Andy Gates

Badger cull numbers - just not worth it

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 18:18:40 GMT

I've been trying to get my head around the numbers involved in the bovine TB drama. The take-home number from the Government's Randomised Badger Cull Trial (the Krebs trial) is a reduction of up to 16% in bovine TB after nine years of culling.

Let's say you've got a medium-large dairy herd, 200 cattle. Let's say you have really bad TB, and 10% a year are culled as TB "reactors" (cattle that react to the test). 20 cattle per year. At the end of a decade of culling badgers across your land by the Krebs method, you have 17 reactors: 16% is really lost in the rounding on such small numbers. So you spend nine years culling on your land, hiring people to do it, faffing with paperwork, dealing with saboteurs, and after all that you've saved three cows a year?

That can't be worth the effort.

It gets worse. The cull method that DEFRA propose isn't the Krebs method: it's widely agreed to be less effective. It's not been tested, but instead of trapping it goes for wild shooting with ample chance of perturbing the local badger population. Perturbing the population - stirring 'em up - spreads disease and makes things worse for cattle and badgers both.

The rational response is to abandon the cull and pour effort into the ongoing badger TB vaccines being trialled at, for example, Killerton in Devon. That's what the Welsh farming office are doing. That's what the English should be doing too.

Modified KAP rig ready to fly

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 18:38:39 GMT

Modified KAP rig ready to fly
Originally uploaded by andygates

Staying Alive [cycling rant]

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:41:11 GMT

This is going to be a bit of a rant, following on from the building hand-wringing about getting all minced up on the roads. Apologies for offence caused, but, fuckit.

The sides of lorries are FUCKING DEATH ZONES. AVOID THEM.

That is all.

Really, that is all I have to offer with umpty years of riding in umpty styles and places: LORRIES WILL FUCKING KILL YOU DEAD IN THE MOST RIDICULOUSLY HORRIBLE WAY IMAGINABLE SO DON'T BE A FUCKING RETARD BY FEEDING YOURSELF INTO THEIR UNCARING MAW.

Does this need a "You wouldn't jump into a woodchipper? You wouldn't dangle your legs in lava?" public service advert? ARE PEOPLE REALLY SO FUCKING THICK?

Yes, I know they are, or in a hurry, and yes the road shouldn't be a mindless grinding machine lubricated with the blood of Our Tribe but by FUCK on a HOLY FUCKING FUCKDAY the stories I read are all - to my jaded eye - avoidable.

I'd bet a fat pot that these are the same people who wear a fluo vest and a helmet on backwards and then jump red lights having ticked the boxes and thinking they're safe but with THE ROAD SENSE OF A BLOODY BADGER.

GAH!

STOP DYING LIKE IDIOTS! You're making me look bad.

"But how," I hear them ask, "How do we learn this, that you so-smug on your ivory seatpost claim to be Great Wisdom? Evil Government doesn't train us! Waily waily!"

You can just fuck off, you spineless whining pussies. I learned the way you bloody should: I acted like a dick and got scared by a near miss. The difference is I PAID FUCKING ATTENTION. Get out of your bubble of false safety, get that stupid plastic hat off SO YOU FEEL AS VULNERABLE AS YOU ARE and get a few scares. That'll teach you.

And if scares aren't your type, get the fucking bus or grow a pair. (Ovaries will do fine; it's the weirdly prepubescent indolence of the permanent manchild that irks me here: just take control of your own bastarding safety) There are some adult training courses and they are good, but this isn't rocket science.

Victim blaming? You fucking bet I am. I'm fed up biting my tongue.

3D printing bones, redux

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:57:02 GMT

All that muttering? Meanwhile, random Scottish surgeon is just doing it. Details and howto : http://twitter.com/#!/3DBONES

It looks like 3D-printing bones is headed toward the mainstream, for the previsualisation it offers surgeons.

Ffffuuu...

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:19:25 GMT

Day two in the Big Ballsup house, and more random Irishmen are dialling in and poking progressively lower-level things with progressively lower-level sticks. This is all to do the first part of the preamble; the actual work hasn't even come up on the radar yet. Had the local cell mast not abandoned me, I would be tweeting colourfully right about now.

Gridthruster... archive retrieval run commence

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 20:15:33 GMT

Just trying to recall the rules for Gridthruster, the imaginatively named spaceship build-n-shoot game we came up with at middle school. I'm a bit horrified that I can remember the detail so clearly. We used to play this with graph paper and blu-tacked pieces.

