A year on a bike

A 20-something nerd with a penchant for music, bikes and politics - this year, I'll be cycling from Cardiff to Paris for Shelter Cymru and this blog is mostly devoted to things I see in my training for that, but wll contain other interests too.

Recent Tweets @sprinklecone

Who I Follow

I could listen to Steve Reich talk for hours, and this is fascinating.

These are my bikes.

On the left, is a Reynolds 520 Steel Framed Track Bike. Running a 42x16 gear and Mavic CXP22 rims built onto unbranded track hubs. Front brake only and I’m trying to source some bar end brakes for it so it’s a bit safer. Handlebars are an old set of 40cm road drops recovered from a skip sawed down and flipped. Has a flip-flop hub but I normally ride fixed wheel. This bike has probably covered about 1000 miles so far this year and is my ‘get around bike’ - I ride it to work/the shop/the pub etc.

On the right is my Trek 1.2, from 2011. With a groupset change. Now running SRAM Rival with a compact chainset and 11-25 cassette, it started as a Shimano Sora Triple. Just changed the saddle to a Sella Italia Flite Gel Flow which isn’t reflected in the photo as longer rides were getting uncomfy and the original saddle has a badly deformed body. It’s a joy to ride though the seating position could be a bit more aggressive and I’m contemplating taking another spacer out to lower the bars a bit more, but might need a new stem then too. This bike has done just short of 2000 miles so far this year and is only ever really ridden distances over 15miles.

Wait for the bass line to hit at 1:24 - this is simultaneously absolutely beautiful and emminently danceable. This is what Radiohead would sound like if they made ‘dance music’.

(via jonnyathan)

If it doesn’t hurt you’re doing it wrong. Or to quote Hincapie “it never gets easier, you just get faster”

(via coolroadbikes)

…today you don’t need to read SF to get a sense of wonder high: you can just browse “New Scientist”. We’re living in the frickin’ 21st century. Killer robot drones are assassinating people in the hills of Afghanistan. Our civilisation has been invaded and conquered by the hive intelligences of multinational corporations, directed by the new aristocracy of the 0.1%. There are space probes in orbit around Saturn and en route to Pluto. Surgeons are carrying out face transplants. I have more computing power and data storage in my office than probably the entire world had in 1980. (Definitely than in 1970.) We’re carrying out this Mind Meld via the internet, and if that isn’t a 1980s cyberpunk vision that’s imploded into the present, warts and all, I don’t know what is. Seriously: to the extent that mainstream literary fiction is about the perfect microscopic anatomization of everyday mundane life, a true and accurate mainstream literary novel today ought to read like a masterpiece of cyberpunk dystopian SF.

Charlie Stross, SF, big ideas, ideology: what is to be done? (via markarayner)

(via aslightcaseofoverbombing)

I love this video for so many reasons. It’s funny and endearing and obviously made with love.

It also reminds me of Montreal (for obvious reasons) and features many of my old haunts.

I miss that city.

The 70s German in me is excited by this

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/arts/music/talking-to-ralf-hutter-of-kraftwerk.html

Sometime I feel I might have been born in the wrong era in the wrong country.

I’m going to slink off and listen to Kraftwerk and read some Heinrich Boll now. Laters.

Nate Dogg to perform at Coachella via hologram? – FACT magazine: music and art →

This. Just. I know I’m living in the future and all but this is ridiculous. Retro-hyper-real-insanity.

Took a long circuitous route home and had to stop in Gabalfa to fix a flat tyre. Within 5 minutes was offered some “herbal cigarettes”. Why does this always happen?