The UK ISP TalkTalk was recently spotted shadowing its customers' tracks around the internet. The excellent NoDPI.org has a comprehensive summary of why this is illegal (TalkTalk becomes StalkStalk).  Interestingly the man in charge, despite claiming to have deleted all emails from one protester has had his legal crew write an apparently evasive letter.As with the BT-Phorm debacle, it's going to be interesting to watch this unfold...buy I can't see the UK regulatory bodies acting with any great rapidity if prior experience is anything to go by,

An article principally concerning government plans to squeeze those living in council accommodation (David Cameron announces plan to end lifetime council tenancies | Society | The Guardian), Prime Minister David Cameron is quoted as saying:[...] the coming public spending cuts will not be restored when the economy recovers.

I've recently taken delivery of a Garmin 500 bike computer, rather a neat piece of kit that can use GPS positioning to show speed and distance: it also has a speed/cadence sensor and a chest strap to send HR to the unit. It is ANT+compatible so can receive data from any ANT+ power sensor (I've got an eye on the Metrigear pedal spindle device, should it ever enter the market).Garmin have a website to which data can be downloaded from the unit online: this requires a downloaded plug-in to facilitate upload from the Garmin 500. Or so they say (more on this in a bit), and it's only available for PC and Mac. The software is pretty limited in comparison to other apps I've used. While you can see graphs of power, altitude, speed and heart rate, you can't seem to plot them in combination. Nor are there any of the very useful ways of plotting power data that some other packages offer. You can however use Garmin Connect to convert from FIT format to TCX format, which can be useful.You can also download Garmin's Training Center to run on a PC or Mac. Once again there's no Linux version available, though I've used a Windows virtual machine to have a play with it. As with the web-based Garmin Connect, it seems to me to be rather limited in its analytic capabilities. So with those comments in mind, what training software have I tried and (perhaps more pertinently) use?I've been using VidaOne's Diet and Fitness (VODF) since the days it was known as MySportTraining, This was largely because it had a Pocket PC version that would synchronise with the Windows version - now it also has an iPhone app. Of course it's always been a pain to be using Windows apps when I am by and large a Linux user these days. I currently run this app in a virtual XP machine (using VirtualBox), and have training data going back 7 years. It would have been more, except for a laptop crash back in 2003 - which taught me a lesson! Using the Polar IR USB device, VODF can download directly from the Polar CS600X with power, but beyond offering a graph of power against time, seems limited in how to analyse power data. VODF doesn't currently download GPS data from the Polar CS600X.Most of the heart rate monitors I've used have been from Polar (successively the Polar Coach, S600, S720i and now CS600X), and so I've tried a few versions of Polar software - Polar Protrainer 5 currently, but find the interface a little clunky, though I guess this comes down to personal taste. And like VODF, it's analytic power tools seem to be rather limited. The principal reason I keep PPT is that I can collect GPS data from the Polar.Golden CheetahThis year, as I enter my second half century, I've seen consistent improvement in my time trialling performances. As I write, I have ridden my best times at 10 miles (21:05, my best since 2002, and my second best time ever), 25 miles (55:29, my best since 2004) and 50 miles (1:57:45 and again, my best since 2004). So, what's this down to?The sceptics out there seem to reckon it's due to my new time trial bike, built around a Cervelo P3. I supect it's more down to changed training practices. Back in mid-2009, I figured I needed to re-evaluate my work-life balance, since my working pattern was leading to ever-later finishes each day, and directly impacting on my ability to schedule training sessions. And as anyone should realise, the key to decent performance is a detailed and thoughtful training schedule. Indeed, way back when I was setting my personal best times in 2002-4 I was rigorously following Pete Read's Black Book, which is actually a fixed schedule of sessions based on heart rate monitoring.On the basis that a change is as good as a rest, I've been dabbling with power-based training for my time trialling habit since October (after last year's Duo Normand, in fact). I've reviewed the hardware I selected over at the Team Grumpy website - the Polar CS600X cycle computer with the WIND power meter attachment.Thus far, I've principally used the device on the turbo trainer bike. Despite frequently offered advice that the power system doesn't work on a turbo trainer mounted bike, it does seem to deliver pretty robust data. I also plumped for the Polar G3 GPS device for use in road cycling. This bit of kit picks up the GPS satellite data and relays it to the CS600X head unit. My main reason for investing in the G3 was that I'd not need to get speed sensors for all my bikes. I'm pretty pleased with the G3, it seems to generally work well, once one has figured out the hopelessly inadequate documentation.  The main problems I've faced have related to battery life (G3 uses a single AA cell, supposedly good for 10h, but I reckon less, particularly if an NiMH rechargeable cell is used).I don't particularly like the Polar Pro Trainer (PPT) software that came with the CS600X - I have continued using the training software that I've used since about 2003 (VidaOne Diet and Fitness), but need to use PPT to get the GPS data downloaded. Both the Polar and VidaOne applications lose out quite markedly on the matter of displaying and analysing power data. After a spot of Googling, I came across an Open Source project - Golden Cheetah - which produces releases for Windows, Mac OSX and (most importantly) Linux. This offers a neat set of analytical tools which mean that power metering can be really very effectively used to deduce the effectiveness of training sessions.I have found Hunter and Coggan's book Training and Racing with a Power Meter to be realy invauable in making sense of a lot of the graphs and charts that GC can use to display data. The book's just come out in a second edition. GC aims to display data derived from a number of devices (and their individual file formats). Unfortunately the Polar CS600X produces two files - the first containing the session data in hrm format, and the GPS data within a second file in gpx format. GC imports GPS data in the Garmin tcx format. In itself, this isn't a major problem (for example the GPSies website offers format conversion, except that the session and GPS data remain in separate files.Fortunately Rainer Clasen has developed a series of perl scripts to do a number of tasks with such data files, including merging datasets - see perl Workout library. These do an excellent job, though you do need to know a little command line work. I got the scripts installed with a minimum of perl expertise (and I mean minimum!), though there were one or two snags in the files I was seeking to merge that required a little help from Rainer (for which, many thanks). Now I'm able to merge hrm and gpx files into a tcx format file, which imports well into GC.Next on my plan is to take power-metered training out on the road. I have fitted a second Polar WIND power sensor to one of my road bikes, and over the last few weeks I've been evaluating the kind of training I can do with the extra information at my fingertips. Whereas on the turbo I principally use the power data to analyse my training sessions after completion, on the road I tend to keep an eye on the power output while riding. In part this reflects the nature of the sessions - extended efforts on the road vs intervals on the turbo - but also that the readings are a little more stable than on the turbo. Neatly, GC has a Google Earth display which shows the GPS track of the ride, coloured to show 30s average power readings along the ride. Now, I'm not convinced of the importance of the power colouring, but seeing the route is quite useful.Despite all this movement towards power-based training, my main emphasis has remained on using power metering to analyse the training sessions rather than dictate effort applied. In particular, I've been using it to estimate my threshold power in order to monitor my progress through the training schedule. Instead, I rely mostly on the physiological readout of my heart rate. What remains is to incorporate all this information into a much more structured scheme over next winter in preparation for the 2011 season.

