Digital Radio

We've been toying with the idea of digital radio for a while. We listen to the radio quite a lot and it's been annoying us that we get bad reception in the new house.

But DAB radio's are expensive and we've questioned the value. Several of our friends have them though - a surprising number in fact! - and with moving out of London meaning we get less access to stations like XFM that we like, we decided to look into them a bit more closely.

I, with my techie hat on, was looking for features. We like the "live pause and rewind" on our Sky+ box, and I was hoping to get that functionality in the radio too - should be simple enough you would think. I also wanted to be able to plug an iPod into it - preferable through a line-in socket. Sally, with her aesthetics hat on (we're a good team) wouldn't let me get a cheap, plastic-looking one - preferring the slightly vintage look of the Pure and Robert's models.

We tested the water by getting a cheap (£35) Roberts clock radio. A lot of our listening is done in bed as we attempt to wake up, so this seemed like a good way to try it out. And...

I was astonished!

I thought we'd get poor reception, with it constantly breaking up. But, no. DAB, here in Swindon at least, is crystal clear. We get a good range of stations. The sound quality is excellent. And the radios are incredibly easy to use - I don't say that lightly by the way, but you literally plug it in and it works with barely a button press.

We were SO impressed that we almost immediately went to Amazon and spent a lot more money on a Pure Evoke 1S for the kitchen. Which is equally easy to use, crystal clear, well built, has most of the technical features I wanted (not live pause and rewind - surprisingly few models had this!), and looks the business.

I'd happily evangelise DAB radio to anyone. If you're thinking you have reason to switch - do it!

I still think the receivers aren't particularly good value but in this case I'm happy to pay the premium for being a fairly-early adopter. Perhaps prices will come down as take-up increases? Or maybe the signal is sufficiently poor on other places to limit its take up. I guess only time will tell.

Chicago - Film, Sountrack and Musical

As one of her Christmas presents (I won't say from whom but his name begins with R and he's a very good present buyer!) Sally got two top-price tickets to the musical Chicago!

Sally loves the film version of this, I quite like it myself, and we both wanted to see it "Live". So, yesterday, off we went to London (luckily she chose to go with me), for a fun day out.

As part of the present I'd bought the CD of the soundtrack too. The film and the CD are, as you would expect highly polished, well produced, with dazzling effects, stunning performances from all the artists, and plenty of razzmatazz and razzle-dazzle.

We love the music, which is lively and varied and really captures the mood of 1920's America.

Did the stage show live up to the promise of the film and soundtrack?

Well, yes! But they we're very different. The show was...well...I guess it was more of a show. It was less polished but it knew that and made up for it by being slightly tongue-in-cheek. The show girl scene portrayed in the movie as sleazy and sensational, came across in the show as slightly silly - more Blackpool Pier than Chicago!

The stage was less sophisticated than I was expecting. It was quite a basic set up but with the band on platforms behind a limited stage space. The musicians were very prominent and played a big part in the show. There was even some clever interaction between the cast, the band and the conductor, which worked very well. The music was brilliant and I thought the band were just as much stars as the cast were.

It was highly entertaining and, while not worthy of a standing ovation, very well performed by some very fit, strong and talented people who can dance, act, sing, climb, and do acrobatics - usually more than one at the same time.

All in all it was well worth going to see. The excellent soundtrack (bar the last few tracks which are modern songs "based on" the story) will be revived occasionally I'm sure, but, as is my experience with most musical soundtracks, won't be an often-heard CD. The film, however, will be watched again and again on dull evenings that need a bit of livening up.

The Blog

I've been considering the purpose of this Blog lately

It's really only "notes to self" and yet, I started it after being inspired by other people, who were writing interesting stuff...or at least stuff about what they were up to that was of interest to me. It's stuff that I'd like good friends to be able to see, but not stuff that I want the whole world to see.

Truth is that, though there's an element of pride in having a set of hopefully interesting/funny /useful notes that others can read, I'm slightly embarassed about it. Some people recently heard that I had a Blog and all questioned with surprise..."you have a blog???". In opening it up to the world, I open myself to the critical eye of the world.

I originally set up my Blog such that people had to be approved as readers. However, I recently "imported" my Blog into my Facebook "notes" application - which meant that people could easily be updated when I post something new, and I really value having RSS feeds of other people's Blogs as it makes it easier to stay up to date. Both of these required me to open up my Blogger RSS feed, which I can only do by opening up the whole Blog to the world.