Start with a grid representing space, scattered with a random selection of drifting parts. Each player gets a ship comprising a Command Module and one Thruster, mated to the Command Module. Players start around the edges of the space, facing toward each other.

On your turn you may move or fire.

Moving: You may move as many squares as you have exposed thruster ports. At the start you can only go in three directions because your Command Module is blocking one thruster port.
Firing: You may fire any one weapon.
Connecting: This is automatic. If your move ends with your assembled ship touching a part, that part automatically adds to the ship. Be careful not to block good stuff with space crud!

The pieces are:

Command Module: Be the last one standing to win.
Thruster: An engine that moves your ship one square against any exposed direction. If you have three engines thus: TTCT you may move three squares up or down but only one left or right.
Plasteel Block: A chunk of stuff, destroyed by any weapon. That shows its age, "plasteel" was so cool in the mid-eighties.
Armour Block: A chunk of stuff, only destroyed by a Missile.
Laser: Fixed directional weapon. Destroys anything except the Armour Block when fired. Range unlimited. Reflected by Mirrors. May be used again and again.
Missile: Destroys anything it hits. One-shot weapon removed from the ship when fired. May only be fired into open space. If you make a Missile into a structural link, you lose the stuff on the far side of the link if you fire the Missile.
Mirrors: Anti-laser defence angled in one of the two diagonal slashes. Collect several for rebound fun.
Mine: Explodes destroying anything in the 3x3 grid of which it is the centre, when touched by a ship or shot by a weapon.

If two ships collide, both have control over the gestalt mega-ship and both players may control the whole thing. Hilarity usually ensues.

Damn, this makes me want a tablet and a coding kit. Board games with the faff taken out are just what tablets are good at. Faff? Faff was moving a thirty-piece megaship and not missing any bits...

With computers, of course, you could sort the initial random scatter, introduce drift, make it realtime and introduce rudimentary physics. And add a third dimension. Make it a bit more buildy and a bit less Scrapheap Challenge IN SPAAACE. And then you're damn close to the deep-alpha voxel game Blockade Runner. :)

Strongifts 5x5 - 12 weeks later [training]

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 19:51:09 GMT

At the end of my 12-week SL5x5 routine, I did a strength test, in the form of a mock powerlifting meet.

Powerlifting meets are structured as a small number (3-5, usually 3) of single attempts at the squat, bench press and deadlift, in that order. The order's as sacred as the triathlon swim-bike-run order. After you warm up, the idea is that you start with a "banker" safe lift (are bankers safe any more?) then push and pull huge amounts of iron while snorting ammonia and growling like continental drift. You must make at least one lift in each exercise to score at all. Solo, there's no gamesmanship angle, but hey. "Raw" rules apply: no fancy kit here, just belt and chalk. Only good lifts: No half squats, arse-up benchpress or hitched deadlift allowed!

The squat warmed up to 140kg, then started with a banker of 150kg, easy. 160kg was hard but went up. I'd hoped to try for 170, but the toughness of 160 made that clearly silly so I went for 165. First go, and I went out of the hole and over forwards CRASHBOOMBANG into the safeties. Time out. Breathe. One more go... and it went up! 165kg for the squat.

The bench banked at 80kg. That was heavy but went down and up nicely. I was already into unknown territory so 82.5 was next... yup, that too. 85? Nah. 85 went down and stayed down. 82.5kg for the bench.

Deadlift time. I do like the deadlift, it's so huge and caveman-simple. Banked at 180kg, then 190 ("Is that 190kg?" asked the nerdliftergirl at 180. "No..." RARR THUD "...but that was :D"). Then two attempts at 200kg and although it broke off the floor, I couldn't get it up. Grip was, surprisingly, perfect -- I had chosen the most bitey-knurled bar in the gym for the lift and was using a dust storm of chalk. 190kg for the deadlift.

Lifetime PBs all round and a total of 437.5kg, or 964.5lbs. Damn near half a ton. Just shy of my seemingly-impossible target from three months ago of 1000lbs. Close enough that I am stoked at the numbers (just off-target enough to deny my prize).

