pan troglodytes July 30, 2004  

We were a bit short on food, so I went to the supermarket last night rather than at the weekend as usual. It's a very different vibe. Of a Saturday afternoon, the place is jam-packed with stressed families, parents yelling at kids, people stopping off on their way back from the Saturday shopping trip to town to pick up the groceries. Of a Wednesday night at 9pm, it's knackered workers (either people coming off shift, or yuppies who've worked late) dispiritedly trying to pick up convenience food. And surly shelf-stackers, who are very arsey with annoying people attempting to actually shop around them. On the whole, I prefer the Saturdays - at least it's a bit more lively, and while the staff still give off a vibe that suggests they'd rather be anywhere else, at least there's more people around, so they can't focus their low-grade exhausted malice on you. Maybe I'm just oversensitive.

Other revelation: I hadn't realised how much I talk to Rebecca in the supermarket. I kept finding myself making little comments ("Look! Aubergines!") to the trolley. Surprisingly, this did not excite comment.

There was a telly program on last night called - I kid you not - "Stupid Behaviour Caught on Tape". The bottom of the barrel is no longer being scraped. It is being licked.

Ways to be annoying in the gym: carelessly toss your towel onto the rack of dumbbells, then stand ten feet away, ignoring everyone else and chatting loudly to your mate in between doing sets of bicep curls. I don't want to have to touch your sweat-rag just to be able to grab a dumbbell, you dirty bastards. Keep your towel with you the same as every other bugger.

It's a problem: there's actually quite a subtle etiquette to the gym. Usually, you pick it up with time. It's mainly based around consideration - don't take up equipment that you're not actually using. This annoys people. Wipe stuff down. Don't jump in on machines that are in use (or rather, ask if you can work in). If you need a spot, ask for one. That sort of thing. Problem is, you tend to get young blokes coming in groups of two or three, and just throwing their weight around (and, indeed, just throwing their weights around, too). The bravado means that they don't pay much attention to what's happening around them, and the machismo means they like taking up space and showing off. And so as not to look like they don't know what they're doing, they completely ignore all the subtle clues that they're really pissing everyone else off. Usually a few of the much bigger blokes have a quiet word and that's that. Unfortunately, most of the much bigger blokes go to the companion gym to the place I go, so we have to put up with some quite boorish behaviour.

In the "live and direct" category: Billy (second from the left in this wedding photo) now has a livejournal. Good lad.

dyspeptic punk-rawk July 28, 2004  

I make a point of not discussing various matters on this site. Specifically, my family and my work. I'll drop the occasional inconsequential light anecdote in, but nothing more. I don't talk about my family much because I have a healthy respect for our privacy, and I don't like the idea of the whole world watching our dirty laundry. Also, they read this site (mainly, I believe, to get the pictures of Rebecca), and they'd be a bit narked if I was talking about them behind their backs, so to speak.

I don't talk about my work much because I consider it a bit unprofessional. If there's something wrong at work, the web site is the wrong place to be talking about it - a private meeting with your manager would be more appropriate. I know for a fact that several past/current workmates (and their spouses - hi Julie!) read this. I'm quite aware that future employers may well Google for me (as of time of writing, an exact Google search for "Jack Elder" has this site as the eleventh result), and it's not a good look to be constantly talking about your employers or coworkers. Talking about your actual work is dodgy, because it's often commercially sensitive if not actually under NDA. Talking about your workmates is dodgy, because it's basically talking about someone behind their back. Bitching about tools is acceptable, though. Anyway, I have a good work/life split and I make an effort to keep it that way.

Though the odd anecdote may seep through.

Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of introducing a link to one of my coworkers' web site. Bob's a very good bloke, and has some interesting deep thoughts about the software development process and computers in general. Have a squizz at ThinkingAboutComputers.org.uk for more.

And Bob becomes the second person (after Steve) to ask me for an RSS feed. I'm a reasonable bloke - if you look to the right, you'll note a syndication button (courtesy of FeedBurner) - the zippy automatic syndication is available at http://feeds.feedburner.com/Tallpoppy. I'm not sure how pretty it's looking, as I don't actually use a syndication aggregator, but I'll have a crack and clean up any problems. Let me know what you reckon.

