One of the enduring myths of cycle racing concerns the relative merits of tubular tyres relative to clinchers. Convention has it that nothing can compare to the performance of a quality tubular. However, lot of anecdotal evidence is bandied around supporting high quality clinchers as superior to tubulars. I was recently sent a link to test data regarding the characteristics of tyres versus tubulars - this gives clear data to support this contention.', '

Clinchers and tubulars

A couple of images to show the differences between a tubular and a clincher (links to external website images)

Seems to be a week for obituaries. Gary Gygax, who with Dave Arneson wrote the groud breaking tabletop role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, has died. The Register has an obituary, as does the New York Times. I spent a lot of time as a youngster playing a variety of role playing games, beginning with D&D. While I eventually moved on to other games (notably Call of Cthulhu) and eventually gave up gaming, I retain a soft spot for D&D, and particularly the original edition of a boxed set of three slim booklets (pictured left, and see the Wikipedia article).

D&D was derived from earlier miniatures war game rules, and was published by Tactical Studies Rules, later known as TSR. The company grew astonishingly rapidly (probably too fast), before being absorbed by Wizards of the Coast, a company that rose on the back of a craze for trading card games.

Riding the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up 25 mile event in south Wales has become something of a Team Grumpy tradition in recent years. In the past, the event has been held on the fast R23/3 (or variant) course, which features the improbably fast descent of the Neath bank, a hill that you don' have to go up again! Due to roadworks, last year the event was run on the R25/24, an altogether more realistic course - this course was used again this year. In 2007, the weather was astoundingly vile, torrential rain coupled with strong winds.

Team Grumpy entered the event this year with particular enthusiasm, as we plan to ride the Duo Normand again this year, after missing last year's event. Both Gerry and I always look to this event for a glimpse of our form; this year we were particularly keen as Gerry's had a bad neck, and after a winter of diligent training (well, as diligent as my work life allows), I came down with something that resembled winter vomiting virus exactly two weeks before this event.

This year, I received a series of increasingly gloomy emails with dire weather forecasts from Gerry - on the day, however, we drove over to the HQ in quite pleasant though rather windy conditions. We'd requested an early start as we had a lunch reservation at Y Polyn, a rather excellent restaurant we usually go to after the event, so we were the second team to start. The R25/24 course begins by heading down the Neath valley on a dual carriageway (A465). On the day, this made pretty hard riding, as it was into the teeth of the wind. Fortunately, Team Grumpy were working well, taking spells of about 30sec each. While I felt at the time we were riding rather cautiously, in retrospect I'm glad we kept something back for the hilly second half. After the southern turn, we roared back up the dual carriageway to the halfway point, mostly clocking 30mph or more, before heading south again on the B road that runs alongside the main road. This road's considerably more challenging, with many short steep climbs that throw you off your rhythm. Added to which, there were considerable numbers of road-kill toads! Fortunately the overnight rain had mostly drained away, and other than the aforementioned flattened amphibia, there were no pools of standing water (as there were last year).

I was saddened to read on www.timetriallingforum.co.uk that Sheldon Brown had died (see this obituary). Sheldon Brown's website is a fabulous source of bike information, particularly related to fixed wheel and tandems. He'll be missed worldwide.

I've just received a FrogPad portable keyboard, to use with the OQO UMPC I bought recently. It's Bluetooth enabled. The manufacturers claim one can reach 40wpm quite quickly, even for those who aren't already touch typers. I'm most definitely a "hunt and peck typist", so it'll be interesting to see how this gets on. Besides using the keyboard with the UMPC, I plan to use it with my (hopefully soon to be resurrected) iPaq hx4700 Pocket PC.

This is what a Righty FrogPad looks like (if you click on the image, you should see a life-size version). I bought the Lefty version, in white, with the intention that this would leave my right hand free for mouse or stylus use.

Physically, the unit seems pretty robust, with a slide on cover. It comes with a CD with a typing tutor (for Windows and Mac, but the Windows version seems to work OK on Linux under Wine), a retractable USB power cord and mains adaptor, and several leaflets and manuals.

Groklaw has a story linking the current MSOOXML deliberations to a Microsoft strategy document that's in the public domain thanks to at least one anti-trust case. (Note that it's a big pdf file, and that the groklaw story has it as text). The Groklaw story has many comments, and is worth reading. Is this normal behaviour for a company, or am I just naive?

Having looked at that document, this news story (Gates to tap young minds) sent shivers down my spine.

Well, actually, a bunch of American Baptists burnt an effigy of Richard Dawkins. It is pretty impressive that standing up for your views on life and religion can provoke such a response. On the other hand, they also burnt an effigy of Hillary Clinton (reportedly described by the fruitcakes as "a Hitler named Hillary Clinton – the anti-God baby killer who plans to turn the United States into Sodom and Gomorrah").

Wild stuff in the realms of a "god" who's believers claim is kind and benificent. Me, I rather like Dawkins' portrayal of the Old Testament god in The God Delusion. I notice the amazon.co.uk listing has garnered 700 reader reviews, which seem on first glance to be very polarised...

My friend and colleague Lynne Cox is chairing the organising committee of a meeting to be held at Oriel College, Oxford, in July 2008. This meeting promises to be an excellent opportunity for networking and establishing collaborations in this field. Lynne asked me to join the committee and design a website.

Click on the meeting logo to visit the conference website.

 

I have occasionally linked to news items relating to Microsoft's dubious tactics aimed at getting ISO ratification of its 6000 page OOXML file format as an international standard. Now the European Union has waded in with an investigation into Microsoft's actions. Reports from CNN and The Wall Street Journal. See also Groklaw's chronology page on office file formats, which provides a huge set of links to provide background to the situation

 

After buying a Squeezebox music player, I have recently been considering various formats I have music in, their relative merits (both sonically and aesthetically), and their convenience. Over the years, I've acquired a fair sized collection of vinyl records. To be honest, I rather like them - there's a sense of having to look after them, and the artwork of the sleeves has the capacity to be far superior in most cases to that of CD covers. Currently I use a Rega Planar 3 turntable for playback through a Naim Nait 3 integrated amplifier. They sound pretty damned good, too.

Of course convenience leads us all to CD. I have a good number of these now, and a Naim CD3 CD player.

What's prompted this discourse has been my purchase of a Squeezebox. This is a smart device, that runs an embedded Linux and hooks up through the wireless network to a fileserver holding audio files. The Squeezebox is in turn connected to the amplifier. It can play a wide variety of file formats, including mp3, ogg and flac. So. I've been ripping CDs to disk, and using the Squeezebox for playback. Is the quality good? Well, I guess not as good as CD, but that's countered by the sheer convenience!