Nothing like a nice sing-along session to cheer everyone up. This is why Trump is the best.

Possibly one of the cringiest things I’ve seen for a while.

A lot of those streaming sticks will draw huge amounts of current for the graphics hardware. Everything will be fine until the graphics gets turned on. If you can’t deliver enough power for that, they will brown out – only needs to be briefly – and crash/reboot.

Big capacitors to mitigate this cost $$$.

Look at all the threads about power supplies for a raspberry pi – they have similar problems (but it’s derived from a mobile chipset, so power draw is at the lower end).

I’m not a hardware engineer, but I have spent a reasonable amount of my time on this planet debugging boards that reboot due to shaky power supplies.

I have two pairs of glasses, one for distance one for close up.

Tried varifocals but did not work for me – could not cope with looking at a monitor and having to move my head to get the bit I wanted to read into focus.

Take a bike and put shopping in pannier bags. Make the world very slightly better as a bonus

I don’t think it’s possible, at least I have never succeeded.

I create routes in Strava on the app which I can then share with Garmin or wahoo.

This is another reason my next gps unit won’t be a Garmin.

I would be tempted to just order some more d-lites.

Also definitely worth measuring the ERD.

Also, do not use the sapim spoke calculator as it is all over the place.

D-light spokes are what I use, and have on several 32h MTB wheels. No problems so far. I always find them a delight to build with.

Could you just train ChatGpt to do the captchas for you automatically?

You could ask GitHub copilot how to do it.

I assume that’s what everyone else does.

Young Earthers.

Not exactly the same as conspiracy theories but the same delusion of access to a secret inside world view.

I know a YECer, any attempt at discussion goes around in circles with increasingly elaborate explanations.

It’s depressing that seemingly rational people would go to such lengths to close their eyes to the real wonders of the universe.

But arguing with him is just a total waste of time. Maybe he’s better now, I don’t know.

If you’ve got this far, thank you for reading my ramblings. Thanks also to Pete for coming along on both of these trips, my incredible wife of course, and thank you also to the amazing and generous people of Korea without whom this would not have been nearly as much fun, or even possible.

Eventually arrived in Mokpo!

A lot of cycling. I could really have done with a beer at this point, but sadly that was not an option.

Stopped to admire a Jeongja built in 1520  – a kind of meeting place for scholars, so a bit like STW but with nicer views.

Stopped off at what had to be the fanciest cafe ever, views across the river. Had coffee and cake. To be honest, the views were better than the cake.

Last day today. Left Damyang and followed the Yeongsan river downstream.

Reached the enormous city of Gwangju after about 20km; the path stays by the river and entirely bypasses the city. Unfortunately there was no way to avoid the fighter pilot training going on – loads of fighter jets flying around from the nearby airbase.

Gwangju was the scene of pro-democracy protests in 1980 which killed hundreds of people but eventually forced the government to hold free elections.

Pete found a photo of the giant cycling/walking ringbridge at Sejong. It’s gigantic.

Lake above Damyan, Korea.

Mostly downhill from there into Damyang. Lovely cycle path (apart from idiots in weird rented miniature cars). Rice fields looked glorious in the setting sun.

We left the city on some big wide dual carriageways but these eventually gave way to some much nicer roads and eventually we found ourselves on a cycle path which ran beside the river into Jeungeup. There the cycle path ran right through the middle (paused for coffee and mystery cake) before the road kicked up into the hills. Through a tunnel, past the guy on the saxophone belting out jazz, to the lake.

Gunsan had some quite interesting colonial history but did not have time to explore. We went to a Korean place for breakfast; usual problem of having not enough Korean to identify anything meant that while my breakfast was delicious, Pete was very grumpy about his cold rice noodles. Every day is a learning day.

They’ve introduced tourist police in Marrakech so it’s much better now.

When I went in 1988 it was awful, but I went back a few years ago it was fine.

Airport was chaotic, bring your own biro for the immigration form.

I can’t recall who I went with right now.

