The flies&bikes blog has been a bit quiet lately.  This has been partly because I've been rather distracted by events and activities at work, partly because much of what I write about relates to my bike racing (which is seasonal), and partly because I write on a few blog sites.My blog 'Wonderful Life', which is hosted at this site, is where I blog about biology and atheism, frequently on topics such as creationism and its deviant offspring 'intelligent design'.  This has lead me to accept an invitation to join the committee of the British Centre for Science Education (website, forum and blog).  So a bit more effort has gone towards 'Wonderful Life' lately..Normal service will be resumed...

It's been quite a few weeks (or perhaps months) since dear Valv. (Piti) - aka Alejandro Valverde's doping case graced this blog.  Today, CyclingNews.com reports that Alejandro Valverde has lost the final appeal against his doping ban (Valverde Loses Final Appeal).This of course follows one of the few instances in which DNA fingerprinting led to a correlation between a pro cyclist and ablood bag recovered from Dr Fuentes' stash.  I guess the DNA profiling was felt to be rather incontrovertible.  Oh, and the barely concealed code name on the bags.He's now banned until the end of 2011.  He was formally banned from the first of January this year, but kept on racing for a while.  But the bottom line is - why couldn't the Spanish authorities succeed in getting more of the blood bags sampled for DNA fingerprinting?  How many riders got away with it?  And is it fair to clobber just a few of the cyclists involved?

Clocks change this weekend (from British Summer Time to Greenwich Mean Time) in the UK, and as usual we get a bunch of silly stories about how we ought to change this practice (for example BBC News - Putting clocks back damages our health, says expert).I'm a cycle commuter, and personally I think increased darkness in the morning would be a dangerous change.  I'm not convinced drivers are fully awake during the morning commute - a suggestion supported in the article by Dr David Lewis, a chartered psychologist who has done research into the effect of sunshine on our well-being

"But there is a danger that people leaving for work in the morning don't really wake up properly if it's not light."

It is apparently recommended that adults take 30 minutes exercise per day and children take 60 minutes.  It does seem to me that the easiest way of getting this exercise is by encouraging people to commute by bike where possible (and take public transport with its attendant walking to/from buses and trains): I expect people are less likely to do so in the dark.

I've finally shaken off the recurrent cold that's been a bit of a burden since I returned from the USA in the first week of October.  This was convenient since my Team Grumpy team mate was visiting and we'd planned a bike ride.  This is actually rather a rare occasion for us.Of course all my assertions that we should 'take it easy' and 'don't forget I've been off the bike for four weeks' had zilch effect as we found ourselves zipping along on a beautifully clear and sunny morning (though it was rather cold at the start), particularly after we encountered an old club mate on the way, with the consequences that generally follow.  We covered around 50 miles in about 3h riding time - the furthest I've cycled since our trip to France in September, and the first 'proper' bike ride in the last month.  We did stop at a cafe in Winslow, which was just as well, since by the last 10 miles, my legs were suffering.It was notable how 'mobile' my heart rate was: while mostly it was in upper level 1 or lower level 2, it didn't take much for it to leap up to levels that I normally see during short time trials.  So recovery is still some way off, I guess.  Added to which, as I write this the following morning, I do seem a bit achy - particularly my neck.Oh, and I did collect a slow puncture a mile or two from getting home.

It would seem as though the UK government has quietly performed an about turn and revived the Intercept Modernisation Plan ('Surveillance state' fear as government revives tracking plan | UK news | The Guardian).  As The Guardian reports:

A £2bn plan to allow the police and security services to track the email, text, internet and mobile phone details of everyone in Britain is to be revived, the Home Office has confirmed.The coalition agreement promised to scrap the "surveillance state" plan by pledging to "end the storage of internet and email records without good reason". Both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats voiced criticism in opposition.But the project, known as the interception modernisation programme, has been quietly revived - a decision buried in the back pages of the strategic defence and security review published this week. Senior Home Office officials have confirmed that legislation is being prepared.

You might have thought that in the current climate of swingeing cuts in public expenditure this might have remained axed.  But no, it's back.The plan doesn't yet include retention of the content of messages (but as ever, beware of 'function creep').

