Talking Bad

The last few gripping episodes of Breaking Bad are playing out through September, and it's interesting to see the way they are testing new ways of social viewing. The series is on AMC in the USA and has a Sunday 9pm slot.

There's a follow-up TV show called Talking Bad, to review the episode, in a way that is similar to the post-mortems of talent show contests here in the UK.

We don't have Breaking Bad shown on normal television here in the UK, although the Netflix version is available from sometime late on Sunday evening.

It's an interesting development comprising the show, the post show review and also a parallel internet dialogue running at showtime, which includes various votes and similar.

I don't know whether it will ever be shown here on terrestrial or satellite, but it would be difficult to recreate the US style experience. I wonder if there will be similar experiments with UK programming, other than cringe-worthy reality shows?

apple iTarte

We've been eating apples from the garden and have plans for a few more to go into some kind of tarte tatin.

The apples are the dessert rather than cooking kind, which should actually work better for the upside-down recipe. Caramelise the halved apples, top with shortcrust, bake, invert. Eat.

in which the hybrid bike gets its climbing gears

I took a few snapshots during the bike cog switchover the other day.

The result is that the hybrid bike now has a slick twenty speed climbing gearset(2x10), which breathes new life into it.

The old 9 speed deraillier was from a mountain bike and the handlebar selectors were 3x9. Note the direct cable routing, rather than a road bike's typical loop.

The previous gears on the bike were actually a 10 speed, so it's a bit mixed up before I start. It was 2x10 running on 3x9 selectors and a 9 speed rear deraillier plus a stretched chain. Oops.

I thought I'd sort out the front selectors too. The old 9 speed did work across the 10 gears, but it would be easier to put on a proper spare set of 10 speed.

They are SRAM flat handlebar selectors, with those little indexing windows. Ideal as I'll also use this converted bike with the turbo trainer.

Ping out the rear wheel. Find the new rear gear cassette. Somewhat bigger and a lot shinier than the old one.

Remove the old cogs with one of those special spanners. I always struggle to work out which way round to put the chain spanner, to get leverage.

There. New cogs installed. They only fit one way, thanks to the little indexing tabs on the bike hub. Its the same indexing for Shimano and SRAM. The original rear gear was Shimano, then a temporary SRAM and now this new one.

I noticed a couple of loose spokes during the process and have re-tightened them. I know they are inexpensive wheels, but a separate future project will be to get some improved wheels for the carbon bike and hand the current carbon bike's wheels down.

Time to break the bike chain and remove the rear deraillier.

I recalculate the length of the new chain instead of just copying the length of the old one. The new one should, in theory, be longer, but the calculation of 'tight around the biggest gears + 1 link + the Powerlink means it will actually be slightly shorter than the one it is replacing.

Remove the rear derailler with an allen key, then clean the rear hanger before putting everything back.

The replacement deraillier is bolted on via allen key.

Reattach the wheel with it's sparkling gear.

Rethread the chain and new cables, having first checked the deraillier alignment. Remember to pull the new cables tight before screwing them into place. Cut with a proper cable cutter and add those little caps.

Flick through the gears up and down a few times in both big ring and small ring positions (i.e. all 20 gears) to check alignment. Make micro adjustments (the last millimetre) using the black twisty wheels by the black outer cables.

Add a Garmin sensor, so that the bike counts wheel revolutions (speed) and cadence; useful on the road and also with the turbo.

And,'hey presto' a bike. There's still a few more things to adjust, but it is back in action. Elapsed time, with coffee, around one and a half hours.

According to the Garmin, I've put about 100 miles on it since I swapped it around and it's pretty much bedded in. So much smoother than previously. I guess the proper SRAM 10 speed chain helps! It may not be the fastest bike, but a very entertaining ride.

can't see the top of the Shard

Around the City of London today.

I looked over towards the Shard and Canary Wharf. They were both shrouded in cloud. The grey skies are back and I'd even packed an umbrella into my bag.

sneaky september spiders

Todays's specimen was a Buzzing Spider, which was looking at me from a door frame. Yesterday there was a small wolf spider. The bouncy kind that tried to jump out of the tumbler used to catch it before moving it back outdoors.

You know. Cover it with a tumbler. Gently slide a card underneath. Invert. Carry outdoors. Tip onto foliage.

And the day before that we had a long leggy house spider.

