Dunwich Dynamo 2013

This was my second DD, this time with my father-in-law and brother-in-law.

Not a bad ride all in all, we left about 8:30, and got to the beach at about 8:30.

I had a nice chat to a couple of people in the queue to pick up coach tickets.  Doctor Cake modelling the rather swish LFGSS ladies jersey (which looks stunning).

Chatted to a few people on the road, had a nice chat with Chung, said hi to JAH Tim. Plenty of LFGSS sharkpits and caps on the road, and got DaS'd a couple of times, to which I think I gave an appropriate response.

Crashed at one point, when someone overtook me, and cut back in (I'm 99% certain they left me loads of room) and I, being a bit dozy, flicked myself left into a gutter created by the road camber and curb, filled with dust, cut speed, sensed that it was going to end badly, unclipped, and tried to go up a dropped curb, and flicked myself over the bars.  Reportedly I did a fantastic tumble, ending up sitting up, with grazes on my left elbow, and both knees, a hole in my new shorts and my lights in bits.  Found all of the rear one, which went back together fine, but the front had to be sticky plastered back together.

Following that it all turned into a bit of a haze.  I recall the food stop well enough, no issues finding it this year, but we got there after most of the snacky bits had gone, so grabbed a coffee, ate some sausage rolls, filled water (Said hi to Skydancer) and headed back out.  Most of the ride was me getting ahead of the other two, waiting for them, then disappearing off again.

I paused at the bottom of the big hill, waiting to gather people so that I could shoot down to the bike shop to get new bar ends (since mine had come out in the crash) and missed my father-in-law, but found my brother-in-law, who thought his dad was behind him.  He waited whilst I shot off and got the bike fixed up, When I got back to him, he'd discovered that we were about 10 miles behind.  A lovely bit of faster paced riding got us caught up at the first of the breakfast tents that where popping up, but we pushed through past the sausage stop to the Yurt with the bacon and drinks.  We grabbed a sandwich, peered at the Yurt, decided not to risk going into it (we weren't sure we'd be able to carry on if we did), filled our water bottles and headed out again.

The last few miles felt like they went on forever. The distances seemed much greater than I recalled from last year, but the final descent was lovely, helped I suspect by the fact that we managed to get ahead of a coach that was busy getting stuck trying to get past cars that where leaving, meaning that there wasn't much in the way of moving things other than bikes and people.

We locked the bikes up on the beach (near to tricitybendix and companion in their sleeping bags) before trundling back to the Cafe, where we managed to get an inside seat, and devour breakfast, before getting slightly changed, and joining the coach queue.  Our bikes went on the 11:00 lorry, but we managed to get onto the 10:30 coach, deciding that sitting in London in the sun was preferable to sitting on the beach in the wet.

Riding home along CS7 on a Sunday was by far the worst bit of the ride.  Most of it becomes a car park out of peak hours, so was only any use to us for directions. I'm glad that we chose to get get the train across London on the way out, and sad that it was suspended on our way back.

Despite swearing off of doing it for the first couple of days afterwards, I've already decided that I'll be back again next year.  I might try and persuade the family to camp somewhere near the end of the ride, so that we can just tootle along after we've had out beach breakfasts and crash, rather than getting the coach back. 

Product Reviews

I'm currently waiting for the new SimCity game to be released in the UK, whilst I do so, I've been reading a number of forums for the game, and watching the first reviews rolling in from the States and other places that the game has launched.

As with many other games that have have gone down the have-to-be-online-to-play route (mostly MMOs, but notably Diablo 3 too) there have been issues with the servers at launch. Despite Maxis and EA running beta tests to try and ensure that there were no problems, inevitably there were.

This has lead to, in the age of instant feedback, to an interesting effect. The reviews for these games have hugely suffered.

Taking Diablo 3, it has an Amazon.co.uk rating of 2.7 stars from 476 reviews (100 @ 5*, 75 @ 4*, 55 @ 3*, 64 @ 2* and 164 @ 1*). Looking at the numbers here, the number of 1* reviews seems hugely out of proportion to the others. Its Metacritic scores are also interesting. Pro critics scored the game at 88/100, but the public scores only give it 3.8/10 (from 7943 ratings).

