Cycling in the Wicklow Mountains

Earlier this year I was persuaded to sign up for the Wicklow 100/200 cycle event. This event takes place in June and offers a choice of two routes, one 100km long and another 200km long. A 200km cycle would be challenging enough, but this route has the added challenge of passing over several steep climbs.Luckily you don't need commit to either distance when you enter and you are allowed change your mind at any stage until you come to the fork in the road where the two roads diverge.

I don't have much experience of cycling in the mountains so I am unsure how I would get on.Yesterday I rode over the Sally Gap for the first time. I found that I was not a strong climber and was constantly being dropped from the group as we went uphill. Luckily I had no problem catching up again when we came to a flat section, but it is looking very much like I will be opting for the 100km route in June. I will also need several training cycles in the meantime to ensure I complete it in a decent time.


View My Firsttime Cycling Over The Sally Gap in a larger map

[xpost] Smasher now works with juniper firewalls

As many people know, I was the original developer of the smasher Sametime plugin for automatic BSO authentication. However, I have not been actively maintaining it in the last few years. The last update I did was in 2011 when I partially fixed a problem which stopped SUT and smasher working together. Whenever people ask for new features or bug fixes, I typically point them at the location of the source code and then politely suggest that if they really want their issue solved they should fix it themselves.
Recently the Böblingen lab announced that they were planning to replace all of their CISCO BSO devices with juniper ones. This caused a flurry of emails from German employees since neither smasher of any of the alternative tools work with the Juniper firewalls. I was not in a position to help because I don't have access to any of the new firewalls to test, Luckily Thomas Immel was kind enough to help out and he developed a new version 1.3.5 which apparently works with the new firewalls.
The new version of smasher is available from the same update site URL as before http://dubgsa.ibm.com/~bodonova/public/smasher/latest/ - I didn't get a chance to do any testing with this new version (I no longer use smasher myself), so just in case it causes problems for anyone the old version is still available at http://dubgsa.ibm.com/~bodonova/public/smasher/smasher-1.3.4/
I hope you enjoy (and send any praise or complaints to Thomas rather than me).

To tri-bar or not to tri-bar? - that is the question

When I bought my racing bike through the bike to work scheme, I had 50 euro left over. The bike shop offered to give me a voucher for the unused money, but I was keen to spend it on some accessory. I asked the shop what I could get for 50 euro and I finally decided on getting tri-bars.

Tri-bars are extensions to the handlebars on a bike which allows the cyclist to take on a more aerodynamic position. They are called tri-bars because they are normally only used by participants in either a triathlon or an individual time trial.

The advantages of the tri-bar are:

• The position of the cyclist is more aerodynamic so it is possible to cycle faster and expend less effort.
• While using the tri-bars the cyclist will normally rest their elbows on soft pads which eliminates all strain on your arms or back.
• You look really cool when using your tri-bars (this was probably the main motivation for me to purchase the tri-bars),

However, the tri-bars also have some dis-advantages:

• When your hands are on the tri-bars they are quite some distance from the brakes, so sudden braking is not possible. Hence they cannot be used in traffic or when cycling in a group.
• You have minimal steering control while using the tri-bars so they can only be used on straight road. In fact it is not even feasible to swerve to avoid pot holes while using the bars so they can't be used on poor road surfaces.
• While it is more efficient to cycle with tri-bars, it takes some practice to get used to the different cycling position.
• The tri-bars use up some space on the handlebars which reduces the space for attaching other accessories. 

When I initially started cycling on my new bike, I found that I hardly ever used the tri-bars and so I decided to remove them. However, when I started training for a triathlon last year I re-attached them and decided to make a concerted effort to learn how to use them. I still find that I don't use the bars very often, but I think that it is still worth having them because they don't get in the way very much when not being used.

Mysterious growth in visitor numbers from China

Readership statistics according to Blogspot

It is now 3 years since I started this blog and so I decided to review the visitor tracking statistics. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was an apparent dramatic increase in the number of page views near the end of 2012.

This surprised me since I hadn't changed my blogging habits in any significant way. Therefore I decided to dig a little deeper. When I started the blog, I enabled Google Analytics tracking because the statistics provided by the Blogspot platform was much more limited. It turns out that the statics provided by each tracking platform were quite different and Google Analyitics doesn't see any  similar growth in visitors.

To understand why there might be a difference you need to understand that Google Analytics works by executing a snippet of JavaScript in the visitor's browser. Almost all browsers today support JavaScript soI would not expect many normal visits to fail to be registered. However, visits to the blog that come from automated programs won't register. It seems that there has recently been a huge leap in the number of visits to my blog that come from automated bots.

The other thing that has changed is the location that the visitors come from. When I looked at the location of my visitors from 2011 most of my visitors came from Ireland (which is not a surprise) and  I had no readers at all from China (I assume that this was because the great firewall of China was blocking access to the Blogger platform). However, I got my first visitor from China in 2012 and they now represent the a very significant proportion of the visitors (according to Blogger statistics, but not according to Google Analytics)

There is definitely something dodgy going on, because I don't think that I am suddenly popular in China. Perhaps this article from the BBC gives some clue.

