10:10 Campaign

I signed up to the 10:10 Campaign, which is a commitment to reduce your carbon emissions by 10% for 2010. So I decided to use some carbon calculators to work out our carbon emissions. I tried the Guardian's Carbon Calculator and the Government's Act on CO2 calculator.

I was surprised to find a very big difference in the results. According to the Guardian Calculator we produce 10.51 tonnes of CO2 per year, but the Government's calculator gives us a figure of 5.47 tonnes per year. The national average according to the Guardian's site is 15.4, the target for 2010 is 14, and for 2050 is 3.

I'd like to think that our actual figure is 5.47, but I think for the purposes of this attempt I'm going to pick the higher figure (I suspect that they are both inaccurate) because this means I have to save 1 tonne as opposed to 0.5 tonnes.

Punctures :-(

Last Monday I got two punctures in 500 yds. It seems that my front tyre had a slit in it, so when the tyre compressed on the road the slit would open up and the inner tube would squeeze into the gap, then when the tyre rolled onwards the slit closed up chomping bits out of the inner tube.

I effected a temporary fix by putting a puncture repair patch on the inside of the tyre.

I have now replaced tge tyre with a new Schwalbe Marathon which are meant to be puncture proof, I hope.

The puncture proof Specialized Armadillo on my racer 700x23 has done well so far (about 600 miles of puncture free cycling) although a small nail did find it's way through the protection to give me one puncture.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Trigger's Bike

Just replaced the frame on my old mountain bike (used for commuting), with a new Dawes Watoga frame, and as a consequence also needed to replace: -

• The brakes - the old Canter Lever brakes wouldn't work on the rear, as there was no centre-pull for the system, so I've had to replace those with Vee Brakes.
• The front dérailleur - the old one was bottom pull only, and the routing on the new frame required a top-pull system.
• Bottom bracket - I couldn't extract the old one from the previous frame.
• The seat-post - the old seat post was way too narrow for the new frame, which accepts a big 31.2mm diameter seat post.

Incidentally, I had some difficulty measuring the seat post hole until I worked out that by rolling up a sheet of paper, inserting that into the hole and letting it unfurl; I could then draw a line all the way around the top of the hole. Measuring the length of the line with the paper flat gave me a length of 98mm, dividing this by pi gave me my 31.2. I checked that 31.4 should be 98.6mm and 31.0 should be 97.3mm and then rechecked the lengths.

Previously replaced on the bicycle are the following: -

• Headset bearings - after the steering ground to a halt (lots of leaning around corners for a while there).
• Front forks - after the headset was replaced I had too much rise for the previous forks.
• Both wheels - after discovering splits in the rims.
• Chain set - can't remember why I did this.
• Pedals - upgraded from plastic things to SPD pedals.
• Chain and Cassette - I got through three chains & two cassettes last year.
• Tyres - On my second set of tyres this year.
• Rear Dérailleur - The old one had worn very badly.

So all that remains from the original now is: -

• The handlebars & grips
• The saddle
• The bell

I'm thinking about changing the saddle next :-)

Cycling

I returned to cycling (last year) after about a 14 year absence, and now cycle commute to work every day, and have brought a mountain bike for the weekends.

Well this weekend's plan was to go on the Cambridge Carbon Footprint picnic, but plans were thwarted by some misinformation as to the start time :-(. We ended up cycling into Cambridge and a bit further to try and find them, this wasn't helped by a puncture on the way.

We arrived at 10:30 (the time we were told), but unfortunately the group left at 10:00.

Luckily we had another cycle ride planned for Sunday, and ha a very enjoyable ride to Grantchester and a pub meal in the Red Lion with some ex work colleagues (the company went into liquidation last year). It was nice to catch up with them all and some of us enjoyed a walk alongside the Cam afterwards.

On the route home we took a detour along the new guided bus-way, and saw a "little owl" on a fence post near the Oakington section.

All in all I think we racked up 52 miles over the weekend, which when added to my normal weekly commute came to 152 miles this week.

Next weekend is more likely not to involve much cycling

Dragon Game 239817

This is an attempt to use Drago to put the game into my blog

Back to Blogging

Been absent from updating my lbog for a long time. In the meantime I've been up to quite a few things, including passing my karate grading - I'm now 3 dan in Shotokan karate.