The low-key invasions started promptly at the beginning of September (which I think of as spider month). As the weather starts to change, a few errant spiders make their way indoors, mainly on the lookout for mates and probably less successful at being spiders indoors than outside. Other than the house spiders, most of them do a lot better in the open, with a combination of water and small flying things to support them.

We usually liberate them again, and it seems to be my job to do this, occasionally finding an area of the house cordoned off with that yellow and black warning tape until I can intervene.

arty ways to get an iPhone 5C for $29?

The economical method could be to get one of those new 5C cases for the iPhone5 instead?

It would stand out as a 'black dot' edition. Like a powerful Black edition car. Only it's a phone.

A more expensive option could be to slip a Damien Hirst picture in between the iPhone 5 and the 5C case to make something unique.

Okay, maybe a smaller Damien Hirst would work better?

Or just wrap polka dots around the outside in a kind of Yayoi Kusama tribute?

Until the iPhone 6, of course.

bicycle's new cogs on test spin around virtual Madrid with Trainerroad

I whipped the new cogs and shifters onto the silver pub bike, which now has a very skittish personality. This was the plan, of course.

I'll probably add a few pictures of the change when I have more time.

So far I've only taken it out for a quick spin to the nearest wiggly lane. I don't like going far on a revised bike until I've had a chance to ensure everything is working properly. It's already quite fun having it set up so differently from my usual carbon bike. More upright, straight handlebars, MTB clickers and I'd forgotten how slippery the leather saddle can be. I should have done this sooner.

I've added a spare Garmin sensor and a heavy duty rear skewer, so its fully turbo compatible in preparation for the darker months ahead.

Just for fun I clipped it into the Bushido and tried one of those virtual reality videos of a spin around Madrid. I used Trainerroad on a PC as the testbed, and a Ride Fit video.

It was good fun although madrileños have different biking rules from here in the UK, with added creative use of pavement areas. The video shows that there's a pretty good biking infrastructure around the city. My actual visit to Madrid remembers some significant slopes, although this ride seems to be along flatter parts by the river and through an area of the centre.

I used the turbo ride as a bike test and to ensure that all the various sensors and links are working. So far so good, although I have a feeling that getting the TACX software to run properly will be more of a challenge than Trainerroad, which just works.

turning the hybrid bike into a 20 speed hill climber

No, the picture is not a ninja shuriken, I'm just starting a bike modification that I've been idly considering for a few months.

In truth, another cyclist's exploits on hills finally spurred me on.

I should explain.

I have an aluminium hybrid whose gears were a bit mashed. I'd already transferred an old 10 speed cartridge onto the back wheel as a replacement, but as the rest of the bike was 9 speed it was only interim.

The 9 speed changer with a 10 speed cartridge

Despite the hurried changeover, the full range of gear changes worked, even with a 9 speed handlebar selector. Just keep shifting, the clicker didn't seem to mind. All 18 gears worked although the 9 speed chain ran a bit lumpily around the smallest cogs. Now's the time to turn this slightly sad bicycle into one with some happy personality.

So here's my combination project:

1. To take off the mis-matched 11-24 rear gears and put on a hill climbing 11-32 set. A wider range of gears, for the entertainment value. At the same time, to change over the current 9 speed mountain bike style rear deraillier for a normal 10 speed road changer. Eagle-eyed would spot that currently the cable goes direct instead of 'around' at the back.
2. Standardise on one make of components. It's 2/3 SRAM and 1/3 Shimano at the moment. Pragmatically SRAM therefore wins.
3. To exchange the front gear selector for a 10 speed so that there are the right number of clicks. The SRAM decision gives me an excuse to use Doubletap.
4. To use 'indexed' selectors so that I can read the gear selected as a little number on the handlebar. I wouldn't normally worry about this, but I'm thinking of also using the bike with with the turbo trainer in winter. A visible gear selection could therefore be quite handy.
5. To add an ANT+ sensor, so that it can commune with the other bike equipment and sensors. It will probably be WiFi, ANT+, bluetooth and -er- Wifli enabled (!)

Prior 9 speed selector, hanging around

Excluding the climber gear cassette, I already had most of the bits and pieces lying around, making this an inexpensive project.

Although, I must admit, when the new gear cassette arrived I started to wonder what I'd done. It's like a saucer compared with the beer mat sized one on there at the moment.