11 month gap is because this is a different trip to cycle new areas! Sorry, I should have explained that better!

Last year was the Four Rivers route. This year we are just making it up as we go along based on the weather forecast.

Today, cycling west next to the river as it slowly turned into the Yellow Sea at Gunsan.

Lots of this was amazing, but some is a bit grim, I have to be honest.

Tomorrow going to head further south, eventually to Mokpo.

Yesterday we arrived in Baekje, once the capital city of the Baekje kingdom but conquered in the seventh century by the Han Chinese and the neighbouring Silla kingdom (who should probably have known better than to play with fire). This is a monument to the maidens of the palace who threw themselves from the nearby rock to their deaths below rather than fall into their enemies’ hands. All rather sad. I think the monument is actually fairly recent, just a century or so.

We got given these as a side dish in the evening. Fried butterfly pupae. I had them when I was here in Suwon all those years ago. Never. Again. Ever.

By Monday we had joined the Five Rivers trail about half way down and ended up going through the brand new city of Sejong. This has been built out of marshes in the last decade as far as I can tell. We did not stop here but it does have an absolutely amazing double-decker circular ‘bridge’ across the river. It’s about 0.5km in diameter and takes about ten or fifteen minutes to gently cycle around. Bottom deck for cyclists, top for pedestrians, nothing for cars. Soothing piano music plays from loudspeakers every few hundred yards apart. It really is quite astonishing.

No way to get a photo. But I tried.

I returned with my long-suffering friend.

We set off from Incheon and headed through the megalopolis towards Suwon.

I was in Suwon a decade ago but spent the entire time in a grubby Samsung office trying to fix hopelessly broken software. This time I wanted to see a bit more of the place.

The castle is prettier nice but chucking through the rest of Suwon is a drag. Giant six lane freeways and huge intersections where the traffic lights take forever to cycle through. Took a couple of hours to escape on to the river path heading south.

I was involved in something similar in Cambridgeshire. A local resident bought the land and it was then paid back by a charity that was setup locally. Took a couple of years to get all the money together (about 200k for 10 hectares iirc).

The charity now looks after it and it’s really amazing to see.

Angle-grinder proof bike racks are a thing. E.g. run a chain through the inside of a Sheffield bike rack. Whether anyone does I don’t know.

I have serviced (just the lowers) those forks without special tools. It’s not too bad and the bolts were fine. There’s a clip inside to adjust the travel that I managed to damage by overtightening so watch out for that.

There are a few pages around with some helpful tips.

I think it might be because cloudflare is having a hissy fit about me being on Korea telecom.

FWIW my Litelock makes an attempt at protecting the key hole from the elements. But I would still want grease on the moving parts.

Grease. Lots of it.

I don’t own one. But in the K-drama “I am not a robot” the female lead invents an umbrella that changes from transparent to opaque by pressing a button on the handle.

Comes in very handy around episode 6.

+1 to alloy tensioner. Crank fell off but has been fine since the plastic one was swapped for an alloy one.

Do NOT get a pixel 6a or 7a – the fingerprint sensor is not reliable. Loads of threads on the tinternet about it.

I heard that pixel 8a has an ultrasonic sensor and is much better but I have not tried it myself.

As someone who lives very close to Cambridge, I can say that this is a completely accurate assessment.

Here is a photo I took a few weeks ago on the Roman Road near Wandlebury, with views across to the Gog Magog hills and beyond to Chapel Hill in the far distance. The weather was fantastic then, but obviously now as the snows are starting to set in it will soon become impassable.

I’m sure some other Cambridge locals will be along soon with some more stunning photos of the mountain biking around here.

Hands up those who think that the country would be significantly improved if a handful of uber-rich tax-avoiders **** off to Monaco or wherever else they wish to live out their vacuous lives.

*raises hand*

I like it. But I have terrible taste.

Trump isn’t going to win, so there’s that.

He is quite unlikely to win the popular vote but still has a strong chance of becoming President, via several different routes.