Life in the Bus Lane

Still sore and scabby.

No riding today, partly due to a lengthy hangover, however I did do plenty of fettling.

Fitted a new 32t Goldtec chainring to the Inbred and tweaked the drivetrain a bit. Repaired a puncture on the Stiffee and poked/prodded the forks. Then I swapped the bars between the Inbred and Stiffee. The Inbred now has the low-rise EA50’s and the Stiffee has the 2″ rise Azonic World Force. If, as I suspect, the higher bars suit the Stiffee, then I’ll get a set of RaceFace or Azonic Double-Walls for it.

Hopefully I’ll take the Stiffee out for a spin tomorrow.

Still sore, nice and scabby as well.

Microsoft saw fit to send me a tie today, how nice of them. Shame I can’t really remember the last time I wore a tie. December probably.

Why do people seem to get so worked up about the “ethos” of singlespeeds? Always talking about “keeping it real”, or worrying whether their choice of shonky fork might offend someone.

Some advice for these people: Who cares what other people think, do what you want and not what you think other people would prefer you to do. By all means ask advice, but learn to make decisions for yourself (something very few people seem capable of these days).

I think it’s time for a new motto.

Singlespeed - it’s just another fucking bike

I like my singlespeed bike a lot, but I don’t treat it any differently to any of my other gear equipped bikes. I don’t suddenly get worried that I’ll be ostracised for having unsuitable forks, the wrong shirt, the wrong tyres, or the wrong attitude. I just ride the thing.

It’s all over bar the healing now. Slightly sore this morning, but that’s to be expected.

Finally got around to posting off my entry for the European Singlespeed Championships in 10 days time, hopefully the weather will hold out long enough, failing that we’ll just have to drink more. Also posted some Marzocchi canti-studs to Lolly so he can resurrect another bike.

Hopefully I’ve sorted out the missing sleeping bag liner, apparently the offer went up before they arrived, and they’ll send me one when they do. My new memory stick also hasn’t arrived, it took Expansys a day to pack the order so didn’t manage next-day delivery. Hopefully I’ll get that tomorrow.

I’m also tyre hunting for the Stiffee, Nokian NBX’s look a possibility at the moment.

My head cleared up enough to head out for a ride about 7:45ish, and I’m glad I did. I managed to power up every climb a gear or two higher than usual, and everything felt good. I took quite a few pics whilst I was out and about, and managed to break the damping on my Fox Vanilla’s although 5 minutes with a 2mm allen key seems to have cured that.

All I need to do now is sort out the photos, then have a quick shower to wash the blood off my legs.

Did I say that bikes were great?

My new sleeping bag finally arrived, although the “free” liner was absent which could mean that the offer had expired, although they have recently changed the order page to allow you to specify the free liner, which would tend to indicate that they still have stock. I’ll wait to see what customer services say before kicking up more of a fuss.

I was going to go for a ride tonight, but seem to have developed a headache, so I’m not sure I’ll go. I’ll leave it an hour or so and see if my head feels better.

Good job I went to see Matrix Reloaded last night, the people I was meant to go with this Friday have already been and didn’t really enjoy it. These are the same people who started arranging to go and see X-2 with me, then went on their own anyway.

At least they are predictable.

Spent most of the day at my parents for my nephew’s birthday party. The weather was nice enough for us to have a bbq in the garden, and I took loads of pictures with the digital camera. I’m getting used to it slowly. An additional memory stick will be on it’s way as soon as I can sort out why Expansys think they haven’t got the credit card details I supplied.

This evening I did the “sad loner” bit and went to the cinema on my own to see The Matrix Reloaded, definately a good film, but seemingly more of a build-up to The Matrix Revolutions than a story in it’s own right. Roll on 7^th November when, hopefully, all will be revealed.

Update: It seems the card expiry date was missing from the order details. Not sure how that happened.

The less said about the rugby the better.

Went out for a ride on the Stiffee this afternoon, took the camera along so I could take some pictures, but the weather put a stop to that for most of the ride.

The first half of the ride was quite wet, but otherwise normal, however the descent through the woods was lethal. There were a bunch of weirdo’s dressed up in strange clothing walking about (amateur medieval re-enactment or something), and I managed to lose it totally in front of them while trying to cross an load of steep off-camber roots. I rode, well slid, down the steep descent then stopped and took some pics in the woods for 10 minutes or so, walked and slid down the next bit, then rode the rest of the way home.

Time for a shower and lunch, then the rugby on tv.

Too tired to write anything useful now. Spent last night/this morning help run the District Scout Sports Challenge, which involved racing up and down the cycle path this morning like a deranged nutter trying to find scouts on bikes. We got there in the end though. Took loads of pics which you’ll find on a website not too far from here, you can work the URL out for yourself though.

