tallpoppy

onward! let 'em have it!

surprisingly hard on the knuckles February 26, 2005

Tip of the nib to Maire; interesting idea. So here's ten things I've done that I suspect you haven't:

Put together a bicycle from scratch.
Seen someone with bound feet.
Stood at the whispering gallery at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and realised slightly too late that it's a bit pointless unless you've got a mate with you.
Seen the dodgily-preserved mortal remains of The Great Helmsman.
Calmed a drunk tramp who (mistakenly) reckoned we were disrespecting the memory of Greyfriars Bobby and was giving grief to our mates on their wedding day. It was those bloody tourists putting Furbies on his grave, not us.
Hung an iron winch hook from my ear for a laugh.
Received fan email from a German piercing fetish site as a result of the previous item.
Chartered a plane to fly into the middle of Abel Tasman national park to kick off the honeymoon.
Never taken drugs. A couple of hits on the nitrous during the birth doesn't count, either.
Seen in the New Year dancing on the podium at what turned out to be Beijing's premier transvestite nightclub.

big stripe of mud February 25, 2005

It has been snowing, raining, or just manky every bloody time I've left any form of shelter for the last week. I spend most of my time coated in a thin sheen of road salt, snowmelt, and grit.

Importance of context: I have several bits of cycling clobber from Ground Effect, who are based in NZ. For them, I'm an M. I have just got a longsleeve jersey from Castelli, who are Italian. For them, I'm an XL.

Genius bit of graphic design - the logo for NZMBA (New Zealand Mountain Bike Association). Absolutely brilliant. You might need to be both a Kiwi and a cyclist to fully appreciate it, mind. Similar concept used in the - presumably not unrelated - logo for the 2006 World Mountainbike Championships, which are being held in Rotorua. Nice one the home country! We'll definitely have to be home for that one.

Just posted off my entry form for the Essex Lanes 106km audax in a couple of weeks. I'll be interested to see how much form I've got at this time of year. In any case, there's seven hours to do the 106km, so barring accidents I should manage to drag my carcass around the course in that time. For comparison, I did the Mildenhall 108km last year in just on six hours, including several short stops, one puncture, and an early lunch - but that was at the end of summer, so I'd already had a fair few miles in my legs. This is the first step to me Randonneur 500 this year - rides of 50, 100, 150, and 200km. It's curiously refreshing to have a solid sport-related goal to aim for.

Also means that I'll be off work for Red Nose Day (I'm taking the Friday off to give Heather a break prior to my taking off for most of Saturday). Quel dommage.

Assuming, of course, that I haven't left it too late, and can get entry to the event. Fingers crossed, eh?

simply evil February 24, 2005

There was a story on the news this morning about how a cancer charity, Maggie's Centres, had turned down a donation of £3000 on moral grounds. Said donation was raised by a charity performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera, for which the cast & crew waived their fees, etc. So far, we've just got a charity being a bloody silly pack of prissy old women - why, sah, we can't possibly take your tainted money! Then I heard an interview with the head of Christian Voice, the pressure group agitating against Jerry Springer: The Opera. And it turned out that they'd had a discussion with the charity in question, during which they pointed out how bad it would look to potential Christian contributors to the charity if word got out that they'd accepted the money - and had then promised to picket the charity's offices in order to ensure that word did get out. After a bit of thought, the charity reasoned that having a load of ultraconversative whack jobs standing outside their offices scaring away any or all potential contributors would offset the actual cash benefit of the donation, and "took the moral high ground." One is forced to wonder if, while wandering around the charity's offices, the head of Christian Voice also speculated on the relative flammability of the premises.

This disgusts me. These small-minded wankers are so caught up in being offended by a theatrical production that they go off and strong-arm a cancer charity into refusing a donation, via threats and intimidation. And then they have the gall to claim that it's a victory for Christian values. That is - and I use this word with meaning - vile. These people are scum; no moral human being should have truck with them.

