Some months ago, I wrote briefly on my early attempts at developing a website with Drupal. (see Drupal vs Joomla! part 1, part 2 and part 3) I was pretty impressed by Drupal, but considered it had some odd omissions from the default installation. In particular, the lack of a stock WSIWYG editor seemed pretty glaring, especially as installing an editor turned out to be so fiddly.
I've restarted the development of that website, and have concluded that:
On Saturday, I made another sortie to the Local Bike Shop (LBS) to be bought a 50th birthday present, albeit somewhat early. This took the form of a new time trial frame, and had been generously offered by Mrs Grumpy. The trip to the bike shop was the third in a week or so during which I had been browsing the interweb and think about several different brands and models.
In the end, the decision was (apart from aesthetic grounds) made largely on whether the frame made use of standard components. I decided against the Specialized Transition Module because of its oversize BB shell, which would mean I couldn't use any of my existing chainsets, and its slightly eccentric cable route to the rear brake caliper (I also didn't like the look when I saw it for real). I went against the Argon 18 E114 because it had a rather odd system by which the handlebars attached to the steerer tube - this would have meant I couldn't use any of the existing handlebar/stem setups I have. I looked at one or two other brands before plumping for a Cervelo. But a P3 or a P4? Both were reduced because the 2009 models were about to be replaced by 2010 models.
I had thought of writing a pointless article about the launch of Windows 7 earlier this week, but really, I couldn't be bothered. The big news in the OS world for me is next week's release of Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic Koala'. I've been running Karmic in alpha and then beta for some time now, very happily. It's running on a 2.5 year old Vaio laptop that was never really capable of running the Vista Business that it came with, and very nice it is too (last week I booted into Vista last week for the first time since January 2008, but quickly decided I'd had enough of interminable spinny "wait...wait...wait" type cursors).
Despite my dislike for Microsoft's bullying business style, I kinda hope that the gargantuan misadventure that was Vista may be behind them. Certainly there's quite a bit of enthusiasm for Windows 7 out there (and I don't just mean the breathless puffery at the likes of the BBC website), but quite a bit of it seems to be based on the observation that "it's not Vista". Many commentators are saying however that for many a significant hardware upgrade is still going to be needed to get the max out of Windows 7.
Apparently the Google Toolbar has a new addition, Sidewiki. It's kind of passed me by, as I don't use the Google toolbar, but it's a bit misnamed. It's not truly a wiki, but it does offer website visitors an opportunity to leave comments about a website or webpage.
These comments are only visible to Sidewiki users (see picture).
Cyclingnews reports that Jan Ullrich visited Dr Fuentes 24 times. Which all goes to make me wonder how many times Alejandro Valverde (sorry, Valv. Piti) may have popped into see the gynaecologist with sporting interests.These are two cases where DNA fingerprinting evidence demonstrates that Dr Fuentes was storing bags of blood that are definitively linked with professional cyclists.
Ivan Basso, of course, took it on the chin with a two year ban (that mysteriously didn't seem to be followed by the ProTour ban the rules would indicate). But dear old Alejandro Valverde (sorry, Valv. Piti) continues to fight, claiming innocence despite CONI ruling that the DNA match was sufficient to ban him from racing in Italy (and therefore preventing him from riding the 2009 Tour de France). Meanwhile, it looks as though the Operacion Puerto affair will drag on till 2011, leaving UCI president McQuaid furious.
Here are a couple of other video segments, taken from the roadside at the 2008 Duo Normand. Both videos were taken with a pretty basic 5Mp Kodak camera by Carol (who in 2009 had to drive the support car), and both clips are mercifully short, compared to the 2009 feature film. The first clip shows us leaving the start ramp, and climbing up the little lane at the start of the race.
Team Grumpy rode the Duo Normand again in 2009 (see this story, and also the Team Grumpy blog and website). Silent Movie is my first effort at editing video footage - in this case recorded from a video camera attached to "Grumpy" Art Vanderlay's tri-bars. Thus, you can periodically see my backside and legs, but "Grumpy" Art doesn't feature much at all. I edited the video using the Linux package kdenlive, and rendered it as a 320x240 pixel flash video. Be warned, this is a 90' video, and if bandwidth issues result, I'll need to unpublish this article. It's also rather boring for those not interested in the Duo Normand! The video seems to play well with Firefox on Linux and WinXP. IE8 on WinXP seems to throw a wobbly about the Flash Player, though after installing Flash Player 10 it worked OK. Haven't tried other browser/OS combinations yet.
This just in from the "foot in mouth" department.
The British Chiropractic Association has written a press release, or rather two in quick succession following yesterday's ruling that Simon Singh has leave to appeal against the BCA's libel case.
News is spreading across the blogosphere that Simon Singh has been granted leave to appeal in the libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association. Rather that repeat what's being said, I'll merely refer to one of those blogs: Dr Aust's Spleen: Stop Press – Simon Singh granted leave to appeal where updates have been added through the day. One choice quote:
Mr Justice Laws described Eady's judgement, centred on Singh's use of the word "bogus" in an article published by the Guardian newspaper, as "legally erroneous".
Stefan Schumacher, the former Gerolsteiner rider, has always claimed innocence over his positive test for CERA (and EPO derivative) during the 2008 Tour de France and the Beijing Olympics. That comes as no surprise - few athletes admit to cheating, even when presented with pretty unequivocal evidence.
The announcements that samples taken during the 2008 Tour would be re-tested, and secondly that those 17 tests proved negative have apparently given new life to Schumacher's claims of innocence (Schumacher calls for withdrawal of positive results).