Reflections: Afterwards, I locked up utterly, whole-body stiff-n-sore, slept like the dead and still haven't stopped eating: the systemic impact of max efforts is pretty intense, just like for a triathlon day out. The max-effort bench was particularly hard on my nerdy-carpal wrists and forearms, and I'll be buying some wrist wraps for continued training. Tactically I may have made the 85kg bench if I hadn't done the 82.5, but hey. And the 200 deadlift was greed: 195 was surely doable.

Both the squat and deadlift failed on that primary hip-unfoldium driver, so I'll probably add good mornings or glute-ham raises to the assistance exercise list. And I'm tempted to try weightlifting shoes for that raised heel: this was all in Vibrams (which are perfect for deadlift by the way) and the biomechanics of a heel-up squat are a tad different.

Interestingly my lifts match my predicted lifts (1RM from ye standarde formula) almost to the pound.

Where next? Well, I'm still on for the thousand and more: this is working for me, and working nicely. I'm going to give Madcow 5x5 a go. I respond well to pushing this 5-rep point -- much better than I respond to training to failure or repping out.

And perhaps more importantly: those lifts are handy enough that I'll look out for a novice/masters powerlifting meet next year and try my hand in competition. Yay!

Geoengineering and bad analogies

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:02:15 GMT

There's a proof-of-concept test being started in which a big balloon will be used to tether the high end of a hosepipe, and water will be pumped up to be dispersed in a spray. It's a fair old engineering challenge, and the water is just a placeholder for speculative future compounds to cool the atmosphere. I have a problem with the whole notion of geoengineering: we're already doing it. We're very successfully engineering the atmosphere to be hotter and wetter, right now.

There's an analogy with driving towards a precipice: our carbon emmissions are the accelerator; the cliff is, say, 4 degrees of warming (=catastrophe). What do you do when you are driving towards a bad thing? You let go the accelerator. You do not really apply the brake as well... and you sure as hell don't apply a pedal labeled "probably a brake: untested". There's a reason that the brake and accelerator are worked with the same foot.

I have yet to be swayed by geoengineering. It strikes me that adding more inputs to a chaotic system in a transitional state is just asking for trouble. I worry that the gee-whizz relief of being able to "do something" will make it attractive to the people who make such decisions.

Smash Redux [training]

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:47:01 GMT

Coming to the end of the 12-week Stronglifts 5x5 program and it's been ace. Challenging and rewarding - and I'll get some test numbers out in a couple of weeks when it's done. For now, I'm looking at the future.

I've got a couple of programs in sight for the next quarter: Madcow 5x5, and Wendler 5/3/1. Madcow's a continuation of the 5x5 exercises with pyramid sets and a heavy-light-medium staging; Wendler has other exercises and heavy singles and a powerlifting-dedicated plan. I enjoy heavy singles. I enjoy 5x5 simplicity. I'm not sure I'm advanced enough for Wendler, but then I wasn't sure I'd survive squats every session with 5x5, either. A dilemma I'm sure will resolve itself by the time I get around to choosing.

Does anyone have any other recommendations? Strength program for an intermediate lifter.

P-p-p-p-p-power!

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:57:33 GMT

I've been wondering about how good you need to be before attending a powerlifting meet, so I had a look at the GB Powerlifting Federation's local results page. Not so much looking at the front of the pack where the barbells bend like Dali noodles and Very Big Men With Legs Like Trees* rule, so much as seeing what sort of level a dabbler should be without embarassing themselves.

I remember doing this with triathlons too, looking at the results to see if I could expect to come in at the back or two sigmas off the back. So: this link is a recent master's, junior and novice meet -- noobs like me. Looking at the athletes who are close to my bodyweight... I'm not there yet, but damn, you know, I might well be there next year. That's invigorating!

Just gotta unsuck this bench press... :)

* Dale Clark, The Squat.

Down this road, in a gym far away,
a young man was heard to say,
"no matter what i do, my legs won't grow"
he tried leg extensions, leg curls, and leg presses , too
trying to cheat, these sissy workouts he'd do.

from the corner of the gym where the big men train,
through a cloud of chalk and the midst of pain
where the noise is made with big forty fives,
a deep voice bellowed as he wrapped his knees.
a very big man with legs like trees.

laughing as he snatched another plate from the stack
chalking his hands and monstrous back,
said, "boy, stop lying and don't say you've forgotten,
the trouble with you is you ain't been SQUATTIN'. "

Stronglifts musings [training]

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 21:35:40 GMT

I'm in week 9 of this 12-week Stronglifts 5x5 programme, and things are starting to stall out a bit. It's taking several goes to make a weight, and the progression is losing its relentless linearity. According to my stats, I'm as strong as I've ever been, and all at once.

