I’ve just had a look on Amazon.com. On there there book is number 23 in the cycling chart, which also is a brilliant achievement given the fact that this market is so much bigger as it includes many other countries as well as the States.

You guys should also write some reviews for Amazon.com as the UK ones do not get ported over. Great result that, and it is number 9 also in a slightly different chart cycling/ excursion guides.

Cool

It will be better when the paperback gets on to Amazon in a few week’s time as then you may sell some more. Kindle seems to be where it is at sales wise, as my book seems to sell around 5 times as more on Kindle than in paperback.

I was really happy with the quality of book you can produce on Lulu, and photos come out quite well too if you ever want to put some in your next book ; )

Now that you are building up this huge fan base you will have to get going on your next book!

During my little exile back in the UK, I really have quite enjoyed “Come Dine With Me” 🙂

Attic Attack?

What’s mad for me is the aggression in the lorry driver. With that horn, he’s like “get off the road!”

I do not want to break any forum rules on being explicit in a description of the poor victim’s body, but in summary the cyclist’s body was extremely damaged, and yes, many people are asking how a car was not speeding could have resulted in what actually happened.

An interesting day today. Eike Batista has been on Twitter defening his son.

In one tweet, he says that the “imprudence of the cyclist could have caused three deaths.”

This is what the McLaren looks like:

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/1063876-thor-atropelou-no-acostamento-diz-advogado-da-familia-de-ciclista.shtml

Witnesses are saying the cyclist was on the hard shoulder and that the driver had tried to cut up a bus and then lost control. The lawyers of the son of the world’s 8th richest man are saying that the cyclist, who lived a few miles from the accident spot, was crossing the road and I think they are saying he was in the middle lane of the road.

Hi Kev

Yeah – would be great to see you there. The workshops are on 21st and 22nd April in London.

If anyone is interested, this article explains about shamanic drumming and trance dance as a very different way of doing meditation

http://wp.me/p1rDS0-3p

I have experienced my own death in a shamanic initiation. I just wonder quite cautiously and hopefully non-judgtementally about people who say they are at one with death, as I was like that before I went through a way-off-the-scale-terror 🙂

I hope you find a way to be at peace with the cosmos and life itself in all its cycles and mysteries.

Of course, yoga is not the only way 🙂

Ah I didn’t know that. No one has contacted me just yet! 🙂

I have two facebook accounts to keep certain things separate.

Main one is 280 friends, plus 333 likes for my book and 102 for my CD which isn’t bad I feel.
Twitter, following 59, 31 following me
Work based facebook is around 35 friends

It’s the government who are going to be spying on you via every single gadget in your house : )

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2115871/The-CIA-wants-spy-TV-Agency-director-says-net-connected-gadgets-transform-surveillance.html

Yeah, terrible.

The other side of the coin though is that in São Paulo traffic is close to gridlocked, with many many miles of stationary traffic each day.

So whereas in the past plans for cycle lanes and routes just got shelved, maybe these plans will be taken more seriously.

There is an appetite for riding in São Paulo, but families can only really go out on Sunday mornings when various roads are actually closed to traffic and set up for bikes, so you can ride in almost total safety. That is a good start to get people onto bikes in their leisure time and to help change opinions about bikes only being for poor people.

There are a number of factors, having lived there for more than a year, and travelled on both city roads and on motorways.

There a many problems in Brazil, but I don’t want to criticise. There are now a growing number of cyclists all involved in activities to improve the situation.

In Brazil, due to corruption, the car companies managed to stop railways being built, so pretty much everyone is reliant either on cars, or if you are poor, busses.

Cyclists are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain and there is zero respect for them on the roads. Motorists also have very little respect for motorcyclists, but then motorcyclists weave in and out of traffic in a crazy way and I have seen some terrible accidents, which happen daily in São Paulo.

In São Paulo, if you are a cyclists on a road, there is often no space at all as roads often have two lanes squeezed into the space whereas in the UK it would maybe be more normal to have just one lane each way.

Also, speed limits in cities can be much higher too, to the extent that I have been extremely nervous in some taxis. In this instance, the speed limit was 110 km/h, in a built up bairro, or residential area with many cyclists and pedestrians.

Brazil can be a very superficial country, and bikes are still associated with poor people, but I think this is slightly changing as cyclists try and get bike lanes built so that they can safely ride to work. There is no way in a million years I would cycle in São Paulo.

We really need much more of this kind of video to help change people’s attitudes, but of course many people lack any kind of quality education.

This video is one trying to get drivers to remember the “1.5m rule”

You see very few people wearing helmets or bright safety clothing, but then this is obviously often due to poverty rather than ignoring safety.

