August 30, 2003  

in the air for you and me 29 august 2003

Took the new bike out for a bit of a spin last night. Goes like the clappers, but it's going to take me a few rides to get used to the lower riding position. I had aching thumbs from resting my hands on the top of the brake levers. Did an hour long spin, maxed out at 35mph (err... 56.32704kph) on a moderate downhill (Madingley Rise). Good fun for playing in traffic.

Spurred on by their Tour de France Soundtracks album, I've been on rather a Kraftwerk kick for the last couple of days. That Radioactivity's a cracker of a tune, innit?

I'm starting to get spam emails for the drug "Soma". Did I miss something? When did Brave New World come true?

It's been a short, sharp week. I'm absolutely knackered.

August 29, 2003  

the miracles of the modern world 28 august 2003

First scan was this afternoon. Young proto-Elder has the correct number of heads, arms, legs, etc. Seeing it moving on the scan was one of the biggest headtrips I've ever had. Scan pictures here [156k jpg].

August 27, 2003  

The new bike is now roadworthy.

 

down the docks 26 august 2003

Spent a happy long weekend down in Bristol, staying with our mates Nic and Andy. Much relaxation, many quiet saunters around the city, and a fair bit of chilling. All in all, most pleasant weekend. Highlights:

• Seeing old friends (lao pengyou, hao pengyou) is always a good thing.
• Bristol itself is a very nice old city. OK, so we were staying in Clifton, which is one of the nice bits (very money). Still, walking into/around the central city was good fun. Lots of nice old Georgian buildings, reasonably sympathetic restoration, good funky town centre, docks. I'm a big fan of waterfront cities: there's just something about chilling out on the waterside that I really love. Waterfronts are also usually quite good for large, open public spaces (cf Wellington's Civic Square) that I think add a certain frisson to a city. It's also nice to be somewhere with hills again.
• And where you get hills, you get bridges. Brunel's suspension bridge across the Avon gorge is pretty impressive, and not far from Nic and Andy's flat. It's deeply impressive structure - and would have been frankly OTT if Brunel's original plan (involving Egyptian columns at each end) had been adhered to.
• And the bridge is just around the corner from a very nice, large park. Clifton Park, I think it was called. Anyway, good huge location with lots of green space: very nice. Also included an exposed rock face which was just begging to be slid down - sufficiently so, in fact, that a large number of people had already done so. For quite some time. This rock face included a very obvious polished slide area, buffed up to a brilliant sheen by the combined trouser seats of many generations of Britain's best and brightest. Most impressive.
• Also saw a few kite boarders around in the park. Impressive stuff - basically like being strapped to a skateboard and pulled along by a kite, except with the potential for very sharp turns when the kite is tacked onto a reverse course. The guy would fiddle something, the kite would start moving across the wind in the opposite direction, and then the slack on the guy's ropes would run out and he'd be lifted 10-15 feet in the air as he snapped around. Looked like a lot of fun.
• Bristol Zoo has keas. And naked mole rats. And good poison dart frogs. It was most impressive. It was great to see the keas, if a little disconcerting: aren't you supposed to be back home? Kind of like running into one of your students from uni shopping at Sainsburys. The keas did look mightily disappointed at the lack of boots to destroy (for some reason, every kea enclosure I've seen in NZ had a boot or two for the birds to wreck), although there was a story from the keas' keeper relating him watching them destroy a rental car. The naked mole rats rocked out. I'd never seen them in the flesh before, and yes - they are that repulsive. Coooool. They were mostly asleep in a big pile, except for a couple that were busily cleaning the tunnels out. Worth the price of the trip in themselves, they was.
• Saw Standing in the Shadows of Motown [IMDB] while we were there. Good little doco focussing on the loose group of session musicians, known colloquially as the Funk Brothers, who played on virtually every record Motown put out during their golden age. Impressive stuff: these guys laid down a lot of the beats we all grew up with. Hearing them reminiscing about the sessions for Heard it on the Grapevine, My Girl, or What's Going On? was amazing. Fun tip: the bassist for What's Going On? was hauled in for a late-night session after being on the piss for several hours. The bassline was laid down with the bassist lying on his back on the floor because he was so drunk he couldn't sit on his stool safely.

