Sitting comfortably?

Last night, I decided to perform some bicycle maintenance tasks that I’ve been putting off for too long, one of which was to adjust the angle of the saddle.

It is said that a bad workman blames his tools. On this occasion, I am the kind of workman who blames his tools, but ultimately accepts responsibility for buying shitty tools in the first place.

Shortly after setting out this morning, it became clear that I had not tightened the nuts sufficiently. As I rode over the bumps, my saddle tilted backwards a few notches. After stopping three times in the space of half a mile, I realised that something had to be done. Fortunately, I knew that just up the road was a garage, and I wouldn’t even need to detour.

I kept my bum off the seat while I rode onto the forecourt. The mechanic kindly loaned me a 15mm spanner and I was on my way again with no detour required, and only a five minute delay.

Categories
Daily In The News

An ominous warning that the rapid rise in oil prices has only just begun

  • “The price of everything from food to energy would see significant price rises. Household electricity and gas bills are particularly vulnerable. Power companies have begun warning of a second round of major tariff increases for household bills this year that they say they will need to push through just to break even.” Wow. I guess they’re also going to have to reduce the salaries of the top executives just to break even. Seriously though, this is crucial stuff. Your petrol prices are about to skyrocket. Now is a good time to ask your boss for a raise.
Categories
Meander

A startlingly interesting bike ride

Usually the number of interesting things that happens during my 4 mile commute is some non-negative integer n where n = n mod 2. But today, three interesting things happened! Well, not that interesting, but there were three of them!

1. There’s a decomposing animal which I have been monitoring since Friday. On Friday it was still vaguely recognisable as an animal, albeit a dead one with a gaping hole in its chest, exposing its ribs. It has gradually withered to a disgusting clump of fur and bones and flies. This evening, there was a man stood over it, looking at it with intense interest. He appeared to be poking at it with his shoe. I gave him a wide berth, because he was clearly a bit crazy.

2. About halfway through, I crossed paths with a friend of mine, who was out for a run with a buddy. Both of us were travelling at intense speed in opposite directions, so we barely had time to exchange one-word greetings. Usually the only people that I cross paths with are dog walkers (in the morning) and other cyclists. I’ve noticed that the cycling commuters tend to be male, hideously ugly, frowny as all fuck out, and generally about as lively as the decomposing animal which I mentioned before. The non-commuting cyclists tend to be wearing skin-tight brightly coloured shit. Some wear reflective sunglasses, and pass you without acknowledging your presence, but the rest of them smile and say hello or g’day. I am always friendly, of course.

3. The last 1.5 miles (first 1.5 miles in the morning) goes through town. Cycling down the road at about 15mph, a black Merc pulled out of a side road a few metres in front of me. I pulled to a smooth stop by his door, my face betraying no emotion. In retrospect, my mind played through a few alternative scenarios, the most entertaining of which involved me leaping off of my bike, allowing it to crash into his car, smashing the window and denting the door. I would then insist that he then pays me £30 to replace my twisted bicycle. Silly scenario, off with you.

So there you have it. Three events, none of which would be interesting enough for a blog post on their own, but they combine like Power Rangers into something that is still not interesting enough to merit a blog post.

Ah, fuck it. Publish.

Categories
Music reviews

Guillemots

I once said this:

> For a little while, I thought that Guillemots were my new favourite band, but upon closer inspection they have only recorded two songs that really blow me away. *Trains To Brazil* and *Made Up Lovesong #43* are absolutely amazing, but the rest of the songs on this EP sound like the simply-fabulous Rufus Wainwright having an off day.

If I had taken those two songs and mentally extrapolated to an entire album, I would have ended up with something rather similar to their latest album, Red.

It’s fantastic.

That is all.

Categories
Daily

Google News

  • Sigh, we can dream, can’t we? There’s only one article on this page that I don’t consider to be a “Good Thing” and I think that’s the one about Harry Potter. Oooh, controversial.
Categories
Computing Daily

Creating a GUI using PyGTK and Glade

Categories
Daily In The News

Daily links for 3rd June 2008

Categories
My Bands

Siamese

Who were we?

* **Ajay** played lead guitar and wrote most of the original songs. He came from a wealthy family, and was the only one of us to ever drink so much alcohol before a gig that they could barely keep their eyes open.
* **Chris** was the drummer, and had “the classic drummer physique”.
* **Scott** played acoustic guitar and was the lead singer. When I met him he had fairly long, curly hair, though these days he is a lawyer and has a shorter, more conservative trim.
* and I played bass and performed backing vocals. I also sang the lead vocals on *Belinda*, which was a song that I wrote.

How did we meet?

I met Scott on my first day at University, as we lived on the same corridor in first-year accommodation (Rootes J, ground floor). We learned of each others musical talents early in conversation, and my initial impression was “he has long hair. I have never had a male friend with long hair before. Therefore we shall clearly be incompatible.”

At some point in the second term, he approached me and said “I’ve hooked up with a few guys through BandSoc and we’re looking for a bassist. Interested?” and I said “Yeah, why not.”

Originally we were a five-piece, but the guy called Nick (who played guitar) only showed up sporadically and so we booted him out.

Categories
Computing Daily Music

Quod Libet

  • My new favourite music player on Linux. It keeps track of my library, yet is not a nausea-inducing eyesore like Rhythmbox and most other iTunes-inspired players. It’s written in Python for GTK+, so it doesn’t need 100MB of KDE libs to run it (hi, Amarok!). As always, installation is just sudo apt-get install quodlibet
Categories
Daily

Dailies for Sunday 1 June 2008

  • Nice one, guys. In one evening, you’ve managed to make Boris Johnson look credible. Okay, not entirely credible, perhaps. But he’s less uncredible now than he was. And the link between alcohol consumption and asshole behaviour becomes just a little bit stronger.