Seemingly trivial things that intrigue you

pblakeney

rick_chasey said:

Satellite malfunction?

On a virtual ride?

pblakeney

pblakeney said:

pangolin said:

pblakeney said:

pangolin said:

That's nonsense surely?

Yeah. It's clearly cheating. The question is how? Simply curious, I'm not interested in lying to myself. Also, how can some people still take Strava KOMs seriously?

It's a virtual ride? Can you put in ludicrous rider weights? Can you edit how aero you are?

I guess you can. Weight loss will help going uphill but hinder going downhill.
I might play with aero coefficients next time, and hide the ride.

For anyone interested, I reduced the Cda and resistance to absolute minimums and rode an undulating course. I did keep my weight correct therefore there is room for "improvement".
My average power went from 222W to 218W.
My average speed went from 32.1 km/h to 47.9 km/h.
My top speed went from 81.9 km/h to 90.2 km/h.

And I was still nowhere near any KOMs! 🤣

Note:- I use Fulgaz which limits speed to 2x filmed speed to reduce buffering and improve video quality. This is not normally an issue (for me) but I can see how unrestricted apps could go very fast.

Ride now deleted.

briantrumpet

Supposedly getting full fibre installed today, all at no extra cost to me. So far have two Openreach vans and engineers working out how to do it, they need to (probably) get someone with a heavy lifting tool for the manhole to connect my 'node' at the end of the road. I'd guess the cost to Openreach will be well north of £500.

rick_chasey

pblakeney said:

pblakeney said:

pangolin said:

pblakeney said:

pangolin said:

That's nonsense surely?

Yeah. It's clearly cheating. The question is how? Simply curious, I'm not interested in lying to myself. Also, how can some people still take Strava KOMs seriously?

It's a virtual ride? Can you put in ludicrous rider weights? Can you edit how aero you are?

I guess you can. Weight loss will help going uphill but hinder going downhill.
I might play with aero coefficients next time, and hide the ride.

For anyone interested, I reduced the Cda and resistance to absolute minimums and rode an undulating course. I did keep my weight correct therefore there is room for "improvement".
My average power went from 222W to 218W.
My average speed went from 32.1 km/h to 47.9 km/h.
My top speed went from 81.9 km/h to 90.2 km/h.

And I was still nowhere near any KOMs! 🤣

Note:- I use Fulgaz which limits speed to 2x filmed speed to reduce buffering and improve video quality. This is not normally an issue (for me) but I can see how unrestricted apps could go very fast.

Ride now deleted.

82kph is fast

pangolin

rick_chasey said:

pblakeney said:

pblakeney said:

pangolin said:

pblakeney said:

pangolin said:

That's nonsense surely?

Yeah. It's clearly cheating. The question is how? Simply curious, I'm not interested in lying to myself. Also, how can some people still take Strava KOMs seriously?

It's a virtual ride? Can you put in ludicrous rider weights? Can you edit how aero you are?

I guess you can. Weight loss will help going uphill but hinder going downhill.
I might play with aero coefficients next time, and hide the ride.

For anyone interested, I reduced the Cda and resistance to absolute minimums and rode an undulating course. I did keep my weight correct therefore there is room for "improvement".
My average power went from 222W to 218W.
My average speed went from 32.1 km/h to 47.9 km/h.
My top speed went from 81.9 km/h to 90.2 km/h.

And I was still nowhere near any KOMs! 🤣

Note:- I use Fulgaz which limits speed to 2x filmed speed to reduce buffering and improve video quality. This is not normally an issue (for me) but I can see how unrestricted apps could go very fast.

Ride now deleted.

82kph is fast

I guess it's what it works out you can get up to if you aren't worried about trivial things like crashing.

pblakeney

As said, downhill without any concerns about corners, gravel or potholes.
Weighing in at 80 kegs help too. 😂

Wheelspinner

pblakeney said:

As said, downhill without any concerns about corners, gravel or potholes.
Weighing in at 80 kegs help too. 😂

I ride the Tacx Training video films and it's quite visually disturbing to do some of the descents as the "speed" you are riding is entirely inappropriate for the corners on the road. There's a stretch of the Amalfi Coast road on one I was descending at about 65-70 km/h around hairpin bends signposted at 20.

pblakeney

On the bright side you do get to see the scenery instead of focusing on the surface or next apex. 😉

drhaggis

Anything over 70 km/h feels bloody fast. I've only broken 80 km/h once on the bike. In Erlaitz (Evenepoel's favourite climb in Clasica San Sebastian). It's ~4 km at a very constant 11%... but it's full of corners. And one of them has a cattle grid just waiting for the unaware cyclist going waaay too fast. Scary.

