Any question answered...

Much appreciated.
Edit: Return tension was in fact out of whack...all good now. 🙏

Have you seen the QMUL maths building?

Hah! That's next level!

Such a great album. That whole early 2000s Out of Spite/Josephs Well/Wakey scene was amazing

I ordered something online on Sunday morning, then realised I'd made a mistake and sent an email canceling. The seller has just said they are

unable to cancel an order once it has been placed as this is sent to the suppliers for shipping in real time.

Are there some sort of distance selling regs that allow me to get out of it?

Any advice?

Cheers.

Edit: there's probably nothing wrong with the product, I just thought I was buying x10 the amount, which makes this an expensive mistake.

Are there some sort of distance selling regs that allow me to get out of it?

Yes, but if there is nothing wrong with the product you'll have to send it back and pay the return shipping.

OK. Well although that might be pricy I'm assuming it'll be cheaper than keeping it.

So I assume it's just a case of telling them I'm sending it back and asking how?

Thanks a lot for your help.

You might be able to refuse delivery. I'd tell the seller that you are planning on returning the item under the Consumer Contracts Regs and ask if you should refuse delivery.

The seller has to refund the postage to you (if any). If their T&Cs state that you need to pay return postage then obviously you need to pay it. If it's silent on the matter then I believe (although not sure) the seller should be paying it (although whether that's fair given it's your mistake is down to you).

What's the easiest way of getting hold of my NHS records?

I arrived here as a 6yo refugee in 1990 on medical grounds and received treatment for immuno-deficiency caused by the Chernobyl disaster; this took place before we claimed asylum and ended up staying, so I'm unsure of whether the early procedures and interactions with the NHS would even be listed on my record as we didn't formally exist back then as far as the state was concerned.

Would be interesting to know what the fuck they did to me back then lol

Ask your gp?

https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/about-the-nhs/how-to-access-your-health-records/

The number of times I'm asked the same stuff though about previous conditions with there been no record of it on my file, I wouldn't be surprised if nothing came back anyway.

Same when I've been with my mum into hospital - frightening the things they expect her to remember about previous chemo treatment, as they evidently aren't able to find it / look it up.

I've already spoken to my GP, who weren't very helpful, and didn't have much in the way of suggestions...

As I thought then.

Facebook is prob your best bet, I'm sure they'll have them somewhere.

Is a belt drive fixed gear a stupid idea?

I know Schindelhauer and a few others do and have done it but it doesn't appear to be popular. Is it just the cost and people's irrational fear of drivetrain losses?

people's rational fear of drivetrain losses

 FTFY

Not many are in to belt drive, so even fewer, read pretty much zero, are in to belt drive fixed.

Possibly just a numbers game. I also remember stuff about the tension requirements to be high enough to damage hub bearings when run fixed. Could be nonsense though, Tester will probably confirm.

I thought it was hotly contested and I've seen figures suggesting the linear relationship of input to output is less steep than with a chain such that they become more efficient than a roller chain at around 210W.
Others scream about 10% losses vs 5 for a well lubed chain so who knows

Yeah I've seen that cited as negatives but I just watched a video of a dude who's put 100k km into belt drives say that he's been slowly reducing the tension on his belt to test and he was running it pretty slack now. He's ridden around the world, up the highest road in the world etc etc
Just got me thinking. A no maintenace town skidder might be a lot of fun with low hassle. I wouldn't really be bothered by efficiency losses but did wonder why others haven't taken up the idea.

There was a Schindelhauer Gates team at a few red hook crits. No idea if they did very well or not

They often had some big burly dudes riding those things so I wouldn't worry about strength of components. I think the biggest hurdle would be getting the gear at a decent price and modifying a frame to use it.

the linear relationship of input to output is less steep than with a chain such that they become more efficient than a roller chain at around 210W.

I imagine you got your "around 210W" figure from the Friction Facts paper, where it is suggested that a hypothetical belt drive requiring no preload would be more efficient than a chain above 208W. They state that since no such systems exists at present, the chain will always be more efficient than the belt because preload needs to be increased to correspond to higher rider outputs. I'm not completely convinced by some other aspects of their methodology, and they were comparing a belt with some narrow bushingless chains, which you wouldn't use on a fixie skidder anyway.

All that said, the numbers are not even big enough to be important in the context of leisure and transport cycling if there are corollary benefits to belt drive which exceed the high costs. For me, the claims of cleanliness and silence don't add up to a worthwhile benefit weighed against the costly components, difficulty of finding replacements in case of wear or breakage and the need to have a custom or customized frame. A waxed Connex 1Z1 is clean and silent when accurately set up with decent quality sprockets, it's cheap, and in a pinch you can usually get an emergency replacement in the sports aisle of your supermarket.

tension requirements to be high enough to damage hub bearings when run fixed. Could be nonsense

Is nonsense. The preload is about 400N, which is also the mean chain tension at 250W/60rpm for a typical fixie skidder gear of 48/19. Peak chain tension would routinely be at least twice that. There is small addition to total pull on the axle as the belt, by design, must never drop to zero tension in the bottom run, but it's trivial. Radial load on the hub bearings from the rider sitting on the bike will be of the order of 500N static, a bit more under acceleration due to load transfer. 6000 bearings, which are about as small as you'll find in rear hubs, will take about 2000N each static and over 4000N dynamic.

TL;DR: Belt drive works, but chain drive works better for less.

Sound enough reasoning for me. Off to the idea bin with that one then
Cheers

Lens fell out of my wife’s MacBook Air. Camera works fine, but is this a common problem and is there an easy way of replacing it?

She’s taped some clear plastic over it in the mean time. Not sure if she still had the lens/cover that fell out.

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There's a website somewhere that combines all of the Mail's (or possibly Express's) ludicrous stories about all the things that are harmful to you. I can't find it on google though, anyone any idea what I'm talking about.

Think it was A-Z in order of the "harmful" object.

Things that give you cancer?

http://thetownend.com/index.php?topic=38270.0;wap2

No, I found that one on my search but it's more general, not just cancer.

Kill or cure?
Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.

https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/