Back in January of this year I posted an article (Unreleased products top cyclingnews.com 2010 tech innovation poll!) pointing out that two 'products' that had been awarded a best product award for 2010 had yet to emerge onto the market.  Well, bikeradar.com now reports that the Garmin (formerly Metrigear) Vector pedal-based power-metering system faces release in March 2012 (Garmin Vector pedal power meter available in 2012).  Not bad for a product that won an award for technical innovation in 2010.Somewhat annoyingly for me, the device now uses Look Keo pedals, rather than the originally slated SpeedPlay system (none of my bikes have Keos, but two do have SpeedPlay).  No word currently on whether Polar's parallel system, which is also based as far as I know on the Keo pedals, will see retail shelves in 2012.The Garmin system does look pretty neat compared with crank-based systems.

This event was the last evening event in the North Bucks time trial series (the remaining events will be run at weekends).  The turnout was quite small (about 9 riders, I think) probably because of the weather.  The drizzly weather had set in during the afternoon, and by the time I left work to ride over to the race, it had turned into rather more persistent (though light) rain.Still, this was a counting league event, so some of us were up to it, including Lindz, Tony and Geoff - all of whom are on good form at the moment.  For my part, I wasn't looking forward to dragging my body up the hill on the outward leg, particularly as my attempts at weight loss have been a bit derailed of late.  This 'anticipation' pretty much reflected reality.While I satisfactorily reeled in some of the riders ahead of me, as usual I found tackling the first half to be the usual hard ride.  Indeed, I reckon it took me 15 minutes or so to reach the turn.  In my own defence, I have to say I was taking some of the turns a bit conservatively, as I wasn't keen to take a tumble so near to the Duo Normand.  Anyway, the return leg was as usual much quicker, peaking at 69kph.I finished in 27:10, not too bad for the conditions.  I'm pretty sure that Tony (26:08) and Lindz (a long 26) both finished with course PBs.  I've no idea what my best on this course is, and have no easy way of finding out, I think.

An odd morning, weatherwise - quite bright as we drove out to Tempsford but rather heavily overcast for most of the event.  In fact I was quite surprised it didn't rain, and the general darkness of the cloud certainly suggested we might be in for a bit of a downpour.  An additional worry for me was that I'd only just returned from a week off the bike at residential school in Nottingham.  Not only does that keep me off the bike, but the diet is rather dodgy, with too much greasy and stodgy food topped off with more alcohol than I'm used to.So it was with trepidation that I set off for this event.  I wasn't feeling too great, having slept badly and got up early, and to add insult to injury my inward parts were still suffering from the last week.  I made a vague effort at warming up, during which my heart rate resolutely refused to rise above 150bpm.  Anyway, I returned to the start line, had a chat with other riders and the start crew, then off I went.The event was on the F1B/25, reputedly the slower of the two courses based on the A1 near Tempsford.  You can see the course on the Garmin map below.  After joining the A1, the course heads south across the Sandy, Biggleswade North and Biggleswade South roundabouts, to turn at a roundabout under the point where the A1 becomes the A1(M), near Baldock.  In general terms, the turn is higher than the start, with considerable uphill and downhill sections in the southern section.  I had no real problems, other than lassitude in the legs, and no traffic related issues other than nearly seeing a car crash happen at Biggleswade North (which had my heart in my mouth), and getting delayed by a lorry (but that won't have delayed me much) at the Sandy roundabout.I got to the turn in a bit less than 30 minutes, which is usually OK, as the return leg is often a bit quicker.  There was a stiff sidewind which meant that the return leg wasn't as consistently fast as I'd hoped.  Still, I finished with 58:15.  That's the fastest '25' I've ridden this year, I believe, but only because it's only the second solo '25' of the season.  Let's face it, my 2011 season has not been good so far!  Tony finished with 55:43 I think, a sterling ride on a not-so-quick day on a not-so-quick course.

