crc-ict

Not strictly true - you can't skip selection of gears, but there is nothing to say you have to engage each one. Eg you can go from 5th to 3rd by clutch in, click down, click down, clutch out. Common move for example at traffic lights is to stop in whatever gear you are in, clutch in and click all the way back down to first ready to go. But yes, can't skip completely like a car where you can move the lever straight from 5th to 1st. But that's a good thing on a bike, you wouldn't want to accidentally change down too many gears at once!

Although not necessary, as you have the opportunity it's not a bad idea by any means. I did an hour pre-CBT because I wanted to see if I would like it before committing to a whole day and £100-odd quid. Getting that one-to-one time to get the basic hang of the clutch and gears was so useful when it came to CBT. CBT is a packed day with a lot to take in, so anything you can get learnt beforehand is going to help. And bearing in mind that a lot of CBTs are done in a group of up to four, if you are with three 16-year-olds on twist and go 50's you are going to feel time pressure when trying to get used to clutch and gears. An hour or so should have you competent at moving off and stopping the bike at least, leaving CBT day for you to concentrate on the manoeuvres and 'roadcraft' elements without trying to figure out how to make the machine work at the same time

Has anyone else had an issue getting this to work? I have set up all the routing as per the instructions. Checked and double-checked, it's all correct. But the test e-mail still doesn't work. Just get the 'Something Went Wrong' error and can't get past it.

Radios are easy to deal with. I used to deal with an old neighbour who blasted a radio the other side of my bedroom wall using one of those iPod FM radio transmitters. Work out which station they are listening to, set the transmitter to the same frequency and blast away the cheese. Worst case scenario they lose reception, but most of the time the signal used to overpower the real signal and play the cheese out via their radio. It used to be quickly turned off! This was a good few years ago now, and I don't really recommend this as there are probably numerous rules as to why you shouldn't do it!

Beware though, if you are looking at secondhand, they are still a relatively new model, so on the used market you are more likely to see it's predecessor, the CBF125. These are apparently a good bike too, but with an unfortunate reputation for rusting away fairly easily. Not ideal in the British weather, especially if you will have to store it outside. Look very carefully at any used CBF125 to make sure there isn't signs of too much corrosion. Also, in my experience, beware of cheap waterproof textile trousers. I find them to be horribly hot and sticky. +1 for earplugs. Try a few different types and find some that suit you. Not worth the risk to your hearing to ride without.

Try Ian Bethell at Creative AV Solutions. They did all of our projectors on site over the Easter break to good effect. Ian is incredibly helpful too. Creative Audio Visual Solutions Brookmans Park Teleport Great North Road Brookmans Park Hertfordshire AL9 6NE Tel: 0844 5678 065 e-mail: [email protected] We are South Coast too (Worthing) and the location was no problem.

I'd agree - had one of these before I did DAS and they are great bikes. However, without a big topbox on, I'm not sure how practical it would be as a 'work vehicle'. For all the

Common practice for the likes of pizza delivery etc. They are almost always youngsters riding on L plates with only CBT.

Biker perspective here... Firstly, if you are out in sticks, forget a 50cc. It will be lethal on the open road, just too slow and will encourage other people to try stupid overtaking manoeuvres. Also, there is no real advantage to a 50cc anyway - used ones are generally ragged to death by 16 year olds and new ones aren't much cheaper than a 125cc anyway. There is no difference in what you need to do to ride a 50 or a 125 on a provisional with Ls either, the CBT is the same. Secondly, if you go for it on two wheels, if you simply want transportation and aren't interested in the experience or thrills, consider a 125cc scooter. It will be easier to live with as daily transport as riding it is so effortless. Literally twist and go. Also the body style tends to give you a bit more weather protection, and a lot of them have useful amounts of storage under the seat. Most motorcycles, especially 125's, will have about enough storage under the seat for a pen and a small screwdriver. With the licensing, training etc. remember that the CBT is bare legal minimum. Although once you have completed the CBT you are entitled to ride, it doesn't mean you are a trained or qualified rider, it just means you know the basics and the instructor on the day was reasonably confident that he could sign you off to go out and wobble about on your own with a reasonable chance of not pancaking yourself or anyone else. If you are completely new to the roads, I would suggest some extra instruction time, preferable one to one on the kind of roads and type of riding you are going to be doing. Even a couple of hours one to one with a decent instructor will make a world of difference. And finally, even as a biker, for work travelling all year round, in all weathers, I would actually say go for the car route - if you have the time. Obviously with the CBT and L plates, it is much quicker to get into a position where you can ride a bike on the road unsupervised, whereas you are looking at a good few hours of car lessons before you can consider taking a test. Another consideration is the fact that insurance for a car with a newly-minted licence is likely to cost you somewhere around £2k, so by the time you have paid for the lessons, test, bought even a cheap car etc, you could easily see off £3-4k. With a scooter or bike, you could probably get on the road for £1200-1500 without too much problem (about £600-700 for a decent used 125 scoot, £200ish insurance, £120 CBT, £100 decent helmet (don't buy a £30 job off eBay - unless you have a £30 head that is!), £150 reasonable jacket and trousers, £25 gloves, £50 boots) Sorry for the long post, but final pearl of wisdom, if you go with bikes, about this time of year Lidl sometimes do motorcycle gear, which is usually quite highly rated and keenly priced. This would be an exception to saying don't buy a cheap helmet. I bought one last year from Lidl for £40 and it's very good for the money. Aldi do stuff sometimes too, but that's already happended this year. Lidl haven't done it so far, so might well be coming up soon.