I'm nervous about this.

I don't mind people that I know are nice and won't make silly comments reading and commenting but I don't think I want everyone to see. There's a security risk in there, and, though I'm careful about what I write and I make sure I set my Blog up so that search engines aren't informed about my posts, I don't want all of what I write searchable by Google and so on.

This, though, poses some challenges.

Firstly, I don't currently have a way to only allow RSS access to a select group. I've tried importing my notes into a Wordpress setup, but this doesn't seem to allow secure RSS feeds either (if such things exist).

There's also pride in knowing who's reading too. I don't want to think I'm big because the world can read my musings and hopefully be entertained by them. But having control of who can see means I'm retaining control and I become aware of how popular I am (or am not). That could work either way.

And I'm challenged about what I'm writing too. Why am I nervous about the world seeing it? Do I not believe it? Do I not think it's interesting/useful/funny? Am I not prepared to stand by what I've written and be identified with it?

So I'm a bit confused about what to do at the moment. I think I've turned public access off, but it may be on and off for a while, while I work out what to do.

If anyone IS reading (I know at least one person is), I'd appreciate your comments and thoughts.

52 songs

Oh dear, what have I done??

Our friend Simon had his 30th birthday on 2nd December and he had a really fun party in York that we attended. He's a musician and has lots of musical friends, so part of the party was there was a PA and some musical instruments set up and a thrown-together band that played some well known party songs.

This was MOST entertaining, particularly the random, unrehearsed singalong at the end of the evening.

It gave me the (crazy, stupid) idea of having a new years resolution to learn a popular song each week. I've been playing guitar for about 8 years now and don't know many pop songs by heart, this would be a good way to learn.

Anyway, I never really thought I'd do it. But Sally's gone and bought me some chord books of pop songs for Christmas, so I guess I have to.

I doubt I'll make one per week, but I'll start a new thread here and maybe use it to keep people posted on how I'm getting on (if at all). Maybe this is a good way to be accountable and have people suggest songs too. If you're one of my limited readership, feel free to post comments or email me suggestions/ideas.

Thoughts turn to what the first few songs might be. "Love me do" by the Beatles is a good choice as it REALLY is three chords and has simple words. Though Robbie Williams' "Angels" may also be a good start as I sort-of learnt it before. Or maybe a Christmas song...especially as I've been playing LOTS on Christmas Carol services at church of late.

An update sometime soon...I hope.

Dress Codes

Another comment that I made on another persons Blog that I wanted to copy here. It took me a while to write and contains a funny story from a business meeting, so I wanted to include it as a "note to self" of my own.

The other-Blog author, is actually a friend of Sally's, but he's an excellent writer and has been keeping a very entertaining Blog of his time as an Englishman in Brazil. His writing was one of the things that inspired me to take up my own note taking here, but the quality and entertainment value of his posts is far greater than mine.

Links:
- Maps and Legends: Dave Maclure's Blog
- The specific post I commented on

---
In response to "Things I love about Brazil #25: informal dress codes"

I'm still reading and still enjoying your writing. Hope you don't mind. I particularly like your random numbering of "things I miss...things I love..."!!

I was thinking about dress codes the other day. I was in a business meeting with a supplier. The guys from the supplier company were both wearing suits. But us as "supply-ees" were, at best, smart casual. (In amusing contrast, someone had bought along some Chuppa Chupps lollipops, so we were all sat there eating kids' candy...in suits...bizzare)

It reminded me that I hate wearing suits. I feel like a fraud in them. It's not who I am. But I am pretty clean-cut, and I find myself frowning at people who dress really scruffily. And yet, that's who they are. They'd feel like a fraud wearing what I wear. I don't wear suits, but I AM a clothing snob!

Brazil sounds like the kind of place where you can just be yourself. Whereas in England we're forced to dress certain ways at certain times. I wonder why that is and what it achieves?

Hmmm...

File Sharing

I've mentioned Iko, the excellent band that a friend of ours is in, before. The lead singer of the band recently posted an message on his MySpace Blog about filesharing. I spent some time writing a response and wanted to copy my thoughts here. The full thread can be found on MySpace here.

Ultimately, Kieran was starting a discussion about file sharing, whether or not it's beneficial to the music industry, or should it be banned in some way. He hadn't asked a specific question, just wanted to see what people's thoughts were.