The 5x5 rep/set structure and big compound lifts have, very effectively, taken up all the muscle memory I laid down in the past. This is awesome for a re-starter, but I think it means SL5x5 isn't a lifetime plan. Well, it was never meant to be: I'm looking now at cutting the number of sets to 3x5 in the monster lifts, where the volume (weight x reps) gets absurdly huge and hard to recover from. The warmup weight starts to be considerable, big enough to factor into recovery, so it's not "air squats then 5 x 60kg" (which is how my SL started, cripes!) so much as "60, 100, and then 3x 127.5" (this evening's bar-bending fun).

Itching to do some heavy singles, too, but that's for week 13, which is "Let's Pretend: Powerlifter" week, chasing PRs. Chasing that thousand.

What comes after that? I'm considering an actual (gasp) intermediate strength program -- something like 3 full body workouts with Heavy, Light, Medium instead of linear progression, sawtoothing the max up once a week).

I'll call SL5x5 a huge success for what it is: a beginner-to-intermediate strength program that's really hard to screw up, and well suited for restarters who can gorge on muscle-memory newbie gains for a couple of months.

Scan-to-3D Print Redux

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:43:44 GMT

A while back I mused about the toolchain you'd need to print CT scans in a 3D printer, for autogothic drinking skulls. Well, nobody's done exactly that, but there's a chap featured on BoingBoing who has a nice detailed post on doing the same thing for crocodile skulls.

You know, I'm sure there's a qualifier to the Singularity that reads, "future shock is when whatever you can think of, somebody's already doing it".

Post-LEJOG touring mutterings: The Prime Directive

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:38:04 GMT

Just want to get this down before I forget; thinking about LEJOG compared to other adventure holidays, where the natural tendency is to go all-out at the start (Crossfit WOD for breakfast?) and only the hardcore (Nastia!) are still going by the end with the rest subsiding into beer and Wii Bowling.

LEJOG was quantitatively different because it had an un-blaggable endpoint. Even if, say, a tri-themed camp training camp were to have an actual proper race at the end, it's still blaggable. A sightseeing tour would be, too; by the end of it, bad weather would tick the tearoom box more than the clifftop one. But a point-to-point tour can't be blagged: you allow a degree of slack because it's not a route march, but the only way to get where you want to go is to keep on riding, every day, munching up that mandatory itinerary.

In fact, the itinerary becomes the Prime Directive. Do what you like to have fun along the way, but you have to make the miles. Pretty soon I learned that an early start was essential unless I wanted to finish very late; no lie-ins on this holiday! Shopping, pubs, bike parts, food all change their priority from "best choice" to "first acceptable choice" because there's just no time to mither around all day comparing the titanium to the carbon widget or looking for organic hand-rolled dolmades when there's a can of Sutherland chilli in the Spar. This sounds grim, but actually, it was kind of okay; in fact it was liberating: buy food, get wheel, find campsite. The option-paralysis that sometimes hits me ("this pub has better beer" "its a bit crowded" "how about this one" "dingy" "lets go back to the first one" "argh!") isn't allowed: it breaches the Prime Directive: Get the miles in.

I'm wondering whether it is applicable elsewhere, because I rather enjoyed it.

Mind you, I enjoy the slack adventure stuff too: there the Prime Directive is to have fun; the adventuring is the secondary objective, the vector for the fun to be had, and as such it is changeable (and since hanging out with a beer and a bad movie is fun too, easily changed).

Mongo Clank Redux

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:17:10 GMT

I've been wanting to get back in the gym for ages; just as I was getting set up for it, LEJOG prep and now a triathlon have got me with their beams of shiny. Once Burnham is done and dusted...

A shift all-out to some focused lifting. I looked at a strength assessment a while back and it reminded me (bigtime) that I'm a fair squatter, a really rather good deadlifter, but a novice bench-presser. It's been an avoid-training-weaknesses-because-they-suck thing. Well, balls to that. I'm going to go with 12 weeks of the 5x5 programme, which has a good reputation and satisfies my urge to pick up heavy things and put them down again.

