Tony Harrison

Thanks for the feedback, that's good to know - they seem to be the pro choice of tyre. Awesome bike in the pic. I like the red and white colour scheme - my dad has a couple of TZ250s (an E and a J) and they're just insanely beautiful bikes. Here are the two SR400s I saw at the weekend... They look like they've been built with no expense spared. This is eventually the standard I want to get mine too: The mechanic told me today that he's hoping I can have the bike on Friday and then next week I can take it back to sort the tank, short seat and wheels. I'm just itching to have a midnight blast on it. This weekend coming there's a big SR meet in a nearby city, so it'll be interesting to see a good selection of bikes that other people have modified.

I still look back at photos I took in 2006 with my Nikon D50 and, despite me hardly being a proficient user of it, the image quality wasn't bad. Sure, with less settings and options on the camera you're a bit limited, but 1000D still allows for a ton of possibility. I'm sure a lot of us have had that (frankly quite insulting) response to showing a half decent photo to someone of "Oh nice, what camera do you have?". We like to blame our kit for things, and others like to assume that it's the camera does the work, and it's true that better kit in the hands of the right person can produce a better image, but the 'entry level' gear still allows for a lot of learning. I keep thinking it'd be nice to do an experimece, take a D40 and a D4, go on some shoots with the same lenses and find out what it's like to compare. If I can get my D50 back from wherever my ex-girlfriend is these days, I might compare it to my D3, shot for shot... How cropped is the photo? Also were you using a continuous focus mode? I keep thinking it'd be good to master manual focus, but it's never something I've given much time to.

The guy actually came back from France a few weeks ago on another holiday and had got in touch with me beforehand to see if I could help him source some Yamaha parts. So I took a day out to take him to my main supplier on the outskirts of the city, and Thierry was like a kid in a sweetshop. Filled a massive box with 1000EU of stuff, which made the shop owner pretty happy. Also Thierry had brought two decent bottles of red wine from his local vineyard for me! Can't believe it's a whole four months nearly since my post about my bike. It took several months to get the paperwork done, and I didn't want to start work without that - so now the bike is legal and registered to me, I'm good to get it finished. However one of the most frustrating things here (Bangkok) is getting hold of parts. There are some Facebook groups, but otherwise it's shops tucked away in the backend of nowhere who don't really do much online, don't speak Thai and don't answer emails. It's taken ages to find everything I need, but a chance meeting in a convenience store with a guy from US saw me recommended a Japanese mechanic who's fairly local to me. So with xmas out the way I rounded up a few more bits (a couple of raw fibreglass seat bases, headlight mounts) and spread it all out on the bed to take stock... The speedo/rev counter is really nice. Original early Yamaha SR part, in stunning condition. The rims I bought last year for the equivalent of £200, which isn't actually that cheap, but they are Japanese-made Excel ones. They're both 18", which means a 1" reduction for the front wheel which is currently a 19". Suits me fine though. They are brand new, pre-drilled - I just hope the drilling is suitable for the drum hubs I have in mind. Most of that stuff, and the bike, I dropped off at the Japanese mechanics place a week ago. I'd love to do all the work myself but I don't have the space or enough tools, and I don't really want to be buying a whole load of stuff. Not only that but I'm struggling to find much time to do anything on this project, and as I said it's been 4 months now. As for the rims, I strapped them to the back of the bike, took them to the aforementioned Yamaha guy who dug out a couple of hubs. A wheel build here is the equivalent of £4 in labour... The drilling in the rims could be at the wrong angle but it 'looks' right. The rims were sold for this make/model of bike, but the disc hub is much smaller in diameter. Anyway I left all that lot at the shop a week ago, so on Wednesday I should find out what's going on and if they were able to build them up without any issues. Meanwhile at the weekend I saw a couple of SRs exhibited a local bike festival. I'm pretty much decided based on them, and other opinion, that the Bridgestone Battlax BT45 is the tyre to have. By the time this is all done, it'll be a fairly pricey wheelset I have. Hanging up on the ceiling at the shop I spotted a grubby looking Manx Norton style tank, built for the SR. It's got a lot of charm to it actually - it has that home-made feel to it that I've seen on privateer classic race bikes, the kind of machines people prepped in their workshops at home. Most importantly though the fit on the frame is spot-on. I wasn't against paying £300+ for a brand new one (I paid £120 for this one) but the ones I've seen advertised don't look right somehow. They don't sit down on the frame properly. Anyway I took it from the Yamaha shop to the Japanese mechanic, and he's going to polish it up, flush out the inside and hopefully find a petrol tap for it. The Japanese chap is also making up a couple of custom cafe racer style seats - one for two people to use with the original tank, another shorter one for with the alloy tank. Another finishing touch is this beautiful top yoke. Made by Peyton in Japan, apparently replicating the ones fitted to the TZ Yamahas in the 1970s... Other than all that I still have a few bits to find - small indicators, a better headlamp. The Japanese guy has sent the fork uppers off for rechroming, and he's doing a load of other work too. Also I want to find a capacitor kit to replace the battery, so I can ditch the whole battery/air box for a cleaner look. Just itching to get this thing done now. If I'm lucky I'll get it back for the weekend, and then it'll go back in next week for the wheels to be fitted and the tank/short seat to be finished off. I'm also toying with having the engine completely rebuilt, but if I do that it'll be next time I have a few weeks out of the country so that it's not an inconvenience. Anyway, more pics in due course, and I hope I'm not boring everyone with this ; )

What an awful thread, so predictable too...

