#

It was my birthday last Sunday. Daniel, perhaps prompted by Natalie, decided to make me a 2000AD birthday card. He doesn't read 2000AD (it not really being a comic for 11 year olds in this modern age), so I have no idea at all why he decided on Zombo, a very polite secret government experiment with a taste for human flesh.

We live in the future these days and I kinda-sorta-know-on-the-internet Zombo writer Al Ewing. I thought he would be tickled, so I popped the picture up on Twitter. I cheekily copied in Zombo artist Henry Flint too, but had no real expectation that either would even notice.

... but within minutes ...

What good blokes.

The internet. It's top.

[Add a comment]

#Warwickshire Wanderer 100km

Harry and I rode our third audax together today (if you don't count his outing as a passenger), the Warwickshire Wanderer. The Wanderer was part of the CTC's Heart of England Rally, held annually in Meriden, which sits pretty much half-way between Birmingham and Coventry. Meriden is the nominally centre of England and is home to a national war memorial dedicated to cyclists who died in the First World War. That may sound an odd dedication, but cycle messengers were a vital part of battle field communications at the time and the British Army even had a Cyclist Division. The village itself is rather genteel and it is, therefore, no surprise that it is also the birthplace of Napalm Death.

Our previous outings have been over 50km, which the kind of distance pretty much anyone with a functioning pair of legs should be able to do. Harry also gives off the distinct feeling of being done with 50km on the tandem, as he's keen to do one on his own bike. I'm not sure he's quite ready for that yet - maybe later in the year - and suggested we do 100km tandem. He agreed, especially when I told him he'd get a different colour badge for it. The 50km badges are pink, while 100s are a nice birds' egg blue. Audax, it's bike riding for badges in our house.

The route itself runs its way south from Meriden, south around Warwick and out to the west, looping back to thread between Leamington and Kenilworth. On the way, you get some pretty spectacular views away of the Vale of Evesham. It's relatively flat, although there is a punishing hill around 50km. It doesn't look much in this picture, but it's a proper killer. Having battled up to the top though, your reward is the decent down into Fenny Compton. We hit 60kph before having to haul on the anchors - the road through the village is alarmingly twisty and narrow.

Harry himself was a complete champ and probably handled it better than I did. I was a little worried when 30 minutes in, he started asking when the control was - answer, about an hour and half - but it turned out he just needed a wee. Easily solved. Later on, as I was labouring a bit he egged me on from behind, "come on Dad, we've done 86, we can do 100". Top man.

Out on a ride I don't keep track of the time, only the distance. Before we set off I had no doubt we'd finish, and anticipated our time to be between six and half and seven hours. Six hours was, I thought, right on the lower limit of what we might do, but I thought it unlikely. When we rolled in and checked the time, I was amazed to find it was just gone three o'clock, six hours and four minutes since we'd started. It was bloody marvellous, and I did get a little teary. The time isn't really important though, and I'd have probably got teary anyway. There's a particular pleasure you get from just riding a bike for a good long time that you don't get any other way. An hour isn't enough, you need to get away from traffic lights and roundabouts and what-not, it's even better if you can get away from motorised traffic. Don't get me wrong, city cycling is dead good fun but there's something about just riding and riding that's really fantastic. Audaxing pretty much guarantees you that. Have a go, because I think you'll like it.

[Add a comment]

#[elsewhere] We've also seen people using the drop-in as a way to avoid rush hour trains; it's not just the warm-up act for the evening's beer and pizza.
[Add a comment]

#Ninja in his pyjamas, and fruit bowl

[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] ‘A prime piece of Lovecraft real estate…’
My comics-chum Matt's brief interview with writer Ian Edginton. In many ways, Edginton is one of the unsung stars of British comics over the past 20 odds years. His recent work with Iain Culbard adapting Sherlock Holmes stories is first rate and I would urge you to have a look.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] How the Murdoch press keeps Australia's dirty secret - News Corp papers across the world propagate the myth that prejudice has no effect on the lives of modern-day Aboriginal people.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] C++ CSP2 - C++CSP2 is a library that provides easy mechanisms for concurrent C++ programming. The CSP-derived approach is to eliminate sharing of data between concurrent processes. Processes are separate pieces of code that communicate explicitly via channels.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Why train departure information is not currently open data
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] SchNEWS interviews Richard Stallman – hacker, founder of the Free Software movement and activist for digital-software-information freedom... - “To try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage.” - Richard Stallman, 1986.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Right, figures from Moseley & Kings Heath ... 3731 for No; 4622 for Yes. 55% in favour.
So, does that mean we get it here, or what?
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] A Brief History of Allotments in the UK - There is no set standard size but the most common plot is 10 rods.
Rods, aka poles, or perches.
[Add a comment]

#[elsewhere] Rode out this way with my nipper on our tandem this past Saturday
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Elite coder readies £15 programming gadget for schools - Braben thinks that today's ICT classes lead to computing ignorance and merely prepares a student for an office job, rather than inspiring technical creativity.
I would agree.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] How Heavy Metal Is Keeping Us Sane - “We seem to move on a thin crust,” warned Sir James George Frazer in The Golden Bough,

which may at any moment be rent by the subterranean forces slumbering below. From time to time a hollow murmur underground or a sudden spirt of flame into the air tells of what is going on beneath our feet.

Though written in 1922, this is metalspeak, pure and simple.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Raspberry Pi Foundation - The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing. We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Raspberry Pi: A £15 mini-computer
BBC video piece
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Game developer David Braben creates a USB stick PC for $25
That's about £15 in proper money. Which is awesome!
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] One generation, new species - all-female lizard bred in a lab - She set about trying to breed a hybrid whiptail, using the same combination of parent species that Neaves described. She succeeded.
[Add a comment]

#[linkfarm] Staff shocked as Princes Avenue's Pier Luigi's restaurant closes - Former customer also saddened. :( Falcon's Kebabs, Peppinos, and (most remarkable of all) Ray's Place still open.
[Add a comment]