I don't think there's a massive difference between a flat bar hybrid and a 26" wheel with a slick tyre – if I ride right up on the flats, my road bike is not much faster than the old 26" wheeled piece of junk it replaced. The big difference in speed is when you have a more aerodynamic position (i.e. drop bars). Oh and tyres, they make a big difference, although you've got sort of narrowish slicks already.

Joe

No-one here is claiming that £30,000 of cable will turn crap into gold (so stop extrapolating to extremes to try and win arguments!) but I will hands-down guarantee that I can tell the difference between my old £1/m speaker cable and the QED anniversary silver £5/m stuff I replaced it with. There was tons more bass, and anyone would have been able to tell. And I'll take that double-blind test.

If you could win the £500 offered here, you could follow it up by doing the $1 million challenge that James Randi offered.

http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-09/092807reply.html#i4

hardknott pass in the lakes is an average 33%,

It's maximum 33% on the hairpins. Average is about 15% – 20% depending on where you count as the start. If it was really 37%, it'd be a)the worlds steepest road, or a close contender, and b)steeper than the UK's steepest road (in Wales, 34% gradient at the steepest point).

Joe

i've been up 37 on a road bike, and as (if not steeper) on a mountain bike.

In Dunedin, New Zealand (supposedly actually 35% but still jolly steep), or the one in Pittsburgh (actually measured at 37%)?

It is a pity there aren't any roads over 34% in the UK, the really steep streets seem like a fun challenge.

Joe

Test bench results do not determine musical quality. Of course it's a subjective experience; my example of different cabling was extreme to indicate that where there is a physical difference in equipment, there will be a different audio outcome.

But there's also evidence that flicking a switch that isn't connected to anything will change your subjective experience – people told that a switch changes between high quality and low quality cable, will be able to hear a significant difference in quality between the two.

If there was a difference that you could hear, you must have better ears than every audio type who has ever done a blind 2 way test, given no-one has ever been able to tell the difference between cables yet in a blind test.

Joe

fair point, but clearly if the public body chose suppliers purely on the basis of the cheapest price the objectives of service delivery are going to be unacceptably compromised – the key element is competition on delivery and value for money.

What happens in practice, is that the public body outsources a service (the classic example is IT of some kind or another). They now have no people in house who are experts in this service. This means they have no idea of how to manage contractors, or of what quality the work being done for them is. Instead of choosing contractors based on their ability to do the job, they choose them based on their ability to schmooze and play golf, and end up employing some bunch of shysters for massive cost* (like EDS or other similar consulting companies). There's very little evidence that this saves anyone money, although sometimes it does allow creative accounting that pushes the money spent onto the next government.

If competition to provide public services was such a great idea, it would have worked in any of the many examples where it exists already, like building stuff (the public get conned by building companies), large IT projects (the public get conned by contractors), IT for schools (the schools get conned by various large companies who sell them aging kit for vast amounts of money), university catering (terrible food at very high cost), and any of the many many other places where supposedly competitive contracting out is already used.

Joe

*I've been on the IT supplier end of this, and the poor old government really don't have a clue (but they certainly do like a game of golf with the salespeople).

I'd happily do the Ryvoan Pass – An Slugan route in the dark. Nice open tracks and no difficult navigation.

Description here, although obviously start from the Aviemore end (can ride in to it easily).
http://cycling.visitscotland.com/find_route/highlands/pass_of_ryvoan

You'd need lights that went on for a fair length of time mind – it took me almost 3 hours when I did it last.

If you're riding in the woods S of the Rothiemurchus road, take a compass. If you get lost, just take tracks that head roughly North until you hit the road again.

Joe

But if they left it all to cats and dogs and donkeys for no good reason, I would contest it. (But I know they are/were of sound mind and wouldn't do anything so supremely stupid).

What about if they left it to cats and donkeys because they like them? Would you still contest it?

Joe

So are you basically saying that if you are nice to someone in the last few years of their life, you should get all their money, no matter what their wishes (as expressed by their will) were? It shouldn't be up to other people to judge who most deserves someone's money when they have made clear their wishes.

But the point was that they were not of sound mind when the will was written. What sane person would leave an estate of that size to a few scabby dogs over their own fresh and blood who had helped them out for years and years.

