Also, do you guys all have no traffic lights on the route? Or not many hills?

Doing my 16.5 mile commute at 17.5mph average feels like I am riding quite hard, although it is cunningly at right angles to the direction of the valleys round here, so I do get a bunch of sharp climbs, and quite a few of the descents have annoying traffic or junctions on them so I don't always get the full benefit of them.

Having said that, from my experience of going on road rides with proper roadies, I know I am way less fast than many people who regularly do group road rides.

Joe

For the next 7 days, these guys[/url] have a bit more of a hardcore commute than you!

Joe

An hour and a half for 36 miles – that is bloody fast. Even 1:45 is pretty nippy for a commute into a city. I take it you're quite a serious road rider? I was pretty proud of my 33 mile round trip until I saw this, and I only manage to average 17.5mph!

Joe

Some idiots at work genuinely believe it was "magic"

I did some stuff with magic tricks at work, where the (very basic) tricks were revealed, and I had someone afterwards say that they were a bit disappointed that magicians weren't real. That surprised me a bit, I thought they were pretty open about it?

With that Blane trick its same as all his street tricks – he's surrounded by a whole production team – as numbers are being called out someone from the art department is making up the ticket (or placing the watch in the window, or writing something on the side of a bus)

Surely a lot of his street tricks (the ones where a car drives past with a card on and the like) are just classic forces of cards, with a fancy show-off ending. Most of them are just normal tricks done well. I still can't work out how he does his lottery one though – he just seems to have a bunch of different numbers in the 3 times he does it. I can see how he can force the last 2 or 3 numbers, but the other numbers I don't get, and I can't see how he can print out the ticket quick enough even with the help of a confederate.

Joe

The real solution:
"Probaly require a lot of computer technology to get the perfect formular for the Lottery draw.."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ooP6s7PmXk&feature=related

It'll be pretty disappointing if it was camera trickery like just freezing one side for a moment or whatever, although he's kind of hinted that it might be.

Can anyone explain this one (I've no idea how – I dunno if it's a mentalism trick, listening for the numbers he wants or something more cunning):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJaGyCiPcfo&feature=related

or this one (maybe a bit more obvious, either he did it hundreds of times, or there's a switch when he faces away)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVy92jBj5GU

Joe

Assertive riding, owning your space etc. is all well and good on urban roads, on country lanes how are you going to stop someone using the oncoming lane to overtake you on a blind corner and the then pulling in inches from your front wheel? If another car comes round the car you are all going to die.

I have a corner like this on my commute. I've found if I ride at the side of the road (about 1m off the kerb), everyone and their dog will overtake me, with inches to spare if need be, meaning they are endangering both anyone coming round the corner, and me as well. If I sit far out almost in the middle of the road, but not so far out that I'd get hit by oncoming traffic, then anyone who is stupid enough to overtake and pull in suddenly doesn't matter because they I have loads of room to veer left in. It also makes it much less likely that they'll overtake in the first place, because they think of it as doing an illegal overtaking manouvre, whereas if you're in the normal place, they think of it as passing a bike, which doesn't seem to count for most drivers.

Joe

audio signals are so low bandwidth you could stream it happily off pretty much anything. The hard disk is going to be massively faster than the wifi connection. You can do this sort of streaming off a mobile phone nowadays, so a netbook will have no problems.

The only hassle I can see is having to drag a disk around with you when you move the netbook around.

Joe

It's possibly just that whoever you're watching has upped the speed, as 99% of broadband users have significantly faster connections than that.

BBC iPlayer has a 'low quality' mode, but it is probably not that low.

The other thing to be sure about is if you have a wifi router, check that it is still slow if you plug in via a cable, rather than over the wifi, although that is a long shot given your broadband speed.

Joe

I expect pjt201 has the correct solution – i think he did a similar thing with one where he predicted a number of horse races? (I didn't see that one)

Yeah, he'd only have had to do it 13,983,816 times to be sure of the six numbers. Or 1,031,397 times to get four numbers. Assuming it required a minute of filming per combination, it'd only take him 2 years of solid filming to get enough combinations for four numbers (or 27 years for the six numbers he actually did). I'm sure that's the most likely answer!

Joe

Well go on then…

I'm not explaining the two tricks that I listed above, as they're pretty popular tricks amongst people who do magic for a living, and because I might get in trouble with the man who sells them (who I kind of know through work, friend of a friend). Suffice to say, they are both devilishly clever ideas, yet dead simple to actually do (given a bit of practice).

