spode@thinkbikes

We (thinkbikes.com) are moving to these for 2008. I would hardly call them short though. 1060-1080. That's short to medium I guess. Very much looking forward to riding them - I'll post pictures when they have arrived.

Although that is all very true, if Mark's diet hasn't changed then this wouldn't suddenly become a problem, he would have always been affected by it. And you can't categorically say he doesn't have diabetes. He probably doesn't, as he'd have other symptoms too - but it's a simple urine dip test that doctors can do there and then if he decides to visit.

Mark, if nothing has changed and you're suddenly very hungry, it really is worth going to the doctors about. It's a key symptom doctors will ask you about. There are parasites that you don't shit out, that can go undetected. You could be in the early stages of hyperthyroidism, diabetes, cancer, or one of several other gastrointestinal conditions. Not that I'm trying to worry you But anything like that, as amusing as it is - isn't right!

Where is that? Looks fun.

A guy I used to work with went a little crazy and filmed this... It's quite amusing. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Wam52JBZY Not sure how to integrate it - if someone else wants to, feel free.

Hey Boon, Add me to MSN and I'll let you in on all/any details you need - it's not something I'd want to do on an open forum. But most of it is laid out in black and grey on the website http://www.thinkbikes.com/booking http://www.thinkbikes.com/training Training wise, it's not particularly expensive to do, we teach to the level of the riders, using specific training rig. They get to ride all of our bikes, and get a 10% off voucher with Tarty Bikes. It's a great idea for anyone wanting to get into trials, and a good idea for anyone who wants to control their bike better. The last session we did, most people had jump bikes! This is obviously all insured, including CRB checks on trainers. Demo wise, we're competitively priced, you get 3 riders, 1200W PA, Insurance for up to £5 Million. Four 30 minute demos. As Ruse says, we are pretty flexible on things (as any business should be) and do offer a discount for choosing Demos + Training. We've done this a few times, training the audience in between performances. If you wanted a more independent view, Adam Bessel and Phil King have ridden the demos with us, so can give you an idea of things. Phil has done some of the training sessions too. And naturally, there's a £50 Tarty Bikes voucher for you Boon, if we get a booking from your Dad.

Hope everyone has a good one

Being in a cast sucks

If anyone has a Digg account... http://www.digg.com/odd_stuff/Free_Secret_Santa_Tool

Thanks I've just had a couple of suggestions made that I'm fixing now. Other that that, it seems to work as it should.

Yeah, that's me. Just realised there is a minor security I'm fixing. Just ignore any errors like that for the next couple of minutes

No idea! Took me 2 days tops and it's not like it'll need changing next Christmas There's a £5 voucher off iwantoneofthose.com if you use it.

I don't know if any of you are organising any Secret Santas, but I've just created a website to help with doing so: http://www.thinksecretsanta.com/ No more pieces of papers in a hat, welcome to the 21st Century!

Certainly on the games front, you're right. This has been a driver issue. You have to remember that the driver model in Vista is entirely new, so the drivers have almost had to be written from scratch.

Not buying it. Take a top end machine now, and XP will STILL out perform Vista, It's been documented - hell, I've documented it. However, in human terms, if you've got a top end machine - you won't notice it. That doesn't mean it's not there.

I had seen it mentioned to in a few places. Just one more reason while you'll never see me on anything with a motor... Pretty coincidental, dontcha think?

When I was 17, I got asked for ID in a pub. So I said, Sure! And handed her my provisional license, which of course had me as 17. And she looked at it, tried to work out my age and then just said "ok, that's fine". I don't know what was going through her head. She must have added it up, and thought, "hmm 17. Hang on, why would he give me his ID to say he's 17? I must have added it up wrong..."

32 to 64, might not seem like a huge jump, but you have to remember that's 2^32 and 2^64. The difference in the amount of addressable memory is phenomenal - about 17TB IIRC, which is essentially limitless - I don't see us ever having that much system memory in my life time.

Yeah, that's the beauty of having a router. Pretty much all network cards are supported in most Linux distros. Windows, I will have to download specific drivers for things. I use Fedora and Ubuntu, and both have been awesome on every computer I've put them on, without the need for any extra drivers. What distro are you using?

