Heatsink

Next have some stylish offerings - funky trainer looking shoes which are obviously for fashion wear rather than sport. The only problem is they're over priced and the shoes were very narrow so I couldn't even get them on! I'd have a skim around the supermarket clothes departments. Next buys their stuff from the same far eastern sweat shops but marks it up alot more. I bought some once for £15 but they were unwearable because the bridge part of the sole (between the front and back) was too flexible so it didn't support my foot properly when walking. Be sure to check this! I don't mind buying clothes from supermarkets or Matalan, since most of it doesn't have any distinguishing logos on it for logo snobs.

Hey Nick! The presentation of the site is great :lol: I like the subtle colour scheme and the font choices - cool and relaxing! Nice one :sick: Steve

Having recently become a Mum, I can say that bringing up a child is damn hard work and you'll only realise this once you're a parent yourself. Our lives completely revolve around our little one - everyday he calls the shots. It'll make you suddenly realise the huge amount of work your parents put in for you! One day a year to show your appreciation isn't asking much to cover the other 364 days of the year when you're horrible to them. :) No need to add to the commercialisation of the day and feel you have to buy lots of pressies - Maybe making her life easier for one day, it could be helping with a meal, making her cups of tea, something like that would be much appreciated.....But if you do have some loose change that is enough for a bunch of flowers and some choccies, then I'm sure your Mum could find a good use for them! Tracy (Mrs Heatsink)

Move the contact details to under the main logo so they're always there. It would fill the white space better under the Main logo. Why make people click on "Contact" when you can make the info come to them? I must admit I haven't got the Contact info in this way on my website though :"> But it is the best thing to do however! Steve

I was reading the reviews on Amazon yesterday for the 2 Zen beasties, Micro (5gb, smaller in size than it's brother) and Touch (20GB) Have a look on there - some really good things to be aware of. Battery life is very important, and the Touch has 24hrs of battery and Zen 12hr, although in reality people report that it can be less than this if you actually play around with it, flicking through the menus etc. Check out for yourself via Amazon the difference in price, difference in size, difference in storage and see which is best for you. Will the bigger one fit in your pocket already? They're both £160, so you could say wanting it extra small means you loose 15GB of storage and 12hrs of battery life - I'm coming around to preferring the Touch now! To check the size, you could cut up a bit of wood the right size and try putting it in the pocket of the trousers you intent using. A bloke at work has just ordered a Touch, so I'll have a good oogle at it tomorrow and be better informed then (Y) Steve

I like the way that they've completely kicked the ipod mini for touch with all the features- 50% longer battery life, easily replaceable battery, more choice of colours (I think!) 1,250 songs (83 hours) at 128 kbps is more than enough and the all important thing is the size really if the other boxes are ticked (Y) Steve

Hi there, They're a reference to pads that I've made. Some people are calling the white 05 Batch B pads "Nu Gen" or "New Gen" pads, which is a phrase I coined for the moulded pads which aren't here yet. I've actually stopped taking more orders on any of my pads at the moment because I can't find time in my schedule of full time job, being a husband, & a dad to Callum. Making pads by hand to the quality level I want to maintain takes too long to achieve the immediate send out that I strive for. I will only be starting up again when I have the moulded pads available, the proper "New Gen" pads. Cheers, Steve P.S. This topic can be locked!

On the fatigue point - Just to clear up the definition: Fatigue is the failure of a component due to loads below the material's breaking stress. This occurs because these loads are applied many times. Of course the higher the stress then the less number of cycles required to break the component. The beauty of steel and titanium is that you can eliminate fatigue failures if the stresses in the component go below a certain value, i.e. a proportion of the breaking stress. For aluminium it's possible to break the component no matter how low the stress if you apply it enough times, although the figures may be so high that they are outside the reasonable life of the component and so not a problem. From my own work with designing steel components for non-bike application with fatigue in mind, I've found that a factor of safety of 1.4/1.5 is a bit of a magic figure, because from the data I found, then you'll safely fall under the "Endurance limit" for steel and so sidestep any failures due to fatigue. Steve

Sorry to everyone for posting so much in this topic - I try to keep my posts about my pads in one thread in the News section normally :o Mark - The pads look grand for trading in with the clips in top condition, they'll clean up nicely, and the old pad material will be removed so cleanly you'll never know they previously had other pads in :- Postage and packing wise, it only costs me around 30p for the parcel (great quality but bought in bulk) and a 1st class stamp, and I made an early decision to absorb this cost myself rather than do what some places do on brake pads and cheekily make a couple of extra pounds on the postage/packing - I was fed up with being treated like this myself! Ben - I am indeed running your old XT brake on the front, and despite all the pivots there isn't any noticeable wobble yet, just a lovely parallel action. coupled with an matching silver Avid SD5 lever - £10 from CRC and my white compound in some Plazmatic CRV backings (I'll be transferring the material to my own backings as soon as I've caught up with the pads for others!) I'm really chuffed with it! On top of the advantages I posted earlier, I'm loving the reduced weight compared to my front magura and easy and quick response (I must admit that my old maggie was in need of a bleed), all without any compromise in brake performance! Steve

