Andy Gates' Journal
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Andy Gates' LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Monday, July 6th, 2009 | | 5:32 pm |
Dunwich Dynamo XVII
 It's that time of year again - July's full moon weekend and the 120-mile ride from central London to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. This year, on the back of a great year for bikes in the UK and some fantastic weather, there was a record turnout of up to 1000 riders. The Dun Run is the nicest, funnest overnight century you could hope to ride, so the plan this year was to do it on pennyfarthings. Alas, my penny's cranks fell off, and another rider's bike broke, so Charlotte had to do it on her own - I rode a Brommie and did support along with Phil (in the picture - click for a set). Nobody's done it on a penny before. The ride's always a sort of CM-with-a-plan fun fest, a bit of a gathering of the cycling clans, and it was lovely meeting lots of friends in passing. We soon dropped back to the penny's 18kph steady pace and arrived to a round of applause after C had ridden for fifteen and a half hours. Chapeau, dear heart!  Highlights this year: Gerald's inflatable boat (so he could go for a little row afterwards); Wobbly John's wobblebike (designs pinned to the Cliffs of Insanity); 4th July fireworks in Moreton; great craic at the last pub stop; wearing a glowstick in my newly gauged lobe; the filthy innuendo around dawn's rosy fingers; glowstick smiley faces on road bikes; stopping under a village doctor's eaves for a power nap and a coffee-and-whisky brew up; the sheer pluck of some non-cyclists having a go anyway (getting lost, going slow, having fun); the skinny-dip at the end (nothing, not one thing, beats a sea-swim on a bike-ride-battered arse). But mostly it was Charlotte's night, and well done to her: the penny takes lots of upper-body to ride (you push against the bars opposite your pedal to keep it straight; more power = more pushing, so hill climbing is a sort of 7-foot-high benchpress argument). Next year I'll have mine ready, oh yes I will... Current Mood:  happy | | Saturday, July 4th, 2009 | | 1:40 am |
Dunwich Dynamon't
The penny farthing has been naughty - between the wobbly crank, disintegrating pedal, and -- oh yeah -- raw naked terror, it's been an emo day. Upshot is, Bucephalus is in the shed and I've got torn shorts, and Dunwich will be done as part of a one-penny penny posse. Later: bike to get new or sorted crankage, handling skilz to be learned away from fecky London fecky driverfecks and (see, emo, told ya) we'll take it sensibly. But for tomorrow, nuppence. I has a sad, but it's not a catastrophe. | | Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 | | 8:26 am |
Place bets now!
 This year's seasonal Arctic melt is getting well underway. The exact level is mostly guesswork unless you've been paying attention to the last year or so's weather up there - and even if you have, there's plenty of natural variability to season the pudding. To help choose your "extent o' doom" [tm] here's a pointer: so much ice melted last year that a lot of this year's ice is thin single-year stuff, more vulnerable to warm weather and storm breakup. To recover multi-year ice, we'll need the last couple of years to have been a blip and for a couple of years of better-than-the-scary-plunging-red-eyetr end. If the coverage ends up below 4,000,000 sq km, the blip is strongly reinforced as a nose-dive trend. Current Mood: grim | | Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 | | 8:05 pm |
Twishful Thinking
Just stumbled across Twitter 'bot IWishIWas - it seems to be a scraper for public tweets with "I wish I was" in the text, but there may be a human in there to filter out naughty or tedious tweets. It's got a simple charm, though it's also tinged with the same sort of melancholy that you found on postsecret back in the day. | | Monday, June 29th, 2009 | | 9:04 am |
Tasty energy spoo
The discussion along yesterday's ride ran to ride food and whether it would be possible to make savoury energy gels. Gels are mostly maltodextrin, which is a little sweet but pretty neutral, so it ought to be possible. Some nice nutter already did the hard work and here are his recipes for plain gel. What savoury flavours would you like to see? I'm up for: - Vitamin P
- Rosbif
- Chicken and stuffing
- Pepperoni pizza
...and so on. Who's up for testing? | | Sunday, June 28th, 2009 | | 9:08 pm |
Dartmoor Classic
100km of nicely-marshalled and well-managed Dartmoor sportive, sounds fun, doesn't it? Just the thing to get out on a Sunday morning. ( Ramblin' on... ) Current Mood:  tired | | Thursday, June 25th, 2009 | | 10:21 am |
Scribd put on a white hat?
