Any question answered...

Youtube, has everything. Free. Impartial. Diverse. Accessible.

Spotify, more and more being removed. Rips off customer and musician. Limited.

Spotify started off incredible and ot has changed the landscape.
It took 2 years till things started going wrong.
A good adblock is all you need to fix YT.

The 'own catalog' I would say is self explanatory. Main thing, quality. Aac/flac > mp3

YouTube certainly doesn’t have everything. Since using Spotify for the last like 3 years, there’s been less than a dozen things I’ve searched for and not found, YouTube is pretty poor for this with music. Unless uploaded by the artist or label, most videos for songs are removed for copyright pretty quickly. YouTube audio is quite shit too unless you’re at home with good connection and all the videos are available in HD. YouTube’s only advantage over Spotify is that it’s free.

I discover new music I like almost daily with Spotify’s suggested sections and personalised playlists, if I had my own library I’d be stuck listening to the same shit for years.

I think Spotify is great, so is bandcamp. Streaming sucks balls for artists though. On any platform.

I do hear that a lot of people find yet more appropriate artists through spotify but its not much different then youtube. Just probably laid out in a more 'youll love these! Listen to these!, kinda way. Yt will send you to some mindless life hacks if youre not careful.
Aside from prince and a few smaller acts yt is literally the worlds jukebox. Admittedly there are some tunes you can never get the album audio only live versions of but yt is awesome.
You find music on there.
You buy/pirate (we all do it)
You catalog and leave it to vlc.
Repeat.
Of course some people like spotify. Thats fine. Its wrong though ;p. One opinion to rule them all.

Youtubes gonna change soon n all. Even more so than when google bought em and threw ads everywhere.
Shudder.

YouTube's video suggestions algorithm used to get me to all kinds of nice new things but nowadays it keeps circling in the same shit I already watched before. #sad

if I had my own library I’d be stuck listening to the same shit for years

Serves you right for liking shit in the first place. I haven't felt the need to download anything new since about 2003, and I don't even have a particularly large library.

That’s because there’s no more pre 2003 music being released.
The rest of us aren’t all luddites

That’s because there’s no more pre 2003 music being released

It's more because nobody has released anything new since about 1990. It's not Luddism, it's not even the attitude which people unfamiliar with the true story of the Luddites call Luddism. It's a problem generated by the very services we're discussing - when people have instantaneous access to everything which has gone before, and when marketing is driven by algorithms, it's hard to create a work which isn't just a synthesis of everything, and harder still to get it heard if it can't be described and sold as a hybrid of two or more things a listener already likes. Even in the olden days when people were adding actual creativity to their derivative works, it was often more rewarding to listen to what new bands had been influenced by than the new works themselves.

All of which is not to deny that there are still good performers, writers and composers coming through, it's just that there was already more than enough music on record by 1940 to satisfy anybody with an attention span longer than that of a gnat.

I have just received my grandfather's Mag Lite 2D (two D cells). The bulb is fine and probably there are spares in the drawer in his office.

However, what is the best LED bulb to replace this?

I suppose many are HK specials that may not perform well.

Or, is it the same to buy one direct from China, rather than a UK seller?

many are HK specials that may not perform well

Even a poor one will be five times better than an incandescent lamp. The best will only be about twice as good again.

Mm yea, I was editing my post to ask if they were all the same anyway. In no rush so I suppose up to a month wait for the same object at a half price is fine.

A friend was recommending a Cree XHP 70.2, but said it was £££

So looking at the cost of the HK ones at a fiver and a torch forum recommendation of Terralux, looks like the question is now TerraLUX TLE-6EXB for £13 vs CREE xP-G2 S4 for £11

torch forum

Got a link? I really should improve my Ryobi torch with an led lamp.

Get some of these:

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F251397209384

Turn the red adjuster all the way down and they'll be short pull for cantilever or road calipers.

That’s exactly what’s on there at the moment but she (owner of the bike - my other half) bumped a bollard and bent one so was looking for alternatives. Not that there was anything wrong with them. Just maybe something a bit more classy looking

They're widely (and rated highly) used in bike polo for those who are still on mechanical disc.

Used to run them too for about a year and yeah they're functional, not too bad aesthetically and best performing and great value levers in the market IMO.

IF you must go upmarket (I.e. Form> Function), I've got a pair of silver Paul e-levers going spare, so make me an offer! These: https://www.bricklanebikes.co.uk/paul-components-e-lever-silver

Was phone browsing and closed the link after reading recommendations. Will try find again tomorrow

Im looking for a wooden box i can store 4 pairs of glSses and 2 watches in, to live on a dresser in a bedroom

Ive seen a few custom ones on pinterest, but the shop available efforts appear to be plasticy and tacky looking, with the incorrect number of sections anyway.

Any ideas where i could get something like that made?

Just maybe something a bit more classy looking

The Shimano BL-R780 levers (Ultegra spec flat bar levers) feel classy. As to whether or not they look classy, that's rather subjective. Pretty sure the decals would come off the silver ones easily enough though. Pretty cheap too from SJS.

Any chippys/joiners/people with woodwork workshops on here/is there a thread?

Second hand shops.
Old cigar boxes, strawberry baskets, sewing baskets, cutlery boxes - all kinds of stuff used to be packed in either wood, ceramic or metal.

Does it have to be sectioned or DIY?

How difficult would it be to bodge a 650c wheel, either front or back, in a retro 26" rim brake MTB? It seems like I'd only need 6mm of vertical wiggle room on the cantis to get them to fit (my working: (571mm - 559mm)/2 = 6mm).

Depends on whether the studs were centred or not, a deep drop caliper would get around that though.

Why would you want to? 559 rims are much easier to find, and skinny 559 road tyres are about as common these days as 571 tyres.

Because I think it would be funny and/or interesting to ride around on a retro MTB with a very cheap eBay tri-spoke or something similar. Edit: see my username.

We've had a similar discussion in the past; I'm guessing you won't consider this a sensible use of time or money? Fair enough really.