The recent spell of hot and muggy weather continued through to this event, although the lunchtime thunderstorm caused a bit of concern - were this to happen at the event, I could have seen the third cancellation in four events!  By 7pm it was rather better than that, but with a breeze that made conditions rather harder on the outward leg.Annoyingly, I got stalled by traffic at the first and second roundabouts, which always interrupts my concentration a bit.  On the dual carriageway, I initially found my concentration wavering, but then set to the task of catching my minute man (which took until some distance beyond the turn).  Rounding the turn, I was counting the time off until I saw Tony - when I did see him, it seemed to me that he was on a good ride.Back of the dual carriageway, and I was horsing down the hill to the last two roundabouts.  Unfortunately I was again held up by traffic at both - once by a huge white lorry with a train of following cars that (in discussions after the event) had encountered riders at elsewhere on the course.I finished in 4th place with 22:19.  Tony was in first place with an excellent 21:30, so a nice return to form for him!Results:

	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	+ / -	Vets Pos
1	Tony Parks	NBRC	21.24	V46	26.42	+5.18	4
2	Geoff Perry	TeamMK	22.04	V51	27.46	+5.42	1
3	Rob Saunders	NBRC	22.19	V51	27.46	+5.27	2
4	Richard Golding	TeamMK	22.21	V42	25.54	+3.33	6
5	Glen McMenamin	NBRC	22.32	S
6	Lindz Barral	iTeam cc	22.58	S
7	John Buchanan	TeamMK	23.22	V41	25.42	+2.20	8
8	Dave Carrington	TeamMK	23.43	V46	26.42	+2.59	7
9	James Vaughan	Twenty3c	23.49	S
10	Clive Faine	TeamMK	25.38	V65	31.00	+5.22	3
11	Alan Lawson	NBRC	26.48	V43	26.06	-0.42	9
12	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	27.10	V68	31.45	+4.35	5
13	Tony Brunton	NBRC	29.12	V46	26.42	-2.30	10

There seems to be a growing tendency for software updates to be pushed out to users at a fixed and high frequency. I've kind of got used to this through Ubuntu GNU/Linux releases every 6 months (but there it's generally a large collection of packages, many of which will have had significant updates during the 6 months). Additionally, periodically a release is denoted for Long Term Support.More questionable is the Rapid Release cycle adopted by Mozilla for Firefox. In this release cycle, updates are pushed out four times a year. For most domestic users, this might not be a problem (it's not a major hassle updating a browser), but for the corporate sector, it's a headache for the IT managers (Rapid-release Firefox meets corporate backlash).What then do I make of the upcoming release schedule for the Joomla! CMS which I use for a number of sites? You can see the sort of situation in this infographic:This strategy seems to involve releases of different support durations, which is confusing in itself.  To add further complexity to the upgrade path is that often upgrade requires database changes as well as updating files.  For the 1.6.5 to 1.7.0 migration, the Joomla! devs have kindly supplied a 'one click' upgrade tool accessible from the back end of the site to be migrated.  Unfortunately on the two sites I've tried it on, it doesn't work.  The second method proposed in the documentation, in which a migration package is manually applied through the extension manager, also doesn't work.  Irritatingly (and I presume this is to to with my particular hosting company's setup), there's no feedback to indicate where the problem lies.  At least not that I can find.  And the migration documentation isn't too much help.Yet another level of complexity is presented succinctly in this snippet from the documentation:

Check that all installed extensions are compatible with Joomla 1.7 by checking the JED Listing or developer site.

Very wise advice (and I suspect it could include templates).  I use several extensions on my sites - none very exceptional - and few appear to be compatible with Joomla! 1.7 so far.OK, so I probably can't migrate my sites until the extensions and templates are compatible with 1.7.  Who knows how long that may take?  I have every sympathy with the extension developers, who have presumably found themselves at the mercy of a rapid release schedule!As it is, I'm looking at the manual installation, where I have to copy a whole bunch of files and folders over to the site, delete another bunch of files and folders, conduct a migration of the database using an sql script.  Now, I'm competent to do this, but it seems like quite a hassle, particularly when the version being installed is only going to be supported for 6 months (and half a month has already elapsed!).Looking at the release schedule, it looks very much as though version 1.5 will be supported beyond 1.6, and to the point when the replacement for 1.7 is released.  Perhaps I ought to have hung on to 1.5, missing out releases 1.6 and 1.7?  I see security updates for 1.6 continuing for the moment, but for how much longer?  Maybe migration out of Joomla! is the best course?

