It’s the simple things that count most in a photograph. Like simply framing your subject and choosing your lighting. OK, sometimes you don’t have a choice – it’s midday and you need to take a shot. But you can always move around, change angles, or use a bit of flash to fill in the dark. And for those sun-in-your-face situations you could even use the back-lighting to create a stark, silhouetted shot. That’s the beauty of it – you can actually turn a difficult moment into a creative one; or a dull shot into something special.
So what are my key tips?
- Firstly, keep the camera close by (you never know, do you?)
- Always ask yourself, ‘where’s my subject?’ and ‘where’s the light coming from?’ Good lighting is critical to any shot and involves a bit of thought about shadows and contrast. If you can, shoot at the ends of the day. And ask ‘do I need some flash here?’. Flash can ‘fill-in’ a dark area but can also make for a starker image. So don’t use the flash unless it’s really needed or gives the effect you want
- And then ask, ‘can I get closer to my subject?’; closer is usually better than distant, unless you want a group shot or a landscape of course! Macro shots can be dramatic, as well
- Am I in focus? Sometimes you may want to try different focus-points to emphasise different things in your shot, remembering that depth-of-field changes with aperture, too
- Ask also, ‘is my subject moving, or still?’ (This helps you decide on shutter speed and aperture, if you are into really it, or if you need to pan your camera with the subject’s movement to avoid blur.)
- Can I improve the shot by changing my angle or indeed moving the subject itself?
- Have I thought about framing? By framing carefully you get what you want in the shot – things like heads, feet, the people or landscape you want
- On the other hand don’t forget you can crop and adjust later – so don’t get hung up on the framing and freeze with your finger just over the button!
- Shoot lots, you can pick the ones you like later (especially so with digital cameras!)
- Don’t be afraid to try different things, be a bit creative, and to practice, practice, practice!
It’s the simple things that count most in a photograph. Like simply framing your subject and choosing your lighting. OK, sometimes you don’t have a choice – it’s midday and you need to take a shot. But you can always move around, change angles, or use a bit of flash to fill in the dark. And for those sun-in-your-face situations you could even use the back-lighting to create a stark, silhouetted shot. That’s the beauty of it – you can actually turn a difficult moment into a creative one; or a dull shot into something special.
So what are my key tips?
- Firstly, keep the camera close by (you never know, do you?)
- Always ask yourself, ‘where’s my subject?’ and ‘where’s the light coming from?’ Good lighting is critical to any shot and involves a bit of thought about shadows and contrast. If you can, shoot at the ends of the day. And ask ‘do I need some flash here?’. Flash can ‘fill-in’ a dark area but can also make for a starker image. So don’t use the flash unless it’s really needed or gives the effect you want
- And then ask, ‘can I get closer to my subject?’; closer is usually better than distant, unless you want a group shot or a landscape of course! Macro shots can be dramatic, as well
- Am I in focus? Sometimes you may want to try different focus-points to emphasise different things in your shot, remembering that depth-of-field changes with aperture, too
- Ask also, ‘is my subject moving, or still?’ (This helps you decide on shutter speed and aperture, if you are into really it, or if you need to pan your camera with the subject’s movement to avoid blur.)
- Can I improve the shot by changing my angle or indeed moving the subject itself?
- Have I thought about framing? By framing carefully you get what you want in the shot – things like heads, feet, the people or landscape you want
- On the other hand don’t forget you can crop and adjust later – so don’t get hung up on the framing and freeze with your finger just over the button!
- Shoot lots, you can pick the ones you like later (especially so with digital cameras!)
- Don’t be afraid to try different things, be a bit creative, and to practice, practice, practice!
OK, this car-of-the-year malarky is the “rubbish” bit. Nevertheless I have to say I agree in spirit with the choice of a diesel Hyundai i30. It seems to be a reasonable choice, particulate emissions concerns aside. Even better would be to re-use what we have, but if you must buy a new car then buy a small, decent one with the minimum enviromental footprint for the job.
One quibble. They went on to say this: Set aside your prejudices then, take your hands from the childrens’ eyes…the i30 CRDi is not only stylish and excellent value, it is a grand drive. Pretend it’s not Korean and you will love it.
I guess they (news.com.au) are saying that they are prejudiced against Korean cars, or that they think the readers are… I don’t quite dig why we have to pretend anything – it’s good, it’s the winner, it’s a done deal. Does where it came from matter? Are they making a political comment about South Korea, or the rapprochement with the north? Why did they write it?
I think they wrote it because of their personal prejudices… of course that makes it more remarkable that they selected a Korean-built car in the first place!
OK, this car-of-the-year malarky is the “rubbish” bit. Nevertheless I have to say I agree in spirit with the choice of a diesel Hyundai i30. It seems to be a reasonable choice, particulate emissions concerns aside. Even better would be to re-use what we have, but if you must buy a new car then buy a small, decent one with the minimum enviromental footprint for the job.
One quibble. They went on to say this: Set aside your prejudices then, take your hands from the childrens’ eyes…the i30 CRDi is not only stylish and excellent value, it is a grand drive. Pretend it’s not Korean and you will love it.
I guess they (news.com.au) are saying that they are prejudiced against Korean cars, or that they think the readers are… I don’t quite dig why we have to pretend anything – it’s good, it’s the winner, it’s a done deal. Does where it came from matter? Are they making a political comment about South Korea, or the rapprochement with the north? Why did they write it?
I think they wrote it because of their personal prejudices… of course that makes it more remarkable that they selected a Korean-built car in the first place!
Well, the Federal Government, anyway. Certainly the lower house, which changes immediately; and by a quirk of our parliamentary system the upper house as well, but not until next July. It’s a funny old thing, isn’t it? One day we have this long-running, successful but slightly desperate team of conservatives in charge and the next – literally the next day – we have a bright new crew with plenty of bold new rhetoric. It seemed like it would never happen, that this coalition of right-wingers would keep up the bluff and that the Opposition would continue to shoot itself in the foot every 3 years. But the worm turned and the cowardly custard conservatives were revealed to be bitter, divided and poorly directed after all. The sham was indeed a sham – the Howard-Costello “team” was a facade, a falsehood, a hologram of leadership. Having finally as a community made the leap to the other guys we suddenly see that leadership can really mean something positive; a new hope for the future. Well I hope everyone feels this way.
Of course it may all yet end in tears, but I have a good feeling about this new optimism that is afoot.
Filed under Humanity by Rob.
Lots of recent words on the young these days ditching the technologies of the elderly.
Thus we have PCs displaced by super-powered mobile phones and email ditched in favour of instant messaging. Well I reckon it’s not quite like that at all. Sure, hand-held devices are becoming more powerful and can do more, but they can’t do everything. I don’t want to use Photoshop on a hand held, for example. Or Office, for that matter. Maybe I’ll do a draft, or a sketch on a handheld but I’ll do the real work on the PC. If youngsters are ditching PCs it’s because they don’t need to do the heavy lifting that a PC can do. They are satisfied with faster, lower quality and less functionality. And that’s sweet. Most of us only use a fraction of what a PC and its typical applications can do – maybe only 10-20%, if that – so it’s only natural that we’ll adjust our tools to suit our real work and home needs. In that way I think handheld devices will continue to erode some of the PC market, and convergence of features will continue to shift people to new devices with new multi-functional capabilities.