One thing I got from LEJOG was a grok of the idea that repeat small stuff makes big results. I think that reflecting that on the winter's deadlift goal -- where it was less structured but still solid -- I have a mental toolkit for plugging away at this and not letting myself get derailed. Bored, distracted, or whatever, yes, but almost a degree of detachment that should keep me on track. Less "this sucks" because there's always an hour of suck, so just ignore it; less "ooh shiny" because shiny isn't going to get the miles in.

Also: that 74-year-old gymrat granny. Awesome. My inner transhumanist wants to see Aubrey de Grey all buffed up and greybearded, so it does. Between her and Jack laLanne and the inevitable wonderful old gimmer plugging round every club tri circuit, I think Yoda needs updating: "When this old you are, look this good you may well."

Blagging Burnham

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Mon, 30 May 2011 11:21:21 GMT

This year's go at Burnham Triathlon in two weeks' time is going to be a spectacular ass-pull. I haven't run since winter, haven't swum all year, and all my cycling has been of an entirely different character (super low effort, super long duration); my high-effort cardio fitness is somewhere back with the autumn leaves, I think. The Auld Knee is another factor: it hates torque, and TT riding is torquey spin.

So, some tests before actually racing:

Swim: Can I actually remember how to swim crawl at all? If I can, can I get back to the required 20 lengths without puking up a lung? Get in the pool and JFDI.

Bike: Does riding hard hurt? And more importantly, does the hurt matter? Through LEJOG there was plenty of hurt, but ample ibuprofen meant it shut up an went away; also the first ten miles hurt worst, so a warmup may be indicated. Torque hurts more but if it's just a rubbish signal from complaining gristle, I can pill and tune it out to a degree. Get the road bike fettled and hammer some commutes. Do Science on it.

Run: Can I actually run? Apparently yes I can -- if I can do 20 minutes now, I can do the 30-35 that Burhnam's sandy 5k offers, on race-day when the gumption is high. Cardio effort is extreme though, and my feet and calves are like "wat?". Test passed, though it's going to be ugly.

One Thousand Miles of OSM

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Thu, 26 May 2011 18:38:23 GMT

Earlier this month, I rode the End-to-End* using OSM on my Garmin as my primary navigation resource.

In a nutshell: it was great. 1104 miles covered in three weeks. All the way through, either using routing or moving-map display, it was reliable and accurate and just right. There was one dumb-routing moment (that farm track was not rideable!) and only a couple of ways absent from the map.

I had a couple of moments of drama that gave me warm fuzzy feelings toward the OSM community: one incredibly mundane - I was *desperate* for a loo and the tourist signs had me muddled; and one utterly critical - my old rear wheel collapsed and I needed a bike shop, urgently!

At this point, Bike Hub came to the rescue. Bike Hub is an app that uses OSM data so I was able to hit the "Bike Shops Near Me" button and -- joy! Dryburgh Cycles, seven miles away. A short taxi ride and I was repaired and rolling again.

I have, as the saying goes, eaten my own dogfood, and it was delicious and nutritious.

* Writeup to follow, honest.

Home for the next three weeks

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:07:11 GMT

Home for the next three weeks
Originally uploaded by andygates

Well, here goes nothing. Lots of lovely bags, loaded with stuff for conditions from St Ives to Cape Wrath.

For the gear nerds, that's sleeping gear (summer-weight bag, thermarest, pack pillow and lantern) in one rear bag and clothes (2 of everything, waterproof, VFF's and bike shoes) in the other. Front bags are roughly kitchen and bathroom, with the handlebar bag serving as bento and dashboard and wallet. Tent is a Terra Nova Explorer, more than I need, but big enough to fit all the bags inside for storm/security reasons and able to take anything that'll be thrown at it.

Bike mods are basic: fat comfy slick Schwalbe Marathon Superbes and a set of bolt-on front lowrider racks.

I have a spork, and I'm not afraid to use it.

Did a fandom finally get me?

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 18:06:51 GMT

Or am I making hotroot and shrimp soup, a la Redwall's otters, out of coincidence?

Death by Dangerous Cycling

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:53:30 GMT

People have been asking me what I think about this. I think it's rubbish, and here is why:

The death rate is so vanishingly low that a law specializing in death by dangerous trousers is more urgently needed. Seriously, we have an accident category for them in A&E and everything.

