Normally at this time of year, I write a review of the past season. This year I won't, mostly because my season has been so awful. A combination of the weather, illness, injury, and having trouble fitting training in around my work all contributed to a poor season's racing (in combination with Father Time, it has to be said).I had intended to return from the Duo Normand and get straight into preparations for the 2013 season. By the time I rode the Duo Normand, my scrapes and grazes acquired in the crash on 8th September had pretty much healed up. Unfortunately by then what turned out to be a series of aches and pains had begun. First up was severe shoulder pain, and this was followed by lower back pain, hip joint pain, leg muscle problems and the like, all mostly affecting my right hand side (which had made contact with the road).So, as I write, I've effectively been laid off from cycling (other than a spot of cycle commuting) for the best part of four weeks. Not ideal. I was too crocked to ride the NBRC Hill Climb championship. This is held on the short but steep climb at Bow Brickhill. I am gratified to see that one of my NBRC club mates won the event, though by an excitingly small margin of 0.3 seconds! Personally, I dislike hill climbs - they make me feel unwell! Formally, of course, the final event of the 2012 club event series actually happens in 2013: the New Year '10' on the first of January.The layoff has been pretty useful in the sense that I had the time to follow up on the news coverage of the Armstrong scandal. I had read Tyler Hamilton's book The Secret Race on the Kindle just before heading off to France, so I had some idea of what the USADA dossier would say. But I wasn't prepared for the extent to which USADA savaged Armstrong and colleagues. The fallout has been epic, and I look forward to Bruyneel's appeal hearing to CAS over his sanctions.My bike club, the North Bucks Road Club, has had a bit of a rough year, with declining membership and lower turnouts at our club events. Our recent AGM addressed some of these issues, particularly fired by my revolutionary zeal. This earned me nomination as club Vice Chairman. Or, as I put it, Chairman of Vice. Having ploughed through the USADA report, one might say I am now well-qualified to be Chairman of Vice! But seriously, we do hope to pull the NBRC through the doldrums and capitalise on the upsurge in interest in cycling both locally and nationally. I've begun overhauling the club's website, though at the moment changes are somewhat behind the scenes unless you're a paid-up member of the club. Attendance at our Wednesday club events has been dropping, which probably reflects lower membership but also competition from other clubs' events - particularly those held on the fast Tring course which I think has attracted non-NBRC members particularly.
I was in London on Friday for the latest progress meeting of the SysMIC project. It's a project funded by the BBSRC as a resource for members of its research community: from graduates beginning their career through to established researchers wishing to improve their skills in mathematical and systems biology.Here's the course syllabus. There's also an overview of how SysMIC connects to the BBSRC's new doctoral training programmes (SysMIC briefing for DTP students - Word file).At the moment it's being 'road-tested' by some early adopter PhD students (and by me, the only member of the team with what might be classed as 'rusty' mathematical skills). At the end of our meeting, we wandered over to the computing lab to chat to these students, who all seemed to be engaging really well. It goes live to registered members of the BBSRC research community in January 2013 - the first cohort of students are PhD students in the new Doctoral Training Partnerships.I tend to focus more on the mathematical aspects of SysMIC: partly this reflects applications of this kind of training in the biological sciences, and partly because I perceive a rather changeable definition of 'Systems Biology'. I prefer to think in terms of developing models and using those in a predictive way to design and interpret experiments (my own definition of Systems Biology would be of mathematical modelling that integrates multiple and diverse data sources to model complex systems).I'm working through the material that's been prepared so far, and having fun with MatLab, the mathematics platform we chose for SysMIC, and while I have to say I've yet to move on to anything mathematically serious, I can see how a more mathematical approach could benefit my own research.
