In 2013, Team Grumpy regrouped as usual for the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up ’25’, but on that occasion I was suffering too much from a bad back to ride. This year, work commitments made it impossible to enter that event (which was a week or two later in the calendar), so we entered the EC Cycles ’10’, on the R10/22A. Unfortunately, this event had no 2-up event listed either at entry or on the start sheet (though indications from at least one results listing indicated 2-up entries had been expected).After a few days of typical Team Grumpy preparation (i.e. takeaway curry and Leffe), we set off for the event, some 45 minutes from Team Grumpy’s welsh base. On the drive over to Resolven, the weather just improved steadily, and ulimately we rode the event in quite balmy conditions - bright sunshine, warm temperatures and a light breeze from the south-east.We warmed up briefly on a nearby road, and found no mechanical issues - unlike two years before, when I punctured while warming up! Gerry was down to start a minute ahead of me, so we finished our warmup together near the start.The course starts some way down a minor road to an industrial area, and no sooner had I got up to speed than I had to do a sharp left turn onto the dual carriageway at a roundabout. This briefly checked my speed, before accelerating again. The outbound leg is largely a gentle descent, though it does undulate somewhat. I was cruising at a decent speed in the southbound leg, often at more than 30mph, but though ny HR seemed to be up where I expected it, my legs didn’t seem to be chucking out as much effort as I would have hoped.I reached the turn having caught my 2-minute man, and never saw another rider in the race. I negotiated the turn as best I could given I only ride this stretch of road once a year - it’s an extended flyover junction that seems to go on for ever! The return leg was quite a bit tougher, as it was mostly slightly uphill, and what little breeze there was didn’t seem to offer any assistance. But then again, it dodn’t seem to offer too much hindrance, either! The finish is just off the same roundabout that we entered the dual carriageway section, and I gave it everything to get round the corner quickly, then motored on to cool down on the smaller road alongside the course.I finished with 22:47 for 18th place, not bad for this point in the season, though my legs didn’t feel like they’d done enough work! That being said, my heart rate was about where I’d expect it to be… Result EC Cycles 10 Mile Time Trial (9 March 2014) Course R10/22A (revised)