A lovely morning greeted us as we loaded my bike into the car.  As we drove over to Tempsford, the conditions became rather misty though this had cleared by the time we lined up at the start.  Also rather disappointing was the head wind to the turn, which rendered the outbound leg rather stodgy - I was certainly struggling to keep the speed over 25mph.The current incarnation of the F1/10 runs southbound from near Tempsford, across the Sandy roundabout to turn at the Biggleswade North (Warden Lane) roundabout, with a finish line really close to Tempsford Hall.  Joining the A1 after the start is rather nice - it's a sliproad coming down from a flyover.  Unfortunately, the 29+mph I'd got up to coming down the sliproad soon evaporated and I was plugging along trying to keep the speed above 25mph.  Once at the turn, things looked up a bit and I found myself doing 28-30 mph most of the way back from the turn.I finished with 22:33 (somewhat better than I'd expected in the first half of the race), around 18 seconds slower than Tony.  In fact there weren't many really quick times today - the event was won with a 21, I think.Back home, where Tony and I had cappuccinos, then nipped out for a 33 mile easy ride  out through Soulbury, Stewkley and Hoggeston, during which we saw some charity bike ride under way.  All in all a rather good Sunday morning.

Pos	Rider	Club	Time
1	J Bates	Team Milton Keynes	00:21:15	V
2	T Davies	Icknield RC	00:21:42	V
3	D Kealey	Finchley RT	00:21:56	V
4	N Stephens	Finchley RT	00:22:03	V
5	A Strickland	Cambridge CC	00:22:12	V
6	T Parks	North Bucks RC	00:22:15	V
7	S Tarry	Chronos RT	00:22:16	S
8	N Pitt	Chronos RT	00:22:18	S
9	C Symonds	Bike and Run London	00:22:29	S
10	K Gill	PCA Ciclos Uno	00:22:30	V
11	I Bibby	Finsbury Park CC	00:22:31	V
12	R Saunders	North Bucks RC	00:22:33	V
13	G Perry	Team Milton Keynes	00:22:35	V
14	J Hargrave	Spalding CC	00:22:36	S
15	K Read	North Norfolk Wheelers	00:22:53	V
16	P Davis	St Ives CC	00:22:57	V
17	A Halliday	Westerley CC	00:23:00	S
18	N Ellison	Beyond/WDBMC/Specialized/RRP	00:23:02	S
19	M Horton	CC Ashwell	00:23:10	S
20	R Palmer	Team Salesengine.co.uk	00:23:25	V

It's not often I see telomeres referenced in a web comic. Here's today's Dilbert:

This event was looking promising.  A warm and overcast evening, there was a breeze that looked likely to help the riders up the hill to Nash.  The timekeepers, riders and associated personnel were congregated at the start, when a bloke in a big 4x4 pulled up an announced that there was a significant car crash between Beachampton and Nash. This was just before the first rider was about to start - we duly held off starting and dispatched Chris on his motorbike to investigate whether the road was indeed closed.  It turned out to be the case, and the location of the crash prevented us from switching to the Whaddon circuit.So that was that.  A 33 mile round trip and no race!  This is the second time in three events that we've bee forced to cancel an event just as we were to start.Not riding events is becoming a bit of a feature of my 2011 season!  Hopefully the Hitchin Nomad '10' using the F1/10 on Sunday will go ahead without disruption.

This is getting ridiculous. Alberto Contador tested positive for a vanishingly small amount of clenbuterol about a year ago. At the time I felt that the small concentration found (which was several orders of magnitude below the testing ability expected of a testing lab) meant that guilt for clenbuterol use might become a lottery of which lab was selected to test a sample (Is Alberto Contador really positive for Clenbuterol?).Now comes the news that the CAS inquiry, already delayed from before the Tour de France until August is to be further delayed till November (Contador CAS hearing postponed until November | Cyclingnews.com).The length of time this case has taken to reach a conclusion is nothing short of scandalous.  Remember that the UCI is seeking to nullify Contador's 2011 results.  Assuming that he's found guilty, of course.