So PCs are indeed going to have to evolve, and even then will lose more market share. They’ll shrink in size but retain that heavy-lifting grunt-ability we need to do full-size jobs. Equally, however, the miniature-sized devices will continue to grow their abilities upwards and become much more like miniature, portable computers. Sounds like they’ll collide in the middle. So what’s really happening here?
Well PCs aren’t dying, they are evolving, just as the hand-helds are, too. These new converged devices – cell phones with CPU, memory and camera, for example – will grow into still more capable hand-held PC modules that will plug seamlessly into full-size keyboards, scanners and monitors when you need to use Office or Photoshop or whatever. When we need that still-more-big-iron-grunt, extra memory or some specific applications we can download it all off the web and “the grid” and simply leverage the scale of the Internet to boost the performance of our modular mini-PC. In this way the PC-in-a-big-box will have morphed into a more portable device; just be careful not to lose it somewhere on a train or a taxi, OK?
Does that mean it died? Or is it more like dinosaurs evolving into birds?
As for email, well IM is just like email but quicker, looser, more free and easy. It’s part of a continuum between casual and formal communication. I expect to see the divisions and distinctions blur over time so IM simply becomes email when needed, or an email simply becomes an IM. It all depends on the application – if your email application only does email then that’s what you are stuck with… but if it can morph into IM on a whim, so will you. Again, does that mean email is dead? Nope, it just evolved again.
Here’s an InfoWorld piece on this subject.
When I’ve come so far, why stop there?
Filed under Bubbles by Rob.
When I’ve come so far, why stop there?
Filed under Bubbles by Rob.
Of course I can never leave anything alone, I have to do something more with it…
Filed under Bubbles by Rob.
Of course I can never leave anything alone, I have to do something more with it…
Filed under Bubbles by Rob.
Well I’ll photograph anything, really… using the Nikon, all digital, a touch of flash
Filed under Bubbles by Rob.
Well I’ll photograph anything, really… using the Nikon, all digital, a touch of flash
Filed under Bubbles by Rob.
He claims to have a naturally high testosterone level that has passed previous examination, however this time he’s been outed. A-sample positive, testosterone ratios out of whack. He’s tarred now, like all the rest, but will await his B-sample. But will it be a lab result we trust? Or that the UCI trusts?
Björn Leukemans tested positive for testosterone in an out-of-competition doping control shortly before the World Championships in September. Team Predictor-Lotto immediately suspended him pending the results of the B-sample.
He said later: “According to the last test, I would have used a prohibited gel. However, I deny that most definitely,” he stated, noting that, “I knew that there would be a control before the Worlds. Why would I be so dumb as to use testosterone, knowing that? Besides, the scientists say this product does not make you go any faster. You don’t run a red light when the policeman is standing right there. I’m not that dumb!”
Meanwhile Floyd Landis is appealing against his positive for testosterone. After American cyclist Floyd Landis filed his appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), seeking to overturn his two-year suspension on doping charges, his defense team selected Swedish arbitrator Jan Paulsson for the panel which will evaluate his appeal. Landis’s team and his opposition were permitted to each pick one arbitrator from CAS’s list. CAS selected the final member of the panel.
He claims to have a naturally high testosterone level that has passed previous examination, however this time he’s been outed. A-sample positive, testosterone ratios out of whack. He’s tarred now, like all the rest, but will await his B-sample. But will it be a lab result we trust? Or that the UCI trusts?
Björn Leukemans tested positive for testosterone in an out-of-competition doping control shortly before the World Championships in September. Team Predictor-Lotto immediately suspended him pending the results of the B-sample.
He said later: “According to the last test, I would have used a prohibited gel. However, I deny that most definitely,” he stated, noting that, “I knew that there would be a control before the Worlds. Why would I be so dumb as to use testosterone, knowing that? Besides, the scientists say this product does not make you go any faster. You don’t run a red light when the policeman is standing right there. I’m not that dumb!”
Meanwhile Floyd Landis is appealing against his positive for testosterone. After American cyclist Floyd Landis filed his appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), seeking to overturn his two-year suspension on doping charges, his defense team selected Swedish arbitrator Jan Paulsson for the panel which will evaluate his appeal. Landis’s team and his opposition were permitted to each pick one arbitrator from CAS’s list. CAS selected the final member of the panel.
Filed under lab analysis, Mayo by Rob.
Filed under lab analysis, Mayo by Rob.
There’s nothing better than magazine articles where interviewees say ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ and we are encouraged to translate that into ‘definitely did’. Thus we twist a fairly weak story to beat Jan and Lance over the head all over again. Bear in mind that neither Ullrich nor Armstong have ever been tested positive – well, not without a letter from a doctor to explain it, anyway. What we do have ample evidence of is superlative athletic performance on a consistent basis. We also have many proven cases of doping amongst teammates and competitors; but to draw conclusions by simple comparison is to draw a long bow indeed.
On the other hand where there’s smoke there’s usually fire… via CyclingNews:
According to the magazine, a meeting at d’Hont’s house on March 16 of this year, Pevenage admitted to having advised Ullrich and others on blood doping. He said, about “30 to 40 percent” of the riders were informed of the practice, but later they all knew about it. “You gave up a half-litre of blood three weeks before. And it is well-stored. Good, you feel a little weak for the first two or three days, but then you start to recover… You feel a lot better and then at that point you get back that extra half-litre,” Pevenage described the process. Even Lance Armstrong’s name came up in the conversation. “I don’t understand why Jan could never beat the other one [Armstrong - ed.],” Pevenage said, and wondered about his blood values. “One day someone told me the American is unbelievable. He starts the Tour with a hematocrit value of 46 and at the end his still has 46. How can he do that?” questioned Pevenage. “With blood doping,” suggested d’Hont.
There’s nothing better than magazine articles where interviewees say ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ and we are encouraged to translate that into ‘definitely did’. Thus we twist a fairly weak story to beat Jan and Lance over the head all over again. Bear in mind that neither Ullrich nor Armstong have ever been tested positive – well, not without a letter from a doctor to explain it, anyway. What we do have ample evidence of is superlative athletic performance on a consistent basis. We also have many proven cases of doping amongst teammates and competitors; but to draw conclusions by simple comparison is to draw a long bow indeed.
On the other hand where there’s smoke there’s usually fire… via CyclingNews:
According to the magazine, a meeting at d’Hont’s house on March 16 of this year, Pevenage admitted to having advised Ullrich and others on blood doping. He said, about “30 to 40 percent” of the riders were informed of the practice, but later they all knew about it. “You gave up a half-litre of blood three weeks before. And it is well-stored. Good, you feel a little weak for the first two or three days, but then you start to recover… You feel a lot better and then at that point you get back that extra half-litre,” Pevenage described the process. Even Lance Armstrong’s name came up in the conversation. “I don’t understand why Jan could never beat the other one [Armstrong - ed.],” Pevenage said, and wondered about his blood values. “One day someone told me the American is unbelievable. He starts the Tour with a hematocrit value of 46 and at the end his still has 46. How can he do that?” questioned Pevenage. “With blood doping,” suggested d’Hont.