I tried something new and exciting on the London to Cambridge. At one point, we were heading down an A-road on our way into the city - I believe it was the A1307 - straight into a headwind. We were basically heads down, grinding away. Donald was in front. Given the headwind, I decided to have a crack at drafting behind Donald - that is, riding very close behind him so as to benefit from the lessened wind resistance. And bugger me if it didn't work. I got in about a foot from his rear wheel (don't try this in traffic, kids!) and matched his speed. And the pedalling became notably easier. The general statistic quoted is about 20% energy saving, which felt about right. Obviously, not the sort of thing you want to try unless you can guarantee to be doing a consistant speed and not jumping all around all over the place, but it was great when it worked. Must try that again. See if we can get a wee peleton going or something.

Speaking of the peleton... Good tour this year. My man of the match is definitely Thomas Voeckler, who did an excellent ride to get the yellow jersey, and then rode his guts out to keep it for an astounding ten stages. As Phil Liggett said, he's the Tyler Hamilton of this year's tour. Unlike Tyler himself, who was one of the legions of probable challengers who managed to badly injure himself and then drop out well before he presented any threat to Armstrong. Armstrong himself rode incredibly well - really acting as a patron to the rest of the peleton (slight hint of Hinault with the way he treated Simeoni, mind). Five consecutive stage wins, including all the stages in the alps: that's what I call the hard yards. Respect to the man.

Not long now to the Tour of Britain, either. Should be a good one. USPS, CSC and Credit Agricole have all committed to send teams - although Lance won't be riding for USPS (it'll probably be Ekimov heading the squad), CSC are sending Basso over. Should be a good one to watch.

Actually, that was one thing that Sunday reminded me: I can be a right competitive little bugger when I get the chance. Nothing too overt, nothing too butch, but just a little bit of "hmmm... I reckon I can pass that guy ahead of me...". Which works OK, right up until you put me in the middle of a huge group of other cyclists - I thrashed myself quite hard and set a pace somewhat higher than I'd expected, simply because I kept thinking "ah, I can pass them" when sitting behind people who were travelling at about the speed that I'm comfortable with. It's like having a workout partner when lifting weights - you don't want to look bad in front of them, so you end up pushing yourself a little harder than you might otherwise manage. It's not a bad thing. As long as you don't take it too far and thrash yourself into oblivion.

it's all a blur after nazeing July 26, 2004  

An overview of the statistics for this year's London to Cambridge bike ride:

• Percentage of our group who rolled over in bed at 6am, nudged the curtains back with their foot, and decided it was raining so they couldn't be bothered: 33%
• Departed Cambridge: 7am
• Actually started the ride: 8:40am
• Arrived Cambridge: 2pm
• Time spent:
  • ... actually cycling: 3 hours
  • ... sitting on grass verges, chatting: 1 hour
  • ... in pub en route: 1 hour 10 mins
  • ... waiting at level crossings for trains: 10 mins
• Number of USPS strips seen: three, if you only count full replica strip
• Number of times we were passed by the same bloke, who put on a big spurt of effort to get past us, then couldn't maintain it, dropped back down to his normal cruising speed, and was thus duly passed by us (our cruising speed being about 2mph higher than his), at which he made loud sighing noises and promptly did it again: at least six
• Pints of beer drunk en route: 1 each
• Pints of beer drunk at end of ride: 3 each
• Number of recumbents spotted: 4, if you count the Giant Revive (silly looking thing).
• Percentage of journey time spent internally debating whether to remove/put on rain jacket: 20%
• Actual number of times rain jacket put on/removed: 2
• Amount of rain: just enough to be annoying
• Number of times my ride partner knocked a large steel roadworks sign over with his foot while trying to make eye contact with a particularly cute route marshall: only once, but it was memorable
• Number of times I made a humming noise while going over rough ground, so it sounded like a motorboat: twice
• Average heart rate over the entire event, including time not actually spent cycling: 127bpm
• Claimed length of route: 50 miles
• Actual length of route: 48 miles
• Number of times I was soaked to the skin by local children with buckets of water (on request): 1
• Delay between being soaked and arriving at the next pub, where we stopped cycling for an hour: 30 seconds
• Number of ambulances that bowled past at high speed, around blind bends, on narrow country lanes, nearly causing accidents themselves: 3
• Number of people with large GPS receivers fixed to their handlebars, despite the possible clues to the route offered by the marshals, big fluorescent yellow route marker signs, and 4000 other cyclists: 1
• Number of people in Aldi £5.99 bike shorts: 5
• Distance between the start point and Picadilly Circus: 16 miles
• Reward for finishing event: one (1) glass of mineral water (flat)
• Amount raised for charity: £145

