Cycling: Edinburgh Critical Mass: July 2007

On Friday I went along to the monthly Critical Mass again.

I managed to arrive just in time this month for them setting off from the foot of the Mound at 6pm. This month seems to have been busier that the previous two months. There was about 44-55 people on their bikes there.

This month there was no major problems. Unfortunately at a few points there motor vehicle getting into the middle of the group, but we managed to sort that out quite quickly. Also on our way up Leith Street, when we were stopped at the traffic lights, there was two police cars coming up behind us with their sirens blaring and lights flashing. Unlike motor vehicles, we were able to rapidly shift over to one side of the road and on the pavement and let them past.

In true Critical Mass style at the last minute, we decided to head to an off-licence and then the Meadows for the after cycle drink and chat instead of the usual trip to The Peartree pub.

 

Sindändùne has started the Edinburgh Critical Mass Flickr group

The route of the ride

Unfortunately the GPS has gobbled my GPS logs again, so I had to re-create the route from memory.

Cycling: Glasgow to Edinburgh

On Thursday evening, I took the train over to Glasgow for the Scotlug meeting. There was an interesting presentation about phidgets. Afterwards I went along with the other geeks to the pub to grab something to eat and have a natter. I've even now seen an iPhone (not just in pictures), though not yet had a chance to play with one.

After 11pm, I set off back to Edinburgh. On my bike. I could have taken the train, but that would have cost more and I was needing the challenge of cycling over night home.

I headed North from George Square to the Glasgow spur of the Forth and Clyde Canal. I then followed the Forth and Clyde Canal, the whole way to the Carron Sea Lock, where I then hit the road for the rest of the way home (except the cycleway parallel to the A90 from Dalmeny to the Crammond Brig pub, where cyclists are not allowed on the trunk road).

By the time I was nearing South Queensferry, first light was starting to show. See the picture below, where you can just about make out the towers of the Forth Road and Rail Bridges.

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The journey took 5 hours, and was about 53 miles in length. It's not very often you'll see me arriving home at 4:20 am.

The greatest thing about cycling at night is that the roads are really quiet, especially after 1am. It also makes cycling on the bigger roads a lot easier, and saves you from having to use the quieter and hillier routes. It can also be faster as you don't have to deal with other traffic or air turbulence caused by other traffic.

I'd be quite happy to do it again, as long as I don't need to get up the next day before lunch time.

Full route from Glasgow to Edinburgh

Can launch PPC apps again

Since installing the Quicktime 7.2 and iTunes 7.3.1 updates on my MacBook, I've been unable to launch PPC applications through Rosetta. It appears that having Java 6 installed has caused the prebinding process to crash.

Following the process documented in a comment by Darlene on a blog, I've been able to launch PPC applications through Rosetta again. The process is basically removing Java 6 and then force running the prebinding process. I didn't even need a restart which is nice.

EDIT: I've also had to download and install Java for Mac OS X 10.4 Release 5 to get Java working again.

Blogger Labels Cloud

I've been wondering for a while now, how to change my long list of labels in the sidebar to a cloud, which would take up a lot less space.

I've finally found out how to have a label cloud in blogger.

Picasa Web Albums now supports GeoTagging

Picasa Web Albums has now caught up with Flickr and started to properly support GeoTagging of Photos.

I have however found a bug in the iPhoto uploader plugin. Basically if you have used a GPS track to Geo tag your photos, if you compress the photos on upload, then you will lose those Geo Tags.

As a point of note, you need to enable the GPS tag reading as described in the Google Help.

I have posted to the Google Web Albums Google Group to see if any one there has come across the problem too.

My first GeoTagged Google Web Album

Some people thought that I done a lot of cycling?

Many people have commented on the various day cycling trips that I've taken. However yesterday when shopping, I found someone who has been doing a lot more cycling than myself. He took the train from Cambridge up to Inverness. Then he started cycling and camping rough. That was two months ago. 

He was taking everything he needed in panniers on his bike. He was looking at doing around 50 miles each on the way back down to Cambridge.

See the attached photo of his bike with the panniers full.

OpenOffice.org Aqua 2nd Preview Released

The second OpenOffice.org Aqua Preview is now available for download.

There are a number of new features and bug fixes in this release. There is one major known regression, that will be fixed in a future development build. This time we have not hacked the source to include the Mac OS X native file picker. Instead there is the OpenOffice.org file picker used.

For the record the new things in this version include:

• Printing now works, though it does not yet use an aqua print dialog
  
• PDF export now works
  
• Copy and Paste should now work fully
  
• OpenOffice.org no longer crashes after quiting
  
• Text and graphics are now drawn properly
  
• Windows and dialogs mostly now have an aqua theme
  
• Combo boxes now look a lot better
  
• Various bugs, crashes and performance improvements
  
• (QA only) testtool can be hacked to work properly
  

There are a number of things that do not work in this version. Please do not report anything in the following list, as reporting known issues, just wastes developers time. The known issues currently include:

• There is a black flash when opening new windows
  
• OpenOffice.org still has problems with Aqua's device resolution indepence
  
• There is no Aqua file picker in this release. This is a known regression, the Aqua file picker will be back in a future build
  
• Opening a document to open in OpenOffice.org from another application, such as the Finder, Mail or Safari, will mean that OpenOffice.org will open with a blank document. You need to open all documents from within OpenOffice.org
  
• The print dialog is not the same as one in other Mac OS X Applications
  
• Starting OpenOffice.org from a shared/remote folder does not work
  
• Impress will not recognise multiple monitors for presentations
  

The list on the aqua download page will be updated with more known issues as required.

Cycling: Critical Mass: Edinburgh June 2007

On Friday I headed to the Edinburgh Critical Mass again. It was a lot busier than last month, which meant that it was better perceived by the public.

As the route of the Critical Mass is not predefined, it is very easy to change the route. When we tried to turn right from Princes Street into North Bridge, no vehicles were allowed, so instead we headed down Leith Street.

My Critical Mass photos on Flickr

Part of the Critical Mass route (I was late so it's missing the start).

After Critical Mass, I took a little detour home by going via Crammond Island.

I've stuck the photos on to Flickr seemingly Yahoo maps doesn't actually have Crammond Island.

Cycling: Stirling to Glasgow

Last Thursday I was in Stirling for a presentation in the morning. I took the train out, so that I was able to be out there for the start of the presentation at 9:30. Unfortunately as I was travelling before 10am and it was not yet July or August, I had to pay the full fare of £5.80, rather than get a third off with the Young Person Railcard. I'll need to keep in mind that for the next 2 months, I'll be able to get the discount even when travelling before 10am Monday to Friday.

After the presentation finished at lunch time I cycled to Glasgow for a Scotlug meeting, where there was a presentation by Chris Fleming about OpenStreetMap.org. It took about 5 hours, including some time for a few breaks. Unfortunately there was some rain showers on the last half of the Cycle from Stirling to Glasgow. At one point it was so heavy that I decided to hide under one of the bridges that go over the Forth and Clyde Canal to let the heaviest of the rain to pass over.

As it had been so wet, I decided to take the slow train home, otherwise I would have cycled through the night back to Edinburgh.

Map from Stirling City Centre to Stirling Services

Map from Stirling Services to Glasgow

Getting plain text logs from Colloquy

In the process of putting the log files of the Mac OS X porting meeting logs up on to the OpenOffice.org Wiki, I have been having a few problems. This has primarily been due to the location of new lines.

To day I asked on Colloquy's IRC channel, and found that there is a simple utility to get plain text logs from the XML Colloquy logs. It is located at the Colloquy extras page.