The open road is dedicated to the bicycle, freedom, and the open road, but may contain thoughts about any idle subject whatsoever...

Spring Bike Rides

Date: 2010-03-15

I had a great ride, a week ago, around Ilkley and Bolton Abbey, returning from the dales via Ilkley Moor, and including a brief visit to Betty's Tea Room to obtain cakes.... I've not been into the tea room in my cycling stuff - I guess you really ought to be wearing Edwardian cycling gear to fit in. At the moment, my yellow top is looking sad (more lemon than yellow), my trousers look like they have been immersed in a river for a while (they have faded unevenly...), and I was wearing a woolly hat under my cycling helmet since the breeze was pretty cold, so I look very like a tramp when on my bike. I believe it is sooooo fashionable.

I think I took a photo at some point, so I'll add it shortly. I took tea at a farmhouse tea room, where the tea cups are a lovely old Mason's pattern - from the days when it was all manufactured in Stoke (as it still should be, and will be if the Chinese correctly value their currency). Bolton Abbey was very very busy, so no lingering there. But sitting in the sun drinking tea, after what has seemed like a long winter, was wonderful. Lots of bikes around - the road between Otley and Bolton Abbey must have had a hundred bikes or more travelling along it. Gives you hope...

Oh, just noticed that firefox 3.6 has a wonderful theme collection. If the security issues of using Internet Explorer weren't enough, there are now aesthetic reasons for the switch. I am viewing the web through fluffy clouds at the moment, a great theme.

Bike Commuting in Bradford = 0.3 %

Date: 2010-02-18

According to the T and A, only 0.3% of commuters use bikes. This is from a "Recent Survey" for what it is worth. The figure seems a bit low, I'd have put it at a few percent, and it may be the old problem of counting bikers, who often use backstreet routes to avoid the heavy traffic, stagger their journeys to avoid the heavy traffic period (e.g. arrive early and leave early) when the counters probably are not at their posts.

This is accompanied in the article by some sensible comments on the need to get people out of the just-me-in-my-car mentality, which clogs the streets and causes serious pollution (including big CO2 emissions). However, considering how little the council has done to make bike commuting feasible, it is going to be difficult to increase the bike commuter figure substantially. I don't think I have seen a single new bike lane for years. I would happily cycle (rather than my current bus) the 12 miles to work most of the year if it was a pleasant, safe and direct route. Unfortunately it is the A road between Bradford and Hudds, densely packed traffic, lots of poor/illegal driving, and no cycle lanes. If that is how it appears to someone who likes biking, how would it appear to someone used to putting metal walls around themselves against an unfriendly world? The council evidently needs to get serious about cycling, but there is no evidence that this is about to happen. The original piece in the T and A is at http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/ news/5009289.Jam_today___and_jams_tomorrow__ Rethink_way_you_travel_says_Council/?ref=mc

Cycle Campaigning

Date: 2010-02-15

It is a curious thing that although cycling is growing, according to most stats, cycle campaigning isn't growing at all. BCAG, the Bradford group, dwindled down to zilch. The demos about climate change were curiously small things on the whole - I remember massive anti-nuclear demos (I remember participating in a crowd that was a large chunk of a million in a demo against nuclear energy, and was part of putting paid to the nuclear agenda for the last 15 years), etc, But not now. There are some wonderful and creative demos going on, but were are the mass crowds? Students are, perhaps, just too burdened down with debt and recession to focus. Online life has, certainly, taken a fair bit of the energy from offline activism. But people seem more fussed about getting their facebook profile right than writing a blog against the evils of nuclear energy, the food industry, and the upcoming energy/food/C02 crunchies. It may be that between the debt economy and the virtual world of self-fashioning narcissism (my space) there's not much room left for saving the planet....

QE, Asset Bubbles, Inflation...

