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…

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

Went out for a pootle on the bike today to get over the fact that I’ve been on flights and sat in meeting rooms for the past week or so. It’s all @jimphelps fault, as he’s been going out pretty much the whole time that I’ve been cooped-up inside

The weather was glorious today – warm, with a bit of a breeze (as ever, it seemed to be anabatic and therefore detrimental to my inbound speed). The heat was also a bit warm for a climb, so I took a detour out to Rocky Mountain Cycles in Llantrisant to grab a new Camelback. If you’re in the area and need a friendly bike shop, then there’s nowhere better – they even filled up the Camelback for me and topped it off with some powder to keep me going. Pretty good job really, as I was out of bananas and hadn’t eaten much before setting out.

Aside from avoiding decorating and other rather dull chores that need to be done around the home, the idea today was to test out the geotagging of the new Blackberry Bold (9000). I wasn’t convinced that it was doing anything when I was out in the States, but it seems I was wrong. It was almost certainly due to the overshadowing of all the tall buildings downtown that was preventing a good lock. Here in sunny Wales, where we’re lucky to see the sky, it’s no problem. I’ll re-edit this later with some of the images tagged for the trip.

Max speed today was down a little on what I might have expected for the route. I’d have thought that I’d have been able to hit 45mph without too much trouble, but it seems that wind resistance was going to spoil that for me on the way back down from peak ride height. The other problem area was 30 miles out on the return leg – I’d forgotten there were a couple of short but annoying climbs on the way back in – and paid the price for it. Oh well, that’s part of the fun.

Track for 26th July 2008

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Posted: July 27th, 2008 under Cycling, Geospatial, Hardware, mobile.
Comments: 5

A tweet from Jim Phelps put me on to the Gmap Pedometer, which I’ve been having a quick play with this evening.

The service provides a means of being able to pre-record a route that can be exported to a gpx route in the same way I’ve shown previously. Rather than use Google’s directions service to be able to describe a route, you can simply ‘draw’ it on the Gmap Pedometer service and then export that out for use on your Garmin as before.  Now that’s more like it – as provided the high-res imagery is available in satellite view, you should be able to record off-road routes without too much trouble.

A word of caution though.  The registration/positional accuracy of the Google data coupled with the accuracy of your GPS unit at any given time may well lead to some pretty large error in positioning.  Pretty large meaning, don’t plot any knife-edge routes and expect to be able to follow them blindfolded wihtout mishap.  You have been warned!

Posted: July 13th, 2008 under Cycling, Geospatial, Google.
Comments: 1

523.18 miles in to the Kona PhD now and all is well. That’s 40+ hours in the saddle and 36652 calories burnt Average speed is up by probably more than 4 mph now over the old MTB wheels – but that’s not surprising given the rather skinny rims I’m running on. Pleased to say that I haven’t had a flat since switching to the Specialized Armadillo tyre at the rear.

Posted: May 16th, 2008 under Cycling.
Comments: 1