48 x 17

Is the gear I am riding in London now and it feels just about perfect. It is certainly painful on the steeper hills, Highgate West I am looking at you, but overall it's fantastic. Finally my legs seem to have figured out the job they have to do and with the aid of some creatine have stopped hurting and started turning the pedals.The weather has been fantastic these last few weeks, riding back along the embankment into the sunset is positively pleasurable. I am almost going to miss the sixteen mile commute when I head back to the USA.

Fixed gear renaissance

It seems wherever you look now in London you see fixed or single speed bikes it has been suggested that all these riders are copying bike messengers. I think there is more to the trend than simply imitating messengers and to some extent they are many of the same factors that drove bike messengers to ride fixed bikes. As more and more people commute into London by bike, existing riders who have been commuting for some time want to find a way to differentiate themselves form these hordes of "newbie" riders. Riding fixed is a way of standing out from the crowd of ordinary commuters. It's new and sort of fun/painful. The bikes are super simple to maintain, requiring a lube once in a while and thats about it. Did messengers lead this trend? Yes they did, they are the lead users amongst urban cyclists. Are other cyclers trying to look like bike messengers? Some but I think the trend is larger than that and encompasses both the practical and the desire to stand out from the crowd. The interesting thing will be spotting the next trend in cycling.

LibriVox

LibriVox provides community created audio books of public domain works. There are currently 547 books available on the LibroVox site including: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen Plague Ship by Andre Norton The Master Key by L. Frank Baum Ghost Story Collection 003 The Clue of the Twisted Candle by Edgar Wallace Contes en vers by Charles Perrault Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers by Elizabeth E. Lea Link

Ski the tube

Know my bro will love this, so here you go. Skiing the London Underground nice pre olympic warm up. We obviously just need some more urban versions of our favorite sports. Suggestions please.

Never travel on a sunday

This is one man's tale of trying to get home a simple enough process in a city with London's extensive public transport system. Unfortunately this is not the case when you live in Richmond and you choose to travel on a Sunday. I left my brother's house in Brick Lane and walked to Liverpool st station. Unwilling to pay the double fare for paying cash on the bus I went into the station to stand in a horrible queue in order to first get an oyster card and then to charge it up. Thinking that now I was in the station it would be easier to simply jump on the tube to waterloo rather than waiting for a bus I got on the central line westbound. Upon alighting at Tottenham Court Rd station, I found that the Northern Line was shut, fantastic. Heading above ground I managed to find a bus that was going to Waterloo. Once there I discovered that there was no main line service to Richmond nor was the district line running to Richmond. Instead I had to buy a more expensive ticket to Kingston and wait 25 minutes for a train. From there it was a simple matter of two busses to get back to within walking distance of home. Total Time: 2hours+ Total Cost: £8:20 and people wonder why I am prepared to cycle 17 miles each way every day.

Why do people in hot countries eat spicy food

Have been curious about this for a while, but not curious enough to actually go looking for an answer. Thankfully the power of the internets and the curiosity of Paul Sherman, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University have given me a potential answer to this question.

People who live in warm climates are attracted to spicy foods because the red-hot seasonings keep people healthy, according to a scientist who takes a Darwinian approach to medicine.

Very sensible answer it has always seemed somewhat counterintuitive that you would eat very spicy foods in already hot countries but apparently there is an evolutionary answer.

"Humans do what makes them feel good, and they learn from each other," Sherman said, adding that people in hot climates learned that spicy food is less likely to make them sick and thus developed a preference for it. "The simple mechanism is they felt better after eating food that was spicy, and since they felt better they learned to like that stuff," Sherman said. "Over time, word-of-mouth spread the news." In cooler climates such as Iceland, a steak left outside overnight might freeze. The cold would slow germ growth in the meat, rendering the use of spices unnecessary. As a result, Icelandic dishes tend to be bland. But that's not a bad thing, Sherman said. Why take antimicrobials when they are not needed?

Link - National Geographic

Big Image of commute

Here is a HUGE image i stitched together form google earth. Click for the full size warning its 3MB, 8000, 4000 pixels. For a more digestible and interactive version you can download the google earth KML file here commute.kml

Commuting diary

Thought I would try and put down my thoughts on commuting to work every day by bike from Richmond to Brick Lane. I will be periodically posting observations on the ride. Here is a quick top five list to get me going. Top five dangers on the commute.

