sjh - mountain biking linux geek spice - mtb / linux / canberra / cycling / etc

Steven Hanley hackergotchi picture Steven
Hanley
About

email: sjh@svana.org

web: http://svana.org/sjh

Other online diaries:

Aaron Broughton,
Alison Russell,
Allan Bontjer,
Andrew Pollock,
Anthony Towns,
Chris Yeoh,
Jeremy Kerr,
Martijn van Oosterhout,
Michael Carden,
Michael Davies,
Michael Still,
Rusty Russell,
Tim Potter,
Tony Breeds,

Links:

Linux Weekly News,
XKCD,
Userfriendly,
Questionable Content,
Planet Linux Australia,
Bilbys,
CORC,

Canberra Weather: forecast, radar.

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planet sjh
(online feed aggrgator for all the diaries I read regularly)

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Fri, 29 Dec 2006

Wee Jasper on the road bikes - 11:27
In preparation for the Alpine Classic (to ensure it is comfortable to complete rather than painful) a bunch of us went for a "lovely"? long road ride from Canberra to Wee Jasper and back yesterday. Crash's recollection suggested it was fairly flat and around 70 KM each way, I guess this is almost accurate as there are no individual long sustained climbs, and it is about 74 KM each way from the start point at Deeks Drive. However if you take into account the extra 14 KM each way to and from home and the fact that added up there were 2300 metres of altitude gain during the ride the claim of it being flat and sort of easy becomes more dubious.

What the ride definitely showed me is I really need to do a lot of work in the next month to ensure I am ready to have a comfortable Alpine Classic, I do not have enough long road KM in my legs currently to do something like that without pain and extreme effort. The ride yesterday was however a lot of fun even though it was tough. We left at 9am (leaving home at 8:30am) and got back to Deeks around 5:30pm, at which point Ron had called his wife Annie for a pick up to avoid the last 15 KM home so I also got a lift home with them to leave the ride distance at around 160 KM for Ron and I.

Riders on the day were Simon, Crash, DeathMarch, Darryl, Ron, and I. Simon was as always very strong, Darryl appeared to be getting stronger as the day wore on also and DeathMarch did an astounding job of it considering he has only been riding again for a week now and has been mostly not riding for the last year. The hamburgers at Wee Jasper were indeed some of the best I can imagine ever tasting, as we told a local, we heard they were good so rode from Canberra for a hamburger. There were a few more sections of dirt road than I had thought, one I knew for sure was on Fairlight Rd before we hit Mountain Creek Road, then another I had forgotten on Mountain Creek road not long after we turned on to it. Then about 5 KM of dirt on the way down to Wee Jasper just before the fun final descent down to the township, apparently this used to be about 10 KM so it had improved already. As we were on road bikes with 23c tyres the dirt was somewhat tough at times, there were 4 or 5 punctures in the group (fortunately I did not get any) and the stutter bumps on the first section of dirt were rather pronounced and harsh.

The ride is highly recommended though, a lot of fun was had, it is a little unfortunate I forgot to tell Tony or Hugh about it, however they may have found it fairly tough.

[/mtb] link

Unexploded softdrink - 11:22
When I got home from a 160 KM road ride yesterday I put a bottle 1.25 L bottle of flavoured mineral water in the freezer to cool off while I drank a bottle already cold from the fridge. I subsequently forgot it was in the freezer until this morning. Just now I had a look to find it was in the freezer, solid, but unexploded, neato, the amount of soft drink, for whatever reason, did not cause the bottle to explode when it froze solid. Just goes to show absent mindedness is not always as bad as it could be.

[/various] link

Tue, 12 Dec 2006

Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 12:00
So no photos, and possibly not directly about milk cartons, though there is mention of printing information other than missing person details on milk cartons in this story. Kottke had a link to a news story about the US Dairy Industry Crushing an Innovator who tried to get around the entrenched milk price fixing system in the US.

Maybe it is because I am a West Wing junkie or maybe it is because it is just interesting to see some of the ins and outs of the system over there, but it is a fascinating read into US politics as they relate to milk (and subsequently milk cartons (to tie in with this post)).

It does definitely seem the various big companies in the US Dairy industry have a lot of money to throw around, thus I am not surprised the guy who owns milk.com is holding out for serious offers to buy the domain only and is otherwise happy to use it for his own purposes. Good on him.

[/various/milkcarton] link

Thu, 07 Dec 2006

Not worried about the scratches showing. - 14:39
So I competed in the AROC Brindabella Challenge Adventure race on Friday night last week with Andrew Rowe and Bruce Luckham, then yesterday afternoon I competed in the AROC corporate challenge with Danielle Winslow and Jeff Howell.

Both of those races were a heck of a lot of fun, short enough that it does not really hurt to get through them, a lot of interesting and different legs. In the Friday night race one of the checkpoints was at Jamison Pool and we had to go down the water slides three times in order to collect the control. The race yesterday had a few more of the novelty legs than most of the races, such as building a billy cart form parts in a pile on the ground and pushing a team mate around a track without them touching the ground or the billy cart collapsing.

As much fun as the long races such as 24 hour adventure races (Geo Half or the Full I guess) or similar are, they take a lot of time to commit to, these shorter races are easier and still a fantastic way to spend a few hours. Though there are side effects, because in a short race you want to move fast and wearing gaiters simply would not make sense (over heating, and really not much time spent scrub bashing), thus when you do a bit of scrub bashing you are likely to acquire new scratches on your lower legs.

People are used to my legs being scratched to heck, and it does not really matter what they look like, however outside just now I had to pull my socks up high and look all preppish so as to cover the bloodied scratches and stop flies congregating on my lower legs. At least I do not have to worry about what attire I can get away with if my legs are too scratched, Danielle was pondering if she could still wear a skirt to work after the race last night due to scratches. Though if I were pondering the choice of wearing a skirt to work there would be more significant things going on in my psyche than being worried about the odd scratch <g>.

[/mtb] link

Mon, 04 Dec 2006

I wonder where that email notification is - 18:28
Nice to know that the early bird registration for lca2007 I made will have a 10 day payment window once they inform everyone who registered for early bird by email that we can pay.

I wonder when they will contact people and tell them they can pay? Not everyone who has registered will read blogs, nor will they all be hitting reload on the conference website every few hours, it is nice to know we gave our email addresses with our registrations for a reason. At this rate I at least will not have to get my boss to enter credit card details until the 14th of December at the earliest....

Yes this post is somewhat tongue in cheek, however I am entirely convinced they need to honour their 10 day window from the time of notification by email.

[/lca] link

Singlespeed/Fixed Road bike, the new N+1 - 17:36

Single Speed/Fixed Road Bike (fullsize) 		Yet another N+1 happened on the weekend. In this case a single speed/fixed gear road bike. With the option of a freewheel on one side and fixed the other side of the back wheel.

I put a few photos and words about this bike up on a Fixie/Singlespeed Road bike page. I have not yet ridden it in fixed wheel mode, and I am not game to ride it around Cotter/Uriarra tomorrow morning, I will probably take it on the Bilbys Road ride on Wednesday morning though.

[/mtb/gear] link

Fri, 01 Dec 2006

Reasons to use quality patches. - 14:05
Generally I purchase tube patches for bicycle inner tubes in strips, the Cure-C-Cure weldtite brand patches that most shops here sell in strips for around AUD $2 or $3 for 6 (in various sizes).

Recently however I wanted to repair a few tubes sitting in my office (though I wonder why I bother these days when I can purchase 10 tubes or around AUD $30 from a number of places) and did not want to ride over to a bike shop, so I purchased a bunch of dodgy round orange and black patches from the on campus bike shop. No name standard looking patches.

Guess what, they really do not bond well, I did everything as I should, scouring the surface of the tube, applying a thin smear of glue to both surfaces, letting it almost dry, applying the patch and waiting for it to dry for over 24 hours (with some pressure on each patch point). I went to use two tubes I had repaired with the dodgy patches yesterday and both were leaking out the side of one of these rather large patches, obviously the patch rubber had not bonded properly with the tube rubber. Ahh well buy new tubes, toss these and remember to get and use quality patches next time.

[/mtb/gear] link

Tue, 28 Nov 2006

Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 15:26

Dutch Milk (fullsize) 		The milk is back, well actually the carton is back, there is no real proof that it currently contains milk. Who knows with the beer near by it may be a beer carton. (I leave it as an exercise for the viewer to work out which of the containers is more likely to contain which liquid under common circumstances).