Rank	Rider	Club	Cat	Time	No.
1	Billy Oliver	RST Sport/Aero-Coach	S	20:27	90
2	B Xavier Disley	RST Sport/Aero-Coach	S	21:02	80
3	David Brice	Bynea Cycling Club	V	21:29	65
4	Joseph Beech	Ogmore Valley Wheelers	S	21:30	20
5	Anthony Mark Jones	Bynea Cycling Club	V	21:32	32
6	Adam Jones	EC Cycles	S	21:37	76
7	Harry Edney	Scuderia R T	S	21:38	30
8	Christopher Gibbard	Bynea CC	S	21:53	79
9	Richard Wilder	San Domenico	V	21:55	19
10	Gareth Rees	Cwmcarn Paragon	S	22:00	70
11	Christopher Jones	Ride Bikes Wales	V	22:05	56
12	Courtney Rowe	Cardiff Jif	V	22:09	15
13	Chris Tatton	Sodbury Cycle-Sport	V	22:09	29
14	Rob Jones	Ogmore Valley Whs	S	22:10	75
15	Thomas Weir	CC Ashwell	S	22:27	61
16	Gareth Thomas	San Domenico	S	22:33	27
17	David Medhurst	Cardiff Ajax CC	S	22:46	25
18	Robert Saunders	North Bucks RC	V	22:47	48
19	Daniel Gough	Swansea University Cycling Club	S	22:48	59
20	Thomas Ashford	Cardiff Jif	S	22:51	39
21	Ian Rees	Pontypool RCC	V	22:57	35
22	Gerard Oram	Bynea Cycling Club	V	23:00	47
23	Jonathan Pitt	Monmouthshire Wheelers	V	23:00	82
24	David Evans	Worcester St. Johns CC	V	23:02	40
25	Wayne Thomas	Pontypool RCC	S	23:08	87
26	Leigh Jones	Ride Bikes Wales	S	23:14	37
27	Richard Beech	Ogmore Valley Wheelers	V	23:19	21
28	Steven Madeley	Ogmore Valley Whs	V	23:25	38
29	Mike Broadbent	Bynea CC	V	23:25	69
30	Steve Morris	Ogmore Valley Wheelers	V	23:41	88
31	Lee Watts	Bynea Cycling Club	S	23:47	49
32	Chris Massey	Cwmcarn Paragon	V	23:47	77
33	Mark Nott	Ogmore Valley Whs	V	23:49	41
34	Alexandre Touche	Cwmcarn Paragon Road Club	J	23:54	54
35	Stephanie Post	Cardiff Ajax CC	W	23:59	6
36	John Regan	Pembrokeshire Velo	V	23:59	18
37	Colin Richard Wallice	Merthyr CC	V	24:00	50
38	John Shehan	Bynea CC	V	24:11	67
39	Richard Lawton	Newport Phoenix	V	24:13	55
40	Richard Hayes	Taff Ely Triathlon Club	S	24:13	63
41	Adrian Sullivan	Merthyr CC	V	24:17	71
42	Jonny Webb	Gannet CC	V	24:25	26
43	Ian Mcdonald	San Domenico	V	24:26	84
44	Andrew Harries	Ogmore Valley Whs	V	24:27	51
45	Mark Cane	Cardiff Ajax CC	S	24:28	89
46	David Wilson-Evans	Bynea CC	V	24:32	81
47	Edward Malarczyke	Cwmcarn Paragon Road Club	V	24:34	34
48	Thomas Vale	Swansea University Cycling Club	S	24:45	68
49	Mathew Atkins	Cwmcarn Paragon Road Club	V	24:50	53
50	Nigel Thomas	Bynea Cycling Club	V	25:00	52
51	Paul Griffths	Cardiff Ajax CC	V	25:01	74
52	Georgina Harper	Cardiff Ajax CC	VW	25:03	1
53	Hamish Belding	Cardiff Ajax CC	S	25:04	86
54	Christopher Goodwin	Ogmore Valley Whs	V	25:13	28
55	Ayrton Peel	Swansea University Cycling Club	S	25:22	57
56	Jason Strange	Ogmore Valley Whs	V	25:34	64
57	Andrew Grist	Bynea Cycling Club	V	25:42	42
58	Nic Forbes	Bynea Cycling Club	V	25:47	43
59	Chris Barnett	Bynea Cycling Club	S	25:55	33
60	John Diffey	San Domenico	V	26:05	16
61	Kevin Thomas	Pontypool RCC	V	26:26	62
62	Heather Dennis	Cardiff Ajax CC	VW	26:26	2
63	Lloyd Morgan	San Domenico	S	26:44	22
64	Sally Wilder	San Domenico	W	26:45	13
65	Gareth Robert Hill	Abercynon Road Club	V	26:45	73
66	Susan Burnett	Newport Phoenix	VW	26:46	10
67	Phil Bradshaw	Cwmcarn Paragon	V	26:48	78
68	Suzie Warren	Cardiff Ajax CC	W	26:54	5
69	Frances Williams	San Domenico	VW	27:18	7
70	Sally Harmer	Pembrokeshire Velo	VW	27:33	8
71	John Seaward	San Domenico	S	27:53	36
72	Sue Hollin	Monmouthshire Wheelers	VW	28:01	3
73	Tim Raine	Ogmore Valley Wheelers	V	28:23	83
74	Chris Jowitt	Monmouthshire Wheelers	S	28:30	46
75	Paul Rees	Bynea Cycling Club	V	28:40	23
76	John Evans	Bynea CC	V	29:08	72
77	Nia James	Cardiff Ajax CC	W	29:14	14

   

