Gluggy

Have seen many a drive fail without flagging up any S.M.A.R.T errors / warning signs, in one case the drive was playing back a movie and simply died half way through :-( Not sure how it applies to modern drives but older ones use to "thermally recalibrate" and from memory this would make a slightly different sound to the normal seeking one - either way hope for the best and plan for the worst by making sure anything important is backed up just in case the drive is on its way out. **EDIT** If S.M.A.R.T is turned on the system "should" show any errors when doing its power on self test however if the laptop is never rebooted and only hibernated / sent to sleep they may not show.

Guess it depends on what you listen to - the station the Mrs and I prefer is DAB / online only but thankfully the car has DAB and we can stream it indoors via the AV receiver. If the aerial doesn't need upgrading and there's not much price difference between FM + DAB and FM only head-units then go for it - some people are not a fan of the "digital sound" but certainly far more stations available with DAB + FM than FM alone.

Ignoring poor wi-fi speeds or 100mb network interfaces in connected kit the op's issues could be down to the contention ratio - at the end of the day there is only so much bandwidth available from the cabinet / local network hubs... Ultimately the more people connected the less potential bandwidth each person has, not a problem if people are only browsing / checking emails but if everyone starts streaming video or hammering torrents it soon slow everyone / thing down as people start using more resources than the ISP "expects" At one point my 150mb connection was lucky to hit 15mb on a good day, Virgin did some upgrades to improve the network (contention ratio) and now I get 210-220 on 200 connection all the time.

Only in a negative sense, used an ad-blocker as the adverts on their site often took up more space than the content... Never bought the paper and wont bother with the website now either - to be honest if its really newsworthy the national press will carry it and if its just local "gossip" then there are plenty of Facebook groups / this forum anyway. Always nosed at the the food section though just to see if anything local was worth a look, although it seemed at times the write ups were more like paid placements than proper reviews . Guess on one hand they save a little bandwidth by blocking people like me but wonder how much they will lose in terms of the "silently sponsored" reviews and corporate news when then web stats show a drop in traffic....

Clearly not a local then lol

Did wonder, from what I saw there was one in the middle of the road with very little, if any damage and another already pulled over / parked. Bit daft really, if the damage is so minor just take some photos for the insurance companies and push it out the way - like you say the police have far better things to do...

Not the biggest thing in the world but does anyone know what happened about 5:15pm? We just missed what looked a very minor accident between Lindsay and Ingelow however according to friends that way that section is still blocked with police in attendance. Knowing how fast some drive on the side streets around it probably won't be long before there is another accident...

If your a council or housing association tenant I'm pretty sure they will / can collect rubbish so many times a year - might be small charge but got to be less than hiring someone.

Richardsons DIY in Firth Park - used them many times for timber and sheet materials, prices have always been very close if not better than the big names and they will happily work from a cutting list.

Yup, a couple of times and very nice it is lol - the heat builds in stages so goes flavour, heat, more flavour, more heat and so on. On a side note, really rate Chutney in general - never had anything but great food and very friendly service, its not the biggest or "poshest" but think that's a plus point more than anything.

Was half expecting your link to have been this song instead -

Richardsons in Firth Park - Proper old school DIY store with very helpful staff, if not on shelf dare say they could order in for you :-)

Very lucky to get it back without having to take the insurance claim further - read this bit "I checked, it isn't mentioned explicitly, but I did not report 3 points I got on my license 2 years ago so if they want to screw me over... Winds me up that they can, I wasn't aware that I had to report that and I am fairly sure very few people actually are. Sure it is in the small-print, but..." and thought oops as I wouldn't have been surprised if the insurance company cancelled the policy for failing to declare the points - its a standard question when taking out a policy to ask if the driver has any endorsements, claims etc over the past x years. Given insurance policies / prices are based on risk the undeclared points may or may not have changed the premium and at the extreme end whether they would have offered to insured the OP at all. Sorry if it sounds like a rant / lecture but potentially by not declaring those points you've been driving around more or less uninsured, if you'd been in an accident or had to claim for a total loss due to car not being recovered it would have been an ideal get out for them to avoid paying, leaving you out of pocket and possibly in bother with plod...

Have used https://krystal.co.uk/ before and found the support / service good - admittedly that was around 6/9 months ago, not involved with site hosted there any-more but might be worth a look.

Thanks for the replies, will get on to them in the morning - if it was only the odd few bits I'd have taken them to the tip but looks like a skip full from what I can see up there.