I'm not explaining Derren Brown's trick because whilst it might be simple, I don't know exactly how he does it (assuming it isn't technological cleverness, which I don't think it is).

he doesn't usually use techniques like these though, does he?

Nope, and there's no obvious reason why any kind of delay would help, it'd only be useful if he appeared to reveal the numbers before the draw. The only technological device I think he might quite likely use is a particular camera angle in the last close-up shot – if the angles weren't very tight, I can't see why he wouldn't have a live audience for it.

Joe

Thinking about it, the numbers have to be in ascending order, that must be key to the trick – I'm guessing because wherever he has the stickers snaffled away, they are in rising order. There are tons of card prediction tricks that work in a similar way.

The neatest similar card trick I know is the one where a deck of cards is put into the magician's pocket, a person is asked to name a card, and then the deck is taken out to show that card is the bottom card – utterly impossible to explain at first, but dead simple when you know how it works. I've seen a neat number trick that relates to this too, where someone in the audience gives a three digit number, which is written down on a big piece of card so all the audience can see, and then the magician reaches into his pocket and pulls out a locker key, with the 3 digit number written on the key tag. This trick could be done with a combination of similar effects – although if it is, he does it incredibly well, no magicians I've asked can see exactly where he makes the moves, and it must be very hard to pull off.

It is an interesting piece of misdirection – everyone is talking about it on the internet as if the hard thing is finding out the numbers, talking about camera delays, digital vs analog delay etc. Whereas that bit isn't at all hard, as he has the numbers read out to him, live on TV, so of course he knows them. The hard thing is taking the numbers that he knows, and getting them onto the balls somehow.

Joe

Delaying the transmission etc. would have no point – the key to the trick is that he only revealed the balls after the numbers had been shown on the lottery anyway. If he really had advance knowledge,it wouldn't need a split second delay, it'd need the BBC to delay their feed by about 10 minutes, for them to print out the numbers and get em stuck to the balls, and then for him to waffle on about it. It is pretty unlikely that the BBC would do that just to help one of their key competitors, particularly for something with so much regulation around it like the lottery.

The only logical solution is that the numbers that you see on the balls got there *after* the real lottery draw.

Which means it is either camera trickery, or something that he does in the split second when he is near the balls before he turns them round.

It is probably not camera trickery, as he's a stage magician, so there's almost certainly a trick to it. I don't know exactly how he got the stickers onto the balls, but I think it *must* have happened at the point he turned the stand round, or just before that when he flipped the number board over (possibly with some preparation of whatever it is as he writes down the numbers).

Joe

I assume it relies in some way on having all possible numbers available to him to select somehow at the point when he writes down the numbers on the card, all the other ones I've seen do.

I think maybe on the back of the black card, he has a bunch of stickers (black on transparent maybe) with all possible numbers on. He somehow gets these arranged into a neat, evenly spaced line at the point he is writing down the numbers (where you can see him fiddling with the back of the card, which is turned side on to the camera).

Somehow he transfers this neat line either onto the balls or draped over them somehow at the point where he fiddles just before he turns the stand with the balls round.

Possibly, they could just be put on a sheet of perspex, that slots into the right place on the stand? And be printed to look curved?

However he does it, it is a very well done trick, way better than your average lottery prediction trick (there are a bunch of them), and it must be really hard reliably getting hold of the right numbers in the second or two that he has to get them.

Joe

Cyclocross races near us (in the Midlands) have kids categories, and you can enter them on a mountain bike. I'm guessing the same is true of Surrey races. Plus it is just the start of the cyclocross season, and they are dirt cheap to enter, £1 or something for kids (I don't think kids need licences do they?). There are probably some races near you.

Look here for some in the South East, maybe they are near enough?

Our local road bike club has kids in, I think that's pretty normal of big clubs but maybe not. Most of them their parents ride, but I don't think they always turn up with them or anything.

Joe

Out of interest, are you paying OS for this? If so, I'd be really interested in knowing how much you're paying.

If you're not, I'd worry a bit that you're blatantly breaking their terms and conditions (the bit that says 'For example, you may not charge the end-user for the use of your application.') and that if they pull your API key, everyone using your application will be buggered?

It does look pretty neat though.

Joe

After all the replies though, I think the answer to the questions are, "No it is not natural, it is a life choice (not sure it's healthier yet)"

I'd agree with that, it isn't natural, it is a life choice, exactly the same as all other modern diets.

and "No, you could not be totally vegetarian living solely from the produce produced in Britain"

I think that's probably not true, although you might have a somewhat more restricted diet than many of us do and it maybe would not be quite so healthy (not convinced either way on that). If you look at what a lot of poor people ate historically in the UK and Ireland, it would have been a primarily meat free diet with no imported goods, so it is clearly possible to survive.

