Xkcd's cartoon today on Christmas songs and baby-boomers in the USA.  But of course we in the UK favour Slade!

Ove the last few years, I've dabbled in Facebook, but frankly never really wanted to share all the trivia of my life with others, and nor did I want to know the trivia of other peoples' lives.  Periodically, Facebook seemed to make changes to the privacy settings of the system, and therefore my account, and I have been getting increasingly annoyed at having to delve into what's frankly quite an arcane settings system to rectify the situation.So after news reports of what seemed to me to be a rather intrusive set of changes to the way Facebook streams trivia and tittle-tattle between users, I decided to suspend my Facebook account.  In part this decision stemmed from the stories about Facebook's cookies tracking users' web activity in a way that was rather difficult to close down.  I chose to suspend rather than delete my account because I thought that perhaps I would want to return to the fold, and read updates on peoples' lives, their travails, and above all their bonkers Facebook games.  Well, perhaps not the latter.It's been over a month now, and I've not missed Facebook at all.  But.  I notice that some web companies such as Spotify now require a Facebook account to register.  This is no big deal to me, my music listening habits aren't really going to benefit from Spotify membership - while I think I've increasingly embraced the digital music era, the way I think of and listen to my music collection is somewhat rooted in a vinyl LP mindset.However, during my daily perambulations round the internet I follow a good many links, many of these to news sites where the comments are often of interest.  In general, I tend not to leave comments of my own (unless it's a subject I'm particularly interested in), but I often like to see what the regular readers of the site have to say.  Some sites I've visited recently have required readers to have a Facebook login - not only to post comments, but in some cases to read comments.This is a little sad, I think.  It's assuming all internet users are going to buy into the loss of privacy that the Facebook mindset leads to.(The links to Facebook on this site currently point to a page saying "This content is currently unavailable" - if and when I finally knock my Facebook account on the head, those links will go).

The New Humanist magazine reports that Nadine Dorries has won their 2011 Bad Faith award by a landslide (Bad Faith Award 2011: it's Dorries by a landslide).  As New Humanist says:

It's been a fascinating race for the award this year, as for the first time in its five-year history one of the candidates took note of the fact that they had been nominated and began a campaign to ensure they emerged victorious. As many of you already know, Dorries, who was nominated on account of her twin attempts to change the law on abortion counselling and introduce abstinence-based sex education for girls, noticed she was in the running shortly after we opened the poll, and published a post on her infamous blog ("70 per cent fiction and 30 per cent fact") stating that "it's scary to think how many people out there hold such extreme views dressed up as acceptable in an online glossy magazine". 

This week, Cyclingnews provided an update of the much-delayed CAS hearing on Alberto Contador's doping 'positive' (Contador Doping Verdict Expected In January | Cyclingnews.com).  More delay in finishing with this bizarre case:

Alberto Contador’s fate should be announced in January, according to AP, who reported Monday that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) would reach a verdict in the first month of 2012.

The UCI issued a statement reporting that the concentration was 50 picograms per millilitre, and that this was 400 times below the minimum standards of detection capability required by WADA, and that further scientific investigation would be required. Contador was provisionally suspended from competition, although this had no short-term effect as he had already finished his racing programme for the 2010 season. Contador had been informed of the results over a month earlier, on 24 August. Later the amount discovered was clarified as 40 times below the minimum standards, rather than the 400 times originally reported by the UCI. Contador's scientific adviser claimed that he would have needed 180 times the amount detected to gain any benefit in his performance.

The infamous pepper-spraying of protestors at UC Davis has gone a bit viral it seems. Here's a video of the cop casually spraying peaceful protestors. This isn't some harmless spray.  On the Scoville scale of chilli heat, where the pretty damned hot habenero chilli scores around 350,000 Scoville units, these sprays deliver a whopping 2,000,000 to 5,300,000 Scoville units. It's not trivial.Anyway, some rather wonderful photoshop images are doing the rounds.  Here's a favourite:

This is like a scene from my life with computers...

In my work mailbox, I receive a daily dose of emails soliciting my participation in international conferences (usually, but not always, located in China or one of the arab nations, and usually in a field or research I'm not active in), or soliciting my involvement in a journal.  Usually, the journal emails are for what I would consider 'vanity press' publications, and either involve invitations to join editorial boards or to submit a paper.  Today's mailbox includes this wonderfully personalised email:I don't suppose it's too bad, being referred to as Dr firstname!