Another route I like has a descent that tricks you into picking speed... and then you arrive to the technical bits, which of course are quite gravelly because that road is really in the middle of nowhere.

Just don't think what'd happen if you got it wrong.

On the other side, I've heard that Tourmalet really lends itself to scarily fast descents. Maybe disc brakes aren't a bad thing there, especially for amateurs that might drag the brakes a tad too much, risking overheating the tyre/tube.

pblakeney

drhaggis said:

Anything over 70 km/h feels bloody fast...

You do realise that the current thread is about virtual cycling on a trainer?

laurentian

briantrumpet said:

Supposedly getting full fibre installed today, all at no extra cost to me. So far have two Openreach vans and engineers working out how to do it, they need to (probably) get someone with a heavy lifting tool for the manhole to connect my 'node' at the end of the road. I'd guess the cost to Openreach will be well north of £500.

I am having this done literally as I type! They are creating a conduit from the pavement at the bottom of our drive to the house. In order to do this, they need to:
get permit to close footpath, cut into asphalt footpath and excavate to bottom of drive, lift block paviors, dig trench, install conduit, back fill, lay sand, re-lay block paviors to "as was" before then drilling through house wall, connecting some kind of box to the exterior and router to the interior. This is costing me nothing - I think it must be government funded. . .

rick_chasey

drhaggis said:

Anything over 70 km/h feels bloody fast. I've only broken 80 km/h once on the bike. In Erlaitz (Evenepoel's favourite climb in Clasica San Sebastian). It's ~4 km at a very constant 11%... but it's full of corners. And one of them has a cattle grid just waiting for the unaware cyclist going waaay too fast. Scary.

Another route I like has a descent that tricks you into picking speed... and then you arrive to the technical bits, which of course are quite gravelly because that road is really in the middle of nowhere.

Just don't think what'd happen if you got it wrong.

On the other side, I've heard that Tourmalet really lends itself to scarily fast descents. Maybe disc brakes aren't a bad thing there, especially for amateurs that might drag the brakes a tad too much, risking overheating the tyre/tube.

Yes the Tourmalet is the only time i've hit that kind of speed.

That really steep bit where Vingers put Jumbo on the front and blew the race up, near the top.

10%ish, straight, wide, good visibility. Whoosh.

First.Aspect

My Garmin said I hit 85kph on Dartmoor last week. A bike should be perfectly stable at that speed so if you know the road it is not a big deal.

pblakeney

85.5 km/h last year. Great fun!

Pross

I was lucky enough to race on the Isle of Man TT course with a fully closed road and having been dropped going up Snaefell my speedo maxed out (early 90s wheel magnet version) on the descent. I think its limit was 55mph and I reached that somewhere near the top of the descent around Windy Corner so not sure if I got quicker further down. When I finished I discovered I'd had several spokes ripped out in a touch of wheels earlier in the race, I guess it was lucky I had 36 to start with back then and I was a lot lighter!

briantrumpet

laurentian said:

briantrumpet said:

Supposedly getting full fibre installed today, all at no extra cost to me. So far have two Openreach vans and engineers working out how to do it, they need to (probably) get someone with a heavy lifting tool for the manhole to connect my 'node' at the end of the road. I'd guess the cost to Openreach will be well north of £500.

I am having this done literally as I type! They are creating a conduit from the pavement at the bottom of our drive to the house. In order to do this, they need to:
get permit to close footpath, cut into asphalt footpath and excavate to bottom of drive, lift block paviors, dig trench, install conduit, back fill, lay sand, re-lay block paviors to "as was" before then drilling through house wall, connecting some kind of box to the exterior and router to the interior. This is costing me nothing - I think it must be government funded. . .

