Well, what do you know! Dear Valv. (Piti), who's DNA has been found to match blood bags stored by Dr Fuentes of Operacion Puerto fame, is now leading the UCI World Ranking (Valverde Tops UCI World Rankings | Cyclingnews.com), despite suffering a two year ban in Italy as a consequence.  Meanwhile, Jan Ullrich, who's career was terminated after his DNA match must be wondering "what if"...In separate news, Cyclingnews.com also reports three riders that appear to be manipulating their blood, at least on the basis of the "Biological Passport" (UCI names riders snared by Biological Passport).  Apparently the three are Franco Pellizotti (Liquigas-Doimo), Jesus Rosendo Prado (Andalucia-Cajasur) and Tadej Valjavec (Ag2r-La Mondiale, and their teams are not pleased.  Disciplinary proceedings are "requested", but it's not clear what these "disciplinary proceedings" will be.So at least the UCI would appear to be making progress in the battle against doping in cycling, but it does always seem to the three steps forward, two steps back.  I wonder what's going on in other professional sports?

There have been a couple of stories over at Cyclingnews.com on the general theme of doping. In the first, Frei Explains The Motivation Behind His Doping | Cyclingnews.com, BMC's Thomas Frei explains his motivation behind doping with EPO.  He failed an EPO test, and declined to have his B sample tested - admitting guilt, he seemed to be relieved to have the truth out.  In this article, he touches on the motives behind getting involved in doping.  While I appreciate that there is always the possibility that his public statements may to an extent be self-serving, they do seem to me to be quite illuminating.

"Of course I would have gone on doping. The money tempts you, it is the same for everyone," said Frei in an interview with Swiss website NZZ.ch.

As for his slide into doping, this comes across as something straight out of Trainspotting:

As for himself, he said that he started his pro career clean. "Then came the hard stage races, and I learned that infusions were used for recovery. Everything was legal, but I still didn't want any of it. But at some point it started [for me], because everybody does it. The doctor gives you the first shot, and then it isn't long until you give yourself the first illegal shot."He said he took EPO, because "you stand in front of a huge mountain and don't know how to get over it. Your ambition eats you up. After all, you want to become more than just a helper."

The section I find interesting is how the teams work.  While they aren't directly saying to the riders "You must take this to be competitive" (well not since the days of Festina), there does seem to be a tacit acceptance.  Teams never enquire why a rider shows a sudden and dramatic improvement in form, and of course where not only is survival through long hard stage races an issue, but pay and future contracts reflect performance, the temptation to dope will always be present.  Frei finishes with:

"From the bosses you only hear, 'We don't want any doping cases.' But what they really mean is something else."

And this seems to be key. It seems to me that riders are victims as well as culprits complicit in doping. The teams want strong athletes that can deliver performance, and in the face of (probably hard to eradicate) doping practices choose to turn a blind eye in favour of disowning the rider when he's caught.  To my mind the teams end up being complicit.  While there's ostensibly a new anti-doping breed of cycling teams out there, the cynic in me wonders "says who?" - who can we believe in a murky world of black market doping, where investigations get shelved with only partial justice (e.g. Ullrich busted, Valverde still riding while dodging investigations), or cases where justice and retribution are so long coming that an athlete may well retire before punishment.A second story, High profile Italian doping case close | Cyclingnews.com, seems to indicate that a high profile Italian cyclist may be busted before the Giro d'Italia gets going next week.  This follows widespread analysis of blood values - the "biological passport".  So far, five Spanish and Italian riders have been busted for blood value manipulation.It does seem as though the response of the dopers (and one might surmise in the light of major doping rings) the doping industry has been less in the direction of stopping, or trying new products and more in the direction of fine-tuning the doping process with the objective of making detection less likely.  Much of this focusses on what's probably the most effective drug for an endurance athlete, EPO.  Strategies for evading detection have included microdosing (as in the case of Frei), and the use of modified EPO derivatives such as CERA.  CERA, of course, was being pushed as an undetectable form of EPO, a promise happily unfulfilled as the rash of offenders detected over the last few years testifies,