And that's all I have to say on that.

more of us out there February 23, 2005

Many, many congratulations to Lisa and Paul on the safe arrival of the latest UK/Canadian crossover rock act - in the blue corner, weighing in at an even ten pounds, the fit, hale and hearty wee Jack William Durbin! Nice one. I am well chuffed at having a wee bairn named after me - must have been that speech at the wedding that swung it, eh? Or possibly that Lisa's had a lot of experience with phrases like "Jack, stop swearing", "Jack, don't lick that live electrical cable", or "Jack, stop smearing banana porridge behind your ears".

Oh, sure, they claim it's after Paul's grandfather, but we know different.

In any case, welcome to the world, little 'un; we look forward to meeting you face to face.

breeding a better sneeze February 22, 2005

...and we're back. Sorted.

Hey kids! Want to work with a top sports team, but aren't really athletic enough? Why not become a soigneur with a cycling team? Combination masseur, driver, general wrangler and (intermittantly) drugs smuggler, it's never a dull life! USA Today's article on life as a soigneur.

RIP HST. One thing you really noticed was that a lot of the stories about his death focussed on his drug use, while quietly downplaying the people who actually knew him who made a point that his drug usage was quietly under control: as in, he took a lot of drugs, but no more than he could handle. The underlying cause of the suicide was probably more related to the factors that made him take so many drugs and write so much good stuff - the obsessive depression, mainly.

It's been snowing on and off for the last two days. It's supposed to get worse, but in the meantime we've had large flurries of snow and intermittant hail, interspersed with brilliant sunshine. It's great if you time it right, miserable if you don't. I had a nice wee 30-miler planned for Sunday - that one went right out the window after the second howling gale and flurry of snow before 10am. I ended up spending much of the day reading Neal Stephenson instead.

Disadvantage of cycling to work: at 4:50, as a huge burst of snow descended, our manager gave us the informal tip-off to head home. Or rather, she gave those of us who'd driven in the all-clear to go - after my "Yes, the snowstorm put a good two minutes on my commute!" smug-bastard-comments of last year (when other staff members had been trapped overnight in their cars on the M11), our management structure is now annoyingly aware that snow doesn't necessarily slow down cyclists. Mind you, the main reason that it slows down cars in Cambridge is because everyone freaks out and tries to drive home at once.

on the air February 18, 2005

Apologies for the hiatus; our cable modem has died. I'm quickly posting this from work at 8:56am. NTL are "sending out an engineer", although when they will do this has yet to be determined. We should be back on the air soon.

mongrol smush February 16, 2005

I snapped my chain on the way into work today. I was coming up to a roundabout in the bike lane, next to a line of traffic doing about 8-10mph. I signalled that I was going straight through, and moved slightly in front of the car to my right. Came up to the roundabout, stood up on the pedals, gave it a good bit of wellie to get some acceleration through the roundabout, and snapped my chain. I was thrown off balance as my strong thrust went straight down unresisted, and ended up wobbling across the roundabout and hurriedly dismounting on the traffic island at the centre. Thankfully the driver behind me hadn't put the boot down, so he didn't hit me. I thought I'd just unshipped the chain until I realised that it was lying in the street in the middle of the (now very busy) roundabout. So I got away with looking like a bit of a plonker, and having to spend ten minutes replacing the broken link (I carry a spare link for moments like this). Could have been a lot worse.

That's probably about the third time I've snapped a chain, I think. It's disconcerting but you get used to it. I've never snapped anything more vital (cranks, bars etc) from serious effort - though it's not through lack of trying.

I reckon that after the recent trend to "celebrity" reality TV shows, the next trend will be shows like "Extreme Nonentity Retox" - where people you've never heard of, but who look vaguely like your mates, are forced to wallow in their own excement on the premise (delivered by a Well-Known Physician who has difficulty keeping a straight face) that it'll be good for their skin.

So Lance has publically committed to Paris-Nice next month. Should be one to watch: what'll his form be like that early in the season? Since Lance's year is traditionally focussed solely on the Tour, he's used to training specifically to peak for a 3-week period in July. How he copes with a number of shorter efforts earlier in the year is going to be interesting. Still no word on whether he'll be in this year's Tour, though.

Those Bluetooth headsets, eh? Half the 16-year olds around our way have 'em. It's very disconcerting seeing these sleek futuristic devices stuck in the earhole of a spotty-faced gangler in a nylon tracksuit - overall effect is very Chav Trek.

