twentynine inches • one gear • zero travel

Black “Hogger” Down

We’re back into the time of the year where one has to mount bright, powerful light beams in order to enjoy a few hours on the saddle after office hours. Other than weekends, daylight will be something I’ll only see through my office window during the next couple of months. Time on the bike will be greatly reduced, but with a decent hill in my backyard (like every Swiss has to have) my monthly training mileage won’t dwindle down to nil. I certainly won’t let that happen. Now that I have a Focus Mares, the climb and descent from my backyard “hogger” got a tad safer than last winter on the Trek. Skinny road tires, leafs, moist and sometimes icy roads just don’t mix together well. Two Magicshine beamers on the handlebar also provide a bunch more visibility, so rides during this dark season should be plentiful. The backyard stats:

Distance:13.6km (8.4 miles)
Elevation:790m (2’590 feet)
Time:44:34
Speed (avg/max):18.4/67.8 kph (11.4/42.1 mph)

Feeds API, Nivo Gallery and Youtube Mashup

While web development had been my daily work at my previous job, the daily business at my current job rarely leaves any room to manage or even keep up to date the corporate website. While sales numbers are nowhere near what they were a few years ago, it seems nature of business to be so thinly staffed that there aren’t enough hours in a work day to spend time actually improving business, whether that’d be developing a marketing plan or moving the business beyond writing quotes in Word and Excel and into the modern world of a solid ERP system. An ERP project has been launched a few years ago, but due to lack of time it’s not moving forward an single inch.

If I want to delve into the inner workings of a website, I do it in my spare time these days. This and are those two playgrounds, at which I’ve been doing things a little different than in the days I managed a PHP/MySQL driven business website. Instead of dealing with the server-side of things, I’ve spread my content into the cloud and the very awesome environment is the focal point where everything is brought back together.

When Gilbert of released Nivo Gallery last week, I immediately thought that’d it be a nice library to bring my Youtube videos together on a static blog page right here. The recipe for it was really simple:

A little JavaScript magic et voilà! I wish you “Bon Appetit”!

Don’t Crash Tuesday

Start:Place Centrale (1288m)
Finish:Orvin (669m)
Time:9 minutes
Bike:Neilpryde Alize
Camera:Replay XD1080
Cast:Collideous, Fiona (cow #1), Tamara (cow #2)

The Friday Fifty

Leaving the office an hour early on Fridays, leaves an hour more to ride. Now that the days are quickly getting shorter, it’s a valuable hour during which a few more miles can be ridden at daylight. Having recently received a package from Newbury Park, California containing a small Replay XD1080 action camera, I wanted to test that little gizmo out on the road. With it’s cylindrical shape the camera fits perfectly into a vent of my Giro Atmos helmet, no mount required. I cut 23mm wide strips out of an old mountain bike tube and fit them around the XD1080 front and back. The tube sections fit without much tension, add friction between camera and helmet and protect the camera housing. A velcro strap holds everything in place. Still do get done are mounts to attach the camera at various points on a bike frame. I ordered a couple of mounts from , but to have a system that lets me quickly switch the camera from one place to the other trailside, I need to come up with my own mounting system. To get done: a universal handlebar mount with rubber O-rings, a rear dropout mount and maybe a top tube mount.

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