A blog about skating and cycling, or vice versa

April Fool#

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 17:05:06 +0000

Let's review what we should have learnt at Koln:

and what we should have learnt from Blenheim

and what we should have learnt from the One-Eleven

and now consider whether there's anything good to say about how I tackled the Berlin half on Sunday

While checking my skates over before leaving for the event I saw that one of the hubs had split. Not really wanting to chance it, when I got to the Junker tent I bought some new wheels from him and spent what should probably have been my jogging-to-raise-pulse time swapping bearings and spacers over. Then I had about ten minutes slow gentle skating up and down, then I joined the people at the start line and found I was already ten rows back. A little sidling got that down to seven rows, but still too far.

When the gun went off, I was boxed in. I spent the first 3km overtaking people until in sight of the lead pack, then I was joined by a line of two people and we then spent the next 10km (assisted by a couple of others who we picked up along the way) failing to catch the lead up. Unlike last year where the front of the group was an enormous crocodile, this year the lead pack was quite small and quite fast and the second line (which I passed quite early) was the skatersaurus

The first 13km of that race was basically the hardest I have ever worked on skates, to the extent that I tired my legs enough that I lost edge control in my right foot - very odd and more than slightly unnerving.

After that I'd had enough and waited for the second pack to catch me. Hopped on the back (I was so obviosuly toasted that nobody was lettting me in any further up), moved up through the pack on each corner until I was somewhere near the front (maybe sixth place or so - basically, aimed for the first place that looked like a gap would form) by km 20, then got myself taken out by someone's foot as the line disintegrated just before the last corner, as everyone jockeyed to be in a good place for the sprint. Well, with legs of jelly what else was I expecting? So I missed the second pack as well as the first. Grrr.

Still aching on Monday. Still aching Tuesday too, in fact, but I think that's viral or something (probably the return of last week's cold): for (a) I have lungsful of phlegm, and for (b) I certainly didn't smack my head on the ground at any stage, and that bit hurts too.

Final time: rubbish; final place: worse than last year

Lessons learnt: don't be so bloody complacent next time

MORE LISP#

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 15:59:55 +0000

I'm blogging this with a :lisp tag despite there being no Actual Lisp Content, because it's an announcement (yeah, yeah, vapourware) that I intend to have some soon. I tendered my resignation from clara.net on Monday afternoon and as from, oh, early May, I expect to be working fulltime for Stargreen bringing their web site and IT systems into 2007. Or 2008, or even 2011, depending on how far into the future the Awesum Power of this 50 year old language will get us. And hopefully I'll get a little discretionary hacking time for work on SBCL and other stuff that'll make my life easier

Entirely phlegmatic#

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 20:01:29 +0000

When I breathe deeply I can hear it bubbling in my lungs.

Last night I found the LFNS RC hard work.

Perhaps, he says hopefully, my crap Sunday was a one-off. It's still only a "perhaps", though

asdf-install and $vcs#

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:20:49 +0000

The goal is to make it simple for semi-interested hackers to track bleeding-edge on large projects (multiple asdf systems from different sources with dependencies between them).

Thoughts off the top of my head

What if we mark depended-on systems as "shareable"/"unshareable"? Are there multiple sharing domains? If E depends on C and D, D depends on C and C is unshareable, should E use the local copy of C anyway to satisfy its direct dependency because it's already got a copy via D? Most probably. So unshareable systems should nevertheless be shared with anything that has a dependency relationship with the system that caused them to be installed.

With regard to specifying the appropriate tree: Let's consider darcs for example: a repository is a branch, but that doesn't tell us its genetics - if we have a C' branch locally, we can't determine by looking at it whether it satisfies a requirement for http://darcs.example.com/C. We need to look at the patches it contains (typically, I expect, a tag) to determine whether it's good enough. But a tag alone won't help with locating the repo in the first place, so we still need the repo url (or anyway, a repo url) as well.

We also need some kind of local registry of "places to look for C other than the official repo", which contains pointers to previously downloaded (and shareable) copies of C

2007 Events#

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 01:37:30 +0000

Stuff that I am variously booked for/planning on/thinking about. All depends on dates, though

See also the LSST Events List

Proud to have been a part of it#

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 01:55:49 +0000

I've written so much about the Easterskate elsewhere (bunnyblog , Week on Wheels and its own website that I probably didn't mention it here much on coruskate. Or mention much else on coruskate while in the throes of event preparation, for that matter. But it's done and dusted and all over with nothing remaining to do but sort out the cash, thank the sponsors, send out the press releases, edit the video, update the web site with post-event news, and write it up for the Week on Wheels. Not a lot, really.