A good time was had by all, and sport (or at least, breast cancer research) was the winner on the day. Many thanks to all of you who sponsored me on the ride. Now I just have to get a bit more training in prior to the Oxford to Cambridge bike ride in October.

pumpy pumpy July 23, 2004  

I've started going to the gym at lunchtime. It's easier to get in at 8:30, leave at 6, and take a two hour lunch, than it is to leave at 5:30 and try and crack off a workout before getting home. The vibe at lunch is well different. Slightly more mature - less of the crowds of young blokes lifting badly and shouting a lot. The music's different too: instead of tuning the tellies into The Box (lots of jiggling and gyrating, skimpy clothes, and bouncy beats), it's tuned into VH2 (like VH1, but a bit less nearly dead - generally thoughtful guitar rock from fifteen years ago). So I had the odd experience the other day of working out during Pixies Hour. Pull-ups to This Monkey's Gone to Heaven, preacher curls to Debaser, hammer curls to Gigantic. I enjoyed it, but it was quite hard to get into a good rhythm during the sets.

Could have been worse, though.

As I went to get showered, they were starting a Cure marathon.

I have reached the conclusion that the world can be divided into three categories:

1. Things that are easy to carry on a bicyle.
2. Things that are hard to carry on a bicycle.
3. Things that are impossible to carry on a bicycle.

So, for example, a bottle of wine is in category 1. A case of wine, on the other hand, is category 2. And a vineyard would be category 3. It's a simple heuristic. The fun is finding out where category 2 shades into 3: is, for instance, a case of beer impossible to carry on a bike, or just hard? How about a case of beer and, say, some wine? How about a case of beer, two bottles of wine, a brioche and a malt loaf?

Let's just say that my pack was pretty full on my commute home this evening. I reckon I was carrying 14-odd litres of fluid, plus assorted glass, bike-locks, emergency tools, etc. C'mon - 24 tins of very drinkable lager for £8, and I'm just supposed to walk away? And it doesn't count as drinking if you've used eco-friendly transport. Honest.

As he led an elite group of five over the final summit, Armstrong turned to Landis and asked, "How bad do you want to win a stage of the Tour de France?"
"Real bad," came Floyd�s reply.
"How fast can you go down a hill?"
"Real fast!"
"So," concluded Armstrong, "run like you stole something!"

Tour de France, stage 18

God-damn. Good tour, although it'd be better if every main contender apart from Armstrong and Ullrich (though now it's more like Ullrich, Basso and Kloden) hadn't dropped out already.

Quite possibly, SUVs are like capital punishment: one of those inexcusable and immoral things that the majority of people actually support. They both require an acceptance that, sometimes, innocent people will get killed. It's just, with SUVs, that a number of these innocent people are likely to be children and cyclists.

The Guardian

nettle rubdown July 20, 2004  

A good weekend, on the whole. Paul came up for a visit on Saturday. We've been meaning to get together for a few drinks for ages, and he'd not yet met Rebecca. A very mellow Saturday ensued, with much sitting around in the sun. We had one of those good afternoons where I take charge of Rebecca for a bit while Heather goes off and does something, and Rebecca shows her innate trust in me by falling instantly into a deep, deep sleep. I took Paul for a wander through Cambridge's hystorical citie centre, and picked up some veges (for Paul adds vegetarianism to the liberal leftie woofter convictions we all share) for dinner. We ended up managing to get a table by the river at the Fort St George. Rebecca stayed blissfully asleep throughout this whole proceeding, and throughout a quiet pint and a long chat. Occasionally, she emitted loud sighs and wiggled slightly, then quieted down and dropped back into deeper sleep. And then she woke up two minutes after Heather rejoined us. Impressive.

Also spent a happy ten minutes on Saturday evening attempting to catch a juvenile pheasant ... in the back garden. It was an escaped pet - Heather had run into the family that'd lost it - so it was fairly friendly. I spent five minutes trying to hand-feed it, and then five minutes stalking it (with Paul's help) around my compost heaps. I was carrying a washing basket, with the intent of trapping it. Unfortunately, pheasants can of course fly, and it made a frantic break for freedom - flapping off into number 9's garden. Ah well.