I mentioned at the end of my previous blog article on the Raspberry Pi that I had a DAC board in transit. Well it has arrived, I’ve fitted it and after a few trials and tribulations, it is set up and working well.The attraction of having an onboard DAC in the Pi is really one of neatness. It also frees up one of the USB ports that I would otherwise use to feed a USB DAC (for example I can boot the Pi into Squeezeplug, and use the Pi as a Logitech Media Server with Squeezelite as a player). The case that I’m using for the Pi doesn’t really offer a lot of room for manoeuvre when installing additional boards, but in the end I bodged together a neat enough solution.The HiFiBerryThe HiFiBerry DAC is a small printed circuit board about half the area of the main Raspberry Pi board. It attaches to a set of 8 connecting pins - the onboard sound connector P5 - you have to solder an 8-pin header to the Raspberry Pi main board first.I’d ordered the board with two RCA connectors, but no headphone style jack plug. The RCA connectors were three pin sockets, obviously intended to be soldered to the board. It was immediately clear that this would mean the Pi would no longer fit in the case, so I decided to connect the RCAs via wires to the board, and mount the RCAs in the lid of the case. The board came with the GPIO and P5 sockets already soldered.AssemblyStep 1 - I soldered the P5 header to the Raspberry Pi board. This proved pretty easy. The P5 sits right next to the GPIO connectors.Step 2 - I soldered four wires to the output terminals intended to output to a 3.5mm jack. Two from GND to the GND tag of the RCA sockets, and one from the L and R channels to the appropriate tag of the RCA sockets.Step 3 - I drilled two holes in the case lid. I also needed to remove some bits of plastic from what appear to be strengthening ribs in the case lid to allow it to fit over the HiFiBerry board. I fixed the RCA sockets into the holes, which needed a spot of araldite to hold them firm.Step 4 - I mounted the HiFiBerry board on the P5 connector - it also slots onto the GPIO header for added support. The card came with a polythene pillar and screws to further support it in place, so I fitted those.Step 5 - I assembled the case back together, inserted the SD card and booted the Pi.[caption id="attachment_2499" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Upper side of HiFiBerry board[/caption]You can see the wiring I added to connect the RCA sockets to the board. Obviously, the sockets supplied are intended to be soldered to the board in the positions labelled 'Left' and 'Right'.[caption id="attachment_2501" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The underside of the HiFiBerry board[/caption]There's not much to see on this view of the HiFiBerry - other than my soldering, and the two connectors that attach the board to the Raspberry Pi - the board came with these already fitted.Using the piCorePlayer web interface, I selected the option for the HiFBerry DAC, determined the ALSA settings for the HiFiBerry and entered them, and saved the whole setting to the SD card. Then I excitedly hooked up the phono cable to my amplifier, booted the Pi and sat back to listen to the music.Well, I could listen to the right hand channel, but the left channel was sadly absent!A problem!Clearly I’d done something wrong! I referred to the forums on the HiFiBerry site. Most people having this sort of trouble had evidently made minor cockups with soldering, though there were hints that some cards may have been defective. A quick email elicited a rapid response suggesting I check the connectors for evidence of shorting out. I did this, finding no problems. As an aside, I found Daniel at CrazyAudio very responsive and polite in the face of a neophyte solderer asking questions.A little while later, it occurred to me that the two non-ground pins of the RCA connector might not be equivalent - in particular, it wasn't easy to see how they connected within the socket. I plugged in an RCA plug into the L channel socket and used my multimeter to determine if the signal wire from the plug actually made electrical contact with the tag to which I’d soldered the wire from the board. It didn’t, so after a bit more investigation I detached the wire and soldered it to the third tag of the connector. At this point the Pi was properly outputting audio from both channels!Triumph!So, how does the Pi perform as a media player with the onboard DAC? First impressions are that it compares well with the two external DACs I have available, though both are budget items (a Cambridge Audio DACmagic 100 and DACmagic XS). More on this later, though I'm not really a serious audiophile and I've no way of doing a proper blind test.

Adventures in Raspberry Pi LandWhen the Raspberry Pi was announced a few years ago, I was rather attracted by this low power but very flexible educational computer but never bought one until recently, when I fancied having a bit of a play with setting up a Raspberry Pi as a Squeezebox player.After a bit of a sidestep in the ordering, I ended up with the following:

• One Raspberry Pi Model B, with SD card containing NOOB
• One USB WiFi USB stick (not the Edimax stick I originally planned - more on this later)
• One clear plastic case
• One power supply