Definitely need more tattoos.

mongrol smush

Definitely need more tattoos.

early February 15, 2005

Brighton is nice. Through a slight recurring absentmindedness, I kept calling it Bristol, and a slight brainfart on how long I'd paid for the parking ended up landing us with a ticket, but it was in general a very, very nice place to be. We were staying with a couple of friends (the resoundingly splendid Naomi and Marv) who turned out to live very near to the North Laines (I thought it was "lanes", but apparently not) shopping district. This made our arrival a bit interesting, as it involved looping around the one-way system while desperately trying to find the street - the instructions from the AA having slightly failed to mention a left turn, thus forcing us to resort to the "streetmap and mag lite" method of urban navigation. We got there in the end. It was, interestingly, just around the corner from the Prince Albert pub, which had a giant mural of John Peel on the side. Respect.

On the Saturday, we ended up spending a lot of time wandering around the place. The Laines are a good bit of fun - lots of funky, interesting shops to tempt you (though often without good pushchair access). Also highly noted was the Brighton Pavilion, which was intensely trippy. A hugely ornamented space, designed as an English idea of China before many images had come from the latter. The overall effect was quite lush, but as you looked more closely there were little discordances. For example, there were dragons everywhere, with the long sinuous body traditional of Chinese dragons - but the heads were completely wrong. They looked Welsh. It was deeply odd. Incredible, though, and I highly recommend it for the visitor.

Also went for a stroll on the seafront. When I was very young, and we were living in the UK, our family went on a trip to Brighton. Having been raised on a media diet that depicted beaches as sun-kissed expanses of sand, I got out of the car, looked at the windswept stretch of fist-sized rocks that meets the sea at Brighton, and said in a quavering voice "Is this the beach, Mummy?". I was four.

My reactions this time were a bit better. The seafront is still a long way from sun-kissed expanse of sand, but given that it was freezing cold that wasn't a priority. The seafront is excellent - a lovely long boardwalk, random public art, lots of cool wee shops, and the burned-out pier as a sort of civic momento mori. A building-scale reminder that everything is impermanent, and that there's nothing so solid that a combination of human stupidity and the laws of physics can't tear it down. Left to rust in the waves. It's a pretty powerful sight, actually. Particularly as you look past it to the other pier, bright and glowing as dusk drops.

Sunday morning we went for a wee walk on a section of the South Downs Way - specifically, up to Firle Beacon. Nice hill, windswept as all heck. A most impressive view stretching away in all directions once we got to the OS GPS calibration point at the top of the beacon. The walk was clearly popular with the local dog owners, as well as with ramblers and mountain bikers - at one point we were passed by a posse of MTBers in their 40s, taking advantage of the 3/4 tailwind to help propel them up the climb. And the point itself has been popular for a while, to judge by the presence of a long barrow and local legends that a giant is buried there.

At the pub for lunch on Sunday, we sat about two tables away from what I'm assuming was the staff from Wildcat. As in, they were all heavily tattooed, quite obviously pierced, and one woman at the table had forehead implants. Most impressive stuff, and some beautiful tattoos (mainly in the English Tribal style popularised by people such as Alex Binnie and Curly at Into You. Left me with a profound feeling of being insufficiently tattooed. Must get around to getting some more ink - I've got a few good ideas about my left calf.

So we all had a great time at t'weekend, chilling out, chatting to mates, and generally relaxing. Rebecca had an absolute blast, being fussed constantly by all the others there. Brighton's a top place, and well worth the penny.

bicycle n 1. a vehicle with a tubular metal frame mounted on two spoked wheels, one behind the other. The rider sits on a saddle, propels the vehicle by means of pedals, and steers with handlebars on the front wheel.

Collins Concise Dictionary, Fourth Ed (1999), emphasis mine

All well and good, except that the emphasised phrase in the above definition has two serious weaknesses:

High-end bicycles these days are commonly made out of carbon fibre, rather than metal.
The word "tubular" misses out monocoque frames.

Thus, by this definition, Lance Armstrong's rode at least part of last year's Tour on something not quite a bicycle (carbon fibre frame), and Chris Boardman's hour record wasn't set on a bicycle. Of course, the bloody UCI is behind the dictionary as regards the second bullet (monocoque frames are not allowed in UCI-run events - which is to say, every major and most minor cycling events in the world), but still.