A very warm day transformed into much cooler conditions for this event over at the Stony Stratford course.  At least the rain showers which I rode through en route to the event held off for the actual racing.  On the other hand, I really shouldn't have taken part in the event, as I was feeling decidedly unwell on the ride out.I also took a chance on riding rather lower gears than usual on the outward leg, particularly on the uphill section to Nash.  Unfortunately, this (coupled with the uncertain feeling in my stomach, and my caution cornering on wet roads) merely slowed me down to the point I recorded a poor 28:31 in tonight's event.  My generally unwell feeling intensified overnight, and I spent the night tossing and turning.That's the last time trial for a week and a half, as I cannot race due to work commitments.  I'll return to the fray in the Finsbury Park '25'.

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	9	Tony Parks	NBRC	26.35	V45	30.29	.+ 3.54	1
2	13	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	27.01	S
3	6	Lindz Barral	i-team.CC	27.35	S
4	5	Adrian Cox	TeamMK	27.36	V49	31.26	.+ 3.50	2
5	4	Robert Saunders	NBRC	28.31	V50	31.41	.+ 3.10	4
6	14	John Buchanan	TeamMK	28.35	V40	29.20	.+ 0.45	5
7	8	Ben Garrard	Leeds Tri Club	29.06	S
8	12	Piers Vallance	Private	29.42	S
9	10	Claire Vallance	Private	31.30	LS
10	3	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	32.34	V67	36.13	.+ 3.39	3
11	1	Alan Lawson	NBRC	32.48	V42	29.47	.- 3.01	8
12	11	Nigel Skinner	Private	32.49	V45	30.29	.- 2.20	7
13	2	Dave Garrard	NBRC	35.11	V62	34.48	.- 0.23	6
	2 up TTT
	7	Sue Skeggs	TeamMK	33.30
		David Skeggs	NBRC

