Archive Page 3

13
Jun

I *heart* bike porn

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Cycling

Whilst we’re on the subject of clothing, I thought it would be remiss of me to not mention the Sock Guy.

Sock Guy produce socks for cycling, and not much else (a few running socks too, but cycling is their thing). They have hundreds of designs and will even make custom designs for teams too. But with their range being so wide, it’s highly unlikely you’ll need custom.

This is one of my favourite designs:
I *heart* bike porn

Unfortunately, and as is usual with my luck, that’s the one style they’ve stopped doing! Ah well, they still stock the widest range of cool cycling socks I’ve ever seen :)

12
Jun

Why cyclists wear gloves

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Categories: Cycling

It’s one of those things that you start doing when you first cycle, because everyone is doing it. But you don’t stop and think why you wear gloves, or if you do you just conclude it’s to keep your hands warm or to prevent road rash on the knuckles if you were to go down… it’s neither of these. If you’re vain, you might even conclude it’s to keep your hands clean… it’s certainly not that.

On Saturday I did a whopping 10 hours on the bicycle. This is the longest I’ve been on a bike in a single stint, and because of the weather (hot and sunny) I chose to go without gloves so that I didn’t have a tan that left my hands bright white and my arms dark brown. It wasn’t warm and I hoped not to crash, I reasoned, so the gloves stayed at home.

10 Hours later and I know why cyclists wear gloves… blisters.

I now have a blister on each hand, on the lower mound opposite the thumb. The blisters seem to be quite deep, and have left a very sore ridge across the hands.

So now I know why, I know what a good pair of gloves should consist of:

  • A padded area around the base of the hand, padding that won’t wear thin.
  • A thin top to allow air in.
  • Fingerless to give you control over the gears and brakes still.

Effectively, you need the padding to prevent blisters, but on all other counts you should aim to make it feel like you’re not wearing gloves. It’s pointless purchasing gloves with poor padding, or gloves that promise things that simply aren’t needed.

I wear a pair of mitts very similar to these:
Pearl Izumi Mitts

Given the above criteria they would appear to be perfect. Thin layer on top, fingerless, and with plenty of good padding that won’t wear thin.

Tip for anyone new to cycling and aiming to cycle a lot: Get yourself a good pair of mitts. They cost little, and will save you from blisters.

10
Jun

I wish I were a girl

By admin 5 Comments
Categories: Cycling

Then I’d buy a t-shirt with this design and wear it with pride:
Velo Kitty T-Shirt

It’s divine isn’t it? It’s a shame I’m not a girl.

It’s from the C.I.C.L.E. store, and they do have other shirts, I’m tempted by this one:
Benefits of a Bicycle T-Shirt

It’s not quite up there with Velo Kitty though.

10
Jun

“Feel the city air run past your body”

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Categories: Cycling

So it’s 6:40pm and I’m back from cycling, having been out since 8am this morning. I’ve clocked up around 100 miles, not easily though! The Park Ride this morning was a bit faster pace than I would’ve liked given the heat, so I dropped at the end of lap 2 and then did the last 2 laps as a solo inbetweener (between groups 3 and 4).

After that I still felt great and didn’t want to dismount, so I shot off towards Barnes (not the way home) and from there meandered the day away navigating a huge arc around South London and up into East London.

Around 2pm I dropped into Cycle Fit, and Warrick was there servicing a bike for someone. I was fried, and needed a hat… so of course, I now sport a London Dynamo hat in addition to the shorts, bottles, jersey and shirt! I’m not sure there’s any club gear left for me to purchase! The hat was really needed though, the difference it made was instant, a considerable drop in perceivable temperature, and on a day like today that was really appreciated.

The real fun started at 3pm though, when I arrived at Hyde Park Corner for the World Naked Bike Ride in protest at oil dependency, the effects of that and a general pro-cycling rally. Stripping was the hardest thing to do, I hesitated and only gave in when I was considerably outnumbered by naked people and started to look a bit prudish. There was nothing to it though, you just get undressed in front of a thousand other people who are in various states of undress.

A few pervy guys (not participating) at the start line were hassling some of the women, but the police were great and moved them on… and then we got rolling.