Scribd, the ebook host, has started doing a profit-sharing downloads-for-sale deal with authors. Given that their previous entry into my thunkosphere was "waily waily, some ass has uploaded my magnum opus" from minor authors, this sounds pretty cool. Anything that isn't device-locked and fitted with a killswitch is a big win in my (e)book. Would you writery folks use it? | | Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 | | 3:23 pm |
Laszlo Writ Large
Laszlo's Chinese Relativity Theorem states, "Whatever you're doing, three billion Chinese people couldn't care less." It has an athletic corollary, "No matter how good you are, somewhere an eight-year-old girl is warming up with your max." So there I am feeling pretty buff 'n' stuff after the Dumb Run. 115 miles! Overnight! On fixies! Through swarms of predatory bugs and drunken Weegies! Except that the TRAT crew passed Gretna at lunchtime and are caning along. Land's End to Taunton on day one? Pretty damn buff 'n' stuff. Except that the RAAM leaders (twitter: RAAMrace) are 2500 miles into their non-stop race, four minutes apart and face the next thousand miles as a 72-hour pursuit. Sleep or not? Push it or conserve? Man, that's intensely buff 'n' stuff. That grinds the gruel in gruelling down to dust. Strictly, the corollary is untrue, but for those of us within the Gaussian biomass it is more true than not. I have a distinct feeling that the RAAM riders are well into the realm of statistical outliers. | | Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009 | | 9:08 am |
Dumb Run Dun!
 We did it! Conditions were perfect for the third attempt at our 115-mile coast-to-coast ride from Dumbarton Castle on the West Coast to St Andrews on the East. The last two rides were thwarted by weather, but fear not, Scotland still had something for us: this was the Year of the Midge and we all got nibbled on. My legs are a picture... We opened at a decent pace, the usual suspects (Erron sans beard, Will avec mohawk) plus one, Mister 86 (that's a huge gear). Tom's the only one clever enough to have brought gears, the rest of us are fixie recidivists all riding around 70"; 69" jokes are made. Bowling along, we made Merkins Farm in daylight, then pressed through the pretty West coast lumpy stuff (ie, hills) to the Kirkhouse Inn in Strathblane at lighting-up time (about 10). One lamp was sacrificed to the eaty-kit godlings of potholes and rough stuff. Weirdly, some of this route had been resurfaced, so it was a random selection of crazy agricultural potholes and slick tarmac. Leaving the pub we fired up the photonic drives and dove into the industrial heartland in the middle of the ride; we counted the Roundabouts of Cumbernauld (I'm not telling, that'd jinx it) and I coasted into the services bellowing " I have counted the Roundabouts of Cumbernauld!" just as half a million Take That fans were waiting there for the only 24-hour services in town. Whoops! Pace was still high, so we tried to throttle it down a bit, but it seems our legs weren't having any of it. The whisky-and-jerky stop outside Linlithgow was more ritual than necessity (last year it was a desperate refuge), and then Mr 86 blew a spoke, so there was bodge-fettling to make the bike rideable and much debate about boutique wheelbuilders and whether or not they're worth it. And so to the Bridge approach, whch was just utterly glorious. The Forth was flat and shiny, dawn was putting a bright metallic edge on the clouds; the land was scattered black speckled with streetlamps, and the Bridges strings of jewels over the water. Insert purple prose here: it really was worth the ticket just for this bit (and, as always, to have earned it made it better, like a cup of tea after a hike). Up and over the Bridge, then, with mandatory photo op and jelly babies, and on to Dalgety Bay for fresh tea, coffee and croissants straight from the oven. As Stephen Fry might say, "blissikins!" Now it gets hazy. Arses are beginning to ache and bodies trying to shut down, and the pace naturally drops. Erron and 86 are going strong; Will's pace is like his hair, going a bit floppy; Tom and I are making "ooh, me arse" noises and RB's doing her buff ninja thang. The conditions are a gift: nobody's going to be packing now we're over the Bridge, not unless bits drop off. From Dalgety Bay we press across to Kirkcaldy, and stop briefly at the point we were rained out the first year. Yah-boo-glory gets rolled up into argh-hill-crikey and alas, for your correspondent, it starts to blur here as I begin bonking. It all gets a bit shigata ga nai - there's only one way this ends, so what's to be done? Ride! We hack across country via Leven towards Crail, then take the main road to St Andrews in beautiful bright sunlight and a literal mirror sea, but I've bonked so badly that the others are taking spells shadowing my wobbly ride and I'm a grumpy arse (sorry chaps). And then the beach. And then the grass. And then the coffee. Done! | | Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 | | 1:43 pm |
Hulk Splash!
