Author Archives: essiep

Oily hands

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9°C:; light N.
56 miles. Clear fresh and bright. Was there was a rally on, I was crossed by numbered 1970s sports cars, Alphas, Triumphs, Volvos and even a Mk1 Cortina. All of them muddy, and souped up the way they did back in the ’70s.
A spectator warned me of the risks in cycling, he’d broken his back when hit by a minibus.
Pauses to think and eat another jaffa cake.
It took another 2 hours to finally finish fixing that bike. BrakesbearingstyreschaincleangreaseAndSoOn…
 
Ice due tonight @ -1°C

Spokes and truth

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10°C + all day…
Are people who true bicycle wheels just failed piano tuners?
It only takes a slight variation in tension on the spokes to cause an evantual breakage, especially with my 93Kg mass on the bike. My solution? Tap the spokes with a spanner and listen to changes in pitch, a higher pitch means a tighter spoke, lower= looser. If a spoke needs adjusting to make the wheel true, then make sure the ones either side are turned slightly as well to spread the stress. that way Wheels stay true, and breakages happen less often.
Looser spokes can be surprisingly troublesome, it’s as if the movement leads to metal fatigue, then failure. It’s the ones that are beyond the norm that are risky, either tight or loose.
Is this a metaphor for life?
 
 
 
 
er…no.
 
~

Yamantaka

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13°C, wind & rain
Yamantaka Eye certainly is "cool", but not in the traditional sense of the word. I like it more on each playing.
 
As for earlier references to Peter Howson, I remembered the album cover that used his artwork, see here. I’ve not heard this record, there were posters everywhere on it’s release date; in bus-stops, billboards record bags. Just goes to show doesn’t it- how effective advertising is. That was 1998.
 

LATEST UPDATE: I just listenend to some samples of that record, now I remember why I didn’t buy it.
Including pictures in your blog,use this code:
<IMG  src="http:// put URL here.jpg", it doesn’t need a </img> tag, but should be outside an <DIV> tag. Remember the quotation marks 
 

Split rim

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16°C, windy & warm

The rear wheel is split on the rim – along the braking surface. That made for a nervous ride home. It could conceivably, burst open so that the rear tyre would explode. It’s not unsafe unless it happens in front of a big lorry or something. Oh well.

Now I’m home all safe.

…that Yamantaka Eye record is fantastic! I need ot hear it a few more times before I can say anything meaningful about it, but it makes you listen.

Brecht

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14°C, leaves on the ground
Birmingham Hippodrome, performance of Bertold Brecht’s The Life Of Galileo ( translated in to English).
I felt no sense of being in an Avant Guarde play. There are three versions of the play itself, & who knows how many of the translation.
 It was all a bit tame thought I.
oh well,
MSN spaces have been blocked at work now…

Loose ends

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14°C, heavy rain, then clears

rambles:

  • I thought that video was done, and again I now think it is, because it wasn’t. Aaand I learn’t how to name DVD chapters. Soo that means it’s ready to re-burn to the DVD
  • The memory definitely needs to be returned. BIOS update made no difference
  • Cycled only 32 miles
  • People in Sutton Coldfield have fusilades of fireworks, must have cost thousands (each)
 
 

Guy fawkes

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Guy Fawkes Night
For non-British readers:
Guy Fawkes night celebrates the execution of a Catholic bomber and loads of his accomplises. He wasn’t really a terrorist, more of a leader of a coup. He attempted to blow up the government, rather than kill random innocent civilians.
He was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quatered (just in case). Except he jumped off the scaffold just before and broke his neck- dying instantly. You can’t blame him after lengthy torture."Pah!" they said, so they hung/chopped up loads of his co-conspirators.

But that was all in 1605- and we British don’t do that anymore. We imprison terrorists and let them out after a few years. So don’t panic Osama.

Krumpf..krumpf

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10°C, sun+rain
Scanned a drawing made during a pastoral meeting of yesterday. I liked this enough to copy into my A6 sketch-book but it didn’t come out the same at all. Ack well…
I added some others onto the School Planner section since they were made in meetings.
 
Visit this site for a remarkable concept art artist. His pictures are mosrly done in photoshop with a wacom graphics tablet. –> John Wallin

Precipitation

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15°C:rain+warm+boistrerous wind.
Sprite has taken longer than any picture this year, especially if you count the restarts. I need to do a quick picture of two before my confidence is eroded. The A4 oil-paper pictures are excellent for quick pictures and still look good in picture frames.
Thoughts are fed by the Peter Howson book, currently grey-orange-deep cerulean blue.
Lets see what comes up.