[/various/milkcarton] link

Fri, 24 Nov 2006

Messed up fines - 12:15
My sister arrived last night in town on a Murrays bus from Sydney (it is my birthday today and she has come down to visit for a few days), about 10 minutes before I was due to pick her up off the bus I got an SMS saying she would be an hour late. Fine I thought, probably due to some traffic control issues on the Federal Highway near Collector where there were fires blocking the highway in the middle of the night on Wednesday night. However the fires were under control to the extent that traffic was not impeded, the reason for her bus being late was far more unusual.

The police were doing drug searches of all busses and trucks on the highway up near Goulburn, no idea why, maybe they had a tip off, or maybe they just wanted to use police resources there for some reason. Anyway the drug dogs sniffed around the luggage and all the passengers on the bus which took a while. The messed up part is what happened to one German backpacker. Jane mentioned the dogs had singled him out for some reason, so the police questioned him for a while. However in the end he did not have any drugs or evidence of drugs on his person or in his luggage. However they found a swiss army knife in his luggage (carry on luggage) and gave him a spot fine of AUD $550 for that and confiscated the knife.

So apparently the terms and conditions on the ticket may have some clause about no concealed weapons to be carried on your person, though it is not possible to find this anywhere on the Murrays website, the terms and conditions on purchasing a ticket make no mention of such clauses, it may simply be in some public transport law the police claim to be adhering to.

I personally think it is somewhat dodgy to fine someone and confiscate possessions, sure there may be some good reason the Police dogs went for this guy, however with no way to convict him on the spot it is a bit rough to fine him for someone I am fairly sure no one has ever mentioned or warned about. Really this is not air travel, have you ever been told upon getting on a bus that you need to stow all weapons or similar items in the baggage hold?

[/various] link

Thu, 23 Nov 2006

I wish I had thought of it - 23:05
A friend wore a fantastic outfit at the recent Australian Single Speed mountain bike champs, I only wish I had thought to wear such a great outfit before him, I simply can not help laughing every time I look at the photo.

The slightly strange thing is the race was not even held in Victoria so the outfit was not even as expected as these guys at gravity.

[/mtb] link

Fri, 17 Nov 2006

Mark's Guide and Cool Tools - 21:42
BoingBoing had a link to a pdf file Uncle Mark's Guide which is a pretty wicked one recommendation per category style gift guide. In it I found a link to Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools which is indeed very good reading, similar style of things, all manner of well thought out recommendations for stuff. In both these guides I have already seen a number of great gift ideas for people I know.

[/various] link

But Brain, how exactly to the 1428 pair of rubber pants fit into the plan? - 19:39
It is always fun to see interesting science and other stuff (well duh I here you say), for example this week the real Air Guitar at CSIRO. Though I was wondering about uses in detecting mountain bikers form while riding through tracks or on downhill, and then being able to tell the differences in minute body movements between different riders. I have to agree that sort of application is a lot less sexy than playing an air guitar for real.

Then there was the report on BBC with physicists claiming they will be able make useable wireless power transfer mechanisms using resonance of materials in the radio or similar level frequencies. The claim is rather light on actual references or details of the research, however it sounds interesting, it would seriously rock to be able to use a laptop inside the office or at home or at cafes and have power and network coming through the air. Lets hope this is actually for real.

Then more of the purely cool research, the scientists mentioned on an ABC Australia news story that got dolphins to sing the Batman theme tune. The good news here is at least they are not singing "So Long and Thanks For All the Fish" I guess.

The ABC is often a source of good stories (humourous or otherwise) such as the story about teaching pandas to mate by playing them porn videos, obviously in the hopes they will emulate the the behaviour on the screen, they must be hoping these pandas are not the type to rock up to the Sydney Mardi Gras with a ready supply of rubber clothing. Lets hope the Pandas do get it going to the bow wow wacka wacka beats.

[/various] link

Mon, 13 Nov 2006

Good consistency where Gravity happens. - 14:58
In this case I am referring to the Gravity 12 hour mountain bike race held at Rosewhite in Victoria every November rather than the Scientific property of matter. This year I teamed up with Gail and Alex, we had a great time at the race. The course was dry, I did not overheat, all worked out well.

I have photos and a few words up on my 2006 Gravity 12 Hour Mountain Bike Race page. As for consistency, I was happy with my performance, being able to do 6 laps with the following lap times: 37:54, 37:33, 37:20, 37:13, 37:36 and 41:48 around the 12.3 KM slightly hilly lap.

[/mtb/events] link

Thu, 09 Nov 2006

Geek mountain bike humour - 13:10
It was not a particularly funny joke to begin with, but I will share it anyway. There is a tradition of Garden Gnomes appearing on pine forest single track in Canberra where the 24 hour race is held. They used to be on Kowalski and Son of Kowalski in Greenhills near Stromlo. More recently there have been Gnomes and some other decorations track side at the Kowen 24 Hour course. When Tony, Mikey and I were doing a lap the other day there were still some Gnomes that had survived the 24 hour race out on the tracks.

However some of the Gnomes were broken a bit, probably having been hit by riders a little bit off line as they went past. My suggestion as to the cause of the broken Gnome was that someone had committed some bad untested code into CVS.

[/various] link

Mon, 06 Nov 2006

Another what I ate for weekend lunch style post - 16:46
Except that this contains no mention of food products.

This weekend Lina and I competed in the ACTRA Spring 12 Hour Rogaine on Saturday. Held in Deua National Park out beyond Tallaganda. We both had a lot of fun, and I think we both improved our rogaine and navigation skills somewhat which is definitely on my must work in improving list (day and night foot navigation). With the benefit of hindsight, and a look at the controls Tom, Al and Karl collected in the 6 hour event (getting a higher score than we did in 12 hours) I can see a bunch of better routes we could have done, but it was fun anyway.

The rogaine finished at 11pm on Saturday night, it would have been lovely to camp out at the hash house with most of the other competitors and come back to Canberra on Sunday morning. However I had to be back for a kayaking/paddling course on Sunday morning, so we left after a good post event feed and the presentation ceremony. On the drive back, while still on a dirt road between Cooma and Braidwood before turning off toward Captains Flat. I wondered why the rear of the car seemed to be influencing the steering strangely, it got really wobbly and was not handling right at all, so I pulled up to a stop, got out and found the flat rear drivers side tyre. It was around 1am when this happened, it explained the handling, I had obviously been driving for around 1 or 2 KM with it in this state as the tyre was now shredded. Fortunately the spare in the boot was ready and it took about 15 minutes to change, the most surprising thing is that it happened at all. I have never had a flat in this car before, and from what I can tell flat tyres are remarkably rare in cars now days.

So after getting to sleep just before 3am I had to be up at around 7:50am in order to make it to a Kayaking/Paddling course I am doing for the next two months (Sunday mornings and Wednesday afternoons) being run by the Burley Griffin Canoe Club. Julie suggested this course to me as it will give me proper coaching in improving my technique, balance and all round capabilities in the kayak, something I think I need to do for the purposes of being able to do adventure races more comfortably. Then Sunday afternoon I went for a mountain bike ride with Tony and Mikey around the 2006 Australian 24 Hour race course as I had not had a chance to ride a lap of this year's course yet, and Tony and Mikey were both keen on having a mountain bike ride somewhere.

That was the weekend (see told you it was a boring post), next weekend is the Gravity 12 Hour mountain bike race down in Victoria, should be fun.

[/various] link

Thu, 02 Nov 2006

Apparently Rocky Mountain Element bikes will break if you have low shock pressure. - 16:40
So I have updated my Rocky Mountain Element page with details of what has been happening since the frame broke 2 weeks ago. Anyway due to the pressure in the shock being lower than their recommended pressure Advance Traders have rejected the warranty claim. The rest of this post is simply the stuff I wrote at the start of my page linked to above.

So as stated below my Rocky Mountain Element 50 Dual Suspension frame broke while out riding on Friday morning 2006-10-20. As the frame snapped just below the shock mount I just looked at and though, ahh well something was wrong there, they will replace it under warranty. The warranty says 5 years for dual suspension frames. Of course it also says under what is not covered "B.Consequential damage or any damage caused by accident, misuse or abuse." and "C.Improper assembly and/or lack of proper maintenance," and there is the other clause that the majority of bicycle manufacturers seem to place in their warranty now days under What will void your warranty "A.Competition racing".

Anyway as you may suspect this is leading up to the Australian Importer of Rocky Mountain (Advance Traders) have rejected the warranty claim, Rocky Mountain are standing by the call Advance Traders have made. Their reason for rejecting the warranty claim is that the shock pressure was too low when it was bought into the store. I have been running the shock at 150 psi since I bought the bike. I can not remember exactly why I chose this pressure, though mostly it was from riding it, looking at how much it sagged, checking to ensure the shock was not bottoming out while riding (tie a zip tie around the shock shaft) and setting it to the pressure that seemed to give about 1 inch sag and felt comfortable.

