• 10:52 About to head for Stirling for the afternoon for a meeting about sewer networks. And they say saving the world is glamorous… #
• 17:38 Home from Stirling and a little damp. ♫ blip.fm/~7qil #
• 17:40 Aha! It’s not the live version! ♫ blip.fm/~7qja #
• 17:41 @warrenellis We’ve got a parang. It used to belong to a headhunter in Borneo. #
• 17:42 Just been reminded that the singer from the Crash Test Dummies sounds almost exactly like (my) Ben, just a bit deeper in pitch. #
• 19:50 A final one before getting on with the evening. This just cheers me up. ♫ blip.fm/~7s9y #

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• 10:55 Waaah! Frood just got doored! 🙁 #
• 11:18 Frood update: chunk missing from finger, road rash on hip and elbow, brand new bar tape ruined.Driver jumped out in middle of traffic jam. #
• 12:11 @andygates Driver offered details and Frood didn’t take ’em beause he thought bike was undamaged. #
• 12:44 @andygates Driver was lucky he hit Frood and not me. #
• 15:24 I has a Spider! he’s only scary coz he’s hairy (he’s in the bath! with a panda! hunting hedgehogs! in his tent!) tinyurl.com/5lly2v #
• 17:05 Yay! Home from work. ♫ blip.fm/~7eas #
• 17:18 Boss Drum. ♫ blip.fm/~7efo #
• 17:43 Change of pace — haven’t heard this in a while. ♫ blip.fm/~7eoc #
• 17:44 A tad obscure, but in the tradition of the Judacutters… ♫ blip.fm/~7eor #
• 17:58 Something cheery. ♫ blip.fm/~7etq #
• 19:58 @kayucian Have a nice time! #

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Frood got doored today.

For those of you who have little to no urban cycling experience let me explain what it means to be doored and hopefully you will thus be able to avoid the high risk zone.

“Dooring” is what happens when one is riding along, cheerfully minding one’s own business (i.e. the psychotic , murderous nature of the drivers of the other vehicles on the road) when someone in a parked car opens a door right in your immediate path without looking, thus causing a collision. One is either slammed sideways into the oncoming stream of traffic by said door, or one rides straight into door (and the person getting out, if you’re lucky) and is flung either through the window or over the top, both of which can result in extremely serious injury. Getting doored is one of the worst hazards of urban cycling.

Fortunately it is easy to avoid. Ride far enough out from parked vehicles that you are outside the reach of any opening door. This may earn the ire of drivers who are completely ignorant of the risks posed by their unobservant peers, but fuck ’em. Seriously. Fuck ’em. Rule #1 of cycling, whether urban or rural: your life and your health are worth more than 30 seconds, five minutes, or even half an hour of someone else’s time. Let them wait.

Frood knows this. He’s an experienced urban cyclist. When he was hit this morning he was cycling up the outside of a line of traffic that was stuck in a jam. This is the sensible option. Riding up the outside is safer because the driver is on the outside and there is more room to manoeuvre. So what happened?

Driver is running late for work. Girlfriend is in passenger seat. While waiting at lights at the top end of Queensferry Road, just after the bridge, driver decides to jump out of car. Because, get this, the girlfriend is actually giving him a lift to work, it’s just that he’s driving. She has to carry on to her work. Driver and passenger need to swap so they do it while waiting at lights. Frood is turning right ahead, so is coming up on his outside. Driver doesn’t look before opening his door. Frood is actually parallel with his car when the door opens, and the edge of the door slashes his bar tape while sending him sideways (fortunately there was no moving traffic in that lane).

Missing chunk from finger, road rash, band new bar tape ruined, probably quite bruised. I haven’t seen him yet. Sez Frood:

“At least he was very, very apologetic as I flicked blood at him.”

It could have been so much worse.

Drivers in Edinburgh are special. Only yesterday I was overtaken by some blonde bint in a Renault Clio on the same roundabout as I was T-boned a few weeks ago. The blonde then turned left on top of me before pulling in to park in the bus stop 10 yards away, and had the gall to yell abuse at me from her window when I expressed my displeasure at nearly being squashed. I watch taxis ignoring every rule of the road they possibly can (I suspect there’s some form of cab drivers’ bingo going on) and yet they hurl invective at cyclists and say we’re all law-breaking arseholes who shouldn’t be on their roads. The buses are like brachiosaurus: massive, lumbering, and directed by a brain the size of a peanut. The amount of diesel they spill on the roads is simply shocking. The road surfaces are also worth comment: Usul, we have potholes the like of which GOD has never seen. Most of them seem to be in the cracking, bleeding, crumbling lanes of red paint that are what the Council risibly calls cycle facilities. Drivers apparently don’t understand that cyclists not only don’t like trying to bunny hop over a hole 3feet wide and a foot deep, it can be a pretty hazardous manoeuvre. I’m having to develop the skill, however, because, being ignoramuses, the drivers don’t leave me enough room to avoid these pitfalls and sometimes they’ll even cut in on me because they object to me riding in even the secondary riding position, never mind the primary.

