June 28th, 2009

Just got back from the Dartmoor Classic 100km cyclosportive event. I got a time of 4:17 which is good enough for a gold medal, so that’s alright then. Looks like all that commuting over the hills definitely paid off. Feel a bit tired now, but getting up at 6am can’t help.

The event is now one of the largest of its kind in the UK. It’s very well organised and staffed. I had feared a long wait for registration but they were entirely on top of things.There were marshals at almost every junction round the route, controlling the traffic with enormous red flags and pointing us cyclists in the right direction. Well done to all of them.

The weather was just about ideal: overcast and cool with a refreshing shower near the end. I gather that last year it was a stifling 30 degrees!

Tags: cyclosportive, Devon
Posted in cycle | 1 Comment »

May 6th, 2009

It was dry when I set off on my commute #4 from Ashburton to Hexworthy. By the time I had accelerated down the slope (behind those trees) to the tight bend at the East end of Venford Reservoir, it was drizzling and the road was greasy. By the time I’d careened round the bend onto the bridge across the reservoir, there was a car in just the right place for the wrong outcome. There was no road left to maneuver in, no time to do it and no grip to do it with. I had no choice but to leap from my bike and stop the car using just my forehead before it had a chance to run over my precious bike. Actually to save any damage to my helmet, it was more of a face-but than a head-but. It stopped the car, but I lost points for style.

I think that was when I said: “Ow!” and other simple terms of exclamation. I promptly re-assumed an upright posture and proceeded to a) apologise for hitting her car with my face and b) insist that I was perfectly capable of going on my merry way despite the new hole in my forehead, the blood dripping from my eyebrow and the jaunty angle at which my right shifter now hung from the drops which no longer pointed quite the same way as the forks.

Fortunately the motorist whose evening I was doing a good job of ruining was far too together to listen to my blathering. So while I inspected the front of her car and ran through my denial checklist again, she bundled the bike and then me into said car and off we went to find a professional who knows what to do about an unexpected hole in the head.

Cutting a long A&E story short, I ended up with two layers of deep sutures followed by seven ‘ordinary’ stitches ontop. Oh and a bit of glue aswell. That’ll teach me to slow down on the bends, hopefully.

Tags: bike, commute, crash
Posted in cycle, funny, stupid | No Comments »

April 10th, 2009

We’ve just spent the whole day assembling this giant Meccano kit for Parents. There’s pre-drilled aluminium tubes, numerous and varied plastic couplings, webbing, bendy poles, a slide, a big bag of nuts and an even bigger bag of bolts. The instructions were good if seemingly unending and a grand day was spent by all, assembling, disassembling and reassembling until everything had been well and truly assembled.

Actually it’s not really Meccano but an Action Stations - Optima from http://www.supertrampdirect.co.uk. Not only a British manufacturer but in Devon too, so that’s local produce for us. I have to say I’m very satisfied by the quality of the parts. The plastic mouldings are to a high standard as is the slide. The sewn parts are also very strongly made. Packaging and instructions nicely done too.

There’s nothing difficult about assembling this kit, though it does take quite a while! It’s a good thing that Super Tramp include two very adequate ratchet spanners because there’s a whole lot of bolts to fit — but this is the price for a very solid structure.

I’d have no fear of half a dozen screaming urchins dangling off this frame without doing it any harm whatsoever. I’d be standing at the other end of the garden though.

Tags: Meccano
Posted in garden | No Comments »

April 6th, 2009

A colleage has just introduced me to this terrific site: bikeroutetoaster.com. It’s a free application using Google maps with which you can very quickly draw up a cycle route. The auto-routing is geared toward finding a good route, based on maximising speed or minimising distance and optionally avoiding main roads. The summary view shows a nice elevation chart along with total distance, total climb etc and an estimated trip time. If you have a Garmin gadget then you can download the route data for it. Finally the cue sheet page gives you turn-by-turn instructions.

This is just what I’ve been after. Now I might be able to estimate how many miles I’ve ridden since New Bike.

Tags: cycle, Google, map
Posted in cycle | No Comments »

December 6th, 2008

A couple of weeks ago, Dad called me to tell me that the cat has just helped him to pour a mug of tea over the keyboard of his Lenovo, and now neither he nor the cat could switch it on. As you know, PCs don’t drink tea, not even after a traumatic Christmas shopping trip. They really, really don’t like it, thank you very much. No not coffee either thanks. No really I’m just fine with the juice. If there’s nothing DC then anything AC would be great…

So PC revival procedures began. As per my instructions, Dad took the covers off the back and left the PC ontop of the Esse (other stoves are available) for a few days. No joy. Popped into a low, fan-assisted oven for a day. No joy. Wafted a hair dryer over it for I don’t know how long. No joy. Sent it to Lenovo who declared it in need of a new motherboard and hard drive. Zero joy there.

