saintbletch

buctootim, The short answer is "no" I can't follow perfectly good diagrams. But that's not important here. The Clag-Gone didn't have a fixed wheel so pedalling backwards simply allowed little )) symbols to form around your feet and knees, without actually causing the wheel to rotate at all. The keen eyed among us will also spy the derailleur system employed on the Clag-Gone. I'm here to tell you that pedalling backward against a derailleur system is the act of a man soon to have oil on his fingers. But thanks for taking the time to offer advice. I feel your love.

I sent mine back. As you can see there is a design error. It looks good in the pictures but the wheel actually spins towards you and not away from you as was suggested in the image. I ended up with a clag-free crevis but a winnit-packed scrotum. £299.99 down the drain - and before you suggest it, I tried trading standards. They couldn't care less.

Yep, I'd agree with that. Perhaps it's just my outlook on life, but I wouldn't use the word 'expect'. I'd have to add caveats about team gelling, etc. It's funny, when I look at QPR's spending and determination to buy a first eleven at every transfer market opportunity, I can see that going dramatically one of two ways. I have no expectation of that working. On paper it should. But football isn't played... Bonding those 12 new players into a squad that included 10+ new players at the last window will take some doing. And if they get a few stuffings along the way, then picking up the players and keeping their morale high will be a season-long challenge.

I'd agree with that. Let's hope the team "does something" and stays in the league long enough to prove that.

I agree to an extent. We've certainly created expectation through spending that money, but I think your conclusion is a little dramatic. We might have outspent a lot of the teams in the league, but a lot of the teams in the league have been in the league for some time. We've attempted to fast track our squad to a certain standard, so I'd say that yes, we should expect the team to deliver - but not in line with our spending rank, or anything near that. I'd say that if we get the new players to gel then we should 'expect' safety with perhaps a buffer of 3 or 4 teams below us and the drop zone. Expecting anything more than that expectation would be naive. Takeaway the Ramirez signing and we've spent still spent significantly but nowhere near as dramatically on a cost per player basis as if you include Ramirez. I think our season finish is linked to NA's ability to get the formation to work, to get the new players bedded in and of course Ramirez's performance. I don't expect those things to be easy, so I'm not linking our spending performance with our sporting one.

Highly recommended here too. I thought this was a funny take on the dispute...

Sky just put our spending at £29.3m. Incidentally the same amount as Liverpool. Can't argue with that.

Odd stthrobber. I had a similar problem many years back when ripping CDs from a specific label (not sure who that was) but it was some form of early DRM protection. The problem you're describing seems to be related to Windows 7, Warner Brothers' CDs and certain CD drives and is discussed here and here. Don't know how to fix it but I would recommend downloading Easy CD Extractor by Poikosoft - I think they do a free trial. The software let's you change the low-level characteristics of how the CD is read and how the audio stream is ripped. It has multiple strategies for error correction (did you know that even though a CD is digital, it doesn't guarantee that the same information is interpreted the same way every time?) and it can verify that the read of the CD is completely accurate by comparing it with a database of other users' rips. Anyway, have a play with the CD drive and error correction settings in Easy CD Extractor and you might be able to get a faithful read of the CD.

itchen_dan, you've carried out a public service on this thread. I can dip in and out every couple of hours or so, looking for your posts and not have to spend my entire life on Twitter - because you're spending your entire life on Twitter for me! Keep up the good work sir. Although I do worry about what you'll do with your time when he eventually signs for someone.

Tokyo, don't you realise that this thread is a great opportunity for The Muppet Show Ltd? It's like when a motorway gets closed in Devon (do they have motorways?) and all the cars, lorries and coaches get diverted through a little village and the drivers stop and visit the pub, take a p*ss and buy supplies at the local shop. They get out, stretch their legs, have a look round, count our fingers, smile nervously, spy the bear sitting in the corner grinning inanely whilst playing with his peter, and then they get out of town as quick as. So if you can have a word with the bear and tell him not to get his peter out while we've got visitors, then we might encourage them to stay awhile. I'm like the bloke behind the counter of the The Muppet Show Tourist Board and you're a Games Maker from the Muppet Show Olympics. Put a smile on your face and don those beige Chinos and purple shirt. Oh, and less of the "bletchy big head" please. I'm not arrogant, I'm simply anally-superior (think about it). There's a big difference. It's why I agonised over using the word awhile above and you can't spell socal saint's name proper.

No! It's a trap. If you follow that link and login then you will have left footprints in Internet snow, fingerprints in Internet dust, DNA at an Internet crime scene. The people's republic of PoL will be able to see that you were referred from TSW and you will probably be terminated a little bit. You have been warned.

It was a pyrrhic victory Bearsy. After what I had to type into Google to find the image; I've now got MI5, the Japanses ambassador, MI6, the RSPCA and the Ursine Liberation Army knocking at my door. As for the size of the image - that is a concern. I like the fact that Tokyo-Saint is obviousy being abused by you in the image, and whilst he must be in some considerable pain (physical and emotional), he's still attempting to keep his belly above the bed in order that he might arch his back at the perfect angle to increase your pleasure. As long as those levels of dedication and servitude are conveyed in the smaller image, then I'm sure it'll work.