So: Bristol good. Try some today.

August 25, 2003  

back from the dead 24 august 2003

Sorry about the hiatus there: my hosting company had a bit of a glitch, which coincided with us taking a trip to Bristol. It's sorted now (or should be), so back to normal.

Bristol's really nice, by the way. Go see it. More on this theme later.

August 20, 2003  

Damn, Blogger is acting all moody. You lot might not see this update for a bit.

August 19, 2003  

bring tha noise 19 august 2003

Look closely at the hyperbolic yet exceedingly vague advertising campaigns for the much-heralded new generation of 3G phones, Agar notes, and a similar confusion is evident.
"It's clear that the companies themselves don't have a very good idea what they'll be used for. They've spotted this pattern in the past" - that if you bundle in enough features, one of them will snowball into a craze - "and they're hoping that it will repeat itself...."

The Guardian [source]

Or: throw enough shit at the punters, and some of it'll stick.

I found out the other night that one of my friends can make her stomach rumble on demand. Damn it, now I want this mighty power. It's supposedly down to good diaphragm control. The problem with hearing something like that is that you then think "righto, I've just got to learn to control my diaphragm" and you spend half an hour making odd faces while trying to control internal muscles that you've been ignoring up until now. Still, my practicing continues apace.

Nearly hit someone on a driving lesson last week. Still, both my driving instructor and myself agree firmly that it was her own silly fault, so I'm not too worried. This was a pedestrian, crossing a wide, long, straight street (King's Hedges Road), with excellent visibility for about 400m each direction, only looking to her left. As we approached, we watched her start across the road, walking slowly, only looking to the left as we approached her from the right. About ten metres out, I hit the brakes and then the horn. She looked surprised - why, there are cars approaching from BOTH directions! Who would have thought? Still, it added a frisson of danger to the lesson, and it kept me on my toes.

Driving lessons going well in general, although I do have an annoying tendency to stall it when trying to pull away from a stop. A heavier foot on the gas is required.

Spent a happy few hours on Sunday around at Lisa and Paul's place on Sunday. It's a nice wee house, and they're making it nicer. They are also extremely lucky to have bulk frogs in their garden, which always adds a nice homey touch to a place. And as for their puppy - well. Fortunately Jasper was a little big for Heather to conceal him insider her pockets and walk out of the house, whistling innocently. He's a grand wee puppy, and getting bigger by the day. Very friendly, not too over-excitable, and quite well-behaved for a puppy his age. Now I want a dog. Mind you, I understand that babies have the same trainability, plus they can learn cool tricks - takes longer to housebreak 'em though.

Anyway, wee Jasper is a lovely little bugger. Lisa and Paul are lucky sods.

My bike build-up goes apace. I'm amused to note that a Google for 'kaffenback' now returns this site higher than On-One, who actually handle the online ordering for these frames. Heh. Anyway, I've now got it looking like a bike: wheels, handlebars, etc have been fitted. The only bit remaining is the drivechain, which is where it could all get a bit tricky. Further bulletins and occasional rants as events warrant.

August 13, 2003  

new meat 12 august 2003

New pages on cycling, including a page about my building up a touring bike from parts. Woo hoo!

August 12, 2003  

galibier et tourmalet 11 august 2003

The road works department of the Cambridge City Council need to learn an important point: when you take up the surface of a road, then stick a new load of tarmac down, it's important to make sure that interfaces between the road and pavement aren't affected. In the case of the current Histon road works, dropping the road level by an inch doesn't seem like much - until you realise that there's a diagonal interface onto a cycle path at the bottom of the rise there. This means that, coming from Histon and heading towards town, you barrel down the slope and expect to be able to twitch the handlebars slightly to pop smoothly up the half inch lip onto the cyclepath. Hitting a 1 1/2" lip at an acute angle at 20mph is less than fun. I now have an interesting collection of bruises; fortunately I didn't break anything, and the bike is none the worse for a rather spectacular over-the-bars dismount at speed.

