bigblackshed – Member
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FT is one of the few new outlets I’ve found it worth registering a free account for. The number of stories they restrict free accounts to reading is enough for links found scattered around places like here, and the login is persistent.

Last week I got to ride with a bunch of people much faster and more experienced than me. Only a couple of other people were using Strava, I even got a KOM, and it felt pointless because I was one of the slowest people in the group. I learned a lot more by watching the people I was with than looking at data.

Having a few casual rivalries on local trails has helped my riding up to a point. I use Strava for my riding, but leaderboards, stats and other extrinsic motivators can have a horrible way of gradually inverting that.

As someone who gets sucked into Strava leaderboards sometimes, but who’s also been through the flood of trophies, achievements, badges etc. in videogames and then seen them turn into a parasitic sub-industry furiously grafting them onto anything and everything to “drive user engagement”: UGH

Seeing data after the ride feels okay. CBA to think of anything other than riding while I’m doing it though.

I favour these, because **** branding aside, they’re well designed:
https://www.urbanears.com/ue_gb_en/headphones/kransen

The cable loop works well, and being able to clip them together behind your neck is good. As an added incentive to keep them clean, if you don’t they become a lovely earwax display for anyone behind you.

I did a little cheer for the Mordor traverse… then realised I still won’t be able to ride. Have fun.

I knew I shouldn’t have looked at this thread.

I’ve got a Tenet 2, and being entirely non-roadie before that, have little to compare it to. It’s much more comfortable than my steel single speed. I replaced the Tektro pads with Kool Stop. Got it up and down a load of French cols just fine, including one with a couple of miles of gravel at the top.

A bad review I left over a year ago is still up (I’ve had some good things from Superstar in the past, but not QRs and only 3 of 4 brake pads I stocked up on were usable).

If I still lived somewhere where I needed to change the seat height every half hour instead of every few minutes, the Orbea thing would look great. The keyway is a good idea, I’m a little surprised no one’s done that with matched clamps and seatposts before.

I spent the last few years riding in Vans. They’re ok, but move around a bit because the holes in them are way bigger than pedal pins. If they did a negative profile of the typical vans sole in softer rubber I’d be all over them.

mjsmke: if they’re approaching tight enough, all spokes twist when you turn the nipple.

I’m picky about camera mounts and sometimes make my own, but the cheapo sets of gopro compatible ones from ebay are fine.

My Susan excuse for being out is that one of my finger bones is in three pieces instead of one.

1mm either side of the calculated spoke length is fine, but definitely get rims first then measure the ERDs yourself.

(I learned both these things from the Musson book, it’s good and well worth the tenner or so to buy).

I switch between our (crap) ADSL and a 4G modem when there’s stuff I really need to get done. I’ve also used it with an access point to support the stage and workshop rooms at events I’ve run. Price per GB is the only thing keeping me from using it all the time.

I found tape a few mm too narrow would always crease when taking a tyre off, and I’d have to retape.

As Big Dummy says, it’s taking a punt. I don’t back stuff at a level where I’d be unhappy to never see the money again; for me it’s more that I believe in what they’re trying to do and getting a thing from it would be a nice bonus.

what’s to prevent anyone from setting up an ace looking project on there, (shouldn’t be too hard given a little imagination) with a sensible target and then just buggering off with the cash?

At one time, there was no protection from this. There was a comic author who had a breakdown after his backers pressured him, so he had the books printed, put them in a pile, burned them and posted the video on kickstarter. Indiegogo has had a few blatant scams too, such as a holographic projector shown projecting black, and a mobile wifi thing you “charge up” with bandwidth from your home internet connection.

andybrad – Member
Lots of logs appearing around halifax area at the moment.

Is any of that up on Norland? I’ve run into arsey dog walkers up there, we all got to the top of a trail at the same time, they leapt to set off ahead of us then got arsey when we (politely, slowly) wanted to pass a few seconds later.

If there’s a very specific bike you want and no one makes it as a complete bike already, do it. Put every component in a spreadsheet and research them to make sure of compatibility. If you spend a few months looking through sales, you should be able to make some decent savings too.

Kraken, by China Mieville.

The City and The City is also very good, but I think you might enjoy Kraken more because of the mixture of Banks and supernatural stuff in your list.

It might be the difference between your saddles.

I have a story about the cats I had as a kid, but it’s long and disgusting so I’ve put it at the end of this link.

+1 for Giro’s new road shorts. They’re not baggy, just not skin tight. I did a load of road riding in the alps last year in some, they were comfortable, not flappy or annoying.