The crime is already covered by manslaughter. Only a petrolhead would fail to spot that, because they have special super-lax and weakly applied laws to make them feel better about screwing up. Or maybe they have spotted it and are keeping stum in case they feel "the full force of the law" themselves. Imagine how people would drive if they expected a manslaughter charge for killing people?

It's a tribal sop to Clarkson Man, who feels aggrieved by fuel prices and such, and who likes to see those naughty cyclists kicked. This fits in with the current Hammond transport vibe, which is so petrolheaded that it looks like he wants to replace Hamster Hammond. That would make Cameron into Captain Slow, which is a pity because I like Captain Slow, but he is posh and they are all mates. Yes, your transport policy is being run by Top Gear.

Note that every discussion you have with anyone about this proposed law changes within a couple of sentences from death to red lights and chavs on the pavement. It's nothing to do with the issue. It's pure vacuous politics and it stinketh.

LEJOG: The Route!

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 18:55:57 GMT

I've had Land's End - John O'Groats on my list since I was about fourteen and first heard of it. Forty is a good time to do a bucket-list ride, and this three-week trip (some camping, some hostelling, some couch-surfing) is how I'm hoping to do it. Days are around 60 miles, with nothing centuriffic and a few shorties. There are rest days in there too, though "rest" and "beer" may be cognate in this context. The deviations from the CTC's standard route make for a total of about a thousand miles.

Land's End - Wadebridge (up the north coast - gorgeous but tough - with chuffy, baggy and cider)
Wadebridge - Crediton (coastal to Bude, then pause via home)
Crediton - Glastonbury (you can't keep a good hippy down; the chuffbag sabot is fired off home now)
Glastonbury - Bristol (a short day, and hopefully a hookup and some ales)
Bristol - Cinderford (I've always wanted to ride the Severn Bridge; hope to avoid Monmouth)
Cinderford - Clun (if I can get away from being Mum-fed)
Clun - Chester (possibly with forum rider types)
Chester - Preston (goin' north)
Preston - Kendal (lumps!)
Kendal - Keswick (short detour to the Lakes; rest day and a paddle)
Keswick - Kielder Water (water is a theme, isn't it?)
Kielder Water - Edinburgh (this and yesterday could be quite the hack; pick up ravenbait , frood and ales)
Edinburgh - Crainlairach (picking up the CTC bikepacker route)
Crainlarach - Glencoe (Scotland is big. Really big. )
Glencoe - Loch Ness (More lakeside camping, plus monster. ME! )
Loch Ness - Carbisdale Castle (they'll probably repel the English)
Carbisdale Castle - Tongue (made up name, surely?)
Tongue - John O'Groats (groaty john got groats on his head!)

I'm fizzing with apprehension and excitement in equal proportion, which is probably about right.

The power! Oh, the limitless power!

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 22:28:10 GMT

I'm a gadget queen so I had to work out something to keep my kit going during my upcoming extended cycle tour. Now, there's a lot of dynohub-and-battery-charger arrangements coming to market, but I lack the dynohub and don't want to tie stuff to one bike (or any bike). Solar is the obvious candidate, and most of the commercial "backpacking solar" is expensive and rather underpowered. Here's what I settled on:

An Extreme USB smart charger, which will charge up 4 AAs (and AAAs) from USB or mains power and will drain those batteries to charge USB devices. Since I'm standardized on AAs, this ticks all my boxes. 4 full AAs will feed a phone more than twice over, and in case of emergency, disposable batteries can be used to feed the phone too.

A stack of Vapex AA NIMH batteries. At 2900 mAH, they're more capacity for half the price of rechargeable Energizers. They even come with little cases, bless. They are fat little buggers though, and they jam in tight torch barrels.

And a Voltaic Systems 2w 6v solar cell from Adafruit (yes, the geeks on the cover of the latest Wired, home of the Mintyboost and the SpokePOV (one day) and other nerdy goodness). Output peaks at 330mW, and the panel is vanishingly light and weatherproof.

By sweet serendipity the charger is tolerant of a range of inputs: it kicks in weakly in low cloudy gloom and rages away when south-facing at just the right angle at noon. The panel's output plug even matches the charger's input! Plans were afoot to molish a fancy-pants regulator-and-low-light-boost, but this Just Works. So the solar cell goes under the clear map-trap in the handlebar bag, the charger lurks inside somewhere, and Robert is your mother's brother.