OK, so I use an ibike and have whinged a bit about some niggles. Well Velocomp has seemingly fixed all of those issues – and brought the ibike up another level.
For completeness here’s a long post that covers just about everything I’ve ever written about the ibike and briefly describes ibike 2.0. I’ll say more about ibike 2.0 soon.
The ibike and me.
OK, I’m a bike rider and a data collector. I have documented every ride I’ve ever ridden, and the data keeps getting better as the gadgets improve. Hey, it works for obsessive old me. Simple bike computers are great and tell you a lot. But maybe you want to measure your power output as well? This post focuses on the ibike power meter – what it does, how to set it up and the problems you may encounter – but covers a bit of bike computer history as well.
But first, the latest update!
Just a quick note about the latest ibike upgrade. It’s a significant change. Firstly ibike release 1.15 upgrades the ibike unit itself to accept new features, including wireless sensors and – a big one – the use of indoor trainers. Going wireless is not only neater and easier to install but the battery lasts longer as well. Currently I get a couple of weeks out of the CR2032 battery – up to 3 – riding 7-10 hours a week. You can stretch it to 4 but the readings get dodgy. Wireless looks like a good option if you have battery problems (colder climates especially seem to reduce battery life).
Secondly the ibike 2.0 software is a massive improvement. Now you can process multiple coast downs and calibrate against a 6km ride. You can adjust – tweak, if you like – the aero and friction values to your heart’s content and apply these new settings – or a bunch of different profiles if you want – after the ride. So you can forget to change profiles when you change bikes and it doesn’t matter. You simply apply another profile in the software and save it.
The calibration tools are much, much better. You can also adjust barometric pressure and temperature. All in all a great upgrade for the technically minded, although the casual user may be put off at first by the greater range of options.
Power overview
OK, so you want POWER? You want to train harder, or better? Or you just want to see how many Watts it takes to ride up that hill? The ibike may be just what you want – it was what I wanted, and here I will tell you all about the tips, trips and fun I’ve had measuring my Wattage as I ride!!
OK, so now I’m getting into it. It’s addictive. I’m a data junkie and it’s making me get out on the bike and ride, just to see what it looks like when I sprint, chase a car or climb a hill. Then I want to compare sprints, compare hills… drats, I wish I had one 20 years ago! (But they didn’t exist at this price, of course.)
That’s the good side of the ibike – real data that makes sense. You’ve got to set it up right and do the coast-down test properly, as per spec, and make sure the battery is delivering the goods. But once done it’s great. Of course today I punctured and swapped front wheels, but because it’s just a magnetic pickup there was no sweat. I could even swap bikes as I’ve got a spare mount and pickup already on bike number 2. So I think ibike is still looking like a pretty good thing.
Bad news? It goes a bit screwy if you watch the Wattage display too much (it seems to jump around constantly, especially on the flat, only settling down when efforts are made, in a sprint or in a climb) – but when you download to the PC the odd figures seem to have disappeared and clarity returns. And the peak figures on the LCD don’t always match the data logged. The battery seems to play a part in this, as does road surface – bumps and corners definitely throw it off.
 So on to the fun.. the screenshot on the left shows power in blue and bike speed in green. You can see steady state on the left, then I accelerate to catch a slow-moving Toyota ‘Landbruiser’ that pulled out in front of me. You see both power and speed rise as I chase, peaking at around 865W and 45kmh or so; then as I get into the draft speed stays up (for a while, I didn’t stay on as there’s a nasty climb around the corner and I’m not that fit!) whilst power falls off sharply. The ibike seems to handle ‘sucking wheels’ pretty well. You can see that power falls away rapidly to zero until I hit the climb and have to get pedalling again. Speed falls away too and you can see me approach 300W on the lower part of the 10% climb (the bump on the right).
 The next sreenshot shows a zoom-in on that power peak. You can see the effort to accelerate, the speed rising and then the power clearly falls off as I get into the draft, despite speed continuing to rise. In fact the car eventually accelerated, having suddenly realised that the rider they pulled out in front off at that T-junction was still there… and I let him go, as you see the speed dropping again. Wow.
Even better, the power breakdown (the colored box centre-screen) shows what was happening at the point where the cursor sits… all of that green in the pie chart is acceleration. The cursor itself is the black vertical line right on the power peak. So it all makes sense. When I move the cursor into the ‘draft zone’ the proportions all change… as you’d hope.
Bottom line? It works!
What about the software?
First up, read the update above – things have improved. For teh record, here’s how I found ibike 1.0 – and ibike 2.0 has installed over the top faultlessly.
Well the v1.0 software looked good enough sitting on the CD-ROM, and it seemed to install on my PC OK – and I followed the instructions – but it failed to find the USB driver first up. I followed the instructions again, went through the whole install and once again it failed to find the driver. So I went manual in control panel and found the driver had indeed installed correctly on my hard drive, it’s just that the “automatic, preferred” search doesn’t look there… of course. Wonder if this happens to everyone? Anyway, it really does extract and copy it to your ibike program folder, so a bit of searching will find it. It’s just a manual approach is needed when ‘auto’ fails. Once loaded it all worked.
The software is simple. Connect, download all or some files… ooops, it crashed. And the ibike itself froze. OK, this has only happened once, but again I followed instructions, restarted the software and took the battery out of the ibike. I popped the battery back in and it fired up again and has worked flawlessly since. In fact it works better now than before. The battery started life reading 2.80V and fell to 2.70V during the 2nd ride, before recovering to 2.78V. However after refitting (and perhaps putting the cover back on a bit tighter?) it reads 2.82V pre-ride and hasn’t fallen below 2.77V. The instructions say to get a new battery if it falls below 2.75V before a ride. Perhaps my first-day glitches were battery related?
Anyway, back to the software. It’s good enough. It loads up the whole ride as a .CSV file and you can ‘play’ with power, wind speed, elevation, slope and bike speed for starters. You basically can graph it as you like it, including looking at neat breakdowns of acceleration, hill and friction readings at any point in the ride. And you can probably read and modify it in any spreadsheet, too, given that it’s saved as a .CSV (but I haven’t tried – yet). It’s simple, but does the job for a data junkie like me. It’s strange though that the ibike itself displays slightly different maximum values than that logged in the data file. That aside, overall it’s what I expected. Check this out…
The setup…
Right, so it’s mounted and ready to go. We have total weight, it’s leveled (so it can tell if it’s climbing or descending) and it seems to be sensing wind speed OK. Now we need to calculate the aerodynamic drag and the friction between road and tyre. Now we can estimate this pretty well, but the “coast” test will actually time your deceleration run – ie measure the drag induced by you and your bike on the road. So out we went, ibike and I, on our Look KG76 for test number 1.
