Merry Christmas!

Just a few words this evening.

I would like to wish you a Merry Christmas!

That is all.

I love Oxford

Wahey! The Christmas holidays have begun and of course means one thing, that the Christmas shopping must begin. It was to this end that today found me taking the opportunity to go into Oxford and get the ball rolling.

As I'm getting tired of the 20-minute plod on foot to the station to get the train into Oxford, this was a good chance to take my new folding bike for a trip on the train. This bike-train-bike arrangement works out much faster than driving into town, even after I've folded the bike, unfolded it, fiddled with the handlebars, re-folded it, unfolded, removed my trapped leg, re-folded it again.

Negotiating Oxford traffic on a vehicle the size and shape of an upside-down ironing board is also an interesting experience. Fortunately these days I feel generally confident in traffic, and having experienced cycling across central London Oxford is a piece of cake.

There are two wonderful things about Oxford. Firstly there's the atmosphere; to me it just feels like such a friendly place to be. As I wondered through the covered market everybody I passed seemed to be in a cheerful mood.

Secondly there's the uniqueness of the shops and pubs. Sure Oxford has the usual high street chains like HMV, Waterstones, Pizza hut, Nando's, etc, but if you know where to look there is just an endless supply of small and unique private establishments. Lots of little independent shops selling anything you care to imagine. There are pubs, accessed through inconspicuous doorways in walls, without signs outside. There are even whole streets that don't seem to be there unless you know they are.

Then of course there's the covered market, which is just brilliant. No chain shops at all, just passageway after passageway of independent retailers with everything from food and drinks to shoes and tshirts.

Most memorable from this trip was the butchers in the covered market, where several whole wild boars were hanging from their back legs on hooks and a man with long pole was fetching down christmas turkeys from a high rack outside.

Oxford is starting to feel more and more like my home town these days, and I'm very happy about this.

Sandwiches

It has been apparent to me for a long time that we have a disease in this country and that disease relates to sandwich fillings.


Somewhere, surely, there must be people who hold the executive power to decide what should be put in the sandwiches that are put into packets for sale at sandwich counters, and it seems to me that these individuals are on a lifelong quest to make all sandwiches everywhere what they would consider to be as interesting as possible.

I don't consider myself to be a fussy eater, I will generally eat most things, but some of the sandwich filling combinations that these people come up really leave me questioning that idea. As I see it the more different ingredients that go into a sandwich, the greater the chance that one of those ingredients will make the whole sandwich a non-starter, by being something I'm not particularly keen on, or something I don't believe should be in a sandwich, or I feel it clashes with something else.

Do 80% of people really want a salad in their sandwich for example? Has anyone asked them?

There's always mayonnaise too. Why, why, why make the assumption that nobody wants margarine or butter on their sandwich, but everybody loves mayonnaise and lots of it?!

The result is I often find myself, stomach growling, looking at a whole shelf stacked high with sandwiches hoping against hope that I can find just one sandwich that doesn't make the corners of my mouth instinctively curl downward.

All I want is to be able to reliably be able to buy a nice simple sandwich like cheese and ham, or tuna, bacon, chicken or turkey with stuffing maybe even. Without mayonnaise. The trouble is that if the sandwichmakers' cartel do let their guard down and allow the occasional couple of simple sandwiches to sneak onto the shelves these always disappear almost instantly, the label remaining below the empty space of course to add insult to injury.

Market economics would seem to suggest that perhaps, maybe, this would be a sign that perhaps there is more demand for such "boring" sandwiches and that maybe they should make more of these, and fewer of the other type, which go on to form the unclaimed hoards, remaining to be eyed with suspicion by hungry passers by.

Unfortunately this isn't the case. As far as I am able to tell, to the unpopularity of their more interesting sandwiches can only be interpreted by these people as a signal that they aren't trying hard enough, and they'd better redouble their efforts next time around. This then becomes an endless feedback loop which will go on forever.

If it wasn't for the time spent travelling I swear it would be worth the price of a Eurostar ticket to go to France where it's possible to get a buttered baguette with cheese and ham in it. Delicious cheese and ham, and nothing else!

Congestion Charge

I heard today that the population of Manchester have voted against adopting a congestion charge by quite a large margin.



Of course the congestion charge was only part of the deal, there was a £3bn investment in public transport that would have been implemented with it. Before it in fact; the charge wouldn't have been introduced until the transport improvements had been delivered.

I personally see this as a perfect illustration of how the majority of our population seems to think. I wouldn't call it stupidity as such, it's more of a confirmation bias in favour of the received opinion that the car is the only form of personal mobility.

Nobody sits down and calculates how much it really costs to run their car, per mile.

Nobody likes to accept the fact that it is physically impossible to provide enough road space for everybody to use a car in a densely populated area.

Put cars into politics and people start behaving completely irrationally, so putting this charge to a vote in the way in which it was done was clearly not a good idea. I'm not a fan of congestion charges actually, but that's a discussion for another post. The fact is that better transport comes at a cost, and someone has to pay for it.

Perhaps next we should have a vote on whether we want to pay income tax or not. Of course we know what, all things considered, the rational answer to that question is; I just don't credit the population with the ability to be that rational.

