Le Tour sponsored by Bengay

The Tour de France is coming in a few weeks though I doubt I'll make the team considering my new found adoration of Bengay for my sore lower back and achy everything else :). I have, however, always wanted to do a bicycle tour of Wales and France. Lonely Planet Guides have started publishing cycling guides, such as Lonely Planet Cycling France, that are really terrific. I wish they had these 10+ years ago when I did a lot of touring with gazetters and topo maps :). For the Bengay set there is also French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France which is an amusing travelogue of riding the course...in a much more entertaining and slower fashion :)

permalink Ω 11 June 2002, Helsinki

South Park alterego

When you can't take the ennui anymore, get on over to the South Park Studio [ thanks Dave :) ] and make your own South Park character so you'll be prepared to be a cameo guest someday:)

permalink Ω 10 June 2002, Helsinki

Digital Babel

The June issue of Wired has a nifty timeline tracing the roots of computer languages [ caution: 500k file ] from 1954 through 2001. It is interesting to see what has lived and what has not and that Perl sorta stops at Perl4.000 :) A sidebar also mentions Larry as a charismatic leader which is something I don't think has had that much influence on Perl's continued usage and survival as a computational tongue since Larry isn't that active outside of a small developer circle.

One visual effect of the timeline is just how much congestion in the number of languages there is after 1990, a computational Tower of Babel. Diversity isn't a good thing everywhere and, since Microsoft gained much of it's monopoly through Microsoft Office as the standard application which eased file exchanges, I suspect a majority of these languages will die off in the next few years. Speak: A Short History of Language may also provide some insight into survival of the fittest languages. After reading the 5th Apocalypse I have a feeling that Perl6 will need all the help it can get to survive.

permalink Ω 10 June 2002, Helsinki

Now even my bike has a computer

Since I probably won't be getting a new bike anytime soon I resorted to buying some new kit for my old bike; a dynamo light, tire liners to keep all the glass and nails at bay, a waterproof pannier for my laptop and, I'm ashamed to admit, a computer. I used to do a lot of touring on this bike and bike computers seemed to be overly complex odometers that were hard to install, use and maintain.

Well...an online place had a big sale on bike computers and I noticed one that actually looked interesting, the Cateye OS, since it keeps track of how far you have ridden over the last week, month, and year ..and it graphs it too :) Well, I was suckered into buying the shiny computer and got it installed without a hitch. The design of the components is the most thoughtful I've ever seen as the handlebar mount is large enough to accomodate my large touring bars and the magnet and sensor don't require tools or futzing with rings and shims to get it to fit the fork. The amount of wire is perfect for the job as well so that you don't have to wind it around the brake cable or bundle it up in a large unsightly blob. The computer itself is easy to set up since it asks a few questions and you're all set to go.

I now know my round trip to work every day is around 20 miles though some days it feels like 100. I'd rather have R2-D2 as a onboard computer but I don't think he'd fit on the handlebars :)

permalink Ω 3 June 2002, Helsinki