Sleep Can Wait! Cycling Series #1

What a way to kick off a cycling series even if there were only 2 participants.

Taking advantage of the 2-day Chinese New Year holiday, we organised an evening ride that will take us to some of the more popular riding routes. The plan was to remain fairly flexible both on timing, distance and speed. Unfortunately, some of the riders had other commitments and that left us with just 2 roadies.

The route was simple. Meet Francis at his place, and ride towards Pasir Ris, Changi Village, Changi Coast Road, East Coast Parkway, and decide what we want to do after reaching Fort Road. Stops were planned every 20km (or so) to refuel and rest the hopefully tired legs.

The first section was a 20km route from Paya Lebar Road to Changi Village via Old Tampines Road, Pasir Ris Dr 3, and Loyang Ave. The section was fraught with somewhat difficult terrain that we eventually conquered with our relatively fresh legs. And we managed it with pretty good average speed of almost 28kph. The terrain forces great variance in the speed that ultimately ranged from 18kph pushing towards Loyang Ave, and over 50kph reaping the hard work invested earlier.

The most memorable hills must be along Old Tampines Road and just before turning towards Loyang Ave. Old Tampines Road, Pasir Ris Dr 3, and Loyang Ave all looked a little more hilly than they did in a car.

The reward for that hard 20km riding was an extended break at a 24hr Changi Village Coffee Shop. The stop took over an hour -- longer than our ride so far. We also made a mental note _not_ to stop here in future.

The next section is another 20km of super flat riding from Changi Village to our next stop at Playground@Big Splash. This rides through perhaps the most popular cycling route of Changi Coast Road and East Coast Park. The aim for this section is to push a consistent pace. With the long rest, we managed to maintain a speed of 29-31kph along Changi Cost Road. East Coast Park presented some challenges of being dark and my head lamp decided to run out of charge there. We slowed down to 26kph using safety as an excuse over our tiring legs.

Mr Teh Tarik waved us into Playground@Big Splash. This proved to be a much more efficient pitstop. Drinks with food are both done within 15mins and we moved off just as a team of fixie riders rolled into the joint.

The final section was venturing into uncharted waters. We wanted to do Nicoll Highway but there wasn't much plan after that. So Nicoll Highway came and gone, and we shot past Shenton Way. Shenton Way is always so quiet in the wee hours of the morning. We pushed on into Pasir Panjang Road and turned towards Lower Delta Road. By then, energy level was already low so we made no attempts at Mt Faber. At the moment, I'm just not confident to attempt Mt Faber without a granny.

We started heading home via Scotts Road, Moulmein Road, and finally MacPherson Road. The route was carefully chosen to avoid any major hills. I finally broke away from Francis as he headed home along Paya Lebar Road. With the little energy left, I bumped up the speed to 31kph, attacked Siglap hill and barely made it home.

A total of 80km was clocked in the evening's adventure lasting till 3:30am. Not too bad for the inaugural midnight ride.

Cycling for Weight Weenies.

I was just about to step out of the bike shop after getting my Argon18 Gallium Pro built up when I remembered to answer the necessary question -- how much did the bike weigh?

I was never a weight weenie. I never really cared that my bike was the lightest in the bunch as long as it does not become a burden. I maintain that the 20kg of tummy I could lose is more than any of my bikes ever weighed. Still, almost every conversation with any rider about equipment ends up about weight. Perhaps, with all the different material, construction and mechanical design, weight is the single metric that is easiest to quantify.

This post proposes a framework to examine the weight of a bicycle from a budgeting perspective, both in terms of cost and actual weight of the component.

A weight budget works exactly like a company budget. Figure out the weight for each component on your current (or future) bicycle. Next, figure out what you want your bike to weigh, and work from there. E.g. if your current bike weights 8kg and you wish to bring it down to 7kg, you have to decide the strategy that will rein in this 1kg deficit.

Generally, a bicycle consists of 3 sets of components.

The first set consists of only 3 components. They are the frame/fork, wheelset and group. These individually contribute significantly to your bike's weight (between 1-2kg each) and also happen to be the components that you are least likely to change. From the weight budget perspective, these 3 components tend to already account for 60-70% of your bike's weight. Any savings here will have a significant impact on the overall weight of the bike so this is the most effective places to look for weight savings.

