Satin BowerBlog

Filth

2011-10-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

Hell hath no fury

2011-08-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

Sound Advice

2011-06-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

Quotelets

2011-05-28T06:50:00.001-07:00

the slow burn theatricality of gardening

Sunday

2011-05-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

Broken ...

... ready!

For Carolyn

2011-05-07T08:30:00.001-07:00

Tramp Stamp

2011-05-07T05:26:00.000-07:00

Mountain Bike Year

2011-05-02T05:47:00.001-07:00

Shame

2011-04-19T03:23:00.000-07:00

New VW Beetle

still looks like King Charles Cavalier Spaniel

when it should have looked like this

Bugatti 107 Sport XS

2011-03-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

What happened?

2011-03-24T23:50:00.001-07:00

crocs

2011-03-06T08:07:00.001-08:00

SoundRacer

2011-02-27T02:20:00.000-08:00

You know it makes sense.

2011-02-06T09:25:00.000-08:00

Ice Spikes

2011-01-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

Because it amuses me, that's why.

2010-12-18T08:54:00.000-08:00

8 Ball

2010-12-11T12:49:00.000-08:00

I swear the hammy is developing biceps - he'll bend the bars apart, squeeze through the gap and run amok one day.

It rained a lot. I didn't like this town much.

2010-11-22T07:04:00.000-08:00

I pay good money to do this

2010-11-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

Annoying second guesser.

2010-10-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

Cool Shirt:

Cooler Shirt:

Turn left, then ...

2010-10-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

Uh oh

2010-10-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

Seven Bikes

2010-10-22T03:27:00.000-07:00

Foldy, Bouncy, Rusty, Racey, Thursdy, Italy, Happy

New Old Bike

2010-10-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Flying Wizards of Satan

2010-08-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/1039169.marksman_called_in_to_kill_kingstons_pigeons/

Long drop.

2010-08-26T12:20:00.000-07:00

Tenzing's house has the *most* outside toilet in the whole world.

Changes

2010-08-22T09:36:00.000-07:00

Check out this old photo from a hotel we stayed at in Italy. It might be from the Giro, if not the Tour.

Aluminium bottles (must have been high tech then), fatter tyres, the riders wear a spare and clearly have to fix things themselves rather than standing around in a huff waiting for the team car. It's hard to be sure but I think the bikes have stubby little mudguards. The cranks are cotter-pinned. I might have expected to see gear shifters on the downtubes, but can't. Surely they're not single speeds? Most striking of all - a post race cigarette. I can't see sponsors putting up with that today.

Tsk

2010-08-22T08:30:00.001-07:00

Embarrassment at the Office

2010-08-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

Poor BMW X5 fish was never let into the traffic from side roads

2010-08-22T08:25:00.000-07:00

going to be a looooong winter

2010-08-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

Irony

2010-08-15T03:05:00.001-07:00

Summer Visitor

2010-08-07T04:35:00.000-07:00

We get loads of these

Best headline. Ever.

2010-06-27T00:46:00.000-07:00

Beautiful Game

2010-06-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

Quotelets

2010-06-20T13:06:00.000-07:00

He's taken to it like a duck to orange sauce.

2010-05-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

Nigh on unbelievable now, but these actually existed.

When radium was first discovered it seemed so mysterious and exciting that it must somehow be good for you - it was crow-barred into an array of means of ingestion, including fags. Radium Cigarettes - Jesus.

Surely nothing contemporary will be quite so tragically laughable in the future.

London to Brighton

2010-05-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

T Shirts

2010-05-21T02:00:00.000-07:00

This T-Shirt made me smile ...

... here's a load more from the same people:

New Funny T-Sh..

Favourite Boots

2010-05-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

Touring

2010-05-15T04:00:00.001-07:00

The Rules

2010-05-13T22:42:00.000-07:00

I like to ride both Mountain Bikes and Road Bikes. When asked which I prefer the answer is "They are different, but I can't really choose - I would miss either if I were to stop"

To explain the differences, here are the 64 Road Bike Rules and the 2 Mountain Bike Rules.

Good luck with that

2010-05-13T01:56:00.000-07:00

I can see for miles and miles and miles

2010-05-13T01:34:00.000-07:00

Loyalty schemes, particularly airmiles, bug me.

Non-remittance, which is to say people who are too dim or lazy to chase up the rewards, are part of the careful corporate calculations.

Thus I end up paying a bit more for fares, indirectly subsidising hardworking intelligent people.