The recent weather patterns were forecast to continue for this event - heavy showers were to be the main feature.  As it turned out, despite the glowering clouds, all we got was a little light drizzle for a few minutes.The Stagsden course (see map below) isn't a very frequently used course, so it made a bit of a change from the regular events.  Unfortunately, I rarely ride on the course, as in my annual cycle of work, I'm generally working away from home at this time of year.  I put this lack of 'course experience' down as the explanation of my lousy start in this event.  Shooting off from the start in decent style, my rheumy old eyes couldn't believe the 29.9mph my computer was showing.  Unfortunately, the road then went upwards - not as who should say a mountain, but a significant impediment to a rider in an inappropriate gear!  I found myself plugging up this gentle undulation at embarrassingly slow speed, before reaching Astwood and lifting the pace significantly.  I suspect this, and the ensuing oxygen debt cost me quite a few seconds, and indeed made me wonders what I was playing at.Fortunately, things improved from there, as I picked up speed between Astwood and the small climb to Chicheley, and made it to the turn roundabout in decent style.  Coming out of the turn, I could see Tony (who started a minute behind me) was gaining on me.  This spurred me on, and this together with a gentle tailwind no doubt lifted my pace for the return leg (you can see this in the Garmin trace below).  Despite getting stalled a bit by a motorist who was being excessively cautious in passing riders I was about to catch, I felt pretty good about the return leg, finishing in 22:48 (I think).  Results to follow.I was of course beaten by Tony (and also a visitor from Finchley RT), but that's kind of to be expected, I think, and at least he didn't catch me.  So, second NBRC rider in a League event.

Pos	Name	Club	Time	Cat	+ / -	Vets
1	Andy Hastings	Finchley RT	21.35	S
2	Tony Parks	NBRC	22.30	V46	+4.12	4
3	Rob Saunders	NBRC	22.49	V51	+4.57	2
4	Trevor Hook	TeamMK	23.43	V53	+4.29	3
5	Anthony Batt	NBRC	23.52	S
6	Ian Markham	Chronos RT	24.35	V42	+1.19	6
7	Alan Crane	Chronos RT	25.14	V42	+0.40	7
8	Clive Faine	TeamMK	26.02	V65	+4.58	1
9	Graham Line	NBRC	27.38	V46	-0.56	8
10	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	27.49	V68	+3.56	5
11	Alan Lawson	NBRC	28.03	V43	-1.57	9
12	Tony Brunton	NBRC	29.18	V46	-2.36	10
13	Dave Crane	Chronos RT	32.55	V46	-6.13	11

Both time trials I'd intended to ride this week were cancelled, adding to the general sense that my 2011 has been (and will probably continue to be) rather lacklustre.The North Bucks club event on Wednesday was abandoned due to roadworks on the course, complicated by some rather inexplicably high traffic levels.The API-Metrow '25' was to be held on the E2/25 on Saturday afternoon.  The weather forecast was pretty dreadful, and I'm never keen on riding DC courses in heavy rain.  As it was, Tony came round and we jointly decided we wouldn't trail over to Newmarket only to drive back.  We had an enjoyable day watching the Tour de France, eating curry and drinking beer.  Possibly not the best fitness regime... We did monitor the situation regarding the API-Metrow event on the timetrialling forum, and the event was indeed cancelled due to the prevailing conditions.  They plan to run it again, I think on 17th September - the day before the Duo Normand!