The next set are components that are fairly significant like saddle, seat post, handlebar, stem, chains, tyres/tubes and pedals. These components are each in the regions of 100-300g. These components still contribute their fair share of weight to the bike due to their large variability in weight. E.g. the same handlebar design could be offered with up to 150g difference in weight. The more exotic material used in the lighter bar will cost a lot more than a 7075 extrusion. Most components in this set can be replaced by any mechanically proficient rider. This is a good place to look if you are already within say 200-300g of your weight target. Any more than 300g will usually incur significant cost in replacing many components.

The final set consists of components and accessories that weigh less than 100g and hence offers you even less potential savings. The set includes handlebar tapes, cabling, skewers, seatpost clamps, and waterbottle cages. Other than cables, the rest are trivial replacements. The weight savings from this set tends to be fairly negligible. A good test if you are a weight weenie is if you bother with this set. In other words, unless you enjoy counting cents, do not look here!

Obviously, if you are looking to cut weight, you will look at the heaviest components due to the most direct gain there. Unfortunately, the difficulty in replacing these parts usually mean you have to get it "correct" from the start. The second set is where you should be looking if you are lightening your ride after building it up. Be aware the limitation of gains possible in this set and the cost of doing so generally sprints towards diminishing returns quickly.

Personally, I have no idea why anyone will be looking at the final set unless he is a true blue weight weenie. Savings tend to be only a couple of grams for significant investment.

Looking back at 2011...

2011 is definitely an exciting year with a few very noteworthy events. It is time to take stock now to basically sum up 2011 and herald in the new year!! So here's my top 3 personal triumphs in 2011.

1. I finally changed employer after 12+ years in NUS. Most who knew me (including myself) never expected me to ever leave NUS. In fact, I just learnt that a few of my ex-colleagues thought I was still with NUS. NUS is a great company to work for but a dozen years and being my first employer necessitated the move. I hesitate to say it's the same job because my boss embellished me brand new opportunities every 2-3 years as I moved across different domains and experimented with different things.
   
   So far, the move has been mostly good. In the half year with the new organisation, I have gained a lot of insights I will not otherwise have. I engage with many more people here (previously mostly vendors) and this has certainly extended my views since they approach the same subject with a different desired outcome in mind. The part I do miss about my old job was the fun in hunting down system bugs no less with users breathing down our necks. I kinda miss tinkering with other people's box for a paycheck.
2. I committed over 7 hours of my life to Standard Chartered Singapore Marathon. Yes, the full 42.192km and I took almost 7 hours. All my objectives for the marathon was met. I completed it in good spirit (means happy) and health. I made a slight detour towards the emcee to give him a high-five. My feet complained quite a bit towards the later part of the run and I struggle to walk after the run. However, I was walking only slightly awkwardly the day after without the marathon telltales.
   
   The commitment before the run was intense. I had to sacrifice a weekend morning to wake up earlier than for work and forgo all my weekend badminton sessions to make the training. Annetta has been super supportive and I could not have done it without her.
   
   The reward of all the training and running the marathon was immense. I made a lot of new friends and the strong sense of achievement at the finish line was just beyond words.
   
3. I published my app in the Android Market after a few failed apps ideas (and code). I just needed to get this one out before my new employment starts.
   
   I have been writing codes for different purposes and for different audiences for as long as I can recall. I had been coding in x86 assembly to C to C++ before getting to college. Then it was all the higher level languages like Jave, Scheme, and scripting languages like Perl, Ruby and bash. I have coded at different levels from bashing together a couple of commandline, to web development (Rails, PHP, Perl and Java), to writing system codes (usually C), and dipped my toes into OpenSolaris and Linux.
   
   Publishing in Android Market was a milestone because I have never published my code.
   

So those are my top 3 personal accomplishments to sum up a very fruitful 2011 indeed.

Office Internet...

went down again. Well, email still works but there was no connection out to the WWW.

I started work after the Internet era and have never been disconnected for anything more than a couple of hours without at least partial recovery. Not quite the scale of what our SMRT service just experienced but I will nevertheless put this down as an extensive outage.