Date: 2010-02-04

Obviously Gordon Brown is desperate to get growth before we get voting in a few months time. Hence the massive Quantitative Easing, the low interest rates, the crazy levels of public debt. But this political manoeuvre comes at a price for the electorate since we are evidently back in asset bubbles - house prices shouldn't be going up at this stage of a recession with income decline, job uncertainty, etc. Excessively low interest rates have also pushed up share prices - the bounce back there is bubbled by the difficulty of finding any bank account paying as much, even, as the rate of inflation (RPI, after tax). I guess Gordon is inevitably going to continue his old form of putting political expediency over the long term, the environment (because this all cashes out as consumption in the end), the poor (who are not, of course, benefitting from the asset bubbles in houses and shares)... It makes the political choices we have look pretty dreadful...

Fedora 12 - Yet Another Brilliant Fedora Release....

Date: 2010-01-27

Fedora 12 was released back in the Autumn, but I've only just got around to installing it. Fedora 10 was so good, and a great leap beyond Fedora 9, that I found it hard to get around to upgrading. It just seemed such an excellent version of Fedora. I was also a little wary of the new ext4 file system, but that seems a bit over the top since I back up my stuff quite regularly (and ext4 is making its way into other distros, I think it is default for Ubuntu 9.10...). Now configuring it. Seems great, speedy for sure (well, I think that is part of the value of ext4 isn't it?), so much faster than Windows XP, and so much prettier, so much more functional, so much better in every way. Evolution found all the configs nicely. Just want videolan, k3b, konqueror, some useful codecs, etc. Oh, and my citrix client setup for accessing the odd server... [Later...]After more testing I'm as impressed as ever. The most notable thing, coming from Fedora 10, is the increase in speed. Compared with my work XP machine, it is stunning. Fed 12 boots in 30 secs. Applications are snappier. I have Desktop effects turned on and multiple desktops (on a cube), but it is still very snappy. No problems getting DVDs to work (remember you'll need libdvdread and libdvdcss for this). OpenOffice is now a really super piece of software, and I prefer it considerably over the clunky MS Office. Wireless, bluetooth, etc, all seem fine. Basically, why is anyone paying for Windows? Big Puzzle (or a compliment to the power of the herd? advertising? Crazy people...). All credit to the Fedora team for producing an excellent and pretty easy to use distro.

Planning Bike Rides for 2010

Date: 2010-01-24

Although most people are planning trips to beaches by aeroplane, or caravanning in Wales, the cyclist at this time of year is looking for great places to go for a bike ride. Although I proved, the other day, that I can still cycle 20 miles in slush and rain without falling into a faint, I'm planning to knock off a few bigger mileages come warm weather. I had such a great time in mid-Wales last year that I'm inclined to try that area again and venture into Herefordshire too. Mid Wales seems a bit of a bike paradise - quiet roads, fewer cars, wonderful views, and just sometimes a dancing silver sea at the end of the road. I would also like to do a massive bike ride in the Antipodes (NZ or Oz) but that does not fit in the holiday allowance from a standard-ish job, so I'm at a bit of a debating point there ;-)...

This weekend, no cycling but just a walk around Halifax and Shibden Hall (the impressive Anne Lister and lesbian life in the Nineteenth Century - fascinating - was ever human society able to be amused by harmless, even sweet, variety in sexuality rather than reacting with fists?) which ended up in the Cock o' the North bar in Hipperholme - wonderful place, with a delicious Jamaica Ginger Beer and a frankly wonderful Dark Side Chocolate Stout. Hard to stop drinking the stuff, but the bus beckoned so, running speedily to the bus stop a couple of miles away, I got the bus home

Anne Mustoe Cycles Off into the Sunset

Date: 2010-01-15

Having seen Anne Mustoe lecture last Spring, and heard her talk about setting off on a third time around the world, I was sad to hear over Christmas that she had died (sounded like it was nothing to do with cycling) while travelling in Syria. She was a great inspiration - partly because she defied all the usual ideas of what long distance travellers are like - being elderly, on a fairly average bike (for a tourer), not keen on bike repairing, and looking vulnerable (I thought she looked like a fit 70-something when I saw her, but less rugged than the average aunt in my experience!).

