Dynamos are limited to 3W

Hub dynamos are only limited to 500ma actually. So like you showed in the pic, you can get any wattage by using multiple LEDs. There is someone I think on candlepowerforums or mtbr who has built a 6 LED one that is something like 15 watt of stupid brightness (dimmable by switching off some of the LEDs).

I built a super duper dynamo rear light, just used a cheap rectifier and a red Cree LED. Dirt cheap, jolly bright, and the automatic current limiting effect of the dynamo seems to stop it blowing out which is neat. Slightly less efficient than it could have been, due to the rectifier, but still not noticeable drag.

Joe

But you can aquaplane at the speeds that bikes travel.

On a 23mm tyre or even a 50mm balloon bike tyre? Bet you can't.

Joe

I know we're all big on lightweight bling etc, but seriously, if dynamos work, why don't we all have them for lights etc? or are they just a bit pony, unreliable and badly designed? I've always fancied one, but they don't seem to be stocked that much im LBS's?

It's because they only became any use when the combination of the latest LEDs with more efficient dynamo hubs meant that you could get a usable amount of light without massive drag. Even now, with the exception of the Supernova lights (very very expensive, very bright) they're not as bright as the most expensive battery powered offroad lights. They are great for on-road riding, but probably not quite there for technical off road, especially given how bright and cheap the newer battery powered LED lights are. Homebrew lights are dead easy to build though, I guess some people will build some very very bright homebrew dynamo lights some point soon.

They also have a bad reputation based on people who have used ancient systems which rub on the tyre, cause massive drag, don't work well in the rain and generally aren't very bright either. It is hard to believe that they can be so good when you know how bad the old ones were.

You also have to rebuild your front wheel, which is a bit of hassle.

Joe

Also, this might not be obvious, but "wild swimming" as a term is also used to differentiate it from "open water swimming", which (within competitive swimming circles) usually refers to swimming races that are held outdoors. I guess wild swimming is meant to emphasise the going out and seeing nature part of it, rather than just seeing "open water" as a slightly bumpier pool where you don't have to turn round so often.

It is nice that it is getting fashionable, maybe there will be more adults swimming outdoors, and less places being shut off / less hassle from people who own / manage land about swimming.

Joe

"Wild swimming" is what I grew up calling swimming too, I don't know where all these self proclaimed wild swimmers are though, Swamp girl and I are pretty enthusiastic and its extremely rare to meet anyone else doing it.

I can safely say that they aren't in the Peak District (at least never are when I'm swimming).

I also get irritated by the people who feel the need to use the term because its fashionable. Having to go to Wales to do it is a laugh too, nice scenery, but there are plenty of nice gravel pits etc. round here in the Home Counties. Not to miss out the Thames, lowest point swum in so far is Hampton Court. [If you live on Thames Ditton Island and pulled back the curtains in the morning to find a bum print on the picture window, it wasn't me, honest]

Hah, I've swum at Eel Pie Island in Twickenham – that's lower down*. A nice little swim, although watch the tide, it can be a right hassle if it is going the wrong way. I've also swum at Chertsey (nice enough beach, although it is a bit busy with boats sometimes), and Penton Hook Island (you can swim in the weir outflow – not too close to it obviously, but 50 metres down from it, you get a great current pulling you round past the marina, and then you can get out and wander across the island back again, or battle back against the current if you want the exercise). Oh and a few points higher than that (up Maidenhead way) as a kid.

Having done some swimming in Wales, they do have some lovely little fast flowing rivers and waterfall pools to swim in, and some very very beautiful lakes, it's is a very different thing to going swimming in Heron Lake down by the M25. Same goes for Alpine lakes and things. The water may be the same, but the scenery does make it a bit different.

Joe

*and also probably illegal – I think the Port of London authority ban swimming in the tidal Thames.

oddjob does the joystick give any side visibilty? Joe sounds good but no flashing mode and does it have different light levels?

You don't need multiple light levels – it is designed for use on roads, like a car light, so it doesn't dazzle people, it just puts a load of light down onto the road / ground where you need it, by using a cunning shaped beam.

It doesn't flash, but I've never found that to be a problem – I guess it might mean people think you're a small motorbike rather than a bike.