The experience does make me wonder how office life must be like before the invasion of the Internet. Most of my colleagues are on facebook and while we do meet up in the pantry for an occasional chat (in person, not the electronic type), face time (again, not the IOS app) is somewhat limited to colleagues in the immediate proximity around our cubicles.

Today, we seem to hang around and chat more. Being only 2 weeks to Christmas definitely has an impact as many of us are taking our vacations and work is winding down. It is pretty novel to receive updates in person that is fresher than on the facebook wall. This novelty must extend even to those who do not do facebook. For once, your always online colleagues are crippled without their regular newsfeed of the latest happenings around the office.

Towards the end of the day, most of us who could succumb to the urge to just tether out from our mobile phones. The order of online presence restored by my trusty Nexus One. Facebook walls are being updated, and blogs like this one published.

As a colleague commented, the office is quite a miserable place without Internet connection. I find it hard to disagree.

Are Singaporeans Bad Drivers?

I was scanning through the Highway magazine article when the following segment caught my attention,

A female member agreed, describing how the majority of larger cars she has encountered on the road always try to muscle their way into her lane.

Damn, she's so correct. Singaporeans are bad drivers. The only reason those cars need to muscle their way into her lane is because she refused to give way. She obviously do not give way to most of those larger cars so she is such a bad driver!

Not every bad behaviour observed is misplaced. The few good ones are inability to drive within allotted lane, inability to keep to speed limits, inability to stop at red lights, and, my favourite, inability to stop using the handphone while driving.

Unfortunately, the article continued to take a victim's stand on other attributes like drivers not signaling early. The Singaporean thing to do when someone signals is to close up the gap quickly. I have learnt from my years of road training to only signal just before switching lanes to increase my chance of successfully switching lanes.

We (Singaporean drivers) need not be as bad. There are always bad eggs out there and there is always the urge to retaliate bad behaviour with worse behaviour -- an escalation in psychology terms. Yet, instead of behaving like victims of circumstances, we can just as easily take charge of the situation.

In my own attempt to encourage my fellow drivers to signal, I ALWAYS give way to anyone signaling. When somebody gives way, I make it a point to show my gratitude by raising my hand to thank them. Whether it is placebo, I find my road journey improving just from these simple gestures.

Chrome, Lion and the Macbook Pro

Web browsing after upgrading to Lion had been a little less than awesome. One of the features I missed dearly was the 3 finger swipe for navigating between webpages. For a while, I had to make do sniping at the miniature back and forward button in the toolbar or reaching for the keyboard. Further, the new full-screen feature in Lion left me wondering when Google will update chrome to take advantage of the new clean layout.

Turned out I didn't have to wait very long. With the release of Chrome 14 (and 15 beta), Google introduced a number of improvements to browsing experience.

The first that I notice is swipe browsing is back. Not quite 3 finger swipe but better. The natural scrolling gesture using 2 fingers on the multi-touch trackpad pages backward and forwards. While a little confusing as to the paging point initially, the feature is easy to internalise at least for me. Now, I find myself reaching for the trackpad again for scrolling and the rather seamless experience of web browsing is back again.

The other feature worth talking about is the full screen mode. Chrome featured a full screen mode since I started using it. It is especially useful for presentations especially when the slides are online. Further, it is easier to read when the page fills up the entire screen without the usual clutter around. The full-screen mode can be invoked with shift-cmd-F. Unlike in previous version, Chrome now hides the menubar as well so you get the page that is devoid of clutter.

Finally, Chrome can now hide the scroll bars. Now, this continues to be a hotly debated feature, just like the "natural scrolling". I personally like both as default in Lion. Natural scrolling feels more correct and I never liked having the scroll bars around anyway.

If there is one enhancement I want for Chrome, it will be the ability to turn off the use of external graphics card. For some reason, simply starting Chrome causes the MBP to engage the external graphics card and that is detrimental to battery life. In fact, the battery life is more than halved when Chrome is on.

Despite that, I am still a happy camper and have been browsing using Chrome since 2008, and actively persuading users to switch to this more pleasant browsing experience.

Oh Tablets 2.0!

The powers that be has bestowed upon me an iPad2.  I had previously lambasted the lack of use cases; for such intermediate devices that includes, well, all tablets.  As luck may have it, I gained possession of a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and an iPad2 a couple of weeks ago.