Thanks for the tip there, I will check that out on mine and see if it works for me!

Bear in mind that this approach might not work on a modern, fully can-bus equipped car. My 2011 Mondeo is a nightmare for this - there isn't a single ignition switched supply available in the car at all for this sort of thing, everything is permanently live and then enabled or disabled as needed by the can-bus signals. If you have a car like this, you can buy a special can-bus interface to provide the equivalent of an ignition live, but they are not cheap, and getting the needed connection to the can-bus isn't easy - you usually have to tap into it from the back of the stereo. I have cheated with mine - I've got a towbar fitted with full electrics and this does provide a switched supply so I have tapped into that. Although that is a pain bringing it right through the car!

I'm not into photography as much as I used to be, but a few years ago the mantra seemed to be that the lenses were the place to spend your cash. You can take great photos on a more limited body with quality glass, but the best body will always produce mediocre photos with inferior glass. I guess it comes down to whether you yearn for more megapixels, or if the newer body has features that you want.

We have Forefront Endpoint Protection which uses basically the same engine as Defender/Windows Security Essentials. Thought it was OK until last week when one of our PCs picked up the Spora ransomware from a compromised website and FEP did absolutely nothing about it. First we knew of it was one of the network drives being half encrypted! So for me FEP/Defender is useless and is going asap.

Might be worth talking to SSE. We are buying a house which currently has energy supply with Utilita, who also use an obscure smart meter that no-one else can use. SSE are sorting the meter swaps for us so that they can take over supply - no problem and no charge. It's a bit round the houses because the Utilita meters are prepay, meaning SSE have to change those for standard pre-pay meters, and then change again to standard credit meters about 10 days later.

We have an ultra short throw projecting onto a normal pulldown-type screen. Haven't had any significant problems.

Do you have lots of shared documents in your drives? The big problem with shared documents in Drive is that they only remain under to control of the owner. So if you have shared folders etc, this will not transfer with takeout or migration tools, each document will only migrate with the Drive of the document owner, and sharing etc will be lost. It is a royal pain!

I ordered a vinyl record from Amazon over the half term period. Although it was new and in the cellophane, and was decently packed, when I played it, it was badly warped - to the extent that you could watch the arm rising and falling about 25mm during playback. Tried to arrange a return via the website, only to be greeted with a 'This item is not eligible for return' message. So went onto live chat in a huff expecting to be told I couldn't return, but ended up being offered a replacement, or a refund. Either way, I wouldn't need to return the disc, just to 'dispose of it safely'. So a refund came my way. Amazon always seem to be great for customer service - my wife even got the difference refunded when she bought a Fire tablet couple of days before Black Friday which ended up being discounted!

Spot on that man!

How about this then? I've actually got one of these in the attic at my parents house.

Should have known that - I had an Atari 800 and one of these! In my defence, I was very young when we had it!

Modem connector for an acoustic coupler?

Definitely. Season 12 onwards is part in the US, part in the UK and I don't enjoy it so much like that. American cars just don't interest me that much - don't know why really, but it seems to lose appeal a bit when they are working on car models you've never heard of. I like the nuts and bolts mechanical stuff in the earlier series' too - too much of the later ones is just doing resprays etc! Style over substance.

Seeing a similar thing here too. Although on Windows 8 and during startup.

The problem I have experienced looking at these 'Computers to Africa' schemes is that they all seem to want a minimum spec. And always much higher than we would consider getting rid of! My concern also is being sure that they are getting to the right people once they have gone. Also the data security implications of not being able to say for absolutely certain what happened to the PCs. I like PRM Green Technologies personally. It might not be charitable, but I like the security of certificates, with serial numbers, confirming my hard drives and data have been destroyed.

Has anyone seen any pricing for the ClassVR stuff? Our SBM has a real thing for wanting to get some VR stuff.