Are you somewhere in Scotland? http://www.kinetics.org.uk/html/cyo.shtml stock the Cyo, if you could make it to their shop in Glasgow, you could have a look at one in the flesh (and maybe they'd let you have a test ride or something).

Joe

On road, tread gives you less grip not more. Best grip is a slick.

Continental GP 4000 S is a good tyre all year round – pretty puncture resistant for a fast tyre, good grip in the wet, and jolly lovely and fast rolling.

Whatever you do, don't get Bontrager tyres. They appear to be designed by people who only ride in the sunny parts of California. If it rains, you will feel unsafe.

Joe

I have – mostly unintentionally

You know, paddling is how I got into river swimming. Doing white-water rescue training, I discovered how much fun it is to be the rescuee, and thought that it might be nice to do that on purpose sometimes!

Joe

I agree the default is a swimming pool. "Wild" is rather over-hyped though if all you're doing is swimming in a lake or the sea (or even down a non-whitewater river). I do plenty of "wild" swimming by their definition, but would be embarrassed to call it that.

Yeah true. White-water swimming is awesome though, you should try it (I'd only swim a grade 2 or 3 canoeing river though). When we had all the rains, I swum a section of our local river that is usually too shallow – it was a foot up from normal, and you could just get through without too many scrapes on the rocks. The feeling of no return as you swim into the main channel, commit yourself to it and the river catches you is awesome.

I also swum in some rivers in the Dolomites too – that was cool, very strong currents, but wide and shallow, so it was easy to break out of the current when you wanted to go back up.

Oh and I've swum in bits of the Spey too, although that is a Grade 1 or easy grade 2 at most.

Swimming in the sea can be pretty extreme too, when you've got anything over about 4 foot of swell it always seems like a good laugh.

I think though that the phrase 'wild swimming' is meant to be more about wild in the scenery sense of things, as in getting close to nature and seeing it / being a part of it, rather that wild in the crazy / extreme sense. At least that's the idea I get from the Daniel Start & Roger Deakin books. Which makes sense.

Joe

Is it a long enough ride to justify a dynamo hub? The LED lights from B&M are really usable now.

Yes, they certainly are, at least for anything other than technical off road.

I just wish someone would design a light that could be used in proper darkness and had enough side visibilty for urban stuff. I suppose it's a pretty niche market.

If you mean on-road / on cyclepaths / canal towpaths etc. in pitch darkness, then a B&M cyo iq, plus a hub dynamo (Shimano DH-3N80 will do the job and is lightweight and very low drag), lets you ride at daytime speeds on roads, and has good visibility. It is very low drag (you don't notice it at all), and you have infinite runtime. If you mean for technical off road then you might want a bit more light, there are expensive dynamo lights that are a fair bit brighter (triple LED jobbies) which would probably do the job, but I haven't seen them in the flesh.

Joe

But, even as kid, this is what swimming meant to me..

What, so if someone says to you

"I'm a member of a swimming club"
or
"I go swimming every day before work"

you'd assume they were doing it in a river?

Personally, I agree that it shouldn't be the case, it should be that if you say you're going for a swim, people assume you mean outdoors, but given most people seem to do only 'turbo trainer' type indoor swimming, the different phrase is used for the one which is odd.

Joe

p.s. It isn't usually that cold in summer. Pools are too hot though – you get sweaty swimming hard in them, which just isn't right.

It's becase in the world of swimming generally, people swim in pools.

The same as if you ride an exercise bike, you say that you rode an exercise bike, not that you went on a bike ride, because the default there is to do it outside.

Joe

Should be narrower in the middle of the spoke.

he new £60 fenwick torch for a head light…. 240 lumens, 1 AA battery powered

Surely it'll only have a half hour run time though?

Do you mean Fenix?

Anyway, £60 for a torch sounds a bit much, given the £10 2xAA torches work fine if you want a less bright thing to stick on your helmet.

Joe

Those who ride come rain or shine, how do you avoid the temptation to just jump on the bus/in the car when it's chucking down? I dont believe anyone genuinely looks out of the window at rivers down the tarmac and thinks "good good, another nice ride in".

Bus: Costs £7 return, and involves a 10 minute walk in the rain either end.
Train: Costs £6 return, and even then I have a short ride at the end.
Car: Don't have one (and if I did, it'd probably take the same time as riding due to morning traffic).