Rocky Mountain have since said the pressure should have been around 190 psi for someone my weight. However I am trying to work out why a low pressure in the shock would cause the frame to break. What Advance had to say on this was somewhat hard to interpret.

You are correct in saying that a standard triangle frame should not break in the middle of the tube, which would probably be a sufficient point if the bike were a hardtail. But, because you have a moving rear end, it's highly likely that excess force (due to heavy impact and / or undersprung shock) through a certain area will cause the problem you have experienced. "The key to it's design is that it doesn't rely on the shock as a structural component of the suspension." (Rocky Mountain 2004 catalogue - Element - Design). If the shock were a structural part of the design I would expect the shaft of the shock to bear the brunt of the force and bend, or the shock bolts to do the same instead of the force being transmitted through the frame.

So they do not even answer my query as to why a low shock pressure will cause the break, it seems they suggest it is highly unlikely to cause the problem I have experienced with a moving rear end. I have asked in my email why the low shock pressure would cause the break. There is nothing in the warranty or owners manual suggesting the frame is in grave danger of breaking with low pressure in the shock. Also the claim made that the warranty guy at rocky mountain has never seen a frame break there before, I think would suggest there must have been something wrong with this specific frame.

The price they have offered a replacement front triangle to me is AUD $750, however I still do not understand why the low shock pressure is being used as a reason for rejecting my warranty claim. Anyway links to parts of this page are at the top to make it easier to see different things I have written about here.

I am not an engineer so I am waiting for some feedback from friends who are to see what someone who knows about this stuff would say on the issue. It is interesting to note that no onw from either the importer or Rocky Mountain have looked at the frame or seen it themselves. They are basing the rejection on photos I took and on asking the bike shop I some questions about it.

[/mtb/gear] link

Wed, 01 Nov 2006

Kernel command line for environment variables - 14:56
So installing a debian based system from a network boot server, ie plug in a computer to the network and the debian installer appears (or similar, in this case it is actually ubuntu). Trying to work out how to ensure a proxy would be used for fetching all the files downloaded during an install (debian Packages files, .deb's, etc). The default d-i can still ask you for a proxy, however this one we are using did not.

I remembered reading something somewhere about setting the proxy environment variable on the kernel command line that d-i would then be able to use. I can find no documentation about this with respect to d-i. However it seems to work correctly by putting append="http_proxy=blah" into the correct pxe boot file. AJ pointed out it is a kernel feature that allows variables entered in such a way to be passed to init (this is sort of hinted at in the kernel Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt file, though not made clear). Anyway because d-i uses wget (and even when it gets to apt, apt understands the same variable) to fetch files this works correctly.

[/comp/linux] link

Mon, 30 Oct 2006

Interesting lyrics from another pianist. - 10:25
One of my house mates had a cd playing the other day with a really great sounding voice coming out of it. I asked who it was and was given a name I had not heard of, Regina Spektor who apparently is part of the Anti Folk scene (what ever the heck that means).

Regina has a really fascinating voice and ways of using her voice, bouncing around the spectrum a lot and really using it as a central instrument, then to the lyrics in a lot of her songs are fascinating. Full of jokes, literary references or just strange ideas and imagery. I guess I can see where the Anti Folk label may come from with the poking fun at herself and her music and many other targets.

Anyway I have to say I am hooked. I say "from another pianist" above largely due to th fact Missy Higgins is a pianist and good lyricist. As for the fun and interesting lyrics from Regina Spektor this is a good example: 

And then i fill the sink to the top with bubbles of soap
And then i set all the bottle caps i own afloat
And it's the greatest voyage in the history of plastic
Music Box - Regina Spektor

[/leisure/music] link

Thu, 26 Oct 2006

50 people listening to someone talk about slugs - 20:29
The title is somewhat arbitrary to the content, but it is true, I am in a room with 50 people listening to a talk about slugs, and this is a Linux related thing not a biology conference or something. Heck Mikal even has us laughing. Though he just ruined the myth about running everything as root by using sudo many times to access root. There is still no firewall at least so all of our world views have not been shattered

Of course talking for an hour or so about slug's is possibly an unusual approach to holding the interest of an audience, I wonder what other unusual ways you could hold he interest of an audience. One that I liked the other day, though it only holds the interest for a few seconds per story were a bunch of 6 word creative works.

The blurb goes "Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves." This is at wired, they asked a bunch of famous people, mostly authors for 6 word stories.

As is often the case, Joss rocks with his story "Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. - Joss Whedon", interestingly as Jane pointed out when I passed the link on to her, you can actually get a good idea of the Author's specific style and preoccupations even from their 6 word stories. Such as Cory Doctrow and Neil Gaiman.

Considering NaNoWriMo is on next month, you could do that, or if you are not up to writing 5000 words of one story a day for a month, maybe try 833 6 word stories a day with 833 different plots.

[/various] link

Julie, Tom and Al Bundy stories - 16:12
The title refers to Julie Quinn, Tom Landon-Smith and Alina McMaster. I was thinking about this the other day, in the vein of the Floyd Stories there are stories around the place of that nature concerning people I know. I am sure others among you who know mad keen fit people have the odd story about them that astounds or confounds others upon the telling of.

What got me thinking of writing something about this was reading some of the reader contributed stories on Fat Cyclist, such as this recent story about a really hard bunch ride. I have not had much in the way of attempts at humour or simply interesting and fun stories on here recently so here are a few.

Julie is good at getting out and doing big endurance efforts, she won the 2006 World Rogaine Championships in the womens Category 2 weeks ago, 12th overall too. Julie has been a world rogaine champion for the 4 years now and will be for 2 more now, having won womens in Czechoslovakia in 2002, then winning the mixed category in Arizona USA in 2004 and now Womens again in NSW Australia in 2006. Also Julie competes in the Triple Tri solo and last year stormed through faster than all but one of the male solos, she even appeared to be catching the male solo winner last year near the end of the race.

So my Julie story for today is about the time she went out for a 30 KM training run in her build up to a solo Triple Tri. Most of us mere mortals look at the 30 KM and Training run in one sentence and are already scared of the effort involved. On this run however Julie just happened to go a different way and accidentally ended up doing a 50 KM training run that Sunday morning. How the do you accidentally do a 50 KM training run I wonder? Do you trip, almost fall, stumble a bit and suddenly realise you did an extra 20KM of running without noticing?

Alina and Tom are the core of the AROC adventure racing team, by far the most successful and capable adventure racing team from Australia. They have won the last two XPD races, finished second and were on the way to a good place the following year in Primal Quest in the US in the past few years, they also take out sprint distance adventure races around the place and have won every Geoquest they have entered as AROC. So tough and fast people both of them.

My Al Bundy store for the day is about her solo win in the Triple Tri 2 years ago, AROC had done a race in south east asia somewhere about a month before the triple tri and Alina had a fall or something and suffered an injury, a crack in a vertebra in her lower back. So with limited leg movement, some pain when using her legs and the suggestion probably being made to rest up and let it heal she entered the Triple Tri anyway, completed it solo in around 14 hours and was unable to even feel her legs at the end of it. Far tougher than the rest of us weak and wussy mortals.

As for Tom, this is a recent story. Tom and Al have recently moved out of town to a property in an area called Bywong, this is around 30 KM from Kowen Forest where the Australian 24 Hour Mountain Bike Championships were recently held. Tom and Al were both competing in the race, Tom was in a 4 person all male team, so he would be doing 5 or 6 laps in the 24 hour period probably at reasonable pace. Al rocked up to the site with gear for their camp, when someone asked where Tom was she responded, oh he wanted to run here. He had decided to do a 30 KM run to get to the start of a 24 hour race he was competing in. As anyone would do I am sure... and this was from a man who often claims he hates training and loves the fact there are so many races on every weekend, he never has to train and can just race all the time. Obviously the 30 KM run was a warm up for the 24 hour race, quite a different perspective from most of the competitors who complain the 700 metre run they have to do to get to their bikes at the start is too long.

I wonder how many other stores there are around about the people I hang out with all the time, hopefully lots more I can find.

[/mtb] link

Fri, 20 Oct 2006

Broke my Rocky Mountain Element 50 Dual Suspension mountain bike frame - 11:14

The whole bike with the break visible below the rear shock (full size)

The break on the left hand side. (full size)

The break from the front. (full size)

The break on the right hand side. (full size) 		So the Friday morning ride was in Majura pines this morning, fun and all with around 10 people on the ride, then we returned to the Purple Pickle for breakfast, as we crossed the road into the university (Barry Drive) I bunny hopped up a gutter and heard a crack sound. Odd I thought, the gears on the front shifter went funny at the same time, I looked down and could not see missing gears or bike bits so rolled on the next 200 metres to the cafe and sat down for coffee and breakfast.

