Buffalo & Doozerie - The mild musings of two grumpy old men!

Jep Gambardella wrote: »

In my view, there are two circumstances in which citizens should be permitted to take the law in their own hands.

In the case of people who use high powered lights, either undipped or on strobe setting, it ought to be permissible for anyone to drag them from their bike and beat them to within an inch of their lives.

+1 overtook a guy with a strobe front light the other day and I wasn't able to see behind me when I was checking around. Cant believe it was safe for anyone.

The second exception should be for people who put up their Christmas tree before December 1. Their neighbours should be allowed burn them out.

I always used to be the weekend before Christmas, this year, 30th November, and I'd do it again.

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In one side and out the other, but missed the tube!

there's no image showing there for me.

on sunday mornings, my wife goes horse riding in NCD. so what i usually do is throw the bike in the boot, drive her out, and then get about an hour and three quarters out around oldtown/garristown/the naul, etc.
cept this morning, as i was pulling the bike out of the boot, realised i'd forgotten my poxing cycling shoes. and it looks like a lovely morning for it too.

buffalo wrote: »

I perhaps should have been more specific. There's a stretch of towpath on the Royal Canal from Phibsboro to Ashtown which is unlit, and people have a genuine need for higher powered lights to see what's in front of them.

What would you and others recommend as a good light to illuminate a dark country lane, and not blind oncoming cyclists?

Chuchote wrote: »

What would you and others recommend as a good light to illuminate a dark country lane, and not blind oncoming cyclists?

Depends on Budget. The edelux is great even at slower speeds than it was meant to be used at, with a stop light which is still pretty decent for unlit areas. I found the mid range cateye volts to be good. Both have to be set up correctly.

Basically look for shaped beams, while I appreciate that people seem more aware of the need to be lit up, I am increasingly getting annoyed by overpowered strobe lights or high beams pointed upwards and leaving the world behind and around in a veil of darkness that I cannot see into.

CramCycle wrote: »

Depends on Budget. The edelux is great even at slower speeds than it was meant to be used at, with a stop light which is still pretty decent for unlit areas. I found the mid range cateye volts to be good. Both have to be set up correctly.

Basically look for shaped beams, while I appreciate that people seem more aware of the need to be lit up, I am increasingly getting annoyed by overpowered strobe lights or high beams pointed upwards and leaving the world behind and around in a veil of darkness that I cannot see into.

What do you mean by a stop light, please, and shaped beams?

nomdeboardie

magicbastarder wrote: »

on sunday mornings, my wife goes horse riding in NCD. so what i usually do is throw the bike in the boot, drive her out, and then get about an hour and three quarters out around oldtown/garristown/the naul, etc.
cept this morning, as i was pulling the bike out of the boot, realised i'd forgotten my poxing cycling shoes. and it looks like a lovely morning for it too.

Primitive Toeclips&Straps FTW

Chuchote wrote: »

What do you mean by a stop light, please, and shaped beams?

The edelux runs off a dynamo. It holds a charge so that when you stop at lights or for a break it still stays lit for a few minutes. I remember that when I first got one that it stayed lit for far longer than claimed, which is great.
Shaped beams refer to the fact that they are not just singular spot beams or spread light in every direction beams. For examples the edelux beam shape throws light onto the road in a large spread for quite a bit while lighting up the side of the road with a weaker but nonetheless useful beam pattern. If set right it gives more light on the road and does not blind oncoming traffic than a regular torch.
Obviously with a battery powered light, a stop light is a mute point.

Chuchote wrote: »

What would you and others recommend as a good light to illuminate a dark country lane, and not blind oncoming cyclists?

Something which can be moved to focus on a point which isn't at eye level.

buffalo wrote: »

Something which can be moved to focus on a point which isn't at eye level.

Well, yeah, lots of lights can be pointed down, but will they illuminate the road before you if there aren't streetlights?

Chuchote wrote: »

Well, yeah, lots of lights can be pointed down, but will they illuminate the road before you if there aren't streetlights?

I don't know where you cycle, but in most places the road is below eye level.

I suggest you read my posts above again to more fully understand the point I was trying to make. You appear to (either deliberately or unconsciously) have snipped the part which explains what I believe is good practice.

Lusk_Doyle

buffalo wrote: »

I don't know where you cycle, but in most places the road is below eye level.

I suggest you read my posts above again to more fully understand the point I was trying to make. You appear to (either deliberately or unconsciously) have snipped the part which explains what I believe is good practice.

???

Your exact post was quoted.

Lusk_Doyle wrote: »

???

Your exact post was quoted.

Not in the original question: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=102007052&postcount=1314

Chuchote wrote: »

Well, yeah, lots of lights can be pointed down, but will they illuminate the road before you if there aren't streetlights?

Yes, the good ones will illuminate the road for quite a distance but will be no more blinding to oncoming traffic than a car with correctly aligned dipped headlights on.

OleRodrigo

You cant beat a hub dynamo for regular commuting. The initial cost and degree of hassle to setup make them worthwhile in no time.