A review update for the Cowon X7 Personal Media Player.I've still really only explored the audio functions (though I did try the radio player).I have played about with four UCIs (User Contributed Interface, I think), which I believe significantly enhance the usability of the device:Lynx - An excellent desktop replacement, with useful widgets - an absolutely vital addition to the X7. It offers customised wallpaper art and a very usable interface.Sense - A replacement for the original music player, offering among other things good album art display.  I understand that the device as supplied has a bit of trouble displaying/resizing album art.Leaf - A music browser app, which is not only visually appealing but offers several search options.Vision - Photo album, less important for my purposes, and it seems to pick up a lot of cover art files (a legacy from the music collection).All four of these UCIs were written by Kizune, who posts frequently at the iAudiophile forums (indeed he may be the administrator there).  These forums are an invaluable resource for the new Cowon user.   In use, I've had a couple of occasions when something's got corrupted and the system no longer recognises the music files on the hard drive. The only sensible way I've found to rectify this is to replace the system files on the Flash drive.  I guess it might be possible to identify which files are responsible for the problem, but I haven't done so yet.  On the first occasion this happened, upgrading the firmware (in this case from 2.07 to 2.08) corrected the problem.  The second time I tried to reinstall the firmware, but it didn't help.  I then made a back up of the Flash drive and deleted the lot, reinstalled firmware 2.8 and copied back the UCIs I'd installed. This is a faff, since you have to go back and configure the device from scratch.For future use, I've made a backup of the Flash drive in a functional state, and I'll see if merely replacing the Flash drive files with that will sort matters out.I've seen reports that using a Mac for file transfer can responsible for this situation arising. I was indeed using a Mac, but it doesn't seem to happen particularly frequently - I have connected the device many times daily for file transfers and only suffered this issue on two occasions.I think I'd have to conclude that the Cowon X7 is an excellent player, but that the user needs to be prepared to fiddle and troubleshoot the device on occasion.  Fortunately, I quite like tinkering!

I picked up a link to a website that claims to test if your website is blocked by the Great Firewall of China.  Interestingly the results are as follows:This website appears to be blocked in Yunnan province - I assume that Wonderful Life is also blocked, but it throws an error.The Team Grumpy site and blog, the North Bucks Road Club site, and the Northwood Wheelers site are all freely accessible in China.  So it's great to know that the population of Yunnan province are free to read all about my cycling activities (except my time trial reports!).This all begs the question as to what activities I have perpetrated on Flies and Bikes have roused the ire of those in charge at Yunnan Province!