A story that surfaced in TalkTalk forums a while back, and more recently in the Phoenix Broadband Advisory Community and the No DPI forums has now come to the attention of The Register (TalkTalk turns StalkStalk to build malware blocker).  This one's interesting - under the guise of harvesting URLs for future malware protection TalkTalk have been following their clients around the web.  El Reg:

It's less TalkTalk, more StalkStalk: the UK's second largest ISP has quietly begun following its customers around the web and scanning what they look at for a new anti-malware system it is developing.Without telling customers, the firm has switched on the compulsory first part of the system, which is harvesting lists of the URLs every one of them visits. It often then follows them to the sites to scan for threats.[...]The new system is provided by Chinese vendor Huawei, and customers can't opt out of the data collection exercise. As they browse the web, URLs are recorded and checked against a blacklist of sites known to carry malware. They are also compared to a whitelist of sites that have been scanned for threats and approved in the last 24 hours.If a URL appears on neither list, Huawei servers follow the user to the page and scan the code. According to measurements by webmasters, the TalkTalk stalker servers show up between about 30 seconds and two minutes after TalkTalk subscribers.

Isn't this clear copyright violation?  On guy in the PABC forums has requested the TalkTalk cease visiting his sites: they have refused to stop doing this, claiming they "reserve our rights to check your site for the protection of our users".It would seem that the URL harvesting takes quite a bit of information along with it.  TalkTalk claim that their crawler obeys robots.txt instructions, but from the evidence provided in the PBAC forums this isn't actually true.  It would also seem that the process interferes with gamers' online activities and prevents computers from being able to access the iTunes store (see for example this thread).

Another Sunday, another time trial, another spell of riding between Temsford, Sandy and Buckden on the A1.  After last weekend's '100', it would have been nice to race somewhere else for a change, but once again early Sunday morning found me ploughing my way up and down the same on road.   On a dull morning (only occasional sunny spells), there was a nagging breeze that should've made things easy northbound and a bit tougher heading back south but actually seemed to me to make it tough all the way round.Nothing much untoward during this race - I plugged southward to the Sandy roundabout where I got held up briefly by traffic, then headed north through the Black Cat roundabout to turn at the Buckden Roundabout.  A fairly dull event, enlivened by catching a few riders en route, and hearing what sounded suspiciously like a puncture (but wasn't - good job I didn't stop to investigate).  To be honest, my chest was still feeling the effects of Wednesday's club '10', and by the time I finished, I was coughing quite badly.My period of irritating mechanical problems have continued - after the event, Geoff pointed out I was missing a chainring bolt (and since these are a particularly unusual type using a torx key and from Campagnolo a replacement is stupidly expensive) - presumably it's out there on the A1 somewhere.  On the other hand, during the week, I identified the horrid banging noise that I thought was emanating from the head tube area was really the seat pack with tube, levers, patches and CO₂ cylinder banging the seat post.I finished in 58:30, which was a little disappointing.

For one reason or another, I'd never ridden this course before (I don't even know the course code!), so I was rather looking forward to having a go on this course.  the course itself starts in a laybay on the A422 near Stagsden, and goes west to turn at the roundabout junction with A509, before retracing (see the map).  The straightforward nature of the course didn't stop one rider from going off course...which I suppose reflects the fact that our club events are un-marshalled.The evening was warm and sunny, with a stiff breeze that threatened to make the outward leg quite tough.  And so it proved.  Immediately after the start you have to muscle up a quite steep (it seemed to me) rise, where I found out rather quickly that my legs really hadn't recovered from the '100' on Sunday.  I reached the top gasping and wondering whether it was wise to continue - my thoat was burning with the hot air.  I had no idea what speed I was riding at, since my GPS resolutely failed to communicate with the bike computer.  From there it was a pretty standard ride on an undulating '10' course, past Astwood, through Chicheley, to turn at a roundabout, where ofr a change I had no trouble with traffic, indeed a huge lorry waited behind me before entering the roundabout.The way back was pretty uneventful, and pleasingly quick after the outward leg, and I came over the finish line quite quickly.  But by the time I reached the meeting point, I was coughing uncontrollably.  I coughed all the way home, and carried on coughing till midnight.  I'm writing this blog entry on the following morning, and I can still feel wheeziness in my chest and I'm coughing hard.  So something's not right, and I am wondering whether there was pollen in the air 9though I've never been prone to hay fever. I'm not particularly pleased with my time, which I estimate as 23:14 prior to seeing the results, and I didn't feel I exerted myself particularly, judging from my heart rate recorded during the event.Still onward towards the Verulam '25' on Sunday, where once again I will be riding on the F1.  Yawn,Here's a map of the course (finish point approximate) - manually entered to Google Maps since the GPS messed up. results to follow.
View Stagsden '10' in a larger map