[xpost] No longer a reluctant blogger after 7 years

I recently got a note about the plans to finally shut down the old BlogCentral blogging site. This was the first internal Blogging platform deployed in IBM and although it is technically still active, in recent years employees have been encouraged to use the blogging service that is bundled in IBM Connections instead.

The old service currently gets very little traffic and so it is no surprise that the service will be turned off - however, since blogs can be a useful historical record there is a plan to migrate content from the old service to the new one. In order to reduce the load on the migration tool, the administrators asked all blog owners to review their blogs and to delete anything that they didn't think should be migrated.

This is the first social networking site that I ever used, so I was a little bit nervous to see what embarrassing rubbish I had been writing back then. I saw that my old blog was called "Brian's Braindump" to reflect that I wasn't sure what I wanted to blog about (not much has changed there), but I was surprised to see that my first blog post was entitled "A Reluctant Blogger", and it was published almost exactly 7 years ago. In this initial post I explained that I didn't really see the point in all of these social networking tools and that I was only establishing the blog due to peer pressure of colleagues telling me that this would be the next big thing and that I ought to try it out.

I suppose a lot has changed over the last seven years. While I might still struggle to explain my own motivation for using social networking tools, I definitely could no longer be described as a reluctant blogger. In fact I suppose that I have taken to the concept with the zeal of a convert. I wonder what I will be writing about in 2020 and what tools will I be using to write it?

FixMyStreet.ie really works!

I am a big fan of the idea of applications that allow citizens to directly communicate with their local council. As a result I installed the FixMyStreet Ireland app on my phone which is a convenient interface to the FixmyStreet.ie web site which can be used to report issues to your local council. In common with similar services in other countries this is a deceptively simple application that automatically directs your problem reports to the appropriate council. Whenever, citizens spot a problem the most common reason given for not reporting it is that the person doesn't know whom to report it to. The beautiy of FixMyStreet is that it knows where to forward your report based upon what type of problem it is and where you are (it can use the location from your GPS to figure out which council is responsible for solving the issue).

My inner geek was keen to try out the app. However, I was reluctant to divert valuable council resources into fixing minor issues just so I could see whether or not the app works properly. For the last few months I have been searching for a real problem that I could report (there is never a pothole available when you need one).

There is a bridge that I needs to cycle across on my route to work each morning.  A few weeks ago I noticed a minor blemish in the road where somebody had dug up the road to lay a cable and had not repaired the road properly. Initially the problem was very minor, but the recent cold weather seemed to cause the material used to repair the road to crack and come loose. Gradually the problem became worse until there was a sizable hole in the road which made one entire lane impassable on a bike.

For a few days I got off my bike and carried it past the hole, until I suddenly remembered that this was an ideal opportunity to try out the app. Yesterday morning, I filed my first problem report describing the issue. Unfortunately I didn't properly save the picture. I suspected that the council officials would think I was exaggerating about the size of the hole so I decided to stop again this morning and update my problem report with a picture.  To my amazement I saw that the problem was already fixed.

I must publicly applaud Fingal County Council - even in this tough economic climate they are doing a great job of responding to complaints,

Bluetooth devices don't always admit all of their capabilities

The Bluetooth protocol is used to communicate between all manner of diverse types of device. In order to ensure that you don't try to do something silly like play music on your heart rate monitor, devices must declare which of the various profiles it supports. Of course it is becoming increasingly common for devices to be capable of multiple different functions and so the standard allows them to declare support for more than one profile.

The most common type of Bluetooth device, is a hands-free unit which allows you to make phone calls while driving your car without taking your hands off the wheel. These devices implement the Hands-Free Profile. These devices must be capable of outputting sound, so it should in theory be possible to use this device for listening to the music stored on your phone.

Unfortunately, many of these devices don't declare that they implement the A2DP profile. Perhaps this is  because the A2DP standard states that devices implementing this profile should be capable of outputting high quality audio and many hands free units have poor quality - but high quality is a subjective judgement which should be left to the user to decide.

If you have such a device, don't panic because  there is an android application called BT Mono which can solve the problem for you. It works by fooling your hands free unit into thinking there is a call in progress and then whatever sound you play on your phone will be directed to the hands-free unit.

Do modern smartphones support magic?

Arthur C Clarke famously declared "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Modern SmartPhones are certainly close to passing this test.

I recently upgraded my phone from a Samsung S2 to a Samsung S3. I didn't upgrade for the new features (it should suffice to know that I also invested in a screen protector at the same time), but I am still excited to learn how far technology has advanced in the year or so since I bought my last phone.