Following the announcement of the upcoming OSX app store, it's reported that Microsoft is (supposedly) working on a Windows app store, too.Hang on - isn't this what we do with Ubuntu?One of the things that delayed my buy-in to the iPad was the whole walled-garden of the thing - without jailbreaking (with it's attendant consequences) I'm committed to only obtaining and running software available through the App Store.  Now, I eventually concluded that the iPad, like the iPod Touch, is actually a consumer device rather than a computer per se, and I can see why Apple have gone down that route. And I've found the iPad to be an impressive device fr many of my day to day work (and entertainment) activities.Regarding the proposal of an "App Store" for Mac OSX, I was rather relaxed.  After all Linux distros have really had this kind of facility for years - in the form of the repository system used by whatever packaging system used.  In Ubuntu I either access this via the command line or via Synaptic.  There is of course the "Ubuntu Software Centre", which seems to me moving from just a listing of free software to also offering commercial software.In that sense, moving to an App Store model for distributing software for computers isn't particularly innovative, unless it becomes the only way to install software.  It appears that the OSX app store is to be incorporated in next year's OSX 10.7 and added to the current OSX 10.6 pretty soon (Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" - Sneak Peek).I'm a little uneasy about this move: I don't want to work in a completely closed software ecosystem, and I'm not getting a sense of whether this will be the exclusive mode of software installation. I guess this will be resolved quite soon, as it's coming to OS X 10.6 in the coming months.Update:  Ars Technica's review of yesterday's Apple media shindig (Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: "Mac OS X meets the iPad") quotes Steve Jobs as saying that the Mac App Store won't be the only place to get applications—just "the best place." So that's OK -  for now...

Sitting awake after another nocturnal coughing fit (will this darned cold never shift?) in the early hours of the day in which the Government's Spending Review details will be announced, I notice that the BBC is reporting that the civil science research budget is to be cut by "only" 10% over four years (Science cuts 'less than feared').   Still bad, but  I guess we will feel a sense of relief after the  Government spin of recent weeks.  As the BBC report says, the Royal Society submission to the Government earlier this year said:

A 10% cut would "fundamentally damage the quality, productivity and capability of the UK's research base".

I guess the quality of the Government's spin doctors is revealed by the sense of relief that the cuts will be 'only' 10%.Still of concern is where the cuts will fall.  The BBC's report says that the Medical Research Council may lose least as it's viewed to fund research that fits "national priorities", while those funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council may be more worried.  No mention of the BBSRC in the report.Still, while the USA and other competitor nations raise their research budgets (in terms of % GDP), we are taking the opposite direction.See also Spin Spin Spin.

The BBC reports 79% cut in University teaching funding (Will this mark the death of UK Universities? - Grumpy Bob's Posterous).

I am wondering if I am turning into a Mac Fanboi...I recently bought my first Apple computer (I don't really include iPods or iPads as computers), in the form of a 13" MacBook Pro.  This purchase came shortly before the release of Ubuntu GNU/Linux 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat), of which more later.  Over the years, I've had computers running Windows 3.1, 95, 2000, Me, XP, Vista (possibly my least favourite) and most recently Windows 7.  Since about 2000, I have been using Linux, starting with an ancient version of Red Hat, then Mandriva, and for some years now, Ubuntu.  In fact I've rarely used Windows except for specific applications in several years now.  The Windows 7 desktop PC was bought and promptly set up to dual boot; the Vista notebook (a Sony Vaio) was so woefully underpowered for Vista that it was first used as dual boot with Ubuntu, then the Vista partition scrubbed.The trigger for this purchase was my experience giving a presentation at a conference recently.  I had an 8 minute (!) presentation to give: this was straightforward, except I wanted to include a brief video.  My Linux notebook running OpenOffice.org flat refused to project the video, using Powerpoint 2003 via Crossover Office, I couldn't even embed the video.  Switching to my Windows 7 desktop PC and its trial version of Office 2007, I was delighted to be able to embed the video and get it to function.Of course I needed to check the presentation at the conference.  Powerpoint 2003 on an XP machine wouldn't run it.  Powerpoint 2007 on the projection system wouldn't run it.  Powerpoint 2008 on the Mac presentation system wouldn't run it.  This was less than 24h before I was to deliver the presentation.  I ended up processing the video on the Linux notebook and regenerating the presentation on Mac Powerpoint 2008.  Nerves of steel I do not have, so this was undesirable pressure.I've had the MacBook Pro for a little over a fortnight now: other than iWork (which I obtained at a significant reduction), all the software I've installed has been open source: Firefox, Chrome, GIMP, Inkscape, Mendeley, OpenOffice.org, and FileZilla to name a few, thereby recapitulating quite neatly my experiences with Linux.  The hardware and build quality of the MacBook is second to none (it's annoying to have to buy an adapter to make a presentation, but the power brick is so small as to be genuinely portable).In the meantime, I've updated a venerable Sony notebook and a Dell desktop to Ubuntu GNU/Linux 10.10, with no issues.  No astonishingly obvious changes visible so far.  Gnome-Do doesn't seem to play with Docky; the Ubuntu Software Centre is a bit easier to use (but I don't use that very often); Trash is renamed "Rubbish Bin" in dialogues, but not on the desktop.  I dare say a bunch of other stuff will become evident in the coming weeks.

The latest from xkcd tickled me - this sort of conversation with "tech" support is why I changed ISP (well, that and the Phorm phiasco).[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="xkcd - Tech Support"][/caption]