My go activities have been reduced in the past two years, as I've been preparing for my karate grading and had quite a lot to do at work. In addittion I have been trying to learn japanese - so I've been quite busy.

I'm keeping my go playing abilities active by using http://www.dragongoserver.net/ and http://www.littlegolem.net/. I was inspired to resurrect my blog by the very well written http://the-shodan.blogspot.com/, and hopefully I will keep going this time.

Fingers crossed.

Just finished an interesting 13x13 game on dragon (Dragon Game 239817)

Star-Encoding in C++

Star Encoding is a way of making your data more compressable by standard compressors

Read more at www.dogma.net/markn/art...

Rzip - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Interesting algorithm to take into account long distance duplications in source data - very memory hungry though

Read more at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Compression Tools Compared | Linux Journal

Interesting site about compression tools - comparing memory usage, time taken to compress/decompress and resultant size

Read more at www.linuxjournal.com/ar...

Fractal Desktops

Just found some rather nice fractal images at Fractal Desktops

Silly stuff with electronics

Mike's Webpage who does silly things with electricity. Clearly mad

Plucker - The web in your pocket

Just found plucker for my Palm Vx, really good application allows me to DL webpages and view them offline on my Palm. Good for pages like The Onion. Has a natty little interface that will go off and DL a load of channels for you. I've even had a go at shoving some of Charles's Go Articles from gobase at it, and it's done a pretty good job, though the image's tend to be a bit small (I can still zoom them so it's not too bad).

You can find plucker at the Plucker homepage

Sharpe's Eagle & Shapre's Gold

Recently finished these two books: -

In Sharpe's Eagle events centre around the battle of talavera. At the start of the book a standard of the ficticious "South Essex" is taken by the French, and a bit of blamemongering goes on and Sharpe is blamed (of course Wellesley doesn't fall for this, but the blame mongers have high political positions back in England). Sharpe tries to recover the regiment's honour by capturing a French Eagle.

In Sharpe's Gold, the British Army are short of funds and withdrawal is imminent. Sharpe's mission is to "recover" some Spanish Gold from behind the French lines. It brings Sharpe into contact with a group of Guerilla(sp?) fighters. Very well written - gripping to the end.

An update on my goproblems

Here is a list of the go problems I've submitted: -
Problem 3009 - rated as difficulty 3d
Problem 3007 - rated as difficulty 5k
Problem 1592 - rated as difficulty 4k

Deadline

With a deadline looming in the office,I decided to search for "deadline" and see what it's etymology might be ... this site was quite helpful word origins.

My first search in google brought up lots of butterfly collecting websites I searched for entimology - doh!

Ladders

A few weeks ago I fell off of a ladder onto a concrete driveway. I was doing some work on the Eaves of my house when the ladder decided to fall, and I had no option, but to fall with it :-(. I managed to escape largely unscathed, but quite bruised, and have only just managed to resume my exercise schedule. Last night I went to Circuit Training and I still seem OK, so that's good. Will resume karate tomorrow.

GTL : Reviews by me

Here are the reviews I've done for the Go Teaching Ladder GTL : Reviews by chrisg.

Sharpe's Rifles

Finished this book (also whilst on holiday), another very good read. It introduces Sharpe as a Leiutennant in the Rifles, and the main story is based around the British retreat to Corunna.

This book was also written after the main Sharpe novels and acts as a prelude to the main series which focus around the Penninsular War.

I am now looking forwards to reading the next Sharpe Book, but am taking a brief break from fiction to read "A Brief History of Time" by Steven Hawking

Sharpe's Triumph

Finished this book whilst on holiday, an excellent read. It continues from Sharpe's Tiger and is also based in India. It deals with the battle of Assaye in which General Wellesley with ~13,000 troops (British and sepoys) takes on and beats a force at least 3 times the size. A very impressive victory and one which Wellesley was rightly proud of.

This book was written after the main Sharpe novels, and fills in some of Sharpe's earlier exploits.

Ireland

Just come back from Ireland, beautiful scenery and wonderful people. Spent most of our holiday near Killarney, and Killarney National Park. Walked the Gap of Dunloe a glacial valley. Also went to Dingle for a day, where we saw Fungi the Dingle Dolphin , and visited Slea Head.