It is with delight that I note that loyalty schemes are slowly being watered down. I guess this is because the hoi polloi are becoming more determined to remit their claims.

Thank you all, keep up the good work.

Never marry an Italian ...

2010-05-11T04:54:00.001-07:00

... the spare parts are too expensive.

(£60 to fix a blown light in #60 - harumph, grumble)

Quotelets

2010-05-11T04:44:00.000-07:00

... yet we continue to conspire in the myth that wine and our copy-and-pasted-from-the-newspapers opinions about it matter.

Oh dear

2010-05-05T10:29:00.001-07:00

If you see someone drowning ...

2010-05-05T02:48:00.000-07:00

... laugh out loud.

A dirty video about lycra and sheep

2010-05-02T23:24:00.001-07:00

Mountain biking in Wales

Quotelets

2010-04-10T06:15:00.001-07:00

... a Weight Watchers meal for one, and two and a half bottles of Baileys ...

Litespeed

2010-04-09T05:52:00.000-07:00

Pro, Lite, Race, Speed, Carbon, Flex, Go, Motion, Rider, Pace, Line, Blade, Power. Pick any two and you'll have a cycling brand. Sometimes, for example, in winter I have RaceBlade guards on my Litespeed bike.

The list of acceptable words is currently a bit short, so to help manufacturers I suggest adding: "Middle Aged", "Tubby" and "Feckless"

A proper Citroen

2010-04-05T07:49:00.001-07:00

I would occasionally see this wonderful old car motoring around the suburb where I live - and was astonished to eventually realise its owner lives but a stone's throw away.

Newspeak

2010-04-02T23:23:00.000-07:00

Note that Easter is now to be referred to as "Chocolate Weekend". Likewise, at the end of the year we have "Present Day".

I didn't coin these phrases, but find their irreverence somehow appealing - so - here they are.

Changes

2010-04-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

Now too small child's roller blade sacrificed in name of Brommie skate wheel conversion. No longer will I have to carry the bugger on the rough St Albans platform. It may wander about the train on its own a bit though.

Mystery no more.

2010-04-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

Finally worked out what this is for.

Sicily Trip - Readers Digest Version

2010-03-31T06:16:00.000-07:00

A cycling friend makes DVDs of our road trips.

I have just been given a copy of our 2009 Sicily trip video - it's most excellent, a perfect memento. It took quite some weeks to do and is appreciated by all.

The film is 20 mins long, acknowledges contributors, is in high quality, has a theme, narrative, structure, wit and some pretty cool music. I have *ruined* most of this in hacking a 5 min bloggable version to share with my blog readers. (Sorry Matt P - I hope this is not too heretical)

Anyhow - with thanks to Matt who made the original - here are me and my homies cycling, drinking & eating too much.

Sicily C2C 2009 from atc5k on Vimeo.

Quotelets

2010-03-26T07:06:00.000-07:00

Southwold - it's just like being in the 1950s, but with Olives.

Easter

2010-03-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

Godammit!

2010-03-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

Tufte

2010-03-21T01:15:00.000-07:00

YikeBike

2010-03-10T04:52:00.000-08:00

Quirky electric commuter bike for the utterly shameless.

Video (foreign language) here.

From the ridiculous to the ridiculous (with a sublime engine)

2010-03-04T02:53:00.000-08:00

You may note that the modern version has a rather sweet V8 engine. A history of such lunacy:

http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/MOTORWHL/motorwhl.htm

From now on.

2010-03-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

This term annoys certain people mightily. So - that will be us using it from now on then.

OK Go

2010-03-03T02:09:00.000-08:00

I try very hard not to post "Ooooh - look what I found on Youtube" posts. But discovering these two videos to the same song has proved too hard to resist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY

I'm guessing that RGM stands for Rube Goldberg Machine.

Combining the saccharine naffness of a marching band with nightmarish contemporary camouflage is a teeny stroke of genius. My favourite.

Hardly a surprise.

2010-03-02T05:53:00.001-08:00

Story told to me on a recent cycling related course: A couple of guys from the training centre were flying back from a cycle show, weighed down with the usual freebies of new products. One of these was a sample of a cycle degreaser.

This liquid was more than 100ml which is air-travel heresy. On top of that it is a suspicious dayglo blue. The last straw was the name - for which click here.

They were delayed in the terminal for some time.

Against the tide

2010-02-28T00:46:00.000-08:00

Recently I read a Jeremy Clarkson column in which he was bitching about being tormented by a white van man.

