I've been playing further with Mythbuntu. Using the Mythbuntu 9.10 installation (which uses MythTV 0.22), I never managed to get the Hauppauge remote working at all. And then it seemed to me that there was a rather a lot of hard disk activity while the computer really ought to have been idle.A quick Google search suggested this might be solved by upgrading to MythTV 0.23.  This was straightforward using links at the Mythbuntu site.  I also took the plunge and upgraded to the beta2 of Ubuntu while I was at it.  This was straightforward, except I rendered the system unbootable by incorrectly answering a setup question relating to Grub2.  Rescue was straightforward, and by running grub-install from a live Ubuntu CD, as described on this useful guide to grub 2.Somewhere along the line I was asked what remote I was using, and the upshot is that I now have a partially functional remote.  It's not there yet, but there are a variety of handy wikis out there with sample configuration files for this model of remote, so I am confident I'll be able to set up full support for it.So, now onward and upward for more complete testing.

The Lea Valley CC '25' was held on the E2/25 course with an HQ in Exney, near Newmarket.  It was also the victim of a car break-in during which all the entry forms were pinched.  It's to the organiser's credit that the event went ahead at all, let alone so smoothly.  I went over to the event with my club mate Tony - both slightly apprehensive, and in particular in my case rather worried about the course, which is based on the A14 and A11 dual carriageways near Cambridge.Anyway, for a change I found myself setting up to race on a warm and sunny afternoon, rather than the wet and cold conditions I've raced in recently.  Both Tony and I decided that for our first '25's of the season, we'd be happy with results in the 57 or 58 minute range.  After we set up the bikes, we went to recce the ride up to the start, and do a brief warm up.  After that it was off to the start.  I was there good and early as I was a bit concerned about the start time (15:12 isn't usually correct for number 62!).  Eventually the start came, and off I went, down the sliproad onto the A14.As I joined the A14, I was surprised to find myself tearing along at over 30mph. On the face of it, the A14 is rather alarming, with three lanes in each carriageway. In practise, the E2/25 (this was my first ride on the course after last year's debacle) turned out to a be a rather nice course - quite flat with few sliproad junctions.  I didn't expect to keep up that pace, but much to my surprise, I found myself rocketing along at an average of 30mph.  I'm a realist, so I didn't actually believe I'd become Chris Boardman - most likely the breeze, which had got up during the afternoon was assisting me.I kept on roaring along, occasionally seeing speeds in excess of 34mph and never dropping below 28mph, to the junction with the A11 (see the map below).  Here riders just stick to the left and the lane scoots off to form the A11.  The only problem were the potholes, but having been pre-warned at the start, these presented no difficulty.  In my mind, the A11 ran at in a slightly different direction than the A14 (but this isn't the case), so I was pleased to see my speed holding up, and I found myself ascending the sliproad to the turn at about 25 minutes.Descending from the turn, it was clear that there had been significant wind assistance - once out on the A11 again, I found it hard to keep up 23mph most of the time.  As usual in these circumstances, I started mental calculations of my likely finish time - I figured I was heading for a 57.  However, by the time I rejoined the A14 I found my speed picking up again.  At the time I though this must reflect a change of direction relative to the wind, but looking at the map, this can't be the case.Very soon, I passed the two service stations that flank the course not far from the start, and saw the sign for the exit slip where the finish is (this is nice, it gives the rider half mile notice of the finish!).  And with some delight I crossed the finish in what appeared to be a long-ish 55.Back to the car to change and recuperate, while waiting for Tony (who's start was 47 minutes behind me) - when he turned up, he thought he'd done a long 53 or a short 54.  In the end, it turned out Tony had recorded a 53:54, and I'd done 55:38 - results we were both very pleased with.Reviewing my old records, this might be my fasted '25' since 2004 when I recorded  54:38 on the F1B/25.  I'll need to check more carefully!  I'll post more results when they become available. The map below includes some of the warm up prior to starting.
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Here's a report criticising recent Government pronouncements on DNA data retention (one of many to surface on the internet today) Public being misled over DNA benefits - Public Service.  In the runup to the UK elections, the main political parties are jostling for the right message - in this case, to be seen to be "tough on crime".Having been smacked down by our European protectors (at least where human rights and privacy are concerned), the Government still plan to keep DNA fingerprint data on unconvicted individuals for a considerable period.  Everyone collared for an offence has there DNA sampled and fingerprinted.  It's what happens to those data if said individual is not charged, or is found not guilty of the offence that's the issue here.  In Scotland, this is limited to 3 years.  In England, the Government proposes to hang on to these data for 12 years in cases where the individual was charged with a serious offence, or 6 years where the charge was of a less serious offence.Pause to think.  In both situations, the individual will have been found not guilty.  So the Government is effectively suggesting there are two degrees of innocence!  Someone found not guilty of rape is somehow less innocent that someone found not guilty of car theft.A further point is that the case being used to argue for long term DNA data retention does not in point of fact support the retention of DNA data from unconvicted individuals.  As the article points out:

Because Bowman's killer was arrested after a pub brawl, Labour has claimed he would have been much tougher to find under Tory proposals as his profile would have been deleted.But GeneWatch said the killer, Mark Dixie, was arrested after the murder. This means his DNA did not need to be retained for an indefinite period as it would have been checked against the database at the time of the arrest.It said there are "numerous other high profile cases cited by ministers" that also did not require the retention of innocents' DNA."Murders solved by keeping innocent people's DNA records are as elusive as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," said Dr Helen Wallace, GeneWatch's executive director. "If the government has a case to make why can't it produce the evidence?"

Genewatch also claim that "crimes brought to court following DNA detections have not increased since 2002/03, despite the DNA database more than doubling in size."  How much truth will be sacrificed in the pre-election posturing?

A consequence of the events that followed a recent club event at Astwood was that I needed to replace both tubulars on my Corima wheelset.  Veloflex Records appear to be hard to find - and when you do, they are rather pricey, so I plumped for a pair of Continental Tempo tubulars.  I've always found that Continental tyres are rather hard to fit, and always need an undue amount of heaving and effort to get them on the rim, so I guess I should have expected to have hassle getting these blighters on.I'd recently bought a few tubes of Continental rim glue, as I'd found that tub tape is just a bit too tight for rapid removal (for example after said club event).  In the past, during my (so far only) ride in a 12 hour time trial, I have successfully and rapidly replaced a Veloflex Record when I punctured during the event.  This was using Continental glue to fix the tub to the rim.  With this in mind, I've been keen to return to gluing tubs again.Then the problems began.  Here's the Continental instruction leaflet, which makes it look oh so easy:[caption id="attachment_702" align="alignnone" width="550" caption="Instruction sheet for fitting Continental tubulars"][/caption]What I particularly like is the suggestion that a mere 8h after wrestling these things onto the rim, I'd be winning an event.  Heh, some hope!Anyway, I found the tubulars so tight I even checked I'd ordered the right size.  In desperation, I arranged for my long-suffering Team Grumpy team mate to show me how to fit the blasted thing onto an unglued rim (stage III above).  Even he had some hassle, but at least on went the first tyre.  Last night I deflated the tyre and, following stages VIII to X above.  Glue went on fine, dried for an hour, but then there was an almighty struggle to stretch the damned tubular back onto the trispoke wheel (Team Grumpy team mate was not available).  By the time I'd managed this, the air in the garage had turned decidedly blue and my thumbs hurt spectacularly.  Fortunately a Corima trispoke wheel is fairly robust and stood up well to the "manipulation".Tonight will see the attempt to fit the rear tubular to a disk wheel, a wheel that has already suffered from impressions of fingers and thumbs from prior tubular fitting experiences (most carbon disk wheels appear to be constructed from a carbon fibre skin over a foam interior).  I may not be able to grip the handlebars firmly for a few days, so it's a good thing my next event will see me mostly on the tri-bars.

Some progress.  I now have Mythbuntu 9.10 working on at least one of the TV input channels. It seems to work very well, with easy to navigate programming schedules.  The first real test to to record a couple of films this evening (Control and 24 Hour Party People as it happens - I have a long-standing affection for Joy Division and Factory Records).I've also got it daisy-chained from the Humax box, and the S-video output comes into the TV on a separate channel from the Humax box.The big challenge now is to get the remote control working, so I don't have to run it via a vnc connection from my Linux notebook.  More later

Cyclingnews today reports further on a series of searches that have been taking place during an Italian crackdown on doping in cycling (Bernucci House Search Part Of Larger Investigation | Cyclingnews.com).  What's interesting is this little gem (my emphasis):

This same work led to the arrest of former professional rider Aleksandar Nikacevic, the seizure by police of a line of homeopathic products from a pharmaceutical company in central Italy and the searching of dozens of pharmacies following complaints that doping practices were being undertaken by a Venetian doctor on athletes, some of whom were minors, from various sporting disciplines.