I might write something better tomorrow after a ride.

24 cans of Grolsch, £4.52.

How good is that?

A dull day today. Converted 3216 into xml for no real reason whatsoever, went to a meeting telling us about the “oppressive dictatorship” which seems to run NHS IT these days, changed a few backup tapes, and waited for the weekend to creep slowly closer.

Even the weather is dull.

Dullness pervades.

I finally got around to quietening the downstairs PC. It used to reside in a stonemasons, and hence is a pretty dusty inside, the fans were rather noisey causing it to be rather obtrusive. Whilst adding some more memory to it earlier I took the opportunity to disconnect the fan on the processor heatsink, virtually silencing the machine. Because the processor has the PSU mounted directly above it, there is still a steady flow of air over the heatsink from the PSU fans. I’ve stopped running the distributed.net on the PC to keep the CPU temp down as much as possible. Hopefully it won’t overheat and die.

With that done, it’s much more peaceful in the front room. Now all I need to do is squeeze it back into the hifi rack.

So much for their “reliable, Award winning delivery service” [their dodgy capitalisation, not mine]

From my order tracking:
Your order has been accepted and is awaiting processing. 18/05/2003[21:48:32]
Your order has been picked, and is awaiting despatch. 19/05/2003[12:21:50]
Your order has been despatched by Parcel Force/Royal Mail 22/05/2003[10:57:48]

3 days to dispatch a package? That’s really taking the piss.

James Dyson has produced a real-life version of Escher’s Waterfall. There are a few details in a BBC News article which loosely explain how he did it.

Wonder if I can get one in my garden?

Had a quick play around with the camera, charged both batteries up and sort out all the bits that go with it. Gave up on writing my own gallery software and decided to stick with the one I was already using. I stuck a few quick pics up at http://gallery.dynamite.org/testpics/ for you to laugh at how they are.

Today I have several new toys. A digital camera from Marcshop complete with case and memory sticks, there was a USB memory stick reader from Dabs, and some flesh tunnels from Wildcat.

For some bizarre reason, Dabs saw fit to package the USB card reader in something the size of the shoebox. The camera was easily 10 times the size, and in a box half as small. Luckily I elected to take the large courier bag with me.

Field and Trek have also somewhat belatedly updated their online order tracking which now says that my order was shipped two days ago, that should provide more fun tomorrow.

Now I think I’ll write some photo gallery software in php.

I was going to nip home at lunchtime to see if a package had arrived from Marcshop, so true to form it started raining just before midday.

Arse.

The new server has arrived for Labs, for various reasons it’s going to be known as “deepthought”, although having seen it in the flesh (as it were), a far more appropriate name springs to mind.

The problem is that I doubt “songsaboutfucking”[1] would go down too well with the punters. I’d probably end up looking for another job or having to rename it.

Maybe it’ll make a more subtle appearance ;)

songsaboutfucking IN CNAME deepthought

[1] It’s the title of an album by Big Black.

Hmm, winamp’s shuffle mode has just decided to play two versions of Half Man Half Biscuit’s Trumpton Riots in sucession. I wonder if it’ll manage to play another version next?

Well it didn’t rain too much. I had to cut their planned route a bit short due to a lack of time, and the incelement weather, we ended up doing a tad over 12 miles.

Shame two of them turned up without helmets, one had no lights, and two had no waterproofs. We survived though.

I’m taking some scouts cycling tonight which shouldn’t be a major problem. Except there is always a problem, and tonight it’s the weather. Currently it’s rather windy, and it’s alternating between very heavy showers, and sunshine.

I’m taking the Inbred on the grounds that there is less to need to relube when I get back in the dark and rain later tonight. Hopefully they’ve picked a nice flat route and not a tour of all the steep hills around Bath.

GPS routes will be available later for those sad enough to want to know where I’ve been.

…borrowed from /.

386 DX Cyberpunk rock band.

After 9 months in the wilderness, I have once again seen the light, followed the one true path, and returned to the ‘hood.

Yes, I now have Bombers on my Inbred again.

I’d dug the Z4’s back out again in preparation for the SS Euros next month. Riding 20 miles at Thetford on a rigid singlespeed might have been too much, so I changed the oil in them yesterday and refitted them this morning. I’ll still take the Knifens along to Thetford in case I change my mind and decided to “go rigid” as it were.

Anyway, no real riding today. The weather was too crap this morning, although is warm and very humid now, and I have to go and pick someone up from the arse-end of Bristol a little later.

Thats a quick description of my day.

Slashdot | Hubbard Asks FreeBSD Hackers To Rename EDOOFUS. What a complete waste of time, they should have renamed it EBYGUM or EBUTTHEAD[1] something.

[1] Carl Sagan would probably have something to say about that. Except he’s dead now, which would make it tricky.