This is one for the gym monkeys: Swimshop have started doing a grudge belt, a length of stretch cord with a belt at either end. "For tug-of-war and barge pulls." I need a tropical lagoon, a garbage scow, and Mariusz Pudzianowski. | | Monday, June 15th, 2009 | | 8:25 pm |
A god among men
Stephen Fry (Twitter: @stephenfry) not only hosted I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue tonight, he went on to tweet how to bypass Iranian government web filters. You absolute bloody star, sir, I was already going to buy you a drink for being Stephen Fry, but for tonight's magnificently seditious posting (reprising the role in V for Vendetta?) you can have some pork scratchings as well. | | Sunday, June 14th, 2009 | | 8:02 pm |
Another race report: Burnham Triathlon
Today's race was okay. Swim was just okay - what I'd predicted, but not smooth. T1 was a comedy catastrophe with one shoe going flying off into the road - so even though I was holding evens for much of the bike course (translation: staying at 20mph) I lost so much time that my bike leg suckethed verily. Very lonely out, too, so the usual mental-focus issue (speed drops if I don't have people to chase or Hulk Smash to fuel my speed) applied. Then it was T2, quick as you like, and onto the Dreaded Beach Run (roughly 1k beach, 2k woodland, 2k beach), which took about 8 minutes on top of my best, like most folks, and came it slow but solid. 1:26:45 total. And I finally got a T5 out of my Suunto. Thing is, that didn't matter 'cos there was great amusement to be had with an evening of lasagne (nom!) bike fettling and pinball, then a sparrowfart dash across the Levels to set up and go before the sun got to "roast grockle" temperature. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) skean , xeeny and despaer were in tight competition and the result came right to the wire. skean started in the wave behind me -- underestimated his swim-fu -- and I was pleased to have held him off until we were back on the beach with the last 2k or so to go. A good time was had by all. ( Introspection behind the cut ) Current Music: Paloma Faith - Stone Cold Sober | | Friday, June 12th, 2009 | | 12:18 pm |
Banksy
Banksy's a sneaky bugger, he's gone and pulled off a steatlh exhibition in the middle of town. Nice one. I might have to swing by and check it out -- I've a soft spot for Banksy, not least because he's bloody good, but mostly because when I was at my dirt-poor-emo-mopey-boy-est, it was his city-centre graffiti that made me smile. Especially the rats. | | Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | | 8:34 pm |
Eggy eggy eggy, oi oi oi!
Vile Nazi twunt Nick Griffin has been egged when trying to hold a press conference. Good. This isn't about democracy or him being properly elected. He's just vile racist cretin who deserves to be hounded mercilessly until he has a lovely public nervous breakdown and ends up at the Priory next to that singing woman and some druggy celebs. I mean, really, this is the public face of people who think that Lenny Henry, Freema Agyeman, Zeinab Badawi and Gok Wan are bad and need to be kicked off this sceptered isle for not being British enough. Lenny's a Brummie! Freema grew up in Hackney! Zeinab's dead posh and Gok's a Leicester boy. So let's be absolutely clear: Griffin's the figurehead of people as foul, disruptive and stupid as Fred Phelps. That's a very special, very elite shitlist. These are the very zenith of putrid idiocy. Phelps, you'll recall, was barred from coming to the UK on public order grounds: so many people think he needs a slapping that the mere hint of his feculent stench provokes breach of the peace. Let's hope the same applies to Griffin. And if you hear of him coming to Devon to speak, please let me know. I have an omelette that needs making. | | 1:08 pm |
Augmented reality wow
Check this out: automatic fitting and projection of maps to landscape photos. Very clever, very pretty. | | Monday, June 8th, 2009 | | 11:14 am |
Busy weekend!
Gauged out my lobe to 6mm; train to London avec pennyfarthing; fettled up a borrowed Trice Ice Q recumbent trike (mostly "ooh, what's this?"); kip and existential Spice Girls nightmare; FNRTTC to Whitstable featuring hilarious speed, bonkers cornering, and a surprising lack of fear (but wheel-arch spray ew); meeting another penny person; Smithfield Nocturne criterium race (part of the Rapha series, good fun, lots of fakenger fashion fixies); beer!; grokking pennyfarthing riding courtey of the lovely C; working out what was wrong with my penny; planning how to save civilization from itself; resisting the urge to buy a "Teslatron" violet wand; and lashings of tea! *puff, gasp* I have recumbutt. :) | | 10:50 am |
Little Bobby Tables Strasse
While riding on Friday night, I'm fairly sure I saw a SQL injection attack as a street name in my Openstreetmap GPS. I was pretty strung out, in overnight ride stylee, and will need to go back and check the logs, but it definitely wasn't a real street name. Real street names don't have backslashes! | | Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | | 10:15 am |
A better mousetrap?
So Markov chains provide a good model for next-symbol probability, and touchscreens are amazingly shonky at working out what you really just typed. Is anyone using a Markov chain to interpret the raw data from the users fat, mashy finger and determine what they really meant to press? A second-order chain ought to be enough to pick out half a dozen likely candidate letters, most of which won't be in the area of the press. | | Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | | 2:08 pm |
Silly censors
China's Great Firewall blocks Twitter. Twitter users fire up a VPN and carry on as before, except now they're annoyed. "The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" indeed. Current Mood: amused | | Monday, June 1st, 2009 | | 12:10 pm |
Review: Inhuman Beatdown
Dragonforce's new album Inhuman Beatdown gets all the good stuff out of the way in the first minute: a demented intro, some funky high-speed key changes and silly science-fiction lyrics. Then it rambles on like an old lady full of amphetamines for far too long. Their chronic lack of vocal affect has strapped on a couple of extra chorus pedals and "eternal misery" is delivered with the tormented, emotional wrench of "hey mum what's for tea?", and the rest of the band blue into each other in a samey though hyperkinetic porridge. Sorry guys, I want to like it but it's just dull. Apart from that first track, anyway. I'm glad I didn't waste actual money on it; File > Delete. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
