aener

She's obviously never moved house I love having a big stack of books up one wall of the room. I think it's got great aesthetic value - but hardcopies are expensive, and when moving house twice a year (oh student life!) they're extremely cumbersome.

They can be I tend to be naughty 'cause I'm a student (read: skint), and I don't agree with paying for digital stuff. A lot of the books I want are almost the same price as their physical copy, so I definitely don't pay for those ones. They're about as easy to get hold of as music - though they quite often don't have the chapter markers in (when they're there, you can press left and right to skip to the next marker), but that doesn't bother me.

What do you want to know? They're a fair bit of money, but if you read a lot, it's paid for itself by the time you've read 15-16 books. They're dead handy to have instead of carrying books around. They can play music while you read - but only through the files on it sequentially. It's not a media player. It has a browser (if you get a 3G one, the 3G connection is really rather quick) but it doesn't support multiple windows or flash (meaning no youtube videos or anything that opens in a separate window. Battery life is amazing. I charge mine about once in three weeks, an I use it quite a lot. Comes with a dictionary already on it - you can read through a book and use the directional keys to place a cursor over the word and a definition'll pop up at the top or bottom of the screen. They're multiple format friendly: .mobi, .epub, .pdf, .doc, .txt and probably others I've yet to come across. They're comfy in the hand. You can highlight bits and make a note of them in a note file, then if you open that you have all the things you highlighted in one place. You can't create text documents, which would've been nice, but that'll probably come along in a software update at some point. Can't think what else you might want to know. If there's anything, ask away - but the Amazon services are really great. I've asked questions of them via email three times concerning the Kindle, and each time got a response the same day.

I ride Leeds with Carl (CalopS on here) quite a lot. Judders when he's available, Cocky when he can be bothered, and Pogo when he's not injured

Thanks everyone. I'm already doing a fair few of these things, but I'll start doing the others too. Hopefully it'll work. I do read before bed - but it's almost as bad as watching films. I get really engrossed in it and forget I'm supposed to be winding down. Suddenly it's 04:00 I've never taken sleeping pills - always just hacked it up until now. Might consider them if it gets much worse.

I don't know if I normally sleep alright and go through phases of finding it difficult, or if I always find it difficult and go through phases of finding it easy. Either way, I'm finding it very difficult to get to sleep at the minute. It's been a problem for a long time now - on and off since early teens. I've been to the doctors about it twice before, and all they tell me is to be sure to get some physical activity done in the day, and to have a milky drink before sleep. I do get activities done during the day, and warm milky drinks don't help (nor do I like them ). They also say look at my diet. Granted, it's not particularly healthy, but it's not terrible and it's not changed since I was in my last good-sleep phase. Do any of you have any tips? I struggle getting to sleep before 03:00 almost every night, and I feel like I've not slept at all if I don't get around ten hours. 04:00-12:00 is the only eight-hour sleep that feels like a night's sleep, but that interferes with daily life, obviously. When I'm in a good sleeping phase, I'm fully refreshed on about seven. To hopefully put it in context, on Friday night my housemates had a houseparty, so I didn't get to sleep 'till around 04:00. I was riding Coventry on Saturday, so had to get up at 08:00 to leave at 08:30. Drove for ~2.5 hours. Rode reasonably hard from 11:30-16:00. Drove an hour back to my parents' for a family meal, and I still didn't get to sleep until around 02:30. It really sucks. I'm so tired, but I can't sleep. Any pointers/advice/tips much appreciated. I know this isn't the right place to ask for help, but the doctors never say anything useful, so I'm just after your personal experiences. Ta.

I think, back then, EVERYONE used it. I'm to n00by so can't say for sure

Then you're as stupid as he is. Just having a light bike doesn't make you a better rider. It helps you scrape that extra few inches when you're hitting your absolute maximum, sure, but if you rode an old T-Vee and then got given an M5, you wouldn't get that much better. Mods ARE easier to ride, and it baffles me sometimes why more people don't ride them - with exception to the very tall. Fact is, I ride with Kyle a fair bit (he rides a stock), I can't sidehop his bike very high as your theory dictates, but he can't sidehop mine that high either. I don't believe anyone can honestly be as stupid as you're coming over, so my question to you is this: why are you trying to start another argument?

Don't try too hard, or people might stop saying nice things like that. We all know you have (/had) a soft spot for CLS Don't try and hide it. I think that what Echo Lite 09 said was meant to make you feel good. It wasn't an accusation. Sweet video too! Awesome skills, shame you just copy CLS all the time though

Why is that, out of interest? On the times I've done it (granted, only a few), I've always had the crank in the vice and an adjustable + bar on top, and it's worked easy enough. Is it just better for super-stiff ones, and I've been lucky all this time?

Down.

Get a grind on that wheel you stupid boy. Winter's a-comin'.