I found the perfect unobtrusive bell for my mountain bike, free from a bag of old guff that came with my road bike, or available online for the princely sum of £2.50:

PDW one relegated to the commuter because it rang itself all the way down rocky descents.

I suspect it may encourage those who want to slack / do as little as possible.

So what? they end up living on the basic. Their choice.

Yep. Even a load of highly paid professional jobs look likely to be replaced by software in a few decades. If we’re heading for >50% unemployment, then we absolutely have to destigmatise it and find ways of coping without just letting a load of people starve. Letting corporations, startups and automation just continue concentrating wealth does not seem like a viable option, for anyone.

No one knows. Experiments so far have been promising, and it’s good that more are being run. If they’re very successful, expect to hear a lot of “[country] is different because [thing]”.

Nice work!

(Wouldn’t fit in a head tube, but EasyAcc ones are durable and tend to have a good mAh/£ ratio if anyone is looking for something similar).

Not that only thinking of these two hormones isn’t a gender-stereotype driven oversimplification, but an added fun complexity is that in functioning normally our bodies convert testosterone and oestrogen into each other :D

Enjoy the future everyone, it’s going to be really, really stupid.

Sex sells in one particular way to one particular audience. When you have a sport/hobby/passtime/thing that isn’t specifically gendered, formulating your pitch like that is just stupid and exclusionary. If companies insist on it, that’s not wisdom or experience, it’s insecurity and habit.

The fans are who they sell to. Cycling, bikes, associated kit and racing fans aren’t some kind of illusion hung off a pair of double-D knockers. Sponsors and sales aren’t going to disappear without models in bikinis.

Sex sells in a particular way to a specific market, and bigger, more diverse markets are possible. The message in sexist displays is that cycling is for heterosexual men. I’ve been through one industry slowly realising that it’s stupid to only sell to one demographic. Seeing fans/participants of another claim that structure as somehow vital to that industry functioning is a proper facepalm moment.

If a person’s interest in cycling is increased because they get to ogle women who’ve been bussed in to pose for cameras, or if they actually need that to maintain the interest, then they’re hardly a cycling fan.

It’s not about a sponsor swapping podium women for some other thing to attract people, it’s about persuading them to not do things that actively put people off. I already gave an example of people simply putting a stop to it and that vastly improving the audience and atmosphere of an event. It didn’t require companies to replace booth babes with anything else. The number of attendees kept on going up.

Make all the arguments you want about thinking it’s okay because they get paid, or it’s commercially viable, or spurious shite about prudishness, but what you’re actually arguing for is that some basic taste of your own is more important than other kinds of person feeling welcome at an event. Tongues back in, wangs in pants, do that shit somewhere appropriate.

It’s naff and embarrassing, as are shouts of “prudes!” and “Sharia!”

One show I work on had a company turn up with women in hot pants emblazoned with QR codes on their bums. The organisers imposed a dress code in response. As a result, the atmosphere and crowd have been about a million times better and more welcoming at every show since. Straight dudes still get to come and play the videogames they always did there, but hey, everyone else can do that and feel comfortable too now!

Its about context

Context being a bunch of priapic dudes furiously ignoring the vast inequalities in available opportunities and positive media imagery between genders. Context being a bunch of business people ignoring the bigger audience they could have and instead catering to a well worn furrow of teenage and twenty something men. It’s archaic, it’s bad culture, and it’s bad business.

If anyone wants to gawp at tits there are plenty of places to do that (for instance, skype), it doesn’t need to be grafted onto everything else.

Pretty sure all those photographers have a better grasp of their market than the consumers saying “It should be cheaper!”

They work at volume with a low hit rate for sales. £6 is cheap compared to most I’ve seen, and if you wanted to hire a photographer for anything, at a fair rate it’ll work out a lot more than that per good image.

Whoah! £40 of a 1.7 MFT lens I’d been eyeing up, thanks OP!

Yeah, even the rideable bits are quite steep and long. Down is loose and rocky with some wide switchbacks.

If you fancy a loop back to Seathwaite, there’s a strava segment named “Last one down buys the round!”; incredible loose rocky descent, and was a great finish to our ride.

Ugh, that’s sounds like a dreadful situation and some truly bollocks infrastructure. Hope she’s okay.

The Curry Mile in Manchester is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever ridden, compared to Elephant and Castle or anything else I had to handle commuting in London or Nottingham. The condition of roads in Manchester is also shit in comparison to both.

We did it the same way last summer, and had to push for some of the up, but that way is definitely the most fun. Our time for Seathwaite to Torver was one hour fifty, and we weren’t rushing, so probably budget just over two hours.

:D

Once replaced knobblies with semi-slicks for a 23 mile commute, expecting miracles. It knocked a grand total of four minutes off.