piCorePlayer installationThe SD card that came with the Raspberry Pi had the NOOB collection of operating systems. However, I began by overwriting the SD card with the piCorePlayer 1.12a image. I connected the Raspberry Pi to my router with an ethernet cable, and booted it up. Booting piCorePlayer takes only a few seconds. Connecting vis SSH was trivial with Terminal on the MacBook. Recent piCorePlayer releases include a rather nifty web page based configuration system, so it really didn't take long to set up the connection to the Logitech Media Server, rename the device, and set up the audio via the spare USB port to a small Cambridge audio DacMagic headphone amp. Here's a quick snap of the device with ethernet connection to the left and power supply to the right with the SD card protruding. You can see the WiFi stick to the left, next to the ethernet connector.So far, so good.PiCorePlayer successfully saw the Wifi network. I entered the SSID and password, but the wifi stick resolutely refused to play ball after a reboot, leaving the device uncontactable except via ethernet. I subsequently investigated reviews of the Wifi stick I'd chosen. Turns out that the thing won't work with piCorePlayer, but will with Raspbian. Ho hum! I then ordered an Edimax device, which I should have done in the first place.In use, the Pi seems to work well, and plays audio robustly, no pops, clicks or other audio artefacts. In its transparent case it looks quite attractive in a 1970s Blake's 7 budget SciFi kind of style, what with the various flickering and flashing LEDs.A couple of days later, the replacement WiFi stick arrived. By this time, piCorePlayer version 1.12c was released. I reflashed the SD card, and repeated the setup routine. I also expanded the second partition to fill the rest of the SD card. This should allow me to install further extensions to piCore. The Edimax WiFi stick does seem to play ball with piCorePlayer, which can now take up residence next to the HiFi. I note that selecting the correct ALSA parameters for the external DAC is important to avoid pops, clicks and other audio degradation. PiCorePlayer's web interface makes setting up the audio (and Wifi) very easy and straightforward.The Pi is hooked up to a Cambridge Audio DACmagic 100, and thence to a Naim Nait3 integrated amplifier and Mission 720 speakers. I also tested it using a Cambridge Audio DACmagic XS DAC/Headphone amp.Next up...I have a HiFi Berry DAC card in transit. I have also soldered up an expansion board for a 2 x 16 LCD display.

I’ve blogged in the past about the really rather wonderful but sadly discontinued Squeezebox system of networked media players (see for example 2013 – My year as a music consumer and Squeezebox RIP). It hadn’t escaped my notice that the tiny computer Raspberry Pi has been used as a low power Squeezebox, and I fancied a spot of tinkering to make a backup Squeezebox device should some of my current Squeezeboxes conk out (though it has to be said that I have two Squeezebox Radios, one Squeezebox Touch and one Squeezebox Classic, and I’ve never had any hardware problems to date).I looked around the web for tutorials on setting up a Raspberry Pi as a Squeezebox, and there do seem to be several ways to achieve this.First up would be to install Squeezeplug. This sets up the Raspberry Pi not only as a player, but as the Logitech Media Server (LMS) itself. As far as I can deduce, this setup would be useful as a low power media server that would be left running 24/7 - obviously with an external drive to hold the music files. Since I’m running LMS on a QNAP NAS already, I think this might be overkill!I then found this tutorial on installing Squeezelite on an Raspberry PI, with the stock Raspbian operating system - Installing Squeezelite Player on Raspbian. The same author decided to use a different OS to make a device that could be switched on and off without problems, resulting in...Unpluggable Squeezelite Player on TinyCore. This uses a small linux distro, PiCore (based on TinyCore) which runs in RAM and uses the Raspberry Pi’s SD card in read-only mode, meaning it can be switched on and off with no damage.As an alternative, there’s a pre-built version of the above, called PiCorePlayer. This may be the most straightforward way to set up the Raspberry Pi, and will be my first foray into the world of Raspberry Pi.Just now, I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Model B Raspberry Pi (complete with SD card), a small plastic case and a USB WiFi stick.

Cost so far:Raspberry Pi Type B with 8GB SD card               £27.40Edimax Wireless Nano USB Adapter                     £8.95Case-CLR 1 Raspberry Pi Type B Case - Clear      £3.99Total (inc VAT) is                                                    £48.41

The 8Gb SD card is probably overkill for the purpose I have in mind. The RS website says it has the stock Raspbian OS, but I could put the multi-distro NOOB on it. I probably have a modestly sized SD card kicking around - the PiCorePlayer site says the entire thing is only 26Mb (though the latest img file is around 57Mb).I need the WiFi adapter because running an ethernet cable to the eventual location of the device is likely to be impractical. I expect to do all the set up on the command line, starting with the device hooked up by ethernet until the WiFi is setup, though if necessary I can borrow a keyboard and mouse for the setup. I have several 5V USB power power supplies that should fit the bill according to the Raspberry Pi website.My immediate plans are to hook the PiCorePlayer to a DAC via USB. Another future possibility would be to add a HiFiBerry DAC card. This would be rather fun as it’d require me to get out the soldering iron!

It’s always struck me that handwriting was a natural way to use a tablet computer, though maybe this is a hangover from my days as a Pocket PC user! But the Apple Way is not to use a pen or stylus but to poke at a touch-sensitive screen with a finger tip.Steve Jobs famously disliked the idea of using a stylus with a tablet.

(Steve Jobs) It's like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it.