Sunday morning, Donald and I had a good training ride for the London to Cambridge. Chris bowed out, as he was hungover, asleep, and leery of possible rain (not necessarily in that order). Chris turned out to be prophetic - the light shower that was coming down at the start of the ride turned rapidly into pissing rain. Not neccessarily bucketing down, but coming down hard enough that we were both soaked to the skin inside of fifteen minutes. Still, we had a good hard ride around the countryside, heading over towards the Suffolk borders (well, nearish to Newmarket) in order to get a bit of rolling countryside. Good yakka. Apart from the bit right at the end, where I discovered that my saddle had bled black dye onto my (tan) shorts, so I looked like I'd crapped myself. This would just be annoying, if I hadn't stopped off at the corner shop on the way home to buy bread. I wondered why I got through the queues so fast.

Still, it was a good solid ride, holding some nice pace through the rolls, and if the London to Cambridge is conducted in swingeing rain this year we've got the practice in. Not too late to sponsor me, folks - we're not proud.

Engaged in a rather annoying dialog last week. It was during a discussion on Firefox, my current browser of choice.

Me: Firefox is a good browser, but it has a few quirks. For instance, it doesn't let me click the links in the left navbar on my homepage, but it displays them correctly and allows me to tab back through them and use them via the keyboard.
Zealot: The problem is that your page doesn't validate HTML 4.0 transitional. Mozilla is ruthlessly enforcing all that is good and correct in HTML style, and is punishing your non-compliant formatting.
Me: Actually, it does display correctly, it's just that some of the links are only accessible via the keyboard but not the mouse. It's odd.
Zealot: It is not odd. Until your page validates, Mozilla is working perfectly. If your page doesn't validate, it's not proper HTML, and you cannot expect it to be displayed correctly on any browser.
Me: *woggle* Right, I've fixed the two errors that were causing it not to validate. Still got the problem. Any other ideas?
Zealot: Submit a bug report.

I wouldn't have minded so much (he was, after all, right - first thing to do is check that it's not the HTML, because that's normally where the problem lies), but it's just the tone of the discussion. "Free software is perfect and you are a simpleton" is never a good way to win converts.

The verification problems with the page, for the interested, were that I'd forgotten to put quotes around the type="Text/css" in the header and I'd missed an alt tag on the logo. Which I wouldn't have expected to cause problems with the link display, anyway.

Anyway, a bit of a woggle with the CSS later, this site now works fine in Firefox. It was something to do with the CSS rendering - changing the middle div from having left padding to an absolute left position did the trick. Interestingly, the right padding doesn't cause any problems with the navbar on the right, so I've left the right padding in.

Walked past the laundrette today. Bloke walks out. Wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and short shorts. Think a cross between Aussie Rules player and Daisy Duke, but in thin tigerprint nylon. Think "clingy". And, of course, a fanny pack/bum bag. Overall effect: the sort of outfit you'd expect to see a terminally unhip German gay bloke to wear when on the pull in Ibiza. The bloke was easily in his 60s, unshaven, with a pot belly. It wasn't a great look. We're just praying that he was dressed like that because everything else was in the wash - which would dovetail with him coming out of the laundrette.

no purpose no design July 13, 2004  

New Rebecca photos available online: new July page and some additional photos on the June page. Much cuteness on tap.

Cracked off a good bike ride on Saturday morning. A nice 25 miles in the south villages, finishing up at the White Horse in Oakington for lunch and a pint or two. Lovely. Highlights of the ride were taking Chris and Donald up Chapel Hill in Harlton - I hadn't noticed that it's a 10% gradient before, and boy do you feel it. Worth it on the descent, though - a nice fast blat down past the cement works. Chris had a few problems early in the ride, which turned out to be due to the fact that he'd only had a single piece of toast for breakfast, five hours previous. Halfway through the ride he stopped at a village shop, bought three king size Twix, and ate two. Ten minutes later his pace picked up by 50%. Fear the power of Twix.

"You look like Christine Keeler crossed with an ourangoutang."

