HappyCampers

An irony here for me is the amount of thought that was supposed to have been put in to the St James Retail traffic flows - and it is still an idiotic road layout My mother in law lives opposite and, along with many of her neighbours, they campaigned to have decent access - because they feared everyone would park on their road to walk in. Which lots now do, clogging quiet residential streets Personally avoid driving when I can, but public transport in Sheffield is, in my experience, pretty dire. Easily 90 mins each way to travel 6 miles by bus. Can do the same trip by e-bike in 20 - 30 minutes or so, but too few decent cycle routes and too many near misses Used to work in Manchester. The commute by train was about an hour but £150 a week to stand both ways - generally quicker than moving a handful of miles around Sheffield though

this is a whole bay top and flashing, about 10 x 3 ft bay, probably 40sq ft of lead pinched - took me months to save up to get the job done

We got done yesterday, stripped a big bay top, neighbours didn't see anything but there is a camera - so fingers crossed Not sure of it will help someone else avoid the same fate just before Christmas. If you have a camera, or have been meaning to get one then maybe this will nudge that forwards - it was heavy gauge lead (forget the grade) the guys who fitted it years ago needed scaffold and 3 men to get it up there and reckoned it would be incredibly hard to steal due to the sheer weight of the main piece. Assume its already flogged on to some ***** . . . spent weeks restoring the old bay, mostly myself as we dont have much money, absolutely gutted Not sure what to replace it with

We had a little visitor yesterday . . . They stole a millstone from our front garden, it mostly decorative and partly there to help my sister in law get up the steps Just a heads up in case you have stuff like this in the garden, someone might be looking for more - if you got offered one in the pub let me know, I have the dimensions and pictures . . . Not sure if its even worth reporting it to the police, a dog walker friend has some info that might help but dont really want to get in to grief - thoughts?

please share your stories to make me feel better last year I did a load of external paintwork on our house, took several days to do the prep, and I finally went to bed happy with all the prep and 1st undercoat finally done - it rained in the night and wrecked the undercoat. A week ago I finally plucked up courage to strip it all and start again - its taken all week getting fired in the sun at times. Last night the second gloss went on to finish and this morning I wake up to rain . . . . omg!!!

Weird looking bikes with swept back handlebars, no gears and no brakes? just seen 2 kids with one, reported to police rather than approach them myself idiots - if they are dim enough to steal such distinctive kit and ride it round just up the road then they deserve to get caught

http://www.techsupportalert.com/ for many years the finest, most useful freeware site - though I am interest to look at some of the other links here. It used to be if Gizmo didnt list it it probably wasnt any good . . .

thanks Ghozer - it is all sorts of stuff really and its getting annoying to work around - most recently a weeks work in Publisher had to be be reformated and refonted I use 2010 for all my clients and content and dont want to have to mess about with some stuff in older formats. Also it would be helpful to have PDF creator inside Office, which I gather isnt in early versions my concern with Office is that 2010 is getting harder to get hold of as Microsoft push 365 and its outrageously restricted licensing

this seems to be fraught with risks but I am after a proper copy of Office 2010 Professional for a sensible price (eg under £100) for a business collaborator who has a much older version of Office (and we keep having compatibility issues) Ebay is full of them but there seems no way of being sure you are getting If it helps I already have a set of DVDs from my own install

I am looking to do a marketing campaign for my business in the next few weeks and plan to buy a bunch of phone numbers for cold calling MarketingFile came recommended by a friend and their search allows some good discrimination of roles etc But I am interested to hear who else people use as the time commitment will be pretty huge and I don't want to be using an average list if a better source exists thanks

not much extra stuff but 20 odd images (all little GIFs) and only 2 pages of text been googling for a solution but there doesn't seem to be a way to add images "as is" without Word messing about Publisher seems to be just as bad, so I am now wondering about Open Office

I might be missing something obvious, but if I add a bunch of GIF images, with a total file size of less than 700k, to a Word doc does it zoom up to 4MB?! Have tinkered with Word settings and Picture compression and it reduced 4MB to 3.8MB - ?! any suggestions how can I sort this?

thanks gazza, offer was £135 which seemed ok

me too! whats a 2000 Astra likely to be worth? wont start so it would need collection/tow

I need a good thick piece of ply (18mm or thicker) cut to size but have no clue where to get that in Sheffield without buying a sheet - any suggestions?

The kids wanted an aquarium so we picked up a neat little 48L cube shaped one for them (and us really) We didn't buy a stand as we dont have an obvious place for one, so plan to set it up on pretty robust hardwood unit in an alcove (it has 1" thick solid top and isn't bothered by my 75kg frame standing on it) Many years ago we had a ClearSeal 24" tank and put cork tiles under it, not sure of this will need similar or not. One issue though is that the base of the new tank has a plastic trim all the way round, so would you trim cork to that? put cork under the glass only, or not bother with anything?