Clarkson, it seems, was driving a Rolls Royce toward London - when white van man spotted this symbol of conspicuous consumption in his rear view mirror. The resentful tradesman decided that he would spoil the Roller's day by driving quite slowly, holding the middle of the road, and refusing to let the big car past.

Being the incarnation of Wind in the Willows Toad - this infuriated Clarkson.

The solution is perhaps not obvious - certainly not to a bully who likes speeding - but here it is. The Rolls Royce is reportedly a delightful place to be - whisper quiet, very comfortable and with a particularly fine sound system. The point is that white van man may have been able to stop Clarkson driving fast - but, being subject to commercial pressures, he would not have been able to drive anywhere near as slowly. Find some nice music, and waft along comfortably. Clarkson is a wealthy and potent fellow within his sphere - the film crew or meeting he was rushing too would have waited for him. He had a quirky power which his oafishness prevented him from seeing.

All of this is leading to the point of this post. Another piece of Ross wisdom given to you free, whether you want it or not.

How to walk through a crowd. It's common in London to meet a torrent of pushy commuters vomiting out of a station mouth, all going the opposite way to which you want to. If you're not careful you can get squeezed up against a wall, or perhaps into a gutter - most likely of all you end up in an endless succession of those funny little "I'll go left, no right, no you go left..." dances we have with someone coming directly towards you. The trick I have discovered is not to look at people and to walk exaggeratedly slowly. This give you an illusion of solidity and the oncoming tide will flow around you as if you were a lamp post. Walking slowly turns out to take less time - the flood will pass.

Big Up

2010-02-28T00:16:00.000-08:00

My children often change radios from Radio 4 to Radio 1, or worse still to local commercial stations - and then *leave them there*. This makes me listen to brief bursts of these stations by accident.

Recently I heard a DJ, in response to a caller from Luton, say "that's a big up to the Luton massive". No - really - he did say that.

After some effort I believe that I have translated this correctly to:

"I acknowledge, accept and indeed support your belief that the shitty, drab and slightly hopeless town you live in is somehow of remark and indeed is a reflection of your being worthy of fame and admiration - however pathetic, delusional and indeed slightly harmful your self-deception may be."

---

"a big up to the Luton massive", while still a rancid sputtering of diarrhoea, has the advantage of being shorter

Quotelets

2010-02-27T23:50:00.000-08:00

the alchemical claims of the cosmetics industry

Afan Trip

2010-02-27T23:38:00.000-08:00

Subliminal

2010-02-12T11:43:00.000-08:00

Approval by original video owners is unlikely, so this will never appear on Youtube, so here it is:

It's so funny that I was ...

2010-02-12T07:10:00.000-08:00

Not as generous as you might first think.

2010-02-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

I was watching the sainted Charlie Brooker's Newswipe - he had found an American shock broadcaster congratulating the States on their post Haitian disaster generosity and berating countries who had donated less.

It seemed to me that he was either stupid, or wilfully ignoring the twin factors of proximity to the problem and gdp.

I have since found this. Look how the US drops from the top 10 if you consider per capita or per gdp generosity.

Roman Army Knife

2010-02-10T07:58:00.000-08:00

This is thought to be from 200 AD.

Trying to determine if it's credible I searched about a bit. It's on Wikipedia which is to be taken with a grain of salt. It has also featured in blog after blog which is the way of these things.

Eventually I found it in the Fitzwilliam Museum collection - http://tinyurl.com/u9lzm - which makes me more confident.

It's interesting how the modern equivalent is for fixing things - whereas the Roman one is for eating.

Fame

2010-02-08T11:41:00.001-08:00

Scroll down slowly, see if you can recognise famous faces before scrolling to the caption.

http://tinyurl.com/ydl3ms6

Alternatively you could do something useful.

An equal and opposite reaction.

2010-02-08T04:17:00.000-08:00

All together now ...

2010-02-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

Polar opposites who, unexpectedly, seem to share a common dress sense.

Stealth Galleon

2010-02-05T09:24:00.001-08:00

So - I whooshed into a coffee shop near Borough Market to have a pre-interview coffee and last minute read through my notes. To my surprise I looked up from my work and realised that up until this point I had missed the fact that there was a hulking great galleon outside. This was a landmark personal best feat of ignorance. In my defence it is largely painted a dull black.

Quotelets

2010-02-05T04:32:00.000-08:00

... is a sad case of life imitating art.

Manly Fairy

2010-02-04T05:08:00.001-08:00

Quotelets

2010-02-04T04:03:00.002-08:00

... sounds like Brian Blessed being raped by escaped baboons.

