Somewhere in Southwark this evening, in Surrey Canal I think, 6th gear got jammed, as did 4th, and I couldn't un-jam it. I limped home in 2nd gear, where I can sustain 11.5 mph at about 180rpm for a minute or so, before coasting. I'll do this till the end of the week, then I'll borrow my mate's bike.

Tags: Sturmey, Moulton, Pashley

First part of my TSR mk II. This is a Sturmey Archer X-FDD, hub brake and 3w dynamo. Feels heavy in the hand...

Tags: Pashley, Sturmey, Moulton

The rear wheel, which was rebuilt only a few weeks back broke a spoke on me on Wednesday. It's hopeless, but at least Comptons replaced it for free, lovely guys. I'll have to get the wheel rebuilt again. This time with super-strong spokes, as suggested by my dealer, and to my surprise also by the Moultoneers list. DT Swiss seem to be the people to get the spokes from.

Now, the GPS. It's working OK now I have paired up the receiver with the N70. I noticed that Garmin have updated their eTrex line with 'high sensitivity' receivers with 17 hours battery life. So, just like my new Bluetooth GPS then. But what's this shown on the mapping model on their website?

It's Peckham Rye in South London! But to all the world looking like a Welsh Valley. Hmm. Here it is in viewranger.

MUCH more detail. I think I made the right choice.

Tags: Pashley, GPS

I'm doing my last purchases for my trip to Bradford on Avon this year. I am cycling there from Oxford to Wallingford, where I'll be camping there by the river (the campsite will hopefully be dried out by then!). In fact, here's the plan:

• Wednesday night train to Oxford
• Thursday morning, walking tour of Oxford and visit to Ashmolean museum
• Thursday afternoon, ride down to Wallingford (20 miles?) - camp on the river
• Friday, ride 11km down to Goring and joining the Ridgeway to the western end, then take the canal to Bradford-on-Avon
• So, did some purchases early this week (pay day) 3 of them came today:

First is my GPS. This below isnt it, the GPS is on the window sill behind me, this is MGMaps (so named because it contained Mobile Google Maps, until Google told them that they weren't allowed to), so in the picture is the somewhat crappy Yahoo! Maps with a marker in the middle showing my current position (note the missing map tiles on the right - not available according to Yahoo!).

The program is superficially easy to use, but I am yet to figure out how to change the map. It supports several online maps, and I have changed it from map to blurry satellite, but by accident, and I can't change it back, and waiting for Yahoo's map tiles to download is SLOW. Trying it with Viewranger I got mixed results. I think this was due to me not pairing the unit with the phone and giving it free access to the phone.

I used it to log me as I rode over to Greenwich to help a mate move house. After a few hundred meters I got a beep to tell me that the connection was lost. A couple of stops, restarts and reboot later and long waits for it to search for devices, it got working again. Tried it tonight after having paired the devices using the Bluetooth tool on the phone and sha-bing, worked instantly in Viewranger. Back on the ride though, I tested the Trip function on the phone just after Deptford and it didn't seem to give me moving information. Several miles later I realise that the app has frozen ruining the log, a bit. However, looking on what it did record it was very accurate. I've got another longer ride over to Chiwick tommorow. So, I'll see if the reliability improves.

The second thing that came via Royal Mail van delivery (the GPS was a missed delivery from Friday), was the Tempur Travel Pillow.

The packaging was pretty bad, a big cardboard box containing a little pillow. It should have been shipped in its little compression bag which is about 1/5^th the size. But I can't really sleep with a regular camping pillow, so this luxury is an essential. And the last thing to come was delivered by the postman:

Ooh, solar panels! This was intended for charging the Phone and GPS on the road, but the GPS has a long battery life and a non-standard power port (standard meaning Nokia), so this will do only for the phone. No idea how it will work, but I bought it because the panels actually charge a big battery, and you then plug the battery (behind the panels) into the phone. It also has 2 USB port for charging an iPod. The charging works in natural light and specifically not with fluorescent lighting. True too, I put it in sunlight and the LED shows it is charging. I put it under a downlighter and it sort of charges, I put it against my iMac screen and nothing. Anyway, I think the idea is that you charge the battery normally and then use the sun as a top-up. We shall see.

Tags: Moulton, Pashley, BoA, GPS

Replacement rear wheel is due at the dealer mid-week. I'll probably pick it up on Saturday.

Tags: Pashley

I think I need to take the bike back to the shop...yet again. I'm starting to sympathise with this lot.

Chug (audio recorded on my mobile of the Sturmey 8 hub on my bike)

Tags: Pashley

This arrived through my letter box today. Yes, my letterbox!

What will these look like on my new bike?

Here's a bike with trekking bars

And here's a video of a bike with one

Tags: Pashley

Um, so I got a new computer and Rapid Weaver lost its sense of where the photo albums were, so I just left it, but now it's fixed, although RW has put a pixel of white at the top of each picture now. Pfft - a bug I guess!

So my new iMac lets me do this:

That was Vista RC1, and it was/is dog slow, but I only have 1GB of RAM, so that was not unexpected. There was nothing compelling or new in Vista that I saw though. As per the screen shot I also got Ubuntu. It runs nicely, but nothing compelling there either. I wanted to install that NeXT interface, but I couldn't figure it out. Heres a direct comparison of Vista and OSX:

Hmm, Vista text is lighter but Mac OS X text looks more...real. What else is new? I've got one of these on order:

Over £1000 of TSR, but with custom components and a custom fit. I'm super-excited, as they say. I have three words to say about the people I'm buying it off (Villiers-Velo): SERVICE SERVICE SERVICE - it is excellent!

Speaking of Moultons, you can barely see it, but I went on a Critical Mass last Friday and saw a Mark 1 Moulton with a beatbox on the back rack - very trendy.

And today, I was on strike for the first time ever. As I said to my boss, it's not about the money, I don't think the efficiency drive in the service at the moment should lead to compulsory redundancies. Simple as that. Hopefully that'll be the last time we're called out.

Tags: Windows, Pashley, Critical Mass

Rode past Velorution on the way to the gym today (finally found it after hunting and hunting for it on Sunday).

What a sexy bike shop! Pashley TSRs, Dahons, Bromptons, Birdys, and lots of funky european bikes like Helkama. Apparently they do servicing, so maybe I've found my new bike shop.

Tags: Pashley

Did some hoovering (or should that be Dysoning), and tried and failed to fit the mudguards to my bike on Saturday. No instructions came with them, and only some of the screws made sense. What flummoxed me was/is how to secure the rear mudguard to the rear triangle. The little bag of screws included these rubber blocks, which look like they should be used back there to absorb some of the road shock, but nothing came with which to attach them. This is a bit worrying, as I had to thus attach the guard direct to the frame. Hopefully it won't break to bits before I can take it to my bike shop.

That happened on Sunday evening. Sun-day was spent largely sleeping, after getting up early to accompany Russ and his twin brother to Gatwick. Saturday night was Eurovision. Well done Finland, although I quite liked the German entry this year.

Enough boringness though. Film Four is coming to Freeview in July! Yay! No more DVD rentals needed. This isn't news, of course, but the first stage has started today. More 4+1 (a filler channel if there ever was one) is now off the air. Apparently a Big Brother Channel is going to take it's place in the meantime. Speaking of Digital TV, I was in Comet today. I am amazed, there are hardly any CRT TVs left. It was row after row of LCDs and Plasma displays. At the front was something that I guess was a HD demo. It didn't blow me away. Maybe it wasn't really HD. Also noticed the new Miele washing machines. Hmm, plastic doors, well it looks sleeker, but I'm not sure.

Tags: Pashley, Eurovision, Freeview, House

Hey

Something's wrong with my CD-ROM drive so I've not been able to rip this yet, but I've been listening to Creole music all day. Like this, which is just great, I love it. I played this stuff at my mum's wedding too, I don't think anyone objected, it's just so smooth and relaxing. Cool.

Hopefully all my message this time will get saved, half of the last blog got lost...

Anyway, here's a pic of my fixed bike. It cost £275 to get repaired and the service was slow, still I'm back on the road at least.

I read on Thinksecret that the new MacBook will have 1280x720 resolution, this would mean it is wider but shorter than the iBook. I hope not, I went to a Sony store yesterday and their 13.3 inch laptops look pretty good at 1280x800, hopefully Steve agrees.

Tags: Pashley, Music, MacBook