Still pottering around with Mythbuntu!  The PC I've set up as a MythTV PVR using the Mythbuntu distro seems to perform pretty well.  The only problem still to be resolved is that of the Hauppauge IR remote control, but since I discovered the MyMote app for my iPod Touch, this hasn't been too urgent.  I'm pretty confident that I can get that sorted out.At the moment I have this huge desktop PC case sat next to the TV with cables draped around connecting the sound and video outputs to the TV.  Added to this is an annoying blue LED that flickers as the hard disk is accessed and a big blue LED ring around the power button, and it's immediately obvious that I need to see to the appearance of the device.  A further point is that the hard disk makes just enough noise to be irritating in a quiet room.So, searching for an quiet and unobtrusive case has led me to order one of these:This seems pretty plain, with most of the front access sockets and drives hidden by flaps.  I was rather constrained by the components I'm working with - notably the full size ATX motherboard.

This year's cycle tour once again takes us round our favourite haunts: the Scottish west coast Hebridean islands. This year we're planning an itinerary that sees us visit some islands for the first time, and in so doing sees us take seven ferries (eight crossings) in nine days cycling! These are Barra (which we've never visited before), Berneray (only been as far as the ferry jetty before) and Iona (we've never even been as far as Fionnphort on Mull before).
Day 1 Our trip will begin by arriving in Oban by car, in time to catch the 1540 ferry, to arrive in Castlebay on Barra. This is quite a lengthy crossing, not arriving until 2040. We plan to find a B&B for two nights.

Day 2 This day will be spent exploring Barra, and it shouldn't be too taxing, as we can leave most of our kit in the B&B. We hope to visit the linked island of Vatersay to the south and the promontory of Eoligarry to the north. In the past, we've been on ferries that call at Castlebay: usually they are stuffed with birdwatchers.


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Day 3 On the third day, we plan to ride to catch the morning ferry (crossing number 2) from Barra to Eriskay, a small island now attached to South Uist by a causeway, and then on to LochMaddy in North Uist. This route takes us northward through Benbecula, a strangely wet landscape seemingly mostly composed of pools of water!


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Day 4 We're planning on staying two nights on North Uist, probably in Lochmaddy (we have our eye on one particular accommodation, which on our last visit looked to have a rather nice menu), in order to look around in more detail than we've done in previous visits. On one occasion, we stayed over a Sunday (because getting to Harris on a Sunday is pretty much impossible), but unfortunately bad weather in the form of appalling gales prevented us from getting far on that occasion. We're quite keen to have a look at Berneray.

Day 5 From Lochmaddy it's off to Skye, by ferry crossing number three, which should deposit us at Uig in the early afternoon. Probably just enough time to cycle over the Quirang to find a B&B for the night. An alternative might be to travel round the northern tip of Trotternish.

Day 6 We'll be remaining on Skye for another night - aiming to stay in Broadford, with the particular aim of enjoying seafood at Creelers, one of our favourite seafood restaurants.

Day 7 Skye, of course, is less and less of an island, now that the Skye Bridge is there. This has increased the amount of motor traffic and resulted in road "improvements" - we'll cycle down one of these roads to Armadale to catch the ferry to Mallaig on the mainland (ferry crossing number four), from where we hope to reach Salen for the night. We have an idea for accommodation, one whoich specialises in local produce

Day 8 For the eighth day, we plan to ride through Ardnamurchan, though the possibility of diversions to beaches really depend on the weather - last time we were on Ardnamurchan, the weather was unbelievably good. We'll cross from Kilchoan to Tobermory (ferry crossing number five) and stay overnight in or near Tobermory.

Day 9 We have visited Mull on a few occasions, but never got as far as Iona: on day 9 we plan to cycle down to Fionnphort to catch the ferry to Iona and back (ferry crossings six and seven). No idea where we'll stay, but probably try and spot somwhere en route.


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Day 10 The final day of the tour will see us ride from Fionnphort to Craignure, to catch the ferry back to Oban (ferry crossing number eight).

I've high hopes for this tour, it'll be an interesting mix of the (to us) novel and the familiar, of long riding days and short,of road and sea.

