@Batman yep, weird. That would be me :-) I noticed in the review page mouse-over that he was getting to 500; thought it would be nice to acknowledge his work for the community, since it's a l-o-n-g way from 250 to 1000 reviews.

@Bernhard you are in Holland? I have had a couple of excellent holidays there (in north Holland, close to Bergen). The Dutch cycling culture is the envy of the world.

@Mσᶎ that would have to be posh new bikes I'm sure! (or maybe just Aussie?) Last new bike I got did have some plastic bungs protecting the bolts, but nothing you could use to keep the chain out of the way.

Not the bolts, the nuts.

Or maybe I'm just cheaper/more inventive than some people? I just look at that and go "lump of plastic and a wingnut"...

@PeteH Yup, living there. Separate bicycle lanes everywhere :)

Only downside is that we have almost no hills

@Bernhard but more than your fair share of wind! I did a circuit once from Bergen to Den Helder, along the coast. 40km/h on the way out, I thought "I'm feeling good". Then I turned around and managed <20km/h on the way back!

@Mσᶎ the place where I was doing my course last week, the guy made his own wheel jigs and dishing gauges from bits of metal and a welder. Very impressive.

The wheel jig cost me around GBP30. If I'd gone to a shop and got a Park jig, it would have cost GBP150

@PeteH yup, it's all about money vs time - if you can sell you time for more than the cost of making the tool it's usually worth buying it. And some tools are just really hard to make...

But a chain-width pulley with a bolt thru it? Not so much :)

I'm just listening to some of your English folk music, it's quite amusing (Chumbawamba, ABCDEFG)

I'm sure I used to hear Chumbawamba in nightclubs (back before I went and got old!). Hang on....

yeah, Tubthumping. Would have been around 1997, back when I was dangerous!!

Never heard any of their other stuff though.

They'[re actually "not that sort of band", the first 10 albums are largely folk-punk rather than pub music.

and even Tubthumper... the rest of the songs are pub rock but hard left-anarchist pub rock.

Yeah, I must admit I was never a big pop follower. At Uni I was into punk and reggae, and it kinda stuck!

Mrs and I actually went to a gig a month or so ago. First gig for many years, and to see a guy (Paul Heaton) who I'd last seen in 1987, when he was part of a band called The Housemartins.

Chumbawamba are anarchists if that's any colsolation

@PeteH OMG, {fanboi}{

:-)

Their swinging between acoustic and christian was a bit weird.

Yeah his politics were quite strange.

youtube.com/watch?v=4Gzyd3u1Jh0 "give the anarchist a cigarette"

But the music was good, and their left politics were interesting.

ah.....can't play it at the moment. I'm downloading a movie which seems to be taking up most of the cpu

My musical taste is quite influenced by growing up with single-along folk music, so I got a lot of slightly odd (by the standards of the day) stuff. "The Highwaymen", for example, were an English a cappella folk group before they were a bunch of used up USA country singers. But good luck finding anything about them online...

bah, /sing-along/

I must admit I have lots of reggae stuff which just doesn't exist online. It was always kind of "underground" music

For some reason "salt fare, north sea" is one of the Chumbawamba songs I keep coming back to. It's somehow like "Life in a northern town" in my mind. Also a good song, BTW.

@PeteH I seem to specialise in "here, have a pre-release copy of" ... something that never actually gets released.

Life in a Northern Town is one of my favourite songs.

But never really heard of Dream Academy since.

Or when it does it's been chopped out of recognition. My version of Joelistics "Blue Album" is the pre-compressed to shit version, and sounds excellent especially compared to the released version (that I also have). Aussie hip-hop, BTW.

Yeah, Dream Acadamy do seem to have been a bit one-hit.

I did listen to one of their albums, but decided against buying it.

There was a time, if I liked a song, I'd go buy the album just to see what it was like

One thing I love these days is that disk space is cheap and digital to analogue conversion is pretty good. The days of needing $5000 worth of gear to play one of 100kg of CDs are basically gone. These days I have going on a TB of FLAC files and a $600 pair of headphones through a $200 USB DAC are as good as my ears. Even $200 headphones straight out of the PC are reasonable.

I bought a couple of albums, I figure that these days I can afford it.

My habit is to "stalk" good musicians, go and find/buy everything they've done. Jimmy Sommerville, for example, has been around :)

God, random play has given me Bob Dylan. Very much a "occasionally, briefly" artist for me. Like Leonard Cohen - only famous IMO because of the Young Ones. Jennifer Warnes (who can sing) covered a bunch of his stuff and IMO did a much better job.

Yeah he did some good stuff. I tend to "discover" older musicians then buy up everything they ever did. "Found" George Harrison not so long ago, for example

... looks through probably 10 Ani Difranco albums and finds "Lisa Kalvelage"... a song by yet another "can't sing, can write" artist sung by smeone who can.

Jennifer Warnes.....now there's a name I haven't heard in a while

Also, Right Said Fred.... because I have a weakness for funny songs, and bass singers. And, let's be honest, buff dudes in skimpy clothes.

ha

There's just something about a cabaret singer targeting boys in pubs with a song about how cute men are that I find irresistable

I remember I had an "I'm too sexy" tee at one time

oh sh*t, did I really just admit that?

if you get a chance Shona Liang is a kiwi artist worth having a look at. "Glad I'm not a Kennedy" is far from her only song. "Highway Warriors" is a bike-friendly song I quite like, and "Neutral and Nuclear Free"... guess what thats about :)

Crikey, I gotta go. Got to operate Pete's Taxi Service and go pick daughter up. Perils of living out in the sticks.

good l7uck!

@PeteH The wind is nasty and awesome at the same way

For roundtrip I preferably start with headwind

but strong tailwinds are also fun when riding in a group, less advantage of the group, so the strongest survives

once did 48km/hr for a km or so

Tony Martin style ;)

I have extreme arachnophobia, to the point of once leaving a week's worth of dishes on the sink due to a dead spider. Any suggestions on how I can deal with spiders on my bike?

@NateKerkhofs I feel for you. We live out in the country and have lots of spiders (fortunately no phobia). But my city-dwelling cousin came to visit us once, she screamed the place down when she saw a spider on the ceiling of her bedroom! Clearly we hadn't cleaned thoroughly enough.

@Bernhard talking of Tony Martin....one of the best photos I've ever taken, at last year's TdF....

@Mσᶎ was gonna get some Shona Laing to listen to - going to visit relatives this weekend, 200 miles, could use something to listen to - but all my usual MP3 haunts have nothing of her's.

I see some CDs (expensive, 3x normal CD price) but of course I'd never get it in time :-(

But at least my movie download finished. No fibre optic broadband where we are yet, downloading an 8GB DVD is painful!

@PeteH Nice picture!

Although I never understand why people take pictures on these occasions :)

@Bernhard well, you know, I was there in the middle of this bike race, there wasn't much else to do!!

You only saw Tony Martin through the eye of your camera ;)

@Bernhard the speed he was going I was lucky to see him at all!