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sorry didn't mean to sound like a prick, just in a bad mood. anyway just to note, in case you haven't already covered it - if you are talking about reheating stuff that has been maintained at lukewarm temperatures for some period of time then there might be microbiological safety concerns also, depending on what it is. Have not done the survey - but will do. Good luck with it.

doesn't that kind of defeat the object of a vacuum flask? - i.e. that it keeps things hot for a v long time? People would probably prefer to spend a bit more money to get a decent quality vacuum flask (that works) then to buy a shit one which they need to reheat their beverage of choice in because the flask did not work.

tip - you could save money on your design by just having any old container which can heat your stuff rather than fannying around trying to needlessly incorporate a vacuum flask in complete contradiction to the intended functionality of the final product.

sorry lazy of me should have posted the text:

Boris Johnson rescued a woman from three "feral kids" who were wielding an iron bar, chasing them away on his bicycle, it emerged tonight.
The mayor of London was cycling through Camden, north London, on Monday night when he answered the cry of Franny Armstrong, a documentary maker and environmental activist who was surrounded by a group of hoodie-clad young girls.
Johnson stopped and chased the girls down the street, calling them "oiks". He then returned to walk Armstrong home. "He was my knight on a shining bicycle," she said today.
Armstrong directed the film The Age of Stupid, and is the founder of the 10:10 campaign, which aims to cut 10% of carbon emissions in 2010 and has attracted support from leading firms and personalities.
"I was texting on my phone so didn't notice the girls until they pushed me against the car, quite hard," Armstrong said. "At first it was quite funny, because they were only about 12. Then I saw that one of them had an iron bar in her hand. It was more than a metre long. It was as big as her.
"Then along came a cyclist. And I thought, 'Good, he's a big bloke,' and shouted, 'Can you help me please?'
"He stopped and turned around and I thought, 'Oh, my God, it's Boris Johnson.'
"He asked the girls what was going on, and at first they didn't move, so I said, 'That's the mayor of London!' and they ran off. They must have thought they were going to get in trouble. One dropped the bar, so Boris picked it up and cycled after them. He returned a few minutes later and walked me home, and we talked about 10:10."
On her Twitter feed she described her attackers as "feral kids".
Armstrong admitted she did not agree with Johnson's politics, and had voted for his rival Ken Livingstone in the mayoral elections. But she added: "If you find yourself down a dark alleyway and in trouble, I think Boris would be of more use than Ken."
A spokeswoman for the mayor confirmed that he had intervened to help Armstrong, but declined to comment further.
Johnson is something of a magnet for action when out and about. Earlier this year, he was nearly hit by a speeding lorry while out on his bicycle scouting for locations for new cycle routes. And in July, he fell in a river in Lewisham, south-east London, while trying to help a clean-up operation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/03/boris-johnson-attack-camden-london1

don't know much about airlite, but if they were british then it is probably 24tpi which was the british standard in use except by raleigh who were 26tpi

depnding on your axle diameter, these might work?
http://www.mx1.co.uk/ProductDetail.asp?ProductID=18797

It's probably the arse darts that puts them off.

I didn't know arse darts was part of the evening so it was not putting me off, but if it is what it sounds like it is then it might be putting me off a little bit now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLktGrpiW5Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HweSpztfafk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imJ8wEIBwB8

Thanks guys for the advice the reason i ask is one wheel has a 700c tyre on it and the other has a 27x 1 1/4 tyre on it.
Obviously the guy i bought the bike off had big arms. LoL

or the rims are different sizes?

700c is significantly smaller than 27 to the extent that a 700c tyre will almost certainly not fit on your rim. there is 8mm diameter different in the rims (630 versus 622)

you can still get 27" tyres, but very limited range, and higher cost than 700c. In long run you may find it easier to convert to modern road size rims (622mm) rims, and may need long reach brakes if you make that change.
Anyway you should know that Sheldon Brown has a detailed page on this...
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tire_sizing.html