As pointed out, the German makes are a good bet as they are already approved for use on German roads ( an by extension, are OK for Irish ones )

Some forward thinking civil servant could use those standards to regulate the domestic light market and get ride of those offensive strobes. But if we cant even adapt derelict Nama buildings for the homeless, there's not much chance of that.

Can you put a hub dynamo on a bike with disc brakes?

OleRodrigo

Chuchote wrote: »

Can you put a hub dynamo on a bike with disc brakes?

Yeah, the hub just needs to be a ' disc ' version.

doozerie

Chuchote wrote: »

Can you put a hub dynamo on a bike with disc brakes?

I have one on my commute bike, which has disc brakes. There is a decent range of disc-compatible dynamo hubs available these days.

I've been using this dynamo for about a year now, combined with good quality front and rear lights, and I wouldn't willingly go back to battery-powered lights.

doozerie

My daughter and I have developed this bedtime routine recently whereby if she is quick at getting herself ready for bed I let her watch an inappropriate music video before she climbs into bed. The video isn’t always inappropriate, sometimes I’m a responsible parent and watch the entire video myself first to see if it is suitable, but it doesn’t always work out that way. And the world of modern music is well and truly packed with videos that would have had the parish priest burn down the house in my day for even daring to think about any of the images contained in them.

We started this bedtime routine safely enough, over the course of a couple of weeks we watched one video each night by OK Go, every one of which is entirely about fun and entertainment. They are great, if you’ve never seen any of them you should take a look, Upside Down & Inside Out is a great example. You go to bed with a smile on your face after watching one of those, which is exactly what I’m seeking from any video that I let my 7yr old watch. We are like a scene from The Waltons or Little House on the Prairie (for anyone old enough to remember that saccharine sh1te), we watch a “nice” video, hug, say goodnight, and everyone goes to bed smugly filled with the joys of life.

But once we ventured away from OK Go and into the territory of more chart-based music videos, things veered sharply off course. The Waltons and the Ingalls (I even remember their family name, some days I can barely remember my own name, why can I remember the name of a fictional family that I strongly disliked, why is life so unfair?!) would never have stood for it. Tits and ass are the order of the day.

Thankfully I’ve managed to avoid the worst of the videos that go along with songs that my daughter has heard on the radio and has liked. Take for example Ariane Grande - Side to Side - don’t click on that in work by the way. This was one for which my daughter recognised the song name and she asked to watch the video the next night, so I watched it myself first.

The first clue as to its suitability was the YouTube still for the video, which showed Ariane Grande and Nicki Minaj in something I presume is meant to be a sauna. I’ve never seen a sauna like it, of the saunas I’ve been in they’ve never been filled exclusively with fit, toned, beautiful people, wearing perfect hair and perfect makeup, and little else. I try not to dwell on my memories of real saunas but some nights the nightmares worm their way to the forefront of my mind, I wake up screaming at the recovered images of excessive body hair, combovers, hobbit feet, beer bellies, and the grimaces of sweaty faces struggling with the intense heat. I’ve clearly been going to the wrong saunas.

The majority of the video was predictable enough given that intro. There were lots of women writhing in various ways in various places. Personally I can’t see the appeal of squirming all over a communal shower wall, but again maybe I’ve just not been using the right communal showers (cue some more disturbing memories of male showers). Maybe female showers really are exactly like the fantasies of teenage boys (not the teenage boys of the Waltons or Ingalls, obviously), but my inner voice was screaming “that’s simply NOT HYGIENIC!”.

I certainly don’t want to impose barriers for my daughter at such an early age, “writhing in a shower” is arguably as valid a career choice as any, but I’d like her to see it as just one of many choices rather than her logical role in life. Given that it’s a video by and for a female singer (in theory anyway) I thought it might break out of the cliches for a moment rather than just pandering to the drooling males in the audience, but sadly no.

The final straw was the scene on the exercise bikes. Yet again I was left wondering why there was such a massive disparity with the few spinning classes I’ve attended. My classes represented smelly sweaty airless sufferfests, the class in the video represented some very strange sexual activity. They tried to make the pedalling motion sexy by throwing in a curious hip movement that made it look like they were geriatrics, painfully dislocating their hip joints with every turn of the pedals. Just. No. I’m not letting my daughter watch that travesty of cycling technique. Ariane Grande, go stand in the corner and think about what you’ve done. And no writhing while there.

YouTube helpfully auto-played another video before my inner old man fully recovered from the shock of the previous one. This one was The Weekend - Starboy ft. Daft Punk. I thought I was on safe ground here, it opens with two men sitting at opposite ends of an office table. They were both fully clothed. Good start. They were excessively clothed though, as it happens, one was wearing a balaclava the other was sporting the latest in trendy beefy zip ties on his wrists and ankles. So far so weird, but hey, who am I to stand between people and their art, maybe it’s a physical representation of self-restraint. Or something.

Balaclavaman proceeded to walk behind the other guy, put a plastic bag over his head, and suffocate him. To death, like. What. The. Jaysus.

