Slate and the destroyer · 10 days ago by Michael Dales
I’m very taken with the decay of man made objects, but here I don’t think I really did the abandoned saw wheel justice, particularly given it was over a meter in diameter. Taken at the slate mine at Honiston Pass in the Lake District.
Chocolate sheep · 10 days ago by Michael Dales
Taken near Seathwaite in the Lake District; we saw lots of brown sheep like this one. This picture almost has a fake tilt/shift look to it, but this is how it came out the camera!
Electric scooters · 12 days ago by Michael Dales
As a follow up to the Zero S electric motorbike I mentioned recently, there’s now a company, Xero, offering electric scooters, which make another option for commuters wanting an electric vehicle. The prices aren’t too bad at £1500, but unfortunately you can’t seem to just buy one yet, which was the advantage of the Zero S.
Lake District pictures · 14 days ago by Michael Dales
Last week Laura and I took a much needed break to the Lake District, staying near Buttermere, and spending the week having some nice walks, listening to sheep and cuckoos, meeting the feeding demands of red squirrels, and discovering our phones like to say “No service” a lot :)
However, our cameras did work, so here’s some pictures from the week.
Layer Tennis · 32 days ago by Michael Dales
As a side to my interests in user interfaces and photography, I’ve been getting quite interested in design in general. Whilst I don’t particular expect to be any good at it myself, I have to do occasional bits here and there, and I’m always looking for inspiration from others – as they say, if you want to be good at writing, read a lot of books, etc.
A very good way I’ve discovered of seeing interesting design is the Layer Tennis competition, now in its second year. The idea is that two competing designers pass a single design back and forth, each trying to add, extend, and out do the other. There’s ten volleys in total, and each volley can only take 15 minutes – thus you get to see a lot of great design work, and better yet you get to see it evolve over the course of each match.
Some matches are better than others, but overall the current season has been quite good. I definitely prefer it when the designers do continue with the artwork between volleys – on occasion only the theme is continued between volleys rather than any artwork, which I think defeats the purpose of layer tennis somewhat.
I particularly enjoyed Week 1 (which inspired me when doing this background design for Digital Flapjack), Week 11, where the designers opted to work together rather than against each other, and Week 12, but if you’re interested in design I encourage you to look through all the matches, as there’s usually something interesting in each one.
Lunch time in the Garden · 32 days ago by Michael Dales
I totally do not have the right lenses for wildlife photography, but as they say, the best camera is the one you have to hand.
Thankfully the birds in our garden seem sufficiently trusting that I managed to get this with a fixed 50mm lens from a little over a meter away. Perhaps they were just sufficiently hungry…
Wondering where I might be able to rent an extra lens for our trip to the lakes – suggestions welcome.
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OmniGraphSketcher · 35 days ago by Michael Dales
Usually when plotting graphs of captured data series I use gnuplot – it’s easy to get programmatically generated data into, and produces clear, readable results. But when today I wanted to generate a quick graph of memory usage whilst tracking a memory leak, and I discovered both I didn’t have gnuplot installed on my Mac Pro and my macports install was unhappy (yet again…), I decided to see what else might be a usable alternative, and perhaps somewhat more Mac native.
In the end I found myself playing with OmniGraphSketcher – this is a small app that doesn’t do much but let you plot data, draw curves that fit the data, and perhaps annotate it a little. An excellent tool to complement Keynote or the like, but I was surprised how easy it was to cut and paste (or indeed pipe to pbcopy and paste) simple data series into a graph and quickly see what you wanted:
Not the best looking graph, but it did what I wanted quickly and simply (it would appear that the python mysql bindings leak memory somewhere, alas). I had a script that would save a list of samples, one per line, which I could then paste straight into OmniGraphSketcher, and see the results. It’s not nearly as useful as gnuplot generally, but for a quick Mac friendly app, it’s not bad, particularly if you then want to put those graphs into a presentation with annotations.
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Zero S electric motorbike, available now · 47 days ago by Michael Dales
The BBC news website has a video interview with the maker of the Zero S electric motorbike.
Neal Saiki, the man behind Zero’s range of electric bikes, goes through a range of hyperbole, but the important point is that I can actually buy one today. Not particularly cheap up front at €10,000, but given the claim of 0.66p per mile, the ongoing costs are quite cheap – my Buell Ulysses gets about 50 mpg, but that seems to work out about 10p per mile – so the Zero S fuel costs are one fifteenth of what I pay for the Buell.
What’s more, you can test drive one already in the UK up in Loughborough according to their website, with London and Edinburgh to get dealers soon. With both a 60 mile range, and 70 mph top speed, it’s not going to be the ideal bike for touring or sports, but it certainly looks like a great commuting option.
Serious Lolly · 47 days ago by Michael Dales
Advanced Motorcycling · 56 days ago by Michael Dales
Those with long memories might remember that last year I attended the local bikesafe course – a Police run course aimed at teaching bikers how to ride better and more safely. As good as the course was, it was mostly class based, and whilst it’s good to know aspects of advanced riding in theory, it’s very different from being able to put them into practice.
To close that gap, over the last year I’ve gone through the training for the IAM Advanced Motorcycling Test. About once a month I’ve been going riding for a couple of hours under the watchful eye of a mentor from the Cambridge Advanced Motorcyclists – where I’ve been taught how to read the road, pick my line, and handle the bike better – all of which has lead to my riding being both more reactive to the conditions of the road and more assertive in how I apply the bike. I now have greater confidence in using more of the bike thanks to this training, and I get more out of riding the bike – our trip to Wales last year was definitely a better experience as I could guide the bike through the twisty back roads better. As another metric, the chicken strip on my tyres (the unused strips on either side) have at least halved since I started my training :)
Last month, I’m happy to say, I passed my test. That said, whilst it’s nice to have the test done and out the way, I never really cared that much about the test – it was all about me getting more out of something I already love, and that’s something I’ve both achieved and look forward to continuing. And if you’re a biker and haven’t yet done it, I really do recommend it!
Finally, a huge thank you to Mac Lewis, my mentor for all this. He made a great teacher, and this newfound skill on the bike is down to his excellent tuition! Thanks Mac!