Why I felt I needed a new music playerOver the last couple of years, I've accumulated a sizeable collection of digital music - mostly in mp3 format, but also ogg and flac. I play music through the domestic WiFi network, which includes three network music players from Logitech. The first of these was a Squeezebox 3 (now known as Squeezebox Classic, and now no longer available), which is a fairly basic unit that connects to the amplifier via phono leads, and to the fileserver with the music via the wireless network. The music server is a QNAP NAS box, which runs Linux and uses Squeezebox Server to serve music to the Squeezebox. More recently, I've added two Squeezebox Radios to the house.The music library isn't directly compatible with either iPod that I have (a 2Gb iPod Nano 1G and a 32Gb iPod Touch 2G) except by importing it into iTunes. Now, I rather dislike iTunes and its apparent desire to take over my music collection. I have used the excellent Bliss to embed artwork in all the files, largely prompted by using Squeezepad on my iPad to manage my Squeezebox music players.  As an aside, Bliss really was useful in adding artwork to my music files, and I hope to use it to modify tags later on.As my collection exceeds the capacity of the iPod Touch, I've been looking around for a replacement digital music player, ideally with a capacity large enough to cope with my current music collection and a future increase in the collection size, an ability to play ogg and flac format files in addition to mp3, and usable without recourse to iTunes.I dislike iTunes for a number of reasons, including its absence from any Linux desktop, for its apparent desire to take over and rule my music collection; I also find it annoying to use iTunes in parallel with my usual music streaming system. On the other hand, I find iTunes pretty much fine for managing the apps on my iPod Touch and iPad.The Cowon x7After some searching, I hit upon the idea of buying the Cowon x7, a 160Gb HD-based music player. There's a modest but active user forum.  There are several pros and several cons that I recognised before I'd even placed the order.[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="261" caption="Cowon x7"][/caption]Pros:- Plays mp3, flac and ogg files- Plays video- Is user tinkerable (of which more later)- battery life reputed to be in excess of 100 hours when playing music- said to offer superior sound quality to the iPodCons:- said to be large- said to be ugly- said to have difficult to use UI- rather low resolution screen, not as responsive at the iPod/iPad/iPhone capacitative screen.Do the Pros outweigh the Cons? (The first few days of use)Day 1. In the box: the Cowon x7; earbud style headphones; a wrist strap; a mains power charger; a proprietary USB cable; a CD (which I've not looked at in detail. Optional accessories include other interface cables. After all the comments I'd read online, I'd expected the device to be built like a brick (here's a forum article with an illustration comparing the sizes of the x7, an iPhone and an iPod Classic). In fact, I don't find the X7 to be particularly big - it's certainly still pocket-sized. It's actually about the size of one of my old PocketPC devices. The Cowon is available in a white or a black case, and I chose black because I figured white would rapidly look a bit grubby.  The case isn't gorgeous in the way that Apple's iPod cases are but, that's not a major problem for me - a solid and robust case is what I'm after. The first thing I did was to unpack the device and switch it on. The x7 goes through some setup phases in which you set Language and Region. I hit a snag with the first of these: I tapped the 'English' option on the touchscreen. Unfortunately, either the screen wasn't appropriately calibrated or my big fingers weren't sufficiently accurate and as a result, I ended up with a device operating in Czech.No problem I thought: easy enough to deal with this through settings.  Well, of course one can, as long as one can read the language! You go to Settings | Display. At the top of the screen is a slider control, above which are the words Language and English. Obviously in my case, it said something non-obvious and 'Czech'. I fairly rapidly figured out how to reset language. I'd say that the use of a slider control instead of a dropdown list is a bit of an odd GUI choice, but hey, I got there in the end.More seriously, in the initial setup, I selected 'Europe' as my region, with the consequences that my listening volume is limited to a level of 40 (presumably a percentage scale). I've been unable to figure out how to change that setting, even after some browsing.One of the delights of this device is that you can just plug it in to a computer and copy the music files over using whatever file manager your OS employs. I tried this with my MacBook Pro and with my Ubuntu desktop PC, and things went swimmingly well. After uploading the files (mostly mp3s, but there are a smattering of ogg and flac formats in there) and ejecting the drives, the device spends a little while updating its database. Then you're ready to go.Day 2. I decided the default UI left a little to be desired, so I began playing with some UCIs that I'd found via a forum. Sense offers a neat way of handling the music player interface that copes appropriately with album cover art - many comments on the x7 forum observe that the default UI doesn't deal with the album art effectively, and tends to display part of the image only. I can't comment there. I also installed Lynx, which effectively replaces the main UI of the device, and which is highly configurable. Both these UCIs are lovely, and make a big difference to the usability of the device.I would advise that before installing UCIs such as this, a new user should investigate the menu structure of the device to identify where adjustments can be made. In particular, the individual UCI components offer configuability above the standard out of the box configurability. So far, so good!Day 3. A trip to London: listening for real in a bustling railway train environment. So, the first thing I discovered was that the x7 would just loop a track and not advance to the next track of the album. After some poking about I found out how to change that to allow playing the whole album. I suspect that there is depth to the configurability I've yet to find! I also found that navigating the music was a little challenging until I got a feel for the responsiveness of the screen. It's not a lively as an iPod Touch, for example, but is certainly responsive enough. With about 80Gb of music on board so far, it's a bit of a forage to find artists. The search function works very swiftly.Despite the limited volume available to me, I had no problems hearing the music in the quite noisy train. I listened to a variety of music, and yes the playback quality is very good - after comparing with the iPod Touch, I think I prefer the sound of the Cowon. There's a greater range of equalizer settings than the iPod has, and actually, you can tweak the seetings to your own preference and save the EQ profile. I tend not to fiddle around with these too much. But I guess a personal music player is really for use out and about, where even with decent headphones the device is competing with a variety of extraneous noises.Day 4.  I decided the music browsing function needed a bit of an overhaul and installed the Leaf replacement.  This made things a bit easier.  You do have to read the documentation for these add-ons quite carefully, as the usage seems to often depend on screen touch gestures rather than prodding a particular on-screen button.Conclusion so far: It's a very nice personal media player, and I think offers a large storage capacity and a tweakable UI. In a way, I sort of regard it like my Linux computers - a device that seems clunky at first (mostly because it's different from the kit I've used before), but also configurable in a way that Apple don't want to let you do things. And while the touchscreen interface isn't as lively as the iPod Touch, and there's no accelerometer to auto change the screen orientation etc, I'm not so sure that's a major limitation.Features still to be explored:Video playback. All I've looked at so far have been the demo files that came on the device, but it did seem as though the limited screen resolution some reviewers complain about wasn't really an issue. Video playback isn't so important to me (I have movies on my iPad), so I don't know when I'll get around to that.Radio. The x7 has a radio, which uses the headphone cable as the aerial. I have still to investigate this. I think this might be pretty useful while out and about (indoors I listen to radio from internet streams).Audio recorder. I can see the potential for this being useful, but again something I've yet to try.Other apps. The x7 has a variety of little apps, including a notepad, calculator, calendar etc. I can't see me using most of these, given the tiny keyboard, but you never know!Perhaps in a longer term review, I'll have tried some of the other features!So, returning to the pros and cons: Pros:- Plays mp3, flac and ogg files - this is nice where one has a mixed library of file formats. Perhaps less important to those who've only really used iTunes and for who mp3 and the Apple variant arethe only formats they may have.- Plays video - not really investigated, though with my ageing eyesight I suspect the iPad makes for more comfortable viewing. Still, with 160Gb storage available, there is capacity for quite a lot of video.- Is user tinkerable - this is a major selling point for me. But this enthusiasm perhaps reflects my liking for Linux. I suspect that most PMP users would just want to have the (really quite awesome) out of the box user experience afforded by iPods.- battery life reputed to be in excess of 100 hours when playing music. I've not tested this to the limits, but a few hours playing hasn't used up a discernable amount of power. Some reviews I've seen indicate 75 hours is a bit mre likely in 'real' use.- said to offer superior sound quality to the iPod. Well, this is a personal choice thing. I think (on a limited sample) that is is, perhaps, superior to my iPod Touch, but I wouldn't say the 'sonic experience' is life changing, particularly when the device in use outdoors. Cons:- said to be large. I don't think it's particularly large, and in any case there are compromises needed to accommodate a large capacity battery and hard drive.- said to be ugly. It's definitely 'utilitarian' and no beauty compared to Apple's dazzling range of players.- said to have difficult to use UI. It's difficult to be sure whether the UI is actually difficult or just different to what one's prior experience has been. At least one can tweak the system to one's taste.- rather low resolution screen, not as responsive at the iPod/iPad/iPhone capacitative screen. For some this will be the deal breaker. The iOS devices really need a highly responsive screen largely because a lot of the apps demand it. I do find the iOS screens easier to use but I suspect the x7 just takes getting used to.Overall, probably a 4/5 rating so far.

