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Place navigation on the left of the screen- Copenhagen Cycle Chic - Nice pics and philosophy from a city where critical mass happens twice a day, every day.
- Dave Moulton’s Bike Blog - With frames ridden in the World Championships, Olympics and Tour De France, Dave knows his stuff (and there are some gorgeous classics there too).
- Bike Snob NYC - Somewhat hit-or-miss, but an entertaining view on bike culture (if you can ignore the the majority of comments).
- Frank Schleck demonstrates the direct (though more painful) way of descending during the Tour de Suisse. Amazingly getting away with just minor injuries he was able to remount and finish the stage. (0) ξ
- I aintn’t dead (just busy and uninspired). (0) ξ
bike links for a Sunday
Posted by: Ian on 4 May 2008
where am I now?
Posted by: Ian on 29 April 2008
I recently upgraded iPod Touch to the lastest firmware (1.1.4), and the new version of Google maps includes a handy looking ‘locate me’ function where, after polling Skyhook’s database of wireless points, you get a nice target on the map showing where1 you are.
Unfortunately, since the iPT is wireless only (as opposed to also having EDGE like the iPhone), there is one major flaw in the plan. Namely:
You can only find out where you are when you are connected to the internet.
At least in Sydney, open networks in the CBD are few and far between2, and since I know where the open ones are, i don’t really need to use the locate me function there…
The iPT has plenty of space so even a couple of hundred Mb would not really be missed, and runs a version of OS X which is well capable of managing saved data. Two additions would of course be necessary to allow offline operation:
- Allow caching of a set area - i.e. ‘what I can see on the screen, but at max zoom3
- Cache the corresponding entries in the wireless node location database
Maps.app already caches mapping4 tiles (I scroll around collecting tiles at max zoom if I need to go somewhere new), but every once in a while they disappear so it would not seem to be difficult to add this functionality5.
Armed with these cache files, the iPT would become a viable ‘getting unlost’ tool (I don’t think it is accurate enough to call it navigation, but from my tests it gets it right with 200 - 300m). At the moment, the locate me feature is not a whole lot of use.
- More or less ↑
- Rumors of free wi-fi citywide seem to have been rumbling on forever ↑
- I think you really need the street names if you are trying to navigate with the iPT ↑
- In /var/root/Library/Caches/MapTiles/MapTiles.sqlitedb (if you really want to know) ↑
- An extra iTunes tab would probably be easiest to mange ↑
- Design skills - Some have them, some don’t. I wonder if Matthew Dent gets a percentage commission for each coin in circulation. (0) ξ
bring me sunshine
Posted by: Ian on 1 April 2008
Unfortunately, at around 10,500 miles away, walking much farther is just starting to come back…
give a man a bike
Posted by: Ian on 20 March 2008
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring. Desmond Tutu1
- Citation needed ↑
- Not sure if this on on TV at the moment too - TfL’s bike awareness advert. Clever and a little startling. (0) ξ
L is for…
Posted by: Ian on 12 March 2008
Matilda is one of the ferry and cruise operators out of Circular Quay, and I tend to see one or two of their fast catamarans each day from the Rose Bay ferry. their corporate ID is dark blue lettering, with the use of a capitalised, stylised ‘A’, in the name of each of their vessels.
Unfortunately one of their vessels is named ΛLice (hopefully rendering correctly), where the orange does not show up so well on a white sunlit fiberglass hull. Not to mention that someone1 might also fail to correctly interpret Λ as ‘A’…
Maybe they should rechristen it PhthirΛptera.
- I.e. Me. ↑
exercising 22 muscles
Posted by: Ian on 10 March 2008
If you see me smiling for no reason, I may be thinking about one of the following:
- The concept of dogs on segways
- A wi-fi node named ‘Numbat Frenzy!’
- Carport sirens that sound like the Ghostbusters station wagon
- Hoping that Barack Obama becomes the next president so I can refer to the US as the Obama-nation1.
Or not.
- I am sure someone else came up with this first, but it was an original thought by me too… ↑
- This might explain a few things about the events in Firefly/Serenity… or maybe it is just Randall Munroe getting his wish. (0) ξ
ah well
Posted by: Ian on 6 February 2008
That’s me proved wrong then - I had hedged on the 32Gb model not being out until September, so it is a little annoying as it would be the perfect one for me. That said, it has not made my 16Gb version any worse. Ontop of that, it seems people have been stealing my ideas again (or at least having them first).
At least the sun is out, which is nice after 4 inches of rain in the last few days.
so, what else is good?
Posted by: Ian on 28 January 2008
Suggestions welcome, I have some time - my flight doesn’t leave until 2010 (ish)…
- Richard Feynman playing bongos. Yes the Richard Feynman (
one ofthe greatest physiciststo have lived). Genius, in all ways. (0) ξ - Sir Edmund Hillary 1919 - 2007. The first man to climb Everest (though I still like to think maybe mallory did get there). (0) ξ
- It doesn’t get easier, whatever people say. It doesn’t fade. No matter how you dress it up and regardless of how long you try to forget, it is still Dogs at Cards. (0) ξ
- Matthew Parris - Twat. (0) ξ
- Ireland are planning to phase out and ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs starting in 2009. With the low whole-life cost of energy saving bulbs, and advances in LED technology people should not have a problem adapting. However, I assume this is only for ‘normal’ lightbulbs - I don’t think viable alternatives for the H4s in my car headlights are available yet. (0) ξ
four percent
Posted by: Ian on 29 November 2007
I dislike going to the doctors; my usual metric being that if I can get myself there, then I am obviously too healthy to need their services1.
However, once in a while there is the need for bloodletting or various impalations to prevent fun sounding tropical diseases2. There is something profoundly odd about going to the doctors while seemingly in full health - at the best you can do is leave in a similar fashion, and there is always the looming threat of someone saying ‘that shouldn’t be like that’..
Recently I had to have some bloodtests and the results showed that things were not quite right. It seems that 54% of my blood is made up of red blood cells (the HCT count), the strange thing being the normal range is 37 - 50%, and 50% also being the threshold that the UCI deem is a possible indicator of blood doping3 (i.e. strange questions may be asked at the Tour De France).
Maybe I should change my tagline:- ‘Now at least 4% weirder than the norm - Fact!’
