This was the last of the early season Saturday time trials organised by the North Bucks Road Club (the events now shift to Wednesday evenings), and the first of 2008 to be held on the Stony Stratford course F5v/10. In the version used by NBRC, this course is about 11.4 miles and is a sporting course. It's also the furthest of our regular courses from my house, so I set off quite early, shortly after 7.30 am, in bright sunshine.

By the time I reached Stony, the temperature seemed to have dropped (eventually it snowed by Sunday morning), and the reasonably stiff breeze threatened the return leg. It was good to ride this course again - however some of the rougher sections seem to have deteriorated over the winter. In particular, the first sharp lefthander after Beachampton on the return leg has some nasty potholes. In the event,the outward leg was pretty uneventful, other than the line of cars parked juset before the turn (appeared to be parents unloading children for some unknown reason) - slightly worrying with oncoming traffic, and car doors pinging open and shut. All the riders seemed to get by OK. The return was quite a bit tougher than usual, due to the headwind, and I'm always a bit cautious about roaring downhill on slightly twisty roads (call me wimpy if you like, but I prefer to avoid bodily mangling).

In previous years, the organiser of this event (Ian Marshall) has managed to ensure bright, sunny and warm conditions. It was a shame therefore that this year's event was unusually cold and windy. Fortunately the forecast rain held off until after the event. As usual, Team Grumpy (Gerry Oram and myself) entered the 2-up event. This is likely to be the last opportunity for us to practice 2-up riding before the Duo Normand in September.', '

After signing on at the race HQ in the Cranfield University campus, we somewhat reluctantly warmed up, by riding the circuit in the other direction from the race (which had already started). We had been a bit worried by the wind, but we had no problems with the trispokes. Back to the car to remove jerseys and jackets, then off to the start. The version of the course used in this event differs in the start point from the usual course used for the NBRC club events (about half a mile after the Bourne End/Cranfield Road junction), so the climb to Astwood is mid-lap rather than at the end of each lap.

Overall we rode well, though I think we could have organised the changes better - we took turns that were too long (sometimes because it was difficult to change due to traffic). The section from Astwood to Chicheley was seriously with the stiff tail wind. We also had no difficulty with the various climbs on the course, staying in the big ring throughout. In the end, we finished with 47:40 for fourth place.

Well, this was the first of the 2008 NBRC evening events, and was held on the new F5d/10 course that had ony been used once before, for the New Year's Day '10'. The full report can be read here.

The F5d/10 uses the new Stoke Hammond bypass, a nice new smooth-surfaced dual carriageway. We had an excellent turnout, to the point that we worried about failing light towards the end of the event!

One of the explanations frequently cited as to why an otherwise intelligent individual espouses one or other of the many CAM therapies out there is that it is an old and trusted traditional remedy or therapy, and must in some quasi-bonkers reasoning work in some way that is as yet unknown to modern science. The excellent Quackometer blog site has a couple of postings that, by and large, put the lie to this curious notion. In the first, concerning Hopi ear-candling, it seems that the technique is a recent innovation, and the links to the poor old Hopi are spurious to say the least. A follow up blog entry, The Age of Quackery, describes the origins of Reiki, Reflexology, QiGong, Applied Kinesiology, Bach Flower Remedies, Aromatherapy, Homeopathy, Osteopathy and Chiropractic, and Acupuncture.

The best quote here has to be from the originator of Osteopathy, who said he could "shake a child and stop scarlet fever, croup, diphtheria, and cure whooping cough in three days by a wring of its neck". As the Quackometer says, this could have been a line from The Simpsons.

The Register reports that the Information Commissioner has reported that the Phorm system must be opt-in to comply with the law. Interesting, especially since BT therefore engaged in (presumably) illegal activities during their 2006 and 2007 trials of webwise (which, don't forget, they strenuously denied at first).  There's also a story at the BBC.

Oh, and the Phorm share price continues its slump (at least on 9/4/08).

I came across this website (http://www.inphormationdesk.org), while cruising around the badphorm.co.uk forums. It gives a very clear outline of the Phorm system, and why many of us object to it.

Not only did BT trial the offensive Phorm system last year (despite denying it at the time and subsequently), but it transpires that BT ran tests on 18,000 customers back in 2006, again without seeking permission. (Register article, BBC News article)
In essence, the story is as follows:
1. The pilot ran from 23/9/06 to 6/10/06
2. All 18,000 customers were opted-in with no attempt to seek consent
3. BT still plan to change their terms and conditions (which they presumably violated in the 2006 and 2007 tests) before any further implementation.
4. BT refuse to say where these 18,000 customers were.
5. In 2006, the system was called "PageSense".
6. The BT tech guy at the time was Stratis Scleparis, now he's with Phorm.

The BBC report quotes a FIPR spokesman as saying that the tests were "an illegal intercept of users' data".

Usually, I ride this hilly time trial - it's a good early season event to get the cobwebs out. This was my second open event of 2008. By Saturday evening, I'd been getting more apprehensive, as the nasty weather of Saturday afternoon (when I had been marshalling the Northampton and District Cycing Association '10') worsened to gales overnight. By Sunday morning the wind had eased considerably.