Joe

There is so little nutritional value in plant material (calories, vitamins and minerals) that can be extracted by the human gut, it's not really worth eating (you use more calories eating and digesting celery than are actually contained in it).

Whilst that may be true of celery, it isn't true of many other plant sources of nutrition. Which is why no-one worried too much about the Irish Celery Famine, but the Potato Famine was quite a big thing.

Joe

indeed, however in order to get 100% you would need to eat the equivalent of 10 sandwiches which is a lot. In a day I probably eat the equivalent of only 5 or 6 "sandwiches".

Do you have nothing inside your sandwich? And none of the many other sources of protein in the rest of your diet? All I was pointing out is that by a typical lunch and a couple of slices of toast for breakfast, you'll end up getting a fifth of your protein intake, before you even consider adding obvious sources of protein (like nuts or whatever) to your diet. Protein is a bit of a red herring really, because if you just eat a healthy diet, chances are you'll pick up enough just through incidental things that you don't think of as a lump of protein.

When I was vegan (for two years a bit back), I was maintaining a constant weight, commuting for 1.5 hours a day, riding off road for 8-10 hours most weeks, swimming for 40 mins every weekday morning, and not having any health problems. All by just eating a varied, mostly home cooked vegetable based diet. Oh and I got me a world record for off road unicycling, competed in a bunch of bike races and other stupid sporting events, I wasn't unfit. Anyone saying that you need meat to be fit and healthy, or that it is hard to get enough protein as a vegan is just plain ignorant.

I stopped being vegan because I like the taste of cheese and eggs a lot. It was a lifestyle choice that I made, and I don't try and kid myself that it is something I needed to do, it is just something I did because I wanted to.

Joe

It isn't 100% natural, but the omnivorous diet that most non-vegetarians eat nowadays is much less natural.

In the distant past, in hunter-gatherer societies, the reality was that the vast majority of people's diet came from plant sources, i.e.gathering food, with a relatively small proportion coming from hunted animals.

It is only in the last 100 years or so that meat has come to make such a large proportion of people's diets.

If we were meant to have a primarily meat based diet, we'd have mouths like dogs, rather than just a few pointy teeth.

The thing about protein and vegetarianism being a problem is a bit of a myth though – as long as you get a varied diet, you can easily get enough protein. For example wholemeal bread has 10g of protein per 100g, so you can get 10% of your 50g just by the bread on a single sandwich.

In terms of globalisation and environment, the impact of meat farming is massively massively more, as it is a very inefficient way to create calories or protein. That is why there is an environmental movement for people to pledge to not eat meat for one day a week (or more).

Joe

Continental are like the Ryanair of long haul travel. And no free alcohol either. Worst ones are their cross USA flights – 7 hours, you have to pay for food & drink, and the seats are so close together you have your knees jammed up against the seat in front and a fat american's stomach encroaching under and over the armrest to the side of you.

On ones where you do get fed, you get the best of American airline catering, which is to say you get something that is worse than one of the worst, most disgusting American takeaway chains.

I like Virgin best, or Air New Zealand if they fly the route.

Joe

I got thoroughly overtaken yesterday by a guy on a complete fakenger fixy, dressed like a person on a fixy. He had a gigantic chainring and appeared to be able to spin it even up hills. Admittedly I had about 5kg of stuff in my panniers, and wasn't hurrying, but he was just hammering it past me, I had bugger all chance of even sitting on his wheel. Fortunately he turned off after a couple of miles (I caught him up at a red light) so at least I have the excuse that he was probably only going 5 miles to my 16.

Today I got some guy on a (quite fancy) mountain bike trying to race, huffing and puffing behind me. Unfortunately for him he decided to race me on a great big downhill, it turns out that riding a road bike low on the drops, you can freewheel faster down a hill than a sit up and beg mountain biker can pedal it!

I can't help it. I was cycling to my dad's house once and went past someone on a nice bike going much slower than me. A minute or so later i looked round and he was sat on my wheel. We proceeded to try and hammer the sh1t out of each other for about 15 miles of the A6 before i gave in. Then i had to turn round and cycle 7 miles back the same way to go to my dad's.