Basically I'm a stingy bugger, £6 return always seems like a bit much when the bike is free.

Joe

When I hired a bike in Italy, it had big stickers on it with the name of the hire company (and it was written on in marker too).

They took any kind of thing with a photo of you on it as security (I left my university staff card).

That was not at all a fancy bike though, probably a £300 bike at most, I'd imagine with more expensive bikes it is much more of a worry.

Joe

I really don't get the mudguard thing. If it's raining, I'll be in waterproof 3/4 shorts and a waterproof high vis jacket. What benefit do the guards add?

If it rains on you and you have mudguards on, you get just the rain that is falling now on you.

If it rains and you don't have mudguards, you get all the rain that has fallen for the last 4 hours or so, sprayed up your back / in your face.

Not wearing mudguards makes it like it is raining about 10 times as hard in terms of how much water gets onto you, and the water that does get onto you isn't clean rain water, it is minging road dirt water. A lot of the time, when it's only a bit of a shower, you don't even need to faff with waterproofs. You don't get a wet arse unless it rains really hard and horizontally. I don't think I've used waterproof trousers once this year, and my commute is 16 miles each way, so I can't avoid the rain. I can't remember getting a wet arse at all.

Basically you can spend £20-30 on mudguards, which you fit and then leave on your commute bike, or you can spend £50 on waterproof shorts, £100 on a waterproof jacket, which you have to keep washing all the time after they get covered in road muck. Even if you do want all the fancy waterproof gear, the mudguards will make it last longer and stay cleaner as it doesn't get grit all over it.

Joe

Mudguards are the most important thing, make much more of a difference to how wet you get than any waterproof, and are quite a cheap upgrade. Lights obviously. Reflective tape is nice too (get it from Halfords).

I use the same tyres as always, 23mm GP4000 S. As long as it is something with a little puncture resistance that works okay in the wet, and you look where you're riding it's okay.

I use a cheapish altura windproof (cost about £20 I think, maybe 30) rather than a waterproof. If it really pisses down I get wet, but it keeps the wind off so I don't get cold, and I don't sweat too much in it, like I do in the fancy goretex etc.

Joe

My advice would be encourage him to take up a career that you can do straight from school without a degree and make an earlier start in the working world.

Sadly everybody wants a degree these days so there aren't many good options around.

I'd say decide what you want to do. If there's a subject that you're really interested in, then go to university and study it. Or, if there's a career you're really interested in, find out if a degree makes sense for that career, and if so, go to a good university for the subject and study it, otherwise go straight into work.

People who say you should always just go to university are silly, and may end up encouraging people to waste their time spending three years doing stuff they're not interested in, but then people who say university is always a complete waste of time are also silly.

There's obviously the financial argument too, if you go to a good university, you earn a lot more money on average over your lifetime than someone who didn't go to university still. There isn't really a 'head start' when people coming out of university are getting £10k higher starting salaries and having faster career progression. I don't think that's a very good argument for just doing any old course though, even at a fancy university, but it obviously does sway some people.

It's also worth remembering that you can always do a degree later. You don't have quite the same experience maybe, but you do tend to have much more of an idea of why you are doing it. As a bonus, if you've been living independently for long enough, you get classified as independent from your parents, meaning you don't have to pay quite so much in tuition fees etc. as their income isn't taken into account.

i would suggest with the way things are going, you'll need to do a masters after the degree.

That is the norm in a few countries – we have loads of students from particular countries where you need a masters to do anything. The rumour about this is that the reason is that in several of those countries, it is pretty much possible to buy your first degree, so they are somewhat devalued, even for the unlucky kids who actually put in the work, which is sad. That doesn't seem to be the case here even at the worst universities. There are also several European countries where postgrad degrees are a large part of professional training, so lots of people have them, whereas in this country that kind of vocational training is usually something separate.

But I don't see it being the case in the UK, except for areas where it is really very competitive and a more specialised masters can be very useful, for example I seem to remember International Development & charity work people often have masters degrees, because it is a hard sector to get into, and having focused knowledge of a particular area is very useful for the work.

Joe

I rode some (possibly illegal) stuff in the Bois de Clamart and the forests round there that was not completely flat, and was okayish singletrack, although it was a long time ago, so I dunno if it still exists and/or how the heck you get there, I remember it being pretty easy riding distance from central Paris though.

