April 29, 2003  

Other bloggage: noticed that our mates Alison and James have their site up and running merrily away. Complete, indeed, with separate blogs (James and Alison). So there you go.

 

smell of water 28 april 2003

Sorry for the lack of updates - we've been off on holiday. A week-long epic around Wales, taking in all three national parks (Pembrokeshire Coastal, Brecon Beacons, and Snowdonia). That was slightly random, as our goals weren't specifically too outdoorsy: filial piety, celebrations with the mates, and a bit of aluminium framed fun.

Stream of consciousness holiday reportage:

• Pembrokeshire's lovely. Especially when you hit it bang right with the weather, which we did. The Pembrokeshire Coastal Park is beautiful - wraps around the coastline, covering some very nice tracks. We cracked off the section from Solva to Newgale and back. Lovely sunny day, not much wind: gorgeous. Lots of up and down, as coastal paths are wont to do. Among several iron-age forts, the path passed the small non-village of St Elvis. The return trip, later in the afternoon, was excellent for wildlife - we found a slow worm basking in the sunshine, which was cool. Scared the life out of me - I hadn't seen it, and was stepping over it when Heather yelled (she'd thought I'd seen it and couldn't believe I was just stepping over it). I thought it was a snake and freaked. Cool little sucker though. This was topped ten minutes later by us finding an adder also sunning itself. Venomous reptiles in the wild: you'd never get that back home. Mind you, the adder made a very spirited attempt to get away. They've got quite a turn of speed, you know.
• Hay on Wye is pretty fascinating. A small rural town with an agriculture based primarily on secondhand books is an odd thing. Worth a visit, although I should note that most of the secondhand bookshops aren't actually all that cheap. Lots of specialist booksellers - the natural history specialist had a comprehensive stock of the classic carnivorous plant books (all of which I already own).
• There's precisely one extant carrog (artificial island constructed as a defensive fortress) left in Wales - in Llangors. Funnily enough, it's in the lake. We stayed by the village. Not in the lake. Nice place though. Spent a few days in the company of the illustrious Nikki and several of her more debauched friends. A good time was had by all, and I managed to acquire the only seriouus injury of the journey by falling down a flight of stone steps while drunk. It was OK at the time - the pain only kicked in once I'd sobered up. I've still got a bruise on my left elbow.
• Coed y Brenin is an excellent mountainbiking facility. Much big grin fun was had. We rented bikes off Red Bike Hire, run by a top bloke called Jonathan - highly recommended. High quality mid-range MTBs for £16 for the day, which I reckoned was pretty reasonable. Also dropped off and picked up at the MTB centre itself - being able to get handed a bike 25ft from the bottom of the trails was a huge plus.
  We started off by doing the Fun loop, which wasn't too technically challenging but still involved a couple of grunty climbs. Especially at the start, when you end up gutsing it up a lot of loose shale and small rocks: traction was at a bit of a premium. Good ride though. The uphill section was a bit of a bugger, but once we started hitting the downhills it was great. Having knocked the Fun loop off in under the predicted time, we got cocky and had a crack at the Sport loop. This included several sections of moderately technical singletrack, which were a bit of an eye opener. The really technical rocky bits turned out to be a bit of a problem (we did have to get off and walk occasionally), but the rest of it wasn't too bad. Immense amounts of enjoyment occurred.
• I had a minor owl moment at Coed y Brenin when a kite flew out just in front of me and flew down the trail a bit. I grabbed the brakes a little too hard and managed to very narrowly avoid a rather nasty gonads/stem interface (though I still ended up with a rather painful bruise). I'm considering having blinkers fitted, so I can only see the trail for 20ft straight in front of me. I'd be less of a danger.
• Llangollen is host to The Dr Who Experience. It's disconcerting to drive into a town and see stylised Dalek next to the parking, food and National Trust icons listed as the town's amenities. The exhibition was pretty cool - they had many exhibits from the era of Dr Who that I used to watch as a kid (roughly Tom Baker through to Colin Baker). Evocatastic. Including an original Dalek (!) and a life size Dalek that you could get inside and control. Unfortunately, the still photos don't do justice to our attempts to get the Dalek to do the macarena.
• There's a cafe in the middle of Shrewsbury that does proper custard squares. I've not had a proper custard square since leaving NZ. Result.

Ran into the mechanic from my local bike shop at Coed y Brenin. Small world.

So it's back to the salt mines here in Cambridge. As a mark of respect, the weather's been a bit shite since we got back. Still, it's doing the garden a lot of good, so I shouldn't complain.

Honesty is its own reward.

Workable definition of "bloody daft": having a high-speed downhill mountainbike race. 1km below the earth's surface, in an abandoned East German salt mine.

