OB

rick_chasey

How about a video?

We all each record a little 10 second Get well or something of that nature, and fire it over to someone who's IT proficient who splices it all together into a little vid that we can then send over.

Then he can watch it again if our ugly mugs aren't too offputting.

davis

I'd say it's hard enough to get people to do voice recordings, let alone do a video. Consistent video quality, filesize, etc.

rick_chasey

I guess so. I'm not IT proficient so have no idea.

Cleat Eastwood

There are some ex pros who post here - I'm sure a quite pm could yield some items which may help raise the spirits.

PBo

Hi guys,

I've only had time to read 1st page, so sorry if this has already been said....

The sensitivity issue has been highlighted...occurred to me that to make a gesture without patronising ob, we could do something that benefits a disabled cycling charity rather than him...?

mudcow007

OB has replied

OptimisticBiker wrote:

hi all,

just read an email from Condor saying many of you had tried to get in touch via them. i'm deeply touched that you went to that trouble.

it will be many many months from now but i'm already thinking hand-cranked semi-recumbent trike!

rubertoe

Looking forward; maybe Condor could be used to get some publicity/sponsorship for any grand scheme that we do either directly for the benefit of OB or a charity that he would like us to use.

SimonAH

Result!

I have a contact response from OB's son with his and his sister's email addresses.

My email server is down (but the Swiss are working like mad to restore it) so I will be hopefully able to discuss things with them later.

Watch this space!

rubertoe

SimonAH wrote:

Result!

I have a contact response from OB's son with his and his sister's email addresses.

My email server is down (but the Swiss are working like mad to restore it) so I will be hopefully able to discuss things with them later.

Watch this space!

Good work Sherlock. Hopefully we can now get the ball rolling.

walkingbootweather

rubertoe wrote:

Good work Sherlock. Hopefully we can now get the ball rolling.

Or even the hand-cranked semi-recumbent trike rolling

A quick bit of google-fu suggests these start at about a grand, but likely to be upwards of £5k for a competition machine.

rubertoe

walkingbootweather wrote:

rubertoe wrote:

Good work Sherlock. Hopefully we can now get the ball rolling.

Or even the hand-cranked semi-recumbent trike rolling

A quick bit of google-fu suggests these start at about a grand, but likely to be upwards of £5k for a competition machine.

It looks like there will be plenty of N+1 opportunities as well.

I wonder if Switzerland is fixed yet?

SimonAH

I've emailed OB's son and daughter using an old googlemail account (nope, Switzerland is still down, how typically inefficient for such a third world country :-) )

The gist of my mail was as follows;

Good morning Xxxx, Xxxxxx,

I am a member of an online cycling community hosted on the BikeRadar site - as is your father.

We were all absolutely flattened by his post a few days ago announcing his tragic accident, the thread that he posted is here;

viewtopic.php?f=40012&t=12889799

Lots of us have posted messages of support (which we hope is giving him a little comfort) but a number of us have also been talking about doing something more tangible for him (or on his behalf). There is a real sense of 'There but for the grace of God go I'. We are all keen cyclists and this could have happened to any one of us.

What we don't want to do however is go blundering in as we don't know how he feels, what his situation is, how his family feels etc - this is why I've been presumptious enough to track you down.

So if I may;

The initial thoughts / discussion thread (hidden from Irving) is here;

viewtopic.php?f=40033&t=12889833

As you can see a number of things are being considered, but we will make no moves without your approval.

So I suppose the initial questions are;

1) Go away and leave him alone, you lot are cyclists and it was a bicycle that got him into this mess v.s. yes please, it would be good for him and he'll benefit from this (whatever this turns out to be)
2) Would a series of recorded messages in lieu of a card be a good idea? We are spread all over the UK and further afield.
3) Would a 'care package' of films, Music, eBooks, devices as some have suggested be helpful, or is he covered?
4) Financially / materially (should it go that way) is there something that he needs or wants to make life better in the short or long term? Or would it mean more to do something in his name for an appropriate charity if his essential needs are well in hand?

Please let me know how you feel about this, we will of course abide by your judgement.

Best regards
SimonAH

As soon as I hear back from them I will let you all know.

davis

Nice one Simon, thanks.

meanredspider

Great job - well done

SimonAH

OK folks, we have a response back from OB's adult son Marc as per;

Simon

Many thanks for your email. My sister and I are amazed by the response on the forums as I'm sure my Dad is as well. As a cyclist to work (and a biker) as well I have had my fair share of (thankfully minor) accidents and always got back on the bike immediately, and I know my Dad would do the same if he could. So I personally have no issue with you and your community wanting to be involved in some way.

I'm sure he would appreciate a card or other form of message. I'll leave it up to you how you wish to do this, more than happy to help deliver it to him. As for something more significant, we'll raise this with him and my mother in the next few days. As you can imagine at the moment we are both overwhelmed by and grateful for offers of support from family, friends and colleagues, and as my Dad progressively recovers, I'm sure there will be a place for each group to do something meaningful. I think a lot of the ideas on the forum are great - I think he'd really appreciate something that keeps him in touch with the cycling community in some way.

