Life in the Bus Lane

Currently wasting half an hour on BBC1 is a programme called "Hard Spell" which appears^[1] to involve a bunch of children spelling words, and not entirely successfully by the looks of things. Who decided that this was good prime-time telly? What will we have next, "tag-team times-table recitals", "pro-am chemistry lessons", or "live and interactive after school detentions"?

Can TV possibly sink any lower? I suppose non-stop "I’m A Celebrity Get Me A New Career" would probably be even more painful. Thank god for TiVo and DVDs.

^[1]I say appears, as I’m listening to music and the TV is just showing the pictures.

A fairly messy game tonight. We traded legs for a while before we managed to squeeze ahead. We eventually won 5-3 after the Picadillys could only muster 52 against our 53.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Picadillys took 3.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving company.

Still ill with my perpetual winter cold. Spent the day in bed Thursday, went back to work today and spent the day surrounded by very very hung over people. There was a leaving party last night which I didn’t go to, and everyone seemingly drank rather a lot. Quite a few people didn’t last until the end of the day and went home early. Bunch of lightweights.

Hopefully it’ll be a fairly quiet weekend. I’m off to a dinner tomorrow night, so must remember to charge the batteries for the camera and flashgun, and also to take the tripod with me.

My main PC now has a nice shiney new NEC DVD burner, and a previously enjoyed ATI Radeon 9100 graphics card. All being well, the blank DVDs will arrive in the next day or so, then I can back up some of my documents and photos.

Tomorrow is the big server replacement at work that I’ve been working on for several weeks. We are replacing our main, and somewhat aging, SQL server with a much more powerful, and hopefully much more resilient setup. We are starting at 8am, and intending to be back up and running by 9am. We’ve done as much testing as we can think of, the only slight fly in the ointment is the lack of a full-time SQL DBA at the moment, but that just makes it all the more interesting.

All that remains then is for me to try and shift this bloody annoying half-arsed cold that I’ve still got.

The better team won tonight, it’s just a shame it wasn’t us. After 4 legs we were 16 pins down, but we’d brought that back to a deficit of 11 by the end of the seventh and final leg. To be fair, Crazy Gang have won the pins cup for the last three years running, so it’s no great shame to be beaten by them

We’ll just have to aim for the Nomination Cup now, the next round of which we are playing on 21^st of December.

I’m lounging in the armchair in front of a roaring fire, drinking a nice bottle of Old Speckled Hen, when I get an email from Play.com telling me that my copy of Bill Bailey - Part Troll has been posted. The problem is that I’m watching it already, and in fact the credits have just started to roll. Oh well, better late than never as they say.

First ride tonight with my new Solstice HID lamp. Apart a few blackouts caused by not forcing one of the connectors together well enough, it is very impressive. Haivng only used it for a shade under two hours, I can’t comment on the reliability, but the performance is very good, with a good dispertion of bright light.

The setup is a bit messy though, there is a fly lead on the lamp complete with a glowing blue power switch, then another short lead to reverse the polarity and connect to the different style connector on the Lumicycle battery,. It does mean cable all over the place, but it works.

I think I’m now going to sleep until Sunday afternoon.

On my way home from work yesterday, I pedalled my way thought my 2000th mile this year.

It’s not too bad actually.

My new light unit arrived early this morning, it’s a Solstice HID unit from The Rush. First impressions are favourable, it feels nice and strudy, and comes with a nice fly-lead to allow me to use it with my Lumicycle battery pack. Hopefully I’ll be able to give it a brief test on Friday night.

Back to the "normal" weekly night ride tonight, a quick 25 miles out to Bradford on Avon and back again in around 90 minutes. It felt good to give the legs a proper work out after a couple of cold and apathy filled weeks.

If last weeks game was quick, this one was almost supersonic. A quick 5-0 victory and it was all over by 9:25.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Police went home empty handed.

Took the Craftworks for a quick spin today, the first time it had been ridden for 6 weeks or so. Did the usual Uni route, complete with a healthy dose of cheek. It was also the first ride with the Kona rucksack. The bladder made the water taste horrible, and wasn’t very easy to drink from, but other than that I’m very impressed with it. Loads of space inside, and more pockets than you can shake a stick at. It quite happily swallowed my usual collection of tools, phone, minidisc player, and two cameras. I’m not sure that taking the 300D along was an entirely sensible idea as I spent most of the ride nervous of falling off and landing on it, but I did use it to take a few pics in the woods before the light went.

A fairly nice ride, although it’s a bit of a shock riding a heavy "freeride" bike instead of a nice nimble cross bike. Superb weather when I left, but overcast by the time I got home.

Pictures in the usual place - Rainbow Woods ride.

I hate having colds, particularly when they hold off until the weekend before taking full effect. Definately no riding today, and probably not tomorrow either.

A manically busy week at work, I’m just glad it’s finished. It was a combination of rushed server installations, problematic anti-virus software, and the usual problems and suchlike. I’m hoping for a nice quiet weekend, although I really ought to go for a ride at some point as I’ve now not ridden properly for over a week. If the weather is nice on Sunday I might sling the camera into my rucksack and go for a ride.