April 11, 2003  

two doves in the tree 10 april 2003

Today's tip: if you're going to get so drunk that you forget your own address, for christ's sake write it down on the back of your hand or something. The drunken recruitment consultant we ran into on Saturday night had missed this elementary precaution. We have a habit of running into ridiculously drunk young women, who clearly shouldn't be out on their own in that state, thinking to ourselves "well we can't just leave her here" and trying to get them home. Let's just say that spending 75 minutes wandering around North Cambridge at 1am with a very drunk person who is sure that each road junction looks familiar wasn't massively edifying. About ten minutes after we'd given up and called the police, she managed to recall her address. Fortunately the police turned up pretty sharpish after that, and we handed her over for delivery. And she's presumably finished the night off with nothing other than a good story for her troubles.

Don't you want to know why we keep starting fires? It's my desire! Or something like that. Anyway, it seems to be a reasonably common practice around our area of Cambridge for young twockers (TWOC: Taking Without Owner's Consent, the practice of nicking a car to joyride it) to top off an evening of riding around in a stolen motor by parking it around our estate and torching it. The cut-through I use to get to work is particularly prone to this - from one direction, you can drive down a road about 200m long which then cuts off (it's used for access to the local primary school, but the gates are locked after hours). You can then walk through the footpath-only access onto the other section of the estate, neatly preventing most pursuit. We tend to get about one dumped car or van a month on this cut-through, usually burned out. The other day,we walked past a Bedford lorry (think a moving van) that had been abandoned, and had had the engine removed to boot. They must have removed the engine in situ, as it would have otherwise required some serious mechanism to move the shell of the lorry. Impressive either way. And it didn't get torched, either.

Hey, geography fans! It's 12 miles from our Westbrook office to the Cambourne office, and 11 miles from Cambourne to our house. This is using the most direct route, which is basically the A428 there and then a variety of interesting back roads back. The A428 is a hellish cycle which I thoroughly discourage anyone from using; the back roads (from Hardwick to Dry Drayton, then over to Oakington, through Histon and back into Cambridge) are actually pretty good fun. And it's a 45-50 minute cycle, depending on which way the wind's blowing - mind you, you're going to get there pretty sweaty. A good fun run, that was.

We're off to be shouted at by a right-on agitprop leftwing comedian tonight. Yup, Mark Thomas is doing a gig in Cambridge. We've seen him before, and he's usually good/harrowing. Should be an interesting evening out - particularly if Chris drinks his usual four pints of cider prior to the gig. Never heckle a leftie, folks.

April 08, 2003  

on the rivet 7 april 2003

Rather a two-wheeled tone to this one.

We got Heather's birthday present a little early this year. I'd offered to buy her a new bike, as her old one is the two-wheeled equivalent of an '80s Skoda: cheap, heavy, and with unreliable gearing. So being responsible consumers, we decided to spend a couple of Saturday afternoons looking around the local bike shops: seeing what's in stock, how much things cost, etc. Get the info, then go out just before her birthday and buy her a nice shiny new bike. With this brief, we dropped into Ben Haywards to scope out the market. A short chat with the helpful staff later, Heather swung her leg over a bike to test the size. A short test ride later, she was refusing to get off. OK, maybe not quite that bad, but she was certainly very impressed. Unfortunately, the bike was considerably over the budget that we'd been planning on. Then, as the bloke went to put it away, he happened to mention that it was the last one of last year's models they had in stock, and was quite comfortably reduced due to slight scratching on some of the paintwork. Said reduction taking the bike down to the "just over anticipated budget" mark. Hmm, we thought. But being responsible consumers, we couldn't just go out and buy the first bike she'd tried.

So we went around the block to Howes Cycles, took a considerably cheaper bike for a quick spin, thought "sod that for a game of soldiers", went straight back to Ben Haywards and whipped out the credit card. A few quid later, Heather is now tooling around on a Trek 4900 WSD (Women's Specific Design). Nice hardtail mountain bike, mainly Deore level kit, Rockshox Judy C forks, Avid V-brakes. Nice hardtail, good and zippy. Pretty much the same sort of spec as my bike, actually. Pretty sexy. Women's specific, which means that the frame geometry is better for Heather - she's not so spread out. All in all, a result, especially considering the aforementioned hefty discount.