Do you mean... like a maintenance stand, or something you can park and lock up on? If it's the latter, check this out for something a bit different:

I don't know - it was a gradual thing, I think. I remember having stabalizers on my purple Raleigh Bruiser, and I remember not having them on there, but I don't remember taking them off or getting on it for the first time. I only have one memory from before I was five, and this wasn't it, so I'd guess I must've been four. Edit: Can't find any pictures of the actual model, but it was something very like this, with skinnier tubes on the front triangle in a very fetching purple. http://www.raleigh.co.uk/ProductType/ProductRange/Product/ProductDetail.aspx?pc=1&pt=9&pg=5975 (Won't let me use [ img ] and [ / img ] tags "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board."

...and then put the rotor in a frying pan with soapy water and cook it for a while. Pour soap on to the pads, rub it in as best you can, then chuck 'em in with the rotor. Dry it off with tissue - there might be oils on a rag/teatowl. Put 'em back on the bike and bed them in again. As said above, it'll not be as good as pads that never got contaminated, but it'll probably help a bit. Might not, if you're unlucky, or dropped them in a bucket of oil

Is he babyfaced, or is he as young as he looks? He doesn't look old enough to have that kind of power. Keep watching it. Tap-frenchy and hooks are insane.

Bloody love this guy's riding. So awesome.

Because they're so short. If they were shortand had low rise it'd feel like a monkeybike. On a trials-trials bike, you're more laid out. Using Coust frames as an example (very long), the rider's back is almost parallel to the floor when stood on the bike. Just the way the geometry is. On a street-trials bike, you're more stood up. Using Skye frames as an example (very short), the rider's back is not far of perpendicular to the floor when stood on the bike. Y'want a similarish amount of space in the cockpit, it's just arranged differently, which is why they handle differently.

They COULD make a stem with that angle and it would feel the same, yeah. BUT... If you had that stem, there'd be much less option for change. With stackers, you can think: "I wonder how slightly lower bars would change the feel of [manoeuvre x]" and just do it. Or you could decide you fancy a bit more. It's cheaper too If you know exactly what height you want, then yeah - that'd be great - but from a manufacturer's point of view it's kind of limiting. A lower angled stem of length [x] can be used by itself, or with stackers to generate a whole range of geometries. Making just that one geometry limits it to that alone. On the idea of bending steerer tubes, good bloody luck I'm sure - with adequate force - it is a possibility, but I'd wager that number is far more than people can generate. I've never heard of it happening. They're very thick walled, reasonably large diametered tubes... Need a metallurgist/engineer in here really but my money's on needing to be the Hulk or a robot to do that. Again - a longer headtube would restrict you exclusively to higher bar heights. True - most streety bikes you see have high bars to make up for the short cockpit, but there's some Inspired riders I've seen run something like a 110x10* with very few stackers (if any) and ride it as a trials-trials bike with some street rather than really streety street trials. All comes back to being as all-rounder as possible. They're all-rounder bikes that do a bit of everything, so the more versatile they can be, the more the company will sell. Yes - you could run low BMX bars. I was thinking of trying this out on my mod with a long stem to get it a bit streetier. The main issues were the stem. I'd've wanted about 80-90mm reach, which just doesn't exist with a 22.2mm clamp, and I didn't fancy shims with that much leverage. I think you'd have that issue too. Most 24" stems I've seen have been 70mmish, which is at the very longest of BMX stems - though maybe their 70 being flat and trials' 70 being slanted would be enough. Not sure - look in to it, but I'd give the advance warning that I really don't think it all worth the effort. If you want to spend money on experimenting, I fully support you and urge you to do it. Experimentation is good. In this case, however, I think the reasons for doing so are not realistic issues. (That's my take on the things you asked, anyway.)

Just found these. Wondering what year they're from? Look so damn primitive. Did this style ever get used for trials, or are they older/shitter than that?

Out of interest, why have you sanded it down so much?

It'd be much easier, quicker and cheaper to buy one... they're not much. ...But if it's just something you want to do, rather than wanting to get riding, talk to Josh. He made an entire lever body once, was pimp as hell but something went wrong concerning the clamp which wrote it off so never got to use it I remember seeing it though. Made the piston out of brass, I think. (That's a massive "think", better talk to him about it.)

OH MY f**kING GOD. I cannot believe that!! INSANE. Who are your sponsors?! YOU DEFINITELY NEED SOME IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANY!?!?! Have you thought about going for a world record attempt? f**k!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Really? ...Really?! Aside the pricetag, having to use iTunes is the WORST thing about iPhones. I got one off a friend for a bit, since I didn't have to pay for it. I only wanted to use it as a phone and a music device. The music player itself was great, but God damn it Apple, haven't you ever noticed the benefits of drag and drop devices?! I hate how it demands that you use it, and iTunes itself leaves more than a little to be desired. I ended up pulling the drivers out of the installer and using Sharepod instead, but that still was a pain (and I couldn't transfer videos). Unless you have a specific reason for using iOS (such as your investment in applications), I'd say Android every time. No experience with that particular handset though. I'm not much of a phone-guy. Edit: I just noticed the "and are already using iTunes" bit, so that is less directed at you and is more a general rant

Why do people keep calling them "boomerangs"? Is a "boomerang" on the floor, and a "decade" in the air? If so, that's dorky as f**k, and I vote for everyone to enforce that they be called decades from now on. Cool link up though.