I was really looking forward to another excursion on the F1B/25, since I posted a 58:24 at the Beds RCC '25' a couple of weeks ago.  And, indeed, the weather forecasts earlier this week looked promising, with a headwind to the turn, and sunny weather.  Unfortunately as the weekend approached, the forecast worsened.  Last thing yesterday, I checked, and it looked as though seriously heavy rain would abate in time for the event.As it turned out, the overnight weather was appalling - I lay in bed hearing the wind and rain thrashing around the house, and I was dreading the time trial.  I was travelling over to the race HQ in Tempsford with Richard, and at the allotted hour, he turned up - we both looked apprehensively at the rain, but headed over to Tempsford nonetheless.  (I always try to ride an event, after all the poor old marshals have to stick it out).  When we arrived at Tempsford, there were only a few cars, and a bunch of folk hanging about: the event had been cancelled (quite rightly) on safety grounds.  A turbo training session now beckons.This event was the anniversary of the event at which Gareth Evans rider was killed on the F1, and there was a prize in his memory.  Probably quite fitting that the event was cancelled.Back home, I discovered a roof leak.  Something else that'll have to be dealt with.

I've been using the Firefox plug-in Ghostery for some time now to prevent web-tracking scripts, except when there was a buggy release that prevented Firefox from closing down cleanly.  I just upgraded Ubuntu GNU/Linux to 10.04 (Lucid Lynx), and as ever, the process was pretty much flawless.  The upgrade brought with it a newer version of Firefox (3.6.3), and when I started it, a few updated plugins were installed, including Ghostery 2.1.It seems however that Ghostery 2.1 might not be playing ball with a couple of websites.  In my work Outlook web access, all links (e.g. to open mail messages) are dead.  And FaceBook gives blank pages (no bad thing, one might think!  Disabling Ghostery brings back functionality to both sites.

Via The Register, I came across a link to a blog article (Microsoft Contributing More to OSS | Josh Holmes) enthusing about a move by Microsoft permitting its employees to contribute to the open source CMS Joomla!. [Edit: Josh Holmes is a Microsoft employee, so one might expect him to be enthusiastic about this development]. This interests me since this site (and about three others that I run) are constructed using the Joomla! CMS.  There's also an announcement on the Joomla! site (Microsoft signs the Joomla! Contributor Agreement):

Microsoft has signed the JCA (Joomla! Contributor Agreement), and we've got some of their code in the Joomla! 1.6 trunk. There, I said it. It feels like it should be so much more doesn't it? Don't worry, I won't end the blog post there.

I'm sorry. but I don't share the enthusiasm of these two articles (and nor do many of the commenters).  Microsoft is a very dangerous company to get into bed with, and its track record on open source software is not glittering. Remember Microsoft's strategy: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.I'm not about to re-version my websites just yet.  But I'm going to start thinking how to move them to another platform that's not associated with Microsoft so I'm ready when the shit hits the fan.  Perhaps Drupal beckons.Update: Mary-Jo Foley over at ZDnet says (Microsoft signs agreement to contribute to Joomla open-source project)

In an April 27 post to the Joomla Community Portal site, the Joomla team noted that some of Microsoft’s code is in the Joomla 1.6 trunk. About half the commentors on the Joomla site were upbeat about Microsoft’s involvement in Joomla, noting that the Redmondians have been sponsoring many PHP events, as of late. But the other half were skeptical of Microsoft’s interest and involvement in open-source in general, and Joomla, in particular.Microsoft has been working on its own open-source CMS platform, codenamed “Orchard.” Microsoft recently transferred responsibility for Orchard to the CodePlex Foundation, and a handful of Microsoft employees working on Orchard have been assigned full-time to the Foundation for three years. Microsoft also has its own paid CMS platform in SharePoint Server.

Doesn't this worry the Joomla! guys?