The details and entry forms are out, should be a fun weekend. Wonder if they’ll “censor” my team name again this year?

More details.

That all important form.

…he say “No”.

That’s us fucked then.

Bit cryptic, but it’s not been made public yet.

Went out on my usual 12mile loop after work tonight, and for some reason it was harder work than usual. Admittedly I rode it a bit quicker than usual, taking about an hour instead of 70 minutes, but that was mainly due to riding constantly and not stopping.

Just enough time to finish my tea, have a shower, and go straight back out again.

The proper bike mount for my GPS arrived yesterday, so I thought I’d measure the route to work correctly (it went a bit wrong last time), and it’s actually 1.25 miles, not 1.1 .

That 0.15 miles makes all the difference.

The weather is too damn wet for riding considering the fact I’m meant to be helping at cubs at 18:30, and the group AGM is straight after that at 20:00.

Next ride is probably going to be Sunday.

Another sporadic Link Of The Day TM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/3023369.stm.

My head hurts less, the fibre is patched correctly and (as far as I know) working. The sun is shining (briefly), and it’s nearly lunchtime.

A much better start than yesterday.

This one still hurts.

At least I have a nice package from Pinkbike to cheer me up. I only ordered it a week ago, not bad for delivery from Canada.

T-Day: 28/5/2003.

I lasted two hours at work.

Time to go back to bed and hope my head stops hurting so much. Damn migraines.

Woke up at 5am with a bad headache, got up, had a few glasses of water, went back to bed and managed to eventually get back to sleep.

Get woken by the alarm at 6:55, eventually drag myself out of bed about 40 minutes later, and step right in a freshly deposited furball from the cat. Clean that up then get dressed.

Still got the headache, but can’t hide in bed for the day as I’d like, as I have to go to work to patch in the new fibre-optic cable to get the labs up and running on Ethernet.

Hopefully the day can only get better.

Well the weather made up it’s mind, and decided to rain on me, good job I’d packed my Goretex “just in case”. Other than being damp and cold it was a good ride, the slipperyness of the rocks adding a hint of unpredictability and excitment to the route.

so neither can I. However, I’ll probably go riding shortly though.

I’ve finally managed to get rid of the unsightly CAT5 cable running across the floor downstairs. With a length of CAT5 cable courtesy of Electrio, and a crimp tool and connectors from work, I ran a new cable via the cellar and the small pipes fitted in the corners of each room for running cables across the house. So-far they contain phone, speaker, and network cable and were definately a good idea to fit.

I even managed to make up the cable correctly first time, not bad seeing as I’d only done it once before and that was a couple of years ago.

Bet none of you remember that game?

It’s relevance? I may not be a fireman, but I’m shrinking, as you’ll read later on.

Took my nephew and sister-in-law shopping today to get birthday presents for Ethan (the aforementioned nephew). Sorted out his presents, bought a load of DVD’s in VIrgin, and (here comes the shrinkage) bought a pair of jeans a whole 2 sizes smaller than my current ones.

Crooked

Ello, ello, ello� what ‘ave we ‘ere then�? You’re living close to the edge and it’s only a matter of time before you’re collared by the Old Bill. You may have fallen on your feet so far, but it won’t last forever. Have you ever thought about a more rewarding pastime? (Emotionally that is�)

Based on your answers, we have calculated the maximum penalty for your crimes*:

Years in prison: 37 Potential fine: £7000

How dodgy are you?

Various odd people seem to be creating lists of 100 things which define them, so I thought I’d have a go.

1. I am not shopping. I cannot be defined by the contents of a list.

That saved some time.

Today we found out the proposed details of the cost of parking at work from the Staff Newsletter, otherwise known as the Evening Chronicle (as mentioned previously).

Why the fuck should we have to find out work related stuff from the local newspaper? Are the senior management in the trust so incompetant that they can’t even be bothered to tell the staff things that directly affect them before telling the public? What a bunch of useless fucking wankers.

And what better way to finish than with a 5-0?

17:00 Finish work
17:05 Leave work and ride home
17:15 Get home, get changed and ready to go out
17:30 Out riding the empty trails in glorious sunshine. Ride everything including that odd dropoff at the bottom of the steep slope. I am king of the trails once more.
18:35 Get home again

That dropoff I avoided yesterday? I nailed it….

I’d take some pics of the route except I don’t have a digital camera yet, and MikeD is a better photographer than me, so you can look at the pics he took a year ago.

I’m going riding anyway.

I have a suspicion my legs will go on strike halfway up Wellsway.

You find out that you’ve been kidding yourself all along, and the route to work is only 1.1 miles not 1.5.