When I got back on the bike to ride the 1.5 KM to home I noticed the front shifter was still playing up and I heard an odd grating sound when I stood up out of the saddle. I got off the bike and had a look, this is of course when I notice the seat tube is snapped clean thorough just below the shock mount.

So yeah I have just broken another frame, somewhat inconvenient as I now will be riding an aluminium hardtail until my pink steel HT has been welded up. Lets hope the rocky mountain distributors can get this fixed quickly.

I bought this bike at the beginning of April 2004 so it has lasted around 2.5 years until this break. But yes it is alas true my my rocky mountain element duallie has broken.

[/mtb/gear] link

Mon, 16 Oct 2006

A hard pink life - 11:53

The frame stripped of components, has had a hard life (full size)

The crack on the left hand side. (full size)

The crack on the right hand side (full size) 		As I mentioned recently my Bender Bicycles pink steel hard tail mountain bike frame has a few cracks that need fixing. As can be seen on the left here. On the whole the frame marked from a hard year and a half of riding, I guess I have ridden a lot in the past year and a half. I strongly suspect I will need to get the frame sand blasted and resprayed again simply to stop it looking quite so trashed.

I still love the paint job and colour, however the fix will need to be covered with a different colour anyway. And the frame does have chips and scratches and missing paint and the like all over it. Yet another reason to avoid Carbon Fibre mountain bikes I reckon, the majority of this is caused by rocks or other things hitting the frame while riding. Steel (and other metals) fortunately are not known to fail catastrophically after a single impact with a big rock launched at the frame by the front wheel.

[/mtb/gear] link

Wed, 11 Oct 2006

Tear some teeth off - 15:47

Some miche sprockets missing teeth (full size) 		So on Saturday Sep 30 during the Bilbys road ride I noticed one of my gears was skipping a bit on the road bike. No idea why I rode on and avoided that gear, the following morning during my ride out to Corin dam I actually had a look at the cluster and noticed I had at some point ripped some teeth off the middle sprocket on the cluster.

I bought this cluster last year, campag fit for use with the new wheels I purchased then. The cassette is a Miche custom sized (11-28 9 speed) which gives me just a little bit of an easier time up hills. One advantage, at least right now, with Miche clusters is each sprocket is separate, thus I was able to pull the above to sprockets off (the totally trashed 17 tooth one and the 19 tooth sprocket missing one tooth).

Obviously I just do not know my own strength <g>

[/mtb/gear] link

Tue, 10 Oct 2006

Laziness as an artform - 19:05
I guess this is kind of like Linus' quote about backups ("Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)") but I prefer to refer to it as a form of laziness.

I notice I was being somewhat pathetic writing my last diary post when I wanted the link to my painted pink steel hardtail and could not remember the link off the top off my head, so rather than clicking on my home page and following the links to find it I went to google and typed "bender bicycles" as I knew I was in the top one or two links for that search term. Of course the pathetic part is also that I knew that search term had that ranking.

[/various] link

Getting into a bit of a weight weenie project. - 18:51

My new Rock Shox Reba forks (full size) 		For a while I have been thinking my hard tail could use a bit of a diet. The forks on there are bottom of the range Air/Oil Marzocchi MX Comp forks, kind of heavy. The front wheel is definitely heavier than need be, the rear can be made lighter. I have a very heavy rear tyre on currently also. A few other bits could be lightened.

The online store Torpedo7 has for a while been selling Rock Shox Reba SL forks for either AUD $419 or AUD $499 (depending on the week, phase of the moon, etc) either price is damn low compared to the AUST RRP of $749, so I bought a pair which arrived today. The same shop has been selling the top of the line SRAM PG 991 cluster for about half the RRP and the cluster is seriously about half the weight of most other clusters (including the next model down from SRAM) so I bought one of them the other week also.

Soon I should have some hubs arriving which are almost as light as DT Swiss 240's though no where near as expensive so I can build up a pair of light wheels and not spend too much money doing so. I plan to run Stans No Tubes on the wheels to keep weight down (and add a lack of many flats).

Somewhat unfortunately my pink hard tail frame has developed some cracks, one each side of the seat tube/top tube junction. I will need to strip the frame and return it to Wayne Kotzur for a fix (and alas I will thus have some other colour around the fix at that point on the frame). I am planning to throw all the bits back on my Giant Team XtC alloy frame, which though I do not like riding it if I have steel available it is a seriously light frame. It may be a novelty to have a really light mountain bike for once, I plan to use that bike in the triple tri this year, the lack of weight will really help in the hike a bike sections.

[/mtb/gear] link

Mon, 09 Oct 2006

The Scott Australian 24 Hour race is done and dusted - 20:42
What used to be the Mont 24 Hour Race was this year known as the Scott Australian 24 Hour Mountain Bike Race, though I have competed in this event previously, last year, and now this year also I was CORC's Site Manager for the event. (largely because as the CORC vice president I feel somewhat guilty if I do not help out a lot with the club's premier event).

Anyway as I mention in the title the event is done and dusted. The term dusted applies rather literally this year as it was the dustiest 24 hour race we have had yet, there were many people wearing dust masks, all people, tents, bikes, everything else out there was coated liberally with dust even at the beginning, by the end of the race there was a lot more dust everywhere. We had the biggest 24 hour mountain bike race in the world again, with 3031 riders entered, around 180 solo entrants, by the end of the race over 11,000 laps had been ridden which is about 241,000 KM (6 times around the circumference of the earth).

Russ had the preliminary results up yesterday afternoon before he and I had even finished packing up the stuff we had to get packed last night. A big thanks to all the volunteers out there who helped us run the race, and to all the riders I hope you all had a fantastic time and are already thinking up plans to come back. Next year we return to Stromlo on a brand new course almost in the centre of town.

[/mtb/events] link

Tue, 03 Oct 2006

Blog blog blog? Blog blog Blog Blog blog! - 19:31
Okay so the title is some load of trash, however it appears there are similarly strange sentences which may in fact parse.

Buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. is the example I saw today on Metafilter.

Though English is a silly language, I am glad to see other languages are similarly strange, for example the colloquial Swedish "Nallar nallar nallars nallar?" which translates to "Do teddy bears steal (other) teddy bears' teddy bears?"

Of note is that this is indeed a wikipedia page and not the Uncyclopedia Buffalo page.

[/various] link

A weekend with some silly rides. - 09:42
Unlike most years leading up to the 24 hour race, I had this long weekend free to do other stuff, such as ride bikes. So I decided to go ahead and ride a bike or two.

Saturday morning I headed out with the Bilbys road bunch for the long ride, a gentle undulating 100 KM out to Cotter, Pierces Creek, Tharwa, back through Point Hut and home through Tuggeranong. A few of the people on the ride turned off at Corin for some more climbing, however I had to get home in time for a mountain bike ride that afternoon, and I had some other Corin plans afoot.

Saturday afternoon JJJim, Crash, PaulC, lliB, Jaymz, Liam, Rosie, Alex, Terry and I met up at sparrow hill for a lap around the wonderful single track that as JJJim said, flows like oil (the viscosity of which was left as a question for the reader). Much fun was had even if I was feeling a little toasted, which did not really bode well for Sunday.

Sunday morning Liam wanted a road ride, as he had to be back by around 12:30am and I wanted to do Corin we had to leave early, thus no one else was at all interested in joining us for a 7am start on a Sunday. However we headed out to ride up Corin and down to the Dam (the road down is now open after being closed for 3 years). Thus another 125 KM with some climbing on the road bike, then instead of collapsing in a heap once I got home there was more.

After fighting off some cramps and drinking a 1.25 litre bottle of mineral water I was ready enough to head out for a lap of the new single track at Mt Stromlo with Liam, Rosie, Crash (tour guide barbie today), Dan and Tom. The single track there keeps getting better and better. After all of that however I ended up giving the 5/6 peaks ride on Monday morning a miss and had a day off. This morning doing Cotter/Uriarra I was not at all interested in riding fast and cruised round the 65KM loop at a nice relaxed pace.

[/mtb] link

Mon, 25 Sep 2006

Silva L1 and fixing a problem with it - 13:56

My Silva L1 Head Torch (full size)


One of the battery holders, the cut down knobs are visible (full size)

During Geoquest this year, Ian and Michelle were both using a Silva L1 head torch for all night time stuff (bike, foot, etc). This is a 3 W Luxeon Star based LED head torch that is powered by 4 AA cells. It may not be quite bright enough for tight single track as found in endurance mountain biking events, however for adventure racing it appears to be a damn fine light.