Ha, yes, in the end they managed to do it via a pre-existing conduit with a bit of crafty cabling, but even so it was three vans & engineers, two of those for about 2.5 hours (partly as the effectively did the inspection & planning from when they arrived. They did a very tidy job, and I'm full fibre now, and kept my landline phone & old number as part of the package - useful as mobile reception here is very patchy.

Fair play to Talktalk, there was no fee for the gear, waived any delivery cost for it, as I'm a long-standing customer, and the monthly cost for the 24 months has barely changed from my fibre-copper connection, which didn't have any calls included... though that probably just means they had been ripping me off even more previously.

I think this'll be good enough for CS...

pblakeney

Harrumph, no fibre here yet. 🤬

briantrumpet

pblakeney said:

Harrumph, no fibre here yet. 🤬

It did amuse me that it was available for my rural hovel in the Alps before either here or the local town there, but I think that's down to a gouvernement scheme to get small communities better connected well before the copper network is abandoned.

IIRC, copper is on the way out in the UK, so everywhere will have to be fibred before long.

pblakeney

briantrumpet said:

IIRC, copper is on the way out in the UK, so everywhere will have to be fibred before long.

Getting the thread back OT, it intrigues me how long this might take, but rhetorical.
They've been busy in the main street but not got to side streets yet.

TheBigBean

briantrumpet said:

laurentian said:

briantrumpet said:

Supposedly getting full fibre installed today, all at no extra cost to me. So far have two Openreach vans and engineers working out how to do it, they need to (probably) get someone with a heavy lifting tool for the manhole to connect my 'node' at the end of the road. I'd guess the cost to Openreach will be well north of £500.

I am having this done literally as I type! They are creating a conduit from the pavement at the bottom of our drive to the house. In order to do this, they need to:
get permit to close footpath, cut into asphalt footpath and excavate to bottom of drive, lift block paviors, dig trench, install conduit, back fill, lay sand, re-lay block paviors to "as was" before then drilling through house wall, connecting some kind of box to the exterior and router to the interior. This is costing me nothing - I think it must be government funded. . .

Ha, yes, in the end they managed to do it via a pre-existing conduit with a bit of crafty cabling, but even so it was three vans & engineers, two of those for about 2.5 hours (partly as the effectively did the inspection & planning from when they arrived. They did a very tidy job, and I'm full fibre now, and kept my landline phone & old number as part of the package - useful as mobile reception here is very patchy.

Fair play to Talktalk, there was no fee for the gear, waived any delivery cost for it, as I'm a long-standing customer, and the monthly cost for the 24 months has barely changed from my fibre-copper connection, which didn't have any calls included... though that probably just means they had been ripping me off even more previously.

I think this'll be good enough for CS...

Now you just need a wifi mesh, so you have the same speed throughout.

briantrumpet

TheBigBean said:

briantrumpet said:

laurentian said:

briantrumpet said:

Supposedly getting full fibre installed today, all at no extra cost to me. So far have two Openreach vans and engineers working out how to do it, they need to (probably) get someone with a heavy lifting tool for the manhole to connect my 'node' at the end of the road. I'd guess the cost to Openreach will be well north of £500.

I am having this done literally as I type! They are creating a conduit from the pavement at the bottom of our drive to the house. In order to do this, they need to:
get permit to close footpath, cut into asphalt footpath and excavate to bottom of drive, lift block paviors, dig trench, install conduit, back fill, lay sand, re-lay block paviors to "as was" before then drilling through house wall, connecting some kind of box to the exterior and router to the interior. This is costing me nothing - I think it must be government funded. . .

Ha, yes, in the end they managed to do it via a pre-existing conduit with a bit of crafty cabling, but even so it was three vans & engineers, two of those for about 2.5 hours (partly as the effectively did the inspection & planning from when they arrived. They did a very tidy job, and I'm full fibre now, and kept my landline phone & old number as part of the package - useful as mobile reception here is very patchy.

Fair play to Talktalk, there was no fee for the gear, waived any delivery cost for it, as I'm a long-standing customer, and the monthly cost for the 24 months has barely changed from my fibre-copper connection, which didn't have any calls included... though that probably just means they had been ripping me off even more previously.