Looking at SimCity, which has only been out for 3 days, the reviews are strikingly similar. Amazon.com currently has an average rating of 1.4 stars from 278 reviews (9 @ 5*, 10 @ 4*, 7 @ 3*, 18 @ 2* and 234 @ 1*). Once again the number of 1* reviews seems well out of proportion. Its Metacritic scores are similar to those from Diablo 3 - pro critics giving the game 90/100, but the public score being 2.6/10 (from 850 ratings).

Why is this happening? I'm fairly sure that in both of these cases, the reviewers are punishing the company involved for taking a game that could previously be played without an internet connection, and forcing online play on people.  In addition to this, both games have had initial problems with server load that have prevented first day players from playing the game, adding to the discontent of the previous fans of the series, who have been used to being able to play offline. Another factor in the discontent may be that both games are continuations or reboots of an old series that's not been touched for some time (11 years for Diablo II, and 9.5 years for SimCity).

Whilst this skewing of review scores isn't great for the games production company, its also not helpful for Amazon, and to a lesser extent Metacritic. They want reviews that reflect the gameplay experience overall, not just the first week or so where the servers where under heavy load, and the game wasn't as it should be.

So, what's the answer to this issue? From Amazon's point of view, the labeling of users that they know have bought the game from them is helpful, but at the moment, you can't get a rating made up of just confirmed purchasers. This also can't be a solution for Metacritic, who don't have the sales details that Amazon do. The only solution that I can come up with for both sires is not to take reviews for a game for the first week or two. Those who are cross about the games forced online play and/or other issues, then have a chance to calm down about any issues that might have spoilt the launch, and thus will give a better set of reviews. Maybe Amazon could have an option so that you can restrict the reviews to only those who have bought the game via Amazon.

Any thoughts?

Keeping your bike safe at night.

This morning I spotted this Twitter post from The Met Police in Merton:

Last night we mentioned bikes stolen from sheds. Have a look at the security that was protecting them ! #getabetterlock http://t.co/QwSfisKy

(https://twitter.com/MPSMerton/status/276261924973449216)

I've had my bike shed broken into twice, with them going in two different ways.  I've toughened up my security each time, and thought that it might be useful if I shared my experiences.

When I first got the shed, I was concious that as it would have my bikes in it, it would be a target.  I looked at the parts that came with it, and realised that the hinges were a huge weak point.  They looked like they would fall apart with one tap.  I therefore invested in in a pair of new hinges from Screwfix. 

These ones:

Recognising that normal screws would be far too easy to undo, I also bought some 'security' screws, these ones:

I also made sure that I had a good padlock on it, one like this:

The thieves that took my bike didn't even look at either of these things.  They identified that the weak point on my shed was the hasp.  The shed had come with an even flimsier version of one of these:

The thieves cut through the hoop that the padlock goes through, allowing them to remove the padlock (which they took) and open the shed with ease.  Bang, one bike gone.

I then decided that I should replace the hasp with something tougher.  Looking through the screwfix catalogue, one of these seemed best:

I also bought a new padlock the same as the last one.

When the thieves came back, the new hasp did it's job.  The thieves didn't even look at it.  What they did look at where the screws that held the hinges in.  Those came out in a scond.  Security through obscurity (i.e. relying on odd shaped screwheads) isn't a challange for any thief.  The tools to take the screws out are really cheap to buy from the very place that I got them from, Screwfix. 

Bang. Second bike gone.

So, I looked into what could be done to prevent this method of entry.  I discovered clutch screws.  These can be done up, but not undone.  so I got some of these:

I've not gone through all the security now on my bike shed for obvious reasons, but take a look at yours, and see which of my pitfalls you've followed, and can take care of to make your shed safer.