---

Hi Kieran and other folks,

I consider myself pretty old-school, I like cover artwork and inlays, I like to have a physical item in my music collection. Not everyone is like me.

I don't do piracy. At least, I always pay for music that's in my collection because it has value. Not everyone is like me.

Hmm....piracy. It's not new. It's not just that we're all selfish now...we've always been selfish! Hands up all those that copied CD or tapes (remember them) before computers and the Internet were fast enough to make MP3's and file sharing a reality? All that's changed is that it's quicker and easier to copy and swap music and, with digital, you don't lose quality with each copy.

But the technology has improved in leaps and bounds - faster than the industry can cope with, it seems.

The Internet truly is a double-edged sword.On the one hand:
- it has made it easy for new bands to promote themselves.
- it removes barriers and makes people equal; Iko probably have as much power as Radiohead on the Internet.
- it has the potential to create an environment where only truly good music thrives because you can try stuff for free and if it's no good you'll leave it and move on to something else quickly (as Dean does).
- it has potential to remove the middle men (distributors and record shops) and have more of the cost of music going direct to the artist...or to even reduce the cost of music in the same way (most people I know that copy stuff do so because they think/know they're being ripped off by the distributors and shops).

So there's a lot of good things about using the internet for music.

On the other hand it has turned music into "just information" that can very easily be passed between people at no cost. In some cases this may be to the benefit of the artist; especially to a decent new act just starting out who wants to get their sound "out there". However, I suspect that in many cases it can be crippling as the monetary value is removed from the art.

I work with technology a LOT. It is a tool. It is a means to an end. You don't own a hammer for the sake of owning a hammer, you own it so you can hit things with it. And like any tool, it can be used, and it can be ab-used. I can use my hammer to hit people, for instance, which isn't very nice (I don't, by the way)

File sharing is a tool. I'm sure it has many legal, useful purposes and that's why it exists. Sadly it seems to be abused more and more. And, oddly, I find that people who are normally kind, sensible, good-moraled, law-abiding citizens, have no problem with using computers for piracy, and seem to think that it's stupid that they have to pay for stuff that they can freely copy around.

So what can we do?

Just banning/outlawing p2p file sharing is impractical and unlikely to help. People will just find other ways.

We can fight technology with technology. DRM (digital rights management) is another method of protecting the artists rights. Giving the purchaser the ability to use the file on a limited number of devices, or for a limited length of time. Sadly this is more complex than it seems. What if I replace my computer and can no longer use that file? That's unfair is it not? People will always crack the technology anyway, rendering it useless. And the technology industry will always want to make as much hard cash as possible, and so you end up with not one technology, but several, with each technology onwer hoping that theirs will become the big one! (e.g. VHS/Betamax, or the recent HD DVD wars). There are many reasons why this isn't a great solution.

Education is not likely to work either. There will always be people who just don't care.

OK - I'm out of ideas. This whole new internet world needs some real creative thinking to work out how artists can best make use of it. Perhaps that's why Kieran started this discussion? The world is not the one we used to know and we're still mapping out the Internet and forming the unspoken rules and morals that surround it.

Have I helped the discussion? Probably not, K didn't ask a direct question, so I've not sought to answer one - in fact, I've raised a few of my own.

What's encouraging is that there seem to be people who share the values that make the internet good. To all the commenters above - good on 'ya. Perhaps one way we can all help is to help is to spread the word about how artists deserve and need the cash. Perhaps we can be role models in that, speak up for the artists, challenge those we know who copy and file share.

After all, we're right that it's wrong.

Aren't we?

Shelf hanging - a lesson in trust!

Now here's a thing that's quite contrary. I'm not a very trusting person, while at the same time, I tend to believe what people tell me.

I think it's all down to experience.

If someone says, for example, that they've got tickets to go see the Spice Girls at Wembley stadium. As long as it's not said with a fairly strong tone of irony or sarcasm, I'll believe that!It's pretty believable.

If, however, my wife told me that she'd had a piece of toast with peanut butter and really enjoyed it, I probably wouldn't take her word for it, and would insist on checking the jar. If something seems unlikely to me, I will check it out. This sounds reasonable, but I often feel like I'm unnecessarily doubting people when such things happen.

And so, with my sense of mistrust on red-alert, I was confronted with shelf hanging. Our house has lots of bare walls, which with a few planks of wood, can easily be utilised as storage space.