So Sunday we had to give it a road test. It would have been rude not to, right? Fortunately, we already had a road ride sorted out - Cambridge to the small village of Heydon, home of the King William IV pub. 17.5 miles each way (slightly scenic route involving Great Shelford, Newton, and Fowlmere). Chris came along, as he wanted to get some cycling in. The weather wasn't the best - overcast and slightly chilly - but we got a good blat in on the way in, arriving at the pub about fifteen minutes early. We muscled up to the bar and got the pints in. Everyone else (Lisa, Paul, Micky and Susan) arrived on time at 1pm. The advantage to cycling to the pub - especially one based on top of an unusual-for-Cambridge 130 metres above sea level hill - is that you feel completely justified in eating a three course lunch. And are actually able to polish said three course lunch off. The unfortunate disadvantage is that you then have to cycle 17.5 miles home on a very full stomach. Which, after a brief but unnerving encounter with the pub dog (4ft high bull mastiff which had a go at me in the carpark - fortunately it responded as desired to my bellowed "Yargerroffoutofityamangymongrelbastard!" - I've not lost my touch), we proceeded to do. The ride home was noticeably slower, due to fullness, fatigue, and a bastard headwind. Tired but no longer bloated, we arrived home about 5:30pm - except Chris, who then had to cycle another 5 miles home to Cottenham. Astonishingly, he's still capable of walking today. And Heather's new bike performed sterlingly throughout the whole trip - including a fine demonstration of exactly what the granny ring is for during the last, and fairly steep, section of ascent into Heydon. I'll have to remember that hill, it'll come in handy for training for this year's London to Cambridge...

Embarrassing accident on the way back: with my Camelbak tube in my mouth, I reached up and shut off the flow valve by the mouthpiece. This inadvertantly trapped a couple of hairs from my beard in the closing valve switch, which meant that when I dropped the tube from my mouth it surgically extracted those hairs as it fell. Fortunately, I managed to stifle my pained yelp, so none of the others on the ride noticed. Grr.

Tins of V are also rather prone to this: the little ringpull thing is a right bugger for catching a mustache hair while you're swigging, then pulling it out when you take the tin awawy from your mouth. It's eye-wateringly painful. But I guess energy drinks aren't targeted at the beardy bastard demographic.

About five days ago, a sign went up at the gym. "Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Tai Chi class on 11th April has been cancelled." This went up on around the 2nd April. Now, call me a bluff old cynic, but I'd say that a gap of over a week means that these circumstances were actually pretty well foreseen. Perhaps "unavoidable circumstances" would be a better locution?

Channel 4 has been broadcasting daily highlights of the Tour de Langkawi at 2am for the last couple of weeks. I've been taping it and watching it in the mornings before I go to work. And for those of you who don't subscribe to satellite telly, and whinge about how you have to avoid watching telly on the day of a big match so that the result's a surprise when you finally see it on free TV the next day, I'd like to point out that the TdL actually happened in about February. Channel 4 managed to squeeze four weeks worth of slots out of an 11-day race by broadcasting the highlights at intermittant intervals a couple of months after the event. So I'm not exactly holding my breath for coverage of Paris-Roubaix, or even the TdF...

On the other hand, we got an email around today advising us that temporary security access cards can now only be issued under a specific set of circumstances. You can still get a temporary card if you forget yours in the morning, but you have to hand over either a drivers' licence or your car keys. A few semi tongue-in-cheek emails later, I have official corporate approval to leaving the keys to my bike lock as security. Nice.

And on a safety tip: the UCI have now made helmets compulsory in competitive cycling. The UCI is the governing body of word cyclesport, so this basically applies to every important cycle race worldwide. And about bloody time too. Though you know you'll still get some bloody whinging spods complaining about it.

April 04, 2003  

flexible ducks 3 april 2003

On a samurai tip:

...there is a logical fallacy involved in trying to deduce norms of actual behavior from formal legal and moral codes. It is no more accurate to infer from the writings of lawmakers and moral philosophers that medieval samurai were shining examples of fielty than it is to draw conclusions about the sexual behavior of twentieth century Georgians from the state laws on sodomy. The truth is that selfless displays of loyalty by warriors are conspicuous in the Japanese historical record mainly by their absence.

Karl Friday [source]

Interesting article and well worth reading.

OK, so the whole "french fries/freedom fries" thing is a bit ridiculous. Then again, anyone out there able to tell me the difference between an Alsatian and a German Shepherd? Apart from it not being particularly politically acceptable to own a German dog during the First World War?

Laugh or cry moment: a jingoistic American on one of the tech writing MLs I read seriously asserting that WWII was from 1941 to 1945. When challenged, he replied that he's an American, he's in the US, and that's when the US was involved. By which logic WWII never happened if you're Swiss.

On the early April tip: Sheldon Brown, internet cycling legend, on the latest legal performance enhancing substance - codenamed 'W'.

