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davidP

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Everything posted by davidP

  1. Be very carefull of starting a syndicate with your best friends unless you are extremely confident in your friendships. Nothing tests friendships more than money (OK, so maybe sleeping with his wife would test it more, but you get the idea). And read 'The Syndicate' series of books by Mark Cunningham
  2. Sorry if this has been posted before - I've not been on much recently. Anyway, I thought this was worth passing on : Don't do this at home kids
  3. The thing about putting normal fish in an ornamental ond is the buggers camoflage themseves to match the pond colour fairly quickly. I've got a couple of commons in my pond that despite being 9 to 12 inches long I very seldom see - I actually see the tench more!
  4. I saw my two crucians for the first time in over 2 years last week. They haven't grown much compared to the other fish, but I managed to net one and they're beautiful little fish
  5. davidP

    Bicycling

    Nope, and there certainly haven't been any Brit teams for many years (if indeed ever). There's normally a couple of Brits in the race, but not this year since David Millar admitted taking EPO and got banned.
  6. Barley straw certainly works on lakes so no reason why it shouldn't work in a small pond. Be aware however that the cost of a barley straw pad at an aquarist shop will cost you almost as much as a whole bale from a animal feed shop - the markup is extortionate. There are some non-chemical poducts available that claim to help cause the algae to clump and hence sink. I've used one called Pond-Zyme and it certainly appears to work, but I have a pump & filter going 24 hours. If you're going to use it in an unfiltered pond I'd go very easy in the applications as you don't want all the algae to drop dead all at once. If this happens, when the algae starts to break down it can cause a massive deoxygenation of the water. I've seen this happen on a lake after a major thunderstorm (cold water influx seemed to kill all the algae) and within 4 days we had to mount a massive reoxygenation of the water. The guy from the EA actually thought his meter wasn't working because the oxygen level was so low! So if you go this route then be prepared to do some pond cleaning at the same time.
  7. davidP

    Bloody lucky.

