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The cyclingnews.com website released the results of the readers' poll on best technical innovation of 2010 (Electronic widgets voted Cyclingnews Best Tech Innovation - where you can see the full results). Somewhat bizarrely, pedal-based power meters top the list with 26.9% of the vote, edging GPS-enabled bike computers into second place.  But isn't that a bit odd?  After all GPS-enabled bike computers have been doing the rounds for some time.  Indeed, I bought a Garmin 500 in the summer of 2010. However, we have two contenders for the pedal-based power meter category.  Firstly Metrigear's Vector system.  This has been widely discussed by Metrigear via their website and blog, detailing the ongoing product development, but it's not yet been released, despite slipping past several proposed launch windows.  And since Metrigear has been snapped up by Garmin, not much information has been released. As for the Look/Polar confection, supposedly based on Look's Keo pedals, all I've seen has been some CAD mock-ups of what the pedal will look like. Yes, these would have been significant technical developments or innovations of 2010 - it's just that they weren't.  Having said that, I will quickly join the queue to buy one (preferably the Garmin) when they do emerge...

As usual, I turned out for the club's New Year's Day 10 mile time trial on the F5d/10, which makes use of the new Stoke Hammond bypass.  This year, eight hardy souls rode the event (but two as a two up team on road bikes with mudguards, I believe. This year's event benefited from above zero temperatures, but it was still rather cold and clammy with periods of drizzle.  Immediately from the off, I noticed my additional bulk (accumulated as my mileage dropped off during December's snowy conditions) as the road rises to join the new dual carriageway.  Annoyingly (having remarked on how light the traffic was earlier), there seemed to be a bit of an increase in traffic levels around the time we started event.  I got a little slowed by traffic at the first roundabout (and again by a single driver at the penultimate roundabout), but to be honest the road surface at that roundabout is so poor I always take it rather cautiously.Once on the dual carriageway, I focussed on catching my minute man, which I did shortly after the turn.  After that, it was a rather uneventful ride.  However, I did feel rather awkward on the bike - it was the first time I'd been out on the time trial bike since the Duo Normand on 19th September, and not only did it feel both very twitchy in the steering but I certainly didn't feel comfortable in my aero tuck! I finished in 24:21, about 14 seconds faster than last year but beaten into second place by Lindz Barrall with a very fine 23, who increased his margin over me from last year's 10 seconds.  Nevertheless, it earned me the New Year's Day '10' trophy for the fastest North Bucks Road Club rider. Results below the map...

Solo event
Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	2	Lindz Barral	i-TeamCC	23.48	S
2	4	Robert Saunders	NBRC	24.21	V51	27.46	.+3.25	1
3	5	Richard Golding	TeamMK	24.47	V41	25.42	.+0.55	2
4	1	Steve Torley	TeamMK	24.55	S
5	8	Julian Lane	NBRC	25.50	V44	26.18	.+0.28	3
6	3	David Carrington	TeamMK	26.08	V45	26.30	.+0.22	4
Two Up TTT
	6	Jason Gurney	Baines Racing	27.35	V41
	6	Stewart Williams	TeamMK	27.35	V51

2010 has seen some shifts in my usage of computer technology. After many months pooh-poohing the iPad (after all, what would I need an unfeasibly large iPod Touch for, anyway?), I had something of a change of heart. This was largely brought about by a trip to the USA for a conference - after a bit of thought, I picked up a 64Gb WiFi iPad, which proved an excellent device to cart about documents, pdfs, books, music and video. I've previously posted an overview of my favourite apps for the iPad, but this list just keeps on growing. Recent additions to the roster include:

• Air Display - this enables the iPad to be used as a second monitor for a Mac or PC, though sadly not Linux. It's pretty cool, but it remains to be seen how useful it is in practice.
• World of Goo - I recently bought the ludicrously popular Angry Birds for the iPad, but in my view, World of Goo (originally available for several platforms including Wii, Windows, OSX and Linux) is possibly the most charming app I've bought, beats Angry Birds hands down, and is a game format which works almost perfectly with the iPad's touch screen display. In my less well-guarded moments, I've been known to comment it is the kind of thing the iPad must have been invented for.
• Flipboard is a neat app which uses a neat and intuitive interface to let you rapidly and easily access news from a variety of sources, including Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, and more beside. This is a useful an imaginative way to get at these feeds. I'd previously used The Feed to monitor Google Reader, but it seems to be rather flaky since the iOS 4.2 update.