313 - Ladbroke Grove
31t®um - south ealing
50/14 - Parsons Green
alien - Fulham/Hammersmith/Barons Court (take your pick)
Aroogah - Lake of the dead (Mortlake)
AndyW - Putney
Anthony (wolfenger)- Twickenham
Audiosyncratic - Chiswick
Backwardation - Notting Hill
Big Daddy Wayne - Putney
BigFatAl - Ashford, wrk in Chiswick
Big Nick - Notting Hill
Broker - Kew
Buddha Fingaz - Putney
brett - work Chiswick (so in the area a lot!)
cake - Paddington, again. (happy to be drinking in civilised London again)
Charlotte - Sexual Ealing
chatters - West Ealing
CheBeef - West Kensington Posse
crankenstein- West Ealing (work in h'smith half the month, half in soho)
Cornelius Blackfoot - Stockwell/ work in the bush, shepherds bush
dancing james - Kew
dante - Twickenham
dantee - uxbridge
Deamism - Kensal Rise
dominiclincoln - Northolt
Donut - West Ken
Dov - Acton
Elguapo - Suxbridge
essbee - South Ealing
Eyebrows- Putney
fib-Fulham (work)
gatti - Che Boo
Gatorman - Paddington (or Parsons Green if visiting my folks)
geo - westbourne park!
glory311 - Shepherd's Bush
hippy - West Ealing
JackFlash (& shaw) - kilburn/west hampstead (yes, i know it's more north-west...)
JimmyP - Chiswick
Joelounge - Grove Park, Chiswick
kipsy - Richmond
Kirth - Battersea
Khornight - Wimbledon (town house) and Stoneleigh (cuntry house) *
kx.001 (shepherds bush)
mastershredder - Hammersmith (thurs-sun)
mc_nebula - Uxbridge
mmccarthy - south/west Ealing
Mini..Cooper - Putney
moog - Uxbridge
Mouse - 'Brackenbury Village' (AKA behind Secrets) as of Thurs!
Mrlemon - Westbourne Park
nv55 - Isleworth
pigfarmer - Fulham
piran - Kew
PistaGem - Shepherds Bush
porter7474 - Ruislip (north west)
provenrad - Shepherds Bush
Rascal - Chiswick
Rob - Fulham baby
Rolphy- Paddington :D
Scrapper - Kensel Green
simon77 - West Ealing
simonw7 - West Ealing
SLag - Parsons Green (till september)
Soul - Shepherds Bush
Stuan - Fulham
T4NY4 - Fulham
Tea_Bee - Part time in Hillingdon (that is also where the tandem is stabled)
tomoh - West Ken
Ved - Richmond
VelocityBoy - Kew Bridge
Vinylvillain - Battersea
wblati - Ealing
Wooderson - Putney (working in Ealing)
yellowbanana - Sands End, Fulham

What was the Profanisaurus name for that feeling you get in your lower bowel which means you know you have only 20 seconds to comply? Obviously to do with Robocop, but I can't remember the rest.

That is Robocrap: n. the ominous feeling in the lower bowel which leaves a fellow in no doubt that he has only 'twenty seconds to comply'.

my personal favorites were:

Abdul's special sauce: n. A thin, red oddly metallic tasting liquid occasionally found in *badly packed kebabs *and which usually ends up smeared around the mouths of hungry gents after closing time on Saturday nights

Arse like the top of a sauce bottle: sim. A less than clean rectum. A nipsy where slight spillages and leaks have dried in situ, and which will have to be picked clean

Percy Thrower's lawn: *n. *A *muff *that has been allowed to go to seed. A hairy unkempt fanny. Terry Waite's allotment.

Sneaky Hitler: n. The surreptitious slipping of one's index finger under one's nose in order to savour the aroma of one's ladyfriends* blip.*

Back on solids: adj. Descriptive of a woman who has recently been* drinking from the hairy goblet,* but who is now back eating beef on the bone. A cured lesbian.

Beaten like a ginger step-child adj. Descriptive of a particularly ferocious and merciless thrashing, for example off a bouncer at a nightclub, a policeman in a cell, or Bjork at Bangkok airport.

..and so may others...Robin Cooks beard, road to Grimsby, sigh....

p.s. for any camping you need a good sleeping mat that will stop the cold from coming up thru the floor.
Thermarest. Highly recommended.

bringing alpkit into it again, their mats are around half the price of thermarest, and may not be as prestigious, but they're still pretty fantastic for the money. I have regular airic, and also a couple of fat airics for when i have the car, or people crashing on my floor.

+1 snugpak

I have snugpak travelpack extreme, using it in summer in UK i totally roasted to the extent that i could not sleep in it.

Describes it's 'comfort' zone as 2 to 12 degC, with a low of minus 3 degC (although it wasn't that cold in swanage).

I just checked and they are down to £31 on one site, which is about £5 less than what i paid, and i thought i was getting a bargain.

http://www.outdoorgb.com/p/snugpak_travelpak_xtreme_sleeping_bag/?utm_source=froogle&utm_medium=directory&utm_content=GBR&currency=GBP&country=GBR

1100g, pack size 17cm by 17cm. Although it was mentioned earlier that 1kg is a bit much for a sleeping bag, it doesn't really feel heavy at all compared to other bags i have or have had. Lightness and pack size, cost, and 3 season use were the only criteria i used when spending a long time researching this, and this is what i ended up with.

oh and i also use a silk liner...

i find dvdshrink decryption a bit hit and miss with the apprently increased variety and complexity of encryption used on newer dvds - i get a better success rate (still) with dvd decrypter but not sure if this is widely available any more, i got it a few years ago (for making back-up copies of my own purchased dvds obviously).

