Windy ride

I went out on my bike again today. 23 miles on mixed surfaces. Some riverside single-track, some hateful damp grass tracks, gravel access roads and a whole lot of tarmac.

Had a run in with a douche bag in a 4x4, who beeped and pointed aggressively at a narrow pavement. I gestured and swore. He slowed but then thought better of it and sped off. Go die in a fire dude. I had every right of way. The pavement is no place for a fast slick-tyre bike. Also, I had a high visibility windbreaker and was doing near 20mph.

Trails don't just appear...

on pinkbike.com

All hail the trail-builders...

Weekend ride

Saturday's epic ride was cut short after a nasty twisted chain. I was pretty much beat anyway. :)

Akrigg makes a comeback :)

Step by step from chris akrigg on Vimeo.

Frosty but awesome

Boardman hybrid Pro

I am loving my new Boardman hybrid. Really nice kit. Thinking about adding some thicker cyclocross-esque tyres for an all-purpose urban rider. Great for the gravel tracks that cut through Newark.

Dominik Raab - Vienna 2011

Dominik Raab - Vienna 2011 from UMF Bikes on Vimeo.

Danny Macaskill: Industrial Revolutions

Danny Macaskill: Industrial Revolutions from Cut Media on Vimeo.

Santa got moves.

Merry Christmas.

Brilliant. Really kick ass brilliant.

My Mac starter pack

Last year I posted my essential free downloads for new Mac owners. With the arrival of the Mac App Store this year, and the fact that my dear friend @ImTheBigOJ has finally bought a Mac, I thought that I would revisit this topic, whilst also including a few paid apps you will love.

Applications are free unless stated.

System

I mentioned Alfred last year, over the past year it's become absolutely essential, and I'm lost on any Mac without it. Be sure to create a system-wide Alfred hotkey (i.e. ⌘ + Space). Alfred can be a supercharged Finder, app launcher, and if you learn the system commands, a terrific GTD tool.

You need Caffeine. Fact. A simple task bar icon that overrides your Mac's battery management and stops the screen dimming/going off.

CloudApp -- share screen-grabs easily.

FormatMatch -- copy and paste sans formatting (like shift-ctrl-v on a PC).

Dropbox -- what do you mean you don't use Dropbox?

TextExpander -- accelerate your workflow. Warning! Once hooked, you will need miss this like crazy if you use a machine without it ($35).

1Password -- brilliant password management software ($50).

What I said about Growl last year:

It's amazing that Apple hasn't just built Growl into the Mac. I couldn't imagine a Macintosh without it - it just wouldn't feel like a Mac. It's an app that displays messages to alert you of changes to programmes you're running. New emails, IM updates, or that a download is complete. It might sound a bit intrusive (not-to-mention anti-GTD), but the levels of customisation are insane, and you can create a version that suits your needs perfectly.

Video

Three of the apps I mentioned last year are still worth having: Perian, VLC, and Handbrake.

In addition to this list I would add the great video player MPlayerX, which is my go-to video app whenever we watch anything. It will play almost any format you will throw at it. Aces.

Other Apps

MarsEdit -- the best blogging software on any platform ($40).

Twitter for Mac. YoruFukurou is ace, but I prefer the official application (for now) -- at least while it still resembles the original Tweetie app.

Sparrow -- I prefer this lightweight IMAP client to Apple's Mail.app. Partner with a Gmail account for email perfected ($10).

If you want a simple task list for your Mac, Wunderlist is probably the best option, as it syncs with Windows, Android, iOS and Mac.

If you have a Kindle you need Calibre.

Reeder is the perfect Mac RSS reader ($10).

I think that is pretty much it for must-have apps. If you know of any application that I absolutely must add, drop me an email and I'll add to the list (and give you a credit). If there is a specific type of app you're after, email me and I'll help if I can.

Laters.

Skyrim

The blog is on hiatus while I plough through Skyrim. Awesome game.

"Rumpole of the Bailey fantasies"

Beverley Turner in The Telegraph:

In my opinion, nobody has emerged from this whole farce worse than Tom Watson. It was nauseating to watch him over-act his Rumpole of the Bailey fantasies. His theatrical buffoonery might have been entertaining if it weren’t costing so much taxpayers’ money.

The media equivalent of someone leaving a flaming paper bag full of shit on your doorstep. I'm sure the Beverley Turner had a giggle with her friends when she penned this, but she's still a prat.

Nothing to do. Seriously?

For the past few years I haven't stopped. My action folder has always contained plenty of tasks, and there has always been several projects that need progressing in some shape or form. In other words, whenever one task is completed, there is always another waiting for me.

Today I can honestly say, I have nothing to do.

There are things I should be doing, but I'm relying on a few inputs from other's before I can move forward, and I'd be more than likely wasting my time until the project specification is clear. So I'm at a loss. What to do?

I have recently been promoted, and I'm in the process of being trained in a new and exciting role. I've gone from being the Senior Planner at a large food factory, to being the group-wide network logistics planner. The scope is huge. The opportunities for making business improvements are many. And right now I have bugger all to do.

You see the role has been designed by a team of business improvement experts. They have come into the business and overhauled the logistic operations, and my role will be at the fulcrum of the new management systems. It's massively exciting but it's all new. And as today my "mentor" is in meetings all day, and I've batted off all the tasks I've been given, I'm without anything to do.