It was a 6 mile circuit, that we covered in about 2 hours. We were going 5mph most of the time, which I was truly thankful for as it’s just fast enough for me not to fall off (I don’t have a lower gear that could help!). The police stopped us every now and then for 5 minutes or so, whilst the quite considerable number of cyclists re-grouped.

The people were great, and the weather perfect. Even bars emptying of England football fans couldn’t taint what was a great experience.

I’ve posted pictures of the event on Flickr.

P1000285

10
Jun

Early morning, greased up

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Cycling

It’s only 7am, it’s a Saturday and I’ve had a stressful week. By rights I should be in bed, but instead I’m sitting here naked waiting for the P20 to bond to the skin and give me sun protection. On the hob is a pot of water boiling, pasta for breakfast. The weather report is 26′c, bright blue skies… and today is a day for cycling.

So what’s happening? Well, at 9am there is the London Dynamo Richmond Park Ride. I didn’t complete the last time I did it because I got so frustrated with a guy in front who fell over in front of me, and was a little shaken by seeing a club mate down near an ambulance on one of the laps… it didn’t feel right, so I ducked out. I go with how I feel a lot of the time, and usually it’s the best thing to do. So for me, the 30 miles or so this morning will be a re-entry after not completing the last one and having bonked on a Surrey Hills ride. A start (I hope) of far more cycling once Candy arrives.

And then this afternoon I shall be taking part in the World Naked Bike Ride. It’s a protest ride against oil dependency, and additionally to promote the use of cycling as one of many means to help reduce our emissions from, and dependency on, oil. We congregate around 3pm at Hyde Park Corner, undress, and then cycle 6 miles through the most populated part of London on one of the hottest days of the year. Hence the greased up body covered in P20 sun protection.

P20

So that’s my day. Not quite the average one, and no plans for tonight, though perhaps I might just be a little sunburnt and tired by then that I’m thankful for that. I’ll take the camera… I’ll share what I see this afternoon. Hopefully you’ll be looking at the spirit and atmosphere of the protest rather than all of the bodies.

09
Jun

Candys first moments out of the box

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Cycling

Well, here she is (click for the large image):
Candy, naked.

And she weighs virtually nothing! When I walked in, I had only a small bag containing my wallet and camera… the frame weighed less. Out of sight is the fork, which is also in the Candy Apple Red. I chose for them to be fully painted as I’m not really for the trend of naked carbon forks… it’s a bit common ;)

06
Jun

Remember this…

By admin 2 Comments
Categories: Cycling

…”Cyclefit and a new Serotta Nove“?

Well the frame is ‘imminent’. With arrival by Friday apparently. And all of me that was chilling out and calm about it is now jumping around like an over-excited child (won’t someone hit me please!).

So tomorrow I get to pop in and help go over the final choices for all of the componentry. And still, I cannot decide whether to go for the Campagnolo Neutrons or Hyperons, and if Hyperons, should I go for clinchers (which I am very familiar with) or tubulars (which are alien to me).

God, I’m giddy with excitement!

24
May

On the value of mod_security

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Programming

Over on plastic bag, Tom has a problem.

The problem in one word is spam.

He actually had two problems (a mass download of his site via a “wget recursively” style script, and the mass spamming of his blog via a “post continuously” script), but both have the same answer: the Apache module named mod_security.

I investigated and installed mod_security on my server in the winter of 2004 when a PHP worm was harvesting forum addresses from Google and then propagating itself via vulnerable GET requests using the PERL module to perform the request.

The essence of mod_security is that it is a software firewall that you can include within the Apache web server, and that it filters traffic before it generates a request within your web application.

This image sums it up pretty nicely:
mod_security illustration

Installation is reasonably easy, so I won’t repeat the documentation that you can find on their site.

The key part is defining the rules, and two rules would’ve saved Tom from his downtime:

The first should block wget and httrack user agents to prevent mass download, and for the hell of it the PERL module that was used in most PERL worms:
SecFilterSelective HTTP_USER_AGENT httrack
SecFilterSelective HTTP_USER_AGENT wget
SecFilterSelective HTTP_USER_AGENT lwp

The second filter should block GET requests on mt-comments.cgi. I’m guessing this one because I don’t use MT, however comments are POST’d to via the form at the bottom, and I think that most spam would simply be using GET… so let’s nuke that… note the chaining together of these so that the condition must match both parts of the rule for the rule to be applied:
SecFilterSelective SCRIPT_FILENAME mt-comments.cgi chain
SecFilterSelective REQUEST_METHOD GET

There may be far more we can do to that… I’m just jotting this down as a quick example of a rule that may do it. I’d want to look at how Movable Type works and test the rules prior to sending them live. That latter one may be far too broad, for example.