That made me laugh – I've often been tempted, but never actually gone off my route to race people. The A6 is such a great road for impromptu road bike races, so many people on road bikes, and a flat road too, so downhills and uphills don't mess things up. Just been out with the local chaingang down it – got thoroughly dropped by the fast group, and even the slow steady group was going at quite a pace. It is amazing how super fast proper road bikers are.

Tomorrow, I think I might get overtaken – 160km in the last two days, plus two full days of work means I'm pretty tired now!

Joe

That looks significantly nicer than the cheap & nasty one we have at work, which apparently has a tendency to kill phones, I've never dared plug my own phone into that.

Personally I'd really like one without a battery in, as I'm guessing the battery on the dynamo device will wear out after a while, but I don't know if it's possible to nicely regulate the dynamo current/voltage without using a battery in there?

Joe

Ach it's just a bridleway. If anyone fancies tackling it in the snow and ice as a night ride give me a call. I'll be the one on the unicycle……

Funny you say that:

The picture linked below shows my unicycle, at the top of Jacob's Ladder, in the snow & ice.
http://www.unicyclist.com/index.php?page=gallery&g2_itemId=135595

I camped out in Edale a few years back in April, and it snowed overnight, quite a lot. Going up Jacob's Ladder was crazy, covered in sheet ice with a bit of snow on top, and I was wearing smooth soled vans – I was using the unicycle on it's side with the pedals* biting into the ice as an ice axe and kicking steps in the snow where it was deep enough. It was well worth the climb for the ride down and round Roych Clough, Chapel Gate, Mam Tor and back to Edale. I managed to ride approximately 50 feet of the bottom section of Jacob's Ladder that time and none of the steep, ice covered bit.

Joe

*It occurs to me that this might be part of why the bearings in those pedals failed soon after!

Not sure if it's southern enough but the campsite in Horton in Ribblesdale is nice. I don't think they take bookings, but worth a phone to check. The man who runs it is a bit crazy (in a good way), and the showers etc. are pretty agricultural, but it is dead cheap and perfectly situated, and it seems like most of the people who stay there are walkers / bikers and the like, which is nice.

Joe

It seems a bit like having two wheels is pointless really, and makes it a bit complicated.

This is better, and more of a performance:

I don't think supermarkets are that cheap for a lot of things – like fruit and veg, our local greengrocers is silly cheap, I reckon about half the cost of buying the same stuff in our Morrisons (which is quite a cheapy supermarket). And the quality is better than the supermarket stuff too. If we had a market, fruit & veg are even cheaper there usually.

It's true that supermarkets are good for getting all the things you need in one shop, but I don't think they're much cheaper really.

Joe

My downhill bike* about 17 lbs (9.4:1).

Hockey bike* about 12 lbs (13.3:1).

Road bike (actually a bike) at least 25 lbs (6.4:1) with full mudguards, dynamo hub, big pannier thingy.

Joe

*okay these two are unicycles, but they do the job!

I don't see why it'd be so hard assuming you had a level of fitness way beyond what most of us have (and the skill that comes with riding that much). It is just very steep and long. You'd have to be quite strong mind, and good at staying on the bike over the big rocks, but no way is it impossible.

Joe

I dunno if it's true, but I'm sure someone told me that the 'stuff' that comes out of your ear during the hopi candle treatment, that people always say is proof that it works, is 99% stuff coming out of the candle itself or something.

Joe

Yeah but the poly's/uni's are on summer vacation at the moment so all the staff can indulge in their filthy secret habit of reading the mail, away from the judgemental peer pressure they're normally subjected to.

Oi, bugger off! Just because we're not teaching students, doesn't mean that we're not working on our research, in fact it means we're probably taking the time to get some work done without the distractions of term time. People keep saying 'oooh, you university types with your long summer holidays'* to me, as if universities were like schools and the only thing we get up to is teaching.

Joe
*can you tell, this gets on my tits a bit!

Oh yeah, I do have one vital piece of cycle touring advice, when you want hot food, eat a hot meal the first place you have a chance. Don't think that you'll find somewhere nicer in the next town, or it's half an hour before when you hoped to stop for lunch. Inevitably you end up skipping a dodgy looking place, and getting to the place you hope will have nice lunch at 14:05 to find they just stopped serving food.

Joe

If you're only going at 10mph-ish on sustrans routes, I would expect you could pretty much eat normal stuff – it's only an easy cycle touring type pace, not racing. A few more cakes and chocolate bars, but I wouldn't worry much about nutrition, just eat some stuff when you're hungry, and make sure you have enough snack with you so that you've always got something handy to eat.