So iPad users generally have to make do with either their finger or a third party ‘stylus’ that mimicks a finger tip, usually with a squishy rubbery tip that frankly is not much use when it comes to writing. I’ve tried a few of these, without really finding the experience useful for writing - they are a bit more practical for scribbling quick diagrams in my experience.I also have a Samsung smartphone, the Galaxy Note 2. I bought this largely because it comes with a stylus and surprisingly good handwriting recognition software. I can use the stylus for text entry for most, if not all, of the apps for which it would be appropriate. The stylus fits snugly and neatly into the phone’s case.  It’s not a simple device - (this article explains how the thing works - Break It Down – How Does The S Pen Work?) but it works admirably, giving the real sensation of writing. In contrast to the spongy rubber blob of a typical iPad stylus, you pretty well know where the line you’re writing will appear on the screen. The S-pen is good enough in use that it may well be the deciding factor in which model of tablet I buy to replace my iPad3 in the future.There are several iPad apps I’ve always felt would benefit from the use of a stylus:

• Any of a number of note-taking apps - ideally with handwriting recognition.
• Sketching apps (which would include the Evernote app Penultimate).
• Pdf annotation apps such as iAnnotate or Papership. Papership is particularly useful to me as it accesses my library of pdf files indexed and organised in Mendeley.
• Evernote. This would be a dream, but really I think script entry would be limited to Penultimate. On my Galaxy Note 2, I can scribble into Evernote to my heart’s content.

A few weeks ago, the Evernote Market Place (which pops into my awareness from time to time when using Evernote) advertised the Jot Script iPad stylus by Adonit, which has the nearest thing to a pen-like point that I’ve seen in an iPad stylus. For a third-party iPad stylus, it’s a bit on the pricy side but I thought it would be worth a punt. This is something of a preliminary review after a few days of use.The Jot Script stylus works with all iOS devices, though you need to have Bluetooth 4 for all the advanced features such as palm rejection - this includes iPad3 and later models (and the iPad minis). Also, unlike the Samsung S-pen, it’s powered (by a AAA cell). You need to turn it on and let it pair with the iPad. In the hand, the Jot Script feels very much like a pen - it’s got a pretty fine point to it, and it’s pretty much the same length and weight as a largish ballpoint pen.I’ve tried the Jot Script with the following apps:Penultimate. This is a graphics app for sketching that’s part of the Evernote family, so your sketches and scribbles end up in Evernote. The difficulty I’ve had so far (only a few days in) is that the line being drawn doesn’t always appear where you think it will. I imagine this may get better with practice. I don’t find my handwriting particularly legible. The software offers quite good protection against accidental ‘inking’ by one’s wrist. Penultimate also offers a ‘drift’ function where you can zoom in to a page, and it drifts across as you write. This allows you to generate pages with reasonably fine text, but it strikes me as a ridiculous workaround of a pretty glaring defect in iPad design - the lack of a really functional stylus from the get-go. Still, it is quite good, and works quite well.JotStudio - made by Adonit, this is a pretty basic sketching app. It has a few pen types, and limited ‘pressure sensitivity’ - line width seems to be mostly dependent on the speed at which the line is drawn (this is true also for Penultimate). Only seems to function in landscape orientation. This works quite well, but has limited functionality.WritePad - this app features handwriting recognition and is made by PhatWare who used to make handwriting apps for the old PocketPC platform. I have trouble here because, as with the other apps, there’s a bit of uncertainty where the line will appear and when it’ll start appearing. I find it quite difficult to write sufficiently clearly (given the limitations of the iPad screen and the stylus) for effective speed writing and handwriting recognition. I find that if your wrist contacts the screen, you can’t write with the stylus (and you make a random squiggle where your wrist touches the screen). Limited use for me, but perhaps it’ll get better with practice.iAnnotate. Perhaps the leading pdf annotation software. The stylus is useful for freehand annotations. Works pretty well, though the highlighter tool seems to select rather more text than I intend to with the stylus.Papership. This is a pdf viewer and annotater that works with Mendeley libraries. The app is free, but the full range of annotation tools needs a £2.99 in-app purchase. This is worth it in my view. Papership is for me one of the killer apps. Annotated pdfs are snychronised back up to the Mendeley server, so the annotations are visible on your desktop PC or laptop. The Jot Script stylus makes reading and annotating research papers really easy and intuitive.My conclusion is that the iPad remains pretty much unworkable (for me at least) for text entry with a stylus, but that for quick diagrams and, more importantly for me, annotating pdfs, the Adonit stylus is a useful addition and one that's much easier to use than a finger tip or the more usual blunt rubbery stylus.For handwriting entry on a tablet or phone, I reckon that Samsung’s S-pen wins. When (or if) I’m in the market for a new tablet, I will try out the Galaxy Note 10.1 with the S-pen.

