Al’s WebLog

Given the density of distilleries on Islay (and the closeness of Jura) it seemed silly not to take the bike with me when I was up there last week. I guess you could say its like munro bagging, but with distilleries. All in all it was about 130miles of riding, on road, but the big ‘ol Maxxis were handy given the general lack of road quality! I’m pleased to say the 456 was great and survived its first proper trip (and only its 3rd, and 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th rides) perfectly

The little Advent 4211 is chugging along nicely. Its never going to be a day-to-day usable machine, but for a small, light, portable thingie its fine. I chucked another gigabyte of RAM in it ‘cos it was 8quid, can’t say I have noticed any difference to be honest. Maybe I will if I Hackintosh it, which I am tempted to do at some point.

The trackpad has been made usable by a new driver I found on some forum somewhere, that enables you to disable tap-to-click. I still do not like the one button for two buttons thing and I see that someone has hacked it into two butons now which is cool. I’m not sure I can be arsed to replace the trackpad itself with an aftermarket Synaptics one, though it is tempting.

Overall, I’m quite happy with it (but I need tethering for my iPhone to go with it…)

So it’s the second Sunday in November and I have just been eating Xmas (there is no Christ left in it these days) pudding and brandy butter. True enough I am usually the first to lambast the ever earlier starting of the commercial festive period, but as this was in the name of charity, I felt I had to partake in the testing of the pudding. I may well end but burning in my own damnation now…

Quite how I’m not sure, but I passed my motorcycle test yesterday (DAS, Direct Access) with only 1 minor. Scarily I can now go and ride any motorcycle I want on a public road. Thankfully for my own safety and that of others I was quite scared enough on a Suzuki GS500 at 70mph and I have no desire to own a sports bike. Indeed, I’m not sure why I need a motorbike at all, as I work at home and you can’t stick a mountain bike on a motorbike… Still, its good fun

I have decided that anyone using IE6 is a ludite and doesn’t deserve to be able to enjoy things as I mean them to be seen As such i have decided to not bother putting in hacks to make IE6 work with transparent PNGs. Sorry IE6 user, whoever you are. I also need to go play with WordPress 2.6 I suppose too.

This last weekend was the first ‘dig day’ of the Black Canon Collective, which is a new club I’m helping with that was started to make the old unofficial Longleat trails official. Its been a fair while since Longleat shut the place down, for totally understandable reasons, and its been a fair amount of work for the club to get things organised and in place so that club members can once again go ride. This weekend though made it all start to feel worth it. Saturday saw the dodgy old building fenced in and the best track on the area not being felled, B.B.M.S., resurrected. A few of us went back Sunday but we slacked off the building and rode I’ve forgotten what riding tight rooty tracks is like and boy did I suck! It was a really good laugh though and with everyone giving each other encouragement and line/riding advice the achy legs from post drivering on Saturday were soon forgotten. I may have to start riding flats though….

Is it just me, or was the who Apple WWDC ’08 keynote a huge let down? I have not seen much in the techsphere that would agree with me, people seem all excited about a “new” 3G iPhone, but for me the whole thing was a let down. Sure, isn’t it nice to see a cheaper/faster/smaller iPhone, great, but its nothing all that new (similar spec to the original iPhone really) and the AppStore we’ve known about for ages, so basically other than MobileMe and the iPhone 3G there was nothing else new. Where were the new MacBooks? (ah yes, Intel delayed the platform they’d be based on for 6 weeks so I guess those got delayed) Heck, where was anything Mac?

Also, whilst I’m moaning a little about Apple, now that the UK has iTunes movie rentals that work on an AppleTV, why has the price not dropped like it did in the US when they got rentals (and thus Apple subsidized the price)? I’m glad I picked up my AppleTV in the US when I was over there, ‘cos at the moment the price differential is unjustifiable.

After week of the weather “Will it? Won’t it?”, the sun came out for this years Bristol BikeFest. Last year Bob and I wandered along on the Sunday to watch Neil plug around for 6 hours solo and walked much of the course – it looked quite fun, though there was little vibe in the pits, but Sunday is apparently always quieter. This year Bob anf Colin entered the Saturday 12hr as a pair and I went along to ‘bitch’ (pit-bitch – fix bikes, keep an eye on laps and change overs, etc). Owing to Bob and Col going to the Foo Figther’s gig on Friday night, we didn’t arrive ’til after 8am, for a 9am start…

This year, due to “wild flower damage” last year, the main arena was now right next to the camping site, which, when we arrived, despite paying for camping, was full. We managed to squeeze the car into a small gap and Col quickly sorted his bike and went off for the start.

All told it was a fun course, but rather to short (several people got bored on Saturday and went home early) with a lot of singletrack. Now singletrack is usually good, we mountain bikers like riding singletrack, but in a multilap event with a lot of different speeds of people in, too much is a bad thing, especially with a short lap. From speaking to many riders there were a lot of rude, arrogant tossers riding, who would not ask to come by, but would barge past with no warning, or who would refuse to let anyone else past, even when asked. This, for me, is always what lets XC racing down. I know I’m not fast uphill, so I don’t mind letting people by, but I am faster than most downhill… end result, roadies pass me uphill and hold me up all the way down.

Sadly it all ended badly for Bob, as one of the aforementioned tossers held her up for most of the lap, then when he did say “come past on the left” he cut her up and put her into a tree, without even stopping to see if the girl he’d just put into a tree, at some speed and who was now sprawled across the track, was even okay. Thankfully two chaps behind stopped, helped bob to her feet and got her bike straight (thank you gentlemen!). End of race for bob, so with Col tired and still no camping spots, we headed home.

All said, not a great event. It should be though, but sadly it wasn’t due to the overly relaxed organisation and XC roadie tossers who take life way to seriously.

The trouble with something like WordPress is that fiddling with templates becomes addictive and highly time consuming. I never quite could be bothered to make the old template do what I wanted, but then I came across a blog which was laid out just about how I wanted mine to look. Thankfully the template was a modification of a free one, so with a bit of fiddling I soon had things kinda how I wanted. Then of course I started seeing little things I wanted to fiddle with! Bah! I need to find an easier way to make transparent rounded corner backgrounds ‘cos they are time consuming…

The better half and I headed up to see Korpora and Purple Chaos (there is something odd about using LJ names in WordPress…) this weekend. The drive up was quite horrible, but I guess thats what you expect from the M5/M6 these days. Nevermind, the company up north more than made it worth it. Once again though, after playing with toys at other people’s houses I just had to buy my own, so I now have a Wii. Wii Sports, Wii Play… it’s not just me, right?