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eternal long dark night of the soul

Just how eternal? Roger Penrose’s speculations suppose that big bangs could cycle, triggered once the universe becomes an energy only entity after all the black holes have evaporated.

if something with a centre was expanding evenly, how would you find the direction to the centre?

We see homogeneity in the observable universe. No direction shows any difference in content. The CMB is as ancient in all directions.

If there is a central origin in 3d space (4d spacetime) it isn’t within our observable universe.

As far as the centre of the observable universe… It is wherever you are making your observations.

Speculation on any structures or physics beyond the observable universe are moot. Not observable. Nothing can be observed. We can theorise but such theories are untestable. Our best theory about the larger universe is “more of the same”, but we have no justification for even drawing that conclusion which, on the face of it, is an extraordinary special case.

When MG Rover went bust I went shopping. Came away with a ZT-T 260. Then I got it supercharged. 400bhp.

Didn’t keep it for long. Did drive to Italy and back in it. Great in tunnels.

Coin batteries have bittering coatings to discourage infants from swallowing them. These can cause contact problems. When replacing the batteries scotchbrite them or a light sand with a fine grit is a good idea.

Might sound far fetched but it can be a marginal improvement that gives reliability and it costs little/nothing to give a try. Works for me.

Sounds like blue iris transcodes the video streams and uses a lot of cpu on the pc hosting the CCTV setup. Is the laptop running the blue iris SW? Is the mobile getting is video feed from the blue iris SW or direct from the cameras?

As the 4k camera is the only one causing problems, eliminate network addressing from your concerns by connecting an hd camera via the networking connectivity of the 4k camera.

Powerline adaptors are generally “media converters” and don’t give a damn about IP addressing except for some management functions.

Powerline networking doesn’t scale, so the more you have the worse it works. Overall, a powerline strategy is poor when there is traffic from many nodes as the adaptors need to negotiate to resolve collisions on the common cabling. IP addressing clashes and mismatched subnets should be eliminated as a possibility but I’d not jump to the conclusion they exist.

While we’re talking backsweep, consider that other positioning issues can give rise to wrist/hand problems on longer rides.

I’d look closely at saddle fore/aft position and bar position for those distances. To take weight off your hands a very subtle shift backwards of saddle position will put more of your weight through your core than into your hands. Having the bars too close can also make you put weight through your hands; be subtle again but lowering the bars will engage your core more. These changes will tend towards a more “dirt roadie” position but you’re talking about marathon distances so that might be appropriate. All setup is compromise.

Save money on expensive personalised car number plates by simply changing your name to match your existing plate. – Mr. KVL 741Y,

Thank you, Viz top tips

To test the point I just took part in one of this evening’s sprint races. Cat B. Flat course.

Rode the whole race in 32t/11t. 115rpm off the line to get the power down to stay with the bunch. Middle of the race was OK with 90-100 rpm in the bunch and occasional bursts when someone stretched the pack out. 120rpm to get 670W starting the sprint finish but then faded to 450W at 116rpm.

Honestly this was a lot better than I thought. The rpms are high and I could imagine a few extra watts being more sustainable at more sensible rpms. Maybe in a longer race it would be more telling. It would be nice to kick out in a high gear starting a sprint instead of winding up already fast spinning legs.

So not a disaster and it might be OK for everything I intend to do with Zwift.

Very much a guess but it might work on the basis of how much “basic” resistance the trainer offers.

I thought of that and tried it. Doesn’t work. I think it is just a low-grade “cosmetic” feature for the Elite myETraining app so that in “level of difficulty mode” (i.e. direct control of the stepper motor) you can get a kmh number that feels right for you.

Zwift is meant to be a simulation – what you are asking it to do is be less realistic!

It has the same basic rules like gravity. What you must learn is that these rules are no different than rules of a computer system. Some of them can be bent, others can be broken.

Think I may have found the wife friendly option.

https://www.merlincycles.com/3t-overdrive-cassette-11-speed-180155.html

Fits the Elite XDR cassette body (which I have); 11speed (which I have). I’m currently on an 11t, so whatever power the trainer resists at my current 110rpm I’d get at 90rpm. It is a jump from that 9t up to the next 11t cog, but it may be all I actually need.