But - I do still use DVDShrink to compress down to fit on to one image file, and strip out all the foreign language soundtrack and subtitles where necessary, then use nero to burn.

I've used DVD Fab which does both the decrytion and the shrinking and burning - but find the end results have not always been healthy playable files, so I keep using the old multi-step method.

(note - DVDFab has worked for me on DVDs where DVD Decrypter could not decrypt).

Also used in the past DVDXCopy Platinum from 321 studios - excellent one click solution.

edit - just to point out that in response to hippy's specific point - i have absolutely no idea how this process would work or not work for a R2 encoded DVD.

saw Trigger from Only fools... on what looked like a black charge plug (the one with bullhorn bars?) on New Tricks BBC1 tonight. Didn't shout anything.

Different studies have shown women account for between 25% and 33% of cyclist fatalities in London - roughly in line with the numbers out there. However when looking at types of fatal crashes women seem to be involved in around a half of HGV related deaths and a much smaller proportion of non-HGV related deaths. Studies from Germany show a similar disproportionality as does anecdotal evidence from other places.

The way it adds up women are much less likely than men to be killed by a car and slightly more likely to be killed by HGVs. To be honest I have no idea why this is so. One suggestion is that women are smaller than men and so are more vulnerable to inattentive lorry drivers; that doesn't explain why they seem to be much less at risk from car collisions.

Yes this is the pattern that seems to be present in the Inner London data in that BMJ paper that Sharkstar provided the link to.

Much as I I am reluctant to publicly speculate in a relatively uninformed manner on such a sensitive topic, I can't help thinking that this pattern could show that men and women cyclists are to a large extent equally likely to be killed by HGVs because it appears that they may not be seen by the driver, hence no gender determination is made, which means that potential differences in driver behaviour towards women and men cyclists do not occur, hence equal probability of collision/fatality for men and women.

However, women cyclists are less likely to be killed by other vehicles [which do not share the blind spot issue of HGVs] purely because they can be seen to be women, which may in itself be sufficient to invoke some extra caution on the part of the driver. This low level of fatalities of women cyclists (when compared to men cyclists) caused by non-HGVs is very apparent in the Inner London data in the BMJ paper.

Obviously this assumes that cycling behaviour between genders is roughly equal which may not be the case.

I'm just doing some research for my Uni 3rd year minor project.

The research is to be used to help me design a system of furniture construction.

I'm looking at how I can give a personal value to furniture.

Seen as many peoples fixed gear bikes are quite personal to them, I'm interested on what makes that so.

If you could take 5 mins to answers a few questions I'd be very grateful.

Thanks, Sammy

1. Is you bike custom built or 'off the peg'?

2. If OTP, how have you made the bike your own?
   If custom, what makes the bike special to you?

3. How important are your bikes aesthetics to you and why?

4. Have you ever switched perfectly good parts for something else and for what reason?

5. If you could change anything about your bike what would it be?

6. Any other thoughts?

1. Custom Built (I think) - got an old road bike off my Dad that he was going to freecycle it due to non-use,and stripped it down to rebuild as fixed gear, with pretty much new everything.

2. Spent many frustrating weeks of very late nights trawling forums, price comparison websites, on-line stores etc finding the bits I wanted, at the best price I could get, and learning how to stick them all together (which I had not done to any great extent before) - what makes it special is riding it and liking that it looks and feels like it does because i wanted it to and put in some effort to achieve that

3. On my older OTP geared bikes - aesthetics was rarely a major consideration (had them as utilitarian workhorse style commuter / shopper / tag-along pullers). But now on my fixed conversion I like that it looks different to other bikes on the road (despite knowing that it does not look as nice as many/most other conversions) i.e. is unique in its specific combination of components and frame and people stop and ask about it when I'm locking it up etc - even more so as there are not really a great deal of fg/ss bikes in w7/w13 area that i use it in.

4. Switched from bullhorn handlebars to nitto riser bars a few weeks ago, wanted to feel closer to my brake levers after some close shaves; switched the original 27" wheels for 700's for better choice of tubes/tyres, and nicer looking rims

5. fork appears to be a bit wonky - trying to understand exactly what problem is, but will probably end up posting on here in mechanics section..., bottom bracket hanger too low so toeclips scrape on ground when walking with bike.

6. My company is offering cycle2work scheme this month, so am having to buy an OTP fixed (it would be rude not to participate) - and have opted for Genesis flyer 2009. I am apprehensive about how it will 'feel' riding that in terms of how it may fail to replicate the warm glow of riding your own lovingly handcrafted conversion...

As I keep saying, the sample size is not small, it's large. It's in the millions. It's the number of male and female cyclists in London. What is small is the number of HGV deaths observed in this sample.

