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Betty and Yacht on Otago Harbour

There are not many flat rides around Dunedin: part of the joy of the place are the views provided by hills, bith looking at and from them. Finally though, the powers that be are building bike lanes around the harbour, and this morning I took the 10minute jaunt from the new stadium development through to Maia where the end of the bike track currently ends

Looking up the harbour

.The harbour water was glassy smooth, and provided a lovely backdrop for a couple of shots of Betty.

I had the gear cables adjusted a week or so back, as the new outers were stretching, but I think I may have to do it again as I’m getting a bit of clanking and slipping in 3rd and 4th. Glorious day though.

So, a few weeks ago the Wisper City I had ordered turned up, and Sarge at shoosh spent an hour or so putting her together.

Sarge assembling Betty at Shoosh.

Here’s a shot of him and his offsider mounting the rear rack. They had only put one together before, so there were a few things I had to learn about her.  The Sport SE he had in the shop wasn’t restricted to being a pedelec (only helping out while you peddled, working more like a moped and movin with using the throttle on its own.  Apparently being restricted like that is a European regulation.  It took a few visits to the forums to find the location of the infamous Purple Wire – its underneath the bike, below the battery.  I had been poking around fruitlessly in the front controller box: a junction box in front of the handlebars.

Now, there's the purple wire!

There is a little clip thing that unhooked easily enough, and hey presto: the most underpowered motorcycle in the world   I’m in two minds about it -  its kinda nice to be able to pull away from the lights with it helping as well as getting up on the seat, and its very nice to help you if you’re pushing it up a hill, but it really doesn;t add much else to the experience.  I’m thinking I might install a switch to turn it off somewhere discreet.  The earlier versions of the bike had a ‘green button’ on the handlebars to do exactly that.  With all the handlebar-candy I’ve popped on though, its going to be hard to find a spot for it.  Once the bottom cover was replaced I became a bit disturbed by the rather open entrances to the electrics under the bike, so, in keeping with every other thing I own, I gaffered it.

Sealing Betty's bottom.

Not the prettiest job, and I’ll have to get some black gaffer at some point, but it feels a bit better.  I’m honestly quite surprised at how open to the elements it was.

I’ve talked myself into buying a bicycle.  No ordinary bike, but an electric bike.  My motorcycle freinds say that rather than a helmet for this one, I need a boa.  Incidentally, I have a boa.  I really really need to start getting some exercise, and since I loved riding motorcycles (and scooters) I thought this was an excellent half way house: the perfect fat bastard bike.

Sarge at shoosh (http://www.shooshcycles.co.nz/) is selling it to me, and he is a very nice man indeed.  He hasn’t laughed at my stupid questions, or anything!

So, expect boring bike stuff as I discover more about it.  Oh, and the one I’m considering is the Wisper (I know, naff..) City 950

Over hte years I’ve built up a lot of newsletter subscriptions.  Some I signed up for  inadvertantly when getting a bit of software, some I thought I’d be interested in at the time.   They come in, I pop a filter in for them, then I change email client. Then I create a new filter.  Its become really tedious.  Recently I’ve decided to actually take the time of going to the bottom of the newsletter and hitting the unsubscribe link: and you know, it works!  Virtually all the newsletters use a magic unsubscribe system, and hey presto, I seem to be off the list!

I was really cynical about this at first, but it really seems to be working.  A few sites have made me jump through a few ‘are you sure’ hoops, but the vast majority have politely and efficiently let me away.  I highly recommend it as a new year’s resolution, its really very satisfying.

This morning, walking to work through the gardens . A sweetly warm summer’s day I was actually in a state of bliss. I’m writing this so I can look back later and remember the sensation when things are not so good , for this, like all things, must pass. Blue sky with small cumulus and cirrus wisps, warm sum with a touch of breeze, the air clean and listening to Iron and Wine’s Norfolk. Lovely.

The Internet Research Group at Otago is having an un-conference, and they invited me.  Well, less invited, more just turned up – but they are being nice to me, and even letting me witter on. Most of the people there get the ‘net in a way I really haven’t sen since I left the UK, and warm fold of the digerati.  They see the lovely warm mass of contradictory gubbins of rehashed, yet brand new, exciting yet oddly dull wonderful awful thing that it is, and they seem to love it for the same reasons.  Sure, they say, only 20% can actually access it, and when they can 98% is pointless crap, but, ain’t it grand.

So, lots of nice chats and social interaction, so I’m not even too pissed off about the B+ I got for ANTH423.  B+ will do.

The chits I showed so proudly a few months back have moved into a green growing bag, and developed into this:

Spuds - 2009, Jersey Bennes

A huge growing triffid of a potato garden.  As usual, I have no idea what to do next, but I may investigate the little trapdoors in the sides of the growbag at some stage soon.  They are supposed to be little new potatoes, ready for christmas…  Also, either my beans or my peas are up: I’m not sure which.  I think one lot got frosted, and I was growing them all up my Tatlin Tower .

Its my small homage to Russian constructivist art, and delicious too.

Tatlin tower, of beans!

So, here I am, two blogs (this and www.modernprojects.com for work) three main email domains (and multiple addresses) and I’m finally doing the social networking thing.  I’ve been a facebooker for a while, and I’ve had orkut and linked in accounts for ages, but I’ve started actually using them for the first time in promoting some work I’ve been doing for the Otago Alumni office.  Then I have to write about it in my blogs, because that, if anyone is actually reading, gives it some authenticity.  The alumni thing is the end of two years of work – and of course the launch of a site is only the beginning.  Fortunately all my colleagues here are relentlessly optimistic, which really helps.  Not like my day-job at all!

I work on at least 4 different computers regularly, and then a few others on occasion.  Dropbox is a cheap (as in free for under 2Gb of storage) web accessible spot to store stuff.   It creates a directory on each of the computers it is installed on, and when you change that directory on one of your sync’d machines, it automatically updates the others.  I have a text file I have in there with all the things I need to check at the library – when I get there I can check those books by looking at the file on my iPod touch.

Dropbox – Home – Secure backup, sync and sharing made easy..

I use scrivener for my dissertation, and warnings about possible problems with syncing scrivener packages means I copy the dissertation to a folder on the local machine, work on it, back it up to the local machine (scrivener has zipped backups) and then move it back to the dropbox folder when I’m done.

Other than that dropbox seems to work pretty flawlessly.