I was using a 1w Luxeon LED based head torch on foot and a 5w bar mounted light for bike sections during the race. My head torch was not powerful enough to really navigate with or spot controls and the batteries required for the 5w Nightstick were a pain to lug around. Ian and Michelle on the other hand had strong, focused, adequate light for everything we were doing. Thus I decided to buy myself one of these lights. Alina from AROC gave me a good deal on the (which they stock in the AROCShop) light and hey presto I have one to play with.

I put the Alkaline cells that came with it in and powered it up, rather bright indeed, so I went and purchased a bunch more rechargeable NiMH AA cells to use with it and thought all would be well. During the night rogaine last week I went to change batteries and to my dismay found they did not work (yes I know I should have tested before the event). I was worried that the light required 6v to work and the 4.8v from rechargeables was simply not going to be enough. I could find no details online or with the manuals that came with the light as to voltage requirements. Ian and Sarah who both own one of these lights however claimed they can use rechargeables with the light.

Sitting in my office talking to a colleague about it last week, he looked inside and tried putting the rechargeable batteries in. He noticed they did not appear to touch the contacts in one of the battery holders, looking at the battery, the OEM AA cells had longer nipples than the rechargeable cells. Looking inside the battery case there is a useless plastic knob sitting next to the contacts that juts out and holds the battery nipple away from the contact. So I got out a knife and sliced as much of the knobs away as I could (for some reason only one side of the other battery holder had this problem) and hey presto the rechargeable batteries work perfectly in the light after all.

It would be nice if Silva did not put the little plastic knobs there, however if anyone has a similar problem attempting to use rechargeable NiMH batteries in a Silva L1 have a look and be sure the nipples are touching the contacts.

[/mtb/gear] link

Thu, 21 Sep 2006

The shoe saga update, or my Imelda of the mtb shoe world impression - 22:05

new shoes front, Top older to the right (full size) 		The shoe cycling shoe saga continues, I bought myself a new pair of cycling shoes today. In the photo above I have all the cycling shoes I have owned since 1997. On the top right are the Lake brand shoes I bought in January 1997, top middle are the Shimano shoes I bought in September of 2002 when I finally realised the Lake shoes were beyond worn out. Top left are the Shimano M181B, which is effectively the 2006 model of the M180 shoe that I have had replaced under warranty a few times. I bought the M180 shoes in January of 2004 and have had them fail approximately every 4 to 8 months until I got the M181B shoes in November last year.

As I have had the M181B shoes for almost a year now I thought I should probably not claim warranty on them now, though they are failing in two places they probably should not so early in their life. Rather than claim warranty for a 4th time I have finally bought a new pair of shoes, hopefully these will last for a bit longer than the Shimano shoes do. The new pair of shoes pictured in front are the Specialized Comp MTB which have been getting a lot of positive reviews and word of mouth opinions in the last year.

As for the other shoes, I now have a pair of shoes (the M181B) that do not feel awful to wear so I can use them in wet weather or similar and finally do not mind the idea of throwing out my older cycling shoes at long last. The first pair of Shimano shoes (pictured middle) lasted for 15 or 16 months until they really needed replacing, the subsequent Shimano shoes have lasted mostly 4 to 6 months each, until finally this pair (top left) is starting to break down after around 9 or 10 months. I really hope the shoes last for a while, I hear from friends (two in particular who do in fact ride as often as I do) who have mountain bike shoes they purchased in 1996 or so still going strong and am somewhat jealous.

[/mtb/gear] link

Wed, 20 Sep 2006

ACT Schools MTB Championships went well - 22:17
I took the rest of the day off work today after tutoring in the morning in order to help out at the ACT Secondary Schools Mountain Bike Championships race which was run by CORC.

I thought it was pretty incredible last year when we managed to get around 180 students along to the race. This year there were 249 school kids there racing their mountain bikes in school teams. How fantastic is that, definitely good to see them all out there having fun on their mountain bikes. At one point while manning a marshal point I got my camera out and took some photos, until my memory card was full. I am currently uploading them to the CORC Image Gallery where they will be in an album under events sometime shortly. (update, photos are up)

If you wish to see the results Russ has uploaded them to the CORC website in the Junior Events section.

[/mtb] link

Tue, 19 Sep 2006

One way to spend a Saturday - 17:24

Crash, Jaymz and DeathMarch at the eagle rock lookout on Stromlo (full size)


Jeremy and Libby looking toward Canberra near a control on a hill (full size)

There are 8 million ways in which to spend a Saturday, this has been one of them (with apologies to "Naked City" (more info))

Saturday morning I hopped on the Single Speed mountain bike around 7:30am for a ride out to meet Crash, Jaymz and DeathMarch near Stromlo, the purpose of which was for a friendly mountain bike ride on the brand new rather enjoyable Trunk Trail that is part of the CORC Stromlo development. It was indeed a pleasant way to start the day, and the coffee and cake at the new cafe at the top of Stromlo was good too.

On my way back into town I realised the Bilbys were likely to have finished the road ride and be heading for a cafe, I managed to ascertain the name and location of the cafe the fast bunch went to and headed over to Sfoglia's in Dickson to meet up for some breakfast (though it was midday by this time) with them.

Libby and Jeremy had both been on the road ride and were at the cafe, I was able to confirm details with them for what we were doing that evening. Which leads on to the ACTRA 2006 Nightgaine.

This year they were nice to us all and rather than have a 6 hour night gaine starting at midnight it started at 6pm and finished at 11pm, as always with ACTRA events the food put on for competitors as we finished was great (thanks DEWR Hartley crew), though of course the main reason I entered the event was in order to practice my night time foot navigation.

Apart from the fact I need to run more to improve at foot events, I really do want to practice difficult navigation more and more often now days. I can start to see why this sort of event is so much more fun as you learn to navigate better, the times we walk straight onto a control due to our bearing and accurate path through the scrub really were good. On the whole we had fun at the event and I am looking forward to the next one (Spring 12 Hour in November with Lina)

So I had a fun Saturday, how was yours?

[/mtb] link

Mon, 18 Sep 2006

linux.conf.au is a damn good name - 17:20
There has been a discussion (and in another thread) on the linux-aus mailing list sparked off by Jeff Waugh suggesting both Linux Australia and linux.conf.au should have a name change.

Personally I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of changing the name of the conference, and though I do not have a strong opinion on changing the name of Linux Australia, I have not seen an argument with any real reasoning and well thought out points as to why it is entirely necessary. So I weighed into the discussion on Friday afternoon with a semi lengthy set of thoughts on the matter.

One thing I realise I forgot to mention is that Linux is the generic most recognised term worldwide for Open/Free Software already. Jon "Maddog" Hall reminded me of this in his response to the discussion (recommended reading). We have a well known brand with linux.conf.au, as was pointed out by Andrew Cowie, a conference can change their name as "foss.in" has from the old Linux Bangalore name they had, however their name change was in part because they saw how incredibly cool the linux.conf.au name was for a technical geeky conference.

Geeks get the idea of linux.conf.au and appreciate the conference name. If you wish to attract sponsors or delegates that do not understand the conference enough to grok this I wonder if you really wish to run linux.conf.au. There has been some suggestions of running some other event for a number of years, a new alternately focused event could utilise the potential delegates Jeff may be after (those who do not find the all encompassing geekiness or existing feeling of linux.conf.au to be their cup of tea) (and potential sponsors) and that way linux.conf.au can stay as is.

[/lca] link

Wed, 13 Sep 2006

Wheels that are round and brakes that work on the single speed - 22:45
So I had some mountain bike rims sitting around the shed when I built my single speed, I knew there were some problems with them, however I was feeling too cheap at the time to spend money on new rims for a single speed I was trying to build cheaply.

When you hit gutters or other blunt objects with enough force to flatten a tyre (pinch flat) it will sometimes happen that a flat spot forms on the rim. Sometimes these can be hammered out, sometimes not. The problem can be made worse by weak sidewalls in rims, which are caused by wear from rim brakes (v-brakes and similar). Both the rims in the shed had large flat spots and weak sidewalls (splits appearing in places, and pronounced flat spots (one on each rim)).

The flat spots meant I had to have the brakes backed off a lot so they would not hit the rim as the flat spot passed the pads, thus the brakes were set up sort of loose, however once per revolution of the wheel they would be very tight and responsive for a short time. This was not a problem until such a time as you wish to utilise the brakes, at this time the flat really good braking set up on one point on the rim would cause a thunk sort of instant deacceleration which on the whole was rather disconcerting.

Fortunately for me a friend moving to the UK for a while and needing to dispose of some bike bits was happy to exchange a spare pair of wheels for a case of coopers. The hub on the rear wheel was fairly stuffed (pitted cones, bearing surfaces and worn bearings) so could probably use replacement, and the front wheel has radial spoke lacing, however when it fails I can put a sensible spoke pattern in. This pair of wheels have the distinct advantage of not being too worn out on the braking surface and having no flat spots.

