Arwen

I sat my CBT in March this year and currently tide a 125. I have done my theory and Mod1 however. After the CBT I asked about DAS, my instructors said I could probably pass with around 6hrs of training. They did comment that I seemed to take to the bike very well however. Normally they would recommend at least 10 hours. They don't do full day courses normally. But lessons of 90min long. You can however book one for the morning and one for the afternoon, or a double lesson back to back. Reason being that it apparently helps you learn if you have time off the bike for stuff to "sink in". I sat my Mod 1 in September after having my 125 from April. I done a mock Mod 1 on my own bike as an assessment then a further 90min lesson on the 650cc bike before I took my test. Passed with 1 minor (went 49kph through the speed trap) After done that I spoke to my instructors again. Both said another lesson out on the big bike and I could probably pass Mod 2 with no issues, depending how I got along with being on a dual carriageway. I've not been out again though because of life stuff getting in the way. I am a little weird though and I fell in love with the 125 that I bought. I'll be keeping it after doing my tests, just want the L plates off it, so I'm not in a rush to get the tests done.

Biker clothes sizing I have found to be all over the place. It is best you try then on, especially gloves. If you are short in the leg, you may find you need to go for the short version of trousers, which there are not many of 2nd hand. Sometimes you can get away with wearing "standered " length trousers, but make sure the armour is in the right place. EBay and Gumtree tend to be good for 2nd hand gear. If the seller has not specified sizes in inches, I tend to message them and ask. J&S are good to go visit to try on a load of different brands. Their prices are pretty good too. Bear in mind that bike trousers tend to sit a little higher than normal trousers too. Helmet is pretty much the only think I would not buy second hand. You don't know if someone has dropped it previously. Also best to go to a shop for this, as different helmets fit different shaped heads better.

Loving the pictures of you lot on the grom Don't worry Hoggs, I know it looks like toy bike compared to some. I've been told by a few folk that cause I am rather short it actually looks like a normal sized bike when I am on it, until I get closer! I still have a bit of a giggle to myself when I take it into town and park it next to the biggest bike I can find Really wishing I could have made it down to the show this year. Guess I'll have to make do with the Edinburgh show in February/when ever it is.

As above. The A1 licence simply allows you to remove your L plates, carry pillions and go on the motorway.

Looks rather cool, but I think the rear view would get annoying where it is. If there was a way to switch it off and on quickly (handle bar controls?) I would prefer that.

There is no safety risk to users, but the helmets do not meet the approval test requirement. Surely the fact it does not meet the requirement means that is it is then classed as "unsafe" surely?!

No. Arming the police will not do change anything other than make the public more uptight. Part of why I like this country is that our police rarely carry guns. And I think that is excellent. If we are in a position where we need people with guns in every town, then deploy the army. They are better trained for gun fights.

What an eejit!

Windows movie maker is no longer bundled in with most installs now. It is part of Windows Essentials packed that you can download from windows for free. But yea, that is real simple to use. I use it

I wear standard, disposable ear plugs. Work the same no matter what bike I am on and what speed I am doing. The earphones from my Scala headset also block out noise, even if I'm not listening to anything at the time. So noise didn't effect me when I ride, and it doesn't matter what I'm riding. I'm happy using what I do.

http://crossbreezefarm.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/rams315482540_std.360122813.jpg Mind and wrap your PC up warm if you find it freezing more often this winter

Held, and probably others, do a range that attaches to the fuel cap some how. I'm not entirely sure how, or how good they are but I've seen them go for around £50 on eBay...

Why did it cost you so much? Mine was the standard test fee, plus £50 for a short lesson before, and use of the school bike during the test.

Yea I remember those days too. Now it is mostly about the hard drives that speed up your average pc. SSD's make such an impact on every day performance over traditional HDD. Some of my users think I have gave them a brand new, higher spec pc when I change it. Probably got something to do with the fact I also clean their laptop while I have it! Intel are currently playing around with lots of new technology on ways of communication from what I've being getting. I keep getting invites to see their latest wifi displays and new conference solutions and other odd things. They are also making their processors more energy efficient so they can increase battery life in mobile devices. This is possibly so they can truly break into the mobile phone/tablet market. Getting the impression that as AMD are not challenging them as much these days, they are not pushing core processor development as much.

Depends on the case for me. Some cases look absolutely fantastic and I don't mind paying good money for them if they are also well designed in side. My case was £71 when I bought it, which I thought was pretty good for a soundproofed case that still allowed airflow. It idoes not have the best cable management system ever known, but it's pretty tidy still.