The growth of tablet devices continues and I continue to ask my tablet wielding acquaintances what they use it for.  Invariably, they use an iPad (whichever) and they use it for reading, games, note taking, email and web surfing.  That does encompasses over 95% of my uses.  My hesitation remains with the in-between nature of the device.  I love big screens and mobility at the same time.

For the two weeks I had the iPad, I also had the chance to commute to work in a public transport, attended several conferences where the laptop is not that convenient, and buzzed between work areas.  Basically, the stars all aligned to test out the iPad in its waters, where whatever limited mobility it has mixes well with the limited screen real estate and really limited keyboard.

To save you from reading further, I am not entirely pleased.

Firstly, being a keybaord person doesn't help.  I'm too lazy even to reach for the mouse most of the time so VIM remained my favourite editor.  The position of the huge trackpad on the MBP is godsent and I usually use my thumb for moving the cursor.  With the iPad keyboard occupying half the screen without the tactile feedback of a real full sized keyboard, I estimate I am typing at a fifth my maximum possible speed.

If there is anything I really appreciate about the iPad2, its the extensive battery life.  In comparison, Galaxy Tab's battery life is abysmal, requiring recharging on a daily basis.  Sure, the latter device is half the weight and only 2" smaller but even then, I hardly found any use for it.

In conferences and meetings, I tried to take notes to no avail.  The crippling feature was the keyboard.  Despite perhaps having one of the best on-screen keyboard, the keyboard still doesn't click with me.  In all cases, I eventually gave up in frustration and had to whip out my laptop.  On my Android device, I use Swype and Swiftkey that are both easy to operate with one hand, and the predictive text, especially Swiftkey's, makes text entry so painless.  If the iPad could just dedicate a tiny corner of the screen to either of these keyboards and leave the rest of the screen for display, I would be a happy camper.  As it stands today, half the screen in landscape mode or a quarter the screen in portrait, and without predictive text simply doesn't cut it for me.

That relegates the iPad to reading, gaming, web surfing and tiny email.

The iPad generally works well for web surfing except the known lack of flash support.  The screen is large enough and device is plenty fast.  Gaming works well too and I spent hours on Zombie Highway.

On my train ride to work, the iPad proved a little too big.  The iPad needs to fit into whatever space is available in the sardine can.  This makes any activities requiring any but the simplest interaction with the device a challenge.  With gaming and web surfing out, the device is only good for reading.  Even that means contorting my body in the least comfortable way although I'd imagine how much better this would be if I am seated.  But then, if I had a seat, the laptop is not too unwieldy either.  Still, I manage to get quite a bit of reading done.  The discomfort (of body) proved less detrimental to reading speed than the much smaller screen of my Nexus One.  Under the same space constraint, the 7" Galaxy Tab proved the best compromise.  Of course, for longer journey, the iPad will eventually emerge the winner since the reshuffling of people in extended journeys provides a chance to optimise body-tablet placement.

The one place I found the iPad exude the greatest strength is, uninspiringly, the loo and specifically on Saturday mornings.  I love reading the Economist on the iPad mainly because the Economist App downloads all the articles so flipping through them is fast, faster than reading it on my laptop.  I'd love not holding the iPad but that will be a small compromise compared to holding my 15" MBP.  So I spend my saturday morning loo sessions flipping through at least 3-4 articles.  Weekday mornings are too rushed for the luxury of reading, and weekend afternoons are just too warm for enjoying the experience.

For a lifestyle device, I can start to appreciate how the iPad may work.  It reminds me a lot of the now demised Palm devices which does a couple of things really well.  The Palm eventually gave way to more powerful devices that provided better convenience by integrating Palm's organising ability with the mobile phone.

The iPad (or tablets in general) will not replace my laptop, at least not in its current iteration or perhaps even the next few.  There is a constant tug of war between mobility and function and I am still leaning towards a mobile phone and laptop for the best of both.  I will always have my mobile phone with me so the incremental function the iPad provides does not justify bringing it around.  All the time I had the iPad 2, I still lugged my 15" mbp around.  It was the same with the Samsung Galaxy Tab.