It’s harder to find a flat, smooth quarter-mile of road than you’d think. Slightly uphill is good, downhill is bad, bad, bad as it distorts the results. So naturally I chose a road that looked flat-to-uphill but actually wasn’t, so I got some fantastic results. Fantastic as in no way could it be real.
Look at this: 1459W, man! Beat that!
Oh well, back to the “coast” test. In fact I kept finding roads with dips, declines, potholes, corners and really smooth fast bits. Which raised a question or 2 in my mind. Like how accurate is it when road conditions vary? And how is it calculating wind speed, let alone direction? I guess it’s a straight subtraction of total airflow “in” minus forward velocity, and angle isn’t relevant, but the final figures look odd… anyway, wind aside, if I calibrate on a smooth fast road presumably I’ll get errors unless I only ride on that exact same smooth fast road… so are the errors small enough that it won’t matter? Or when I get to new territory should I re-calibrate?
 So I chose to retest a few times (OK, about 5 times) and compare. Firstly the ibike captured the whole thing, despite my many, many retests – which is good – and secondly I never again got the sort of fantastic result I got with the first coast test. Instead of 1459W I was now in the region of 600-1000W tops (I was getting tired, too, after countless sprints!!). So which ‘coastdown’ is correct? Hmmm.
Now if you look at the screenshot on the left (of the ibike software) you will see a few strange things. Firstly it shows maximum Watts on this same ride as 1495, yet the LCD display showed a maximum of 1459! Oddly similar but dyslexically different. On the right of the pic you will see the figures for a precise moment in my ride. Using those figures (28kmh wind speed, 8.9% slope etc) you could indeed calculate that a 72 kg rider at 47.5kmh on that slope is indeed putting out about 2100W, not the ‘fantastic’ figure of 1459/95. But to me, fallible old me, I could have sworn the road was (a) almost flat and (b) that there was little if any wind.
If you take me at my word, that it was a flat road with nil wind then Kreuzotter calculates it as 715W. I’m happy with that. So – assuming a multiply-by-2 glitch occurred – there’s an error of more than a percent or 2, isn’t there? Hence my scepticism and need to rerun this “coastdown” test until it checks out against ‘expectations’. Or am I too harsh? Did the mostly flat road dip and climb suddenly for an instant, or did I pull up on the bars, lifting the front wheel a tad (I was sprinting, after all)… and maybe the wind suddenly gusted? No, I reckon it was a glitch.
So, I think I’ve got the “coast” test figured out and I’ll keep it “as is” for now until I see questionable figures. Certainly my max power figures have come back to earth. Some doubt remains over what happens if you ride very different terrain, but it’s easy enough to re-do the coast setup if on super-smooth or super-rough road. Perhaps do the coast test just before a race on a new circuit? Certainly do it if you swap bikes, but that’s a test I’m going to do later, just to see what the diffence may be… I suspect it’ll be neglible, though, unless my race wheels really are that much better! Did you check this out…?
Mounting ibike on the bike
No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely ‘rock-solid’ on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It’s easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks.
Mounted it looks like this…
And the mounting itself looks like this….
All in all – dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular ‘wired’ bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it’s easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.
Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the ‘turn 180′ exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate – hey I was only out by 10m!).
All up – simple and quick. Hmmm, this again…
The purchase experience
OK, so I chose to buy the ibike.
The first hassle was the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can’t login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the ‘log-in’ option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 ‘tabs’ to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs… they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)
Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the ‘tracking’ option didn’t work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with ‘Velocomp’ written on the box… hmmm. Go figure.
The box looks like this:
Which is fine, although for around $Aussie 600/ $US450 it’s a trifle underwhelming. Still, it’s the technology we are buying, isn’t it?
And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):
It’s showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.
And then I mounted it on the bike… well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.
More soon!Don’t forget to check this out…
Power to the people – power meters for serious cycling
When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.
In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle ‘computer’, although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out BikeBrain for example)
Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go ‘ah, look at that average’ after a hard crit.
The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go ‘wow, that was a tough ride’.
Which brings me to my newest desire: power measurement. Up to now I’ve calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit. SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options – the German HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don’t offer download, so it would be a ‘write down later’ sort of thing – like back to the 80s.
The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end ‘real’ power meters. I also looked at GPS units like Garmin‘s and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.
Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces – wind, friction and inclination – and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren’t good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the “coasting” test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).
I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the “buy” button in the ibike website. I’ll tell you more later…
OK, so I use an ibike and have whinged a bit about some niggles. Well Velocomp has seemingly fixed all of those issues – and brought the ibike up another level.
For completeness here’s a long post that covers just about everything I’ve ever written about the ibike and briefly describes ibike 2.0. I’ll say more about ibike 2.0 soon.
The ibike and me.
OK, I’m a bike rider and a data collector. I have documented every ride I’ve ever ridden, and the data keeps getting better as the gadgets improve. Hey, it works for obsessive old me. Simple bike computers are great and tell you a lot. But maybe you want to measure your power output as well? This post focuses on the ibike power meter – what it does, how to set it up and the problems you may encounter – but covers a bit of bike computer history as well.
But first, the latest update!
Just a quick note about the latest ibike upgrade. It’s a significant change. Firstly ibike release 1.15 upgrades the ibike unit itself to accept new features, including wireless sensors and – a big one – the use of indoor trainers. Going wireless is not only neater and easier to install but the battery lasts longer as well. Currently I get a couple of weeks out of the CR2032 battery – up to 3 – riding 7-10 hours a week. You can stretch it to 4 but the readings get dodgy. Wireless looks like a good option if you have battery problems (colder climates especially seem to reduce battery life).
Secondly the ibike 2.0 software is a massive improvement. Now you can process multiple coast downs and calibrate against a 6km ride. You can adjust – tweak, if you like – the aero and friction values to your heart’s content and apply these new settings – or a bunch of different profiles if you want – after the ride. So you can forget to change profiles when you change bikes and it doesn’t matter. You simply apply another profile in the software and save it.
The calibration tools are much, much better. You can also adjust barometric pressure and temperature. All in all a great upgrade for the technically minded, although the casual user may be put off at first by the greater range of options.
Power overview
OK, so you want POWER? You want to train harder, or better? Or you just want to see how many Watts it takes to ride up that hill? The ibike may be just what you want – it was what I wanted, and here I will tell you all about the tips, trips and fun I’ve had measuring my Wattage as I ride!!
OK, so now I’m getting into it. It’s addictive. I’m a data junkie and it’s making me get out on the bike and ride, just to see what it looks like when I sprint, chase a car or climb a hill. Then I want to compare sprints, compare hills… drats, I wish I had one 20 years ago! (But they didn’t exist at this price, of course.)
