The Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts

For about a year now, I have been meaning to replace my bike lights to get a more sensible performance for night off-roading. I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted: a decent light output, equivalent to at least 20W halogen, and a sensible run time, to be able to get something like 5 hours out of them at reasonable light output (at least equivalent to 10W halogen).

In practical terms, this translates into something as efficient as an HID light running of lithium battery, and this is where my search for new lights has, until now, run into a major obstacle: the price tag. Not being able to shell out £400+, I just kept dreaming, and occasionally looking. Read the rest »

I wish the ******* in the present UK government that are determined to push ID cards upon us would read this and reflect upon it.

In unrelated news it became known that the UK government lost personal details of another 3,000,000 people, this time by exporting learner driver data to the US for processing. It’s been a while I have had to deal with the Data Protection Act, but I am pretty sure that exporting private data of UK residents to the US is prohibited under the Act because the US does not have sufficient (any?) data protection legislation (IIRC, the Act is accompanied by guidelines for data processors, in which this is explicitly spelled out), and if this is the case, then the data was lost not merely through incompetence, but because of the UK government broke the law to start with.

In case you missed the fuss, these alternative tube announcements are quite amusing. (My favourite one is A Reminder for American Tourists, the runner-up being A Reminder for residents of London.)

Web 2.0 … is basically a collection of random unspecified features written by 23-year-old goth acidheads at Netscape in 1995 [a funny and incisive post on Android]

So the saving powers of the self-proclaimed messiah Re and his holy book are now being doubted even at the primary shrine, with allegiances of the most loyal being switched to a new deity:

… we at the OpenDocument Foundation have been displeased with the direction of ODF development this year. We find that ODF is not the open format with the open process we thought it was or originally intended it to be. … [it] does not adequately respect existing standards and does not address the market’s requirements for a single Universal Document Format with which any and all applications can work on an equal basis. [1]

It escapes me how anyone apart from those uninitiated to the word processing netherworld could have expected anything else from the mighty Re and his high priest. It all feels like an Indiana Jones sequel — I wonder, is the holy grail there to be found, or will we all just have to put up with our mortality?

P.S. If we all ask Santa nicely, we will find a universal file format in our stockings this festive season (if it does not turn up, it will be because were up to no good; Santa, as we all know, does not like that).

Just back from a week holiday at the lovely Greek island of Kalymnos — excellent climbing, food and company. Uploaded some pictures to flicker, also my pals have some more here.

I would much recommend Kalymnos as a climbing destination for anyone leading a French 5 and above; the rock is excellent, as is the bolting standard (only came across one poorly bolted route during the week, called Hibiscus Market), and the routes are plentiful. We stayed at the Melina’s (also to be recommended) in Myrties, which is a bit further away from the cliffs than Massouri, but the main climbing area is pretty compact and it turned out to be of no real consequence (and for the further away places scooter / car can be rented in any case). Plenty of places to eat, and eat well; the Agean was probably the best place we ate at, but none of the other places we tried was anything but excellent. The locals are very friendly, helpful, and everyone seems to speak English.