    I had a session about a fortnight ago during all that really hot weather where despite the pump going flat out the fish were all gathered under the pump outflow and gasping at the surface. What I did was get an aerator pump and put a couple of airstones into the pond. The difference was astonishing - within 30 minutes the fish were feeding like crazy and were more active than they had been in a month. What I've also done since is buy a new pump and a pressurised filter. When I install them I'll make sure there's a really good jet of water back into the pond to keep a good water movement going at all times. I'll leave the aerator going as well as they realy seem to like it.
  8. Yup, definitely bee eaters - little bee eaters I think (Merops pusillus) [ 27. June 2004, 08:05 PM: Message edited by: davidP ]
  9. Click Me MP3 Note: this was written in 2002 I think, certainly not for this tournament [ 25. June 2004, 07:13 PM: Message edited by: davidP ]
  10. Elton, it's totally standard for them to ask for money as it gives them options later should they want to change their aproach. I'm just surprised that they came up with an amount straight away as it's obviously not based on any kind of reality.
  11. Great news, but it doesn't say when - we need to know these things!
  12. Cateye AU 100 is legal, and very good (local bike police use them)
  13. There used to be a machine I remember from my youth called an Argocat. It was a 6 wheel amphibious vehicle - saw them on Tomorrow's World several times and the Army dfinitely use them. Have a look at www.argocat.co.uk
  14. Thanks Leon, that's an interesting site and I can definitey see a few ideas for next year )
  15. We grow fruit & veggies in tubs around the garden and patio. For various reasons we haven't put as much in this year, but we should end up with courgette, cucumber, potato, tomato, aubergine & maybe if I'm very lucky this year a melon or two as well (they didn't fruit the last 2 years). We also have a load of strawberries, and this year I've planted some minarette fruit tree in large tubs (apple, plum, & cherry), but I'm not expecting too much from those this year (except the cherries as they're already quite large). If you're into organic and want to do something a little different then can I suggest you join the Heritage Seed Library. This is run by the Henry Doubleday Research Association and exists to try and keep alive all the old species of fruit & veg that are no longer grown or sold commercially (EU rules make it non-viable to sell seed in small numbers owing to registration fees for each variety etc). If you join the Library you get to chose various seeds from their catalogue free of charge each year and there are all sorts of weird & wonderful veggies & varieties to chose from. Occasionally they may ask you let some go to seed and then collect and return them to the library, but this isn't common. Henry Doubleday Research Association web site is also extremely useful if you want info about organic growing [ 14. June 2004, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: davidP ]
  16. I had a Time machine for several years and it never caused me any problems although to be honest it wasn't very well configured when I received it and I had to do a bit of work on it to set it up how I wanted. I had no problems with after service, although the only time I rang them was to get a new PSU a couple of years later when the original blew. Would I buy another from them? Probably not, but that's only because I wouldn't want a 'standard build' machine like they sell.
  17. My tench quite happily take food from the surface, and they spend a lot of time sucking round the edges of the lily pads as well. Like most animals they'll go where the food is. I would also doubt that they'd have starved to death as what would be the chances of them both going on the same day? That to me would suggest something in the water killed them.
  18. I've used live frogs (platana or clawed frog) for catching catfish in Zimbabwe - horrible to put on the hook but a great bait. A lot of local anglers keep supllies of them in water butts or specially constructed boxes. In the UK I've tried various insects, usually out of desparation and with fairly limited success. If you aren't catching on your usual baits then I don't think you are much more likely to catch on anything else. Having said that I did once catch a few semi-decent rudd on a difficult finicky water using some very soft white insects I found in the numerous cowpats. [ 13. June 2004, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: davidP ]
  19. I remember this from the first time round and I always believed it would come back - that's what happens when people are passionate about things. I can't see how it would work on the current Severn however. In the intervening years the flooding appears to have got worse (due to faster rain run-off IMHO), and I can't see how installing a bunch of weirs would do anything more than potentially make it worse. If local councils and residents see any possibility of more flooding it will be more than enough to stop any plans dead in their tracks.
  20. Ain't gonna happen in anything other than the odd case. Do you remember what used to happen when you bought one? The money went in a tin under the counter with minimal recording. That tin then got raided for change, or got lost, or got stolen. The money sat with the dealer until he got around to sending it in maybe once or twice a season, and quite often it was wrong owing to miscalculation, loss of licence books, attempted fraud etc. Or the shop went out of business without paying the licence money to the EA. And then to top it all the tackle dealers started to complain that they didn't earn enough commission. For a national legally-binding licence the system was a shambles and was costing the EA a lot of money and their cash flow was unpredictable. The PO was the obvious choice as a replacement as they did this kind of thing already. At the time they were in the process of installing a new automated system, and they were able to easily add fishing licences to the system and so offer it at a very reasonable commission rate (I tested the system - if it wasn't for me you'd be buying a 'course' licence). The system keeps accurate records, will issue receipts if requested and the PO will hand over all the collected money on time. Also at the time of installation there were aproximately 19,300 post offices which is a hell of a lot more outlets than were available before. I'd go so far as to say that the ratio is probbly even higher now as athough a lot of POs have closed I suspect a higher proportion of tackle shops have shut down. A quick look in my Yellow Pages (Slough/Windsor/Maidenhead/Bracknell) shows I have 68 Post offices in my area against 11 tackle dealers. And let's not remember that not all tackle shops sold them. I'll also bet it's actually faster to buy a licence at the PO than it was at a tackle shop. The difference is at the PO you're stood in a queue with nothing to do whereas in the tackle shop you're wandering round viewing stuff, waggling rods, drinking coffee, waiting for the owner to finish his latest tale etc, so it doesn't feel like waiting. It was the EA who approached the Post Office because the PO will sell them for less, will pay on time and keep accurate records. Government had nothing to do with it.
  21. Downstream 455 Kbps (56.9 KB/sec) 491 Kbps (inc. overheads) Upstream 216 Kbps (27.0 KB/sec) 233 Kbps (inc. overheads) I'm on the outer edges of the connection range
  22. Most of the home broadband packages in the UK seem to insist on USB connection. I suspect it's because the vast majority of PCs have USB whilst only a comparatively small number have ethernet cards, so it's much easier for the ISPs. When I was looking around for my package some of the ISPs told me I was specifically not allowed to connect more than 1 PC onto a home USB package, and if I wanted to connect more machines I had to buy a more expensive package. Fortunately I found a router specifically designed with a USB socket to accept the connection from a USB modem. http://www.draytek.co.uk
  23. The main reason is that most decision makers are now on incentivised pay structures, and if they achieve certain figures they'll get a nice tidy bonus. What this means however is that nobody ever looks at anything in the long term any more. If they can achieve their figures and hence their bonus by cutting this year then they'll do it. They can get away with this for a couple of years before the long term impact starts to hit, but that's when they move on to another company. There are an awful lot of senior managers who never stay in jobs for more than 3 years. The next guy in then gets a years grace to tidy up (often with a decent budget) before he's off on the same bonus chasing as the previous guy.
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