But in general, that’s all we need to do… block all mass downloads, and block all GET scripted spam against the comments page of MT.

I’m sure there are many more examples of mod_security helping out, on Bowlie I use it to prevent PHP worms, detect intrusions, and kill spam. If it’s not yet part of your toolkit for administrating an Apache web server, it most definately should be.

And to help you get started, some starter links and example pages:
Mod Security Manual
Security Focus Guide
Mod Security Quick Examples

28
Apr

250 Dynamates, and not one more!

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Cycling

London Dynamo closed it’s membership this weekend. We’ve reached 250 members and that is quite a lot for a cycling club. It’s hard to imagine how Richmond Park rides could even operate if a third of members turned out (which the summer months might make a possibility).

I headed over to Crystal Palace on Tuesday to watch the racing there. It was the first time I’d attended a cycle race-meet, and I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Getting there was fun, met another two Dynamo’s at London Bridge, cycled down to Crystal Palace (and up the sodding hill that *is* Crystal Palace), and discover that the race track is a smooth path weaving around a park behind the old telecommunications and TV tower. The HQ for this race meet was a park bench. A hastily drawn, and not quite straight, line on the path made for the start/finish line.

Although being egged on and encouraged by my fellow Dynamates, I wasn’t going to race… this was just a looksee. To figure out how the logistics work, how it’s all setup… so that come the day that I want to race, I’m not an embaressing newbie who knows nothing of how it functions.

The race was entertaining, the pace unbelievable. I really am nowhere near race fitness though, and that was made evident on the way home. South Circular, three of us, the two in front had raced, yet still they were effortlessly pushing 25 > 30mph on the almost deserted streets, including the hills. I barely kept with them, and had to thank traffic lights for allowing me to do so.

But this is the bit that really got me from the whole evening, when the other two had turned off and gone their own way home, I was still in Dynamo gear and cycling towards Kew Bridge. Two seperate incidents happened…

  1. Near Sheen, a car pulled up beside me as I cruised, and a woman wound the window down and shouted “Go Dynamo!” and then slowly pulled off
  2. Beyond Sheen, another pulled beeped it’s horn at me, waved and the driver stuck a thumb in the air.

There is just a massive amount of comradery between cyclists of this level. A level of support that is invisible to wider society. And I’ve seen evidence of this on my commutes when I’ve worn the club gear too… cars give me more space, other cyclists stop and chat and let you go first at lights. There are just so many small things that I would never have guessed would have happened, and only happen when I’m in club gear. It’s wonderful, and really makes me feel like I belong.

24
Apr

‘Let me stick my needles in, let me hurt you again’

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Cycling

Actually that’s a shite song, I shouldn’t go quoting lyrics from shite songs… but it’s hard to find lyrics related to acupuncture, so it shall have to do.

8 Needles, that’s what I had hanging from my back this morning. It should be the last for a while I think. A weekend of not cycling, and stretching frequently has made a dramatic difference to my back. the most significant thing is that it’s straight!

“I said, I’m straight”, now those are lyrics worth quoting, I wish I’d thought of it earlier.

“Give her effervescense, she needs a little sparkle”

I also seem to have found a bit of a sparkle this morning post-acupuncture. It’s rare I feel attractive, but I did for a moment and it must’ve showed through. Walking from Chancery Lane to Bloomsbury, turning heads as I strutted (I think I have a strut, but perhaps this is just another symptom of a stiff back). It is a rare thing, but it makes you smile when you feel attractive and the world notices.

Tomorrow evening I’m off to Crystal Palace to watch the opening of the cycle race season there. It will be my first time at a bike race, I have no idea what to expect… I’ll turn up, and see what happens. It doesn’t really matter if it’s good or bad, it will just be nice to be back on the bike and is as good an excuse as any to add a nice 20 or 30 miles onto the days cycling :)

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