I'll try to swap it over outdoors on a dry day when I can take a few photos. It shouldn't take too long and should make quite an interesting contraption. A flexibly geared hybrid that also suits turbo use. I've also liberated a Brooks saddle and some fancy bar ends, so this neglected bike could be quite fun by the time it is finished.

in which I try immobilise tags for the bikes

I've been using that useful free Immobilise.com web site for some time to register valuable items.

It only really takes one splurge to set up, based on initially the most valuable/vulnerable items. Initially I simply listed a few things like iPhones and laptop computers and then have occasionally added a few more things like cameras and fancy lenses. It's good because you can list the items and then progressively fill in more info when there's time. An example was the various computers. I could list them and then add the serial numbers when I was next on the relevant device. I suppose it could be extended to anything with a serial number and does have the advantage of keeping all the information in one place.

The web-site lets you list the item, its serial number(s), identifying marks and even add notes and some photos. It's the citizen half of the National Mobile Property Register, which is the bit that the police use to identify stolen/lost property.

Police forces as well as main luggage handling services like railways and airlines all use this to follow up on serial numbers and markings to identify and re-unite property with owners.

I thought I'd extend it to my bicycles and sent away for their (paid for) Immobitag, which is a simple RFID device which is pushed into the bike frame, effectively providing a permanent electronic tag. Once its installed, it is almost impossible to remove, because its like a one way springy thing that embeds low into a tube on the bike.

A simple idea. It's not like the tracker on my car which sends out a signal if its been moved without authorisation, but it's still a useful additional aid to crime prevention.

I'm told the mainly free scheme works by the sale of the 'extras' like sheets of traceable tags and marker pens, so I don't mind spending a few bob to show some support.

The Drowned Man - Punchdrunk

A few of us visited the National Theatre/Punchdrunk's excellent 'The Drowned Man' in the mysterious dilapidated building by Paddington Station. I've blogged about it previously, and the first time I saw it was part of the early previews.

My gang of accomplices were also seasoned Punchdrunkers, so when we arrived at the allotted nine pm start time, we were the first through the doors into the black labyrinth which precedes the first view of the film studio.

Suitably masked we were bundled into a creaky 'Tower of Terror' style lift and dispatched onto different floors of the building. The pictures here are Punchdrunk PR shots, I wouldn't take photos in a theatre performance. Rest assured though, that it is possible to get very close to the action and to explore the whole environment.

I noticed that the whole start-up process has been slickened since I last attended and I had a similar feeling about the event as a whole.

I'd also had time to process my prior experiences including that the original Georg Büchner play Woyzeck (on which this is partly based) had been discovered as fragments and then assembled. It seems to fit with this production, which can be likened to the clips of a film, being discovered in a random sequence. There's also a kind of negative and positive reconstruction of the same story, which isn't explained and takes a little while to fall into place.

This time, I arrived in the middle of a set of caravans, in darkened zone close to a mysterious chapel, which was gently leaking a liquid. The moisture heightened a damp underfoot aroma as I made my way through hanging laundry and towards a small woodland. Our group was already dispersed by this time, and I truthfully didn't see two of them again at all until around midnight after the performance.

I decided to get myself further lost and moved away from this initial environment, to a vast desert where two men sat alone playing a slow motion game to win drinks from a bottle of tequila.

There was an advantage to being early to the party, to see a few scenes before the inevitable crowds of spectral viewers arrived.


The play features a madness, and actors sometimes psychotically see the masked people watching them. At other times they look straight past, even in moments of intense close encounter.

For me, this version was very different from previously. I'd arrived at a different point, knew some of the scenes, but was also surprised at how much more there was to see. There were a couple of whole places that I remembered but didn't find again at all on this visit.

Imagine a complex of American movie sets, plus some of the surrounding environment. During the preview it was positioned that the scenes were in the London outpost of the Hollywood studio.

This time it was firmly American. Some of the detailing had been changed, but there was still a brooding ambient soundtrack which sometimes swelled to a full-on movie climax. It was difficult to not be affected by this and at one point I followed sounds which seemed to have been deliberately reversed to further disorientate.

There's a darkness to the storylines too. Movies, power, sex, voodoo, quasi-religion, symbolism, experiments, menace. And if you try to follow the light it can still lead you away from the path.