Quick links to those products:

Hinges - http://www.screwfix.com/p/heavy-duty-scotch-tee-hinge-406mm-pack-of-2/76908

Screws - http://www.screwfix.com/p/clutch-head-security-screw-10-x-1-pack-of-25/14977

Hasp - http://www.screwfix.com/p/sterling-188mm-hasp-staple-for-shackle-less-padlock/23300

Padlock - http://www.screwfix.com/p/master-lock-excell-disc-padlock-80mm/84205

Sharing videos with Roadsafe

On the 14/07/2011, I posted a video on youtube of the driver of a black BMW, registration number YE54 0KV (YE540KV) overtaking me, at a point that was far too close to a central road island, and being forced to go the wrong side of it.  At the same time, I reported him via the Met's roadsafe website.

The video is available here:

You'll note that in my intro to the video, I labelled the driver a Numpty.  This is because I think it's quite clear that he is one.  The officer at the met who reviewed my video got back to me to let me know that they were unable to take any action against the driver as "Unfortunately, due to the mildly insulting comments you have added to the title and content of the video, I am unable to take any further action with regards to this matter. The Metropolitan Police cannot be seen to be endorsing such comments in any way.".  They also warned me that I "leave yourself open to being sued by the driver through the civil courts for slander / defamation by posting such comments about him in the public domain."

I've looked up the definition of "numpty" in the OED, it gives us two possibilities:

• Noun - A stupid or foolish person; an idiot.
• Adjective - Esp. of a person: stupid, foolish, idiotic.

I think that the driving in the video is all three, stupid, foolish and idiotic, and stand by my use of the word as such, but I'll let you decide if I'm right or not.

I did however, want to ensure that any further footage I sent to them would be usable, so I asked for some guidance I could share.  I've held onto this myself for far too long, so here it is:

"Thanks for your interest, I have compiled a short list of points that would help both the RoadSafe unit and yourselves :-

 

First of all, don't engage with the driver / rider who's caused you the problem. It's far better just to record the video and post it. There is always the chance of a violent reaction and we would rather you avoided this where possible. If you should get into an argument with someone, remember that everything you say is being recorded by your camera. We have had cyclists submit videos where their language is unacceptable and they themselves have received a warning from us. 

 

Try to say the registration number for the camera audio to record. This helps you where the camera hasn't recorded a good enough image to read the plate later.

 

If you submit a video to us, it would be helpful if you could hold on to the original footage until you hear from us. If you get our standard reply, then you can delete the footage (or whatever you want to do with it). However, it may be that we decide to prosecute the driver and will require the original, unedited footage. You will be asked if you are willing to attend court before we proceed.

 

When posting the video to YouTube, Vimeo etc. Please don't post insulting comments about the driver. Try to keep it neutral, e.g." This driver overtook me on a blind bend, leaving two inches of space and scared the life out of me," not "this ***** idiot, ****ing nearly killed me, the ****" (I'll leave you to guess the blanks). Keeping it neutral presents you in a better light, gives nothing for a possible defence solicitor to work on and lastly, doesn't leave you open to a libel suit.

 

Please tag the video with the registration number, without spaces, e.g. AB12CDE. We can't click the links you provide as we have to move to a standalone computer - but please add the full link in case the registration is wrong.

 

If you post the video publicly, we will add the link to any letter we send out to the drivers. Therefore, you may wish to post the video in such a way that it isn't available to anyone and everyone. YouTube allows this and Vimeo can password protect a video. Or you could use your own web space if you have it. If you do this, please mention this on the RoadSafe submission and we won't include the link.

 

You will see lots of drivers committing lots of offences every day. We would really like to concentrate on the worst - those that draw your attention or cause you a problem and you really feel need some advice re their driving. The video you submitted is a superb example of this.

 

I hope this all helps,

 

PC Stuart Carey"

 

I'd like to thank PC Carey for this advice, and am just sorry I too so long to share it with people.  I hope you too find it useful!

A reply to Giles Corran

I'm posting this here as I don't want to lose it.  It's a response by me to a blog by Giles Corran on Skyfall (here - http://reciperifle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bond-villain.html).  I agree with a lot of the post, but had a couple of issues with it.  I don't know if this will get through moderation there, but I hope that it does, if not, its here for everyone to enjoy.

I like this article, and enjoyed the questions that it brings to me regarding the film.  I don't have answers to all of your points, but I do have points regarding two of them.  This means my reply contains slightly more spoilers than your article, so some people may not want to read it.  Just a (I hope) helpful warning to those that haven't yet seen it.