Joe

As far as I know, the best riding is all N of Derby, but it's worth riding round to.

If you get the train / drive up the A6 from Derby up to Belper, Cromford, Matlock, there is absolutely tons of great riding that way, it's the edge of the Peak District. I did a 40 miler recently from Matlock back home to Belper without duplicating any trails, and I can easily think of another 40 miles you could add on to that, there is that much good riding, and it's easily accessible by train too which is a bonus.

You can go on further into the centre of the Peak District (Bakewell, Curbar etc.) , although that is a bit of a mission from Matlock on the bike if you don't have access to a car.

My condolences on picking the wrong end of the Brian Clough Way.

Not for bike riding. Nottingham = an okay place, but you have to drive miles or catch the train to ride your bike anywhere decent, otherwise you're confined to Bestwood / Shipley / Bramcote etc. which are nice enough local riding, but not quite the same as what you can ride to if you start in Derby and go north.

Joe

Has anyone ever witnessed a bus driver smiling?

We have two types of buses in Nottingham – Trent Barton = smiley drivers, clean buses, give change. NCT = dirty buses, no change, grumpy drivers who are hidden behind a sheet of bulletproof glass.

To be fair to NCT, Trent Barton cherry pick the routes, so they only go to nice places, whereas NCT which is run by the council, they have to go to the dodgy guns and drugs estates, and have had real problems with random people attacking their drivers etc. But they are horrible buses to take.

Joe

The only time I've ever had this happen, is when the microphone on my phone stopped working. Maybe the emails is just a coincidence.

Also, what signal strength does the phone show? It might just be that you have super-low signal strength and something is going to pot because of that.

Unless my memory is wrong, I think GSM needs to be able to talk in both directions before you can actually hear anything though.

It would probably be technically feasible to operate a custom base station, but it is way more likely that your neighbour is a bit odd but harmless and you are being paranoid.

Joe

Buses are already free for oldies, and all transport in London is. It has massively increased bus use, although it costs a lot to run, what with having to pay all the private companies for all those bus tickets.

One of our local buses in particular is pretty much full of old people nowadays at the weekends – it goes across the Peak District, they all catch it to go walking / go to Chatsworth!

Joe

scrape together how much for something I (pepper can speak for himself) could do in a 1/2 hour?
**** that, it's that kind of attitude that means everyone needs to earn serious money & gardeners can by flash

If you can do it in half an hour, then it isn't the kind of work that'd take up enough of the weekend to stop you riding.

I earn a comfortable amount, although not tons, certainly not into 40% tax rate or anything very high paid like that, and even now I can see the point of employing people to do boring stuff if you're busy and working a 60+ hour week with a lot of travelling time stuck onto it.

Joe

Seriously, do you not earn enough that you couldn't scrape together 20-50 quid a month to pay someone to do the boring tasks like garden maintenance so that you could go for a ride?

Joe

Blimey, I find it hard to understand why anyone would do a job like that even without kids.

Is it a very very exciting job, like you're an international super spy, or a rock star (unlikely I guess given you said Worthing!), or errrm, trying to think of jobs exciting enough to justify all that travelling. Hmm.

Even if it pays absolutely tons, it sounds crazy, you must hardly see your kids in the week ever? What is the point of living a life like that, even for good money?

One thing you could do, assuming the job does pay tons, is employ a gardener. They aren't particularly expensive, and will sort out the garden for you without needing to be supervised, so you could have spent half the weekend riding. Same is true for other things that people do at weekends like DIY, cleaning etc. we've recently employed a handyman to do DIY jobs, and to be honest, the cost is not massively different to doing it yourself, you get a better job done, and you have free time. If you're working hard in the week, why mess around doing work at the weekend too. Why waste time maintaining all the trappings of a lifestyle that you want, rather than living that lifestyle.

Taking it to the extreme, depending on how old the kids are, you could just pay for em to be taxied to/from things, although that depends somewhat on whether you want the time with them that you get when driving them places anyway.

Joe

I'm guessing when you're in work normally, it is more than 15 miles or so, so too far to commute, as that's usually the solution to how most of us people who ride much get the miles in.

Do you work weekends as well? Do you have kids / family etc.

When you're away, is it driving, or flying? If it's driving, then stick a bike in, and google riding places nearby.