I'm working on a project at the moment that involves a lot of interaction with some of our US offices. I'm getting to work closely with a technical team scattered throughout the continental US. Which means I get to make a few transatlantic phone calls, teleconferences, etc., to discuss stuff with them. In the last week, I've had two separate odd experiences when calling the US office. In each case, a US developer - an adult professional working in the software industry for a large multinational company - has confessed that they've never made a telephone call outside the US before. One of them, upon reflection, thought he might have called Sweden once. It's another world, I tell you. And these are both really nice, really friendly, really helpful guys - who've just, y'know, never needed to call anyone outside the US before. Makes you think.

I've been having some problems with hand numbness on long, lower-paced cycle rides. Faster rides aren't such a problem, as a lot of my weight is being taken by my legs, but slower rides mean that I lean on my hands a lot more. So I decided to try buying a set of flat bars and bar ends, to give me a more varied set of riding positions. The more you can vary the stress on the hands, the less it'll hurt. So I get onto Wiggle and order some new handlebars, plus a couple of other odds and sods. They arrived this morning. Now, I'll admit the handlebars are an awkward shape, but I did think that the box might have been a little big: it's as high as my desk, and 8x12" around. And if I shake it, I can hear everything inside it rattling around inside its cavernous depths. Now that's what I call packaging.

My internal proofreader winces. He does know that isn't coming off, right?

How can you be a DJ if you don't shake your ass in the middle of the crowd?

Miss Kittin (Caroline Herve)

April 02, 2003  

And on a personal note: I cracked 1000 miles on the old cycle computer today. I'm quite chuffed, even if I did end up looping the block to get the required extra half-mile.

 

footsore and hungry 1 april 2003

So we got a bit enthusiastic on Saturday. We got up, laced our shoes up nice and tight, pocketed a couple of OS maps, and walked to Ely. Elapsed distance is about 18 miles, plus another 3 to get home from the train station. Fun. We left home about 10:15am, stopped for lunch about 2pm, and were in the pub in Ely by 4:45pm. It's a good wee walk. Unfortunately, it was pretty overcast, and the visibility was only about a mile. One of the reasons we walked to (rather than from) Ely was that you can normally see the cathedral from a very long way off. Being as how the fens are flat as a pancake, and the cathedral is a very big building on top of a medium-sized hill, it's pretty visible. Unless, of course, it's really misty. So that was mildly annoying. Mind you, it meant that we didn't bake on the walk, and it was perfectly warm enough to survive.

It's a nice walk, actually. A lot of the route is along the dykes that prevent the river from flooding the neighbouring fields. The dykes are quite straight (so to speak), as presumably making a dyke that closely follows the wiggling contours of the river would take a prohibitive amount of time. This means that in a number of cases, there's an irregularly shaped patch of land between the dyke and the river. Presumably this land is flooded regularly; hence, these areas are known as washes. A number of birds nest on the washes, particularly at this time of year. So as you walk along through this bucolic habitat (with occasaional rabbit holes) you see a large number of waterfowl, wading birds, and various odds and sods flying around you. It's quite fascinating. The whole riverbank ecology is great; also, as this is the fens and the route goes through farmland, you can see the intricate network of ditches, lodes (that's not a typo: they're a kind of very small drainage canal) and canals that keeps the countryside from descending back into marshy fens. The route actually passes very close to the end of Wicken Fen, an absolutely lovely piece of wildlife habitat. Stylee.

And at least one of our mates seems to have got the impression that we walked to Ely and back in the day. Well, it might be possible, but we sure as heck didn't do it. Still, not being too quick to quash that rumour: the harder we look, the better, I reckon.

Ah, daylight saving. One week, I'm scrambling frantically to get home while there's still a scrap of light in the sky. The next, I've got comfortable time to do a round-the-villages extended blat on the way home. Result. It's just great: I love having light left in the evenings. Gardening, biking, sitting in pubs: rock steady.

I've spent a few carefree minutes recently having a look through the Ordnance Survey site. There's just something about having a good, reliable map of an area. Ok, the map is not the territory and all that, but still. And I love the OS's richly detailed maps of the UK (particular fan of the Explorer series). The prospect of a customised map is tempting...

In other news: the Guardian falls for a recent well-known hoax. Or: how much more of the Weekly World News will the Guardian reprint?

What we're listening to:

• Ghost Dog soundtrack, mixed by the RZA. Good, chunky hip-hop album, with the traditional movie soundtrack thing of having dialogue snippets from the movie. In this case, the dialogue consists of Forest Whittaker reading from Hagkure (the Book of the Samurai), with quotes about being really focussed and killing people. Worth it for those alone, actually.
• Radio Caroline volume 1, mixed by Miss Kittin. Rather different from her stuff with The Hacker or Felix da Housecat, this is actually a very nice minimalist electro compilation. Miss Kittin does occasionally talk over the records, but by and large it's just very pure, very clean beats. The sort of mix album where the most mainstream, best known artist on the jacket is autechre. Highly recommended.

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