I'm a little late with this update, but since things are as usual a bit quiescent in January that's not so important. After the New Year's Day '10', I've been trying to knuckle down to some proper training. As usual, this corresponds to quite a lot of turbo training, and if anything this aspect has assumed greater proportions than in previous years, since the weather has been frankly hideous! Unfortunately my working pattern has made effective training something of a challenge.It's too early to say whether my form is coming along well (my feeling is that I've plateaued a bit since Christmas), but at least I've survived so far without illness or injury. I managed to cock up some dates in March, so due to work commitments I won't be riding the usual season-opener, the Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up '25'. Instead, Team Grumpy will ride a '10' on a similar course - solo of course - a week earlier.On website matters, the site devoted to a defunct bike club - the Northwood Wheelers - that I maintain had a bit of a boost over Christmas after a former member made contact and sent some memorabilia, including 20 issues of the club newsletter/magazine dating from the 1950s. These have now been scanned in and can be read online.After the last North Bucks Road Club AGM, I've taken over the club chairman role. This means I have to attend all the meetings so I can chair them! This as well as maintaining the club website...

2013 was a bit of  a mixed bag for me cycling-wise. In terms of results, my racing was decidedly sub-par. We didn't have our usual cycle tour in Scotland. But I did at least hang in there and not give up!Time Trials. Once again, illness and injury really hammered my season, and I found form very difficult to come by. I suppose my advancing years didn’t help! Things were looking really good up until Christmas 2012, when I fell ill with a horrid cold that left me with a hacking deep cough that took an age to shift. Then when it did shift, I put my back out (once again) that set my training back to at least April. Most of the year seemed to be spent desperately trying to get under the hour for 25 miles, which was not good at all! I didn’t race at any distance above 25 miles this year, and in fact rode only a few open events, probably my lowest number in any season in the last decade.Once resumed, training seemed to go pretty well, though I was still far from fully fit when Team Grumpy regrouped for the 2013 Duo Normand. We were therefore rather pleased with our second place in the Corporate category since one of us was rather unwell, and we had no realistic chance of beating the eventual winning team anyway.New tandem. Following our second front tyre blowout on the Dawes touring tandem, and taking into account the bike’s age, we decided to take the plunge and fork out a wad for a new Thorn tandem. This was quite a big step, and we made the most of it when specifying the kit for the tandem. Notably, we plumped for S&S couplings, which means we can transport the tandem inside our car (albeit with the back seats folded down) rather than on a roof rack. You can see my multi-part review of the tandem elsewhere on the site (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5). Suffice it to say that six months down the line we’re still happy with the tandem, though the flat stoker bars had to go. Needless to say, the Dawes hasn’t been disposed of, and we now house three tandems!Changes to our work calendar meant that we had no Scottish cycle tour this year, but two trips to Normandy compensated. We took the new tandem to France and had a great time in very nice (some would say too hot) weather. Plenty of excellent food, too.Team Grumpy. As far as I can recall, the 2013 Duo Normand was the only 2-up outing for Team Grumpy in 2013. We did regroup for the Port Talbot Wheelers ’25’ in early March (our usual season-opener), but unfortunately my back was so painful I could barely stand. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t ride. Anyway, given Team Grumpy’s lack of form, the Duo went pretty well, indeed better than we might have expected, particularly given the aftermath of a nasty cold suffered by one of us. We to second place in the Corporate category (behind a team that we frankly had no chance of beating, barring misadventure).New kit. For the last few years, I’d been using the ‘poor man’s power meter’ - the Polar system that uses chain tension and vibration to estimate power output. When it worked, it did well, with consistent data values (though perhaps on the high side). Unfortunately it was so unreliable as to be pretty much useless on a day to day basis. Eventually I cracked and coughed up for a Hed Disc with a Powertap hub. I selected this over other systems for several reasons. Firstly, I wanted an ANT+ power meter so I could hook it up to my Garmin Edge 500. Secondly, I wanted something that could be easily transferred between bikes. Reading up on the ANT+ Garmin pedal based system led me to believe that switching the pedals between bikes might not be so straightforward, and the crank-based systems aren't really an option for rapid shift between bike.The Hed disc wheel was quite pricey, but is so much easier to use than the Polar system. It delivers data to the Garmin Edge 500 via ANT+, connects reliably and calibrates easily. I’ve been using this not only for time trials but for turbo training as well (it’s effectively a spoked wheel with bonded on carbon sheets). I still don’t believe that training to specific power levels is necessarily the best way, and actually think that training to a measure of one’s physiology is smarter - i.e. heart rate.