My mum just called to say she had a very strange call from a nice chap at Microsoft who was helping her to remove a virus infection from here laptop She hung up when he asked her to pay to fix the problem but had typed "some things" into the command bar I am sure the first thing she typed would have bought up error logs to "prove" the machine was infected, but less clear what else she may have done Thankfully she doesn't use the machine for anything important. I have changed the logins for internet provider and email how can I find out what might have been run/done? do I need to do a clean install of Windows or is that over cautious? EDIT - sorry, deliberately started a new thread on how to solve this (rather than warble on about it being a Scam) but this has been merged with another thread about it being a Scam (which I know!) so I guess no one will read it now

not even £30 for the wheels - when we got a quote for my wifes car, all up it was about £350 for a full set of Goodyear Winter tyres and steel wheels, less than the price of a full set (tyres only) Michelin Energys on it now. Not sure what quality paint to expect on the wheels mind

Not sure you want to 'click' the handbrake, if you are going to do this hold the handbrake button in so you can release immediately if you need to - usually 1 wheel locks well before the other. 4WD descending is better (usually) in that it feels much more in control/balanced My old Nissan 4x4 had diff locks too which really are awesome. Alas, the thing had rubbish Wanli tyres when we got it - you could engage full 4WD and diff locks and still go no where as it span all 4 wheels - funny though. Decent all season tyres made a world of difference

mytyres.co.uk do a good range of wheels/tyres for sensible prices - we nearly got a winter set from these folks for the wifes car when I sold my 4x4 last year. But given that every time we have got in to bother (so far) it was someone else on the road who caused the problem we havent got a set yet for piece of mind next winter I think we will look again at getting some (maybe see if there are any good deals when the warm weather comes) - these lovely winters seem to be becoming a regular event!

sorry about the rant - feel better now I am guessing folks were off "to see the snow" but this morning if you didn't go prepared you were "begging for trouble with your bowl out" as they say . . . people eh ?!

the other thing about 4x4 is the drivers seem to assume that going down hills they are invincible too - last year we saw 2 Range Rovers embedded in walls. One at the bottom of a hill where the driver clearly tried to brake and was going too fast, the other on a bend where they just slid / rolled off the road 4x4 = better NOT invulnerable to be fair if the conditions are that bad the snow tyres wont trump 4x4 but for most winter "normal" stuff they are good

just came back out of Derbyshire earlier this morning and the roads need a bit of respect/care for sure - it was amazing to watch some really thoughtless driving causing all sorts of chaos for others - we got nearly stuck because others didnt have a clue and where utterly unprepared for what was out there Coming up past Fox House the hill was covered in drifting snow and down to one lane in places - not a lot of traffic but the folks coming down the hill decide to keep on coming anyhow! Giving those going up little choice but to stop in marginal conditions Please give way to those coming up hill in these conditions! You can soon start rolling down but they might be so lucky The problem was exacerbated by the chap at the front who had no clue how to get going again in the conditions, so just spun the wheels and went no where. We stopped (on a clear bit of road with no slush/ice) to help and 4 cars drove round us and got stuck behind the other fella - did you folks think I was stood there in a blizzard with a shovel for the fun of it! Please look ahead and engage your brain! If a line of cars is sat there, maybe there is a good reason And it was amazing that none of the folks (now stuck in front of us) were properly dressed for the conditions let alone equipped with a shovel or a sack of grit or anything to actually help themselves - I was all for leaving them there and going into Sheffield via Owler Bar but the chap in the VW Van behind thought we should at least try and help first . . . As they say, no such thing as bad conditions only the wrong gear (and the wrong idea)

kidley - not sure if we are talking about the same thing? yes there are lots of different brands of anti snap / bump etc locks - and yes I did plenty of research, talked to locksmiths, police friends and a fireman mate of mine The ABS were clearly the best of the bunch for the money (£40 a go is pretty good value compared to a small fortune for a high security door) - sacrificial front snaps off if attacked and leaves no access to barrel. Magnet on key prevents bump attacks. Construction prevent drilling If you have evidence of these locks failing then please share it Some of the regional Fire Services have been trained to get through standard Euro locks and it takes them no longer than a scally (including some of the claimed "anti snap" locks). If they encounter an ABS they know the door is "going in" as the lock wont give. The door and/or the frame will be wrecked before the lock - if that's the kind of attack you have in mind then maybe you are right, in my view the scally will go somewhere else before that . . . ---------- Post added 17-02-2013 at 22:27 ---------- for the absence of doubt, this is the kit I am talking about http://www.abs-secure.co.uk/

+1 for ABS. Outstanding locks There seem to be a fair few different brands of the anti "whatever" locks about now but only ABS seem to resist everything. Apparently even some big brands like Yale anti snap/etc/etc can be beat in a few minutes, but not ABS These are getting easier to find now (I heard ABS got took over or something and have really improved their distribution) but we used Barnsley Lock and Safe a while back, easy and good value