A quick trip to B&Q to buy the aforementioned wall furniture, and a drill, and we were off! Sally claimed I went a bit "drill crazy" at first - she probably had a point. We have a lot of holes to make!

But, while confident with making holes, I had doubts about the fittings. Most of the shelves we hung were held up by little "keyhole" fixings. A small, thin plate of metal, with a keyhole-shaped hole in it, that hung over a single wall screw.

And the instructions tell me that two of these little things will hold 25 kilograms?! That's 25 litres of water? It's more than a third of my body weight? Over 3 times the weight of an official men's shotput shot? And the average weight of an antarctic cod? (I'm open to other suggestions as to what this is the equivalent of)

Yeah, right!

And so, with the shelves up, I nervously started loading them up. I have no experience of this kind of thing, but I know that recipe books are heavy. I was very tentative. I told Sally to keep the heavy ones on the worktop - no Nigel Slater or Nigella up there!! I tried to carefully distribute the load between the two supports. I went round inspecting them every day for about a week. I cautiously pulled them occasionally to check that they'd take a little more weight.

It was very much a test of faith!

Lots of DIY seems to be like this. Trying it out, sometimes failing, learning as you go, but having the confidence to have a go in the first place, and to try again if you fail. I'm very much having to overcome some of my doubts and trust what people tell me in order to get things done.

It turns out that shelves are pretty sturdy, and two little metal plates can take a fair bit of weight - I don't know that I've risked 25kg yet and I don't have any shot or antarctic cod to test it with, but we've got some heavy - and fragile - stuff, hanging on the walls of our kitchen now.

Not only that, but I'm now a fully competent, drill-crazy, shelf hanger!

A few USEFUL things that I learned along the way:

1. Those keyhole fittings should definitely be flush with the bracket - if you buy cheap shelves with badly pre-cut holes, make sure that you enlarge the holes rather than forcing the bracket in.
   
2. If you have a large wall space that you want to put a LONG shelf in (we've done this in our utility room), don't try to hang one super-long shelf with more than two supports. Correctly aligning more than two supports such that a shelf rests flush on top of them is very hard. Use two shorter shelves instead!
3. Screwing the shelf to the supports is easiest done if you pre-drill the holes. Put the shelf in place, mark up where the holes should be, hold it all still, drill the holes (with light pressure - shouldn't have to push hard to get through the wood), and then take it off the wall to screw together. (There's probably a "proper" way to do this, but I found this method much easier than screwing it together while the shelf was on the wall. In fact, the pressure required to screw the shelf to the support whilst on the wall seemed to exceed the 25kg and bend the keyhole bracket!!)

Bike Radar

Bit of a plug...the BikeRadar web site is really taking off and if full of useful info. I was just looking through it and I keep coming across more and more useful stuff. Like:

• A guide to chainsets
• A Q&A about chronic fatigue (which I MIGHT have been suffering from earlier in the year)
• Stuff about forks and bottom brackets
• A review of different sorts of winter gloves (lots of good reasons to have cycling-specific gloves - on my Christmas wish-list now!!!)
• Articles on riding technique including road positioning...
  
• and handling complex junctions and roundabouts (very much needed in Swindon!)
• A blog article on the joy of commuting by bike (with hints and tips)
• Why chocolate is great
• Why some cereals aren't so great
• Why ginger is REALLY great

The forums are full of useful help and advice too.

Sometimes the Internet is just SO useful - even if it does waste many hours of my time.

Cycle scheme = NEW BIKE!!!

This is VERY exciting. My work have set up a cycle-to-work scheme. This is a government initiative designed to encourage people to cycle to work. Which I do anyway, but it's still a real treat.

What happens is this. I go out bike shopping to buy myself some new wheels to ride to work on, and any associated safety equipment I need. My employer buys this stuff, and I rent it back from them for 12 months, making 12 monthly payments to cover the cost of the kit. BUT, because my employer buys the bike, they don't pay VAT, so I get 17.5% off. AND, I pay before tax and National Insurance are deducted, so I get about another 30% off! AND I get it all on a 12 month interest-free loan!

At the end of the 12 months I get to buy the bike for a nominal fee - usually 5% of its cost.

Doing the maths, this means I can buy a nice, say, £600 road bike and get about 49% off the cost!

This is exactly what I'm doing.

I looked at 3 bikes: the Giant SCR2 (I think it was SCR2) a something like £525, the KONA Zing (£999 reduced to £695) and the Felt Z90 (£600).