In any event, the iPad has become a pretty indispensable tool for me, not only at home where I use it for web browsing, controlling the Squeezebox music system etc, but at work, where it's a star turn for MS Outlook related activities, note taking and holding my collection of pdf documents. Every so often, I come across an iPad app that really changes the way I think of interacting with a computer (even if the iOS family of devices should really be classed as 'appliances', rather than computers).  Even my initial antipathy towards the App Store and it's Jobsian control freakery has lifted somewhat.  I'm very much less enthusiastic about the prospect of the soon to be launched Mac App Store (of which more later). Just as that seemed to be pushing my usage of Linux into the background, I had so much hassle delivering a PowerPoint presentation that included video clips that I decided to plump for a Mac laptop, choosing a 13" MacBook Pro. Since that time, I've spent a fair amount of my computer use with OSX. Interestingly, and this perhaps reflects my own preferences and expertise, I don't find OSX as wonderful an operating system as its often very vocal supporters would have it. While I hugely prefer it to Windows 7 (a aesthetic disaster in my opinion, though it does seem pretty solid and a big improvement over Vista), I don't find the Mac way of doing things superior to the configurability of a decent Linux distribution such as my favourite of the last few years, Ubuntu.  I occasionally toy with the idea of installing Ubuntu on the MacBook... Mostly I dislike OSX's use of an application dependent desktop menu bar (I don't know what it's called in OSX). This seems to fly in the face of reason, and makes it a bit harder for me to know what windows are open. And why can't finder include a toggle to show/hide hidden files? Anyway, using the MacBook pro is generally speaking a delight, not least because of the physical quality of the hardware. As for the App Store for Macs (to be launched early in January, I believe), well, I've been very happy with the Debian derived Ubuntu repositories from where software can be installed pretty much at will.  And as it's all open source, generally at no additional cost.  One of the disturbing things about buying into a closed source OS ecosystem is that a new computer comes with little in the way of serious applications, in contrast to the typical new Linux installation.  It's amusing to see how I've pretty much stocked my new MacBook Pro with a variety of open source software (sometimes not open source but free in the financial sense) that I've used for a long time on my various Linux machines, applications such as GIMP, OpenOffice.org, Firefox, GoldenCheetah, Filezilla, Mendeley Desktop - the list goes on.  I even found a file manager (XFolders) which lets me see hidden files! Having said that, I picked up iWorks quite cheaply when I bought the MacBook, mostly for Keynote, but I've found Pages to be rather a nice word processor too.  I have the iPad iWorks apps as well. At work I was supplied with a new desktop PC, and even better I've been allowed to install Linux on it!  Of course, I'm on my own in terms of configuring it...not much Linux support at work unfortunately, outside of a neighbouring Department's Linux cluster.  I've already got it synchronising my documents folder with its counterpart on rather aged (nearly four years old now) Sony Vaio notebook which currently runs Ubuntu 10.10. At home I configured an old desktop PC with Mythbuntu.  This works really very well (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), but the case is so unsightly that I've removed it from the sitting room. I'm now planning to reversion an old laptop as a Mythbuntu front-end for it.  In fact  the Mythbuntu box proved to be very much more reliable than our Humax box (which needs to be reformatted two or three times a year).  I guess I'll work on this over the coming weeks. I've extended the home network to include a Squeezebox Radio, and couple of Squeezeslaves running on the MacBook Pro and on a desktop PC running Ubuntu 10.10.  So I've got music systems all over the house...

2010 seemed to bring with it several directions for my web presence. My main Flies&Bikes website tended towards becoming a vehicle for reporting on my cycle racing, usually amplifying on the reports on club events filed at the North Bucks Road Club web site, but also reflecting on the open events I rode during the year. Interestingly some of these articles actually do seem to be read, with at least one time triallist over at Tempsford making a specific request that I note the weather conditions for a particular event had not been good - and this before I'd even changed after the event, let alone got home to write the report! I've been moving away from posting on politics and higher education at Flies&Bikes, and have moved that activity (which is always a bit sporadic) over to my posterous account.  Similarly, my blogging on internet privacy has dropped in frequency, particularly after my departure from BT in favour of a more enlightened ISP a couple of years or so ago on the back of the Phorm phiasco.  I do still blog about techy things that interest me (see tomorrow's post). Team Grumpy blogged sporadically, with brief flurries of excitement as our main event of the year came along, and more extensively with a report on our first visit to the podium (did anyone mention the Duo Normand?) Over at Wonderful Life, my activity increased with the establishment of the UK's first major foray into the wholly risible rehash of creationism, Intelligent Design, in the form of the Glasgow-based (but funded via Guernsey) Centre for Intelligent Design. This has provided considerable meat for the blog, particularly given that its three guiding lights appear to be deeply evangelical (and largely biblical literalists).  I was invited to join the committee of the British Centre for Science Education (website, forum, blog), an invitation that I accepted and a role that I hope I'll be able to take part in more fully in the future.

The British Centre for Science Education (BCSE) is the leading anti-creationist organisation in Europe. We are a well established professional group dedicated to promoting and defending science education in the UK. The BCSE is run as a cooperative organisation by part-time volunteers with paid membership and a community forum where the general public can debate the key issues involved. It believes in the tools for everyone to think for themselves - Science, Education and Reason - and the outcome – Democracy, Pluralism and Liberty. We have become deeply worried about attacks on science education, particularly from creationists funded from the USA and Australia, and our campaign is dedicated to keeping all forms of creationism including Intelligent Design out of the science classroom in the UK.

My twittering (#grumpybob and #teamgrumpy) has been sporadic, and often seems to fill the role of providing content to my FaceBook account.  Website activity at the Northwood Wheelers and Team Grumpy websites has been minimal.