I pretty much always manage to get a ride or a run in wherever I travel to, it is amazing how easy it is to find riding / people to ride with nowadays. Even on a 12pm-12am day (quite a few of those on productions / live shows & stuff ) it is easy enough to get a quick ride in.

I've found with work trips that often you end up on long days because you do the normal work day, then you go out and eat a meal with work people, go for beers with work people etc. I've opted out of that stuff sometimes to go for a ride / run and people seem to understand and not mind too much.

I also have a mountain unicycle, which is the perfect solution if your job involves international travel. It is easy to take places (no extra charges on planes if you pack it in a case), easy to get around with on public transport once you're there, so you can get out to the trails, and as a bonus, it is a really handy little runaround in bigger cities, where distances are often slightly too far to walk. As a bonus, because there aren't masses of unicyclists, the community is very close knit, it is easy to find riders, and local people are almost always up for a ride. The last few years I've ridden with locals near Berkeley, Los Angeles, various places in New Zealand, Paris, Washington DC, Sydney, Edinburgh, and also got riding tips from locals in a load of other places when I needed mid-week or night rides. Oh and I've heard the international joke phrase "where's the other wheel" in a multitude of accents and languages.

The only downside of the mountain unicycle is that it takes probably 10 hours to learn just to ride it on the flat, and longer to be able to get on without a lamp post etc. you'd need to find time to learn somehow.

Joe

What a waste of an hour.

It's gotta be either a magic trick or a camera trick.

There's no clear evidence of the split screen / freezing half the video, and the camera movement effect is very clever if it's applied afterwards, as you can see a bit of parallax (where things move in front of others as the camera moves). The camera movement is consistent with a handheld camera on some kind of little steadicam, or just under the arm.

Similarly, the magic trick is damned good if it is one. But then he could probably do 100 magic tricks that no-one except experienced magicians would be able to guess the method of, and is good enough that even magicians probably wouldn't see the moves he makes (particularly with the perfect angle of view that the single camera gives him).

Joe

Surely its got to be British Columbia would give you time to hit many a world renowned trail. christ you might even get to ride with Wade Simmons. The definition of pumped on being stoked

In February? On a bike?

Personally, Europe sounds like a great idea. Even within one country it can be so different, and there are tons of countries to explore. In my experience, as soon as you're off the obvious rides and not in an obvious trail centre place like Morzine the trails are pretty empty too.

New Zealand is okay, and has some nice riding & scenery, but other than that it isn't really that much of a travel experience – culturally it seems far less different to us than Europe or the USA (if anything it's a bit like Scotland). You would also be a bit late in the year going in February, you'd only get the tail end of the high mountain riding season, and their winter really sucks, a lot of the best trails are too high up and will be snowed in after a few months, plus most houses don't have proper heating, so you are always freezing cold / wrapped up in a million jumpers. On the plus side, if you flew into Christchurch in February, you'd probably find it dead easy to pick up a cheap 2nd hand camper van.

Joe

As I understand it, the Lottery show is actually recorded at 8ish, and broadcast later.

No it isn't. Urban myth. It's live.

I think he probably had someone in the audience who fed the numbers to him beforehand – Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is usually the best.

There isn't an audience.

Even if it was broadcast 'live' there would probably be a five-minute transmission delay on the lottery broadcast, so as to allow for any hitches/mad nudist audience members/Shaun Ryder, so that would still provide enough time to set up the actual, directly live, Derren Brown thing.

There isn't an audience, and there isn't a transmission delay (well there will be a 2 second or something digital transmission delay, but not the 10 minutes or so you'd need to do this. The BBC & Camelot have had spokespeople on every news program saying this for the last couple of days, so I imagine it is true.

You're completely missing the point though, delay is completely irrelevant, there is no mystery as to how he got hold of the numbers. He got the numbers by watching the lottery show, same as anyone else did. The mystery is in how he got the numbers onto the balls in the 20 seconds between finding them out, and turning round the balls.

If he'd have known the numbers in advance, he'd have shown them in advance. The fact he only showed the numbers after the draw, just demonstrates that they were not on the balls until after the draw and he didn't actually know them until after the draw.

Joe

This:

Morning. Speculation this morning fantastic. Lasers, split screens, tiny LED readouts in the balls. I am loving today. Hope you are well.