The event HQ is in Cheddington village hall - I rode out on the time trial bike via the new Stoke Hammond bypass, a nice smooth road, that we used for the NBRC New Year club '10'. This was pretty uneventful, except I punctured near Mentmore. This was a front wheel puncture. As I have acquired a reputation as a frequent puncture victim over the last couple of seasons, so much so that I have reverted to clinchers, I will keep a log of these punctures separately. Anyway, I slung a new tube in and got the tyre up to a ridable pressure using my tiny micro-pump. Once at Cheddington, I borrowed a track pump (I think from the eventual winner), and got the front tyre up to a more reasonable pressure for racing.

The omens were not good for this event. As the easter weekend approached, all the weather forecasts were dire - snow, sleet, rain, wind, all were forecast, and all my pooh-poohing could not evade this. We had very strong and gusty wind from Thursday evening. Come Saturday morning, and we had snow showers, and near freezing temperatures to match the gusting gales.

Despite encouragement not to go, I set out to ride up to Astwood for the time trial. It took me considerably longer to get there than usual, due to the perishing head wind. I was encouraged by seeing at least one rider warming up, but when I staggered into Astwood village hall, blinking from the fierce wind, it seemed as though my appearance had galvanised my club mates from a state of indecision into a racing mindset. As I hate racing in tights or legwarmers, I stripped down to a longsleeved skinsuit (albeit with two longsleeved vests underneath it), and warmed by a generous dollop of extra hot waterproof warmup cream nipped out to the start. It has to be said at this point that racing with bare legs seemed to horrify everyone else, but as I found out bare legs were the least of my worries. The full start list was 9 riders (#1, a number reserved for Alan was left vacant due to Iranian new year or some such excuse). As the riders lined up and started, the snow got really heavy - hopefully some pictures will be added to the official results page.

More news on the Phorm phront...

BadPhorm has an update with Phorm's responses to some questions. Note how the PhormPR companiesare able to take advantage of the system architecture to deliberately obfuscate discussions of data privacy.

The New York Times has another article about Phorm. It quotes a Phorm employee, Virasb Vahidi:

“As you browse, we’re able to categorize all of your Internet actions,” said Virasb Vahidi, the chief operating officer of Phorm. “We actually can see the entire Internet.”

The BBC news website reports that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has serious objections to ISPs tracking users' web browsing habits - as proposed by Phorm (and to be introduced by BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk - probably to be followed by the other big players).

[This item has been updated several times on 17/3/08 and 18/3/08]

A report on El Reg about MI5 reportedly wanting access to travel records associated with Oyster cards (report originally in The Observer 16/3/07) raises considerable issues regarding electronic data and privacy.

This makes me wonder what MI5 might want, once the Phorm system is installed in the ISPs representing the great majority of broadband users. 

Here's the cover of the journal Science (7th March issue which just arrived at my office), featuring a work by the graffiti artist Banksy.

Just thought this was a nice image!

Our paper in Aging Cell describing the identification and characterisation of a Drosophila orthologue of the exonuclease function of WRN is now available online, and open access.

British Telecom have a Privacy Policy. I reached this page from the BT Webwise page, so presumably it applies to their proposed arrangement with Phorm.

We may share your personal information with other companies so that they can contact you with details of other products or services you may be interested in. We will only do this if you have agreed to this and where the companies agree to use your personal information for that purpose only. If you have agreed to receive information about products and services from another company and later decide not to you will need to contact that company yourself to let them know. You can of course ask us not to continue to provide your personal information to any more companies in future.

For background to this article, see the related story about BT's relationship with the targeted advertising company Phorm. Note in relation to the patent application that Phorm (under a different company name had form as a spyware distributor) . For more information check out the links in that story.

Thanks to a commenter at an El Reg article, the following snippets from the Phorm patent (which you can read at the Political Penguin blog) should be noted:

This morning saw the first of the North Bucks Road Club events in the 2008 time trial series. Ian Stokes arranged several 10 mile time trials on the Astwood sporting course and we had the use of Astwood village hall.

On a pretty windy day, thirteen riders turned out. I very nearly failed to make it in time, puncturing in Cranfield en route to Astwood. I refrained from getting too grumpy, as a passer-by helped with my annoying tyre levers! Having (sort of) pumped up the tyre with my very small pump, I dashed off to Astwood, arriving after the first four or five riders had started, in a state of some perspiration. To add insult to injury, I ended up with number 13! I quickly removed unnecessary clothes (bib tights etc), much to the horror of my fellow competitors.

BT have hit the news bigtime recently over their shady deals with Phorm, a company which appears to have a shady past that many allege involves spyware. There's a good overview on The Register. Essentially what seems to be proposed is that BT Broadband subscribers internet browsing habits will be forwarded to Phorm, who run an advert server called OIX. Web pages which use OIX to serve up adverts will then aim adverts at you based on this information. Sounds creepy? Well it is.There are several issues here:

1. BT trialled this last summer, an act they are loath to admit to.

One of the enduring myths of cycle racing concerns the relative merits of tubular tyres relative to clinchers. Convention has it that nothing can compare to the performance of a quality tubular. However, lot of anecdotal evidence is bandied around supporting high quality clinchers as superior to tubulars. I was recently sent a link to test data regarding the characteristics of tyres versus tubulars - this gives clear data to support this contention.', '

Clinchers and tubulars

A couple of images to show the differences between a tubular and a clincher (links to external website images)