Craig Sawyers

The picture of the Alberta Tar Sands site is from a TED talk here

You, Knucks, are on a roll! Awesome images.

Yes - the BT Virginia Woolf is massively intense. In The Burton Diaries he reckons that it was the best thing the he and Taylor did. I didn't realise until the above that it was from a Broadway play by Albee. RIP - what a legacy.

Have an absolutely great one, O tall person!

What a pioneer. RIP

RIP Sushi. Very sad to hear. 19 is a great innings.

Who would've thought that the Chihuahua was descended from the grey wolf (as are all dogs). Woof.

^That, Jose, is a serious bike. How's this for bike madness

Not for much longer. The production company received £15m a year from the BBC, but they wanted £25m for the 2017 series. The BBC were not prepared to pay that much, so Channel 4 (a commercial channel with advert breaks) will have the show next year. Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry and the others have not confirmed that they will make the move - so it looks as if the ratings will take a pasting. This is kind of breaking news. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37349837 .

Radiohead met when they were at Abingdon School in 1985, three miles from where I live. This is a public school, which in the UK is actually a private school for which you pay typically £6k to £12k per term, three terms per year. http://www.abingdon.org.uk/fees . It is a school for children of parents with very large incomes.

Happy birthday!

Seems like I'm just catching up. Gene Wilder - jeeze. I guess that is the problem with film - the younger self is recorded for all time, as the actor gets older. That must be one of the hardest things, to see films of yourself as a young person when you are old. So sad he went from Alzheimers. And so many great movies - Blazing Saddles particularly sticks in my mind. The clip of Young Frankenstein also has the incredible and long RIP Marty Feldman (1934 to 1982), a genius of comic writing and timing.

Can't tell you have relieved that makes me

Dunno if you can get this in the USofA, but the BBC has a series called "The Great British Bakeoff", and this week is Bread Week http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v324h

WTF? It looks like an April Fool joke, except it ain't April. Here's an extract from their sales pitch - how about this for a USP: " You'll find it is designed to fit seamlessly into the outdated headphone connector, transforming last year's phone into a modern masterpiece"

The home page - wow. Average seems to be UKP500 per smoke.

Damn. This thread has reminded me how much I like a fine, but occasional cigar. I've bought a few over the years to enjoy with my son when he visits, from here https://www.havanahouse.co.uk/havana-house-oxford/ . This Christmas they are spending with us, so I'll buy a good selection later in the Autumn to enjoy with my lad (in the garden shed, accompanied by fine whiskey). We had some totally miserable ones in February in Dublin from an outfit that knew diddly squat about anything to do with storing cigars. Acrid horrible monstrosities, which should have been spectacular had they been stored and treated correctly.

Now that is an interesting question. Used to be via ickStream, but you can now directly link to Tidal. I followed the instructions here https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/201871191-Squeezebox . After faffing around registering this, that and the other I can either access Tidal via ickStream, or directly. Basically I have no real idea what the ins and outs are - I just followed the recipe. All of this working under iPeng http://penguinlovesmusic.de/ because that gives me an intuitive and easy to use interface to the NAS, to the Transporter, and Tidal. I've also got the TV connected to the Transporter via optical, and a CD transport via SPDIF. I fiddled around with external DAC's connected to the Transporter, but just ended up using the inboard DAC, because it is a bit good - even fed via Jung Superregulators. Getting it all working is a bit of a fight first time. There are people on forums (Stereonet) who haven't managed to get a Transporter working satisfactorily - like I said, nothing like plug and play!

I have an arcane high end streamer system based on a Logitech Transporter. To make that work seamlessly takes a bit of work. PC needs to run Logitech Media Server for the Transporter to work. Networking via router - so PC, Transporter and NAS drive (with CD collection ripped using dBPoweramp) all connect to router. And because the interface to the Transporter is naff you use an Apple Tablet running iPeng - which connects to the router wirelessly. iPeng is an Apple-only app - so should also work with an iPhone. I also use Tidal HiFi, and getting that to work with the rest of the system is in itself arcane. And it occasionally forgets somehow, so you have to delete Tidal and reload. Pain in the ass, it most definitely not a plug and play - but sounds stunning when it gets its shit together.

Already tried a selection of shoes, and anything resembling a tread or resilience in the sole makes it essentially impossible to insert the other foot on the fly. Wish I hadn't tossed my old hard soled cleated shoes. Also, the price of new cleatless pedals and shoes (as above) is only UKP30 more than a pair of Samba. Phew - fit a new rim and spokes - that sounds like a brave and expensive option; I guess it would need a truing jig too. I suspect that if I was going that way I'd probably just go for new wheels, or a junker bike to scavenge parts. The brakes would cope with 700c though - there is plenty of travel on the (Weinman) brake shoe slots to cope with 4mm more. Oddly I have not have to spread the stays. The 5 speed cluster had additional spacers that I removed to fit the 6 speed, still with sufficient clearance for the small sprocket.

Thanks for the input guys. The place for these things in the UK is Evans (or Wiggle). I've got a pair of A530 pedals and a pair of SH-M065 shoes in my basket.