As a rugged, weatherbeaten male ;-) she gave me hope for doing many decades more long distance touring. I think her earlier books are probably her best - the first circumnavigation of the world thingy was a very fresh perspective. She did show that sharp and fresh observation of the world is often a good deal more interesting than staggering distances covered and extreme temperatures suffered.

Christmas and New Year Cycling?

Date: 2010-01-03

Well, the usual experience of a Christmas has happened - too little exercise and too much food. I also think my family has insufficient joviality - it is tricky when everyone is so different to make Christmas go with a swing - I think I probably managed to annoy my relatives by being wearisomely green. Heck, most people just want to consume and drive and why the heck won't I just let them get on with it without complaining about the traffic when I go cycling, or the crappy plastic that fills up the Christmas present heap, or the endless tedious pink for girls? I am afraid that the evidence from my Christmas is that the vast majority of people will not choose to be eco-friendly but much to the contrary would rather enjoy a ton of conspicuous consumption damn the planet.

Went cycling about four times, the usual mud but more ice than usual. Cycling downhill on an icy road provides a bit of a rush! Did not fall off.

Of course, Christmas was, eco-wise, in the shadow of the failure of Copenhagen.

The bike ride on snow was wonderful though - damp, icy and pretty dark by the end. I sat briefly in a forest listening to the trees moving in the breeze as it got dark - warming my hands on my flask of tea. Excellent! Oh, Happy (and hopeful, if we can manage it) New Year

Linux Desktop FX and Linux Netbook with Multiple Monitors

Date: 2009-12-08

Meant to post this a while ago - there's a great youtube video showing off the craziness that is now possible on Linux if you switch on desktop effects. I like my wobbling semi transparent windows, and the cube of desktops is superb and suprisingly useful, but the youtube video reminded me of how far you can go with Linux. It makes Windows 7 (also shown) look like a rained on picnic. You want bling on your desktop? Well, it has to be Linux.

If you do presentations and you've got a Linux netbook you are certain to be keen to use a higher resolution on the screen than the netbook has on its own screen. Having played around with this question for a little while, so far the best option seems, for my Ubuntu 9.10 NBR netbook, to install 'Multiple Screens' from the Ubuntu Software Centre and play around. My netbook didn't much like not having mirrored screens, but it did accept a higher resolution than the netbook screen itself was capable of showing in its entirety - so I got a nice high res on the projector and as much of that as could be displayed on the netbook. Since the key thing was to do a presentation, that worked very nicely. There's also been a useful article about this at linux.com - though my eee 901 has Intel graphics so the snazzy GUI you can get for nVidia ain't available. No interference with an xorg.conf file occurred during the alterations of my resolution.

Political Choices for Cyclists

Date: 2009-12-07

What did the Labour party ever do for us cyclists? Well, judging by the last few years of New Labour, extremely little. Some early talk of integrated transport turned into bureaucratic targets, which melted into aspirations, which disappeared like the Swiss Glaciers are now. There will be an election in the next six months but none of the political choices, apart from Green, look particularly positive for cycling at the moment. Having seen the last lot of manifestos, I am not holding my breath for bold statements and they wouldn't be worth much anyway.

Labour deservedly suffers for having announced lots and delivered very very little. Sustrans, a non-governmental organisation, has achieved far more than all the government initiatives. My on the road experience suggests that the last ten years of Labour have delivered effectively nothing for cyclists. If high unemployment, ludicrous house prices, and a massive debt burden weren't enough to persuade you that Labour has failed hopelessly, I guess the cycling policies would. Would any other party have done any better? Well, evidently Green Party policies are much more cycle friendly, but only a hung parliament would offer them any chance at power.