Mind you, the UCI make some rather odd specifications about bicycles themselves. Notably are their insistence that a machine ridden in their competitions must be of the standard upright diamond frame (which scuppers recumbents, which reliably beat upright bicycles in time trials due to the considerably lower wind resistance (which can be further lowered via aerodynamic fairings), the machine must weigh at least 6.8kg (which actually lead to riders on the Saeco team in last year's Tour having to glue small weights to the top tubes of their bikes to take them up to the weight limit), and their banning of particular riding positions (Graham Obree's "Superman" position for the hour record, particularly). They're very "Swiss" about the whole thing.

On the headphones: DLT ft Che Fu and The Go! Team. Classic NZ hip-hop vs bouncy Brighton pop-hop (heavy on the drums in the mix).

I am back always. I never go out of fashion; my popularity periodically wanes, until I am rediscovered by an eager new generation. Fear my power.

Pictures of David Clinger's facial tattoos are now available off Velonews.

smell of February 10, 2005

It's the start of Lent, which is apparently a big deal in the religious sections of the community. Now all these deprivation-come-latelies have started abstaining from stuff, for a mere 40 days. Ha! I sneer at your 40 days! I'm doing a two month abstention! Take that, sackcloth and ashes mob!

Saw one of these (Ridgeback Rapide Neutron) the other day, and thought that it's the absolute perfect Cambridge bike. 8-speed hub gears - quite frankly, if you need more than eight speeds in Cambridge, you either need a heart bypass or a chill pill. Hub gears mean much, much less drivechain maintenance - a regular oiling of the chain should do you. A front hub dynamo, meaning that you never need to worry about forgetting your lights, or changing batteries, while minimizing the drag factor. Flat bars and an MTB-style riding position for easier control. Maximum function, minimum maintenance requirements, not too flash looking (and thus not too nickable). Exactly what you need. If I was after a new bike for blatting around town, I'd buy one of these straight off the mark.

And now, a news item which covers two of my hobbies at once: cycling and tattooing. David Clinger, of the WebCor team in the US, has just turned up at his training camp with a full-facial moko. Two main points: firstly, I'm not entirely sure that this isn't a publicity stunt wind-up. No photos of the moko in question, a lot of waffle from the team, and a promise from the rider that he'd get the tattoo removed - sounds highly fishy to me. Secondly, and assuming that it isn't, is this guy one of the stupidest assholes in the world or what? Getting a moko because you've read a lot about "the Polynesians" and greatly admire their "simple ways" doesn't make you a courageous champion of a downtrodded people, it just makes you a patronising, oversimplifying, clueless, honky twerp. Honestly. Speaking as a honky myself, I'm not going to go into the whole "Oh, these brown people won't mind if I just copy some of their sacred iconography" thing, as I don't consider myself qualified to speak about Maori perspectives on unthinking cultural appropriation by arrogant white guys. I will just say, however, that anyone who gets a tattoo from another culture with that much resonance in that culture without every having met someone from that culture is a schmuck of the first water.

Personally, I like the approach taken by tattooists such as Trevor Marshall - he'll do Maori inspired tattoos, but leaves Ta Moko well alone. Sensible. Maori design is great, but some things are sufficiently important in some cultures that you should leave them well alone unless you're a part of that culture. Just my opinion, of course.

I spent twenty minutes at work today trying to think of a name for a fictitious network-based fire alarm monitoring system for a scenario for a training course I'm writing. Coming up with a name for it wasn't a problem; finding one that wasn't already in use was. It certainly made me appreciate marketing a bit more: trying to think of some vaguely catchy name covering the concepts of "it looks out for fires, then tells you" that hadn't already been done was murder. Google is your friend here, but it can tell you some harsh truths. Specifically, that there are no new ideas under the sun. Especially since fire is a favoured metaphor for a lot of other things, and synonyms for "watch" are used a lot in IT. I almost gave in and gave the example product a codename based on a major European city, but managed to resist temptation.

scrolling mousse February 09, 2005

The new Lemon Jelly album samples Flanders & Swann. Subtly, mind. Our language has not the words for the beauty.