Failing that I may reach out to Elite and see if it is a parameter they can hack. They’ve been really good in tuning up erg mode on my trainer to be super responsive. I reckon the controller must already have the logic for “Zwift asks for X so stepper motor does Y” and slope simulation is just an open loop control so a zero-offset parameter that’s hackable would be a likely part of the implementation.

The hydration thing is a double edged sword.

TL;DR moderation good

Got to get it right for your fluid regulation to result in correct fluid/salt balance *inside the cells*. All sorts of ways for this to go wrong when you bung in a load of fluid of any type. I know for sure that the more I glug after exercise, the more I cramp overnight. My body is a lot better at regulating itself than my conscious and ill-informed mind is.

Just wondering, I can see I am in as a D, but I’m not tagged as part of the STW team. Is that sortable?

Technical gremlins sorted so I’ll try and actually join this week

Sorry I couldn’t join you. I did eventually beat the technical gremlins (firewall settings) so I’ll try again next week

@savoyad I’ve got a WTRL account now. Just signed up. I understand there’s something about start pens and links but I probably need to know more.

Not done a Zwift TTT before. Learning curve, I’m sure. I’m on STW Discord as well if that’s a thing we use.

I’ve signed myself up. I shocked myself by doing an FTP ramp test this morning and I’m at 90% of where I should be. It’s been well over 30 years since I last did a team time trial. Don’t know how that experience will translate to zwift but I’ll give it a crack.

I spent a bunch of time looking at the rootsandrain and Strava results of my nearest competitors at some of the enduros I’ve raced. I remember one event where I got on the bottom step of the podium where the two guys above me make up shedloads of time on the long pedally stage. I like to think I have the watts and I definitely had the commitment and went deep on that stage but those guys were just faster. That may have been down to tyre choice where I had a relatively slow rolling setup and they possibly had semislick rears but there’s no telling whether I would have given up more time on the steep stages if I’d followed their example. That was also the day I punctured at the top of one of the gravity stages and rode the stage more or less on the rim but only gave up 10 seconds. Perhaps on a lesser tyre I’d have lost my race day there and then. Racing is racing: some you win; usually otherwise.

Buying speed probably edges towards marginal gains once you have the basics right. Rather than chopping in for a different frame though I’ll happily experiment with the devil I know. My current list of wants includes 165 cranks, cutting my bars down from 800mm to something I can hustle through the tight stuff better. I’ve had 4 pot formula cura sitting on the shelf for a couple of years because the 2 pots work so well but an uplift day at inners showed me that I’m marginal (or possibly just need to service my brakes once in a while). I’ve been mucking about with B1/C1 springs in my Lyrik (currently running the bike as a 150/170 on a B1). I’ve been on flat pedals almost exclusively for the last few years but I’ve got some Superbruni mallet DH that I really ought to give another try. Tyres are all dated to pre COVID so I can mix things up there and not even feel guilty.

Hand grinders can result in some dysfunctional muscle development with their asymmetry.

I’m about to set up an indiegogo for a bluetooth/ANT+ FE-C controllable Zwift coffee grinder. This is a tie up where you will ride through virtual coffee plantations and then make your way to the market, roasters and finally over a finish line conveniently close to a virtual cafe with an appropriate portion of your wattage delivered to a burr grinder loaded by drone delivery with the beans corresponding to your route choice. Grind is determined by nailing your wattage through an intervals session so extra motivation to go deep in your pain cave or you’ll be sucking dishwater.

Fastest reviewed bike is the one that happens to suit the tester. You cannot judge anything from that as it might not suit you.

It is always a matter of diminishing returns. You’re trying to approach “optimum”. The amount of gain left to buy is the gap from where you are to optimum. If you can judge what’s missing you can maybe go out and buy it. If you have no idea about what the missing piece is, you and your money can be parted easily for no return.

It will be taxed as a gift, valued as per the time of the gift. This means you don’t get a chance to use residence nil-rate band in the estate. The provisions in IHT regs are very generous for passing on a house in its entirety to a descendant.

OP is talking about a third radio (5GHz usually) dedicated to backhaul?