That’s the good side of the ibike – real data that makes sense. You’ve got to set it up right and do the coast-down test properly, as per spec, and make sure the battery is delivering the goods. But once done it’s great. Of course today I punctured and swapped front wheels, but because it’s just a magnetic pickup there was no sweat. I could even swap bikes as I’ve got a spare mount and pickup already on bike number 2. So I think ibike is still looking like a pretty good thing.
Bad news? It goes a bit screwy if you watch the Wattage display too much (it seems to jump around constantly, especially on the flat, only settling down when efforts are made, in a sprint or in a climb) – but when you download to the PC the odd figures seem to have disappeared and clarity returns. And the peak figures on the LCD don’t always match the data logged. The battery seems to play a part in this, as does road surface – bumps and corners definitely throw it off.
So on to the fun.. the screenshot on the left shows power in blue and bike speed in green. You can see steady state on the left, then I accelerate to catch a slow-moving Toyota ‘Landbruiser’ that pulled out in front of me. You see both power and speed rise as I chase, peaking at around 865W and 45kmh or so; then as I get into the draft speed stays up (for a while, I didn’t stay on as there’s a nasty climb around the corner and I’m not that fit!) whilst power falls off sharply. The ibike seems to handle ‘sucking wheels’ pretty well. You can see that power falls away rapidly to zero until I hit the climb and have to get pedalling again. Speed falls away too and you can see me approach 300W on the lower part of the 10% climb (the bump on the right).
The next sreenshot shows a zoom-in on that power peak. You can see the effort to accelerate, the speed rising and then the power clearly falls off as I get into the draft, despite speed continuing to rise. In fact the car eventually accelerated, having suddenly realised that the rider they pulled out in front off at that T-junction was still there… and I let him go, as you see the speed dropping again. Wow.
Even better, the power breakdown (the colored box centre-screen) shows what was happening at the point where the cursor sits… all of that green in the pie chart is acceleration. The cursor itself is the black vertical line right on the power peak. So it all makes sense. When I move the cursor into the ‘draft zone’ the proportions all change… as you’d hope.
Bottom line? It works!
What about the software?
First up, read the update above – things have improved. For teh record, here’s how I found ibike 1.0 – and ibike 2.0 has installed over the top faultlessly.
Well the v1.0 software looked good enough sitting on the CD-ROM, and it seemed to install on my PC OK – and I followed the instructions – but it failed to find the USB driver first up. I followed the instructions again, went through the whole install and once again it failed to find the driver. So I went manual in control panel and found the driver had indeed installed correctly on my hard drive, it’s just that the “automatic, preferred” search doesn’t look there… of course. Wonder if this happens to everyone? Anyway, it really does extract and copy it to your ibike program folder, so a bit of searching will find it. It’s just a manual approach is needed when ‘auto’ fails. Once loaded it all worked.
The software is simple. Connect, download all or some files… ooops, it crashed. And the ibike itself froze. OK, this has only happened once, but again I followed instructions, restarted the software and took the battery out of the ibike. I popped the battery back in and it fired up again and has worked flawlessly since. In fact it works better now than before. The battery started life reading 2.80V and fell to 2.70V during the 2nd ride, before recovering to 2.78V. However after refitting (and perhaps putting the cover back on a bit tighter?) it reads 2.82V pre-ride and hasn’t fallen below 2.77V. The instructions say to get a new battery if it falls below 2.75V before a ride. Perhaps my first-day glitches were battery related?
Anyway, back to the software. It’s good enough. It loads up the whole ride as a .CSV file and you can ‘play’ with power, wind speed, elevation, slope and bike speed for starters. You basically can graph it as you like it, including looking at neat breakdowns of acceleration, hill and friction readings at any point in the ride. And you can probably read and modify it in any spreadsheet, too, given that it’s saved as a .CSV (but I haven’t tried – yet). It’s simple, but does the job for a data junkie like me. It’s strange though that the ibike itself displays slightly different maximum values than that logged in the data file. That aside, overall it’s what I expected. Check this out…
The setup…
Right, so it’s mounted and ready to go. We have total weight, it’s leveled (so it can tell if it’s climbing or descending) and it seems to be sensing wind speed OK. Now we need to calculate the aerodynamic drag and the friction between road and tyre. Now we can estimate this pretty well, but the “coast” test will actually time your deceleration run – ie measure the drag induced by you and your bike on the road. So out we went, ibike and I, on our Look KG76 for test number 1.
It’s harder to find a flat, smooth quarter-mile of road than you’d think. Slightly uphill is good, downhill is bad, bad, bad as it distorts the results. So naturally I chose a road that looked flat-to-uphill but actually wasn’t, so I got some fantastic results. Fantastic as in no way could it be real.
Look at this: 1459W, man! Beat that!
Oh well, back to the “coast” test. In fact I kept finding roads with dips, declines, potholes, corners and really smooth fast bits. Which raised a question or 2 in my mind. Like how accurate is it when road conditions vary? And how is it calculating wind speed, let alone direction? I guess it’s a straight subtraction of total airflow “in” minus forward velocity, and angle isn’t relevant, but the final figures look odd… anyway, wind aside, if I calibrate on a smooth fast road presumably I’ll get errors unless I only ride on that exact same smooth fast road… so are the errors small enough that it won’t matter? Or when I get to new territory should I re-calibrate?
So I chose to retest a few times (OK, about 5 times) and compare. Firstly the ibike captured the whole thing, despite my many, many retests – which is good – and secondly I never again got the sort of fantastic result I got with the first coast test. Instead of 1459W I was now in the region of 600-1000W tops (I was getting tired, too, after countless sprints!!). So which ‘coastdown’ is correct? Hmmm.
Now if you look at the screenshot on the left (of the ibike software) you will see a few strange things. Firstly it shows maximum Watts on this same ride as 1495, yet the LCD display showed a maximum of 1459! Oddly similar but dyslexically different. On the right of the pic you will see the figures for a precise moment in my ride. Using those figures (28kmh wind speed, 8.9% slope etc) you could indeed calculate that a 72 kg rider at 47.5kmh on that slope is indeed putting out about 2100W, not the ‘fantastic’ figure of 1459/95. But to me, fallible old me, I could have sworn the road was (a) almost flat and (b) that there was little if any wind.
If you take me at my word, that it was a flat road with nil wind then Kreuzotter calculates it as 715W. I’m happy with that. So – assuming a multiply-by-2 glitch occurred – there’s an error of more than a percent or 2, isn’t there? Hence my scepticism and need to rerun this “coastdown” test until it checks out against ‘expectations’. Or am I too harsh? Did the mostly flat road dip and climb suddenly for an instant, or did I pull up on the bars, lifting the front wheel a tad (I was sprinting, after all)… and maybe the wind suddenly gusted? No, I reckon it was a glitch.
So, I think I’ve got the “coast” test figured out and I’ll keep it “as is” for now until I see questionable figures. Certainly my max power figures have come back to earth. Some doubt remains over what happens if you ride very different terrain, but it’s easy enough to re-do the coast setup if on super-smooth or super-rough road. Perhaps do the coast test just before a race on a new circuit? Certainly do it if you swap bikes, but that’s a test I’m going to do later, just to see what the diffence may be… I suspect it’ll be neglible, though, unless my race wheels really are that much better! Did you check this out…?