Where I live, firmly in the home counties, we have a pretty crap electricity supply.  It is prone to cutting out unexpectedly.  This afternoon was one such occasion, and when the power came back my router (a Netgear model, slightly old now) had bust.  No amount of power cycling or hard resetting would bring it back to life.So, it was off to PC World for a replacement.  I plumped for a Netgear DGND3300 dual band router-modem.  It was pretty trivial to set up with my ISP account.  But no matter how hard I tried, I was unable to set up fixed IP addresses for the various bits of kit I attach to the router.  A bit of googling led to the solution: it seems as though this problem is associated with the most up-to-date firmware for the router (which of course it had).  I obtained an older version, downloaded it and flashed it to the router.Problem solved.Except how come my power supply company is so rubbish they let my power cut out so destructively?  And how come Netgear can't properly test their firmware?  For the record, the latest firmware is 2.1.00.48 but the version that works is 2.1.00.42.

According to Velonews, Alejandro Valverde will be back in the peloton for 2012, riding for Movistar (Valverde confirmed for Movistar return).  Not many of the athletes who deposited blood with Fuentes have ever been properly identified, let alone punished for their nefarious plans to cheat in pro-cycling, but Valv. (Piti) is one of them - he's coming back in 2012 after a 2 year ban.  While I wouldn't want to condone Valv (Piti) in his efforts to get an edge by cheating, there is a wider issue of justice.What of the rest of the riders (and indeed athletes from other sports)?  The Operacion Puerto investigation got dropped by the Spanish authorities - why should some riders get clobbered with a ban, while others get to ride off into the sunset of their careers, clutching their ill-gotten gains?  The degree with which Fuentes appears to have been involved with the professional peloton is quite astonishing.  Many riders must be quite relieved to have made it to the twilight of their careers without being unmasked as blood doping cheats.

Last year, I wrote a couple of blog articles reviewing my year's cycling: 2010 Season Review and My Year in Cycling.  Last season, of course, saw something of a resurgence in my racing.  A combination of motivation (new time trial frameset, defying my entry to my second half century on this planet) with a revised approach to training saw me post my best short distance (10 mile, 25 mile and 50 mile) time trial results in about 6 years.  So, how did things pan out in 2011?RacingThe early months of the year saw me following the same sort of training strategy used in 2010.  Essentially (and as usual) the main place I train is on the turbo trainer in the garage.  Boring, maybe, but it's a place where I can get the effort out without dodging traffic or being restricted by short days.  As in 2010, the majority of these sessions were done quite early in the day, before heading off to work.  Everything was going swimmingly well (resting heart rate dropping, threshold power rising) when disaster struck in February.  About three weeks before my opening event in the season, the now traditional Port Talbot Wheelers 2-up '25', I seriously ricked my back parking the tandem in the bike shed at work.  This took me out of training for at least three weeks, and indeed was still giving me trouble at the 2-up.  Our combined lack of fitness meant we posted a pretty deplorable time, but at least we collected the prize for the fastest Composite team.  In all honesty, that was due to a lack of other teams in the category.  Still, at least that was a start to the season.Unfortunately the season continued to disappoint.  I had about three heavy colds during the season, all of which knocked me back in fitness terms, and the weather during much of the 'summer' remained atrocious.  All in all, I did not race much and when I did, I did not do well at all.Finally, the season's close heaved into view, and as usual this was marked by the Duo Normand, possibly my favourite event.  This year's edition was the 30th and the eighth time Gerry and I had ridden.  In 2010, we'd finally won a category (Corporate) and we were anxious not to do badly this year.  In the end, we had the most atrocious conditions we'd seen at the Duo (as you can see from this video), and we were rather relieved to make it to second place.My performance at the Duo seemed to me to be OK, given that a week before going to France I suffered a heavy cold, and a few days before the race I picked up another.  Frankly had this been a local event on the F1 I wouldn't have started in those conditions and with a cold but, hey, this was the Duo Normand...And with that, my season was over.  Oh and another cold...TouringThis year's Scottish tour started from Ullapool and we intended to proceed around the north coast of Scotland, and possibly make an excursion to Orkney.  As you can read elsewhere on this site, it all went pretty much awry, with a major mechanical on day 2.  We then revised out plans and decided to base ourselves in Pitlochry for a series of day rides.  The second mechanical took the form of a front tyre blowout descending Ben Lawers.  A front tyre blowout on a tandem at 25 miles an hour is a bit of a terrifying experience, though mostly in recollection as it all happens so quickly.  Fortunately I can report that my jaded 50-something year old reflexes are still functioning in top-notch style - I successfully brought the tandem to a safe stop without falling off.  Getting home on a shredded tyre was rather nerve-racking, however.As usual, a second tandem cycling excursion accompanied our trip to Normandy for the Duo, though to be honest, we have explored Normandy to our satisfaction now, and we're looking into the possibility of a week in Brittany prior to the Duo Normand in 2012.All in all 2011 was a bit disappointing.  But never fear, I'll be back in 2012, hopefully firing on all cylinders.  Certainly my winter training seems to be going well at the moment.