This is in theory a good plan, but pay attention to it being 5GHz…. You know, the signal that doesn’t propagate well on anything other than line of sight and a bit of beamforming voodoo.

People get them to work and the industry shills tell you they’re mustard.

But.. (own opinion) is they’re consumer WiFi where meaningless numbers are used in the hard sell and no one is invested in making it work in your house. Low cost of sale, high chance of underwhelmment.

proper wifi 6 meshes have their backhaul on a dedicated channel seperate from the WiFi channel going to clients.

In practice or theory? If you can site each unit in decent backhaul range, then you’re in interference range for the client-serving signals. If you’re in any situation with possible channel congestion from your neighbours, interference is always the limiting factor and thinking you can hog channels and turn the gain up is just an arms race.

This isn’t everyone though. If your neighbours don’t interfere, you can probably be a radio bandwidth whore as much as you like. In these cases triple channel and wireless backhaul may see you right. Inferior to wired “done right” but adequate and maybe even better than anything you’ve experienced before without the aggro of sending wires through the house.

I’ve done wired in two houses (original BT Whole home and TP_link Omada) and they have been one and done experiences; no maintenance necessary after initial install. The Omada stuff is brilliant with VLAN segregated SSIDs keeping my IOT traffic in a little walled garden and away from spying on my network.

In sheets you can do everything in appscript (JavaScript) but there is a learning curve and you need some dodges to handle dynamically extending data

Which version of Excel?

If you’ve got access to power query extension, that is the best way to join your datasets. That can then be fed into a pivot table or used to dynamically populate a tab. Much better than fannying about with vlookups

Usually it means your computer/phone etc isn’t getting an assigned IP address from the appropriate allocation service (DHCP).

The can be multiple causes. Work out that your router is the only device dishing out IP addresses and examine anything that might be dodgy between the client device all the way back to the router.

Taking off the heat as soon as it is bubbling and, depending on the heat, quenching onto a cold thermal mass (e.g. skillet) or under running water work for me. Or, pour immediately but ignore the late extraction you get when it is tipped upright again. I can get a 2 cup brikka to produce a very acceptable pseudo-shot but… The late extraction from 2 cups onward is vile and does nothing for the balance. With a lot of attention you might be able to get something drinkable from a 4 cupper but 6 and up are lunacy. The bigger you go, the better chances come from half loading the filter and going for quicker flow but you might as well have a 2 cupper and make an americano.

And all with boiling water, as many have mentioned.

How do people drink Bialetti pond slurry? I can handle a 2 cup (double shot) moka pot but anything bigger makes an overextracted mess looking more like the stuff I can fish out of the Thames not far from my front door. Why does it taste like somebody dissolved a slice of burnt toast and called it coffee. Smells disgusting while its doing it and somehow it is a virtue not to wash the damn thing. Heathens

How timely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvsPIlPMSZ4

11kg with pedals, bottle cages, mudguards, gell bar tape, wide handle bars, 1kg of sprung brooks saddle rack and lights. Oh and I could lose 5kg of chub if I could stay off the biscuits.

The determining factor for speed is power output, aero and IME, tyres. You can improve power output by getting your position dialled. You can improve aero by getting your position sorted. But then you still have to be comfortable pedalling the thing for 5 hours if that is the usage you want to get out of it. Saddles are personal. I’ll limit my comment to that I’d hate to try and get an aero position on a Brooks.

If I bought a cheap ish carbon bike, think 105 and bottom level carbon frame, would it make any/ much difference to how tired I am at the end of a ride

Bottom level carbon frames aren’t necessarily better than alloy.

75 miles is a good ride. If you did that out of the blue, you’ve done a good effort. Amazingly, getting used to that distance will see you improve.

Life is a proof of concept. Started from nothing. Tootles along for billions of years. Comes up with bacteria and algae. The last half billion years for everything else. We are now perhaps midway through the sun’s life so there’s plenty of time. Climate has shaped the biodiversity on the planet. Major events such as volcanic and asteroid impact extinction events and plate tectonic shifts such as the formation of the Panama isthmus have ushered in distinct eras characterised by resetting the biodiversity of the planet. If we trigger a mass extinction event, even as far as killing ourselves as the dominant lifeform, we put the evolutionary dice back in the tumbler and cannot conceive what will fall out.