Mounting ibike on the bike
No real problems here. The ibike is just like many other bike computers and comes with a bayonet-style mount that sits on your handlebars. I chose the standard size but there is also the larger vesrion if needed. Follow the instructions though, as you need to keep the ibike absolutely ‘rock-solid’ on the bars. I tried using old tyre as padding at first, just to make removal easier, but settled on the double sided tape provided instead. It’s easy to fit, just plan where the wire goes first. It has to get down to the forks, where the magnetic pickup gets strapped on. I kept my old speedo in place and mounted the new gear on the opposite side of the bars and forks.
Mounted it looks like this…
And the mounting itself looks like this….
All in all – dead easy. Lots of twist ties to play with but no harder than a regular ‘wired’ bike computer. The screws that affix the ibike mount to the bars are a bit fiddly, but it’s easier on a stand, or turn the bike upside down.
Once connected I powered it up and went into setup mode. All the expected stuff: time, date, total bike and rider weight, plus the ‘turn 180′ exercise which levels the unit. Again, good clear instructions and I used them (for once in my life). I also zeroed out the wind (I was in a garage) and took a guess as to altitude (later riding down to sea level to make that accurate – hey I was only out by 10m!).
All up – simple and quick. Hmmm, this again…
The purchase experience
OK, so I chose to buy the ibike.
The first hassle was the ibike shop on the web. They revamped it a bit since but you can’t login to the shop without first clicking on a product and pretending to buy it (then the ‘log-in’ option finally appears). And when you try to log-in the login ID box is unclickable without 14 ‘tabs’ to get you there. I tried 3 different browsers and 2 PCs… they all had the same trouble. Not everytime, just 9 times out of 10. Anyway, the tab-tab-tab until you get to the correct input box works. (Must admit I just logged in fine, so who knows?)
Enough whinging. I bought it online and found that the ‘tracking’ option didn’t work for International US Post. Not to worry, I guess. 10 working days later it turned up fine, but opened by Australian Quarantine Services. Must have looked suss with ‘Velocomp’ written on the box… hmmm. Go figure.
The box looks like this:
Which is fine, although for around $Aussie 600/ $US450 it’s a trifle underwhelming. Still, it’s the technology we are buying, isn’t it?
And opening it up we find the device itself, which is tiny and very light (which is good, right?):
It’s showing average Watts here in this pic but it will also show maximum values.
And then I mounted it on the bike… well 2 bikes, actually. I had bought an extra mount, so I could swap from bike to bike with ease, something I saw as a killer feature of the ibike over almost all its competition.
More soon!Don’t forget to check this out…
Power to the people – power meters for serious cycling
When I started this riding gig I was 16 and it was 1973. The bike was an Aussie-made Alcon, circa late 1930s and well looked after, if hand-painted. 28inch tyres, 40spoke wheels, diamond outrigger with sliding adjustment for handlebar reach and just 2 cogs on the back. On one side of the wheel was a freewheel and the other a fixie. Cool way to get started, eh? Even cooler was the mechanical odometer that clicked over incrementally with every turn of the front wheel. Ahhh, data! I started writing it down. Curiously it made me ride a bit more, just to get a scrap more data.
In the 1980s I found myself with electronic assistance in my data habit: a cycle ‘computer’, although all it really did was count wheel revs using a magnet and show elapsed time. It did allow me to see my current and average velocity, rather than doing the usual sums at home after the ride. And it was more accurate than some of the guesstimates I had to make. Now that sort of technology got a bit better over the last 25 years or so, but essentially remains as it was: a bunch of data based on wheel rotation over time, displayed on an LCD. (Although some of these new options are very sophisticated: check out BikeBrain for example)
Now this did make me ride for longer distances, and do more miles each week, as I could actually and accurately see when I had slacked off. And being data-obsessed I just wanted to push teh totals ever higher. Funnily enough I still had to chase down attacks, stick with the peleton over varying terrain and avoid being dropped, irrespective of what the displayed velocity was. But now I could also go ‘ah, look at that average’ after a hard crit.
The next leap forward in this history lesson was to the heart rate monitor. In my case it was the mid 90s and a Polar HRM. So now I could match perceived exertion against both time and distance, as well as estimate my caloric budget. It again made me ride, just to get data. Bizarre, I know. I wanted to exceed 200bpm on my local tough climb and set ever higher averages, so again I could go ‘wow, that was a tough ride’.
Which brings me to my newest desire: power measurement. Up to now I’ve calculated it after the ride, inexactly, and longed to know how many Watts it really took to ride that hard crit. SRMs, offering measurement at the crank seemed a great option. But SRMs were (and remain) waaay too expensive, especially now I had kids to feed. The hub-based CycleOps option was still a bit rich (and what if I swapped wheels?) and Ergomo Pro was again a tad exxy and suffered (like the SRM) from being integrated into the bike. The Polar option was both expensive and tricky to set up. So I looked at the next-best options – the German HAC4 and other options from Germany and Italy, which calculated power from time, speed and altitude gain using accelerometers or barometric changes. Of course this only works on hills, but it was an option. Some of these options don’t offer download, so it would be a ‘write down later’ sort of thing – like back to the 80s.
The HAC4 looks great options-wise but is a bit expensive compared with low-end ‘real’ power meters. I also looked at GPS units like Garmin‘s and wondered why no-one had integrated the coolest features into one unit. Maybe one day, I guess.
Anyway, I flipped a coin and went with the simplest, cheapest real-time data logging power meter I could find. The ibike. It back-calculates power by measuring the opposing forces – wind, friction and inclination – and comparing it to real speed (using a magnetic pickup). Easy to fit, easy to use. It looks the goods but does rely upon (a) your calibration accuracy and (b) unimpeded airflow. Which is to say that it misreads power if you aren’t good at entering data (weight, aerodynamic and friction data, basically, although the latter is derived by the “coasting” test) or have impeded airflow (in a bunch, maybe, and certainly in a sharp corner).
I ummed and ahhed about this for weeks (whilst watching the Aussie to $US exchange rate fluctuate, too) and wondered if I really needed to spend $A580 on a gadget. I decided it was now or never and pressed the “buy” button in the ibike website. I’ll tell you more later…
I’ve always thought it would be helpful if plants could be identified by their DNA in some simple way, like the DNA expressing itself as an easy-to-read label for example. Now that may well be possible, but it may not be desirable. Along similar lines comes this idea from some Japanaes researchers, expanded upon by the NYT: an interesting use of available biological storage, eh?
“Take, for example, an insect from the order blattodea that has 4,500 species in six families, known as the cockroach. A group of Japanese scientists led by Masaru Tomita of Keio University recently used a bacterium’s genome to write four copies of Albert Einstein’s E=mc2 and “1905″ into its DNA. That work has now led to a proposal to create a time capsule by encoding a year’s worth of the New York Times magazine into the DNA of a cockroach. You see, all species have something referred to as junk DNA and, as an example, the human genome has a total of 2.9 billion letters or about 750 megabytes of data, of which only 22,000 letters or genes are used to make us what we are. So there is plenty of capacity, but what makes the cockroach special, is its proven ability to survive almost any conceivable scenario, making it the ultimate information-storage device, devoid of the harshness of evolution and time.” There’s a lot more on this subject here.