I put the front wheel onto the single speed yesterday and hey what do you know, the brakes worked once adjusted, it was almost a revelation. Tonight I rebuilt the back wheel with a hub I had sitting in the shed that is in much better condition and a similar revelationary experience happened with respect to braking on the back when I put the wheel onto the bike.

Three cheers for an improved single speed experience, it will be rather enjoyable being able to stop somewhat predictably.

[/mtb/gear] link

Tue, 12 Sep 2006

Drunken teddy bears considered dangerous - 11:51

What happens to teddy bears drinking (full size)


Some possibly misleading statements about teddy bears (full size)

You see what happens when you allow your teddy bear drinking problems to go unchecked, they become a danger to themselves and possibly others. This poor bear has obviously been putting away one too many bottles of wine and look at all those bandages it needs. To think you leave your teddy near a bottle of wine and come back to find it had to be air lifted to hospital and get bandaged up. Sure people may think this is less serious than babies drinking beer but obviously something is wrong with the world when drunken injured teddy bears become common place.

Do not let your teddy bears drink and mountain bike (both the bottle of wine and the teddy bear are from the N-ZO 12 hour mountain bike race I competed in up near Sydney this weekend). Sure if the stuff on the tea towel in the second photos is to be believed teddy bears are great companions and there should nary be a problem, however I notice at least there is a teddy, supposedly one not telling sordid tales of your life to people at parties, holding a wine glass, who knows what will happen if too many refills come its way.

[/various] link

Thu, 07 Sep 2006

Bee in my bonnet - 22:05
So Mikal wonders if other people have inconvenient insect bites while riding (stating the case mildly here). The worst I have had was riding around the lake in a group once when I was 12 or so and I had a bee fly into my bike helmet, get stuck there and sting me. I crashed into a bridge and tacoed a front wheel and needed to be picked up.

Fortunately I discovered (the hard way) I was not allergic to bees, just that they can be rather irritating. I have over the years swallowed many a fly and other non bitey insect while riding. The hot summer climbs up mountains and such are prime examples of fly swallowing territory, and I have to admit I tend to be careful breathing in the snowy mountains in summer due to march flies and their biting capability.

I wonder if Mikal's kids were asking him if he was about to die in hopes of getting his laptop in inheritance, or maybe they simply liked the live action example of the Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly nursery rhyme. If he attempts to live up to the nursery rhyme it will at least be an excuse to eat a lot of beef, what with swallowing a cow.

[/various] link

Wed, 06 Sep 2006

Printer or Ink sort of purchases. - 10:31
I use those little single LED flashing lights that attach to the front or back of the bike with a bit of elastic on some of my bikes. Today I had to replace the batteries (two small CR 2032s) in the rear flasher on my single speed. The rather cheap LED flashers cost me around AUD $6 (including batteries) from Phantom Cycles. The batteries I bought today at the ANU chemist (Duracell with medical stamped across them, I doubt they are really anything special) cost AUD $4.50 each. Thus it costs $6 for a new light or in this case $9 for two tiny batteries to power it.

Definitely reminiscent of the problems where computer printers (bubblejets) are often sold for less than the cost of the replacement ink cartridges these days. My other bikes all have large rear flashing lights so I do not need the little ones so much, it may be time to buy such a light for the single speed, at least then I can use rechargeable AAA batteries in the lights.

[/mtb/gear] link

Tue, 05 Sep 2006

-ENOCRIKEY - 10:28
It is of course sad to hear of Steve Irwin's death, what with the amount he did for wildlife rescue and the fact he was a recognisable cultural icon that had a positive image and message for people around the world. Sure he may have made many Australians cringe, especially when people overseas expected us all to behave similarly, but freak accidents such as this are sad mmm'kay.

On this note so far, this is by far the best comment I have seen on his death, keeping the humour up even when saddened.

[/various] link

Mon, 04 Sep 2006

2:1 up the hills - 16:10
So I had been wondering for a little while what it would be like to climb some of the roadie climbs in Canberra on my single speed (2:1 gear ratio). I just went out and climbed Black Mountain in 13:54 on it, which when I consider my current lack of fitness and that I would not be much faster doing a standing climb on the road bike at the moment. It was not too hard, I was able to sit and grind away reasonably on the two flatter sections. I reckon I could definitely get the time down to around 12 without much effort on the single speed.

I still have a plan to attempt the 6 peaks climb on the single speed some day (Majura, Ainslie, Black, Pleasant, Red, Stromlo), to the pain.

[/mtb] link

Sun, 03 Sep 2006

Getting some rides in - 18:26
So I noticed over the past month and a half that my form is down a fair bit lower than I would like (and is normal for me). Sure I had a cold in Cairns, but even then I was not riding as well as I should, and as noted a while back I may want to consider some real proper training at some point.

For now though I will simply try and get some KM back into my leg, starting up doing the Tuesday morning Cotter/Uriarra loops again this week on. Yesterday I went out on the standard Saturday morning Bilbys ride which was going past the base of the Corin Road climb but would be about 90KM with the suggested route. Fortunately for me Sue was keen for a little bit more climbing so together we split from the group and headed up the 13KM climb to Corin Forest. When we got back to Canberra eventually we headed to Dickson for coffee, thus I got a good fairly solid 130 KM on the road bike yesterday.

Today I had felt like heading into the Bush for a ride, though with other stuff to do today I wanted to keep it short, the plan was hatched for a ride up Mt Coree from Blundells Arboretum and a few bods were keen to join in the fun. In the end due to weather and some other concerns only Dave, DeathMarch, Jaymz and I rocked up to do the Mt Coree climb on our bikes (photos and a few words). But it was a good little climb and an enjoyable (though very muddy in places) ride.

[/mtb] link

Thu, 31 Aug 2006

Oh no I missed another Blorthday - 19:07
Just like last year when I posted about the Blorthday a day late, but you know worse because this time I am 5 days late. So yeah 26th August was the second anniversary of this diary, and what did I do? Nothing, no cake, no party, not even a post. I am pretty sure my diary is going to go sit in a field and eat worms any second now.

Stats this time around are 

[18:16:50] 3 oneiros sjh ~/diary/data>find -name '*.text' | wc -l
548
[18:16:54] 4 oneiros sjh ~/diary/data>wc `find -name '*.text'`
...
19384 145996 929924 total

I passed the 500th post without noticing, I will soon have more than 1 MB of my blathering up here (when the third number just next to total says 1048576). 221 posts is down a fair bit from 337 the previous year. One thing I have noticed is I have not been keen to sit around and work on silly category posts much (various/ilmiwac). Not sure why.

On the whole maybe I am just not as worthy of the cool t-shirt Andrew gave me, especially when you consider the fact there are still no photos of my non existent cat on here to provide some blogthenticity.

[/various] link

Tue, 22 Aug 2006

Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 12:00

UK Milk Carton 		I notice this milk still has English writing on it, thus it is not really exotic for us Aussies. Though I guess it is at least real English writing as it is from Kent in England. None of this Aussie or American English emblazoned across the carton. You can probably tell it is milk from Ol Blighty just by looking at the picture. They have green grass, if it were Australian milk and they were going for a similar truth in advertising it would have to have a field of brown grass or simply hay scattered on dirt I guess.

I guess with the rampant greenery it could be from Kiwiland, except the measurement is in pints, the Kiwis at least use metric everywhere.

[/various/milkcarton] link

Mon, 21 Aug 2006

RRR Classic 2006 - 18:48
I took a few photos at the RRR Classic mountain bike race yesterday and have now put my photos from the event online.

Definitely a fun course, the thick bull dust down the bump track was very different to most riding I do anywhere. Apparently that will clear up during the next heavy rain, though with the grader having gone down the track most of the interesting rock gardens and their ilk are gone for a few years.

[/mtb/events] link

Fri, 18 Aug 2006

Herberton 8 Hour mtb race - 23:07
Or how I adjusted to the Cairns temperatures slowly, by doing a mountain bike race in the tablelands with rain and almost Canberran temperatures.

Sam and Ben are not going to be competing in the Gravity 12 hour race this year with me as they are living up in Cairns for a year. Thus I was keen to do a race with them at some point. When I saw this appear on the Cairns MTB club calendar it was appealing, then I saw the RRR Classic on the following weekend. That pretty much sealed this holiday for me, so we did the 8 hour race last weekend. As I saw in the few words I write about it, fun, pretty cruisy, could use more interesting singletrack but on the whole worth doing if you are up here.

Anyway if you want to see the details (photos, some words) have a look where I put them.