"1) Judi Dench’s ‘M’ dies, and is replaced by a man;"

'M' dying is interesting, as part of the film, I don't think that this is a problem.  I really liked Judi Dench as 'M', and am sad that she has left.  However nor do I have a huge problem with the new 'M' being male.  What sort of a mess would we be in if we could couldn't change the sex of someone in a job?  It might have been more interesting to see more candidates for the role, but I'm not sure that this is realistic in terms of the amount that the film can show.  

As such I'm not certain that a charge of sexism can be leveled here, but I do appreciate having to consider it, which I wouldn't have done so much otherwise.

"3) The pretty girl who manages to remain chaste despite Bond’s ‘charms’ is rewarded at the end with a job as his secretary."

I also have to take this one up.  Sadly Giles, you've made a fundamental factual error.  Moneypenny is not Bond's secretary.  This is an important point.  She never has been in any of the films.  She is the private personal secretary to the head of MI6, which is hardly a lowly post.  

Sadly secretaries are now often underrated. Proper secretarial trained people are extremely highly skilled and trained, and the post of personal private secretary of MI6 is not just going to be given to just anyone.  

Moneypenny is shown throughout the film as being highly capable, Bond's attitude to her might not be great (the constant ribbing starts to grate a little after a while) but that's Bond, and doesn't make the whole film sexist.  I'd also like to point out that I don't feel that the job was given as a 'reward' for her actions during the film.  In fact, it's explicitly stated that she's been seconded to cover the transition period between the service heads changing, during her suspension from field service having shot Bond (a shot that she was unhappy about taking and was pushed into by 'M').  This implies to me that she has a wide ranging knowledge of the organisation as a whole, a skill that would by highly valued be someone such as the new 'M' who has just started with the service.

Once again, I'm not sure that the (factually incorrect) point you've made is so much a sexist point, as a failing to appreciate the skills of properly trained secretarial staff.

I'm not going to disagree that the film is in some ways sexist. To an extent I expect it in a Bond film, and would be far more surprised if it wasn't.  I was however fairly pleasantly surprised by how little there was.  I find it interesting that other far more mainstream writers have agreed with me (see http://goo.gl/zZp3C for one).

Over the last few weeks, I've been watching the stories coming out of the Everyday Sexism project (see http://www.everydaysexism.com/ for more details on that).  Many of these fill me with horror, some of them make me question things that I see day to day, and some of them make me question where boundaries are and where they should be.  I'm flagging it here as I hope that both of you find it as interesting and challenging as I have.

Thank you for putting this article into the public domain, and allowing us to comment on it, and thank you to Esther, for letting Giles post this here.  I would like to say once again how much I enjoyed it (and the comments after it too).

Petronella Wyatt's mother

I have to say, that if the Daily Mail articles are correct, I feel really sorry for Petronella Wyatt's mother.

If we compare http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200280/Cyclists-How-thuggish-minority-Lycra-louts-terrorising-roads.html with http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1250746/Beware-rogue-bicycles--Petronella-Wyatt-attacks-cult-cycling-frail-mother-knocked-down.html we discover that Petronella Wyatt's poor mother has in fact been knocked down 3 times in two and a half years...

Once within 2 months of the 19th of Febuary 2010, by a cyclist "who did not have his lights on."  This caused her mother to fall on her back and hit her head, causing bleeding. When the cyclist didn't bother to stop, a kind passer-by took my mother to hospital, where was told she was lucky to have escaped concussion or a broken back, but had broken her arm.  Sadly, we're not told where or exactly what date this collision occoured, or which A&E she went to, so that one can't be verified.  (taken from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1250746/Beware-rogue-bicycles--Petronella-Wyatt-attacks-cult-cycling-frail-mother-knocked-down.html - incidently note that the only comment that is left is the one about how she's wrong on what strict liability would mean).

