Me new bike!

Like Kraftwerk, I like a nice bike ride now and then. Well, to be specific, I do it every day commuting thru the crazy streets of London, and for the last four years, I’ve been riding an ultra-budget Raleigh road bike, which although it only cost £150 has been pretty good. In approx. 5000 miles the worst thing that happened to it was a snapped chain going thru Notting Hill.

But, it was showing signs of wear: bearings were getting a little skronky, back wheel spoke kept popping out, etc., so I thought I was justified getting a little upgrade given the miles I do.

So, behold the majestic new 2 wheeled vehicle I am now the lucky possessor of:

Made by Trek, it’s got a light aluminium frame, carbon fibre forks & seatpost and entry-level Shimano groupsets. And well funky spokes.

More importantly than that, though, is that it’s beautifully light (compared to my previous, which I now realise weighs as much as a Russian tank), and which means it goes like the fracking wind! I love it. My regular journey used to take 19-20 mins, it now takes me 15-16 mins.  I’m not joking, it really is that much quicker!

Anyway, just thought I’d share as new bikes are always an exciting thing, and especially now that I can pretend I’m Wiggins hurtling down the back straight to some kind of Tower Bridge crossing gold!

Quick note to TicketMaster

I bought tickets to see Underworld in November, and then received a survey follow-up from TicketMaster:

Personally, if they could just move the search 3 pixels to the left, I’d be so much happier about the extortion they call ‘booking fees’. (This time it was £7.50 on two £25 tickets.)

Satisfaction levels for the location of a search box? Other questions included how ‘satisfied’ I was with their colour scheme, and various other things that any decent web-designer should just know how to do properly. What crap!

World’s coolest cassette

I don’t often bang on about cassettes, despite the band name, but occasionally there’s a good reason to – and here’s today’s:

It even says ‘Roland’ on the mini-reels, how sweet!

(I totally lifted this from my colleague Tom Whitwell’s excellent MusicThing blog, which if you haven’t read it yet – well, you better set aside a few hours for a serious music-tech geekoutathon!)