Wheel of fortune! One of my favourite games. lol

I'm at north ryde too, this is where we find out we work for the same company and you're in the next cube! I'm in the riverside business park, you cant miss me, I'm all decked out in pink flames :p

I resemble that remark! :p

jock, you are a mad bugger for sure.

I just can't be bothered getting out at 5am when I have to be home an hour later. Both my wife & I work full time but since I work closer to home I have to get 2yo daughter up, fed, dressed etc while wife gets ready, then I take them to the train station about 7am before coming back to get ready & go myself.

At the moment it's about one ride on the weekend ,and if I'm lucky, sometimes a mid-week night ride after 8pm.

Nah, just a couple of "nice shirts". Was a bity dark though and the race was about to start, so didn't have time to pimp to much.


Yeah, but as you pointed out earlier, our fabulous pimping of your product is bearing fruit with all the dudes sending themselves broke paying your extremely fair prices. Since you're rolling in it at the minute, I'm sure your well developed socialist tendancies could kick in to spread a little of the love around. ;)

the only thing that gets me up before 6am is a shag. :)

Gimme a break fellas, I just like riding. So if it means getting up while everyone else is asleep then that's how it has to be. Noone's awake before it's time to leave for work anyway, so it's not like the sleepy-headed monsters are missing out.

So, you live near the water and have an interest in wading birds do you? :p

live near water... yes
wading birds, sitting birds, walking birds... sure. ;)

I see Baden Cooke got a win in the Peace Race also. Hondo got Stage 2 and 3 though.

Good to see Cookie get a few results. A pity for him that that Unibet didn't get a wild card into any of the 3 Grand Tours.

Boys, my uber-geek is doing some flash intro for the website. Please fee free to email me your best bike-related images, and I will do my best to get some of them incorporated into the intro. They've got to be ones that you own. Anything you can contribute will be considered.

Cheers.

ugh flash intros. Dont do it!
Whats wrong with just loading a website and being able just to start browsing, not being stuck watching a flash thing while you hopelessly search for the skip button.
Save on the bandwidth bill instead.

+1

Flash intros are a yank thing though. I think if the first thing the see isn't some useless pretty pictures they go elsewhere since it doesn't seem "professional".

Not necessarily a yank thing saccy! A stuff it, it's a yank thing... :D

... but just about everyone loves candied up ****e, whether it's food or something visual. Let's face it, our brains are born lazy so web designers put the pretty pics in to capture our imagination.

Unfortunately that doesn't suit the practical side of 90% of ppls brains which times out pretty bloody quickly!! If the desired info (or a clear path to it) ain't loaded in less than 8 seconds the site has a massive chance of coming rock-bottom of the pops.

The arty types of ppl that make up the other 10% of the population and the website owner will still be admiring the flash intro this time tomorrow :D

It will have a nice big "SKIP INTRO" button. I hate them myself, but if someone's doing work for free, I won't turn it down. It's gotta load fast though. And yes, it's a Yank thing.

Flash was designed to load things fast, wasn't it? If it's slow, it's either a) Crapily designed, or b) designed for someone on a T1 connection in which case....it's badly designed!

I agree though, if it doesn't load fully in about 5 seconds, people get grumpy.

I'm still impressed with my little transparent gif or whatever drop-down menues. Royale did a crackin' job on those.

Thylo you have a good site. looks good, and its quick.
pinarello is a good site, but its **** on dial up.
PBK is a good site because its quick and stuff is easy to find.

Get the bloke to do the free work on something else not a flash intro even if it is a yank thing. buck the trend

this is my idea of a good "front page" of a website

http://www.lhthomson.com/bikes.htm

Simple, no ANNOYING flash crap, loads quick, is uncluttered, and the categories are spotted in 1 second

these aren't bad, neeva:

http://www.bontrager.com/index.php
http://www.eastonbike.com/

These are just a few that spring to mind

I worked in web development for over 5 years... Flash intro's are sooo 2001.
A great deal of people (myself included) won't wait for them to load... unless it's a design site.
The bail out button came about through Flash intros losing hits on sites. People were just hitting the back button and going elsewhere.
If yours is going to have a lot of images in it, it'll be on the slow side. You can only compress images so much before they start detracting from your site... I hope your bloke's not doing cheesy text effects as well.
Flash intros are really not very professional IMHO.

Quick change of topic, has anyone noticed how the rednecks come out of the woodwork whenever there's a thread on Asian manufacturing?

An imaginary conversation......

ABH - "Those Commies, they're not free like us. Nosirrreeee! If they were, they'd make quality stuff!"
THY - "Well, Commies were the first into space, developed nuclear capabilities, I'm sure they also invented a whole heap of stuff"
ABH - "Yeah, but in China, they have no freedom, so they have no quality control"
THY - "Huh?"
ABH - "And those bottom feeders like Walmart come in and -"
THY - "Okay, so you believe in the free market system I guess"
ABH - "Absolutely"
THY - "Great, so, where is the demand for these cheap products coming from?"
ABH - "Consumers?"
THY - "Right, so basically 'free' Americans"
ABH - "Basically, I guess"
THY - "Okay, so here you have Joe America on basic wage, no 401k, no health benefits because the government abolished them, no real plans to send his kids to Uni because he couldn't afford the 100 grand to send them there, and he wants a new gizmo"
ABH - "Err....okay"
THY - "He's 'free', so what's he going to buy? Walmart is a big successful company, epitome of American 'free market', they have the gizmo he wants and it's only 10 bucks! Sweet! I can still buy it an afford a sixpack of Miller"
ABH - "But Walmart just sells crap made by Commies!"
THY - "I'm sure they don't sell commie stuff. I mean, aren't you guys at war with all things Commie? I mean, those bastards are taking your jobs and lowering quality to boot!"
ABH - "Yeah, Taiwan on the other hand, they make quality stuff and aren't Commie, which is a bonus"
THY - "Well, we're getting a bit off track here, but don't you find it ironic that the once demonised 'red hordes' are now flavour of the month with the bastions of American freedom and free trade - the corporation - and that Americans are not only lapping it up but their demand for cheap commodities is on the rise?"
ABH - "Well, everyone likes a bargain. I just got these shoes for 50 bucks!
THY - "Sure, but that bargain just cost someone their job in the US factory that was just shut down, the waste from those shoes is now floating down the Yangse River, and the guy that lost his job in the US can't afford to reeducate himself cos it's going to cost him 50 grand, and he has no 401k or severance pay because he wouldn't have got employed in the first place if he didn't sign on as a temp. How 'free' do you feel? Not much freer than the Chinese girl making those shoes I bet, and to top it off, spend a day looking at where everything in your house is made. I'm guessing the majority of it is from guess where?"

etc., etc.

ok thy where is this thread?
*rolls up sleeves and grabs the left-wing labour economics journal article*

keep it simple I say
http://www.kleinbikes.com/us/home.html

Ok kiddies, any of you doing the Central Coast Century on Sunday ?