The second pair of accidents are a bit more verifiable, and I'm tempted to pop a freedom of info request in to see what it blows up.  The first of the second incidents took place on the 16th of August, as her mother was crossing the road whilst shopping in London's Regent Street, presumbely at a pedestrian crossing, when a youth on a bicycle shot a red light, knocked her to the ground and left her with a broken arm. Now, we're told that kindly passers-by dragged her seemingly inert body on to the pavement and called an ambulance.  This should be traceable, be asking hospitals that she may have been taken to how many callouts to Regent Street they had on the 16th of August, and asking for a breakdown of the reasons for the callouts, and the times of them.  I'd suspect that even a busy street like Regent Street doesn't have that many ambulance callouts a day.

We're then told that 3 days earlier than the date of the article (8 September 2012) her mother was once again knocked down by a cyclist, this time on a North London street.  This would put the collision as occouring on the 5th of September.  She states that her mother nearly lost the sight in her left eye, and that her broken arm sustained such serious damage that she may have to undergo a lengthy operation on it.  I have to assume that this again means that she would have had to go to hospital, so there should be some record of this admission, although as in the first incident, I don't think that there is enough data to pick it up in the stats.

She also goes on to claim in both articles that "If my mother had been hit twice by a car in a similar space of time, the general reaction would have been one of horror and outrage".  Sadly I think that she's wrong.  The Killed and Seriously Injured stats for those hit by cars are horrific, and still they are reported as actions taken by cars, rather than drivers, and are punished in a very light way.  Currently you are more likely to be sent to prison for damaging a car (a charge of criminal damge, which carries a potential jail term of 6 months if the damage is under £5000 in value, or up to 10 years is the damage is over £5000), compared to the charges for killing or injuring a cyclist or pedestrian in your car (a likely charge of causing death by either careless [a punishment of Up to 5 years in prison, and disqualified for a minimum of one year] or dangerous driving [a punishment of 1 to 14 years in prison, and disqualified for a minimum of two years]).  As far as I know, conviction rates on criminal damage charges are much higher than those for causing death by careless or dangerous driving.

I might just throw in those FoI requests, and see what comes back...

More on Vehicle Excise Duty

Sometimes I hate twitter.  It makes me do stupid things.  Like get out of bed to write a blog post on Vehicle Excise Duty at 1:30am

I've been having a discussion on Twitter with Lee Massey (@threeamp1) over VED, and how it could be made fairer.

We both seem to agree on the idea that charging for the amount of wear that your choice of transport does to the road is the best way forward.  Where we disagree is on how to measure that damage.

He suggests that the only two things that are important are the mass of the vehicle, and the distance that it travels. He also suggests that it needs to be based on the actual wear that has taken place.

I would suggest that a better proxy for the wear on the roads is the force that could be exerted on them by the vehicle, combined with the distance traveled.

All taxation schemes have to have a simplification in them somewhere, mine in this would be to use maximum potential wear, rather than absolute wear.  The use of absolute wear would require constant tracking of every one of us, for every minute that we were travelling.  This not only has huge technology cost implications, but also massive privacy ones too.

Physics tells us that force is equal to mass times acceleration.

Car manufacturers are really good at telling us a number of things about their cars.  Their weight, and their 0 to 60 mph time.

Whilst Mass is not Weight, since everything that we are measuring is under the Earth's gravity, we can just use the posted weight as a mass.

I've thrown together a quick table of transport modes, and what their VED ratios per 10,000 miles would be under my proposed system.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AncwBxyMWI06dFNyamltRzN6eE5wNVl1d1BybE0xVUE

I've only thrown a few cars into there, and I'm quite liking the results.  There is no method of taking into account how good or bad a vehicle is in terms of fuel usage, but on the basis that a less polluting car will use less fuel, I'm inclined to suggest that taxing fuel is a better choice for this.

Part of the point of this exercise was to try and find a relative amount of VED for a bike.  I'm going to dig into this a bit more, but since most cyclists don't ever reach 62mph (100kph), it's going to be tricky.  I'll look into it more later on today, but on the basis that a bike ways 8kg, and a cyclist could get to 62mph in a minute, a cyclist does over 600 times less damage to the road than the best car that I've stuck in so far.

I'll update this post later, and increase the table with other vehicles as they are suggested to me.