On a camera related note, the free compact flash card that was on offer with my camera arrived today. As it’s only a 256MB card it probably won’t get much use as I already have two larger ones, but it might come in handy one day, and I never turn down freebies. Unfortunately I’m still waiting to hear about the cash back offer though, the paperwork has been sent in, but I’ve not heard back. It’s probably been lost in the post somewhere knowing my luck. I’m keeping half an eye on a lens on eBay this weekend, it’s worryingly cheap at the moment, but will no doubt rocket to an absurd price in the last 10 minutes or so. I’ve got a theoretical limit in the back of my mind, and I’ll see how far that gets me.

Now that I’m back from scouts, it’s time to relax with a bottle of Old Speckled Hen, and a copy of the latest episode from series 6 of The West Wing.

After losing the first leg on a tie, it really didn’t get any better for us tonight. Police won 5 legs and the pins, Housing didn’t even make an impression on the score board. The game was over by 9:30.

Police took 8 points, Housing took 0.

The only upside was that some player called Rich Wood took top score for Housing by a clear 8 pins.

Having decided I needed an external flash for the 300d, I had a look around and narrowed my choice down to two. A Canon Speedlite 500EX, or a Sigma EF-500 Super DG. Both support second-curtain sync which I wanted, and are fairly powerful. Having looked around, the Canon could be had for £230 via the internet, and the Sigma around £160. However a shop in town had the Sigma in stock for £175 which was a good price, so I decided to pop in after work.

On the way to the shop I stuck my head into London Camera Exchange just to see what they had, partly to see if they had any second-hand ones in stock. They’d had no Canon ones at all, but had the Sigma I wanted in the storeroom. "That’s £149" said the salesman, "ooh bargain" I thought, "but I can do it for £120" he added, at which point I rushed to pay before he changed his mind. I also picked up a Crumpler Long Schlong case, and he knocked £9 off the price of that as well, meaning I got the flashgun and case for less than it would have cost me in the other shop.

Guess where I’ll be shopping next time I need a lens?

There was a local cyclo cross race today up at the BMX track, so I took the opportunity to have a proper play with the new camera. I ended up taking nearly 200 pictures, some of which were better than others. I think an external flash unit would be a good idea, along with a proper camera bag. A Crumpler one looks a likely candidate if I can just work out which size I need.

Cyclo Cross race pictures.

Robert Heaton was the drummer for New Model Army from 1982 until 1998, and wrote the music for one of my favourite songs, Green and Grey.

Why do people think that they are going to get good pictures of fireworks by using the camera in their mobile phone? It’s just not going to happen. Mind you, all the people with point-and-shoot digital camaras were probably even worse off, seeing as virtually all of them were using the flash in a futile attempt to illuminate the entire night sky.

The cross bike now has it’s winter tyres back on, slightly later than intended, but better late than never as they say.

Over the summer I’ve been running IRC Mythos CX Slick tyres which are fantastic on hardpacked surfaces, but lethal when the going gets slippy. Due to their size (700×38c), they also leave next to no clearance around the rear tyre. Luckily my new Continental Twisters arrived in the shop this week, so they were fitted today. I actually reused the old front tyre from last winter as the new rear as it wasn’t too badly worn, and stuck one of the new ones on the front. There is now lots more clearance around the back tyre, and slightly more grip, both of which are advantageous at this time of year. The Mythos will hopefully make a welcome return in about 6 months time.

Tonight was my first proper ride since PBEUK, and it hurt. The climbs were hell as I struggled to breathe clearly, but it just wasn’t working. We took the scenic, and dark, route through the country lanes to Monkton Combe, than back along the canal into two. Night time puts a whole different perspective on an otherwise familar route. It was a perfectly clear night out there, and consequently a bit on the cold side, but a nice swift 15 miles kept us warm enough.

Tomorrow I have to drive to West Bromwich in the morning to deliver a server, then back in time to help out with the stewarding at the main fireworks display in town.

On Sunday there is a cyclo cross race up at the local BMX track, I’ll pop up with the camera to watch and deliver some wheels to MikeD who is risking life and limb by building up a fixed wheel bike. You’ll not catch me doing that. Well not yet anyway.

No new lens today. It was meant to have been sent "special delivery" yesterday, which means it should have been here before 1pm today, but is conspicuous by it’s absence.

I suspect the seller hasn’t actually posted it yet which is annoying, hopefully I’ll know more when he reads his email.

Update: It’s arrived, one of the neighbours had it and the postman hadn’t left a note to say so.

Busy day today. Spent the first hour or so putting scout posters up in an empty shop in town, then rode to work in the rain. Spent the rest of the day playing with SQL servers and suchlike trying to sort out a migration plan for an aging server. Worryingly, it didn’t seem to get light at all today, just an ever pervading gloominess.

It’s election day in the US today. After spending many millions of dollars campaigning, I doubt anyone will actually notice any difference, and the only winners will be the lawyers who appear to be running the whole thing. The main advantage that Kerry has appears to be that he isn’t Bush, which is probably a good thing. At least they both ride, bikes, which is a bonus. Apparently they both fall off them quite well as well.

Another messy game tonight, which doesn’t really show in the final result. After alternating legs for most of the night, we finally managed to win 5-3, and take the pins by a nice and comfortable 50.

Housing Admin took 8 points, Bath Hospitals took 3.

Next week sees us pitted against the Police, however we’ll be playing Bath Hospitals again in the next round of the Nomination Cup.