Tomm

Wow, that looks amazing. I really, really want that eccentric BB. Damn, I thought I could get a cheap frame for my next bike, but that just looks too nice. Although like someone else said - that seat is a bit high.

I agree it doesn't really make sense from a money point of view, but from the point of view of someone who's getting a £1000 bike for free, I'd say it's great.

That is an awesome perk. Tell her to get an XC bike in your size, and then stick her on an Argos full-susser for £80.

She might not need to be. Besides, 10% of women have iron-deficiency. No biggy.

Yeah, if she's low on iron, take more iron! But yeah, road bikes are easily the best (fastest) thing for the road, although be aware that they're not as easy to ride as mountain bikes. My girlfriend hates my road bike 'cos she can hardly ride it. So try before you buy I guess. Also if you ever want to ride off road, you're better off getting a mountain bike. They're far more versatile and only slightly slower on road if set up right. Halfords only do a few road bikes, although they are supposed to be pretty decent for the money. I've got a carrera *something* from there, cost about £280 if I remember rightly. Anyway, it seems good, and it's coping well. It's currently done almost 1000 miles without a service, anyway (I should get around to it, really).

Yeah, I think it's a HS33, which means the piston is I think 14mm. I think.

Is it something to do with the colour profile of the image you're working on? If it's in RGB then it should save as jpeg, if it's not then you may have difficulties.

Tiscali suck. We just got them and ended up with a piece of shit usb modem. It crashed my mac trying to install itself TWICE, just froze completely and I had to turn it off... Which has never happened before. Moral of the story: Any company that gives you USB modems is crap. On the other hard, now it's working it's ok I guess

I was like that when I went from my BMX to my trials bike, and again going from a road bike back to trials bike feels weird after a while. But after a few weeks and a few changes, you'll easily get used to it, and it'll begin to feel natural so you won't notice the change. There's no point changing your ride position on the T-Pro, all you're gonna do is make it harder to ride trials. Unless you want a shorter trials bike to play short-bike-trials on, in which case it's a different matter.

Is it new? I wouldn't expect it to work in Win98, but it should work in a WinXP machine without drivers or anything (if it's a removeable disk thingy). Try it in another WinXP machine, if it still doesn't work, assume that it's broken and send it back.

What lens is that?

I know of someone that just sold a 1GHz, 1024Mb Powerbook 15" for £400, I tink that would be a much better idea than an off-the-peg but cheap laptop, which will be huge, noisy and built badly. Or just a year-old Thinkpad or similar, if you don't buy the Mac fanboyism. Quality of laptops is much more important than it is with desktops, and I'd certainly not look at the spec alone.

If you could stretch to a DSLR I reckon it's a good idea - The Nikon D50 with kit lens is under £400 I believe. The Canon (350d) does get slightly better reviews, but the d50 is a good £80-90 cheaper. Also the 350d has a very womanly grip, I much prefer the shape of the d50. The problem is that when you buy an SLR, you're buying into the system of lenses, therefore if you buy a Nikon SLR, you have to use lenses made for Nikons. At the moment, due to the popularity of the 350D, there are more canon lens options Having said all that, the Fuji would give you almost as many options and is a lot cheaper. I don't really have any experience with that, but my girlfriend has a Panasonic FZ7 which is also very decent. Bear in mind that if you buy an SLR, you'll have to spend around £100 more (minimum) for a telephoto lens that will match the ones on the s5600 (10x) and the FZ7 (12x). So you are looking at £500-600 for a similar setup as the Fuji or other so-called "ZLRs".

Haha, I've been trying fakie to up something backwards, now that's hard. I didn't think it was possible, but Leech does it in Manifesto. b*****d!

The key is learning that when you're going backwards, pulling the front brake will bring the back down to earth. That might seem obvious, but for me it was really hard to co-ordinate because you'll be used to doing endos where if you're too far forward you can let go of the brake and come back down. Whereas when you're going backwards it's completely the other way round. Basically you have to go really far forwards, way past the balance point, and then let the brake off. If you're gonna fall forward, all you have to do is squeeze the brake. It's as simple as that Definitely, anything with a fairly steep transition is a piece of piece to learn on, although it's not the same as just doing a steep slope or something. If you're doing it on a slope that's not amazingly steep something, try and do one sqeaker "scuff" to get you rolling, and just feather the brake

Tell him to design one that bolts onto the axle, and do away with the hanger. Then it would be awesome. Although isn't there absolutely loads of friction there?

Good call, I was just gonna post that

Impressive. I got 12-1 on Italy, so I stand to win £60. Gooooo Italy!