Having missed last year's New Year's Day '10' through illness, I was particularly keen to ride this year. Of course the weather looked less than promising, with strong winds and rain forecast for mid-morning. Despite the forecast, at the time I got the bike ready to go out, things looked pretty promising and I decided to stick with the front trispoke. As it turned out, this was something of a mistake.By the time we lined up at the start, the strength of the wind had increased considerably...and the rain had not only started but had become quite heavy. I hate racing in bib tights or leg warmers, so I'd removed my bib tights. I quailed at taking my rain jacket off, and decided to leave it be for the race. Some of the riders had been out on the course and had reported how tough it was over the first couple of miles. They weren't far wrong...I grovelled up to the dual carriageway section where things, if anything, got much much worse, at least for those of us who'd made an unwise choice of front wheels. I was confronted by a stonking headwind that alternately tried to throw me rightwards into the carriageway and leftwards into the verge. Most alarming was the sensation of being lifted off the road as I passed under the first flyover. I'm almost embarrassed to related the lowest speeds I noticed during the outbound section - 13.5mph. I was struggling so hard to control the bike that I really couldn't even think of putting much effort in.Once round the turn, things became a bit better. I horsed back along the dual carriageway in top gear, feeling much advantaged by what was by now a major tailwind. Things became a bit more blustery heading back to the finish, but it was gratifying to be cheered on by a bunch of riders in a layby (mostly Bossard Wheelers I think). I finished in 27:59 - the slowest '10' I can recall in many a year, but rather delighted I'd finished without any mishap. Full results can be found over at the North Bucks Road Club website.