*Warning - this is full of nerdy, techno-rot and legal-babble. I would have no faith in the verdict in this patent dispute. Judges and the 12 men good and true have zero qualifications to be able to understand the facts of a case like this and patent law precedent doesn't help either. Not saying that Samsung didn't shamelessly copy Apple - they may well have done, but this verdict proves very little. I've been involved in a minor way in a patent dispute having provided expert testimony assistance to a company that was fighting a patent challenge. As ridiculous as it sounds, imagine that you were able to patent walking. You'd be able to point to people that instead of getting out of bed and sliding around from place to place, they knowingly infringe your patent by walking everywhere. The infringing walkers would presumably point to the fact that given the need to move around, a skeleton that had evolved to allow a central balance point, the possession of two legs and counter-balancing arms; it was a natural conclusion that humans walk. A US patent court would likely find for the patent holder and make little allowance that some things simply follow as a natural consequence of discrete facts. Of course, the biggest crime is that the walking patent had been granted in the first place. Someone should have asked themselves whether it was not better for humanity that certain fundamentals remain outside of copyright. In my own experience, the company that had claimed that its patent was infringed had managed to patent what the geeks among us might call a macro - a series of process steps recorded and reproduced when needed. This patent was awarded despite numerous vendors being able to point to examples of prior art and despite many challenges. Once the patent was granted, the patent holder signed up the notorious patent attorneys Akin Gump, ensured that the hearings were heard in a specific Texas Court and sued a succession of vendors that they claimed had infringed the patent (17 or so from memory). Each of the 'infringing' vendors settled early and out of court because the cost of defending such cases, coupled with the threat of interim rulings to force them to take any potentially offending products off the market, meant that it made economic sense. The problem is that for anyone that has dabbled in programming, when faced with a need to repeat similar tasks, a macro-like mechanism is an obvious approach. The proverbial infinite monkeys would come up with it in their coffee break from the Shakespeare work. The fact that you might have written something similar 5 years before the patent holder counts for nothing. Ask yourself why four-wheeled cars don't infringe patents and then ask yourself why having a phone with rounded corners does. It's madness, it's protectionist and it holds back innovation.

Very good Turkish!

Hope Modric moving to Real Madrid doesn't have an impact on this signing. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19389191 Spurs are going to have £30m burning a hole in Daniel Levy's transfer deadline day pocket.

Is that a sexual euphemism Tokyo-Saint?

Brutal and properly funny. But you have to give it the correct context. It was in reply to the following comment - ostensibly from a Burnley supporter. Which in turn was in response to the original srvp28's mild-mannered suggestion to bring in Robert Earnshaw.

Good question buctootim. I think he meant that, as an abusing Bletch, I was able to make an unnamed Star buck.

That's right. Mock my comma craving and my full stop fascination. You meant that to sound like Starbucks, for "the abusing Bletch". I know you did. Four cough and I.

notnowcato, can you do me a favour and put the correct punctuation / spelling in the first line of the above. I'm particularly concerned whether you meant... "I was in Costa, abusing there. Free Wifi whilst waiting..." or "I was in Cost abusing their free Wifi whilst waiting..." or some other permutation. Thanks. Just need to know if I need to dial the final "9" or not.

Again, I don't disagree with any of that theyin. I was simply struck that it was suggested that when someone complains about the way journalists were treating their club, it was wah, wah, wah. But when the press complains about its treatment at the hands of Twitter users, it's in some way the right thing to do. If I had to come down on either side of the argument I'd side with the Mirror's position. I simply couldn't help thinking that the Mirror writer was coming across as having an enormous Twitter-shaped chip on his shoulder... ...and that given the "wah, wha, wha" comment, it looked to me like the Mirror was doing its fair share of wha, wha ,wahing.

I agree with all that. You didn't pick up on the Mirror complaining about its harsh treatment at the hands of Twitter users theyin?

Do you think it furthers our faith in the transfer stories we read? I didn't quite see it that way. I should first state that I don't have a problem with the tabloids doing what they do. On the whole I enjoy the transfer circus and 'appreciate' the role the press plays in it. It was an interesting article and it was good to hear the other side of the story. It was also educational for someone like me that doesn't have a direct involvement with football PR and the press. But it also came across as if he had a massive chip on his shoulder - it seemed to me that there was plenty of the wah, wah, wahing that you describe, but it was coming from him. The important point for me was where he acknowledged that they will run stories that are sourced, but acknowledged that the source might have an agenda for feeding the story to them. So we should be safe in the knowledge that the story was verified and sourced, even though it might be complete b****cks made up by the verified source. I think I knew this before. The 'press' will print made up stuff, it's just extremely unlikely that they will have made it up themselves. But here's my issue with his holier-than-thou stance - it's win-win for the journalist to run with a sourced and verified story even if he suspects it's completely invented by "someone with a point to make or a message to send via the press". At the end of it, they will have sold more newspapers and generated more online clicks. It's the business they're in. So we're back to the fact that we will read stuff that is made up - by someone.

True on both counts. Whilst I haven't researched his role in it, the Japan U23 team at the Olympics did quite well defensively. Admittedly against a mixed bag of opposition. Seems to be reported as a done deal, so I guess we'll be able to tell for ourselves soon. It's wrong to stereotype, so I will do so here...but I've always been impressed with the work-rate, temp and commitment of players from East Asia.