Spent much of yesterday (record-breaking heat) getting newborn baby advice from a very nice couple we know, who have a 6-week old child (the illustrious Robert). Things uncle Jack learned yesterday: Some Kids Squirm. He's a very cute and very active kid, and my word did he make spirited attempts at escape. Cool to hold though. Heather used my camera phone to take several strategic photos, showing me cradling the little baby in a deeply sensitive way, whilst wearing a sleeveless top and showing off my triceps. We plan to sell these photos to some form of new age pinup calendar. Actually, it was quite notable how when I was holding him, he wiggled a fair bit, but when Heather had him, she just plonked him face-up on her stomach so his head was resting between her breasts and he became extremely calm. Remarkably effective.

After a while, watching telly, you find yourself playing TSNAN: That's So Not A Neonate. It's a simple game: wait until a supposedly newborn baby appears onscreen, then scoff at how patently obvious it is that the kid's about three months old. Easy, and surprisingly fun. Try it!

Got the new Kraftwerk album, Tour de France Soundtracks, over the weekend. Y'know, when you hear about them having a big thing for cycling - they're not mucking around, are they? An entire album about the tour. Good music, a bit of a return to the old-school. Starts off with the recent remix single, very trancy sort of stuff. The rest of the tracks are bit more classically Kraftwerk: bleep bleep baby. Worth a listen, mind. Had a lot of fun with the CD brochure, which includes a number of photos of the peleton and a few other things:

• An exploded diagram of a Campagnolo Record Crankset. Titanium and carbon, together in perfect harmony.
• In the centre pages: a diagram of optimal rider position during the team time trial to minimise wind resistance. Facing page has a photograph of a team demonstrating this positioning.
• A list of the great cols (mountains) climbed in the Tour.
• An elevation diagram of Stage 8 of this year's Tour.
• A heart rate monitor data graph for a 280-minute bike ride.
• A VO2max diagram, detailing maximum oxygen intake/lactic acid dispersal.

The CD casing itself also includes a map of the 2003 tour route, plus a little schpiel asking people to please not post the album as MP3s on a file-sharing service. Cute.

Not in any way related: the IMDB entry for Clint Mansell, ex lead singer/keyboardist for the Pop Will Eat Itself. Great band, great band.

August 07, 2003  

twitch onwards 6 august 2003

I'm willing to bet that an exchange like the following took place at our local sandwich bar at about 9am this morning:

Supervisor: Hey, Employee, could you do the sandwich run to the local offices this morning?
Employee: Do I have to?
Supervisor: Tell you what - I'll give you this tab of E if you go.
Employee: All righty then!

It's the only way to explain the sandwich-bloke's cheerful demeanor, speedy walk, and shouts (I'm not kidding here - full volume bellows!) of "Lovely sandwiches! Lovely sandwiches!") through the office today. He is, as they say, speeding through the night.

August 06, 2003  

it's a knack 5 august 2003

Been an interesting few days. Spent a very pleasant evening last week down the pub with my old mucker Joseph Kaye, a good mate from school (St Mary's International School in Tokyo). I'd not seen Joe for, ooh, about nine years, and Heather'd never met him. A very pleasant evening was spent reminiscing, getting bladdered, and talking bollocks. A lot like old times. OK, so we didn't get bladdered as much in school, but it was pretty similar. A good lad, and one we don't see nearly enough of in this neck of the woods.

