Gigapan

Gigapan hosts huge panorama pictures with fast zoom capabilities. Very cool web app. The panorama of the Obama Inauguration is stunning due to the amount of information in it.

Google Chrome

Only in America? Nope, Hastings, NZ…

Two prisoners who fled a courthouse handcuffed together foiled their own getaway when they ran around opposite sides of a light pole, slammed into each other and fell to the ground.

CTV Video of it – brilliant!

The Black Seeds - Make A Move

Brilliant song from a great New Zealand band. Needs to be played loud!

Kogswell Porteur

This is my Kogswell Porteur 650b project bike which is now rideable but not complete.

- Wheels are Paul Components Hubs laced with DT Swiss Competition spokes to Velocity Synergy 650b hubs. The spokes alternate black and silver (for a laugh). Shod with Panaracer Col De Vie tyres.
- Nitto Montmartre bar from Velo Orange complete with cork grips and City Bike brake levers.
- Paul Components "Touring" Cantilever Brakes
- Brooks England B17 Special Copper Saddle
- Cane Creek Headset (threw out one that came with the frame!)

The Truvativ cranks are just thrown on from my singlespeed mountain bike so I could ride it - they are 180mm and catch on the ground if I turn sharply while pedaling.

The gearing is a very low 32 x 19 - which is great for around Auckland where I live. I can easily pedal up hills, cruise the flat, and coast down. It's not designed to be fast but I have been surprised about how light it is.

I’ve been riding it to work every day and am really enjoying it.

To do: Replace the cranks and fit the chaincase. Fit the mudguards. Get a porteur rack built for it and fit.

Doing silly stuff

It was originally intended on being a relative easy 50km mountain bike ride which we figured we’d cut out in around 4 hours. What it turned into was a 8 hour epic with the last 10km’s taking us around 3.5 hours alone. The track we’d selected to get to the Kaiaua Coast was not easily walkable never mind rideable.

  2000m of climbing over 53km’s.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7517724

I feel like an old man today.

NZ Music on-demand

Radio New Zealand has a fantastic stream of Neil Finn & Friends recorded at the Roundhouse Studio.

They also have downloads of a heap of other muso’s here.

Powermat Wirelessly Powered Kitchen of the Future

This is incredible…

GoCycle

Well it ain’t pretty but then it’s a commuter bike; the GoCycle has some pretty clever features and in particular the Pitstop side mounted wheels that have a click-fit mechanism to hold them in place.  It also has an electric assist motor, which, if it got more folks riding to work on bicycle, would be a good thing.

Bird, Rides, Bikes….

Got woken at 2am with the cat doing cartwheels around the bedroom. Didn’t work out until I went to get dressed for work that she’d managed to catch a bird and deliver it to the room. She’s well proud of it.

Went out for a ride in the Waitaks this morning; uploaded to MotionBased and Garmin Connect. I’m unsure which of these two services to continue using. They both have their merits and pitfalls with Garmin Connect going very Web 2.0.

The new Santa Cruz Blur XC has been released in carbon. It’s their first foray into carbon frames and the report says that they were worried about it’s strength so they doubled the tests that they would normally run on an alu frame and it’s stronger than "just about every frame we make."

I quite like what Santa Cruz are doing with their bikes especially around the serviceability of the pivots with grease points and bushings. It will make them last a whole heap longer than running the standard sealed bearings and the ones they do use have a lifetime warranty.

Everyone has a song inside… (apparently)

Microsoft Songsmith looks pretty cool but I’m trying to work out if it’s a gimmick or would be cool to play with it but I haven’t got the time at the moment to download and play with it.

I know if I had a Mac I’d spend hours playing with GarageBand. I once had some free software called Voyetra that came with a sound card; it was so good that Turtle Beach bought the company and now charge for a mangled version of it that is nowhere near as good as it was 8 years ago.

Windows Live Writer

I’ve discovered Windows Live Writer which makes it easy to create blog posts off-line and then publish them when I want. There may be other tools but this certainly seemed easy. http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/

Google Reader for Beginners.

First up is Google Reader for Beginners. Handy video's for learning what Google Reader is all about and how to use it.

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-reader-for-beginners.html

Blog title...

I've created this to encompass stuff I come across so that I can come back and reference it or so that others can discover stuff within my "1 mile radius".

So named after this idea - http://isocrates.us/bike/the-1-mile-solution/

Cheers.