Having established himself as some kind of sociopath, Balaclavaman pulled off his balaclava. Well, why wouldn’t he, I mean who is around to see the face of this guy who just simulated killing someone in a fairly gruesome way. He swaggers down a hallway and opens his mouth to sing. I was wondering what was going to emerge. Some heartfelt hardcore treatise on man’s inhumanity to man? Some gravelly gangsta rap?

No. What emerged was quite a girly voice banging on about something or other. I skipped further into the video to see if there was a point where something as boring as remorse was expressed. But no. There he was smashing things with a large brightly-lit crucifix. Bless him. He then climbs into a car with a black cat that transforms into a Jaguar, and they drive happily down the road together. We have a black cat, on the outside it’s a 9-month old black young fella, but on the inside it’s a wild Jaguar with a serious lack of social skills. Living with a Jaguar is not nearly as calm and peaceful as that video suggests.

I learned later that the video is supposed to represent his killing off an earlier persona of his because …something, something, I don’t know and I don’t care - we all have issues, but we don’t all use them as an excuse to produce a pointlessly violent and utterly sh1te video to inflict upon the world. That’s not “art”, it’s just immature posturing. Another video on the banned list, then.

I’m gonna have to start finding some “safe” videos for my daughter again. The Nolans it is…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ud5T5I4XcA

Jesus. Wake up in the early hours and log on to see what's happening in the world and you sink down in the bed again with confused notions of Laura Ingalls and John-Boy Walton and the rest writhing in a rustic sauna.

Ryath

Here's one that for you that combines great 60's music and cycling! Move on to Danny MacASkill then. Hadn't seen any OK Go videos in years must show my own daughters.

smacl

Chuchote wrote: »

Jesus. Wake up in the early hours and log on to see what's happening in the world and you sink down in the bed again with confused notions of Laura Ingalls and John-Boy Walton and the rest writhing in a rustic sauna.

Forget Debbie does Dallas, here on the 410 we now have Laura does John Boy. Great idea for a new retro-crossover series, anyone got the number for Netflix handy...

odyssey06

I predict a spike from Irish IPs accessing Ariane Grande videos on Youtube... to think last time I saw her she was elegantly attired sharing the stage with that nice young man Michael Bubblelays.

to my ears, ariane grande and demi lovato sound like things starbucks would sell.

RobertFoster

magicbastarder wrote: »

to my ears, ariane grande and demi lovato sound like things starbucks would sell.

Just to be obtuse, make sure you order a large Ariane and a half Lovato.

at least they'd have plenty of room to write your name on it.

Seve OB

Heading down the N11 to Wicklow on Saturday Morning, nice and warm in my car, I passed a group of cyclists just after Druids Glen Turnoff, maybe 7 or 8 of them. I thought to myself fair play to them out for a spin on a bitterly cold and frosty morning, but I also thought I wouldn't like to be cycling on such a busy main road and some of them seemed to be cycling dangerously close to the traffic lane.

No more than a hundred yards past them I saw one terribly lucky guy who appeared to loose his wheel on the yellow line or a cats eye. I don't think he took any of the others down with him, but there was a wobble or 2 as he luckily fell into his buddies and not into the traffic lane, but his bike went out there and a few things (bottles & whatever) fell off his bike and went out as far as the outside lane. It was early enough, 9:45 or so and traffic wasn't heavy, but there were cars coming who had to take avoidance measures and luckily enough nobody to close to make contact.

Coming home Saturday evening, about 5:30 I was on the inbound lane N4 at the second garage. I saw what appeared to be a mopehead up ahead in the bus lane but sailing very close to the busy traffic. I was taking the next turn for Chapelizod and as I got closer, I saw it was actually a cyclist with the best rear light I have ever seen. I don't know why more people don't use decent lights like that, mine is pretty good, but probably not quite his standard. He had a large enough backpack on him, was dressed in black with no reflective gear on him at all, but the very decent light certainly made up for that. I couldn't help but think he was cycling like a nutcase though, so close to the traffic and at times cycling on the thick white bus lane line. There were no busses or taxis in the lane and no cars merging out from the garage so there was no reason for him for not keeping a good bit to the left out of harms way. My mind went back to that morning and how quickly I saw the guy end up on the deck, but he was lucky as there was little traffic. I'm looking at this guy with his heavy looking backpack and great rear light, but if this guy goes down here, it's curtains.

On to this morning, coming up to 10am coming down through the Phoenix park just past the Aras. A girl in her club gear is cycling in the hard shoulder, but again, with no cars for a considerable distance ahead, she is basically cycling on the line while heavy traffic moves past her within a foot or 2 of her, while she has plenty of room to her left to cycle safely in.

WTF is it with these people who choose to cycle as close to the traffic as possible when there are clearly safer alternatives.......

Of course then I realise that this bird is a nut job as I'm sitting at the red lights waiting to exit into busy moving traffic on Parkgate street. Down comes yer one on the inside lane freewheeling at pace, doesn't even look to her right as she breaks the red light and merges out into the traffic with one car having to brake as she went out in front of him, and then she starts to weave pretty carelessly between the traffic swapping lanes a few times before she disappears in the distance.

Nutjob.

spyderski

There's plenty of mopeheads around alright. Especially on a Monday morning...