Chris, commenting on me sitting backwards on a chair

Speaking of cycling - well done to Britain's best cyclist, Nicole Cooke, on winning the toughest women's cycling race in the world - the women's Giro d'Italia. Media coverage: slightly above none. You think they'd be over the moon at having a Brit actually winning a major international event, but nope. Anyway, good stuff the Welsh massive, and onward to the Olympics.

Today, if I was a superhero, I'd be Captain Mucus. I'm coming down with a cold. Mind you, since Heather has wrenched her neck and is having trouble turning her head, I'm counting myself lucky.

Been on a bit of a Sisters of Mercy tip over the last few days. It's amazing listening to their back catalog to watch how they went from a scruffy, garage-y goth band to, basically, big noise rock with a goth influence. Compare Some Girls Wander By Mistake to later albums such as Floodland - you'd hardly think you were listening to the same band. Say, Alice (basically the best goth song ever written) and More - where's the similarity? And don't even get me started on stuff like Detonation Boulevard, which is basically stadium rock with aviator sunglasses.

In a desperate attempt to hold onto some small bit of Apple I've been using iTunes as my mp3 player. And can I just say,, the smart playlists function rocks out. I'd like a playlist of any songs I've imported in the last month, recorded in the 1990s, by bands whose name starts with B, and which are over 100BPM - and please keep dynamically updating the contents as I load new songs, ta. Handy. Not for examples like that, but for playlists like "Anything new in the last fortnight", "Anything with singer [x] in it", or the ever-popular (and default) "Top 25 Most Played". You can claim to have whatever musical taste you like, but iTunes doesn't lie: if your most played song is Michael Bolton, it'll tell you. Style.

Today's theme tunes: Meet Sue Be She by Miss Kittin, and Cancer by Meat Beat Manifesto.

cane it July 08, 2004  

As the weather was rather ropey over the weekend, I spent Saturday morning doing needed fettling on my bikes. Cleaning drivechains, tightening bolts, checking brakes, that sort of thing. Good thing too - on examining the rear wheel on my road bike, I discovered that one or two of the spokes were worryingly loose. A spoke that can be tightened by hand is not a happy spoke, and not a wheel I'd like to be riding for long. So I got out my spoke key, and started tightening. Tightening spokes is like a bad habit: once you start, it's very tempting to keep going, just a little bit here, a little bit there. Maybe it's because the bit you tighten is called the spoke nipple, and it's tempting to be able to come back into the house and say "Well, I've been fiddling with my nipples all morning, and boy am I sore." Anyway, I spent about ten minutes carefully tightening the spokes on my rear wheel, and then gave it an experimental spin. It got about half a turn and jammed solid. I'd managed to completely bugger the tension in the wheel, and knocked it right out of true. A bicycle wheel is a delicate balance of tension - the spokes on one side pull one way, the spokes on the other pull opposite, and the tension has to be just so to prevent the wheel rim being distorted by a stronger pull to one side. This is further complicated because the spoke attachments are asymmetric on the hub, as the drive side is dished in (closer to the hub, so the spokes are more in line with the plane of the wheel, and thus the side is a bit weaker) to allow space on the hub for the rear cassette. It's a very tricky balance, and I'd just shafted it. I immediately did what I should have done at the start, and checked my bike maintenance book. Helpfully, this gave the good advice "This is a very tricky job that is best left to the professionals - only fiddle around with your wheels as an emergency fix on the road." Great. After another half hour with the spoke key, I'd manage to de-bugger the wheel enough to get it reliably turning freely - which I considered to be the point where I wouldn't be embarrassed to take it into a bike shop. it's now at Townsends being professionally trued. Maybe I should do that wheelbuilding course after all...

And I've got a new bloke to support in the Tour - Magnus Backstedt. Partially because he's by all reports a really nice bloke, and a pillar of the local cycling community around Cardiff (he's Swedish, but has a Welsh wife), and partially because at 98kg he's both the heaviest rider in the peleton, and heavier than I am. Most of the riders in the professional peleton are insane whippets, for whom reaching a weight of 75kg would be disgustingly lardy and evidence that they'd really let themselves go. Campagnolo don't warranty their equipment if the rider is over 80kg, for instance (which didn't worry me when someone pointed out that this probably mainly applied to components like carbon fibre seatposts, but did worry me when someone else pointed out that it could equally well refer to cranks). The fact that there's someone heavier than me riding professionally - and doing very well, as he won this year's Paris-Roubaix (a.k.a. the Hell of the North, generally accepted as being the hardest of the one-day classics) is very cheering. Respect.

