Any question answered...

SGS are the people I've used before.
They're good a preventing your furniture ending up looking like Swiss cheese.

Yeah I had one on my SSCX. Will drop them a line.

You could go electric and use linear actuators to have it drop and raise at the touch of a hidden button. Could even go Wi-Fi…
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303927330826

I now have a hilly 15 mile commute. The worst climb has sections of 14%.
I rode it on my geared bike today, but I'm keen to ride it on my new fixed build. The build current runs 49x19 which is about 70 gear inches and I flat out won't manage that on the steep hills. Is running 42x19 at 60GI going to be annoyingly spinny? Otherwise I'd go for 44x19 at about 63 gear inches.
This is a bit of a silly question and obviously subjective, but any thoughts?

64 used to be a standard 'winter gear' used to keep everyone spinning away merrily until warmer weather, you'll adjust quickly.

Is that your way of saying I’ll regret going lower? Or is it more HTFU ;-)

It’s going to be coming down the hills which will be horrible with 60 GI. You will harden up to going up the hills with 70 GI, it’ll be hard at first, but going downhill on 60 GI will be really hard work.

HTFU is the old standard gearing of 72!

I used to go up a mile of 10% on 48:15 on my commute, I know bloody well I couldn't now!

You will be surprised what you can get up with regular gearing on fixed. It's not the same as riding it in an easier gear on a road bike. Some of my fastest rides up hills have been on 49/18 despite putting in effort on the road bike other times

Thanks all, 44x19 it is!

I've had about 10 bots follow me on twitter lately. It's very obvious that they're not real people. None of them has ever tweeted. What's the point of creating them? It must be a lot of work. They all follow 1000+ accounts and have 100+ followers. How does anyone make money from them?

I’ve got 42x19 on the pest with 33mm it gets me up a 17% climb in the morning, but it’s almost as hard work going back down it later.

I guess the real question is how did they even manage that with twitter barely managing to function at the moment ;)

Went 44t in the end. Time will tell. The goal is to get comfortable enough to put the 49t on, so probably wise to not go too spinny! Worse comes to worst I'll just have to walk a bit, lol.

Are the day 5 highlights not showing up for anyone else on ITV player?

Not there for me too

I think it's normally around 10pm they're available.

I'd watch some of the live recording if you don't want to wait, it was a great stage.

I'm torn - need to go to bed, but don't want to leave it and inevitably have it spoiled tomorrow before I can watch it.

Next random question - is the fact that my garmin isn't recording distance in any way connected to the fact that I was also recording on strava on my phone? Happened both ways of my journey today.

Thanks - opposite of what I want: delete the Google photo and keep the original on my device. I thought I previously had instructed Google not to make copies of any photos or videos that I had taken, maybe an update erased that preference?

Next random question

You might get a better response in the GPS tech thread

Anyone got any intel on Shimano's likely offering of 1x12 for gravel bikes? I am scoping a build with 1x11 GRX but don't want to invest in an obsolescent platform (and haven't been keeping up to date with industry rumours).

OK answered my own question:
https://escapecollective.com/next-gen-shimano-grx-gravel-groupset-goes-12-speed-and-offers-a-proper-mullet/

"MiniDV is already digital, and it is a lossy format. It should never be "captured". Use WinDV to make a 100% true copy via Firewire, the way it's supposed to be done."

If that's true, maybe I should look at some way to get Firewire input into my PC instead of using this capture card? In which case, do you wanna buy a capture card? :)

I got video showing in Debut (capture software from VideoPad people) so it works.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/384804-Any-firewire-capture-software-for-Windows-10-actually-work

67" was the lowest I went. That got me up most things in a long Audax season. Generally ground to a halt at ~16%, stuff like https://goo.gl/maps/n1CLE7qEh5sbQjAg6

But the point is that I rode the same roads on a geared bike and still resulted in walking despite having a 30x29 gear choice.

In the end the slight inefficiency of a really low cadence pales into insignificance if you're simply unable to put in enough power to grind up a slope regardless of the gear. Going up something at 5kph takes the same amount of power input regardless of the gear you're riding, it might be very slightly easier to do it at 80rpm rather than 25rpm, but the difference is minor.

I always chose my fixed gear for the downhills. Too low and downhills were just awful, and that's being able to spin at 180-200rpm.

Or just get a freewheel…