A few years ago, I encountered a review of a networked music player that seemed rather useful - the Squeezebox. This was a small unit that connected wirelessly to a computer on the home network (or to a manufacturer-maintained server on the internet) to stream digital music from numerous sources. The Squeezebox itself connects to the HiFi via analogue of digital outputs. The Squeezebox line of devices had been acquired by Logitech from its original manufacturers, SlimDevices. Over the following years, my Squeezebox system expanded to include a Squeezebox Touch, two Squeezebox Radios, and a number of software players for laptops and iPads, with my my music hosted on a QNAP NAS, running 24:7. You can see the general setup in this diagram (the Touch and Classic connect to the HiFi, while the Radios are standalone players):
The whole system is immensely versatile: I really only scratch the surface. The Logitech Media Server (LMS) offers the facility to add plugins, and over the years many official and third party plugins have been developed. I usually use LMS in preference to the Logitech maintained server MySqueezebox.com, and use it for playing local music files (a mixture of flac and mp3 format) and streaming radio. I scrobble my listening to Last.FM, but I don't subscribe to music streaming services. You can synchronise music between two or more devices, alternatively you can play different music to each device. Like I say very versatile.
There were of course issues with the system. Frankly, had I not some tendency towards geeky-ness, I might have been confused by the system. On the other hand, consumer understanding can't have been helped by continually renaming things - for example the server software changed from SlimServer, to SqueezeServer to Logitech Media Server (and I may have missed some out), and explaining to the customer how the local and internet servers worked must have been a complete pain for support.Fast forward to late August 2012. Having just bought a Squeezebox Touch (as an upgrade to my Squeezebox Classic), I was browsing round the Logitech website, when I noticed a new product, the Logitech UE Smart Radio, which looked remarkably like the Squeezebox Radios I owned. As I continued looking round the Logitech site, I could see all the pages relating to the Squeezebox range disappear, and within a very short time, pretty much all mention of Squeezeboxes had been expunged. I posted to the Squeezebox Radio forum, and you can see there the dismay this news caused.Logitech has indeed pulled out of supplying the best home networked music system that I can see on the market. They've rebranded the Squeezebox Radio, and reduced its functionality (though I have to say this generates an easier consumer experience). Oddly the newly branded UE Smart Radio can't play local music files without an internet connection. And there's nothing in the range that can output to a HiFi. So, all very sad.In the meantime, Logitech are supporting MySqueezebox.com for the foreseeable future, and even when that goes, those of us with functional local servers will continue using their Squeezebox systems.It's just a shame that the Squeezebox lineup has gone.
This morning I received a tweet in my twitter stream from some internet Bingo outfit, from an account that I don't follow. It's not unusual to pick up spammers on Twitter, but this one was a bit unusual - it was labelled as a "promoted tweet". I did a spot of Googling to see what this was all about and found this help page. Here I find that...
- Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement from their existing followers.
- Promoted Tweets are clearly labeled as Promoted when an advertiser is paying for their placement on Twitter. In every other respect, Promoted Tweets act just like regular Tweets and can be retweeted, replied to, favorited and more.
- A Promoted Tweet will appear in a user’s timeline only if the Tweet is likely to be interesting and relevant to that user.
- Our platform uses a variety of signals to determine which Promoted Tweets are relevant to users, including what a user chooses to follow, how they interact with a Tweet, what they retweet, and more.
- Users who dislike a Promoted Tweet can simply dismiss it from their timeline with a single click, using the “Dismiss” button that appears as part of the Tweet.
This event is usually the high point in two-up time trialling for many riders, including Team Grumpy, the informal name for the regular 2-up partnership between Gerry and I. We've ridden the event for 9 of the last 10 editions of this event, based in Marigny, Normandy. The course itself is a terrific one, with fast sections, short but tough climbs and equally short but spine-tingling descents all within 54.3km.