I think this'll be good enough for CS...

Now you just need a wifi mesh, so you have the same speed throughout.

Glad that I've got a rather small house, and most of my internet activity is pretty close to the router. But I'll go off and look up wifi meshes anyway.

I suspect that the devices themselves are more likely to slow stuff down now rather than the connection speed. I actually do very little data-down/upload-intensive stuff, so it'll make little difference most of the time, though the quadrupling of upload speeds for photos will be a bonus, even if it wasn't a problem before.

Still remembering dial-up internet, and going for a cup of coffee while a single photo assembled itself, line-by-line, on the screen...

pangolin

They installed the fibre cables on our fairly minor road about a year ago but only last week did we get a leaflet saying we could soon actually sign up and use it.

rick_chasey

Funny how times have changed.

In the 90s the Man Utd supporters tried their hardest to block Sky and Murdouch buying the club.

In the 2020s, they're gutted when the Qatari regime wouldn't front up the money to buy a majority big stake.

Jezyboy

Is that not just because Murdoch/Sky were likely to try and run it like a "business" (much like the Glazers). Whereas Qatar would more likely run it as a vanity project.

rick_chasey

Jezyboy said:

Is that not just because Murdoch/Sky were likely to try and run it like a "business" (much like the Glazers). Whereas Qatar would more likely run it as a vanity project.

At the time it was very much spun as taking the moral high ground.

"We don't want our club to be run by this amoral lot"

I'm a casual fan but I think the way the Utd fans are behaving over this is pretty disgraceful tbh. A lot of the older lot talk with a lot of pride how they stood up to Murdoch etc, but their fawning over some sheik who likes to jail people for gay sex and flogging people who have affairs is not very edifying.

First.Aspect

rick_chasey said:

Funny how times have changed.

In the 90s the Man Utd supporters tried their hardest to block Sky and Murdouch buying the club.

In the 2020s, they're gutted when the Qatari regime wouldn't front up the money to buy a majority big stake.

I think most United supporters would be happy if a local guy owned it. The main reason a lot of the numpties wanted the Qatari bid was to get the Glazers out entirely.

rick_chasey

Obviously this is right in my wheelhouse at the moment. But this chart and the tweet it is in reference to (“thesis of research that suggests the rise in mental disorders is related to too little play children have without parental oversight”)

https://twitter.com/dkthomp/status/1713937759113498642?s=46&t=Q7O5dnx-0MXQv9qE3vz1vg

Jezyboy

rick_chasey said:

Jezyboy said:

Is that not just because Murdoch/Sky were likely to try and run it like a "business" (much like the Glazers). Whereas Qatar would more likely run it as a vanity project.

At the time it was very much spun as taking the moral high ground.

"We don't want our club to be run by this amoral lot"

I'm a casual fan but I think the way the Utd fans are behaving over this is pretty disgraceful tbh. A lot of the older lot talk with a lot of pride how they stood up to Murdoch etc, but their fawning over some sheik who likes to jail people for gay sex and flogging people who have affairs is not very edifying.

I think expecting football fans to be moral arbiters is a bit much tbh.

I'd much rather take moral judgements against companies selling them arms, devices to spy on citizens, taking advantage of the slave labour, etc, or already massively wealthy individuals who decide they are going to further enhance their pay packets by accepting their dirty money.

pblakeney

rick_chasey said:

Obviously this is right in my wheelhouse at the moment. But this chart and the tweet it is in reference to (“thesis of research that suggests the rise in mental disorders is related to too little play children have without parental oversight”)

Isn’t that just down to parents being over protective?
They’ll have genuine reasons but still.

First.Aspect

pblakeney said:

rick_chasey said:

Obviously this is right in my wheelhouse at the moment. But this chart and the tweet it is in reference to (“thesis of research that suggests the rise in mental disorders is related to too little play children have without parental oversight”)

Isn’t that just down to parents being over protective?
They’ll have genuine reasons but still.

It is certainly an interesting thesis though isn't it?

Personally I think it leads to the infantilisation of young adults as well.

(Other factors leading to developmental delays in young adults are house prices, Boomers and Wiggle.)