Well. If you're modem doesn't work - buy a router. You can get some dirt cheap. Getting modern games to work is possible, but much like anything Linux that isn't done with a GUI - it might be a challenge. Your badger will most certainly come in handy - I don't have any food for dinner yet.

I might have to consider a name change..... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=spode

If you dual-boot XP and Vista on the same machine, it really is noticeable that XP is considerably faster. When using SpodeMark (www.spodemark.com) I found it to be considerably slower under Vista. A lot of this speed decrease comes down to RAM usage. 2GB is no longer enough memory - and on a 32-Bit system, having above 2GB rarely makes much difference due to limitations in the way memory can be allocated. Really, Vista should have been developed as 64-Bit only and forced people down that path (MS love to force..). As it stands, Vista-64 and even 64-bit Linux distributions aren't as stable as they should be, because not enough people have made the transition. It needs to happen very soon. Vista does have a few nice touches, certainly when it comes to installing it. But they have moved a lot of things around inside control panel etc. that quite frankly, I just didn't feel needed moving. I feel it came out too early, but considering the delays already in launching it, it would have been embarrassing to have waited even longer. So after all this wait, certainly for me, the only real feature worth shouting about in Vista, is the fact it supports DirectX 10. At the moment, most games look very similar run on DX9 hardware, or DX10 hardware in a DX9 environment. So this feature is only really going to take effect with the next generation of games coming out. That annoys me somewhat, as MS is basically forcing you into upgrading to Vista if you want to play games. A lot of compatibility issues with Vista, are either due to the main user account no longer being an administrator - which quite frankly is lazy programming on the third party programmers side and not Microsoft's fault. However, Drivers have also been a nightmare, which to an extent IS Microsoft's fault, as they kept making changes in specification to its driver model right up until the launch. Most people who have had issues with Vista, are installing on older computers. If you BUY a computer with Vista already installed, generally speaking - it'll run without too many problems. With XP SP3 coming out soon - there's even more reason why you'd want to stay with XP. It's touted to improve XP's speed, and of course security. However, if you play games, realistically, you have no choice BUT to move to Vista eventually. But if you don't play games, there are other options - XP, Mac, Linux. Personally, I moved to Linux for my day to day activities. I have a second box with XP installed on for playing games, which eventually I'll put Vista on full time. Using Wine, you can get even the latest games working under Linux too (see www.linux-gamers.net). Playing games on PCs is becoming more and more costly as each generation of cards comes out. With triple graphics cards setups and quad core processors, PC Gaming is almost starting to become a niche again. Considering the relationships between modern consoles and PCs now - give it 5 years and I imagine everyone will be gaming with a console on an HDTV, with Linux on a low power consumption desktop PC for using the internet and word processing. Each year, the computer is getting closer and closer to becoming a toaster.

thinkbikes.com Dave is older than you! I'm getting worryingly closer to 24 too. It's never too late to start riding again

Thinking about it is half the battle A video really helps. I remember many years ago (7?) we were watching a video of ourselves for the first time, and didn't realise exactly how much we lowered our bikes before the drop. You'll find sometimes that your front goes so low that it actually goes below the edge of the drop you are kicking off. I find when I drop off stuff, I tend to drop the front almost straight away as my back wheel hits and roll out of it - so that both the wheels absorb some of the shock (as someone said earlier with the 70/30).

The WIKI entry covers it nicely. If the system idle process wasn't there, your CPU would be running at it's maximum TDP the whole time. So it would get really hot, and chew up a lot of juice. Prior to Windows NT, you had to download and install a separate piece of software that would execute these HLT commands, that in fact tells the CPU to do nothing (a bit like a NOOP). NT onwards, the "System Idle Process" takes care of this for us. Just ignore it. FireFox as lovely and great as it is, can be a bit of a shit. It has memory leaks and can sometimes go a little crazy. My first port of call, would be to check for a FireFox update. If that doesn't work, it might be worth switching back to 1.5.