That said, it's a bloody nice wee album. A lot less "downtempo quirky" than the two previous ones, it's drifting in a more song-orientated sound reminiscent of late period Orbital, with tinges of a number of other musical styles. Recommended.

Car ads typically annoy me. They say little or nothing about the car itself, concentrating mainly on how other people will perceive you if you drive this particular car (as opposed to how they perceive you in that piece of shit you're driving now, you tiny, impotent gnome, you). Car culture per se puts me teeth on edge, but TV ads for cars tend to be part of the more visible opinion formation/reflection mechanism and hence hacks me off. The only two car ads on telly at the moment that actually tell you anything about the car either make a big deal of the efficient, clean diesel engine, or sell the car on the basis that it's got a bench front seat that can take three people (which, if memory serves, was also the case on my grandad's clapped out old Holden when I was a kid - not necessarily a selling point, I'd say). I actually approve of the former ad - which probably means that I'm in the vaguely lefty right-on sandal wearing demographic that the company reckons would actually want to buy a diesel. You'll note that the ads for Audi have stopped emphasising how reliable and good they are, and started concentrating on the "Sexy German engineered big black car" aspect of it.

So, my dislike of car ads stated, I'd have to say that I'm astonishingly impressed with two car ads on at the moment. Not because of what they're selling, mind, but because they're largely context-free cool images. These would be the ads for the Citroen C4 and the new VW Golf. The Citroen ad is basically designed to appeal to people like me: you were young in the 80s, you had Transformers, you listened to a lot of dance music in the 90s. Hence, the ad features the car in question transforming in classic Autobot style into a giant robot, and then doing a highly funky dance to the tasty sound of Les Rhythmes Digitales. Watching a giant robot dancing lithely around the screen is most impressive. Possibly, however, not as impressive as the ad for the new VW Golf, which takes Singin' in the Rain and puts a spin on it, with Gene Kelly body poppin', somersaulting, and breakdancing around the show. Seamless and jaw-dropping.

Quite why dance routines should be intended to compel us to make major lifestyle purchases, I'm not sure, but with images like that I ain't complaining.

No booze for a week, and I've still got higher motor functions. Result! Only another 51 days!

mens sandwich in corpore sandwich February 01, 2005

I'm sitting here, having a quiet drink of beer. This will be the last alcohol I will drink for two months. Having taken six weeks off drinking last year, it didn't do me any harm and I figure that it's a reasonable wake-up call to make sure that you're not drinking too much. Not that I'm swigging it back at a rate of knots - my drinking's dropped off since Rebecca's birth - but, y'know, it can't hurt. However, everyone gives up drinking in January as a New Year's resolution. Determined not to join the herd - and, coincidentally, to be able to attend the Winter Ale Festival - I decided to subvert this in two ways. I'd give up drinking for two months. And I'd do it for February-March.

So this beer is the last one I'll be drinking for two months. Roll on April Fools' Day, says I, but in the meantime it'll be interesting. When I gave up drinking last year it was a bit annoying for a week, and then a non-issue. I'm looking forward to finding out what it's like this year.

I've managed to seize another front mech on my MTB. It's not like I'm not oiling them - they're better lubed than a gay mechanic at a Big Joe's World of Large Sex Toys try-out party and cocktail bash. GT-85 comin' off 'em in all directions, I'm telling you. And still they freeze up. The latest lasted six months, which I frankly think is a bit crap. I've heard of winter grit problems, but this is ridiculous. Especially since my rear mech has been running for three years with no trouble at all. And especially since Shimano Deore front mechs aren't user-serviceable. Damn.

And also in the "damn" category - although I'm tempted to lump it under "damn, blast, bloody hellfire and sod" - I've just discovered that those wonders of the intelligent pop/rock/rap/industrial scene, the incredible Pop Will Eat Itself, have just finished a reunion tour. PWEI were my favorite band for a good few years, and I was a bit narked when they split before I could see 'em live. And to then discover that I'd just missed out! Ach, well, it'll all be the same in a thousand years, and I've got tickets to Lemon Jelly on the way.

Arse, though.