bikes and things

Just ordered mine from O2. Going to be switching from Orange. Looks like I was lucky, ordered this morning and they’d sold out online this afternoon!

Should be here Sat morning hopefully.

Finally famous! Got my first image published in Dirt.

You can imagine my excitement when they said they were using my image.. You can imagine my disappointment when I saw the size of it!

Ha. Ah well you have to start somewhere I guess.

Original image

Been reading quite a lot from Seb Rogers recently on what to do to get good riding shots. Been trying to get panning sorted and take the camera off the Program mode. Started trying to take shots at 1/60sec and pan with the rider to get the background blurred and the sense of motion rather than stop the action.

I spent last weekend in North Wales with Graham and Vaughan. I haven’t been to Coed-Y-Brenin for ages. I went briefly last year but before that it was in 2003. The first time was with Gavin, Lee and Sam when I was in Bath at DKA. A lot has changed since then and the trails have developed really well.

We did the Dragon’s Back on Sat which was a real killer after a 6am start. We stayed in Penycoed Hall on the Sat night. We managed to fit in a loop of the MBR before doing the Tarw trail.

A few of the better pics below with the rest on flickr here. The Enduro was spot on too, just the job for all those rocky trails. New forks make a massive difference also.

Enduro S-Works

Originally uploaded by theginjaninja1979

Just rebuilt the Enduro after I had problems with the front brake at Christmas. Also got some new [2nd hand] forks on there from David. It’s still a bit heavy compared to the Kobe and takes a bit more to get up the hills but going down it really flies! When Warren had it he put a shorter shock on there which slackens the head angle and makes it even more fun..

Taking it to Wales this weekend with Graham & Vaughan. First time in Coed-Y-Brenin for a year or so.

With a few friends switching to Macs I’ve been meaning to put together a list of ‘essential software’ together for a while and I guess this is as good a place as any. Not sure how I’ll group them. I may just list them all. I won’t include things that are installed by default on 10.5 just additional apps I’ve been using. There’s 10 applications here and I may well add to this list in the future.

1. MarsEdit
$30. Blog posting software from Red Sweater software. Allows you to type all your pointless musings from the comfort of your own Mac at home before uploading to your site. Also integrates with flickr. One of my favourite and most useful bits of software. Also the developer is very friendly and helpful. I’ve had questions answered with an hour on email. Mac only.

2. Handbrake
Open Source [free] but worth donating. DVD ripping software which turns your DVD’s in to nice 2-4gig sized Quicktime files for putting on your iPod, iPhone etc or playing in FrontRow or on your machine. I used to have a library of lots of films I had ripped. This was really good when I had the iMac as I would just watch films before going to bed. Comes in Mac, Windows and Linux versions.

3. Synergy
€5. A simple set of controls to control iTunes and display album art and song details when a track starts playing. Essential. Saves flicking between applications. Mac only.

4. GarageSale
€30. A great application that allows you to manage, design and upload applications offline and upload them to ebay without using the painful process on the site. It includes a series of excellent templates for use. Feels a bit like iPhoto in it’s layout and so useful. Also links with your photos and will host your images for you if required. Mac only.

5. GarageBuy
Free. From the same developers as GarageSale. Allows you to search ebay and save searches on ebay without actually visiting the site. You can also add watched items and even bid directly from within the application. Mac only.

6. iStat Menu
Free but worth donating. Gives you visual feedback about memory usage, hard drives, processor usage etc and completely customisable. Useful to see what process has brought your machine to a grind.

7. Mail.appetizer
Free but worth donating. Gives a preview of emails that come in to Mail in a semi transparent window. You can also delete messages or mark them as read without switching to Mail. Mac only.

8. Growl
Free. “A system wide notifications system”. A number of applications support this and send information to a transparent window. Hard to explain but very useful.

9. Transmit
$30. Simply the best FTP client for OS X. Mac only.

10. Time Machine
Ok, so it comes included with OS X 10.5 and I said I wouldn’t include items in OS X but this really is essential. See this post for more details. Mac only obviously.