This evening's event was scheduled to be run on the 11.4 mile Stony Stratford course.  In the end we used a backup course due to roadworks and traffic lights in Nash: a 9.4 mile circuit running from Stony Stratford through Beachampton to Nash, where we took the left turn to Whaddon and back to Stony Stratford via Calverton (see map below).  I rode a small section of this course en route to sign on, and it didn't enthuse me particularly: the road surface was gravelly, rough, potholed, and the road twisted around a lot.  One or two of the riders had ridden this course earlier in the week in the TeamMK event on Monday, and had some experience.  This was good for them, but the did keep telling alarming tales of the course - horror stories of gradients and potholes!  In the event, it wasn't too bad, but rather tough!  It was a nice warm evening, but rather breezy.  Unlike our usual Stony 11.4 mile course, there isn't a flat section to get the rider started: instead it's straight into the lumpy section of the course.  And this bit had something of a headwind!  It was rather depressing to see how the various potholes and defective road surface have still not been dealt with - the ravages of the winter haven't helped!  The course was familiar until the Nash crossroad, where it turned left to Whaddon.  In fact as far as Whaddon, the road surface wasn't too bad, it was just that the road was kind of lumpy, which a brief climb up to Whaddon for the left turn.  From Whaddon there's a long fast straight section.  Fast, that is, as long as you stayed well into the road and away from the dodgy surface!Then another short, sharp climb and we were on the really rough bit, with gravel and tight turns as we raced towards Calverton.  The finish came as something as a surprise -I'd thought it was a bit further down the road.  Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with my 24:32 - if we need to use the course on our next visit to Stony Sratford, I'd hope to go that little quicker through familiarity with the course.  Congatulations to Lindz for taking the honours (and keeping the "grudge match" going!  I'm already looking forward to next week's event on the Stoke Hammond course (which is an inter-club event with the A5 Rangers and League Round 3).Map
View 10042804 in a larger mapResults

								Pos. on
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	6	Lindz Barral	i-team.CC	24.25	S
2	7	Robert Saunders	NBRC	24.32	V50	26.10	.+ 1.38	1
3	15	Daniel Crawley	Crest Ilford CC	24.34	S
4	10	Chris Dunwoodie	TeamMK	24.41	S
5	16	Phil Jenkins	TeamMK	25.08	V41	24.25	.- 0.43	4
6	14	John Buchanan	TeamMK	25.29	V40	24.14	.- 1.15	6
7	3	Leigh Smith	Alpha Road club	25.41	S
8	4	Brian Primett	NBRC	25.49	V43	24.48	.-1.01	5
9	11	Matt Wootton	TeamMK	26.10	S
10	13	Rob Chaundy	TeamMK	26.30	V58	27.52	.+ 1.22	2
11	1	Alan Lawson	NBRC	29.58	V41	24.25	.- 5.33	7
12	2	Gordon Batcock	NBRC	30.13	V69	30.24	.+ 0.11	3
13	5	Tony Brunton	NBRC	30.47	V45	25.11	.- 5.36	8
14	12	Russell Phillips	TeamMK	32.38	S
	8	David Skeggs	NBRC	DNF	V41
	9	Chris Selley	NBRC	DNF	V41

Cyclingnews has more on the Alejandro Valverde case (Swiss Court Dismisses Valverde Appeal | Cyclingnews.com).  Valverde has been implicated in the Operación Puerto blood doping ring.  The Spanish investigation was suspended because Spanish law didn't specifically prohibit this activity as criminal at the time.  However, this didn't stop the Italians' enthusiasm for pursuing the case and having matched Valverde's DNA to the blood in the bags labelled 'Valv. (Piti)', CONI banned him from racing in Italy for two years.  This of course includes any races (such as last year's Tour de France) which cross into Italy.Valverde appealed to CAS - but that was rejected.  It also turns out that he appealed to the Swiss Court of Civil Rights.  It's not clear to me why he's appealed to the Swiss court (unless he has a Swiss licence, perhaps), but that appeal failed, apparently because it was lodged before the CAS verdict was issued.  Apparently Valverde's appeal was based on his claim that

[...] that one of the arbitrators on the panel, Ulrich Hess, was not neutral because he had worked for the World Anti-Doping Agency.

So, a bit of a non-story in this long-running saga.  None of the appeals seem to relate to the accuracy of the crucial claim: that the Valv. (Piti) blood has a DNA match to Valverde.

I reckon I need to look at one of these HDTVs myself...here's xkcd's take!