The one feature which really amazed me is that if I open a contact record in my address book, I can call it without even pressing the "dial" button. All I need do is simply hold the phone up to my ear and it assumes that I want to call the contact on the screen. To be honest I don't know how it works, but I was just prompted to enable this feature when I first opened the address book. I assume the phone's accelerometer can detect the fact that I raised it up quickly before holding it still - but as Arthur said all those years ago, it is hard to be certain that magic is not involved.

WiFi Ruler - an essential Android App

One of the good thinks about living in a well developed country is that you can get mobile internet access most places. What is even better is the fact that, you will nearly always be able to find a café or similar establishment which is willing to offer free Wifi internet access. However,  one thing that really annoys me is that many of these free access points will require you to click on a button to say that you accept their terms and conditions of use. I understand that mostly they have been advised to do this by overly cautious lawyers, but it is really quite ridiculous because nobody ever reads those terms and conditions anyway and if you were tempted to engage in illegal activity you would hardly be put off by the need to click on a button.

The reason why this feature is annoying is because many people would like to set up their phone to automatically connect to certain WiFi access points when encountered. This saves you the bother of explicitly configuring your phone to connect to the WiFi service every time that you enter the café. However, if the café has a "clickwall" connecting to the WiFi is not enough to give you internet access unless you explicitly launch your phone's browser and click on the button. What is even more frustrating is that your phone will probably disconnect from your mobile provider's 3G service on the assumption that you don't need this when you are connected via WiFi.

Luckily I recently found out that there is an Android app called WifiRuler, which can solve this problem. It allows you to set up rules for what to do immediately after you connect to a particular WiFi service e.g. click on the accept point or enter your username/password. This application will stay running in the background and automatically accept the terms & conditions on your behalf. There is even a blog where you can get new versions.

There is a paid and free version of the application, but to be honest I am not sure what the difference is.

Book Review: The Seven Deadly Sins

I have previously made my position on Lance Armstrong quite clear - I believe that he is a hero and I don't think particularly highly of the people like David Walsh who have spent so much time hounding poor Lance about his drug use. It is not that I believed that Lance never used performance enhancing drugs, it is just that I didn't think it was a really big deal since apparently practically all of the leading cyclists use such products. Therefore I probably would not have bought this book, but since I received it as a Christmas present I enjoyed reading it. I suppose it is always good to read materials which challenge your assumptions.

The sub-title of the book is "my pursuit of Lance Armstrong" and the cover photo shows a silhouette of a cyclist in racing gear. This makes it quite clear that the author thinks of himself as a hero. I was personally put off by the implication that his persistence and dedication in sticking doggedly to this story over the years is somehow comparable to the dedication required of a professional cyclist.

The first thing to note is that the book is very well written. David has been a journalist for many years and clearly knows how to lay out the narrative in a way that is quite gripping.  He really described the life of a sports journalist very well, even if I think he has an overly high opinion of the importance of his profession.

While I previously thought of David as a virulent anti-drug campaigner, it is clear from the story that he started out quite ambivalent on the topic and only developed these strong opinions after observing the effect that drug use was having on professional cycling. As I read the book, I also found myself constantly re-evaluating my own attitude towards drug use in sport.

However, while the author eventually becomes convinced that this is clear choice between right and wrong. He thinks that drug abuse in sport is a terrible cancer which must be fought at all costs, but I still think that there is a lot of moral ambiguity in this story. For example, David is gushing in his praise for Betty Andreu and the role that she played in bringing down Lance Armstrong - but I think the morality of her actions is very questionable.

The quick summary of her story is that she and her then fiancé Frankie Andreu (who was a professional cyclist) were visiting Lance Armstrong in hospital while Lance was undergoing treatment for cancer. She claims that she overheard Lance tell doctors about his use of performance enhancing drugs (in answer to the standard question "what other medication are you on"). Betty subsequently repeated this story to David Walsh when he was researching a his book LA confidentiel. Lance still claims not to remember this conversation, but Betty is adamant that she heard it because it caused her to tackle her husband Frankie about his own use of performance enhancing drugs. I tend to believe Betty accurately recalls the conversation, but I have serious reservations about the morality of her repeating it. Even according to her version of events, the doctor asked her to leave the room before he interviewed Lance, but Lance said it was OK for her to stay because she was a friend whom he felt he could trust completely. Admittedly Lance was particularly vicious in his treatment of Betty once she publicly spoke out against him, but I can hardly blame his for being annoyed that she would betray his trust in this way.

As I read this book it became clear that Lance Armstrong is ruthless in pursuing his goals. I suppose that this should not be surprising since he could not have won so many bike races without a ruthless determination to train and win. However, it was scary to read how ruthless he was in dealing with public relations. He went to great lengths to discredit anyone whom he saw as an enemy - especially if that person was a former friend (e.g. Greg LeMond). No doubt psychologists would have a field day analysing how this attitude arose from the tough environment in which he was raised, but this is outside my field of expertise.

Overall I recommend this book to both Lance Armstrong fans and detractors. It is an entertaining read and also a book which makes you rethink your attitudes - what more could you expect in a book. Clearly it was a very good choice of Christmas present - thanks!