After a few days of quite pleasant calm weather, it was back to altogether rougher conditions for tonight's time trial, held over two laps of the Astwood circuit and counting as the NBRC time trial championship.The wind had been building all day, and had become rather strong and gusty during the day.  We were fortunate not to be clobbered with the heavy showers that blew through during the day, though I imagine all riders got a light shower at some point in the race.  The potential for difficulty due to the wind was obvious during the ride up to the course.  Indeed, at various points in the event, I was finding it slightly difficult to keep a straight line, and found myself easing off slightly.  In particular, the leg from Astwood to Chicheley seemed to me to be particularly difficult - though I was repeatedly buffeted by unexpectedly capricious gusts of wind.  In fact on the second lap one gust of wind pretty much blew me to a standstill.Interestingly, given the conditions, some good times were recorded: Tony Parks won the event with a 46:37, I was second (I think) with 48:34 - my first lap was 23:31 - and some riders recorded PBs, including John Buchanan.All in all, a worthwhile outing on my favourite club event course.Results to follow!

The escalating row over the News of the World phone hacking brings further revelations overnight (News of the World hacking row escalates).  Hopefully, News International's attempt to deflect all responsibility from Rebekah brooks to Andy Coulson will fail, and blame will fall appropriately.The breathtaking extent of the scandal is rather worrying: why did Surrey Police take no action over the Dowler family phone hacks?  Why did the Metropolitan Police appear to do their best efforts to sweep this whole sick story under the carpet at a time when it appeared to involve only 'Celebs'?A campaign for a public inquiry will be launched today - Hacked Off.  There's a petition calling for a public inquiry.Will this scandal prevent the UK Government from approving the takeover of BSkyB by the Murdoch empire, further extending the ownership of UK media?