In the meantime, there are approximately a zillion photos on flickr tagged easterskate07. Tomorrow I'll hack some kind of xscreensaver thing together to display them randomly whenever my screen is locked and annoy my coworkers

Back in the frame#

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:22:54 +0000

My right ankle collapses a bit when it's tired, and I have difficulty getting a good heel carve on that side. After thinking about it for a while, yesterday I moved the frame on my right boot inwards about 2mm. This shifts it away from the line of my Achilles, but towards the centre of the mounting block, and first impressions (from a few laps at Tatem) are that I should have done it ages ago. I haven't skated far enough on it to see if it fixes the collapsing, but the heel carve feels a whole lot easier. I did manage to round off the bolt in the process, which was not so impressive.

Although I don't know if it's because of that change, or if it's just because I spent 30 minutes practising on the empty track, but suddenly I can crossover on the bends at Tatem (the banking is weird). My self-timed 500m there yesterday was down to around 55 seconds (and could have been faster, I forgot just how far down the straight the finish line is), which is a big improvement on last year's typical 60s+ times.

Racing there Sunday. Will be interesting, but I'm not expecting to win anything.

Three out of Two ain't bad#

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:42:34 +0000

content moved to [[Three out of Two ain]]

Three out of Two aint bad#

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:43:04 +0000

That was a whole lot more fun than I was expecting, and I got a podium (first ever). Third place in Category 2.

First race: 1500m. Start went off fast, which was a shame because I didn't. "Oh, that was the whistle? Perhaps I'd better go now". Fred and Matt went off first, a bunch of people following, and me behind them. They started flagging after about three laps so I overtook them, finished third.

Second race: 3000m. Better start, and fairly early we managed to establish a solid LSST presence at the front. Three attempted breaks from behind by the Powerslide team: the first we had to hunt down and kill, and the others never really made it past us. Thought I had a third place, but was beaten on the line. Lesson: don't dismiss the tired-looking skater as actually tired, he might not be.

Third race: 5000m, Cat 1 & 2 combined for a points race. At random times the officials would ring the bell, and then award a point to whoever was in front on the lext lap - so lots of sprinting at the front and complete disarray everywhere else. Really bad start, so I was somewhere else.

Three out of Two ain#

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:43:04 +0000

content moved to [[Three out of Two aint bad]]

I wuz wrong#

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:29:33 +0000

Some more notes on track racing from a newbie perspective:

So I'm not claiming to be an expert based on one only outing, nor that what I did was right - it glaringly wasn't in so many ways. But having said for so long that I'm not interested in track without even having tried it, I felt I ought to put it on record that it's actually not a bad way to spend a Sunday

My way or the Highway Code#

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:08:52 +0000

Some may remember that last year there was a new draft of the Highway Code issued and a consultation process about the proposed changes to it. Several of the changes they'd made with regard to cyclists were pretty dumb, and a lot of people wrote and told them so. Because, after all, it's a consultation, right.

Step forward to this year: the revised draft now says "use cycle facilities such as advanced stop lines, cycle boxes, and toucan crossings where they are provided, as they can make your journeys safer". Which sounds better on the face of it, but as the CTC points out

The distinction between the wording of “Use cycle routes when practical” (on the one hand) and '[Use] cycle facilities… where provided' (on the other) means that the use of cycle facilities will no longer be discretionary for any cyclist who wants to protect him/herself from the threat of adverse legal action. The words ‘such as advanced stop lines, cycle boxes, and toucan crossings' do not exclude other types of cycle facility from the legal argument.
If a cyclist was injured and there was a cycle facility nearby (of whatever kind), the driver’s insurer would have all the pretext they needed to argue that any compensation due to the cyclist should be reduced on the basis of “contributory negligence”, i.e. that the cyclist was at least partly the author of his/her own misfortune because if s/he had been using the cycle facility, the collision would not have occurred.

So: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/roads4bikes/

Network Solutions Solutions#

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:05:14 +0000

Dear Network Solutions® Customer,
Your domain name transfer request has been approved for:
Domain Name: [elided].COM
Transfer to Registrar: Tucows Inc.
Transfer from Registrar: Network Solutions, LLC.
If you have any questions contact Customer Service at registrar@networksolutions.com.
We are committed to providing you with the solutions, services, and support to help you succeed online. We hope to continue serving you in the future.

That final paragraph has the authentic ring of complete fiction about it. If this post should ever start turning up in google for searches like "transfer a domain name away from network solutions", or "network solutions registrar transfer", readers who've come here from there will be well aware that there is vanishingly little on the netsol web site about transferring away; in fact, most of their site doesn't even admit that you'd ever want to or that it's a possibility. The trick is

The straw that broke this camel's back was finding that their web interface will only let you add nameservers to a zone if the names of those nameservers are within the zone. And then it (not surprisingly) wants glue records too ...

⟪Mar 2007 May 2007⟫