Hey Mark! Thought I'd reply directly here rather than PM so that I can just confirm that there's no problem with traded in pads being dirty or contaminated with any substances like magura oil. As long as after I've cleaned them up they are in mechanically sound (the clip feature) and not looking knackered (ask yourself would you be pleased to receive these backings, cleaned up on the brakes you'd bought) then all is well :o Also, please don't try and remove the old pads yourselves (change in advice from on my webpage FAQ), because it's very easy to butcher the backings if you don't do it regularily as I do :D Glad to hear that the Vees and compound are working so well Nick :- I'm really chuffed with these brakes and thinking of ditching my rear maggie as well as my front one. I've got a dead grind on the front and it locks on like a switch with the same feel as hydraulic disk brakes I've tried but for less than 1/5 of the price! On Vees, I really love how it takes a few seconds to set the pad up perfectly straight to the rim, rather than 45 minutes for a magura, plus how I can actually quickly release it to get the wheel out when I'm transporting the bike rather than having to deflate the tyre with my maggie on. I never thought the day would come where I'd be taking the maggies off my bike! Steve

I reckon that you could raise the required monthly money by continuing as you've started - removing non-contributing accounts, but then in addition make it really easy for people to set up accounts again and pay via cheque/paypal the very modest charge that you're asking for. Lots of people paying a couple of quid, plus a few banner sponsors (ahem!) paying more would surely reach the target to establish a continuous service up to the bandwidth requirements :o Steve

Hi all :closedeyes: The Vees are indeed ready to order. I had 25 pairs machined at my favourite CNC machiners to my design (see photo), and I simply haven't had time to update the products page of my website to announce that they're on sale :"> Hopefully there's plenty of info about them in the news scroller on the front page of my site though whilst I sort it out! I've had a good amount of orders, but there's a few days delay on send out because I'm making up the pads to fit by hand, and to maintain the quality level takes time. So far Prawn and Jon (Quick_Spider) have the first complete sets (Jon has a set for front and rear), and I'm working on the pads for the other orders as quick as I can (Y) ^ Here are the remaining 22 backings (hopefully all there - I haven't counted them yet!) just waiting for me to make up the 05 Batch B pads to fit. As you can see, I've inserted a variety of Magura pads into some to show their huge plus point - how they are can take any of the well liked Magura pads out there! I still have pads available to order - just drop me a PM/email if interested, and I'm working through these in the order I receive the payment via paypal/cheque (£15) Cheers, Steve

^ That can't be right! I've never seen a medium as large as 42"!! 40" sometimes though.

In those pics it looks like the guy discovered tanning beds in 2000 and baby oil in 2001! Good transformation though, sshows what's possible with hard work :)

Which ever of the chosen Tee shirt sizes is 38" chest, will be by far the best fit for the majority of young riders. I'm sure Mud and Blood and quickly tell you how the sizing of the Tee shirt they're using is broken down. This is often the Medium size, but some manufacturers have a 40" as medium and you'd be surprised how this step up can completely swamp you! Steve

Just my suggestions: + Get some images on the front page which immediately tell people what you do. Don't need to be big! A picture paints a thousand words and all that - it'll mean you can minimise the amount of descriptive text you've got there. + Loose the click to enter thingy + Make it load quicker, otherwise most people will give up trying to access the site. + Your site is your first way to make an impression. Ideally it should communicate clearly (ease of navigation), satisfiy their quest for information and respond swiftly. On the lack of any other information, people may extrapolate the problems with the website to your engineering services too, which would be a real shame. + Navigation wise, going through the products wasn't immediately obvious. I'm just a fan of simplicity I guess and am probabily not the only one who clicked on the part descriptions frustratedly for a while. Why not make it easier? + Remove the contact link and slap the info on each page - make it easy to find rather than requiring lots of clicking (I need to sort this out on my site!) Hope this is constructive! Steve P.S. I've opened myself up to criticism about my own site now!

This is great news! I've just downloaded the order form, but can't open it in my copy of Word. It's telling me I need to install an add-in for Windows 2000 professional :- Any chance you could save the order form in an older format of the Word file as well? All the best, Steve

George, it's a slippery and expensive slope! Give it 3 months and it'll look like this :wink2:

Q: Roughly how many General Lees were used during the Filming of the popular Hilly Billy series, "The Dukes of Hazard"?

A: None Q: ...

20's not old you young whippersnapper!

The plus side of such tools is the convenience of having a multitude of useful tools all together where they can't be lost. The downside is that each of the tools is harder to use ergonomically because of them all being attached to the body. Because you tend to hold the body as you use he tool, I find that it's a battle to keep the joint from articulating as you use the tool (annoying as you're putting a bit of torque in to tighten up the bolt/screw at the end), whilst the body does get in the way as you use it. What's our reward for getting you an A++ in your report? :P