I have no facts to back this up, buy my assumption is that Intel are focusing more on getting more cores per processor/per watt, rather than greater speed. Guessing it is quicker to have many things working quickly together rather than fewer things working frantically. As I said, no facts/figures/anything to back that up. Just my feeling

That looks very funky! I had a look at the cube shaped cases when I was looking, but couldn't find any soundproofed ones. That one looks especially good in silver in my opinion I toyed with one of these but the cooler master eventually won down to reviews.

I drive home/to inlaws for Christmas. When going to my parents it is a 2-2.5hrs drive, when going to my partners parents it is at least a 9hr drive, ends up more like 11hrs though. We purposely do not put the radio on because radio stations are obsessed with "Driving home for Christmas". It is on at least twice an hour, drives me mad!

What case are you getting? I love picking out a new case... I am at the stage were I value soundproofing over LED's now though

I have been thinking of getting Guild Wars 2 for a while now, might pick it up after christmas. As for TESO, there are only two servers. The USA server and the EU server. I'm on the EU one funny enough I think my account name is arwen_7 there, I'll need to check when I get home. Not been playing it recently, minecraft has been getting in the way!

I used to play WoW as well, a long time ago! I find TESO much less "go kill 10 of these beasts" then "go kill 20 of these slightly harder to kill beats" than WoW. There is much more story to TESO than WoW The main quest's are virtually bug free as far as I am aware now. But yea, beta an for a few months after launch it was common to get stuck waiting for stuff to happen. It has been a long time since I've had that happen to me. Me and my partner tend to play it together, so not really into the massive guilds that are around. We will occasional venture into Cyrodil and team up with some groups there to take the keeps. Much fun until some stupidly powerful vampire comes and beats us all I still find it a very beautiful game to play. Much like Skyrim, I love walking around and looking at the scenery. Especially at night, with the moons. Khajiit do love the moons (I play as one too)

Thanks. I thought for a while about getting the K. But in the end I figured I'd rather not over clock anyway. I'm all about reliability me! I deal with enough broken pcs at work that I want mine to simply work when I get home

I've played it since Beta. It has changed a lot to be fair. Not sure if it is all for the better but there is no monthly fee now. You can choose to pay monthly and get some extras, but it is not a requirement to play any more. There is still some random bugs, and still the stupid amount of items around and not enough space to store them. Crown store is all about paying real money for stupid/pointless things in my opinion. I never spend money on it. And their updating procedure is still torturous when they release a big update.

I don't do anything too demanding on my pc to be fair. Games like TESO, Minecraft, some old games (AoE, CC, etc), some mild photo editing and very occasionally video editing. My set up is - i5-4460 quad core, 3.2Ghz, 6mb cache Asus Geforce GTX 750 TI (2GB) HyperX Fury Series 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1866MHz CL10 Asus Z97-A SanDisk Ultra II SSD 240 GB Sata 3 (boot disk) 2x 1Tb WD green drives (RAID 1 - Storage drives) Cooler Master V550s PSU All in a Cooler Master SILENCIO 652S case that sound proofs it all while keeping good airflow running win 8.1. I could have spent extra and bought: a CPU cooler (£30), the K version of the processor (was £40 more at the time) Up'ed to 16GB RAM (£50) Faster RAM (8GB = £30, up'ed to 16gb = £60-£90) WiFi/NFC charging motherboard (£40) Bigger PSU (£30+) After using the build I have for nearly a year, I am glad I did not spend the extra I considered. CPU has never gone above 70 degrees, CPU has never been highly stressed continuously, never maxed the RAM out. I run TESO on nearly max settings. Turning off a few things like grass (it is easier to find things without it...) and turning down the water reflection. FPS is usually high, occasionally drops down to noticeable stutter in some busy towns, but nothing major. I too get the constant requests for help. I now have a rule that advise if free, but if they want me to do anything then I charge for it. Unless I like them and know it will be a quick and easy job If people get annoyed about being charged I simply ask them if they would expect a plumber to come out and fix their blocked toilet for free/bottle of cheap wine.

That's a monster of a graphics card! I had a look at the H60 cooler, was between that and the Artic Freezer 13. Still don't like the idea of watercooled pcs though. I know they have came a long way, but meh... I prefer the older way of doing things I've also, weirdly, never been a fan of over-clocking. Much prefer the longevity of my kit than the speed. SSD's have done more for fast pcs than almost any other component in the last decade in my mind.