[/mtb/events] link

Great coffee and some mango wine - 21:31

35 KG of coffee roasted at a time (full size) 		As I suggested the other day, I spent Thursday up in the table lands checking out some local produce of interest and looking around Kuranda. The produce of interest was local coffee, and I had a look at a Mango winery simply for the novelty value.

The photo to the left is the bean roaster at the NQ Gold Coffee plantation, this was a good plantation to visit I reckon. Not far outside the town of Mareeba, the plantation is owned and operated by a family, all the coffee has been grown with no pesticides sprayed on it for the last 14 years. They do a free tour for you and will serve a fantastic coffee there. The beans are sun dried there and all processing is done on the premises. In addition to their three coffee varieties (light, medium, espresso) they sell chocolate covered coffee beans, dried fruit (mango and others) and mango jam. All of which I ended up buying. After this visit I decided not to go visit one of the larger more commercial coffee plantations as I was well satisfied with the details I got from this visit. The woman who gave the tour mentioned there is one restaurant in Canberra that serves their coffee (possibly the Chill restaurant in Campbell, I forget).

Afterwards I headed off to the Golden Drop Mango Winery mostly to satisfy my curiosity as to what it could taste like. They had three varieties of wine, Dry, Medium and Sweet, they also sold Mango Port and Mango Liquor, Mango Champagne plus a few other fruit based liquors. I generally prefer dry wines, however I was worried that mango wine would all be somewhat sweet, I was pleasantly surprised to find the dry was indeed a rather good tasting dry wine. The most noticeable thing is there is an almost overpowering Mango aroma from the wine. I liked the novelty of the drink, however at the price (AUD $25 per 750ml bottle) it would not replace a standard drinking wine for many people who drink wine regularly.

After this I headed back to Cairns via Baron Gorge and Kuranda to check out the views and township.

[/leisure/food] link

Wed, 16 Aug 2006

Snicker Doodles - 22:41
The cookies I make fairly often (with apple, choc chip, oat and coconut) are a basic soft sugar cookie recipe. I recalled that there was some slang name for this basic soft cookie in the US however I can never remember it. A few minutes ago I saw an email address with the word Smackerdoodle in it and remembered the cookies were called something doodle. A quick google for "cookie doodle" has reminded me the US slang term for the basic soft sugar cookie is "Snicker Doodle".

[/leisure/food] link

Tea with a coconut aftertaste - 21:42
Sam and Ben purchased some tea from the Daintree Tea plantation when they were up there a few weeks ago. Ben prepared a pot of it a few minutes ago that I am drinking now. Damn good taste, I especially like the slight coconut flavoured aftertaste. I am happy to see I can order this tea online to be delivered to Canberra. (they also have US and Canadian importers) Who knows I may have found a tea to supplant my Twinings Irish Breakfast habit as my favourite tea. I had better sample this a lot more to make sure.

As for things to do up here, I am tempted tomorrow to head up to Mareeba to some local coffee plantations and a Mango Winery as mentioned in this food itinerary. I love fresh coffee, and Mango wine sounds good.

[/leisure/food] link

Good and Bad - 17:16
Having a holiday in a warm place like Cairns with your mountain bike and a road bike available for long rides in the middle of winter. Good.

Coming down with a sore throat threatening to be a cold that makes exerting oneself difficult (160 KM road ride not feasible today) and making you sleepy and lethargic. Bad.

Ahh well.

[/various] link

Tue, 15 Aug 2006

Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 12:00

New York Milk Carton 		This photo from around July 6th in New York has branding suggesting you consume the product 365 days a year maybe. I guess that is acceptable with milk, however I shudder at the thought of having a tall cold glass of cold pressed olive oil 365 days a year as the bottle of 365 olive oil in the background may suggest.

[/various/milkcarton] link

Yummy eggplant bake - 10:19
I get The Australian newspaper for most of the year for AU $15 through a university staff and students deal. The Weekend Australian is delivered on Saturdays and the Sunday Telegraph is delivered on Sunday, the week day papers I pick up on campus through the week. All of this is to explain why I have the Sunday Telegraph at home (I would never willingly purchase it otherwise, snob that I am <g>).

In the Body and Soul section of the Sunday Telegraph on July 16th this year there were three very appealing recipes. Spicy Fish Soup with Cracked Wheat, Easy Eggplant Bake and Pumpkin, Pine Nut and Silverbeet Rolls. I have been meaning to try these out for a while, however had not gotten around to changing my normal shopping and food preparation for meals at home. While on holiday I decided to try them out so last night I cooked the Easy Eggplant Bake (recipe) for Sam, Ben and I to eat for dinner.

That is definitely one fantastic vegetarian dish, highly recommended, the garlic and the nutty flavour of the dry roasted couscous are good with the eggplant base. I will probably try the pumpkin, pine nut and silverbeet rolls on Thursday.

[/leisure/food] link

Fri, 11 Aug 2006

Training for things to do while sleeping - 11:53
This is not the thing where I often am on the verge of being asleep, and seem to think I am riding my bike and falling asleep, then jerk awake and realise I am in bed trying to get to sleep. This is about dreams, or lack there of as the case is.

I do not ever remember dreams, I guess I have them, I hear that in Psychology class at college or other places you learn how to remember dreams or something. I guess I could search online about it, however I wonder why some people seem more likely to remember their dreams than others, what causes this. Is it more instinctive for some people?

I am fairly sure I am not like Barbie in the Sandman collection A Game of You, I have not simply stopped dreaming, with only dreams from some time prior to a traumatic event in my memory.

[/various] link

Thu, 10 Aug 2006

What to do in Denver^WCairns when you're dead^Won holiday? - 22:35
On Saturday I am flying up to Cairns for a little over a week on holiday. While there I am competing in two mountain bike races the Herberton 8 Hour race in a team of 3 and the RRR Classic (details of both races can be found on the Cairns Mountain Bike Club website) on consecutive Sundays. I will be staying with friends, however apart from that I really have no idea what to do in Cairns for a week.

Dave and Julie were there recently and went on a Kayak trip, which was probably fun. This is the part of Australia where glass bottom boats are rather common, heck the Kayak/Canoe you really want up there is one of these transparent canoes I saw on BoingBoing the other day. Apart from the fact my arms may drop off 3 hours into any attempt to Kayak somewhere I have no planned something like that. Is a reef trip a good idea I wonder?

I will probably ride up to Port Douglas one day, maybe look for nice swimming rivers/holes/etc on the way up and down to stop off at. I will probably look for a bit more mountain biking while there or maybe a walk or some trail running. But I really have no idea what to do apart from read books on the beach (which could not be all bad I guess).

Anyone have suggestions?

[/leisure/holiday] link

Tue, 08 Aug 2006

There goes an 8 year stretch - 22:28
Ahh well it was unlikely to ever last I guess, until 6am on Sunday morning it had been 8 years since I consumed any food from McDonalds and around 6 years since consuming anything from there (I had a coffee handed to me while driving to the snow about 6 years ago).

Around 6am on Sunday morning after getting out of a warm sleeping bag out at the race venue for the working week series 8 hour mtb race, as Russ and I started setting up the site ready for the 6:30am rego arrivals and getting everything happening for the race that day Stu (the race promoter) rocked up and handed us both Bacon and Egg muffins. Who was I to turn down free hot food containing bacon.

I guess the main reason I have avoided McDonalds (and since trying it for the first time ever 3 years ago also avoiding Hungry Jacks) is I do not like the taste of most of the food on offer and it is never particularly healthy even if it tastes alright. There is almost always better tasting or healthier (or both better tasting and healthier) food available so I do not see any point in consuming the food on offer from these ubiquitous fast food providers.

I would however live on Bacon and Egg rolls if that were possible so eating a Bacon and Egg muffin almost fits with in that dietary plan. Mmmmm Bacon.

[/leisure/food] link

Mon, 07 Aug 2006

A good web comic with stick figures - 18:29
My cousin Nick pointed *snigger* me at a rather cool geeky web comic today. I only realised when I saw a recent comic I recognised that I had already seen a link to this site previously but had not read more. I must say there are some fantastic jokes in the archive, I also like that the creator has to make it funny through the text as they are not doing anything with the drawing to try to bring on much reaction, though the simplicity in and of itself is pretty neat.

The one Nick emailed me about had me giggling, some of the others I really liked were c10 (though fairly obviously this was created before the recent news about the Japanese physicists who plan to create mini universes in their lab), c26 (a vet friend of mine is named Libby), c69 (almost appropriately numbered even), c73 (who needs those hammer time jokes), c86, c87 (which needs to be closely followed by c135), c107, c108 (could not stay away from the hammer jokes), c109 (pack them spoilers in), c118, c120 (endurance dating, of course this is the sort of thing we know Dave and Julie do all the time).

Anyway if you have some time maybe have a look through more of them.