Lots of people choose to disinherit their kids – it might be ungrateful or spiteful in some cases, but it isn't insane.

None of this is the point of the case anyway, the point is that they argued the mother had been under duress when she made the will. Presumably they argued this pretty convincingly given they won the case.

Joe

Anyway I thought it was senior staff only,

Labour: Pay freeze for senior staff only
Conservatives: Pay freeze for anyone in the public sector paid more than 18k a year.

Joe

90p a spoke is about right for DTS double butted.

40p for dt double butted from chain reaction makes 90p seem pretty expensive. According to chain reaction, the rrp of a set of 36 is only £20 (55p), which given you'd be buying them in full sets to make a wheel, makes 90p a bit cheeky.

Joe

Like I said, you'd have to read the rest of that site to get to the actual law of it. I'd imagine property includes stuff that they haven't actually taken possession of yet, but are legally entitled to, or something random like that.

There have been several cases like this, and they always say that they have to. I imagine they aren't lying about the need to challenge it, as it isn't exactly good publicity when major charities go about suing random people.

Joe

I imagine it is covered by this:

Trustees must always act to protect property owned by the charity. If a charity has permanent endowment, particular care must be taken to maintain its value.
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/publications/cc3.asp#g3

I dunno what exact law that is based on, you'd have to read more on that site to find out.

Joe

simalarly wrong as replacing a chain that has "worn out" when its lost possibly 1% of its mass,at the most?

But that has lost 1% of its mass from all over it, in loads of different places, not just one simple part that would be dead easy to replace if they just made it slightly differently.

Joe

While I am moaning – it appears you can't just buy the springs either, thanks to the cunning way they are riveted into the derailleur body – 23 bloody quid for a broken spring, how wrong is that?

Joe

In London, the longest stair set that is easily rideable without any hassle has to be the Greenwich Foot Tunnel – tight, slippery, steep. 100 stairs, I think it has no landings either. Send someone down first to check for walkers. Oh and start riding once the lift starts to move up from the bottom, as then the guy in the lift can't tell you off.

If you like jumping off stairs, then Canary Wharf has a decentish set. Also, I've seen the ones at Waterloo, from the bridge over Waterloo road down to ground level jumped down in quite a scary looking way, but they're not very long. Also the ones off Hungerford Bridge, but they are always a bit crowded, you have to wait for a decent gap.

Joe

If they'd said, sorry, we couldn't get the cheap rim, so we put a more expensive one on, no extra charge, that'd be fine, fair enough, I've had that happen with things before.

But if they're charging you extra, without asking, that is crazy.

90p a spoke? Are they titanium triple butted or aerodynamic spokes or something fancy? Or black ones? Even buying single spokes, I've never paid more than 50p for a good enough double butted silver spoke.

Joe

cheers. That makes things simpler.

Joe

Aha, it appears I have one of these braze on adapters.

http://www.dotbike.com/ProductsP5560.aspx?utm_source%3dinternal%26utm_medium%3d3%26utm_campaign%3dDDI

Which means I can use any 9 speed triple derailleur in the braze on version right?

Joe

bigger

Only just a night ride picture. Sunset over the mill. My house is just off the bottom left of the picture. In cheesy HDR-o-vision cos that is much more like it really looked than any of the individual exposures were.

Joe

T-Mobile and Three have nearly merged their 3G networks but T-mobile's 2G network falls outside of the network share – Three already had the biggest 3G network in the UK.

Any ideas when this might go live? As that'd save me switching providers (we have a good 3g signal on 3, but no signal at all on t-mobile here, except on the top floor or in the garden)

Joe

I've found t-mobile coverage is great for me everywhere except in Derbyshire.

I now live in Derbyshire. Bugger.

Joe

I'm sure there have be proven studies that workng over 'x' number of hours per week actually makes you less productive, and I'm sure its quite low ie about 50 hours.

I think it was 10 hours a day was the break-even point where your productivity goes back to the same as an 8 hour day. Above that, you're less productive than doing an 8 hour day. The study is referenced in a very good book about software development called 'The Mythical Man Month', which I don't have to hand right now, so I can't check the exact numbers.