So many times I've nearly done that, checked quickly and then for some reason the car in front has stopped while I was looking away...

Good luck polishing that out...

Naturally you gave her the boot. Good time too, means you can sell her presents.

On a similar theme, a long time ago I came up with the name Involuntary Additional 'S' Syndrome (IASS), for people who add an 's' to things. For example 'Tescos' instead of 'Tesco', 'anyways' instead of 'anyway'. There's also of course Australian Question Intonation, which is particularly irritating (i.e. where everything is intoned like it's a question, with a raise in pitch at the end of the sentence). Then there's the whole "I was like", which becomes shortened often to "Ahslike": "And she was like... and then ahslike... and she was like..." It's just sloppy and shit.

Really great capture... Mark they're awesome, really well lit too. The ones in the woods are particularly good in my opinion, also it's a less usual place to see a bike like the Inspired. As for me, I finally went full frame. I bought a used Nikon D3 which was going cheap (although I received it to find the sensor pretty filthy, so there goes £40...), and then a 24-70mm f/2.8, since they're about 25% cheaper in Asia than they are in the UK.

I still have it all, Technic, Scalextric, model trains ; )

There are at least 26 photographable steps missing from the process of fitting that splitter.

Well I still haven't been able to watch it - I don't think my net connection is man enough to stream it. My big complaint with iTunes is its obsession with 'the cloud' and its insistence that I don't need things downloaded. Big problem these days, the assumption that we always have a fast net connection. Unfortunately the Below part you can't download, from what I can see. Makes the whole thing a bit misleading and a clusterf'ck. Why do they even use iTunes when they steal so much of the revenue? Maybe it's because it's harder to copy and pass around...

Race car I thought??

In the iTunes store the running time is given as 27min, so I guess this is all that was uploaded...

Thing is though, I got one 27 min film down. I was led to believe there are two parts to this, and that they would both be released today...

Out now on iTunes for £4.99. I am just downloading it - all proceeds go to the 'Road 2 Recovery' charity.

Slippery slope though. Generally people who gamble only tell you when they win.

I realised with a gf like that once that there's only so much you can do. We all have problems. We can choose to be victims, disempower ourselves and be miserable expecting the world to change for us, or we can choose to be survivors and work with what we've got. Life's to short to try to drag someone else along with you. Sticking the knife in the one you love is hard. But ultimately there are millions more suitable women out there. It's easy to feel like this is some big upheaval, and it is, but in 3 months you'll feel better, and then in 6 you'll be with someone you're more stable and happy with. It'll be like a new life with someone, and you'll be glad that the hardship you endured led to something good. The older I get, the less time I feel I can give to people who have a negative impact on my life. And I try to weigh it up with the here and the now, not try to keep a relationship going because of what happened once upon a time, or how things were. People change, the world changes, life takes us in new directions. Personally I think you're better off without her. As Mike says, it's easy to preach though. I clung on to several girlfriends for far too long - in other cases maybe I was the negative one bringing her down. But if you can endure losing the comfort and security of someone you know, you may end up way better off.

Seriously, it f'cks me off how stupid people are. The messaging apps have that sh't in there so that when you see a message you think oh I'd better reply now, not later. F'ck that. F'ck being a slave to some computer software. It's no wonder people are controlled by their mobile phones and social networks these days. I got shit several times off girls messaging me saying hey I know you saw my last message, stop f'cking ignoring me. So I wrote back saying listen, I'll reply when I want to. If some app wants to invade my privacy by reporting back when or if I've read some message, too bad for whoever sent it.

That was good, would love to go to that one year. There's something about owning a bike... Today me and the girl went across the city (Bangkok) to pick up a pair of rear shocks I'd bought for my cafe racer project. Afterwards we headed over to this little street full of bars and restaurants where all the tourists go just to chill out for a while. As we were leaving afterwards, the guy who'd been sat next to us with his wife suddenly appeared, watching us start the bike up. I lifted my visor and said hey what's up! Turned out he had SR500s and XT500s back in France. So I put the bike back on the stand and went back to the cafe to have another drink, and give him some web addresses to buy parts over here (unfortunately he's leaving tomorrow morning). After that we went to this cool night market where they sell antiques and stuff, and pulled up at a bar where the bike crowd usually go, and got welcomed in by the other riders (who barely speak any English) and invited to a big bike party next weekend. It's funny, it's like you buy a bike and you're immediately inducted into a kind of brotherhood. Doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, just the fact that you ride bikes, that's enough.

So you're one of those people, like women with new 'Minis', who park in the middle of two usable spaces?

Airline websites...

Excited for the new Bond yeah. Craig is the best Bond yet IMO.

I shat in a urinal on Sunday.

I've always maintained that the Happy and Angry threads are shit. This one is like a metaphorical comfort blanket. Typing angry woes into this thread won't make them go away.