[/amusing] link

Tuesday afternoon milk carton blogging - 12:00
Monday Edition.

Saw this link on BoingBoing today to reviews of the 1 Gallon jug of Tuscan Grade A Milk. Highly amusing, if you have a milk carton large enough to hold a Gallon (3.785 litres) of milk what would you do with it?

Now that amazon is selling groceries many people have started reviewing the groceries, mostly in a similar humorous vein.

[/various/milkcarton] link

Wed, 02 Aug 2006

The LA Emperor^WPresident's new wardrobe - 17:27
I notice a mention of anti rfid wallet sleeves or similar on Boing Boing to protect your wallet or RFID cards from being scanned. Now thinking of sleeves, Jon needs a new wardrobe! (I wonder if he wants some long sleeved hello kitty jumpers). Just think if the sleeves on all his clothing were Anti RFID, no one would go around stealing his identity.

[/various] link

Do they really make fake crappy network cards? - 16:24
This is interesting, as Bob mentioned on the CLUG list we had some problems with some network cards that appeared to be Realtek 8139 based recently. As suggested in a few (linux netdev posts with mention of the pci id 1904:8139 there) places, there may (a copy of the code here from the INTEX Zip file mentioned in the previous post) be a 2.4 driver (of somewhat questionable licence, quality and capability)

It was interesting to see, as Bob pointed out, the driver supplied with the cards will load on windows, and appear to say it is a 8139 card, yet it was not recognised as a 8139 by the default windows 8139 driver, nor does this driver work with other 8139 cards.

I kind of wonder what details can be extracted from the 2.4 driver file, as suggested in the netdev posts it may be weird, however if we are allowed to use those register details and such it should be possible to get a working 2.6 driver and maybe even make a driver that does not suck. Of course I do wonder why you would want to fake a 8139 rather than badge it as if it were a much better network card.

[/comp/hardware] link

Getting a Kyocera FS 820 Laser Printer working under Linux - 14:42
I needed to buy a laser printer that would be used on a POS system and make it work under Linux. I looked at the Linux printing suggested printers page and found they recommended a Kyocera FS 820 as it is fully supported and provides a very low cost per page. I purchased it at a local computer shop for AUD $185 which is pretty damn cheap.

Kyocera provide a lot of ppd's that can be used with Linux, however they do not provide one for this printer. The Linux Printing page for the printer is not much help, however I find the PPD for the F-820 drives it successfully at 300x300 and also at 600x600 if I manually add the line 

*Resolution 600x600dpi/600 DPI: "<</HWResolution[600 600]>>setpagedevice"
to the ppd file. I also found the margins needed a bit of adjustment, at the moment the best I can get (losing a few mm off the top of the page currently) is with 
*Margins Custom/Custom : "<</.HWMargins[0 20 30 0] /Margins[0 0]>>setpagedevice"
as a Custom margin in the ppd file.

To get the printer working I needed the usblp driver in the 2.6 kernel and to install a few packages (cups and related), at the moment I have installed "cupsys foomatic-filters-ppds cupsys-driver-gutenprint cupsys-driver-gimpprint foomatic-filters python-foomatic python-ipy printconf hpijs hplip linuxprinting.org-ppds pconf-detect" (on debian) however I suspect I do not really need all of them.

One problem I had with it for a while is it did not seem to be able to find the usb printer most of the time. It took me a while to realise (by running lpinfo -v a few times that it seemed the printer utilities no longer were able to see the usb printer device after the first time they looked for it after it was plugged in. I hope this is due to some bugs in the kernel version or cups version I am using (notably I compiled usblp with gcc 4.0.3 and the kernel I inserted it into was compiled using gcc 4.0.2) and this is on a machine running sid. When I get the production machine set up it is running a debian kernel image and also a sarge system everywhere. For now I can put up with testing from my laptop by re plugging the cable every time I need to print.

Interestingly the device shows up as usb://Kyocera/FS-820 (also you can speak to /dev/usb/lp0) which as they say means it can be plugged in with other printers and not be dependent on plug in order (though if you plug in multiple FS-820's that may now work <g>) Oh and I wonder if the above mentioned need to re plug the usb interface all the time is a cups utils bug due to the fact /dev/usb/lp0 is there all the time an if I do "echo text > /dev/usb/lp0" at any time it prints a page with that plain text on it quite happily.

[/comp/hardware] link

Tue, 25 Jul 2006

Floyd Stories - 13:37
I found a great Landis Profile/Interview linked on Kottke today. Most amusing, the concept of Floyd stories throughout the peloton, as suggested he has increased his legend status a great deal in the tour this year. The 30 coffees in one sitting story is from Lance's book, the others come from somewhere, who knows how much they change with being re-told. As someone said to me in an email the other day after seeing Landis' incredible stage 17 performance. Landis is an absolute dude! I tend to agree.

[/mtb] link

Sun, 23 Jul 2006

Another funny quote from an Aussie in the tour. - 01:37
I do not know if this is an accurate quote, however Mike Tomalaris just repeated something he claimed Robbie McEwan said to him the other day. In discussing how interesting this tour has been and the battles between the top GC contenders. Apparently McEwan said "Yes unlike the last seven years where there was a huge battle between GC contenders up until the tour prologue when Lance took control of the race". Heh, yet another good quote from an Australian Tour rider.

[/mtb] link

Thu, 20 Jul 2006

This tour is amazing - 23:40
Not to take anything away from Armstrong, his tour wins are incredible, however it really is true this is the most interesting tour to watch in a long time, possibly since Lemond's last win or longer.

Two days ago Landis seemed fairly comfortable on he stage finishing on Alpe'd'Huez, then yesterday Landis exploded on the final climb and lost 10 minutes to the stage winner. At this point everyone wrote Landis off. Now tonight watching the stage, Landis went on the attack, somehow they let him get away and he has a huge gap on the rest of the contenders.

And Landis is not the only game in town, Evans and Rogers are both riding well for the Australian flavour, especially with Evans likely to end up higher than his 8th place finish last year this time around.

I should go to sleep so I can function at work tomorrow but my god this is incredible, such an incredible race to watch this year.

[/mtb] link

Sun, 16 Jul 2006

Honesty in interviews - 22:23
Geez I love the sense of humour some Australian cyclists tend to use when interviewed during the tour. Last year I was amused by Stuart O'Grady's sarcasm and now tonight on the live coverage there was a snippet of them asking Cadel Evans how the day was in the stage that aired last night (long hot flat stage where Landis let a break away go more than 30 minutes in front and get the yellow jersey). Cadel's response was along the lines of "Long, Sunburnt, Sore Bum, but thats the tour". Good to see such blunt honesty from a high GC rider, you never heard Armstrong say Sore Bum in interviews.

[/mtb] link

Sat, 15 Jul 2006

Mythtv manual record problems - 20:54
There have now been two really strange things I have seen with my mythtv setup and manual recording schedules.

Yesterday evening I was glancing over the upcoming recording schedule. I had set it to record the Tour de France highlights show every evening at 6pm on SBS, this has been working fine for the last week and a half since I set it in there initially. However for some reason the Saturday and Sunday evening sessions were not in the schedule. No idea why, anyway when I noticed this I deleted the lot and then made another manual recording telling it to tape every 6pm half hour slot from tonight onward and it was in there fine for as long as it should be.

Tonight I saw something even stranger, while the mythtv box was recording Dr Who (according to the status screen it said it was currently recording that) I did an ls in the directory all the recordings are stored in. I saw the 1800 file from the tour highlights (half hour show) and then I noticed there was no new Dr Who file (1930 for an hour) being recorded. I did the ls while the show was being recorded, so I tried a ps auxw and noticed the tuner was indeed doing something as the [cx88 dvb] kernel process was there. For some unknown reason the damn software did not actually save the file to disk. After the show finished I had a look at the upcoming schedule and I notice it had removed all future recordings of Dr Who from the schedule (every Saturday at 19:30 for an hour).

I have no idea why this is happening, Paul Wayper has suggested I should put the effort into ensuring the guide data stuff works and is tied to channels so recordings can be done through that rather than simply requesting a recording at some given time. However it is somewhat strange to see manual recordings playing up in this manner. For now I will simply have to be careful and regularly check the recordings I request are in there and hope they all actually get written to disk.

[/comp/software] link

Mon, 10 Jul 2006

Two 8 hour events, a mtb race and a rogaine. - 13:31
The past two weekends I have competed in two 8 hour events, one the working week series (8 hour mountain bike races) round 4 at Yarramundi near Richmond in greater Sydney and the weekend just past in the ACT RA Championships 8 Hour rogaine held in Bournda National Park near Bega (the camp was the rather lovely, and well equipped Hobart Beach campground). My