Haven’t been active on here in *ages* – which is a pity. I think Twitter took over and ended up becoming something of a distraction for a while, but that’s started to subside recently.

Anyway, the reason for this quick post is to report that I’ve run through a number of OS X upgrades across different machines recently, and all seem to have gone OK. This Apache instance is still up an running, so that’s proof enough that the switchover went well given that there’s a bunch of custom stuff in this which you might expect would get toasted on an upgrade.

The only minor points for me seem to have been a few plugins from various Apps to Mail and Safari – otherwise all seems well so far.

Actually, the main problem I encountered was a less than happy optical drive on one of the machines. There’s a bunch of questions on the Apple Support forums about optical drives refusing to accept CDs or DVDs and there are a set of responses suggesting media type and wandering off to your local repair centre. In this case all it took to get the drive accepting disks again was a blast of air through the drive. I think the drive gets used so little these days that the dust build up must have covered the lens and so the drive just assumes all media are trashed.

Posted: September 5th, 2009 under Aside.
Comments: none

I’m testing a build and install issue that was preventing me from using the NextGEN plugin for Wordpress. Hopefully there should be a load of  photos here from my post-Chicago ride.

and with a little luck, the XML Google Maps plugin will pick up on the gallery and the geotags in the photos

…job done.

Posted: February 8th, 2009 under AJAX, Content Management, Cycling, Geospatial.
Comments: 4

It’s a little over a year since I took delivery of my Kona Ph.D., and my aging Orange EVO2 got to put its wheels up in the back of the shed pending a careful rebuild when time and budget allowed.  As those of you in the UK will remember, last summer was entirely pup from a weather perspective, and so a long term project like bike building wasn’t at the forefront of GTD thinking for me.  It was more appropriate to get the miles in on the PhD. instead

My first post Christmas ride on the Ph.D. ended up being a bit of a disaster as the rear Mavic Aksium wheel ended up being totalled within a few yards of setting off when the hub suffered a failure that lost one of the flat spokes.  All rather annoying – and the wheel’s now in for repair at Tredz in Cardiff, pending a view from Mavic on what went wrong (and hopefully supporting a warranty repair).

So having been back in work for a couple of weeks without the freedom of being able to cycle to and from, I’ve been slowly losing what little sanity I have on the Stagecoach South Wales bus service from the village.  It didn’t take long for my better half to take pity on me and say I was allowed to get myself a new thrash about bike for winter riding – leaving the skinny rims of the Ph.D. for better weather.

Through a process of impressive upward management, persuasion and, alright, eventually begging, I managed to get my budget up from the original Kona Cinder Cone level that I was looking at.  After a quick scout on Google, I managed to find a 2008 Orange EVO8 reduced in the January sale at Sunset MTB around the corner from my office.  How could I resist?  I really miss riding the EVO2 – 10 years is a long time to be in the same saddle after all – and so I dropped in to take a look.

Anyway – here’s the lowdown:

Size 19″
Frame 6061-T6 Custom Butted Aluminium
Colour Champagne
Fork Rock Shox Recon Race Air w/Motion Control 100mm
Rear Derailleur Shimano XT Shadow
Front Derailleur Shimano LX
Shifters Shimano LX R Fire +
Crankset Race Face XC Evolve Triple X Type
Cassette SRAM PG950
Brakeset Avid Juicy 3 160/160
Hubs Shimano Deore 475 Disc
Rims Mavic XM117
Spokes WTB S/S Black
Tyres Kenda Nevegal/Blue Groove 2.1
Headset Tange TG8
Stem Orange Stalk +
Seatpost Stick Up
Saddle SDG Bel Air
Handlebars Supercross +
Pedals Shimano SPuDs

The guys at Sunset are typical of a good dealer: Not snotty; not pushy; warmly welcoming, and; good at what they do.  They didn’t have a 2008 bike up and running, but put one together for me during the day and swapped out some of the components that weren’t really my bag.  All in all, a very good purchasing experience and probably the best I’ve had from an Orange dealer since the good old days when I still had access to Stif’s.

So you can expect some more posts as I get back in the Groove with the daily commute again.  Suffice it to say that I’m chuffed to nuts so far <grin>.

Lucky I didn’t see any carbon road bikes…

Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Posted: January 14th, 2009 under Cycling, WIN.
Comments: none

Saw this over on Failblog and it made me think about dealing with shark-infested waters in the workplace.  Sometimes the best route to avoid painful conflict is just to get the Hell out of the water.

Posted: December 9th, 2008 under Aside, WIN.
Comments: 4

A welcome distraction from the normal stuff today, as I picked up from the press releases that the Mike Barnsley Centre for Climate Research is now officially open for business.  Not only that, but Swansea have used their partnership with IBM to stick a new Blue Ice cluster in the research centre for number crunching and visualization work.  It’s also apparent that Prof. Tavi Murray has taken up the role of Director of Research for the Centre – which is also really good news.

I wish the Swansea folk every success in making the very best out of the centre that they can.  It’s a fitting tribute to Mike’s individual passion for the environment and science, and I’m pretty sure he’d have loved having a cluster to play with.

Swansea’s press release is here

Posted: November 7th, 2008 under Geospatial, Mike.
Comments: none