Folding bike arriveth

Woohoo! My folding bike was delivered today!

I use the term "delivered" in the broadest sense of the word. It seems that the couriers left the "we missed you" card on the floor near the entrance to my flat, as opposed to putting it in my mailbox, and also failed to leave any details as to what I should do next on the card itself. In the end I went on the internet, found their nearest depot, which was in Didcot, drove down there and knocked on the door.

The box it came in was suspiciously large, but at least it wasn't heavy. I had plenty of entertainment, read frustration, trying to remove the packaging though. Some bright spark in Taiwan, where it was made, had clearly decided that putting an immovable piece of plastic up the saddle mounting tube would be a really good idea. I was left with no alternative but to bring out the ol' Irish screwdriver to deal with this problem.

This bike is very nicely made; every bit of it feels solid and dependable. Sadly because of this it also looks expensive, which means I have yet again failed to buy a bike I'll feel comfortable leaving locked up somewhere for any length of time. Whoops!


The process of actually folding the bike is a bit tricky, although I was expecting this in the first instance anyway. I'm told that it gets easier with practice. The saddle drops down, the handlebars fold down next to the front wheel, and then the whole frame of the bike folds in two, where it is held folded by a powerful magnet. Upon unfolding the bike in order to ride it the hinges and latches all lock back into place with a very secure feel.

Folded down the bike itself is actually larger than I was expecting, but it's no larger than a big suitcase. I won't have any trouble taking it on trains as luggage, although carrying it for any distance wouldn't be comfortable. This said, I expect that compared with manhandling a conventional bike in tight spaces, or fitting it into the back of a car, there won't be any comparison.


Now for some shakedown trials before I metaphorically wrap it up for Christmas. Just to make sure everything works of course!

Icy roads

This morning for me was characterised by the amount of ice there was as I stepped out of my flat on the way to work. Turning my car shaped ice cube into a car took some work with a scraper. The heater on the Corolla kicks in about 2/3 of the way to work, as opposed to the old Micra that managed it at 5/6 of the way to work, so it was a bit chilly too!

Most startling, however, was the complete lack of gritting that had taken place on the road beyond my cul-de-sac. As I rolled gracefully forward out of the junction onto said road I became aware that although I was doing with the wheel and pedals what usually makes my car go around that corner today it wasn't working.

There were two issues. First, the front of my vehicle wasn't going in the same direction that the front wheels were pointing. Second, I was going far too slowly for that number or revs whilst in 2nd gear. As I moved toward a sideways encounter with Mr Curb I managed to bring my foot off the accelerator. All of a sudden my front wheels got purchase and I lurched off in the direction of work instead.

If I'd decided to risk cycling to work this morning I bet I may have had an even more interesting time of it!

In Anna's flat

We are eating chocolate. She thinks this is much more fun than being hypnotised. I am hurt.

She is amused by the cryptic fashion in which I have concealed her real name!

Anyway, I am going home now because all I wanted was someone to hypnotise. Meh!

The above is simply to prove that I am not an emo-kid. So there!

Space conference

Yesterday saw the 4th Appleton Space Conference taking place at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Having crawled back to work I was able to attend, which was good because sitting completely spaced out in a lecture theatre was by far preferable to sitting completely spaced out at my desk and then feeling guilty for having done no work.

One highlight was a lecture on the geology of the moon, and of course all the wonderful science that will be done using the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer. Smug moment, as I designed a lot of that instrument!

Many of the other talks were about monitoring climate change. What we get shown in those sorts of lectures are often quite disturbing, such as changes to weather patterns, melting ice sheets, etc. I always come out of those lectures feeling quite angry about the kind of people who say things like "I don't believe in global warming, my mate down the pub reckons it's all a big scam to rip us off with taxes."

A free lunch always calms me down though.

Again this year we also had the head of Virgin Galactic telling us about their progress with their space tourism venture, and how the White Knight aircraft could also be used as an aerial launch platform for rockets carrying small satellites. I missed my second opportunity to ask him if, going on my experience with their trains, they plan to line the seats up with the windows in their spaceship.

Christmas comes early...

Well it seemed almost bound to happen. I mentioned last week that I've had my eye on the Dahon D7HG for a while. The cool little folding bike with hub gears. In fact I've been keen on the idea of having one for about two years now, but I've had other things on my spend radar, such as a road bike, my rent and eating.

Well... preempting Christmas by just a little bit, today I ordered my D7HG!

This is what happens when I decide I like something, then come across it for sale on a cycling website I've ordered things from before at 39% off, with only 1 remaining in stock.

No doubt my parents will insist that when it arrives it should be wrapped up and put under the Christmas tree.

Ill again

Yet again I find myself waking up with that head-in-vice sensation that tells me I've caught yet another cold. That feeling where you know what you want to think, but your brain decides it's going to meander a bit and take in the scenery before getting there.

I was doing so well too. I'd gone 6 months without so much as a sniffle, now two colds in almost as many weeks.

Let's see if Mr Lemsip can get me back on my feet. I'm going to call in sick but I might limp in this afternoon; I don't think I can stand the boredom of slouching about my flat all day.