1. Me - I ride fairly aggressively in order to make good time through the traffic and that style is inherently more dangerous than sticking to the cycle lane and following slow moving traffic at a snails pace.
2. Pedestrians - These moving bollards wander all over the road, singly and in large disorganised groups. They ignore pedestrian signals when there are no cars and are indignant when I come flying through the green lights, dodging the slower ones. They also walk through stationary traffic without looking to se if there is anyone coming along the inside or outside of the cars. Having a startled pedestrian step into your path as you come down the inside of the traffic with nowhere to go is an unfortunately common occurrence.
3. Pot holes - Or the general state of the roads, while not life threatening they can give you a very nasty jolt through the saddle, causing a good deal of pain in a very sensitive place and forcing you unpredictably off the line you are riding.
4. HGV's - Or trucks as they are known in the US, they often don't see cyclists and can turn across the traffic cutting you up as you come along the outside or inside of stationary traffic. In the worst case they turn left over you. HGV's are 30 times more likely to kill you than a car in London.
5. Busses - In general they are well driven and take due not of cyclists, but because they are often forced to share lanes with cyclists there are often times that they will try and pass you with little space to spare forcing you into the gutter.

Tuesday Morning Commute

Logged my commute with GPS this morning.Unfortunately I can't get the track off my phone because it did not log the data to the memory card by default. Tomorrow I will post a map of the route along with some comments. Here is the raw data from the ride, surprisingly quick given the amount of traffic through kensington and the city where I felt I was crawling. Total Time: 1:05:39 Stationary time: 6:54 Distance: 26.9 km Avg Speed: 24.6 km/h Avg Mov Spd: 27.5 km/h

Back to exercising

After basically hibernating through the winter, with only a little cycling to keep the fat off, I have started to exercise again and wow I am weak. In which case it should be relatively easy to make quick progress! Very tempted to start working with Parallets, inspired by my uncle Richard, these are cheap and easy to make and look to give an awesome body weight workout. Will go down to B&Q when I get back to the UK and make myself a set. I do worry that my lanky body is singularly ill suited to gymnastics type exercises, but maybe thats a good reason to give it a go.

I am here

Apparently I am here. Though to be honest if it wasn't for the wonders of GPS I wouldn't have a clue.

Changi, Singapore

Changi airport 6.25am, just been out with friends in Singapore working my way through my 16 hour lay over with a combination of beer, shopping and food. It's worked out well with a good flight to here lots of sleep and jet lag working in my favour. Big thanks to Christina and Amos for taking care of me. Its been strange to be back at once familiar and at the same time alien.

NerdTorrent

I had a look over at the bittorrent tracker thepiratebay.org today and listed the e-books available there by the number of people downloading them. These were the top two by quite some margin.

How.To.Make.Anyone.Fall.In.Love.With.You-eBooKerz How.To.Talk.To.Anyone.92.Tips.For.Successful.Relationships-eBooK

I will let you make your own mind up as to what this really says about nerds...

Ahhh the golden age

We had a commodore 64 when I was a young lad, and it may well be the reason I am now Technical director of GreenPrint. I remember the joys of debugging hundreds of lines of code by hand looking for syntax errors, just to play a game where you kept a blob made of numbers inside lines made of letters. Ascii gaming there was nothing like it. I particularly love the shot of the tape drive, now that really brings back memories. Though I am somewhat confused as to what the imagery of the water slide is meant o communicate. Via neatorama

Neat proposition bets

So the first thing to remember is if someone walks up to you in a bar with a bet that looks impossible it bloody well isn't. There are five very nice examples here, I have just posted my favourite two here because they use SCIENCE. More here

The secret life of brian

Great documentary about the making and the subsequent controversy of my favourite film, The Life of Brian. Could you make this today? What would happen if you made a film that satirised the life of Muhammed. I only hope there are film makers, scriptwriters and actors who are bold enough to do satire as powerful as Life of Brian.

Happy greetings card day

Go out and express your undying love through blatant consumerism or else.

Atheist takes a walk

I think this video is great on so many levels. The guy keeps his cool in the face of complete idiocy, he believes in rationalism and science and he can walk backwards whilst expressing his views. It also shows why people drive everywhere in the states.

WilItBlend.com

The internets unfailing ability to deliver advertising disguised as entertainment brings us willitblend.com. Watch as they blend golf clubs, footballs and pretty much anything else you can get in a blender. Particularly enjoyable is the blending of cellphones, if they only had a portable version of this for use on the train. Link

Make your own dishes on demmand

This video shows the very neat Dishmaker in action. It is capable of producing an entire dinner set for four in about 15 minutes. What's neat is that once you have used the dishes it can then recycle the dishes and make new ones at any time. This is a good example of micro manufacturing and recycling, and has some very interesting potential. I do like the idea of being able to simply produce more of what ever I might need for an evening without having to store it just for those exceptional occasions when I need 36 glasses.