I think, for about the price of a big Powermonkey, I've got about half as much electrickery and a lot more flexibility. Stay tuned to mock this prognostication in late May when I get back!

Passing Bristol

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:17:30 GMT

My big ride takes me past the Bristol massive. Tuesday 3rd May I'm coming from Glastonbury to Bristol; Wednesday 4th I'm going over the Bridge to the folks in the Forest of Dean. If anyone fancies riding along with, gimme a shout (or maybe an evening roll up the Bath Path? or other random pub-related locations?). My speed at all times will be... sedate.

Sturgeon's Law vs. Infinite Monkeys

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 20:24:10 GMT

Famously, Sturgeon's Law says that 90% of everything is crap. It's pretty much true. It too is crap: not because it is wrong, but because it is irrelevant.

Sturgeon extrapolated from his personal experience as a sci-fi author back in the days of paper books, and yes, there's a lot of really crap pulp in that field. It doesn't take much cynicism to extrapolate it to the rest of the world: most gadgets are crap, most food is crap, most politics is crap, and so on.

But that only applies in a resource-scarce environment. Now behold the Infinite, my cynical reader. It's not got better (90% of twitpics are photos of your lunch), but it's got so impossibly massive that whatever you think is great, there's more of it than you can possibly consume. An infinite library has infinite awesomeness: it just needs to be tapped. Of course, 90% of tapping methods are crap, but personal recommendations are usually weighted pretty well, which is why I'll read a retweeted webcomic and usually like it and catass my weekend away reading all the catch-up.

The infinite monkeys win, because any percentage of infinite is infinite, and I only need a hundred years of good stuff before I die.

(Yes, this post is an excuse for doing nothing on a lovely day, thinly veiled as singularitarian Better Than Life propaganda. But you should read Jesus Christ: In The Name Of The Gun. There are far too many HFS needle-peggers for me to spoil it. Go. Read. See? Told you.)

As a postscript, I have real trouble mourning libraries when they are so obviously obsolete. There, I've said it. I loved libraries too. I have a penny farthing bike. It's a lousy ride.

AV (uh-oh, politics)

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:50:57 GMT

So, Westminster and this AV lark. I'm all for it. I'd be more for full-on PR, but AV will do for now.

The arguments for AV? Mainly that it gives a fairer representation of the will of the electorate, which is, after all, the point of having an election in the first place.

First-past-the-post, the existing system, is simple and traditional and... um. That's about it.

"But we'll end up with more coalitions!" isn't a mature objection: objecting to all coalitions because you don't like this one is like objecting to a baker's because you don't like one particular cake. I don't like the current coalition. People say coalitions never do anything, they just stall and bicker: well, this one sure is doing stuff. Stuff I dislike, but stuff. The "AV = coalitions = stagnation" argument is false.

"But the nutters will get in!" well, yes, but your thin wedge of sanity is my nutter; for every Green there's an Nazi and that's just the way fringes are. People hold fringe opinions. Those opinions deserve representation no less than the mainstream. Remember, we're electing MPs, not gods, and they are still beholden to the expert-steered beasts of the Committees. Plus, I like the idea that the minority communities have more power: I'm not too scared of a Burnley bigot to empower the various immigrants and happy mutants we cherish.

"But AV isn't proper PR!" No, it's not, but it's better than nothing. Don't think you'll have another shot at this in a couple of years -- this will be the one chance we have at fundamental system change. Once we get AV, there is precedent for change and the thing can be tuned. First, get away from FPTP.

So I'm for AV. Here endeth the pol-blog.

Medicine, Art and an Ork Bierkeller

andyg@ravenfamily.org — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:11:59 GMT

“I want to print bones of animals that never existed!” - et voila, bonemeal and binder and that's the sort of thing artists do. Expect weird beauty over the coming months: fingery ribcages cradling pseudo-ossified impossible hearts and teratological ocarinas.

Now add the food printing from a couple of weeks ago, and load it with doner meat. They haven't done meat yet, but that's only because they have taste and decency.

Now, at last, I can realize the bar-fight scene from a uni Shadowrun game: an underground bierkeller full of orks and trolls, weird meat on the bone, vile beers, and bones hurled at the band (and the player-party) before breaking into a brawl. Future: You are mine!