— Derren Brown (@DerrenBrown) September 11, 2009

makes it seem like it is probably a conventional magic trick not a load of technology or editing/video effects. There's no reason it shouldn't be a conventional magic trick, there are thousands of tricks out there which people can perform well enough that a million people watching on TV wouldn't be able to guess how they're done.

Joe

If you look at their study more closely though, suprisingly the protein filled milky chocolate drink performed better than the carbohydrate only sample and the electrolite only sample. wonder what they might of found if they actually bother testing it against other like for like protein based recovery drinks???

The Indiana study used Endurox R4, which is a recovery drink. It claims to be better than pure protein recovery drinks (see the text below from their blurb), and if you look at the composition it is very similar in terms of protein / carb balance to milk.

Although researchers have noted that protein can provide a number of essential benefits in the recovery process, too much protein can actually slow restoration of glycogen and rehydration. Endurox R4 is unique because it provides the ideal Optimum Recovery Ratio (carbohydrate to protein 4:1) to deliver the benefits of protein without negatively affecting rehydration and glycogen restoration.

Joe

You need pies joe, lots of pies, probably with cheesy double fried chips.

I made special fried potato cheese and egg dinner yesterday. I think that is probably in the same realm as cheesy chips! Although I did dilute the fried goodness a bit with some cabbage, onion and peppers and stuff.

Joe

No, but I know of research in progress that suggests that less than 10% of "athletes" who consume isotonic/energy/recovery products actually do exercise of sufficient intensity or duration to warrant their use……

True. I only use anything like this in a big week or at races. I find it amazing when you go on just a normal ride and someone turns up with the stuff, rather than just soreen or some other normal food.

This week is a big week. Due to various things needing to be ridden for an event I'm planning, and needing to commute 33 miles to work for 4 days in addition to that, plus a silly decision to go on the chain gang on Tuesday, I've done 14 hours of exercise mostly at a mix of medium to high intensity (except for the road club ride which was all high intensity for me) since Monday. I have another hour this afternoon (to get me home), several hours tomorrow and Sunday (more planning) and I'm finding myself needing a little bit more food and things to help me recover between rides, and hence I have been drinking a few choccy milks. I'll probably have spent at least 20 hours doing exercise this week in the end.

I also lost half a stone recently for various reasons, so I'm just over 11 stone, whereas my normal riding (& swimming) weight is about 11.5. I don't really want to run a calorie deficit.

Added to that, I really need to be fully fit for the weekend after this one, as I'm leading 3 days of riding.

Is that enough to warrant maybe eating or drinking a few more calories?

Joe

I'd never do anything until I've signed and returned a contract. People get screwed over even with an offer in writing.

Joe

Have a look on the ingredients of most recovery drinks. They contain whey protein which comes from milk!

I know they do. The also contain pseudo-scientific gubbins about how they extract only the most efficient type of proteins and carbohydrates and stuff, to make the perfect recovery drink. Which the scientific evidence doesn't appear to support.

Joe

Surely chocolate milk is a bit of protein and a lot of sugar? Great for the immediate feel good effect but wholly useless at getting you ready for another effort the next day.

That is what the people who sell expensive 'protein and carbohydrate' (that's a bit of protein and a lot of sugar to you) recovery drinks would like you to think.

The original studies are:
Improved endurance capacity following chocolate milk consumption compared with 2 commercially available sport drinks.

and

Chocolate milk as a post-exercise recovery aid.

and if you look at them, they seem pretty conclusive in support of chocolate milk, both for exercise later in the same day (4 hours later in the Northumbria study) and in the next 2 days in the Indiana study.

Oh, I've just found this review paper which is interesting:
http://www.jissn.com/content/5/1/15
to summarise it, studies seem a bit limited so far, but the likely findings for endurance athletes like cyclists are:
a)milk is as good as carbohydrate drinks as a during exercise drink
b)milk is a good recovery drink compared to commercial ones
c)milk is a very good rehydration drink – better than water or sports drinks.
d)and as a bonus, it is good for people doing strength exercise too

Joe

It just occured to me, when people are posting these very high average speeds, are they off a cycle computer that stops when you stop at traffic lights, or proper averages that directly relate to how long it takes you to get to work?

Joe