I had a very macho weekend. Spent much time doing things like digging holes, slapping sand around, and drilling holes in things. Specifically, spent much of Saturday afternoon digging in the foundations for a mate's shed, including helping her lay the paving slabs upon which the shed will rest. It was all terribly butch. Especially given the heat - I was sweating like a pig from the off. Not too big a shed, thankfully, so the hole wasn't the largest, but still. Mind you, I got to wear a singlet in public without anyone passing comment, so result.

Sunday was spent in similar vein, except that it involved me reorganising the shed, and then installing a set of hooks (a Tusk 6-hook hanger) in the shed to hang the bikes up. This also involved popping out to Homebase and buying 5ft of 2x4. The bloke at the lumber counter was very happy to be asked to cut something into a multiple of feet: he's sick of working in centimetres, he said, so it was quite nice to be asked to do something in imperial. Well, our shed was made in the 60s, and is precisely 5ft wide internally, so there we go. I reckoned there wasn't much point in asking for it to be cut to 1.525m. On the way back we popped into the Zebra for lunch. You get respect carrying pre-cut lumer into a pub, you konw. Anyway, the bikes are now hanging up in the shed and we now have huge amounts of space floating around inside the house. Woo and indeed hoo. And I got to use large numbers of power tools for a bit, which is always good.

And then the reason I wanted to get that done over the weekend showed up yesterday. Mmm. I've been wanting a road bike for a while, and I've been wanting to build up my own bike for a while. Then the nice blokes at Planet X Bikes offered me some cash off one of their frames and threw in a couple of discounted bits with it, and I'm a happy bunny. The back room now contains a Planet X Kaffenback frame & forks, waiting to be slowly built up into a fast touring bike. Very sexy bit of kit so far: I can't wait to get her finally built up and out on the road. Mmm. More on this anon.

Had my first driving lesson last night. Got a very avuncular bloke as a driving instructor; or at least, avuncular in the sense of being extremely friendly and telling some dodgy jokes. Good bloke, and good teacher. The subtitle for this lesson could be the clutch is a harsh mistress. Actually, it wasn't that bad: I think I'm getting the hang of it. Got a way to go on the muscle memory, but I was merrily pootling around, changing gears, reversing, the odd handbrake turn, etc. We were practicing near the science park, which added an incentive: bunnies. There's a lot of wild rabbits around the science park/A14 area, and they're pretty fearless. I nearly hit a couple of 'em, which added some degree of interest to the proceedings.

Incipient fatherhood links: The BBC, gilest.org parenting page.

August 01, 2003  

And of course: many, many thanks to those of you who sponsored me for the London to Cambridge bike ride. I've raised a total of £170 for charity, which I reckon isn't too shabby. Ta all for the cash, it's gone to a good cause. I'll hit you all up again next year, eh?

 

otherwise fine 31 july 2003

Interesting article in the New York Times about recovered memory. Details the attempts of an experimental psychologist to test whether some pople are more predisposed to be able to create their own memories. Or: people get really, really annoyed when you start coming up with scientific evidence that they might have convinced themselves of something that's not true.

OK, so when did 'healthful' become a word? What's wrong with 'healthy', for crying out loud? 'Healthful eating'? What the metric fuck is that? Why bother with such a clunky neologism when there's a perfectly good word already, and it's only three letters different?

Tempting. An estate agent in March is flogging off ex Royal Observation Corps nuclear bunkers. I'm kind of tempted to put in a bid for one as a holiday home. Hey, it's a cheap way to get in on the property ladder in North Wales! Of course, the complete lack of natural light is a bugger, as is the fact that it's basically the size of a large bedroom. How long were they expecting them to be sat in this place, anyway? Just until the nuclear winter rolled over?

Now this is my idea of an extreme sport: Lawnmower Racing. Including endurance races. Yeah.

Useful inspirational slogan if you're having a bit of a bad day - maybe it's just started pissing down, you're miles from home, and you know you're going to get soaked on the way. Just think to yourself, WWTHD? What Would Tyler Hamilton Do? He'd ride home in the bloody rain, you woofter. And he'd probably have some kind of fracture to boot.

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