Please thank the other members of the forum for their support.

Ride safe.

We can take this as a 'go' for a stage one collection of recorded well wishes I'd say? I agree fully that this would be easier to coordinate than a life webcon.

I therefore need a volunteer to step up to the plate who has the ability to act as receiving hub for a raft of MP3 files and weave them into a reasonably coherent form? (sorry but out of my skillset) I can then send a PM to all involved to get their recordings done and emailed to the relevant person.

Looks like we can get things started! Still keep it under wraps from the main forum please as it would be better as a suprise I would have thought?

roger_merriman

Fantastic stuff Simon!

As another idea, for work i go use these lot http://www.companioncycling.org.uk/cycles.htm in Bushy park, plus they also have this beaty! http://www.vanraam.co.uk/wheelchair-bike-veloplus/itm/14096

don't need to transfure on to the bike, just roll on to the platform and then ride or rather some one else does.

But gives you wind in your hair and on a nice day great fun.

I don't know of anything near where OB is since North london has hills of sorts and with the weights of these bikes bridges are a fair effort.

IE i'd be happy to offer some time if he wanted it? since I live very close to Bushy park, as do a fair number of forum folks.

msmancunia

SimonAH wrote:

OK folks, we have a response back from OB's adult son Marc as per;

Simon

Many thanks for your email. My sister and I are amazed by the response on the forums as I'm sure my Dad is as well. As a cyclist to work (and a biker) as well I have had my fair share of (thankfully minor) accidents and always got back on the bike immediately, and I know my Dad would do the same if he could. So I personally have no issue with you and your community wanting to be involved in some way.

I'm sure he would appreciate a card or other form of message. I'll leave it up to you how you wish to do this, more than happy to help deliver it to him. As for something more significant, we'll raise this with him and my mother in the next few days. As you can imagine at the moment we are both overwhelmed by and grateful for offers of support from family, friends and colleagues, and as my Dad progressively recovers, I'm sure there will be a place for each group to do something meaningful. I think a lot of the ideas on the forum are great - I think he'd really appreciate something that keeps him in touch with the cycling community in some way.

Please thank the other members of the forum for their support.

Ride safe.

We can take this as a 'go' for a stage one collection of recorded well wishes I'd say? I agree fully that this would be easier to coordinate than a life webcon.

I therefore need a volunteer to step up to the plate who has the ability to act as receiving hub for a raft of MP3 files and weave them into a reasonably coherent form? (sorry but out of my skillset) I can then send a PM to all involved to get their recordings done and emailed to the relevant person.

Looks like we can get things started! Still keep it under wraps from the main forum please as it would be better as a suprise I would have thought?

I can speak to a producer colleague at work - she can advise on the best formats to do it I think, and sites where it might be easier to upload rather than email a huge file. She's in NYC until Tuesday but will ask her advice when she's back on.

davis

Simon, if no-one else steps up to it I can probably manage to wedge audio files together. I'm by no means an expert, just a tit with a laptop. If someone believes they're better suited to the task (I've got basic skills with Audacity, that's about it) then please speak up!

Simon, would you mind doing the first one in any case, mostly to set the tone of the other recordings?
If people do make a recording, please use a real microphone if you possibly can: shouting at your laptop in a noisy canteen is not likely to yield useful results. A useful test would be to install/run Skype and call "echo123". Skype has the handy feature that it's likely to adjust your microphone volume automatically in most cases so you're not clipping the audio.
I'm also not likely to be around Saturday or most of Sunday. I fully expect not to be the most suitable person, but if no-one else turns up...

davis

msmancunia wrote:

I can speak to a producer colleague at work - she can advise on the best formats to do it I think, and sites where it might be easier to upload rather than email a huge file. She's in NYC until Tuesday but will ask her advice when she's back on.

Regarding file formats, anything vaguely approaching the following will be utterly fine for voice messages (if you know anything about computer audio formats you might reasonably disagree with me [I've spent ages playing with audio file formats myself!], but I'm just trying to give a rough idea. There's no advantage in an audiophile willy-waving competition here):

MP3 at greater than say 96 kbps
WAV at e.g. 44.1 kHz 16bits
OGG Vorbis >96 kbps
AAC > 96 kbps (please try to avoid this as it's slightly harder to fold in!)
FLAC at anything (if you know about FLAC you'll know enough anyway!)

Far more important than the file format is the recording equipment. Use the best microphone you can find and do the recording in a quiet room. Don't shout at your laptop in a noisy echo-y corridor!

SimonAH

OK here's mine as an example;

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2tneshbh1lif4vr/SimonAH.wav

I'm sure that there are many, many better ways to do this but anyway;

I recorded this as a voice memo on my iPhone and emailed it to myself. Uploaded the file to http://www.convertfiles.com/convert/aud ... o-M4A.html and converted it from the iPhone's .m4a format to .wav. Stored the file on drop-box and posted the link.

