Six things I have learned from cycling home

The clunk of the crank and the spin of the wheels with sun in their spokes; the way your legs move like you’re running but your feet never touch the ground. Stopped traffic, the smooth swoop of a fast corner and with it the freedom of the city.

I cycled quite a lot when I was a teenager, but stopped when I came to London – my big, heavy mountain bike was a pain to haul around and it sat mouldering at the top of the stairs before I gave it away. Ten years since my cycling heyday and I decided to get back into it, buying myself a bike through the excellent Ride 2 Work scheme.

Here are some things I’ve learned from cycling to and from work. Obviously, YMMV.

1. Don’t bother with a hybrid. The problem with hybrids is that they seem so logical – particularly if you’ve been away from cycling for a few years. If you had a bike as a teenager, it was probably a big heavy lunk of a thing made by Raleigh, and designed to be knocked around. It probably looked like a mountain bike. Problem is, if you look at mountain bikes now, well, they’re pretty much like motorbikes without the engines. Disk brakes, chunky tyres, suspension front and back, strange shaped frames – exciting stuff, but not really what you want for riding through London.

So the natural next step is a hybrid; they look like the mountain bikes of old, only on a diet. They still have the flat handle bars and a little bulk, but they’re sensible. You can ride them on and off road. It’s the best of both worlds… right?

The problem I found when researching is hybrids are invariably compromised. Some come fitted with slick tyres – so you’re not going to be able to ride off road without changing those. Then there’s the fact they’re not really that light, and don’t always come fitted with larger wheel sizes. Light bikes with big wheels go further and faster with less work from the rider.

And really, are you ever going to ride off road? I wanted a light, fast bike that I was mostly going to spend riding to and from work, or around South East London. So I bought myself a real road bike. It’s brilliant; fast, nimble and something I really look forward to riding.

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There is good in everything

All you need to do is slow it down, as this Justin Bieber track, running 800% slower than it should do, shows:

Related, the way the Inception soundtrack works:

What to call these? Audio timelapses?

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The history of school history

A few years ago, my Mum took early retirement and went back to university to study for an MA (even going so far as to live in halls again…); she liked it so much[1], she went on to study for a PhD. With that under her belt, she’s now working at the Institute of Historical Research at ULU on a project called History in Education, and she needs some volunteers to fill in a survey about their memories of learning history.

Here’s a bit about the project:

“The aim is to create and publicise a historical record of history teaching as it has developed over the past century in English state schools. We’re looking at what history was actually taught and how ‘what history was taught’ changed and why, as well as how the experience and expectations of history teachers and students changed over time…

There has been no previous attempt to consider the development of history teaching across the twentieth century in the context of national and regional policy together with the ‘lived experience’ of those in the classroom. It is intended to publish the results of the Project for a range of audiences, both academic and ‘popular’, via printed and electronic means and also to create resources for use within the classroom.”

She’s looking for people who studied history at state schools in England to fill in the survey. You can grab it at the link below – if you fill it in, please return it to the email address at the bottom of the file. Thanks for your help!

Download the survey.

[1] Learning, that is. After the MA, she moved out of halls and bought a house.

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Added to the wishlist: On Roads

[Book] Having moved from the North to the Home counties when I was 11, then to York for University, then Norwich, and then London, I grew up on the M1, M6 and A1. Asylum’s lovely review of On Roads meant it headed straight to the wishlist:

“On Roads deals mainly with the motorway era, beginning with the first stretch of the M1, completed in 1959 and the subject of such excitement that it had four press openings… On the M1′s first weekend, “nearly all its overbridges were crowded with sightseers”, and the transport minister, Ernest Marples, sounded a note of Mr Cholmondeley-Warner when he advised that ‘on this magnificent road the speed which can easily be reached is so great that the senses may be numbed and judgement warped’… Moran is equally appealing on the psychology of driving, the ‘terra nulla of the roadside verge’, and motorway service stations with their ‘rich seam of English ordinariness and gone-to-seed glamour.’”

On Roads, by Joe Moran.

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Taiwan Hsinpu Persimmon Garden

Nice to see Taiwan featured on the Flickr blog today. Pictures of the Hsinpu Persimmon Garden; what a perfect name.