17:00 Finish work
17:05 Leave work and ride home
17:15 Get home, get changed and ready to go out
17:30 Out riding the empty trails in glorious sunshine. Ride everything except that odd dropoff at the bottom of the steep slope. I am king of the trails once again.
18:35 Get home again
18:50 Tuck into a bowl of fresh pasta.
19:15 Quick shower and change of clothes
19:45 Head off for a couple of pints in the pub

It doesn’t get much better than that.

People who agree to do something, then don’t. And when the topic is raised subsequently, suddenly become rather deaf.

Don’t know why I bother with them really. Not that the person this refers to will actually read this, or even realise it refers to them.

Pointless rant over.

I think it’s just that one disc that is faulty, strange how it played fine yesterday.

My minidisc player is playing up. Not sure if it’s the player or the disc, however both were fine yesterday when I was out riding.

Maybe it’s just got fed up with minidiscs of The Damned as a Ramones tribute album seems ok so far, which is admittedly only 5 tracks.

Another ace ride. The weather was superb again today, so I headed out on the bike about lunchtime. I started off on the usual uni-bike route, but took a different route through the woods behind the Uni and paid a visit to Team Schnoodle HQ. I then did a bit of exploring in the woods below the downs. I found the beginnings of a rather naughty slalom course in the woods, whilst it doesn’t look too bad, it is noticable from the top, and they’ve cut a big square of land out for make the berms with. I suspect it won’t be there much longer. I then took a rather random route down to the village, and rather wish I hadn’t, both forearms and my right hand are lacerated by thorns, and rather bloody. My lower legs survived the thorns slightly better, but suffered at the hands (or rather the pegs) of my 24Seven Slack pedals.

No doubt my arms will be sore tomorrow, but it’s all in a good cause as we all know that chicks dig scars.

Don’t they?

A quick run-through of tonights BBC Test The Nation quiz gave me a result of 130. That will be a bit low due to it being too easy to double-click and answer two questions in one go (as I found to my cost several times). I got 133 last year so it’s not too far out. When my head is working properly again, I’ll have a proper go at it.

Addendum: A susequent run though, answering all questions, gave a score of 135 with only three questions wrong. Not too shabby.

Another good ride. Tne front brake was squealing continually, so I just turned up the minidisc so I couldn’t hear it. Problem solved.

It’s been a morning of non-stop excitement. First I got up (late) and had coffee and toast, then I wandered up to Woolies and bought not only a new potato peeler, but also a pizza cutter.

I think I need to go for a nice relaxing ride now.

Possum Bourne has finally died after a crash back in mid April.

London Irish beat Leicester, that wasn’t meant to happen.

After my abortive efforts last week, I popped down to the LBS this morning to pick up the RaceFace bashring they pre-emptively ordered for me, along with a new chain. Everything is now fitted and once the threadlock has dried, will be raring to got. A bit of tweaking with a large screwdriver might have sorted out the front brake as well, although I’ll reserve judgement on that until I’ve had a suitable test ride, which given the weather is unlikely to be today, and maybe not even this weekend.

I’m exploring the 470-odd hours of mp3 I have on the network via the delights of Winamps shuffle mode. It’s producing a few “oh, didn’t know I had that” moments.

I don’t do “freeride”
I don’t do downhill
I don’t do xc
I don’t do trials (mainly cos I can’t)
I don’t do urban or street or whatever you want to call it
I don’t go “hucking”
I don’t do North Shore
I don’t do BSX/4X

I just ride bikes

The Bath Chronicle (or chronic to it’s friends, not that it has many) has a story today about how Bath is being slagged off on a website called The Idler.

Has anyone at the chronic ever heard of humour?

Obviously not.

I despair sometimes, I really do.

Why is it I always end up spending the day fighting with php and mysql when I have a hangover?

I’m trying to bodge together a nice and shiney front end to generate emails for sending referrals out through an email->fax gateway, seems to be working so far. A minidisc of Operation Ivy seems to be helping. At least there is a nice long weekend off now, even if it does look like it will rain constantly all weekend.

It appears that Bath Rugby and Bristol Shoguns are in “exploratory discussions” over potentially merging. Presumably this is a safety net in case, as looks likely, one or other of them gets relegated at the end of the season.

As a Bath born & bred sporadic supporter, I’d think be a bit annoyed if the two teams merged and buggered off to play somewhere else (Ashton Gate), although if that’s what it takes for Bath to survive, then so be it.

Chainreaction now have online order tracking, this means I’ll be able to see exactly how much I spend there.

My order from last week finally arrived. Their 1-2 day delivery took 7 days, and they only had half of what I wanted. Rather naughtily, they also charged my credit card for the whole order in advance. The order tracking also claims they dispatched the shorts which proved to be unavailable.

I’ve nearly bought myself a Sony DSC-P1 digital camera from Marc, we are just waiting for Sony to repair it before sorting out the fiscal and logistical side of things.