It's killing me. I cannot understand how people get through the day with nothing to do. We have people in our organisation with poor line managers who openly admit that most days they have no work to do. I find this baffling. How can you sit at your desk, at a loose end, and not take the initiative to go and find and solve a problem? In every business there are necessary tasks not being done.

If day after day, you just sit there at work pretending to look busy, while knowing full-well that you've nothing to do, then what defence will you have if one day a director passes your desk and asks, "what does this person do? Why are we paying their salary?"

You get up and you go and find something not being done. Take on a responsibility. Make an improvement. Find someone who's battling with an old creaky spreadsheet and design them a new one. Run some reports, check them, are our business assumptions correct? Help someone who's stuck trying to reconcile an inventory. There is always something you can do.

Self-worth is all about how much value you contribute to the people in your life: your relationship, your family, your friends, your employers and your colleagues. If you don't present any value to one or more of these groups, how can you be maximising your self-worth?

Anyway, that's enough from me, I'm going to find something useful to do.

A reasoned look at Atlas Shrugged

Zhizou is reading Atlas Shrugged, as usual he takes a balanced view on Rand’s canonical Objectivist text.

The bad guys are only interested in the greater good not their own selfish needs.  This is an interesting twist to make concern for others and society into “evil” and concern for personal gain into “good”.  The dichotomy is far too simplistic of course – things are rarely so black and white and good and evil are not directly linked to these two schools of thought, they – such as they exist – can be in equal measures spread across both.  Rand’s bad guys are all two-faced doublespeakers, not a backbone between them.  They are corrupt, they lie, they are “looters”.  It is quite feasible to be concerned with the good of society and not be corrupt and incompetent.  This is just silly.  What a pity she didn’t put up a real argument from a real character instead of a bunch of weak straw men.

Sparrow for iPhone

I have just spotted some excellent news over at Business Insider, the Sparrow team are working on a Gmail client for the iPhone.

I've been using Sparrow on the Mac for over a year and it's by far the best mail client I have used for OSX. I can't wait to see what they do with an iPhone app. I can move all my Gmail accounts over to Sparrow, and leave the stock mail app for Exchange.

Over in the States, Google have released an official iPhone app, and apparently it's cat-meat. Shame, the Android app is fab.

Latte Art

Makes me want a coffee..

(Via Bret Trepstra)

The moon on a stick?

From The Guardian's piece on Danica May Camacho, the world's seven billionth human:

Previous children picked out at birth by the UN to mark world population milestones have complained that the international body forgot about them later in life.

What do they expect exactly?

$25,000 every year for life, or the moon on a fucking stick? It's hardly an achievement, is it?

Fanboys. Bite me

Image by Pocheco (Creative Commons).

I've been going to write this post for a while. It's about fanboys. As someone who's always been into gaming and tech, I've had long exposure to fanboys.

I remember just before Christmas when I was a young teen (thirteen or fourteen), I had asked my parents for a Commodore Amiga -- which subsequently, they kindly bought for me. I was looking forward to Christmas morning, but every evening on the way home from school, my friend Adam would run-down the Amiga, and list all the reasons his Sega Megadrive (AKA Sega Genesis, which he had asked for) was going to be so much better.

I never challenged Adam. Not because the Amiga was inferior (it wasn't), but because even then I knew it was a waste of time. I don't enter debates when someone is fundamentally unwilling to compromise. This is why I no longer write a politics blog.

There was no-way I could say anything that would make Adam concede even the slightest point in any discussion, so why bother? To Adam the Megadrive was the dog's dangly bits, and nothing I could say could make him think otherwise. Adam was a fanboy.

A year later and Nintendo's SNES had been launched, and the second console wars had begun. If you're a man of a certain age, you know all about the SNES vs Megadrive hostilities. I got a SNES the following Christmas and Adam switched to Nintendo, and somewhat ironically, we were "allies" for a short time. This certainly made the walks to school less combative.

I imagine the N64 vs PlayStation debate was similarity bloody, but by that time I was at Uni and more concerned with getting laid. I did get an N64 though, and we had a shared PlayStation in the digs.

As regular readers will know, I've been an Apple Mac user for many years. Naturally I've also had significant exposure to the Mac vs PC debate. At work I use Windows, at home a Mac. I prefer a Mac, but I don't have any appetite whatsoever to get into an argument about it.

Probably the most vicious debate these days is about smartphones. You read the most ridiculous bullshit about smartphones. Most of the comments and tweets I read about the iPhone, are by people who've clearly not spent more than a few seconds in an O2 store with one. Likewise the idiots who claim that Android phones are over-complicated, or that there are no good apps available.

I use Macs, Windows and I have a Linux netbook. I have an iPhone 4 from work and my personal phone is a Samsung Galaxy SII rocking Android. They're all really good devices and great operating systems. And for a long time I totally loved BlackBerry.

If you like your phone, games console or computer operating system, then great. And by all means tell people how much you -- personally -- really enjoy using it. But if you're going to spend your time on Twitter or in the comments of a popular tech blog, commenting on devices or software you've never actually used seriously, then you Sir, are a moron of the highest order.

Fanboys are like the X-Factor or tabloid newspapers, they're diverting but ultimately pointless.

We're all capable and guilty of prejudice. But if you allow your loyalty to a brand (think about how stupid that sounds), to consume your ability to have a rational discussion, then you really should find a better outlet for your repressed insecurities.

This is not a blog for fanboys, this is a blog for rational geeks.

Google Maps now uses WebGL in Chrome

It's awesome. Kick-ass vector graphics, just like on Android :)

via. Google's blog