The second '10' of the day was the Icknield RC '10', on the Brogborough-based F15/10. By the time Tony and I rode over the to HQ at the Marston Vale Forest Centre, we had lovely warm and sunny conditions, with what promised to be a light head wind back (much lighter than I had had the previous Saturday).I rode from the HQ to the start with Tony and then kept riding to and fro for a bit before getting to the start. After the usual banter with the time keeper, I rode off down the hill, quickly getting into a nice big gear for the opening descent. I had a pretty quick ride out to the turn (maybe averaging over 29 mph), marred slightly by traffic at the roundabout half way to the turn. But then again, that roundabout has an annoying kink that I always slow a little for.After the turn, I settled into trying find a rhythm that I was comfortable with (not comfortable in!). I was tooling along at around 25-26mph when I saw a couple of children ahead of me, wobbling along the road on what appeared to be bmx bike and one of those stupid scooters. They wobbled particularly as the rider ahead of me passed, so I thought nothing of it when the looked back at me and wobbled some more. To my horror, this turned out not to be a wobble at all - the kids veered straight across the road, colliding with me and projecting me across the road as a 26 mph tangled mass of carbon and shredded lycra and flesh, right into the path of an oncoming car.Fortunately the car stopped in time. The adults in the car got out to see if I was OK (the kids responsible for my crash seemed relatively unhurt, but somewhat shocked). I didn't have the heart to bawl them out - asking them just what they thought they were doing seemed to have a bit of an effect on them. I was clearly bleeding, with a shredded skinsuit and fractured helmet. The bike seemed reasonably OK, though the handlebars were out of alignment.I rode back to the HQ somewhat gingerly, where, after, retelling the incident to the organiser and others, I was prevailed upon not to ride home and to accept a lift home. The butchers bill is really just an astonishing array of grazes, scrapes, cuts and bruises. No broken bones, fortunately. It's all rather painful - I don't understand how professional riders can go on day after day after crashes. Maybe being younger and being paid to do it helps!
This was to be the first of two ten mile time trials today, and was actually the last in the NBRC series of club events. It was a delightful morning, still and cool with the prospect of fine sunny conditions later.Not a huge turnout, maybe due to the 8 am start, and even despite the early hour traffic was building up. I made as much of an effort as I thought wise, given the afternoon's open event and I was frankly disappointed by my ride (it's a long time since I came last in a club event). I did get stopped at the first roundabout, but that doesn't explain away more than a few seconds.Maybe it's the "end of season" feeling, but I do have to keep enough enthusiasm to take me to the Duo Normand at the end of September.
A very warm afternoon made me feel quite sleepy. Not only that, while I was riding around before the start, I really felt I ought to be sat in a beer garden sipping Leffe. This wasn't helped by the fact the race HQ was in a social club bar. It may have been soporifically warm, but it was quite clear that this wasn't going to be an easy race: there was going to be a stiff tailwind for the outbound leg, which would make the return leg rather tough. Fortunately, the return leg is shorter!The F15/10 is quite a new course which has been used extensively this season (I've entered another event on it next weekend). It starts at the top of Brogborough hill, which riders zoom down safe in the knowledge they won't have to race back up it again! This got me off to a fast start, and even having reached the bottom of the hill, I was cranking out speeds in excess of 30mph for most of the way to the turn. The roundabout at Marston is a bit of a brute on the outward leg because, despite the fact that riders are going straight on, it presents an unexpected chicane. Once at the turn, it was really obvious (I mean REALLY obvious) how tough the return leg was going be. This was definitely a race of two halves. For the first half, I was whizzing along at a decent heart rate with the wind assistance, for the second half I put a huge effort in, with my heart rate skyrocketing, and only making a modest speed, despite the effort. Oddly, my speed fluctuated quite a bit, presumably due the varying shelter from the wind coupled with minor undulations in the road.It was with a huge sense of relief that I made it to the finish line. 22:55, which I thought not bad given the conditions. It was also around the other riders on a '5'.
The weather was forecast to be pretty dreadful for this morning's event, but it turned out to be not too bad. The roads were wet from heavy overnight rain, but except for a few drops on the ride home, the weather remained dry. A light breeze hampered high speed on the outward leg to Chicheley, though it was then easy enough up to the climb to North Crawley. As usual, I found it hard to get back up to speed riding through North Crawley and beyond, but once past the university turn I was rolling well again.I finished in 23:42, my quickest ride at Astwood this year, and good enough for 4th place out of 9 riders. Results over at the NBRC site.
A bit late reporting on this event, but suffice to say that it was all a bit grim. Right from the start, I found the wind very strong and blustery, to the point where I was having trouble controlling the front H3, which was being surprisingly twitchy. I also got stalled to a standstill by traffic on two outbound roundabouts, which kind of sapped my interest in the event.As it turned out I got caught by Tony just short of the turn, but limited further losses until we left the DC. Not a great performance, 23:53 for 5th place.