It baffles me why homeopathic potions, which after all contain no active ingredients, could be considered in any way performance-enhancing.

For those of us tired of hearing how Apple have reinvented mobile computing with the iPad, here's evidence there's one less iPad on the planet - "Will it blend? - iPad" courtesey of Blendtec, via YouTube. As ever, not to be tried at home!

[caption id="attachment_685" align="alignleft" width="90" caption="Mythbuntu"][/caption][caption id="attachment_679" align="alignleft" width="65" caption="Drupal"][/caption][caption id="attachment_680" align="alignleft" width="75" caption="Joomla!"][/caption]Usually, the short holidays such as Xmas and Easter provide me with the opportunity to put some time aside to deal with ongoing projects, often related to websites and/or computing.  This easter was no exception - I decided to overhaul a Drupal site I maintain, and to install Mythbuntu on an old desktop PC.  Both of these projects were a little challenging, but for different reasons.Drupal and Joomla! CMSI find myself in the position of maintaining and/or building several websites. These range from the "low-effort" Team Grumpy blog hosted by Google's Blogger site to several sites built on Joomla! (this site, plus the North Bucks Road Club, Team Grumpy, and Northwood Wheelers sites). I also use Wordpress as a standalone blogging platform (Wonderful Life) and also integrated within this Joomla! site.Another major open source CMS platform is Drupal. I know from reading about this that it's widely considered to be superior to Joomla!, for reasons which escape me in detail - though it's often said that Drupal has better security.  Indeed at work we seem to be moving over to Drupal from a confusing array of other CMS systems (some apparently custom-built), and in previous blog articles, I've described my initial forays into using Drupal to build websites for my work - largely in comparison with Joomla!.Since last autumn, and upon joining the executive committee of the British Society for Research on Ageing, I've been managing the BSRA website. I inherited this as a slightly outdated installation of Drupal version 5. One of my first actions was to update it to the most recent minor version of Drupal 5 (I believe 5.22 at the time).More recently I've been keen to update it to 6.16, as fairly soon Drupal 5.x will cease being supported.  This turned out to be fairly simple, if time-consuming - each contributed module has to have an updated version identified and downloaded,  It does seem to me (as a user of Joomla! for three or four years) that there are lots of features which really ought to be included in Drupal in the default installation, rather than in contributed modules.  Notable among these is a WSIWYG editor - why on earth one isn't included in Drupal is a bit of a mystery to me.On the other had, the flexibility in user roles afforded by Drupal is rather refreshing after working with Joomla! - it allows a degree of fine-tuning not available (at least in a stock install) of Joomla! - and the extensions available for Joomla! are rather fiddly.Identifying modules for particular tasks isn't easy.  As so often the case, a variety of modules for each task is available, and it's not obvious to me which is the best.  A case in point is my desire to incorporate a slideshow of images within a page in my Drupal site - I've spent the morning floundering around among various modules (and in one case entering a "dependency hell" as more and more dependencies were uncovered).  I have become heartily sick of the deep blue Drupal site, and the minimal documentation that seems to be available for some Drupal modules (on the other hand, some are excellently provided for in this regard).  I guess this is all part of the learning process.MythbuntuWe've had a Humax PVR device for a few years now, and on the whole, it's been fine. However, recently it's been misbehaving, with symptoms rather like those described here. Essentially, the stored files get corrupted, allocated to the wrong programme title, and often cannot play.  The only remedy appears to be to reformat the hard drive, thereby losing all the recordings.  It's unfortunate that the Humax device seems to use non-standard systems, and it's is functionally very difficult to extract data from the Humax hard drive (the supplied Windows software has never worked satisfactorily for me), though I do know of various hardware modifications that enable this.  It was with this backdrop that I decided to buy a Hauppauge TV card and set about installing Mythbuntu on an old desktop PC.Mythbuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu GNU/Linux that aims to simplify the installation of MythTV.  If Mythbuntu is simple, I dread to think how hard MythTV is!  So far, I have:

1. Installed Mythbuntu 9.10
2. Replaced NetworkManager with WICD, so I can set the PC to set up the network connection at boot - network connection is via a NetGear USB WiFi stick.  I would prefer to avoid having a monitor/keyboard/mouse attached to this PC.
3. Failed to configure the TV card
4. Failed to enable DVD playback.