What can one add? Via CyclingNews…
On Jan and T-Mobile: Circumstantial? Unverified? Fiction?
In the recordings, Pevenage allegedly said that he visited Ullrich during a training session on Mallorca in February of this year. Ullrich then said that he was there with former teammates Andeas Klöden and Matthias Kessler, both of whom rode for Team Astana. Ullrich is said to have told Pevenage that he wanted to end his career because he didn’t want “to take any more risks.” Ullrich added that he was at the same hotel as his former teammates, “and I tell you, they were all there, the most important of them are still using the same stuff, EPO and all of that . Nothing has changed.”
On Rasmussen: minor offence or major coverup?
Michael Rasmussen purposely lied about his whereabouts in the period before the Tour de France, making himself unavailable for doping controls, an independent committee announced on Monday in Utrecht, Holland. Rabobank Team Manager Theo de Rooij was right to remove the cyclist from the race, it said, but he should never have started in the first place. The 33 year-old Dane was sent home following stage 16 to the Col d’Aubisque.
What can one add? Via CyclingNews…
On Jan and T-Mobile: Circumstantial? Unverified? Fiction?
In the recordings, Pevenage allegedly said that he visited Ullrich during a training session on Mallorca in February of this year. Ullrich then said that he was there with former teammates Andeas Klöden and Matthias Kessler, both of whom rode for Team Astana. Ullrich is said to have told Pevenage that he wanted to end his career because he didn’t want “to take any more risks.” Ullrich added that he was at the same hotel as his former teammates, “and I tell you, they were all there, the most important of them are still using the same stuff, EPO and all of that . Nothing has changed.”
On Rasmussen: minor offence or major coverup?
Michael Rasmussen purposely lied about his whereabouts in the period before the Tour de France, making himself unavailable for doping controls, an independent committee announced on Monday in Utrecht, Holland. Rabobank Team Manager Theo de Rooij was right to remove the cyclist from the race, it said, but he should never have started in the first place. The 33 year-old Dane was sent home following stage 16 to the Col d’Aubisque.
Nathan O’Neill is a fantastic rider, a brilliant TTer who has come back from horrendous injuries and later publicly thanked God for divine help in those moments of utmost crisis. He is also well known for his legitimate tips and tricks for managing his weight. And for an elite rider maximising your power to weight is a vital component in the overall mix. So it’s not so surprising that a rider of O’Neill’s class will turn to artificial means to suppress appetite, is it? Or is it?
When it breaches clear cut doping rules, it’s not so pretty? In fact it looks like Nathan has succumbed to temptation, if this report is true… American Professional Continental squad Health Net-Maxxis has announced the termination of Australian Nathan O’Neill’s contract as of October 29, following the star rider’s non-negative test for prescription appetite suppressant Phentermine. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s code allows riders to use prescribed Phentermine out of competition, but no trace amounts are allowed in a rider’s system during competition.
Now did he actually think he was out of competition at the time? Was he contemplating his new team for 2008 and not looking back at what he thought was the past when he choose to pop his pills? I guess only Nathan knows what he was thinking, but I suspect a mix up happening here. It will be interesting to see his statement on the matter.
And his statement is: “I admit that I used the medicine for the prescribed purpose, in an out-of-competition situation,” O’Neill said in a statement. “Unfortunately for me, there was a tiny amount that was still present in my body at the time the sample was collected in competition.”
Nathan O’Neill is a fantastic rider, a brilliant TTer who has come back from horrendous injuries and later publicly thanked God for divine help in those moments of utmost crisis. He is also well known for his legitimate tips and tricks for managing his weight. And for an elite rider maximising your power to weight is a vital component in the overall mix. So it’s not so surprising that a rider of O’Neill’s class will turn to artificial means to suppress appetite, is it? Or is it?
When it breaches clear cut doping rules, it’s not so pretty? In fact it looks like Nathan has succumbed to temptation, if this report is true… American Professional Continental squad Health Net-Maxxis has announced the termination of Australian Nathan O’Neill’s contract as of October 29, following the star rider’s non-negative test for prescription appetite suppressant Phentermine. The World Anti-Doping Agency’s code allows riders to use prescribed Phentermine out of competition, but no trace amounts are allowed in a rider’s system during competition.
Now did he actually think he was out of competition at the time? Was he contemplating his new team for 2008 and not looking back at what he thought was the past when he choose to pop his pills? I guess only Nathan knows what he was thinking, but I suspect a mix up happening here. It will be interesting to see his statement on the matter.
And his statement is: “I admit that I used the medicine for the prescribed purpose, in an out-of-competition situation,” O’Neill said in a statement. “Unfortunately for me, there was a tiny amount that was still present in my body at the time the sample was collected in competition.”
Some interesting logic happening here… A court in Liège, Belgium began hearing the case between Kazakh rider Andrey Kashechkin and the UCI yesterday. Kashechkin was suspended after returning a non-negative anti-doping sample in an out of competition test taken in Turkey while the rider was on holidays on August 1. Kashechkin, whose sample allegedly showed evidence of blood doping, has taken the UCI to court as he believes that a private sports body is in breach of human rights by subjecting athletes to out of competition testing. A decision on the case is expected with in two weeks.
Human rights are a wonderful thing. They only apply to humans, of course, as animals in general (setting aside that humans are indeed flesh and blood animals) are devoid of rights, or at least of rights granted by humans. Indeed humans grant themselves these rights, which is interesting in an arrogant but understandable sort of way. For example, understandably and regrettably we have human rights abuses where one human (or more often a system of humans in concert) take as granted their right to deprive another human of one or more of these basic features of a civilised world: food; shelter; freedom to travel; freedom to speak up; to congregate; to practise their faith or beliefs; or even to live. I think such abuses are clear enough.
But the human right not to be tested out of competition? The mind boggles.
Some interesting logic happening here… A court in Liège, Belgium began hearing the case between Kazakh rider Andrey Kashechkin and the UCI yesterday. Kashechkin was suspended after returning a non-negative anti-doping sample in an out of competition test taken in Turkey while the rider was on holidays on August 1. Kashechkin, whose sample allegedly showed evidence of blood doping, has taken the UCI to court as he believes that a private sports body is in breach of human rights by subjecting athletes to out of competition testing. A decision on the case is expected with in two weeks.
Human rights are a wonderful thing. They only apply to humans, of course, as animals in general (setting aside that humans are indeed flesh and blood animals) are devoid of rights, or at least of rights granted by humans. Indeed humans grant themselves these rights, which is interesting in an arrogant but understandable sort of way. For example, understandably and regrettably we have human rights abuses where one human (or more often a system of humans in concert) take as granted their right to deprive another human of one or more of these basic features of a civilised world: food; shelter; freedom to travel; freedom to speak up; to congregate; to practise their faith or beliefs; or even to live. I think such abuses are clear enough.