Here is a slightly happier video to end with

Rode over to Ae yesterday and went down The Shredder. I had forgotten how fun it is, even on a hard tail. Just a shame it is so short.

[/url]
IMG_3700[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

Yep – and when you live in Dumfries, it is amazing what is within an hour or so from here, as well as some top top road riding!

Yeah – it is actually a bit of a slope with a grassy jump. But as it was Sunday with people walking dogs I didn’t want to embarrass myself in public by attempting a jump there 🙂

I was going to take some photos yesterday of me doing The Shredder but when I got to the top where the start is my battery went! All I have is this

[/url]
17th March[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

I saw them twice in their heyday. Would love to have tickets for this tour!

Genuine question – why do the bars stick out at the front? Is it to get a different riding position?

So long as you are happy that’s the only thing that matters 🙂

They have more of teh radd skillz even than Simon Ralli.

Heh – if you want steep then check out this video – so steep that Avid Juicy disk brakes no less were hopeless as the bike just slid down the near vertical slope 🙂

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonralli/3912734225/in/set-72157622224281001

I bought my MacBook via the scheme and while it is good to have the hardware savings, there are much bigger savings to be had on the software.

Actually I do remember the chap in the Dumfries bike shop saying that Kona being Canadian are well suited to Scotland. This was when I was looking to buy my bike (which I still have). I guess Kona though went downhill a bit according to some people tho.

This is where we were. As Trekster said, there are a lot of quad bike tracks which do not show up on the map – so lots of potential loops up there.

[/url]
IMG_3680[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

I did a couple of drumming workshops in London in January and have been invited back to do two more in April so that’s all pretty good really 🙂

[/url]
Week 5[/url] by simon ralli[/url], on Flickr

Really great video – looks like you all had a great trip. The first shot of the qualifier and the going down the slab make it look like nothing, but you really get a good angle from the bottom looking up : )

Sorry – I meant the equations that generated the diagram : )

There is one called The Speculative Society. My father got invited into it but he was so creeped out he refused, and as such I think he is just one of two people ever to have done so. Didn’t help his career but you know, some of these can be really creepy you know?

David

Hi – I didn’t need it in Excel – I was assuming that you used some kind of equation to draw the graph. I am not a graphics person so have no idea how you create these things!

For some of the ones I have done, I have created them on Keynote. I have to say though, for all this talk about Macs being good for creative people, the amount of art on there is dire. I always need to use curved arrows, and none seem to exist at all! Useless!

Oh and apologies to Mrs Toast. That original thread was a long time ago!

Just wanted to say good luck with your book.

I see your Mum wrote a review. My Mum wouldn’t read my dissertation on which my book is based, so I had to make the decision not to tell them I had published my book. Great to see you have her support.

All the best

A little bump so that the evening crowd can enjoy the great artistic talents of STW!

Hiya – no I’m not in Gib – I left in 2009. Since then I went to do my MSc in Totnes for a year, went into the rainforests in Peru for a bit, wrote my dissertation in Brazil, came back for a knee op, went back to Brazil for a few months teaching English, then discovered I had 4 days to leave in November and can’t get back to be with my fiancee until May. Hence I am having some free time staying at my folks, writing my book.

I don’t have any income right now, hence I have no budget to pay for illustrations, but if you have a paypal account I will happily send over a couple of beer tokens for your efforts : )

See – it is amazing what STW can collectively achieve – doesn’t this give everyone a warm Friday glow of happiness ready for the weekend?

That is excellent! Do you have it in a bigger version but without the shadows? Amazing – at last!

Also – what would you like me to put as a credit?

I need it as an illustration in my book I am writing – cheers!

Dobbo – awesome 🙂

But I was hoping it would have followed the first trajectory – then I could show it in my lectures[/url]!

BTW – I had an email from The Daily Mash today and they are letting me use an image of one of their t-shrts in a section about Apple and product design. 🙂

Avdave

You’ll probably enjoy this paper then!

http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP722005.pdf

I have no budget at all, all I can offer is potential global fame once the book goes into the best seller charts world wide.

Oh and I appreciate everyone’s efforts but I don’t think any publisher will want this graph with a silhouette of that chap on his mountain bike with Mrs Flash added basket, rainbow and stars. I’ll save that image for my next book on shamanism thank you 🙂

Ah right,

Basically this is how medieval philosophers understood the flight paths of projectiles, prior to Galileo. The point I am making i that what we see is so often based not just on what is out there, but on what we expect to see.

I do not have the equations that generated this. It is more a case that people such as Albert of Saxony conceived of the motion as having three distinct phases, especially seen in path A F G O B.