Archives: October
Monday, October 31st
Joined up government
Channel five news did a feature on the whole binge drinking/24 hour licence thing earlier, in which they included a clip of Tessa Jowell saying something along the lines of:
"Just because a few individuals might act in an anti-social manner, we should not restrict the freedoms of the majority of citizens"
This from the government which wants ID cards, imprisonment without trial, etc, etc.
On a loosely related note, the BBC have put an unofficial 'Citizenship Test' online. I got 7 out of 14, and without being too arrogant, I suspect the majority of people born and brought up in Britain would not do any better. Does this mean we are not worthy to live in this country? Are we a threat to the nation? You tell me.
posted by David @ 09:24 PM [link]
Thursday, October 27th
Time for work
Soundtrack: System of A Down - SOAD
You wake up. It's early. Too early by far. A thursday morning. Far enough into the week to make the weekend tantalisingly, frustratingly close - but not close enough that you don't have to get up.
It's time to go to work. It's cold and it's still dark. Is riding 12 miles to work really a good idea?
You get kitted up, winter gear keeping the warmth of the morning cup of tea inside. You fire the bike up and slice your way through the village and out into the countryside, just the sound of the engine and the songs inside your head for company.
The road emerges from between a canopy of trees and the landscape opens up before you. You open the throttle and chase the pinky-orange glow of the rising sun. The traffic's light and the road is twisty.
You hit the city and the traffic. Rows of metal cages crawling towards the centre. You are uncaged, you can slip between the bars, use the space that noone else can.
You arrive at work. 8 hours at a desk, but at the end of it there's the ride home....
Would I swap commuting on the bike for the car? Not a chance.
posted by David @ 07:36 PM [link]
Tuesday, October 18th
Zip Merging
Soundtrack: Dead Kennedies - Plastic Surgery Disasters
I've been taking the van into work this week, and it's reminded me of one of my pet motoring hates - the inability of the British motoring public to cope with the concept of zip merging.
The popular cliche is that the British are a nation which loves queueing, always saying "No, after you...". While this may be the case in normal life (and to be honest I doubt it) it ceases to apply the minute we sit behind the wheel of a car.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, zip merging is a way for traffic in two lanes to merge into one. Vehicles use both lanes up to the point of the lane merge, and then merge in turn into the remaining lane - one from the left, one from the right, and so on. Sounds simple enough doesn't it? It's used all over continental Europe and no doubt elsewhere - so why can't we do it here?
Part of the blame has to fall on the Government for their persistent failure to write it into the Highway Code, so that new drivers are taught that this is the way it works. Motoring groups such as the Institute of Advanced Motorists and others have been campaigning for this for years. There seem to be a few pilot cases about (the A4174 Bristol ring road is one I have noticed) but there is no sign of it becoming universally applied. However even if it is included in the Highway Code, what proportion of drivers actually look at it once they have passed their tests? Not many. It should be included, but it isn't going to change things overnight.
Part of the blame must also be placed on the road designers who lay out our slip roads. On the vast majority of slip roads there is no clearly defined merge point - the lane just gets narrower and narrower until it comes to a point. What use is a lane that is half a car width? Again if we look to the continent, we find that most slip roads run alongside the road as a complete lane for several hundred yards before ending fairly quickly - there is a clearly defined point at which the merge should take place in heavy traffic. With the British style of slip road there will always be people who merge earlier and people who carry on right to the end. Not something which encourages merging in turn.
Please note that I am talking about merging in heavy traffic conditions here, in light traffic merging can and of course should occur wherever along the sliproad enables the vehicle to smoothly join the main road traffic
There are all sorts of other reasons to adopt continental style slip roads, but I'm not going to veer off into those here. The good news is I seem to be noticing more and more of them over here. Even if this became the standard however, there are all sorts of other situations in which lane merging is necessary (roadworks, ends of dual carriageways, etc).
So unfortunately, the main portion of blame has to land fair and square on the head of the driver. Zip merging requires two things - leaving a reasonable gap between your vehicle and the one in front, and being prepared to let someone pull into it. The 'Average British Driver' (TM) seems incapable of either of these.