2013 was the year that I started to take music streaming seriously. I embarked upon a premium subscription to Spotify around February (largely  for playback via an old iPad while training in the garage), and it has revolutionised my music habits. Not only have I experienced music that I wouldn’t normally have encountered, but it gave me opportunities to share music that I’ve not been able to take before. I’ve taken quite an interest in how Spotify may or may not impact on the music business, and I do believe that there’s a lack in understanding how it does affect individual expenditure on music. As Dave Allen points out (Musicians versus Spotify: It’s about scale), Spotify itself is still a relatively small player in terms of numbers of consumers. My view is that too little information is available out there on how Spotify impacts on cash flow within the music business. I’m quite prepared to accept that I’m unusual in not stopping buying music in favour of streaming, but I’d like to see some decent information on this. I can’t believe that these studies haven’t been conducted as part of basic market research. Here’s one writer’s take on Spotify as a replacement for a music collection: Spotify, you’re wonderful, but I have to quit. Here’s a clue - it’s not a replacement!For my part, I’ve shifted far more towards buying downloads rather than physical media - mostly because I live in a small house. There are some exceptions, notably the extravagantly produced Deluxe edition of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ album Push the Sky Away, which includes CD, vinyl and a reproduction of Nick’s notebook. Unfortunately I missed out on the autographed edition!   The Velvet Underground’s second album White Light/White Heat gained its 45th anniversary Super Deluxe Treatment - with stereo and mono mixes plus a live CD housed in a hardback book, it was a little less over the top than last year’s VU and Nico 6 x CD reissue, but still nice. In particular, some of the out takes and the mono version of the album are rather good.The upshot of subscribing to Spotify has been a substantial increase in the amount I’ve spent on music. And mostly this isn’t the big name acts that get all the press as Spotify “high earners”. At the same time, I occasionally buy hard copies from the very excellent Norman Records in Leeds.Having bought into the Squeezebox system of streamed audio a few years ago, it was disconcerting in August 2012 to find that Logitech had ended the line. Squeezebox users have ended up in a kind of ‘phony war’, where the Logitech maintained server mysqueezebox.com still continues, and the various devices in my house still run my local music collection via Logitech Music Server running on a small QNAP NAS. At the moment I have a fair variety of players - a Squeezebox Touch, a Squeezebox 3, two Squeezebox Radios, software that turns my two iPads into Squeezebox music players (iPeng and SqueezePad), and the software player SqueezePlay (which emulates a Touch on my laptop). So there’s life in the system yet. There seems to be considerable open development of hardware and software out there to keep a similar system up and running for some time yet - Daphile, Squeezeplug, Wandboard, Raspebrry Pi and others frequently pop up for discussion in the Squeezebox forums.Of course, I’ve been looking for commercial alternatives in case my Squeezeboxes start conking out. I’m attracted by Bluesound, but its appearance on the market seems to be rather slow, and I don’t see how it can gain traction against the likes of Sonos. It doesn’t appear to have an equivalent of the Squeezebox Radio. Sonos is probably the market leader, but also has some limitations (for me, a major issue is again the absence of an equivalent to the Squeezebox Radio), including file data types and, for those with rather larger music collections than I have, an upper song limit of 65,000 tracks. I also find the superior and evangelical tone in the Sonos user forums rather off-putting, in the same way as one sees in Apple forums (and I’m OS-agnostic, I use OSX, iOS, WinXP, Win7, several Linux distros and Android). But that the plug and play ethos of Sonos and (I expect) Bluesound would win at the expense of the more flexible Squeezebox system was perhaps inevitable.I’m gratified that HiFi makers have stepped up to the mark with their streaming systems, though from my perspective it shouldn’t take much in the way of hardware to stream bits accurately to a HiFi: the quality sound experience must surely be derived from downstream analogue processing. Hence the profusion of software packages aimed at utilising budget computing platforms such as Raspberry Pi and Wandboard.Some of my top albums of 2013:[embed size="compact"]Teho Teardo – Still Smiling[/embed]Interesting collaboration between Teardo and Bargeld.[embed size="compact"]Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push the Sky Away[/embed]The dear old blokes just keep on hitting the spot with their excellent new album.[embed size="compact"]Wooden Shjips – Back to Land[/embed]Modern guitar-psych, and strangely reminiscent of Suicide at times.[bandcamp album=1105741548 bgcol=FFFFFF linkcol=4285BB size=grande]Immensely entertaining surf-punk from Leeds.[embed size="compact"]Simon Fisher Turner – The Epic Of Everest[/embed]Excellent soundtrack to the eponymous film released 2013 using the original footage from the ill-fated Mallory-Irvine Everest expedition[embed size="compact"]Black Pus – All My Relations[/embed]Crashing noise-fest from Brian Chippendale. Excellent on the turbo trainer.[embed size="compact"]Nine Inch Nails – Hesitation Marks[/embed]I'm not the world’s greatest NIN fan, but I did like this. I have both the regular and audiophile versions, but on my iPod the difference is marginal!Reissue of the year : The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat super deluxe 45th anniversary reissue.[embed size ="compact"]The Velvet Underground – White Light / White Heat[/embed]I also caught up with some other albums I’d missed out on in previous years, and discovered an affection for ‘near-ambient’ music!

Prompted by an article in The Guardian (Spotify opens up analytics in effort to prove its worth to doubting musicians), I visited a Spotify website which seeks to de-mystify the periodic brouhaha around Spotify's business model and whether or not artists are paid properly for their music which is streamed via Spotify. The article by Spotify is really a series of mini-blog articles on a new site (www.spotifyartists.com).It's an agreeably affable page that makes a series of assertions:

Spotify’s model aims to regenerate this lost value by converting music fans from these poorly monetized formats to our paid streaming format, which produces far more value per listener. The chart below shows the money a Spotify Premium customer spends per year compared to the average spend of a US music consumer who buys music (not including those who spend $0 on music).

There's also the claim that Spotify Premium users in the USA bring in $120 per annum to Spotify, and therefore a proportion of that makes it to the artists. There's an overview of the annual royalty payout in the period 2009-2013 (it looks almost exponential). Taken overall, the average Spotify user apparently coughs up $41 per annum. But presumably this is the trackable income that Spotify makes through direct user subscriptions and advertising (for example $10 per month = $120 per annum - it's a fair bit more pricy in the UK). There's evidence of a solidly growing user base:[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="299"] The growing Spotify user base[/caption]Spotify also outline how their revenue is split - approximately 30% is kept by Spotify, with the rest going to rights-holders. I guess it's up to labels and the like what proportion of that gets back to the artists. But the means by which rights-holders get their slice seems a little complex, and it's not on a per-play basis. Essentially the criteria are as follows:

An artist’s royalty payments depend on the following variables, among others: