cracked rim

cracked rim, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Today's design flip-flop

Today's design flip-flop, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Mark Cavendish wins Milano San Remo

Mark Cavendish, originally uploaded by pedale.forchetta.

All hail the new Mario Cippollini. Hopefull Mario 2 will carry on winning classics, even those which require some climbing.

Talent, and attitude:

At 23 he is the youngest winner of Milan-San Remo since the legendary Eddie Merckx. "It's the best day of my life," Cavendish said. "When you win a great one-day race like Milan-San Remo you've proved you're a great rider."

It was another amazing performance by the Brit who had said last week that he was only going to Italy to learn about the race. But when the lead group failed to split over the last two climbs his thoughts must have turned to victory.

Cavendish's win is the second ever for a Brit in Milan-San Remo after Tom Simpson won in 1964. It is Cavendish's 34th professional win of his career.

Despite spats with the track team, he's racing in the Madison at the worlds next week.

At home, not all is rosy. The Bikeline Two day event was stopped for 'white line crossing'- ie racers moving onto the other side of the road, as is pretty much demanded at that level of racing.

If we're going to come up with winners on the road as well as the track we need to start to pull together more road racing at home- this means investing in rolling closing roads for bike races.

Let's hope the increase in track/tt talent isn't at the expense of road, this was the way of much division in the past, also driven by at least a fear of police action.

because, just because

P1000088, originally uploaded by ANNYIA.

Making a Beach Cairn

Making a Beach Cairn
Originally uploaded by escher1

'How to' video.

19/02/2009 Then and now

19/02/2009 Prescribed, originally uploaded by mike1727.

Imagine the feeling of suddenly getting heavier, falling to the floor, looking up at your family, unable to speak or make yourself understood. That's a stroke. That was me, a year ago.

Luckily, it was a small stroke and there are no lasting effects- a day later I was talking again, a year later I'm fine. My recovery is something which I am very, very grateful for. That and the streadfast support of my immediate family, notably my wife who went through a huge strain in the first few days.

So folks, don't smoke, excercise regularly, drink responsibly and keep an eye on your diet. All these things reduce the risk of strokes considerably.

That's all.

And, when you have a little money to spare, put it here

What's on my new phone^H^H^H G1

The mental synchromesh has more or less stopped working in the transition from N95 to G1. It's quite a change in OS, display and form factor and a jump from a fairly well established phone to a new 'device'which still has some teething trouble.

Here's a few thoughts based on my first week of use:

The G1 is a great web device. Browsing is excellent: it's easy to browse more 'full' web pages instead of PDA/smartphone versions now that page navigation and display is much easier. There are a few pages which don't really work but most of what I see is fine. Missing, however, are most of the add-ins like flash. Hopefully these will turn up pretty soon either as applications or as add-ins to the OS.

Google apps work well- I was using mail, reader and iGoogle on the N95, but now I also use contacts and I'm going to look at calendar. Relying on a single vendor for all my personal stuff is a little dubious but the disadvantages are outweighed by the convenience of having everything available via phone or pc. Maps is excellent too, I'm just waiting for google to launch streetview in the UK.

Beyond the browser, there's a market full of apps to download, currently for free. Some are good, some don't work or are really crap. Time and evolution will tell which survive but the combination of cheap, easily accessibly applications should drive usage.

I'm currently running:

Meebo- looks a good IM client but seems to have difficulties and crashes when moving between 2g and 3g. I'll try it out once I've sorted out wifi at home.

Weather channel weather report. Seems ok, can pick up location using GPS. It will be interesting to see how this compares with a shortcut to the BBC weather forecast in the browser which I would usually use. Accuweather looks good too- same sort of content.

Twidroid- Twitter client, includes location awareness. Seems to work well, new twitter indications appear in the status bar. Other twitter clients are available too.

Sky Map- map of the sky showing positions of stars, constellations. Location aware and links with the position sensors so that you see the star layour in the direction you're pointing the phone. I like this app, having been looking for an easy to use star map for a while.

StreamFurious- Good streamer for shoutcast. A bit short of other radio stations though.

last FM- a good looking client which doesn't work very well. Nice idea, hope the client gets sorted out soon as I'll use it lots.

Lunar phases: moon calendar showing phases of the moon, because I want to take photos of the moon.

Pixelpipe- uploader for Flickr, blogs etc. Still working to get this installed and working properly but it looks good.

Toggle GPS/WiFi/Bluetooth- simple on/off switches for bettery-eating applications.

Waiting in the wings to see if they're any good:

Mymaps editor- edits google maps

Cellfinder- shows map of your location and the cell you're connected to. Usful for cellular geeks.

Photostream/PicPush - uploader for Flickr.

Wheeler- bike ride trip recorder. Not as good as Nokia's sportstracker.

On the down-side:

Battery life is awful

g1 doesn't receive quite as well as the N95.

Browser and app activity when shifting between 2G and 3G is variable.

Bluetoth support is pretty crap, I couldn't connect the G1 to my N95 or send files to/from the g1 to my laptop.

On the severe downside:

The g1's camera is, well, shite. 3MP, no zoom or flash. It's so bad that I'm currently not using it and am still carrying my N95 just to take pictures. Fail, fail, fail in design spec here, even low end nokia cameras are better than this.

Overall it's a good start for Android, shame about HTC's build of the phone but other manufacturers will do a better job.

The G1 isn't a phone for Flickr'ing, sadly. Now, if LG broughy out an Android Renoir, that would be a flickr phone.