Al: a blog about bikes and stuff.

  • 1st post… and so it begins

    I’ll not bore you with the details, but having been pondering a new full sus to replace my ‘old’ Nukeproof Mega AM (26″, since you ask) I finally settled on a Mondrakrer Crafty R+. It was everything I was looking for, aside from having the wrong wheel size and being on the steeper side in…

  • Whats it worth for a warranty?

    Two recent warranty issues have had me thinking a little about the backup behind bike things. You kind of take a warranty for granted when you bike a bike or a frame. The manufacturer says that if due to a manufacturing or design issue you break it they’ll replace it. Great. So when I recently…

  • Two and a half years later…

    I’m not really sure why this is here anymore. All I ever do is apply WordPress updates and think “Wow, its been a while hasn’t it”. I’m not sure that the idea of a personal blog is that appealing in the modern era of Facebook (not that I ever post there either) and Twitter. Perhaps…

  • Distillery visiting on the 456

    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…

  • 456 in the house

    My trusty Santa Cruz Heckler is almost 5 years old. Its seen a few changes in that time, primarily a change from a DUC32 to a Pike, but on the whole its been a great bike I enjoy riding. About a year ago I flirted with a Chameleon frame instead, but for various reasons, primarily…

  • Digibox data recovery

    When the hard disk in your cheapy PBR appears to play up, most people, I suspect, would select teh format option and hope for the best. Oddly, I’m not most people 😉 So, armed with some info from a random website I cracked open my Digihome PVR80 and pulled out the misbehaving disk. As the…

  • Upgrades

    An evening of little updates is quite rewarding. Things like sorting the cert on my IMAP server so it’s not expired and now works properly on my iPhone, plus moving this here blog to WP 2.7(.1). You’d think as a techie type I’d keep my own box up to date..

  • Wind-alike update

    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,…

  • Xmas already

    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…

  • iPhone toyness

    So I joined the masses and now have a Jesus phone. It’s more toy than phone really. We’ll see how it goes.

Got any bike recommendations?