The New Humanist blog is one of many web sites reporting on a fracas involving criticism via Twitter of Scientology (Welsh councillor in trouble for calling Scientology "stupid" on Twitter ). The synopsis of this story is that

When Cardiff councillor John Dixon visited London last year to buy a wedding ring for his wife to be, a stroll past the "Dianetics and Life Improvement Centre" on Tottenham Court Road (just round the corner from our office, as it happens) prompted him to make the following quip on Twitter:“I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road. Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.”

This has appeared to generate a bit of a problem for poor John Dixon, as the "Church" of Scientology made a complaint to the Welsh public service watchdog.  As a consequence Dixon's facing disciplinary action.Problem is, as someone who's read Russell Miller's biography of Scientology's founder L. Ron Hubbard (the wonderfully titled Bare Face Messiah), I rather inclined to agree with Dixon.  It's also why I place quotation marks around "Church", and why I believe Scientology is complete claptrap and an exercise in generating a huge income.  Herewith my modest contribution to the Streisand Effect.On the other hand (and in a spirit of even-handedness), I suggest the core beliefs of most established religions are equally loopy.

During Stage 15 of the 2010 Tour de France, Alberto Contador (Astana) took yellow after Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) suffered an unshipped chain near the top of the major climb of Port de Balès.  Some people reckon this was an "unsporting" thing for Contador to have done, and indeed some quite vituperative exchanges have been going on in cycling forums all across the interweb.Personally, I think you need to bear in mind this was nearing the top of a climb, that the riders will have been really on the rivet, with all the attendant hullaballoo of the motorcade, helicopters and suchlike associated with the Tour de France.  Add into the mix the fact that all the likely podium contenders were there, it seems that Contador did the right thing, and specifically:

• he had no way of knowing how significant the mechanical issue was (assuming he realised there was a mechanical problem)
• he had no way of knowing how long it would take Schleck to deal with the issue
• what would have happened had he waited, and the others had carried on?

I think the critics of Contador's actions need to remember this is race, not a club run...  Here's a video of the event (YouTube)And finally - at last a commentator who takes a rational view of the situation as it unfolds: Opinion: It’s wrong to vilify Contador by Neal Rogers (Velonews.com).  Neal points out pretty much what I do above, and also adds:

But, like most things in life, this situation not that simple — and most people will make their judgments based upon how they already felt about either Contador or Schleck. We saw that during last year’s race, when diehard Lance Armstrong fans vilified Contador, ignoring the facts that Armstrong made his comeback into Contador’s team, that Armstrong did what he could to turn the team against Contador, and that the Spaniard did what he needed to do to assert himself as the strongest rider in last year’s Tour.

You could certainly discern the anti-Contador bias in comments left at the VeloNews site yesterday, and I'd concur with Neal as to the motivation.  Let's all see how this most interesting Tour unfolds en route to Paris.

Dave Jones sent me some photos from this weekend's excessive time trial activity. First off, a picture taken at the API-Metrow '25', presumably at the turn.[caption id="attachment_950" align="alignnone" width="550" caption="At the turn of the API-Metrow '25', on the E2/25"][/caption]I was pretty pleased with my 55:43 in that '25', though a little worried that it might impact on my ride in the following day's '100', organised by the North Middlesex & Herts CA.  On the day, however, the wind presented a bigger challenge that the previous day's racing.  Here are a couple of photos from early in the event.[caption id="attachment_951" align="alignnone" width="627" caption="Riding in the NH&H CA '100', on the F1/100"][/caption]The hump on my back is the Camelbak drinks reservoir.  Actually in itself it was quite comfortable, though it forced my head down because of the shape of my aero helmet.  Hence I'm grimacing.  Well, that's my story, anyway.  Here's a side view.[caption id="attachment_952" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="Riding the NM&H CA '100'"][/caption]You can clearly see the problem with the Camelbak hump and my helmet.  More than 24h after the event, my neck's still stiff.  Next time I'll choose a different helmet.