So essentially, I have another Ubuntu box, with a limited set of functions.  In my own defence, and that of Mythbuntu/MythTV, I ought to point out that actually the issues I face are due to my near-zero knowledge of TV features.  So quite a bit of fun and games on the horizon before this kit is fully functional.

El Reg has a report on shopping for an iPad on release day (Frisco fanboi frenzy on 'iPad Day' • The Register).  It all seems rather bizarre to me.  Why do so many blokes (the gender balance of that huge queue does seem rather one-sided) need a new toy on release day?  Why indeed do so many people want an overgrown iPod Touch?Personally, I'll wait until the frenzy has died down before deciding whether I want oneHowever, having read some over-effusive articles in the current issue of WIRED, it does occur to me that, like the iPod Touch, the iPad is principally a device for consuming information (i.e. reading the web, watching video, reading e-books etc) rather than creating information, for which a notebook computer might be more appropriate. And, yes, I know there's a keyboard you can attach the iPad to - I saw it on Stephen Fry's rather excited heavy breathing video clip of unwrapping his iPad!Maybe I'll eventually have a go with one of these, and quite probably decide it's a device I can't live without - but it's more likely that I'll wait for a similar device to appear.  One which allows handwritten note taking, is less encumbered by DRM and the iTunes app store, and which ideally can run open source software.

Another dreary morning for a North Bucks club event.  In actual fact the rain (mostly) held off for the event itself, but it was rather wet for the ride over to the start.  The NBRC hardriders course (F5x/22) starts at the bottom of the steep climb at Bow Brickhill, proceeds in a westerly direction towards Bow Brickhill station, then heads over to the A5, where the course climbs steadily past Little Brickhill and down to the Flying Fox roundabout, where it turns left to Woburn.  From Woburn, the course turns northwest to Woburn Sands, where it turns to Bow Brickhill at a double roundabout.  After completing two such laps, the finish lies up the climb from Bow Brickhill (the climb used for our Hill Climb Championship, which gives an idea of how steep it is).Anyway, this was the first time I had ridden the course, and I was rather dreading taking my TT bike up the final climb - my lowest gear is 46x21.  The opening leg wasn't too bad, predominantly downhill, the major issue was dodging potholes, and getting stalled by traffic at the first roundabout.  It was a different matter on the road up to and along the A5 - predominantly uphill with a head wind.  From the Flying Fox roundabout, it was surprisingly quick to Woburn, largely I guess due to the tail wind on that section.  Then a steady climb and descent to Woburn Sands.  I got held up slightly by traffic at this roundabout on both laps, but nothing serious.The major issue was the series of appalling potholes just after leaving Woburn Sands.  Unlike one rider I saw, who coped by riding in the gutter, I decided the prudent course was to ride it wide.  Through Bow Brickhill and onwards for a second lap.  Ultimately, I was really mostly worried by the prospect of the final climb.  Firstly I didn't have any spectacularly low gears, secondly the geometry of my bike doesn't I think suit hill climbs.  In the event, I chose to take it easy rather than blow halfway up and suffer the ignominy of having to get off and push!I finished in 1:00:56, which I was quite pleased with.  Full results, and hopefully a map of the course to follow.

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				Lap 1	Hill	Finish
Pos	No	Name	Club	Cat	Time	Climb	Time
1	6	Richard Wood	TeamMK	S	26.45	2.27	55.50
2	9	Simon Cannings	TeamMK	S	26.59	2.39	57.22
3	7	Rob Saunders	NBRC	V50	28.19	3.37	1.00.56
4	8	Lindz Barral	i.team.CC	S	28.05	3.26	1.01.03
5	1	Geoff Perry	TeamMK	V50	30.04	3.17	1.04.13
6	4	Julian Lane	Unattached	V43	31.32	3.36	1.07.05
7	2	David Skeggs	NBRC	V41	32.38	3.35	1.09.40
8	11	Rob Chaundy	TeamMK	V58	32.14	4.04	1.09.44
9	3	Brindley Martin	TeamMK	V47	33.28	3.54	1.12.40
DNF	10	Stuart Tarry	Team Sanjan Design	S	28.01	N/A
DNF	5	John Buchanan	TeamMK	V40	33.15	N/A
Time Keepers:- Steph Cousins & Tony Farmborough NBRC.
Pusher off:- Mr Bryan Scarborough NBRC.