But the human right not to be tested out of competition? The mind boggles.
Personally I have always enjoyed a little cross-training and liked the fact that all you needed was a pair of shoes… and some light running gear. And a safe pathway with good lighting. And even ground to avoid tripping. And somewhere to put your keys whilst you go for that long run. And plenty of accessible water stops. OK, I tend to complicate things, but Lance Armstrong probably had someone hold his keys for him as he ran the NY marathon, eh? He finished 698th among 39,085 runners taking part. His time topped that of former cyclist Laurent Jalabert; the Frenchman ran the 2005 event in a time of 2:55’39″. However, other former cyclists have gone faster in other marathon events; German Rolf Aldag ran 2:42’57″ in Hamburg this April and Spaniard Abraham Olano went 2:39′ in the San Sebastián marathon last November.
Personally I have always enjoyed a little cross-training and liked the fact that all you needed was a pair of shoes… and some light running gear. And a safe pathway with good lighting. And even ground to avoid tripping. And somewhere to put your keys whilst you go for that long run. And plenty of accessible water stops. OK, I tend to complicate things, but Lance Armstrong probably had someone hold his keys for him as he ran the NY marathon, eh? He finished 698th among 39,085 runners taking part. His time topped that of former cyclist Laurent Jalabert; the Frenchman ran the 2005 event in a time of 2:55’39″. However, other former cyclists have gone faster in other marathon events; German Rolf Aldag ran 2:42’57″ in Hamburg this April and Spaniard Abraham Olano went 2:39′ in the San Sebastián marathon last November.
Sinkewitz has at times appeared naive and unaware, and at other times rash. Now he’s in deep denial. On the evening of June 8, while attending a training camp in preparation for the Tour de France, Patrik Sinkewitz smeared a testosterone gel on his upper arm. “I thought, it can’t hurt.” But it did hurt – it got him fired from his job at Team T-Mobile, brought about the cancellation of German public broadcasting of the Tour and nearly caused his team’s sponsor to pull out of its contract.
He has also dragged a few T-Mobile teammates into the muck, whether they like it or not. Michael Rogers is quoted by CN: “I haven’t actually heard anything official directly from the mouth of Patrik Sinkewitz or his lawyer, so for me it’s premature to respond directly to him in the press because we don’t fully understand the extent of the accusations,” Rogers said. “It it’s true, I will be very disappointed in him. If it is true, I’ll be making some very strong claims to put the record straight.”
And a later clearance of Rogers by the UCI:
The UCI has confirmed that T-Mobile captain Michael Rogers “has not been implicated by his team-mate Patrik Sinkewitz.” In a statement released Friday evening, the UCI said “This was revealed after the UCI examined the dossier sent by the German Federation (BDR) following the statements made by the German rider. The document sent by the BDR showed that Michael Rogers is not implicated in any way.”
Sinkewitz has at times appeared naive and unaware, and at other times rash. Now he’s in deep denial. On the evening of June 8, while attending a training camp in preparation for the Tour de France, Patrik Sinkewitz smeared a testosterone gel on his upper arm. “I thought, it can’t hurt.” But it did hurt – it got him fired from his job at Team T-Mobile, brought about the cancellation of German public broadcasting of the Tour and nearly caused his team’s sponsor to pull out of its contract.
He has also dragged a few T-Mobile teammates into the muck, whether they like it or not. Michael Rogers is quoted by CN: “I haven’t actually heard anything official directly from the mouth of Patrik Sinkewitz or his lawyer, so for me it’s premature to respond directly to him in the press because we don’t fully understand the extent of the accusations,” Rogers said. “It it’s true, I will be very disappointed in him. If it is true, I’ll be making some very strong claims to put the record straight.”
And a later clearance of Rogers by the UCI:
The UCI has confirmed that T-Mobile captain Michael Rogers “has not been implicated by his team-mate Patrik Sinkewitz.” In a statement released Friday evening, the UCI said “This was revealed after the UCI examined the dossier sent by the German Federation (BDR) following the statements made by the German rider. The document sent by the BDR showed that Michael Rogers is not implicated in any way.”
Just in case you were wondering, recent DNA work has uncovered the most likely living progenitor of the primates – that’s we humans and the other apes in the tree. It involved looking backwards from known primate DNA and marking the genes that were still there, or not, as we work through the mammals. Whilst it had been suggested that tree-shrews were in with a shot, in fact the colugos have most in common with the primates, DNA-wise. That’s not to say that they are like us (you wouldn’t think it from a first glance) but as far as relatives go this is the most distant common ancestor and most likely candidate for the primate family tree’s singular point of breakaway from other the mammals.
Depending upon your point of view this is either illustrative of the power of Darwinian evolution, to select some critters over others in an environment and then keep on selecting particular beasties over eons as they change subtly to adapt to their surroundings and gain some survival advantage. Or it shows exactly how thorough God was in designing the patterns of DNA in nature so we can wonder at the complexity of it all. Fascinating in either case.
Filed under Nature by Rob.
You may have noticed the recent DARPA-organised robotic car competition. If you didn’t you can read about it here in a Forbes article. It’s certainly impressive and looked like a lot of fun. Aside from enhancing research into practical robotics, competitions between robotic cars completing ‘races’ in urban environments is an interesting look into a Sci-fi future of immense wonder. There must be a business model here for someone.
Just imagine: robotic sports, anyone? Google-search your way to an urban pleasure robot for hire, perhaps? Replace human-driven taxis with robots and cut down on those inane cab-driver conversations? (Unless the robots get speech chips as well of course.) Or robotic buses that eliminate the end-of-shift grumpy-driver syndrome? Or more seriously, competent robotic day-surgery in remote locations without the need for expensive, highly-trained human surgeons “on-site”. It’s potentially a mix of good and bad, isn’t it? More programmers and robotics experts, fewer jobs for real people.
Now I’m not a Luddite, but I do wonder about whether we think these things through. Like Einstein wondering whether his work opened to door to nuclear war.
And sure enough these harmless-looking robot games have a military goal as well, with lives saved if you can send more robots into battle instead of warm bodies. The downside to robotic wars, however, are grim. Without the appropriate programming robots will not show human mercy or simple judgment, and may indeed be programmed to be exactly that – inhumane killing machines. And war with ‘thinking’ machines instead of people at risk may lower the barriers to war itself. So we get more war with fewer consequences – well, if you are on the winning side, anyway.
Meanwhile Google’s ‘first privately-owned car on the moon’ competition is a bit wacky – and certainly way-out – but hints at where we may be going next in our personal transport. Despite the fun of it all it’s possible that our obsession with cars will end on Earth when we run out of accessible, cheap resources; equally it’s hard to see how lunar exploration and exploitation will solve our immediate problems. But that’s humanity – pressing on, pushing the boundaries and fixing up the broken stuff later.
|
|
