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Since my last posting (Weird X freeze on Ubuntu 9.04, part umpteen), the problem with X freezing still seems to be present, despite the bug report saying it was fixed in development versions of Ubuntu 9.10.  I upgraded to 9.10 on Friday, and have had a couple of freezes since then.  Just now, I have just over 40h on the uptime meter.  I think this is because I'm logging out before suspending the computer.  Anyway, logging in is better than having freezes which require a reboot!

I guess a week at residential school with its heady mix of cafeteria diet, excessive drinking and late nights isn't really the recommended preparation for a time trial, and so it proved.  I'd also not trained for a fortnight.

The event was held on the F1/25, on a very calm but slightly oppressive morning - indeed as I left Tempsford after I'd finished it began to rain, and this would presumably affect the later starters.  One other factor was that I was riding my newly installed USE Tula handebars.  I was a little concerned about the location of the brake levers, and whether I'd be able to reach them quickly enough in an emergency.  Well, I found them pretty good, and the slightly altered position seemed very comfortable.  For the first five miles or so anyway.  Throughout the race I was keeping my HR up at well above 180bpm - I presume I am well-rested!

The problem was my extreme carbon saddle - extreme in lightness, but also rather unforgiving.  Now, in the past I'd raced at distances up to 50 miles on this saddle, but today I was suffering quite a bit, and I kept finding myself fidgeting and riding out of the saddle more than was really necessary.  So, from feeling quite confident in the early stages, it became quite clear I was far from likely to pull a halfway decent performance out of the bag.

And so it proved - I finished in 59:21, somewhat slower than my previous outing on this course a fortnight before.  Still, I was quite pleased with the Tula bars, if not the effect on saddle discomfort.  I'll switch saddles for the midweek event up at Astwood, and see if that makes a difference.  Next weekend, I'm riding the Beds Roads CC '25' on the F1B/25, which is the southern course.  I'm a bit happier with that course - fewer sliproads, and somewhat perversely I find it a bit quicker.

Over the last week (while I've been working away, and needing the use of my Ubuntu notebook) I've continued to have issues regarding the weird X freezes I've been having sporadically for the last few weeks (X freeze on Notebook - solved?).  Unfortunately, all the fiddling around with the system were to no avail, and the problem continued.

Seeing the claim that the bug was resolved in the upcoming Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" release, I decided to update the system to the current alpha version of Karmic.  I did this with some trepidation, as I would usually wait until the official release before updating Ubuntu.  Interestingly, I've yet to find any irritating alpha bugs (but it's early days) - it's also a bit early to say whether the X freeze bug has really been resolved.  If not, I'll do a fresh reinstall.  As I type this, I've had a cumulative uptime of 10h42m...so let's hope this is sorted, as it's a bit of a showstopper bug.

Despite being a bit of a fan of Watchmen, I never made it to the cinema to see the film. I finally watched it after the DVD I'd pre-ordered arrived this week. So, what's my take on Zack Snyder's opus? I guess my first comment would be that it's got a kind of fanboy feel - with the exceptions of the omission of at least one scene (the death of Nite Owl I, though I understand it's restored in the new Director's Cut) and the changes to Veidt's gran plot to end the threat of nuclear war, both of which I can understand in the context of a feature film, there's obviously been a definite attempt to stay as close to the book in visuals and script. This extends even to such minutiae as Rorschach's broken trenchcoat epaulette. As an exercise in filming a comic book, I guess it succeeded, but there's the difficulty that a filmed comic book often struggles to convince, and can often come across as rather risible.

Presumably that's why films like the original (Christopher Reeves) Superman series and the Flash Gordon film were in part or whole played for laughs. It's interesting to note the variety of styles applied to the various Batman films over the years, from the really camp 60s versions to the dark and characteristic Tim Burton vision, which gradually slipped in the succeeding films into more jokey style.

The cinematic vision of Batman was regenerated in some style in the two Christopher Nolan films. Of course Batman has the advantage that the character and its origin is well known to most of the public, enabling imaginative retelling on film and on the printed page to succeed. Perhaps that is the problem with Watchmen - for the public at large this would be a new story, with new characters, many with a rich past (well, rich by the standards of a comic book serial) that had to be clearly laid out to the viewer.