Presumably the reason is the irrational obsession that we must get to our destination as quickly as possible. Actually no, that's not the irrational part. All of us are in a hurry from time to time. The irrational part is the belief that letting the odd person out in front of you is going to have a huge effect on your journey time, and also that you get wherever you are going quicker if you sit on the bumper of the car in front than if you sit a safe distance behind.
The 'two-second rule' - think about it. It's drummed into us all as a rule of thumb when we are learning to drive. What it means in this context is that tailgating someone instead of following at a safe distance means you get home *two seconds* later! Oh No! And if letting someone out in front of you means traffic flows more smoothly, then you will get home quicker!
Sadly I have no great faith in this happening, but then most of the time I'm not sat in the car, I'm on the bike and filtering past the whole lot of them. Mwahahaha.
posted by David @ 06:24 PM [link]
Monday, October 17th
Road Trip
Soundtrack: Sonic Boom Six - Sounds to Consume
Having completely failed to see Tom (friend from school) in far too long, an invitation to go to his housewarming party on Saturday night couldn't be refused, even if said house is in (urgh) London (or Brixton to be more precise).
The one thing I do refuse to do however is try and drive into London on four wheels, so the first obstacle was how to fit two people, overnight stuff and two sleeping bags onto the Ninja. We finally managed to squeeze everything other than the sleeping bags into a tank bag and bungee the sleeping bags on in a way that still allowed Sarah to get her feet onto the pillion pegs. Time to hit the M1.
Within about 20 miles I remembered why I hate riding on the motorway (I can't remember the last time I did any significant motorway mileage, and I don't think the Ninja's been on one more than three or four times since I've had it). It's long, straight and incredibly tedious. On a reasonably powerful bike this is a bad thing because it's far too tempting to wind the throttle on and get there a bit quicker. That said, even averaging somewhere between 70 and 80 most of the way down, there were plenty of people coming past. One guy came past in a Mini Cooper Cabrio just before we ran out of motorway - I chased him up to about a ton and he was still pulling away quickly. Going round the roundabout at the end of the motorway we saw him again, parked next to a police car. Silly.
Crossing London was the usual blend of insane filtering and idiot drivers. Not fun, but my hastily scribbled directions in the top of the tankbag served us well and we drove straight to Tom's house without a wrong turning.
Having arrived somewhat early we had plenty of time to walk to the local Tesco and procure booze and pies to keep us going for the night. Went back and the usual house party carnage ensued. Good fun.
Return journey was more of the same, with the added comedy of "is it going to make it back without running out of fuel cos I can't be arsed to stop again". Get back and collapse on sofa to watch MotoGP. Wicked.
posted by David @ 06:24 PM [link]
Tuesday, October 11th
Geeking
Soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze
I have a new project.
Now that my parents have finally bought a new PC (about ten years too late) their old P166 box is surplus to requirements. Now I'd read somewhere a while ago that you could make a perfectly adequate Linux fileserver out of an otherwise obsolete box, and as it happens I have been toying with options for storage of the vast amounts of music and video that are filling up the HD of this machine. Time to have a play.
I should add at this point that I have no experience of either Linux or file servers generally, so this could be an entertaining learning curve.
So dad brought it up today and it is now sitting on the living room floor waiting for a bit of a clean up of what's on there already. Unfortunately, I didn't allow for the box being old enough to require a serial mouse and some strange huge keyboard connection, neither of which we have here, so it's going to have to wait till I can get dad to bring up the original keyboard and mouse. D'oh.
I may have to use the intervening time to open up the box and clean out the 15 years of dust that is no doubt hiding inside it.
posted by David @ 07:30 PM [link]
Sunday, October 9th
But why is Rock City so sticky?
Mood: Poorly
We finally managed to make it into Nottingham yesterday after a month of living here - actually we went twice, once during the day to investigate the shopping prospects (many good CD shops!) and again in the evening for our first trip to Rock City. Good fun. We spent most of the time in the main room. Highlight was an entire roomful of people skanking to System of a Down (Radio/Video). Quite amusing.
However I am now quite poorly and snotty, and have been sat in front of the computer all day trying to finish off the bike club website.
posted by David @ 12:51 PM [link]
Monday, October 3rd
Broadband I up!
Soundtrack: Million Dead - Harmony No Harmony
Finally, we have a decent internet connection! I have been celebrating this fact by trying to finish off the shiny new bike club website.
Now I have washing-up to do.