Once again, the forecast was not good for a time trial: this time the forecast was accurate! It turned out to be a hard evening on the course, with a headwind up the hill to the turn, and light rain.

Because the event was over at Stony Stratford (F5u/10 - though despite what the code suggests, the course version we use is 11.4 miles), I rode down to work on the Cougar TT bike, then on to the event after work.  By then, there was light rain which eased a little by the time I got to Stony.  On the way, however, I had yet another puncture (while I was evading a traffic jam on Brickhill St by popping briefly onto the redway).  I had no tyre levers, but discovered I could use 50p coins instead! This was the fifth puncture of the 2008 season.

The forecast was for rain, but as it turned out, this event was held on a rather lovely spring morning, with a gentle breeze.  The event was organised by the North Bucks Road Club, with the clubroom used as the HQ,  We used the F5d/10, which is the new '10' course based on the Stoke Hammond bypass.

Conditions were fairly similar to those for the recent NBRC club event, and I improved by a measly 3 seconds to record a 23:25.  As far as I recall, the winning time was a long 21 - a fine ride by Jason Gurney (Team MK).  It was good to see a strong turnout from NBRC members.

This is the third event run on the F5d/10 - I reckon it's a pretty tough course, with a lot of climbing (OK the gradients are pretty shallow, but when trying to maintain a reasonable race pace they are quite hard!) to the turn.

This was the Beds Roads slowest 90 '25', and it was the first solo '25' of my 2008 season. I travelled over to the event with Richard Moule (Bossard Wh), who was riding the medium gear event held immediately prior to the main 90 rider event.

Before we set off, I'd popped out to see what the weather was like, and was pleasantly surprised at how mild it appeared to be: No Frost! However, by the time we got over to Tempsford, where the race HQ was in the village hall, we discovered that over there there had been a hefty frost. I had of course made a decision not to bring fleecy gloves, a decision I was regretting when I met Stuart Tarry in the hall - Stuart was smart and had packed a variety of full fingered gloves, a pair of which I borrowed. Richard was due to start shortly after 7am, with me following at 7:34. I duly made a vague attempt at a warm-up, but felt pretty chilly as I lined up for the start.

I notice that the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council  (CNHC) are now online.  At this time, the website is pretty spartan, but what is notable is not so much what is said, but what is not said. 

There's no indication that any of the named individuals are medically qualified (though they my be).  An unidentified group of people seem to run the show:

Well, spring had certainly sprung as I set out for Astwood, and a fine evening prompted an excellent turnout of 30 riders to take part in the latest club time trial held on the Astwood circuit. I've raced there so many times this year that I think I could do it on autopilot!', '

Weather conditions certainly were different from those allocated to Ian Marshall for the Team MK event last weekend - hopefully we'll see some more balmy evenings.
Some excellent performances were seen - particularly a close race for first place between Stuart Tarry and Simon Cannings. Bizarrely claiming to be a newcomer (!), Aaron claimed 3rd place, not far behind those two. The man with the watch (Tony Farmborough) tells me that several NBRC members set personal bests last night - the honours go to the following riders.

Chris Hartley.....................36sec
John Buchanan................. 22sec
Chris Parkes.....................14sec
Alan Lawson......................3sec
Brian Primett......................2sec

Many thanks to Tony and the support crew, and to the 30 riders who turned out to savour the delights of the Astwood circult on the first fine spring evening of 2008. The NBRC are organising the Norlond 10 on Sunday, and road races on Saturday - see the newsflash on the main page. Offers of help and assistance at both those events will be most appreciated by the organisers (Alan Lawson and Gordon Batcock respectively).

UPDATE:

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.