Quotelets

2010-02-04T04:03:00.001-08:00

Live and never learn.

Quotelets

2010-02-04T04:01:00.000-08:00

Oprah Winfrey is the PT Barnum of the 21st century.

Cappuccino

2010-02-04T03:53:00.000-08:00

This morning:

Barista at Costa Coffee: "Would you like chocolate on that?"

Me: "Fzzzzt! Spt! Mmmph! You will remember that not 2 minutes ago I asked for a cappuccino. It's called a cappuccino because the brown top is the same as the brown robes worn by Cappuchin Friars. You, of all people, should know this. If you're going to blunder around drenching the little bits of poetry in life with the lukewarm cow-piss showers of your bovine ignorance - well - it's not very good is it? Yes - I would like fucking chocolate on it!"

Actually - I just smiled and said "Yes please". But I like to think she knew what I meant.

I knew it

2010-02-03T23:39:00.001-08:00

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

2010-02-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

"A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was a 1996 paper regarding the then burgeoning internet. In florid prose it demanded that governments leave the internet well enough alone. It is 16 paragraphs long - I won't trouble you with it here, other than the first and last pars:

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

...

"We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."

Lofty aims - sadly internet fora were the first place I came across angry young men calling each other "fucktards"

Never mind.

Campaign posters - asking for trouble.

2010-01-30T04:45:00.001-08:00

Your argument is irrelevant

2010-01-30T00:00:00.000-08:00

and vice versa

iPad

2010-01-29T00:30:00.000-08:00

A surprising version of an old english folk song

2010-01-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Belousov–Zhabotinsky Reaction

2010-01-26T05:04:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid that the fact I was completely unaware of this comes as no surprise to me at all. I stumbled across the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction while reading a book on Number Theory, I find it astonishing, puzzling and beautiful.
http://tinyurl.com/ybq2gga

Hippy wittering I found on Flickr

2010-01-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

Ooooooooo! May I?

You can't have it both ways

2010-01-23T12:27:00.000-08:00

... but You Shall Never Know Our Position!

My Favourite Newspaper

2010-01-22T05:29:00.001-08:00

http://global.nytimes.com/?iht

Really strong writing and not as US-centric as you might think. (As an added bonus it is often the only english text available in European newsstands - so it is my "holiday" paper too)

Quotelets

2010-01-22T03:14:00.000-08:00

hereditary celebrity Peaches Geldof

New Scientist

2010-01-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

Quotelets

2010-01-19T08:46:00.001-08:00

The plural of anecdote is not fact.

Quotelets

2010-01-18T04:17:00.001-08:00

silver spoon, a paper plate

Stolen from The Guardian

2010-01-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

If Lambrini was being honest, its montage of people "doing the Lambrini" would consist of a group of tracksuited teenagers passing a single bottle of cherry flavour among themselves on a park bench; a young woman in a "sexy policewoman" outfit holding her friend's hair away from her face as the latter vomits chips into a bin; and a Yates's Wine Lodge rejectee grimly holding on to her bottle for dear life as she has hurried sex with a stranger behind a bottle bank while her mate tries to hail a cab.

Truly, a dance for all mankind …

I WILL NOT PAY, probably. Just you wait and see.

2010-01-15T09:15:00.000-08:00

There is a Facebook group called "I WILL NOT PAY £3.99 A MONTH TO USE FACE BOOK FROM JULY 9TH 2010!"

I note that the name is all in upper case and carries an exclamation mark. Thus it is easier to believe that it's rooted in semi-infantile hysteria rather than sound inside information. None the less there is interesting and simple maths that can be done.

The "I WILL NOT PAY ..." group has almost half a million members - this out of 350 million Facebook users. So, a company that bought Facebook and started charging for it might expect 1 in 700 users to become upset and stop using FB. It's an addictive site though, a good many of the half million may be making empty threats, particularly people who have put loads of time into fecking Farmville.

None the less, let's assume that slightly more than 1 in 700 would leave. For the sake of convenience let's say - 359 users out of every 360 would quit - leaving a million paying users. Let's only charge them $1 a month - then we're raking in $12 million a year before even charging for advertising.

Of course I haven't the slightest idea of if or when FB might turn commercial. Contrary to popular wisdom though, there may be danger in numbers.

Mmmm. Nice.

2010-01-13T02:37:00.000-08:00

This, if it actually exists, is surely a joke - but a very expensive one.