This time I spent more time discovering further secrets and the hidden passageways that link things together. There's a delight in delving into a changing room wardrobe, wondering what's there and discovering a disturbingly long and winding path through hanging black curtains to another entirely different environment. Or hanging around in a deserted cinema to see if a movie will play - or just as importantly, what is the other side of the screen.

It was a good hour and a half before I found the bar, which is the only place in the whole building where masks can be removed. It was lively and full, with a torch singer and a very cool bluesy/jazzy band playing. A place to hang out in its own right, except there was still more to see and experience.

I'd taken my own route through most of the show, but there were others who would follow a character along and I noticed at various points when a character arrived at the bar another 20 or more people would follow.

It's still a mystery to me how there can be 600 visitors to this performance yet I could be in whole areas alone. As an example I arrived in a vast chequered floored area alone, saw a central column with a postcard, noticed two people lying prone on the floor and then spied a man watching from behind a column. I won't say more, but it takes a moment and some caution to approach the couple.

I realise I'm not really dealing with the story or the narrative here. If I did it could be a spoiler, but in any case I think a large proportion is the immersive experience.

At it's simplest it could be called promenade theatre; I'll suggest it's so much more.

a falling leaf reminds me to check the orange bike

According to the Garmin I've cycled around 4,134 miles so far this year. Last year my target for the year was 3k and the prior year it was 1,600, so I guess I'm doing okay. I still have a weekly target of 40 miles, which I suppose I'm regularly exceeding.

I looked at the July 2013 National Travel Statistics for comparison.

It says the average number of bicycle miles in Britain is 53 miles per year.


From the report: "In 2012, only 2% of all trips were made by bicycle. There has been a small drop in the number of bicycle trips per person per year from 18 trips in 1995/97 to 16 trips in 2012.

However, in terms of distance travelled, the average number of bicycle miles has increased by 23% from 43 miles in 1995/97 to 53 miles in 2012 – the highest level recorded over this time period.

The decrease in the average number of bicycle trips and the corresponding increase in the average number of bicycle miles has resulted in the average bicycle trip length increasing from 2.3 miles in 1995/97 to 3.2 miles in 2012.

The average distance travelled by bicycle by London residents has increased by 63% since 1995/97; nearly three times the national percentage increase.

People who recorded at least one bicycle trip in their travel diary made 6 trips per week by bicycle in 2012, spent over two hours cycling and covered 20 miles."

I'm not really sure what to make of these published 2013 official statistics. I guess it's the averaging that can make the numbers seem strange. The total mileage of 6.6k miles for all travel seems very low, when the average car does circa 8k miles per year, for example. Same with cycling, the number of folk who cycle is clearly increasing - check out London roads in the rush hour, yet the stats show a decline. I'll just be mystified about these numbers.

I've also noticed a few leaves on the ground. One stuck to my shoe yesterday. Its a signal that now is (gulp) about the right time to examine the bike I'll use in Winter. It'll be heavier because of lights and mudguards and I'd rather be doing those kind of pre-flight checkups in warm weather and outdoors instead of shivering away in the dark.

The orange bike is already in fairly good shape for such expeditions, but I'm looking at my old silver bike with a view to winterising it again. It has all of the little eyelets to fix a rack and so on but is currently in need of overall TLC (Tender loving care).

More of that later.

in praise of Travelpro

The bits arrived yesterday, in a small padded bag from Boca Raton. Zipper parts. Not exciting? They were to me.

They were the parts needed to repair my black wheely luggage bag. It's a bag that has travelled many miles with me. Certainly over a quarter of a million miles. Maybe half a million. Definitely further than from earth to the moon.

Naturally, it has survived many luggage belts and climates in the process. Except the last time.

I can't be sure, but I'd guess that someone threw it by holding the zippers. Not a good move. The two biggest zippers both sighed and one popped out, now lost in some airport handling depot.

Frequent flyer tip: Don't close the zips aligned on the long (throwable) side of the case - always zip them to the top.

It's only a zipper, but it's then that you notice the industrial strength of the fittings on Travelpro. I checked another make of case and by comparison Travelpro is at least one or maybe two sizes more robust. Designed to last. And don't get me started on wheel designs for luggage.


I decided to check the Travelpro website and, sure enough, they had an exploded view of their luggage with all of the parts labelled.

I contacted them by email, explaining the mishap and the part's reference number.

The lovely support person emailed me back. "Don't worry, I'm sending you the parts."

It's all fixed again.

I see more Travelpro luggage in my future.