If we all do similar over the next few days we will have our library of messages to stick together for Irving's soundcard. Sister thread to this created to post them in.

Incidentally mine comes out at about 15s

kelsen

Only just became aware of this thread. First of all well done to SimonAH for taking the initiative and getting the ball rolling. Happy to contribute to whatever we end up deciding to do for OB. Awaiting further instructions re. the recorded messages. Great idea!

tailwindhome

davis wrote:

msmancunia wrote:

I can speak to a producer colleague at work - she can advise on the best formats to do it I think, and sites where it might be easier to upload rather than email a huge file. She's in NYC until Tuesday but will ask her advice when she's back on.

Regarding file formats, anything vaguely approaching the following will be utterly fine for voice messages (if you know anything about computer audio formats you might reasonably disagree with me [I've spent ages playing with audio file formats myself!], but I'm just trying to give a rough idea. There's no advantage in an audiophile willy-waving competition here):

MP3 at greater than say 96 kbps
WAV at e.g. 44.1 kHz 16bits
OGG Vorbis >96 kbps
AAC > 96 kbps (please try to avoid this as it's slightly harder to fold in!)
FLAC at anything (if you know about FLAC you'll know enough anyway!)

Far more important than the file format is the recording equipment. Use the best microphone you can find and do the recording in a quiet room. Don't shout at your laptop in a noisy echo-y corridor!

See, I'm sure you think you are helping but I don't understand one word of what you have written there!

davis

TailWindHome wrote:

davis wrote:

Computery-tootery waffle

See, I'm sure you think you are helping but I don't understand one word of what you have written there!

Fair enough. When you start recording a message on a computer, most of the time it'll ask you what file format you want to save it in. This file format has a bearing on quality vs file size. In this instance, if you're just looking to record a message, then you can sacrifice the file size consideration (message won't be long == small file size anyway) so it's simpler to just go for a higher-quality file format, like WAV.

Even shorter version: just pick WAV or something else that says "CD quality" or similar. Worry more about the microphone and environment in which you're sat. Let the geeks like me worry about file format conversion etc.

DonDaddyD

I'm not clear what we are doing or what I have to do, help.

cjcp

TailWindHome wrote:

davis wrote:

msmancunia wrote:

I can speak to a producer colleague at work - she can advise on the best formats to do it I think, and sites where it might be easier to upload rather than email a huge file. She's in NYC until Tuesday but will ask her advice when she's back on.

Regarding file formats, anything vaguely approaching the following will be utterly fine for voice messages (if you know anything about computer audio formats you might reasonably disagree with me [I've spent ages playing with audio file formats myself!], but I'm just trying to give a rough idea. There's no advantage in an audiophile willy-waving competition here):

MP3 at greater than say 96 kbps
WAV at e.g. 44.1 kHz 16bits
OGG Vorbis >96 kbps
AAC > 96 kbps (please try to avoid this as it's slightly harder to fold in!)
FLAC at anything (if you know about FLAC you'll know enough anyway!)

Far more important than the file format is the recording equipment. Use the best microphone you can find and do the recording in a quiet room. Don't shout at your laptop in a noisy echo-y corridor!

See, I'm sure you think you are helping but I don't understand one word of what you have written there!

Yeah, um, I think I'll go with the card.

Not. A. Word.

Are we doing the card? Been out of the loop this week.

veronese68

cjcp wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

davis wrote:

msmancunia wrote:

I can speak to a producer colleague at work - she can advise on the best formats to do it I think, and sites where it might be easier to upload rather than email a huge file. She's in NYC until Tuesday but will ask her advice when she's back on.

Regarding file formats, anything vaguely approaching the following will be utterly fine for voice messages (if you know anything about computer audio formats you might reasonably disagree with me [I've spent ages playing with audio file formats myself!], but I'm just trying to give a rough idea. There's no advantage in an audiophile willy-waving competition here):

MP3 at greater than say 96 kbps
WAV at e.g. 44.1 kHz 16bits
OGG Vorbis >96 kbps
AAC > 96 kbps (please try to avoid this as it's slightly harder to fold in!)
FLAC at anything (if you know about FLAC you'll know enough anyway!)

Far more important than the file format is the recording equipment. Use the best microphone you can find and do the recording in a quiet room. Don't shout at your laptop in a noisy echo-y corridor!

See, I'm sure you think you are helping but I don't understand one word of what you have written there!

Yeah, um, I think I'll go with the card.

Not. A. Word.

Are we doing the card? Been out of the loop this week.

I haven't done this yet but I reckon I can cope with the technology and record it on my phone like Simon has. You can record into my phone if you like then I'll try to work out what to do next.

cjcp

Sounds like a plan. You around this weekend?

mrc1

Jeff Jones got back to me to say that BR are happy to receive all the goodies if we do go with a treasure chest option of DVDs, books, etc.

Are people still keen to do this? If so, let me know and I'll start a new thread with details.

cjcp

Yep.

jimmypippa

Yep