The driver was lucky he hit Frood today, and not me. I’ve had too many close calls of late to be feeling particularly forgiving.

Bike polite my arse. I’ll start showing impeccable manners when everyone else does.

im_waking_empty alerted me to an article entitled Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

WTF?

We demonstrate by means of simple, noninvasive methods (analysis of satellite images, field observations, and measuring “deer beds” in snow) that domestic cattle (n = 8,510 in 308 pastures) across the globe, and grazing and resting red and roe deer (n = 2,974 at 241 localities), align their body axes in roughly a north–south direction. Direct observations of roe deer revealed that animals orient their heads northward when grazing or resting. Amazingly, this ubiquitous phenomenon does not seem to have been noticed by herdsmen, ranchers, or hunters. Because wind and light conditions could be excluded as a common denominator determining the body axis orientation, magnetic alignment is the most parsimonious explanation. To test the hypothesis that cattle orient their body axes along the field lines of the Earth’s magnetic field, we analyzed the body orientation of cattle from localities with high magnetic declination. Here, magnetic north was a better predictor than geographic north.

For one: WHY? WHY would grazing herbivores align themselves with their heads pointing north? What does that achieve? For two: doesn’t the fact that the people who look after cattle have never noticed this indicate that maybe there’s nothing to notice? Maybe there’s something squirrelly going on with the analysis methods?

It’s a little known part of my history, but I spent two years working with cattle in an effort to design a better system for disposing of the parlour and yard washings. I can’t say that I ever noticed, while wandering about amongst the cows, that they were all aligned in the same direction like iron filings near a magnet.

Hmmm. Received for review April 15 2008. Was it a joke?

• 15:31 Is waiting for call about her car insurance and trying to structure the plot for all of New Chronicles Vol1. With no suggestions. bah. #
• 17:03 Ew! I’m all wet! ♫ blip.fm/~73e4 #
• 17:33 @andygates Just for you: inspirational farming music lol! ♫ blip.fm/~73pb #
• 17:36 Real feel good stuff, this. ♫ blip.fm/~73qr #

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• 09:05 Back at work, but still in dark glasses (NOT TAKING THEM OFF). Returning to "normality" sucks. Who gets to decide "normal" anyway? #
• 10:08 @andygates You got there first! I was going to say that! #
• 10:11 @skean Actually, I look more like Tank Girl. tinyurl.com/69o67d #
• 13:32 @skean No, even with the shades. They’re the same as the ones she’s wearing in that pic (hence the tinyurl). #
• 13:33 @skean Although the black leather idea is quite appealing. #
• 16:22 Home again home again jiggety jig… ♫ blip.fm/~6s5c #
• 22:50 Just a quickie… ♫ blip.fm/~6wiw #

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The comments on this morning’s offering from spEak You’re bRanes are particularly fine.

• 10:56 What a beautiful, sunny day. Shame I still have a broken foot! ♫ blip.fm/~6hyp #
• 11:18 Frood’s replacing his bar tape with glow in the dark, so he’ll hear it this morning… ♫ blip.fm/~6i1c #
• 11:52 This one’s for @andygates although it should probably be "badger den" ♫ blip.fm/~6i51 #
• 12:11 This one’s from Frood. ♫ blip.fm/~6i7p #
• 12:36 Was always a favourite on the jukebox in the Gloucester Arms ♫ blip.fm/~6iaf #
• 14:40 @warrenellis To where?I can’t decide whether that’s temptation or bait. #
• 15:01 Frood is abandoning me for the rest of the day. ♫ blip.fm/~6ito #

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• 21:10 @kayucian The universe has it in for me right now, it seems! #
• 21:11 @andygates For some reason (probably the pain) that’s not as funny as it probably should be. #
• 10:56 What a beautiful, sunny day. Shame I still have a broken foot! ♫ blip.fm/~6hyp #
• 11:18 Frood’s replacing his bar tape with glow in the dark, so he’ll hear it this morning… ♫ blip.fm/~6i1c #
• 11:52 This one’s for @andygates although it should probably be "badger den" ♫ blip.fm/~6i51 #
• 12:11 This one’s from Frood. ♫ blip.fm/~6i7p #
• 12:36 Was always a favourite on the jukebox in the Gloucester Arms ♫ blip.fm/~6iaf #
• 14:40 @warrenellis To where?I can’t decide whether that’s temptation or bait. #
• 15:01 Frood is abandoning me for the rest of the day. ♫ blip.fm/~6ito #

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• 16:22 @andygates tinyurl.com/4d7avw #
• 18:28 Another week’s shopping done. Still to make dinner. #
• 20:21 Things binocular ppl don’t do: misjudge distance between fingers and hot oil in pan. I fried my finger (literally). #

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