Joe

I've been at places where a lot of people worked 12 hour days (doing computer programming). They didn't get any more actual work done than the people with kids who probably worked 9:30 – 5 at the most. I always worked pretty much my contract hours, maybe slightly below. As long as I got the work done, no one minded and they kept giving me pay rises. I think in a lot of jobs, people think that by working long hours, they'll get on better, but in reality, if you work more efficiently and do the same in less hours, you can get on just the same as the stay late types.

Right now, I work on a pretty flexible basis – some days I work a full day, some days I don't, this Monday / Tuesday, I was off doing work stuff which involved a bunch of travel & doing external work, I guess I did way more than 2 days work, although I did get to ride a load of rollercoasters as part of my work, which was nice. I think I probably average out to a 40 hour week or whatever my contract says, but it varies very much depending on what needs to be done and when – if something is being done at an event, or for a particular deadline, then I'll work way longer, if things are a bit slack, I'll do less work.

Joe

While I'm on this topic, how come Kanye West can refer to '****' in his music while the rest of us would be lambasted?

Hmm. OK – well, you don't cut frontline staff, you cut middle-management and introduce better systems and smarter working (standard business practice where beaurocracy has replaced efficiency).

Yeah, because the original Conservative reforms creating the internal market, widespread use of tendering, privatisation etc., taking supposedly more efficient private business practices and applying them to the public sector worked really well, and aren't the direct cause of the current problems. Oh and the more recent New Labour reforms to the NHS, taking (guess what) supposedly more efficient private sector management and measurement practices and applying them to the public sector, they were great in terms of reducing red tape and bureaucracy.

If it was as simple as you're describing, it'd have been done years ago. If it was really 'standard business practice', we wouldn't have exactly the same practices and worse in most large companies, and there'd actually be some real evidence that private sector working methods are more efficient than those in the public sector. We wouldn't have exactly the same culture of obsessive micro-management and stupid targets that people can game in the biggest companies (look at the bank bonus culture for an obvious example).

Joe

Unless you want to do something very complicated, I'd just use windows movie maker (built in to Windows) if you have a PC or iMovie if you have a mac. To be honest though, it doesn't matter too much – 99.9% of the time, what matters is how good your source material is, if your film is okay, all you need to do is chop up the video and add titles & sound, which anything will do.

There are a few free video editing software packages out there, but when I've played with them, they are either no more powerful than movie maker, or probably a lot more powerful but horrible to use. There isn't anything free that is in any way the equivalent of Premiere / Final Cut etc.

Joe

p.s. A blatant plug for something I made with Windows Movie Maker

The latest version of Hugin is very good – a whole lot better than it used to be, and much easier to use. It also has support for HDR, and decent exposure blending support which is very neat. It is well worth upgrading if you have an older one.

Joe

That's a much more illustrative example than guess-work about crank lengths, wheel size and gear ratios. Bike in turbo with no resistance, person holding outside of wheel. Pedal away. I'd have my money on the rider every time unless the gear was massive and the tyre was grippy.

Yeah probably so. If that is the case, then it's an interesting demonstration that the bike allows you to put more than 4 times as much power through your legs than just using your arms alone. Although it does depend a lot on the gearing, and these track bikes do tend to have very high gears no?

Thinking about it, you could modify the wheel turning method by putting the bike on the ground and pushing it forwards. I imagine you could put quite a large amount of force on then – if someone stands and pushes backwards on your handlebars as hard as possible, can you make the bike move forwards, or do you get moved backwards? That'd be a kind of fair comparison, I've never tried that either.

Joe

Actually no it's not. It's a well known fact that given the same A level grades the privately educated people do slightly worse than the state school people, which isn't the same thing at all (given that private school pupils in general get higher A level grades).

You missed that it was at a particular university (Cambridge in that particular example). Students who get into that university from private schools do worse than those from state schools. They do have the same A level grades (almost everyone there has at least AAA at A-Level), but that isn't really that relevant to the argument that people from private schools find it easier to get into universities.

Joe

Yes, that's a well known fact. And it proves the point that public schools such a Eton, provide a higher quality of education.

Because whilst their pupils are perhaps not being as bright, they have a clear advantage over state pupils when it comes a A levels etc results. Once they are on a level playing field with everyone else, they do no better – in fact worst.