But we are at a point where we conceptualise our universe. As a species, we have accomplishments in knowledge and the application of knowledge as well as all the arts. We can conceive the possibilities of the future.

Our accomplishments beyond agriculture, dwellings, story telling and basic territorial war began with the industrial revolution – in barely 200 years we have transformed war into an undertaking where we can kill ourselves multiple times over and not even need a reason to start fighting, industry into a race to the bottom to generate worthless tat and economics into a dark art that serves our lizard overlords as the flip side to a scientific understanding of the mechanisms and powers that bind our universe together from the smallest to the largest scales.

All the things we have discovered generate possibilities for the future but we need a future that nurtures possibility. I feel a bit like a football supporter cheering “our” effort in getting to the final; I’ve not generated much possibility in my life. I’m a cog in the machine of a society that occasionally throws up an Einstein, a Mozart, a Shakespeare. That fate is true for most of us so we cherish family and have children and invest our hopes in our children and their children after them.

I think the answer to the question to why it is imperative for the human race to survive is because the human race is the vessel of our hopes and is beyond our imagination.

85kg, 50psi on my pump which equates to 30% sag, … Don’t feel great on small bumps

Cause and effect right there. 30% sag and 50psi for your weight will tend to pack. Chances are you can’t get the rebound fast enough.

The not getting full travel thing is annoying but setting low pressures to try and get full travel sounds like a bad answer for most riding scenarios.

Doing a friction test when you’re doing a service seems to be the “in” thing to do. Remove lowers. Remove damper cartridge. Remove air spring. Remove seals and foam rings. Fit hub and tighten normally. Do the lowers bind on the bushes anywhere in their travel? Bush sizing or hub spacing/alignment problem?

My Norco warranty process via Evans was grim but sorted eventually – nearly new bike with seized suspension bolts so couldn’t be serviced. One season on, I had a loose main bearing pivot that I took to a local fabricator to fix with a custom bush.

FWIW, I have a spare rear end for the previous generation carbon Range.

I would only expect to use full travel in a full on save my ass maneuverer where i nearly go over the bars.

This ^^^

Every fork is a compromise. The RS Lyriks certainly seem to struggle to give up all their travel… but my experience is that when you tune them for the support you want they give sublime control and take the hits.

I raced a Scottish enduro at Fort William failing to notice that my 170mm Lyrik RCT3 was in the middle compression setting. I set it that way on a climb on practice day and forgot about it. I made a couple of tweak adjustments and went into race day with this far from ideal setup… but the fork was smooth and controlled everywhere and I was able to hit my lines at race speeds. Probably didn’t use more than 130mm travel but no problems with grip or comfort.

My advice: don’t get hung up on seeing full travel; tune the feel of the fork not trying to hit some arbitrary criteria on the numbers.

That said, I’m surprised you’re getting 30% sag on your pressures. Even more surprised you’re on zero tokens on a 160mm.

I’m 95kg, 3 tokens, 69psi, HSC full open, LSC 16 clicks from closed, rebound 3 clicks from closed

Your numbers are the furthest from the way I’ve managed to get my Lyriks working well (4x Lyriks across multiple bikes and eMTB)

Low pressure? Rebound almost closed? I’d expect your fork to have a huge tendency to pack down. The OP’s numbers are more on point.

Times New Roman

I was struck through with terror at the prospect. This just underlines everything.

issue I had with the direto were stability in ERG (it bounced on transitions and was slow on big power changes)

Elite support can fix this with a firmware settings upload.

“Hey Google, someone’s home”

“Hey Google, everyone’s away”

You need to have set up Home/Away routines in the Google Home app. There is no way it can tell you “intend” to go home from distance without you telling it.

I watched my mother die jaundiced a sickening yellow colour, unable to remember who I was, lying in her own shit in a hospital bed, wiping it over herself.

Thanks, alcohol.

Not the most dignified way to check out from planet life and not the best, lasting memory for her son to carry around.

Now, key question: do I like a drink or two?