[also gives me a chance to test WordPress' Tumblr-style reblog feature]

Taiwan Hsinpu Persimmon Garden    Photos from olvwu | 莫方 , sunshine莊信賢影像世界, PAPA GO!!!, nans0410 and Sunny Life. … Read More

via Flickr Blog

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The Japanese food you need to eat: Ramen

A bowl of Ramen

You know what you should eat if you go to Japan? Ramen, especially if you go in the Spring or Autumn (the best seasons to visit Japan, perhaps because they’re well suited to ramen). So what is it? A giant bowl of thick broth with noodles, sliced meat and other goodness. This article from the Guardian is a good introduction to Ramen, linking in particular to Ramen Tokyo, which seems a good place for English speaking seekers of the perfect Ramen restaurant to start. Ramen Tokyo links to Supleks, which is the Ramen database (in food, above all things, the Japanese are obsessives). Yes, it’s all in Japanese, but you can a) Use Google Chrome which will translate for you and b) learn a bit of Japanese. Ramen is worth it.

A couple of my favourite places for Ramen in Tokyo are the Ippudo chain, and Dokutsuya in Kichijoji.

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In Taipei: taxis, rain, daysleeper

I’ve been in Taipei, Taiwan all week for Computex 2010. A lot of time dashing around, existing on very little sleep. I was reminded of a lovely late R.E.M. song called Daysleeper. It’s partly because it actually references Taipei (one of the few pop songs to admit the existence of such an unglamorous place) but more because it gets the soft, distant-feedback-in-your-cortex feel of jetlag just right.

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Star Wars by way of the Jetsons

If Star Wars had been a cartoon from the 60s, Darth Vader might have looked like this. 30 characters from Star Wars, all with a very Jestons sensibility to them, drawn by Ben Balistreri.

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Fashion versus Clothes (and Apple, of course)

Image: Flickr user JBlaze B

It’s always interesting to look at the choices a successful business makes, particularly, choices that are conscious limitations. So-and-so inc expanding into a new area or launching a new copycat product is fairly dull. Looking for new markets, consumers and money is a given in a modern economy. In contrast, a company opting to depart from received wisdom by not doing certain things, skipping certain processes, provided it’s not doing it for cost-cutting measures, is fascinating.

I’ve found myself reading a couple of articles about clothes retailers in the last 24 hours. One is about a place where I buy 90% of the stuff I wear, the other is a shop I can’t stand. Respectively, these shops are Uniqlo and Abercrombie & Fitch. Both are the centre of articles that have much to say about branding, management and choices.

A cursory sweep through the two pieces reveals both Unqilo and A&F have a founder/CEO who exerts strong control over the company:

“Tadashi Yanai, the founder and owner of Uniqlo, is the richest man in Japan, worth over $9 billion… [he is] clearly obsessed with control, [but] is also a deeply pragmatic manager, and fascinated by failure. In 2005, he announced a reversal of strategy for international expansion… Uniqlo works quickly, and the transformation was surprisingly fast. Uniqlo designed and built the Soho store in about eight months, with 150 workers working twelve-hour shifts, seven days a week.”

“Mike Jeffries, the 61-year-old CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, says “dude” a lot… I got a firsthand look at his perfectionism in action when he invited me along for the final walk-through for the Christmas setup of his stores… Jeffries paused in front of two mannequins and shook his head… He stared at the jeans on the female mannequin. “The jeans are too high. I think she has to be lower.” A guy named Josh got down on his knees and started fidgeting with the jeans, trying to pull them down so they hung to the ground.”

However, differences in their approaches are soon apparent. A&F is a typical fashion retailer; it sells a very specific look, and builds up the emotional pull of that look via heavy, distinctive branding that appropriates a series of familiar ideas, images and style cues from the past. Uniqlo is quite unusual; unlike other fast fashion stores, customers expect to wear the clothes until they’re worn out and instead of building stores that are like sets for the movie of the brand, they focus on the way the clothes should be folded and the customer’s credit card is handed back to them. While both A&F and Uniqlo strictly enforce a personality, A&F seeks to sell a certain, specific fashion and style, whereas Uniqlo sells… well, it seems glib to say ‘clothes’, but that doesn’t seem far off:

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New music for May

Three albums I have added to the wishlist, all of which will be out soon:

All release dates are for the UK version.

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