James

I'm off to Courchevel tomorrow, and I was wondering... do the bars in such ski resorts normally sell cider by the pint (or half litre, whatever)? I would just drink beer, but I haven't been able to drink more than a mouthful since age 16/17, as it makes me sick.

Basically, you "borrow" someone's garden gnome, then take it with you on holiday or a few day trips, take some pictures of the gnome next to famous landmarks and of him generally having a good time, then send the gnome's owner the photos. Finally, you return the gnome without explanation.

This prank was made famous by the film "Amelie", but has anyone ever done it themselves, or heard of someone else doing it?

Personally, I always have one eye on it when I'm not going at a constant speed. If it gets to 2000-2200 revs I change up, and if it dips below 1300 then I change down. Of course, I listen to my engine as well, but I know that many people only use their engine noise and ignore the rev counter.

So, what about the rest of you manual car drivers?

My parents are currently in the process of cleaning the house, and in doing so they came across a supply of beer and cider left over from a party we had 5 or more years ago. The beer has expiry dates on it (2002 for most of them, 1998 in one case!), but the cans of cider don't. So, does anyone know if it is safe to drink cider that is at least half a decade old? I would think that, since it is fermented for an extended period of time anyway, it doesn't matter when you drink it, in the same way that wine can be decades years old and taste just fine, if not better. The stuff I'm drinking now (Olde English) seems slightly fizzier than it should be, but otherwise tastes fine.

I used a shredder program (purely out of habit) to delete an unneeded desktop shortcut. However, I did this just as the computer was shutting down, and the process didn't quite finish. Now I am left with an empty file that cannot be deleted, renamed, opened or moved to another place. Doing all of these things tells me that the file does not exist. An obvious solution would be to restore the file I deleted, but I can't, because it's been written over and is unrecoverable. Does anyone have a solution to this, or am I stuck with a random file on my desktop?