The Giant didn't really do much for me at all. You pretty much got what you paid for, and the shop that had it would only sell at RRP, not doing any discounted bikes on the cycle scheme that we're signed up to at work.

The KONA was a VERY pretty bike, well equipped and great value with the £300 knocked off, but it was a racing bike really. Low position and very hard ride. The higher spec was tempting but in the end the Felt beat it on comfort and suitablility for the kind of riding that I'm doing.

So I have a Felt Z90 on order. Aluminium frame, carbon forks, 27 gears, mostly Shimano equipped. It has a slightly more upright riding position and the extra chain ring (that's a 3rd big ring by the pedals), bar-top brake levers and softer ride made it a good buy, and very suitable for the training/touring kind of rides that I'm doing.

It takes a while to process the paperwork for the cycle scheme but hopefully I'll have it before Christmas!!! Yipeee!!!!

Bikish - the language of cycling

So, I'm getting pretty into this cycling lark, but there are a few things that still baffle me. Cycling, like many other hobbies, has a language of its own, and experienced participants use it freely without really thinking about poor beginner like me who don't know their cranksets from their cassettes and their bar ends from their bottom brackets.

I've been looking into new bikes and doing some maintenance so I've been struggling myself. The component manufacturers don't help by naming equipment in the same sort of way that car manufacturers give names to cars. How am I supposed to know the difference between Sora, Tiagra, Ultegra, 105, Dura Ace and so on, easily, without having to research it all the time? Surely there's an easier way?

And sometimes things are known by different names. I still haven't worked out if a crank is different from a crankset, or a chain different from a chainset. There's subtle differences between hubs and axles, and it's not clear whether I can replace just one, or just the other, or if I always need to replace both. There's seat stays and seat posts, which are very different. It's all very confusing!

Anyway, here's a useful article that has helped me a little.

http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/buyers-guide-to-road-chainsets-118

My original intention for this post was to list some cycling terminology that I've learned the meaning of and try to keep that up to date, but that's a bit of a waste of time as there are plenty of resources out there that have already done it. If you're reading this on the internet then look it up on Google, Wikipedia, or your information source of choice.

In the meantime, I'm continuing my learning.

Drenched...but the first time in a long time

I read an interesting statistic a while back that basically said that if you commute by bike in the UK, despite our highly changable weather, you'll only cycle in the rain 12 times a year, on average.

Hard to believe, but, today I cycled in proper rain for the first time in AGES. It's the first time I've tried out my day-glo waterproof in real rain and I first posted about that on October 3rd. OK, I did have a week off driving to work (why was that??? can't remember now), but it kinda helps prove the point.

Anyway, the waterproof proved to be very much so but I got very soggy bottoms and socks and shoes. Riding home in wet gear isn't fun. Must remember waterproof over-trousers and over-shoes next time.

I have a bit of a backlog of posts to write but not much time at the moment. Hopefully I'll get to catch up soon. Sally's not so well tonight so she's gone to bed early and I get a little time that I wouldn't normally have. Bless her.

£50 million and a wobbly wheel

50 million quid for improving cycle routes is up for grabs!

Two quick things. One is that there's this competition going on where four projects have the chance to win £50 million of lottery money in a public vote. One of the projects is being put forward by Sustrans (a sustainable transport organisation) to improve walking and cycling paths, including the National Cycle Network, across the country.

Of course, I have a vested interest in this, being a cyclist, but I also think that it's the only nationwide project, the others are all specific to one place. Yes, they're all great projects, but the best use of public money is surely to improve access to cycle routes?

Some cyclists are very much against this, assuming that, if there are designated cycle routes, then we'll be forced to use them (and they're not very good for serious mountain biking or road riding as they're mostly paths used for leisure rides and shared with pedestrians), but the National Cycle Network is a great way for a beginner cyclist to discover longer rides, and was very much part of my catching of the cycling bug!

So, if you don't know about it, or don't really care which project gets the money, I DO! So please vote for Sustrans. Details on the competition here and details of the Sustrans Project "Connect2" here.

My Wobbly Wheels

In other, more personal cycle-related news, my rear wheel is wobbling again. I thought I'd done a grand job of repairing the broken spokes, but it seems to still be uneven and, when I hit about 25 mph, it starts to shake me around a bit.

But what to do? I've had a good go at truing up but without expensive tools it'll never be perfect. Should I buy a new wheel? Hmm...