I woke rather early this morning, and was elated to see that conditions were well-nigh perfect for time trialling - quite warm, and virtually still.  Over at Tempsford (the event was on F1/25), I signed on and got ready to go and warm up.  Unfortunately I didn't even get out of Tempsford before suffering a rear wheel puncture.  Back to the car and a change of tube!  I availed myself of another competitor's track pump to whack the tyre up to pressure.  Sadly, the tyre didn't hold pressure, and with a substantial cut in the tyre casing, it was pretty clearly game over. This was pretty disappointing, given it was the only decent morning I've had this season for a time trial.Back home for a ride on the tandem.

Today was forecast as a hot and sunny prelude to three days of heavy rain.  Some disappointment, therefore, when the skies were darkly clouded at the start of this event.  It was at least warm, with a rather gentler breeze than we've had at recent time trials.  This event was nominated as the North Bucks Road Club's championship '25' time trial.  Disappointing that I was the only NBRC rider taking part.  I was off at #10, with only three riders ahead of me (and one of those was a DNS).

The event was on the F13/25, which runs along the A41 from Launton Road to the outskirts of Aylesbury and back, and isn't really a very quick course - it's quite lumpy, and the road surface (particularly around the new Aylesbury Vale Parkway roundabout) leaves quite a lot to be desired.  There's also the issue of the pedestrian crossing traffic lights in Waddesdon (directly outside the police station!) - racing through when the lights are at red is a disqualification offence.  And, yes, I've seen a rider DQ'd for running the red light there!  No such problems for me today.

Another windy evening promised a tough outward leg to Chicheley before the first turn.  But at least it didn't rain on us - we had heavy showers earlier in the day, but they'd all pushed off into the distance by the time the riders congregated at Astwood for this evening's North Bucks evening 10 mile event.  A bit of a disappointing turnout of 13 riders, and not many of those were NBRC first claim riders, for this counting event in the NBRC league.Having dashed up to Astwood after a day of seemingly interminable meetings at work (and with not having consumed much food prior to the event), I did feel a bit tired and jaded as I lined up at the start.  At least it was reasonably warm, though not quite what I would expect for a late evening in June.  I had a pretty uneventful ride, though the climb up to Chicheley (gentle though it is) seemed very tough into the headwind.  Once round the Chicheley turn, I was really just fighting my general lassitude.I crossed the line in just under 24 minutes (I made it 23:53, but I await the results coming in).  Not too bad in the conditions, but I clearly need to work a bit harder at the training!On a more optimistic note, Gerry and I have entered this year's Duo Normand.Results to follow.

This was quite a windy evening, and heavily overcast.  It also gave the distinct impression that the clouds were going to deliver some rain.  However, precipitation was limited to fine drizzly rain at the far end of the course, so that wasn't too bad.After Sunday's '50', I was interested to see how I'd fare this evening - I generally lose form, at least where racing speed is concerned, while off on cycle touring.  Sunday's '50' had been a bit of a worry and I'd ten spent two days working away from home.  There was a pretty small field, maybe due to the weather.I was last rider off, and found the outward leg fairly heavy going, but gradually felt a bit better, as I approached the dual carriageway section.  Once up there, I started seeing riders coming the other way - Jason was clearly going fast, near the turn, it looked as though Tony was gaining on Lindz (though in the end Lindz held him off!).  For my part, I was quite pleased with by time of 23:12, and reckon that my legs are getting back into the swing of things.Next open event is the Century RC '10' on Saturday.Results

Pos	No	Name	Club	Time	Cat	Vets Std	.+ / -	Vets Std
1	5	Jason Gurney	Baines Racing	21.23	V41	25.42	4.19	5
2	8	Tony Parks	NBRC	22.02	V46	26.42	4.40	2
3	7	Lindz Barral	iTeam cc	23.00	S
4	9	Rob Saunders	NBRC	23.12	V51	27.46	4.34	3
5	1	Glen McMenamin	NBRC	23.53	S
6	4	Yvonne Gurney	Baines Racing	25.57	L
7	2	Clive Faine	TeamMK	26.13	V64	30.45	4.32	4
8	6	Gilbert Wheelwright	NBRC	26.39	V68	31.45	5.06	1
9	3	Tony Brunton	NBRC	28.44	V46	26.42	.- 2.02	6