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@BenH
SJS sell 140s - they're cheap, basic, and heavyish, though I haven't weighed them and they may actually not be so bad compared to to 170s. They're a small fixed chainring, how many teeth eludes me. Gearing wise they're pretty similar to a normal sized chainring with normal length cranks but obviously ymmv.
I've done maybe a couple of hundred miles on them and am happy. Takes oooh, 15 minutes to get used to them and then you're fine. Don't believe the silly bollocks people say about losing leverage - it's just the same as changing any other part of your transmission. Compensate with a smaller chainring or larger sprocket and the only difference is that you're doing a higher cadence. It's not nearly as noticeable as you'd think, because your feet are doing smaller circles. I can go just as fast with mega short cranks as with normal length ones, with a smaller chainring to give the same gearing.
I got them for the stupidest reason imaginable (got wound up with metal toe clips dragging on the floor on the pedestrianised parts of Oxford). There are other claimed benefits but they're slightly fringe and I didn't have knee pain before so cannot make miraculous anecdotal claims.
Sheldon Brown has a gear calculator that takes into account crank length, btw.