Perhaps this salutary experience suggests that the way to change things is outside of the party politics system - which is no doubt why apathy towards politics and dislike or hatred towards our elected unrepresentatives is so common. So vote with your wallet and buy Sustrans, CTC and other green Christmas Presents! So voting may not help, but a sustainable fairtrade chocolate bar is probably part of the answer... With more folk on bikes perhaps we can return to more Critical Mass demos and activism? (on which topic have you ever visited the Italian Critical Mass web site? You don't need italian since the point are the wonderful graphics! Michelangelo is a cyclist.

Should You Hate Microsoft?... (or 'Sanity Recommends Not Buying Windows 7 Business Pro')

Date: 2009-11-05

Well, as a spasm of emotion as Windows gives you the Blue Screen of Death, or as you struggle with a virus that has easily sneaked into your system and has been able to wreak havoc because of insecurity by design, or as you try to use Firefox on a site that only works with IE, or when you pay over the odds for your PC because you can't easily get one without Windows on it (though there are lots of free alternatives which you'll never be offered in PC World, etc, because of the sorts of deals that MS ties retailers up with), or when you find that you must upgrade Windows to a more expensive version to do pretty basic things, or when a piece of hardware is declared to only work with Windows and may be Macs if your lucks in (Hello Canon!), or when you hear Steve Ballmer and feel very very queasy indeed, yes, it is reasonable to feel a passing blip of hatred.

But the key thing is to make sure the future is different... How do you do this? Well Linux is now, having installed numerous version on my netbook and various laptops, absolutely ready for the desktop. You can even buy them at Dell (well, not a great choice of models but it's getting easier and better in the USA and Europe than in the UK!) - and you can get a computer free of any operating system which will work very well when you subsequently install Linux - see Novatech and others, plus the various niche Linux machine suppliers such as UKLinux (yes, my hosts) and Linux Emporium and so on. So it's reasonable to feel hatred, but action is the path to wisdom.

Google Chromium on Linux

Date: 2009-10-21

I like Firefox and it is my favourite browser on the grounds of the superb extensions (very useful for anyone who does web development, programming, etc, for a living), but it has to be admitted that for sheer pzazz, Google's Chromium takes the biscuit. So I want it on my Fedora and Ubuntu installs... Until recently this was not so easy - especially if you wanted a stable version and not to have to use some workarounds. But now you can do a Fedora 10 or 11 install super easy

A pretty easy way (the way I did it) is to download the pre-requisite library (I think it does some of the super fast Javascript rendering stuff that is one of the big speed enhancements of chromium) rpm - at http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium - I'm on 32 bit Fedora 10 so I needed v8-1.3.13-1.20090929svn2985.fc10.i386.rpm and then you can just get the chromium rpm for your Fedora (32 bit, Fed 10 in my case). Start it up from the menu (it will have added itself to your internet browsers) and away you go - install a nice theme and wow. Chromium with the Yann-Arthus Bertrand theme (pretty pictures to remind us of our fragile planet, etc) does look spiffy. I'll add a picture. I think you can probably add a chromium repository to your repositories for fedora. That might be nice because you could then get some auto updates.

Affluenza Will Get You Down...

Date: 2009-10-14

I went to a church service at the weekend where a representative from an 'adopt a child' told us about their work with children in Guatemala and Albania. Fascinating stuff, even if it provoked a lot of questions (how do you get beyond putting plasters on gaping wounds, how do you mend a hugely dysfunctional society?). I then met a young relative at a birthday party. The little darlin', seeing presents circulating, asked for his present, so accustomed is he to a present whenever any are going around. It was a painful contrast - affluent children expecting presents as of right (he was highly put out that he did not get a present on the birthday of someone else!) while other children, elsewhere, are grateful not to starve. I guess if ever we have really hard times in the UK, and goodness knows it is easy enough to see how it could happen (peak oil, climate change, population growth, unemployment), there will be an awful lot of people coming to grips with a reality that much of the rest of the world has been living with since birth....