No it doesn't prove that they provide better education. It proves that private schools make you better at A Levels. It also provides good evidence that private schools don't make you actually more educated in any long term way, which is what I'd argue a good education should be about – about educating you for things you will do in the future, for the rest of your life beyond the school, preparing kids for the future, not just about teaching people for one test in a way that is not much use once you leave school, and certainly not something that leaves you not very well prepared for their next stage of education.

Joe

I know of people who've broken welded cogs. Although it was on chain driven unicycles (way larger forces than on a bike) and by all reports they lasted quite long.

Joe

While this may be true from a workshop perspective, there's no way you could apply anywhere near the same force that you could by pounding on the pedals up a hill.

Your cranks are 170mm, compared to a 311mm radius wheel, which is 1.8 times the leverage. Then you're going through a gearing system, say if you're using a 70 inch gear, that's another 2.5 times the leverage. Using the wheel as a lever, you'd have a total of 4.6 times the amount of force. Are your legs really capable of applying 4 and a half times as much force as your arms? That may be true, although I'm not 100% sure of it. Using your arms would have a bonus in that it would be a nice smooth application of force, so you're much less likely to break things either – like when you use a scaffold pipe to remove stuck cranks, it always seems much less bad for them than using a hammer on the allen key.

Joe

Our local secondary school has no uniforms, and still gets good results / no major problems with discipline etc.

Apparently when the inspectors went round last time, they didn't approve of this at all, and tried really hard to get the pupils to say that they'd rather have a uniform, or that they felt that not having a uniform caused problems, with no success.

Joe

Eton College provides a higher quality of education.

Is that actually true? Private schools provide an education that is very much targeted towards getting people into a particular set of 'top universities'.

I know at Cambridge in the late 90s (I'm sure there's more recent research about this, but I don't know), private school educated people did significantly worse in their degrees on average than state school educated pupils, these statistics were used to justify the suggestion that perhaps they try and attract more state pupils. It kind of suggests that there isn't a massive load of evidence for private schools making people cleverer, they are just good at making people look cleverer in university application and pushing them hard / spoon feeding them to pass A levels.

Joe

I think riding fixed off road, even with a back brake you will find yourself putting back pressure on the pedals. It will happen when you are going downhill fast and need to keep your speed under control. There's certainly a risk of spinning the cog. A fast downhill is possibly not the best time to discover that you've suddenly lost control.

Joe

Conkers on a bonfire is the thing to do. Great fun in a things exploding quite dangerously kind of way.

Joe

Oh and I always take a big bag of emergency skittles / starburst or similar- if you find you run out of energy completely, you can always limp the last few miles eating one skittle a minute, every minute. You will feel dirty doing it, but it keeps exhaustion at bay for as long as you need it to.

Joe

Sweets, malt loaf, pasta if you can stomach it, bananas, crisps. Stuff that you can digest easily & quickly, and that gives you a quick hit of energy. Any time you are near a shop / tearoom, buy something, gives you variety (although I think there are only a couple of points on the SDW where this is true). Take stuff that is calory dense. It's only one day of riding, so you don't need to be perfect about all your vitamins and minerals and stuff. Personally on a ride like that I'd make sure my sandwiches were something a bit boring (cheese & pickle, peanut butter & jam or something) and I'd rather have cheap white bread over nice wholemeal.

The best way to do 100 miles in a day is without too many long stops – eat small amounts of food often (and a massive load of fish and chips or similar at the end). Especially with the limited amount of light at the moment – if you don't want to finish in pitch darkness, you're going to have to skip the midday pub stop.

Joe

Jo is that a pinhole camera photo ?

No, it's a cheesy HDR made from multiple images. The funny colouring at one side is some bad weather coming in.

I live not far from Joe, but a few miles can make quite a big difference to your access to public transport. I believe 'we could live without the car', but it is not a compromise I would be willing to make.

Yeah, if you head up towards Matlock, transport isn't anywhere near as good, and then you go past it to Darley Dale etc. and it'd be a nightmare relying on just the buses. Belper is a great compromise from that side of things. Plus Belper is just close enough to Nottingham to be a reasonable bike commute.

Joe