So eventually this ‘dead’ PC came to me: can I get the data off the drive? Well, I thought it was worth a final go at drying it out, so I removed all the panels, DVD drive, hard drive, battery and keyboard, popped it onto the back of the Aga and waited. After a day, no joy, but after two days, deep joy: it boots! So it just goes to show: an Aga dries the laptop parts that other stoves can’t reach.

Steve’s PC Liquid Spill Recovery Procedure

1. Panic. Immediately put your finger on the power button and keep it there. While you’re doing that, rip the charger lead out if it’s connected. And while you’re doing that, invert the PC to limit the ingress of the liquid into the PC’s innards. At this point the PC should be off, unpowered, dripping and probably upside down.
2. Take the battery out.
3. Remove everything that you can including drives, keyboard and panels. You want to enable as much air flow as possible. With the lid half open, pop the PC onto the Aga on its edge so that the hot air can flow up past all the apertures, taking the moisture with it. If you haven’t got an Aga, get one — they’re brilliant. Failing that, choose your preferred stove or other hot, dry place.
4. Relax. Now you will have to do some waiting, up to maybe three weeks. You won’t be able to resist trying to power up after a day or so. When nothing happens, don’t despair, just keep waiting.

Tags: aga, cat, hardware, howto, notebook
Posted in howto | No Comments »

November 17th, 2008

Point-to-Point wireless Ethernet bridges operating in the 2.5, 4.5, 5.4 and 5.8 GHz bands at speeds up to 300 Mbps.

Today I started a new job at Motorola in Ashburton. I’ll be working on the embedded software for point-to-point fixed wireless products like this one. It’s an all-in-one antenna, radio tranceiver and digital platform that lives up a mast or on the side of a building, with a singe CAT5e cable connection to carry data and provide power. A pair of these units can form a transparent, wireless ethernet bridge at up to 300Mbps data throughput even without line of sight, and across huge distances. For more information about Motorola point-to-point wireless bridges see the PTP web site.

Tags: ethernet, job, Motorola, wireless
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

November 8th, 2008

I recently noticed that the downstream bit-rate on my ADSL modem was fluctuating. This can happen because the noise on the copper pair between the house and the exchange can vary over time. There isn’t much you can do about that, but it is possible to somewhat influence the performance at the house end by reducing the length of the wire from the master socket to the modem, by using better quality wire and even by disconnecting the bell terminal at the master socket.

But before making any changes, I needed to be able to monitor the effects, so I thought this Muinin plug-in was in order. This plugin monitors the upstream and downstream bit-rates of my ZyXEL Prestige P-660HWP-D1 ADSL modem. I’m sure it’ll work with any Prestige modem. Here is an example plot.

Munin graph of modem bitrates from zyxel_prestige_adsl_chandata plugin

You can get the script here: http://ccgi.ambrosia.plus.com/debian/zyxel_prestige_adsl_chandata. See the documentation therein for set-up instructions.

You can see the bitrate drop twice during Friday evening. On Saturday morning I moved the modem from an extension socket to the master socket. Initial indications were that I had improved the downstream bitrate significantly. However by the evening you can see that it subsequently dropped back to a rate slightly lower than at the same time 24 hours earlier.

Tags: ADSL, modem, monitoring, munin
Posted in sysadmin | No Comments »

November 3rd, 2008

TWiki is a well established and popular open source wiki platform, of which there are many to choose from. I’ve used it for years and I like it a lot. I’d heard rumblings of a change at the project and I’ve just read a Slashdot article that gives a good summary of the recent goings on and their consequences. Unfortunately it seems that the sole owner of the TWiki trademark, Peter Thoeny, has found previously untapped commercial opportunites more compelling than the principles of the open source community that has built TWiki into what it is today. He has alienated most — if not all — of the development community and forced them to fork the code.

The new project hasn’t even named the successor to TWiki yet, so for now it’s being called nextwiki and is hosted at http://nextwiki.org/. Let’s wish the project every success in developing what I expect will be an even better wiki than ever.

Tags: opensource, twiki, wiki
Posted in opensource | No Comments »

October 16th, 2008

I’d heard about this effect before, but I hadn’t seen it for real. Well tonight we got a pretty good view of this halo effect around the moon. As the sunlight reflected from the moon passes through the clouds, hexagonal ice crystals refract it into a halo with a 22° radius and even a second one at 44°.

Here’s my attempt at a photograph of the effect. There are some prettier ones at http://www.lumis.com/pictures/Moon_Ring/.

Moon Rings over Horrabridge

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

October 13th, 2008

I’ve been found out. This is me. Though, I don’t think it was an EEG back then…

Tags: cartoon, dilbert, engineer
Posted in funny | No Comments »