(Saint) Bees in My Cycle Helmet

Date: 2009-09-07

Reached the end of my sponsored bike ride after a short-ish bike ride from Cockermouth to St. Bees. A bit of a headwind. The contrast between the quaint Lake District of Keswick and Ambleside and the post industrial grimness of much of the coastal strip between the mountains and the sea was very evident. Cleator Moor seemed bleak with heavy traffic as we headed for St. Bees. Eventually reached St. Bees against a serious headwind. But the last bit to St. Bees was excellent - downhill to be precise. The priory is fascinating and has a lovely red colour (must make winter days feel warmer). Anyhow, although creaky from 100 miles yesterday, St. Bees was a delight to reach. My support team (another biker who I shamelessly slipstreamed when tired!) and I ate a heap of food at the beach cafe and took the photo to the right.... Just a matter of doing the Wastwater valley, Hard Knott and Wrynose passes, then around Langdale, over the Kirkstone up to the Settle Carlisle Railway, to get the train home. Anyone feeling like sponsoring a worthy cause (a hospice and a bowel cancer charity - see the T shirt in the photo, elegant hey?) just go to www.justgiving.com/Steve-Carr and you can be sure that it is indeed an excellent thing that you do!

Cute Adorable Puppy Linux

Date: 2009-08-17

I have been trying out using various linux flavours on my eee 901, given that the Xandros original operating system it came with is a bit wearying after a while (customisation is limited, software restricted by default to Asus software sources, look and feel is fairly dull). After a bit of playing with a few varieties of linux, I eventually tried puppy linux (100MB) and was very impressed by:

wireless just works
opens MS docs (not sure about docx though!)
flash enabled
mp3 and oggs audio work fine
function keys seem mostly to work (so can get a projector display by pressing the F8 (I think) key - useful when you use it to do presentations as I do
very speedy - even when running from usb flash
a reassuring traditional menu system with loads of software

It is a lot prettier than Asus Xandros, look more functional too. The excellence of puppy linux has made me wonder whether this might be the distro for the average windows user who wants to escape MS. Linux is certainly ready for the desktop - and puppy linux looks like a great operating system for the eee desktop.

[Later...] There is one issue with puppy linux - however much it looks nice and friendly and a great interface - and that's the oddity of running as the root user by default. A little scary. Running from usb and not saving anything makes this less scary. But usually you will want, I think, to install to the hard drive, and then you may be in trouble. If you do have the thing installed to hard drive, make sure the firewall is at high security and that you don't download any plugins that look dubious (e.g. for firefox, etc). I'm sure you can get around this by creating a local user, but it isn't, unfortunately, the default. In actual fact, I have actually installed 'easy peasy' (ubuntu derivative) to my eee 901 and it is superb - wireless, webcam, sound, citrix, all working beautifully. More about this another time....

Four Moors Route

Date: 2009-08-04

On Sunday I cycled, with a friend, over the four moors route - it takes in The Chevin, the Moor above Fewston Reservoir, Blubberhouses Moor and Ilkley Moor. Excellent ride in any decent weather, and not that far just very hilly. Tea and cakes were being sold at Fewston Church Hall, and for someone like me who has a gloomy yard but no garden it was particularly delightful sitting in the sun with tea and cake. Suprisingly busy out on the roads - the A59 (which the route follows for a small distance) was very busy. It is a great route for feeling a very long way from urban sprawl - and can include Bolton Abbey if you like, though I reckon Bolton Abbey is best avoided on a summer Sunday. The route is outlined on the BCAG website - have a look under 'routes'. I guess I've cycled it rather a lot of times over the last 8 or so years. It remains a firm favourite. There weren't many bikes about really - though stats say that there are more cyclists I suspect that there are lots more utility cyclists but not many more tourers or racers, though I'd love to be proved wrong. Perhaps the Cavendish and Wiggins brilliance in the Tour de France will bring some new people to the perfect sport... I'll post a picture of Blubberhouses Moor....

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