juliet

Links, and other stuff:

• Various people I know are doing LEL (London-Edinburgh-London) on bikes this week:twitter link here.
• Other cyclists have been going rather faster round France for the last 3 weeks: some v good photos here. Also, Cav's sprint yesterday was bloody amazing. As was Bradley Wiggins' ride up Ventoux on Saturday. (I really felt for him on seeing the shots of him afterwards, sat on the floor slumped against a fence with his head down, looking like he was either about to throw up or had done already.)
• My cycling friend Gerald was on the plinth in Trafalgar Square dressed as a dinosaur, playing swingball, and stomping on a model London.
• Rats playing musical instruments!
• Climate Camp this year is 26th Aug - 2nd Sept & will be somewhere within the M25, with good transport links. Video here explaining why you should come along!. I spent yesterday helping to build a bicycle generator which will be used to provide power for the London neighbourhood. The secondary aim was to produce a decent design that can be made from stuff you can find in a skip or for very cheap, & doesn't require a dedicated bike/bike frame or any more than basic DIY skills & tools (saw, drill, screwdriver). Success was achieved, but Version 2 (new & improved!) is already on the drawing board. Anyway: Climate Camp is going to be awesome, come along & check out all the exciting workshops!
• Different sort of activism: damned_colonial did what looks like a fantastic keynote speech at OSCON on the topic of women in open source (slides here). The comments on this positive writeup of the talk have been getting rather toxic, in the customary ways[0]. Randal Schwarz being a particular culprit (sigh). Some of you may be interested in the discussion; zorkian has also suggested writing to Linux Fund about it.

Myself, I have mostly been trying to sort out work stuff (in the sense of getting existing commissions in on time & deciding What Else I Do Next); trying to get rid of stuff on Freecycle; and trying to remain calm and not hide under the bed. Spent the weekend doing climate camp stuff (direct action workshop on Saturday, which was excellent and very interesting, and raised some practical & emotional issues for me which I need to sit down and think about; and then the bike generator thing yesterday as above) and visiting my parents, which was nice.

Intermittently grumpy about what is (for me) a shocking lack of fitness: far slower than I should be on the bike, and spinning downhill is bumpy (no souplesse...). I am however aware that a) this will improve the more I get out there, & b) my standards are slightly abnormal. If I can still ride 25 miles in a day I'm not doing all that badly, really, even if it does make me unduly hungry atm.[1]

Oh yes, and Glade last weekend was fun despite the fairly wet weather, due to excellent drainage & the fact that it helpfully didn't rain after dark at any point after Thu evening. Not keen about the fact that you can see passing cars on the nearby road from the middle of the site, though - it kind of reduces the 'special getting-away-from-things' feeling. We did however have cubical jam[2], which is a superior foodstuff of the future and makes everything better. Or at least slightly more waxy.