I do agree with you on this. my point was that the data used for this bbc story is (apparently unnecessarily) limited to 2009, rather than going back 10 years, 20 years, whatever. regardless of whether the number of hgv deaths or the number of bicycle journeys is considered to be the sample. The limiting of the data to such a small period appears purely to be for the reason that this limited dataset gives the impression of supporting the story which they decided they wanted to report,i.e. it is a form of cherrypicking.

Did you even bother to try to read any of the articles on that site? The page hasn't been updated for 5 years and most of the links are broken.

No - I did not see that there would be any value in me trawling through the source data to make my own conclusions, and was prepared to just read the conclusions/summaries on the website page i linked to. Have no reason to assume that they are in any way misrepresenting any of the original reports, but obviously cannot prove this.

The higher incidence of female cyclists dying under lorries in London has been discussed for years - here's one of the earlier papers that makes the link:

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/308/6943/1534

Thanks I had not seen that. a lot of the discussion on the thread has been around whether or not hypothesis implied by bbc is borne out by the data given the sample size. the truth would be better represented by studies of data over a greater time period, including this paper (and presumably data has continued to be collected since this paper).

As to your claim that there should be no reason why such a trend would be specific to London, I can only assume that this is because it 'stands to reason'?

Yes i am making this assumption myself, and of course could be wrong, apologies if it is ignorant.

On the US site http://www.massbike.org/info/statistics.htm there is a huge collection of studies of vehicle on bicycle accident data and saw that there is no reference anywhere to gender related trends. So either there is no significant difference in the probability of a bicycle accident between male and female populations (given that there is a very large sample size being used) or alternatively they just didn't analyse the data for this, but you would thnk if there were such a pattern as the bbc article appears to be suggesting, it would have been highlighted long ago through these resources (there should be no reason why such a trend would be specific to London).

One site I saw in the past which had links to what I thought to be good articles on road safety for bikes was a US site, so you obviously have to adjust the behaviours that they are suggesting for the fact that they drive on the other side of the road to us...

most of it is common sense as you can imagine, but i find it does help to reaffirm the importance of things which I can sometimes get complacent about

http://www.oldskooltrack.com/files/home.frame.html
which links to:
[FONT=Verdana]How not to get hit by cars. Read it![/FONT]http://bicyclesafe.com/

and [FONT=Verdana]Road safety skills[/FONT]
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/SafetySkills/RoadVogue.htm

fwiw I was looking at cross levers recently and in the end went for Tektro RL720, £16.99 the pair from SJS, which was £10 cheaper than the Cane Creeks, look and feel nice enough for the money

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/product-Tektro-Tektro-Top-Mount-Brake-Levers-7187.htm

Saw a couple of people mention on the thread that they have the niterider minewt mini-usb - this came out well in the group test of lights in cycling plus last month and I am planning on ordering one of these as an accessory alongside a new bike i am getting through a cycle to work scheme throught cyclesolutions/wheelies - but they have 2 types - the mini usb, and the mini usb plus, £90 and £120 respectively, but the only difference i can see is that there is a helmet mounting bracket for the light and powerpack on the plus version - can't see why this is worth an extra thirty quid - but helmet mounting might be good for being able to point light at cars coming from side for extra visibility.

so...those who got it, should i splash the extra for the plus model? Or do you know if it can be modded on the cheap to helmet mount?

Shit - you have to take a minimum of 5 kids per adult.

and for that reason, I'm out.

it does not exactly specify 5 kids per adult, only a minimum of 1 adult for 5 kids, so there is nothing to prevent 5 adults taking 5 kids if it is on the same booking - unless of course they suspect that the adults are the ones wanting to sleep in teh musem and have dragged along any eligible kids they could find in order to qualify...

Cheaper if you live in a "social priority area" :

"We can also offer some financial help to enable children from social priority areas to attend Science Night, through our Science Night Bursary Fund which is supported by the Brink Trust, Johnson Matthey and Tesco.
With the help of the bursary, the cost of Science Night is:
Children £6 Adults £10"

don't know where these are, got nothing in google, but i doubt if ealing counts :(

Looks good though, sold out until 19 MArch, and then 18 June, "on the gross and gory theme of 'Bodily Functions'".

You do need minimum of 5 children and 1 adult to make a booking so most people would have to borrow more than one i should think. my 10yr old son would love this ( I am not proposing that he can be borrowed ).

oh dear it's all coming out now.

in fact the ferrules i had to hand (which were from a shimano MTB cable set i had for another bike) did not fit into the cable stays on the top tube (too large), so i just let the cable outer sit in the stays with no ferrules...i didn't think that this in itself would have caused a problem...but am well experienced in being wrong. Have to look for some smaller ferrules. The frame is late 1970's Dawes Road bike, will have to do a Sheldon to see what array of information he might have on ferrule diameters for bikes across the ages, and then of course a new smaller ferrule will mean a smaller diameter outer...

Thanks
Simon