Probably the best Tour resource around at the moment: TDFblog.

The current weather report is for, basically, the sky to collapse, typhoons,cataracts and hurricanoes, spouting till they have drench'd our steeples, etc. The day has slowly deteriorated from blazing sunshine (though a bit breezy) through quite nice but rather windy to pissing rain and wind. Lovely. An English summer, eh?

bang bang July 07, 2004  

I'm sitting here, listening to Phil Liggett, and I'm not feeling nauseous. Life is good.

Heather.

Heh. We sat down and watched the second Etape of this year's Tour last night. I was sitting there, beer in one hand, beautiful wife to one side, gurgling baby to the other, watching cycling on the telly: life is grand. Notably different from this time last year, when our Tour watching was interrupted at frequent intervals by Heather running off to be sick. We're all enjoying it a lot more this year.

That Thor Hushovd, eh? The Norwegian dynamo looks to be going well, due partially to the excellent skills of his lead-out man - Rotorua's very own Julian Dean. Looks like it's shaping up to be a good tour - Armstrong is coming out of the gates strong, isn't he? I reckon he's trying to put the wind up the competition from the off. Pity that Cipollini's so obviously deteriorated - still, at 37 it's to be expected. But where's Petacchi? Four stage wins in the first week of the Tour last year, completely hammered this year's Giro, and nothing yet... Come on, Alessandro, let's see some Fassa Bortolo in the winning tables, eh? Apart from Cancellara, obviously.

All this pontificating on the Tour courtesy of our new Freeview box. OK, so the vast majority of the channels you can get via digital telly are shite, but it gets us the odd Beeb channels, ITV2, and a couple of other handy ones. That's got to be worth a one-off payment, I reckon. And it means that I can watch the Tour at 7pm, rather than bloody 1am. Oh yes.

Best headline after Euro 2004, from The Guardian: "It's coming Homer!" Nice.

In a charmingly reassuring moment, one of my coworkers disturbed a gang of bike thieves under our work last night. Grand. The landlords of the building where I work treat the bike security as a joke; never mind breaking locks, you could remove the bike racks from the wall in thirty seconds with an adjustable spanner. The only thing you can really do is make sure that your bike is well insured.

Have been having great fun at the moment organising to get Rebecca a New Zealand passport. First we have to prove that she's a kiwi, which entails proving that we are. This is harder than it sounds, and involves huge numbers of official bits of paper. It's the first time I've had to get my certificate of naturalisation for some years, I'll tell you that.

structural impact July 03, 2004  

Sorry, just another slight reorganisation. I've moved the sponsorship link from the right navbar to float at the top of this column, for maximum annoying visibility. The sponsorship link has also slightly expanded, to incorporate the fact that the British Heart Foundation have set up their online sponsorship forms, so those of you who like to get your charitable donations in early can sponsor me for the Oxford to Cambridge bike ride. Both events are for a good cause, so please consider sponsoring me. And big thanks and massive ups to the people who've already sponsored me, including some extremely generous contributions. Many, many thanks to you all.

Actually, I'm a little nervous about the Oxford to Cambridge. The LtC is in a few weeks - late July, usually nice weather, lots of sunshine. The OtC is in early October. I'm willing to bet that it'll be freezing cold and swingeing rain, so probably a bit more of a physical challenge. That, and I've never done 75 miles in a day before. Still, I've got three months to get myself ready.

Fascinating article about how the bike industry actually works. Really worth a read, as in this sense I suspect that the bike industry is a good reflection of a lot of other manufacturing - notably also, I would suspect, cars and computer parts.

Today's theme: Tui Dub by Salmonella Dub.

Worryingly, Darth Fish (our blackamoor) has developed fin rot. I'm hoping it's not going to spread to our other two goldfish, as I'm very attached to them. Darth Fish is off in the isolation tank, being dosed with antibiotics and undergoing frequent water changes (50% changed daily). Touch wood, it seems to be working - if not getting better, he doesn't seem to be getting any worse, so we're quietly confident. Only quietly, mind. No clean bill of health until he's looked fine for a week.

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