Have two lunches maybe, or decent pub type meals if you have the chance, and take plenty of snack, but I wouldn't bother with the fancy energy drinks or stuff like that unless you're finding it hard. It is worth having a few absolutely minging energy gels around (the zipvit ones are pretty grim), as if anyone is tired enough to eat them, they almost certainly need them.

Joe

I can sleep on planes slept the whole 8 hrs to thailand once.

Bear in mind that London -> Perth is going to be a good 20 hours flight, not including the time at airports at start/end, and you'll have a couple of hours at least in that time when you're forced to get up, get off the plane to change planes. Even if you can sleep on planes (I can sleep on planes easily), it messes you right up.

Joe

I have one on my commute at the bottom of a 40mph hill, on an A road. It is a right hassle. If no-one comes from the right I can keep up the speed and do the last mile to get home a good minute or so quicker than if I have to stop.

Joe

Even a couple of weeks in Australia is a bit short. Especially if you're not used to long flights. A week's trip is a week of jetlag & feeling rough, then just when you're feeling okay again, you head home for another week of tiredness.

If you're literally thinking of leaving the UK on Thursday and flying back on Sunday (meaning you'll get there at early o'clock on Saturday, and get back to the UK at some time on Monday), that is truly insane – you'll be spending more time in airports and planes than you will be in Australia.

You could probably do it on adrenaline, but it'd be a truly horrible experience. Obviously you have to think about how many holidays you have spare with work, but personally I'd try and make it at least a week and a half, bearing in mind staying in Australia is pretty cheap. Also, if you fly long haul for less than a week, it is often about £1000 extra, as they assume anyone who has to get back home that quickly probably really has to do the trip, so will pay more money.

Joe

Have they done anything on rollercoasters or a fairground bucking bronco yet?

Joe

it's not wireless ???

Maybe it'd be hard to design a wireless protocol that was immune to interference and worked reliably when surrounded by 100 other people using the same protocol, whilst still having enough battery life to work for 1000 miles of riding.

Given even wireless cycle computers aren't 100% reliable especially if someone else nearby has one, or you have a flashing bike light or heart rate monitor or whatever, I guess it would be a bit scary to rely on wireless transmission to actually control the gears.

Joe

It is in the Daniel Start Wild Swimming book, which is worth the money if you like a swim, very inspirational.

Get in is between the two weirs: here is a google map that hopefully points at it.

Get in from the Edensor side of the river (west side), make sure you're out of sight of the house itself, and he says 'be discreet', but I'm not sure what he means – the day I did it there were about 600 people having bbq & jumping in the river down near the bottom weir. Nearer the top weir is a bit deeper and more of a proper swim – and quite a steep bank to get in at some points, so less kiddy friendly. Thinking about it, he may just mean wear swimming trunks, as I think he's a bit of a skinny dipping type.

Oh, if you drive rather than cycle there*, there's a big carpark near the garden centre, I think it's up the Calton Lees road.

Joe

*Although it is only a few hundred metres off several lovely rides, so you'd be silly not to ride there

Open water swimming makes things much more interesting if you want to do distance and enjoy it. No chlorine, no lanes, more fun.

Yes, my local place to swim is great – 600m long, rapids, strong currents (if you really want hard exercise you can swim from eddy to eddy upstream), and if you're lazy, you can swim the 600m downstream round the bend, get out and walk 250m and you're back at the start. Oh and if I'm organised in terms of working out where to get in/out and getting picked up / dumping gear at the other end, potentially there's another 20 miles of nice enough swimming before I'd hit the big river.

I've also swum in Snowdonia (some great mountain rivers there), loads in the sea, in the Thames (surprisingly nice to swim in), up near Chatsworth (amazing views and lovely relaxing swimming), Dove Dale (a bit of a walk for the swimming, but it's an amazingly beautiful place). There are loads of lakes that you can swim in too, if you're not into swimming with currents or want to be able to measure distance swum in a meaningful way (although lakes are a bit boring, I dunno why anyone would choose to swim in a lake if they had a nearby river).

The most surprising thing is how cold it isn't. Once you're in, the rivers are lovely and warm this year (since about June anyway). Although I do find if I go pool swimming it feels a bit too hot nowadays (and I resent paying money for it!).

Joe

Does anyone rate the southern Peak District one – I had a quick flick through, and the one ride I'd done it seemed okay.

I particularly liked the bit where it said 'the bridleway abruptly ends, get off and walk down a short footpath section' in describing a fantastic descent that they clearly do ride based on the overall route description (the route around Cromford).

Joe