Living as I do in Hove I became interested in the Sussex Mac Users’ Group email discussion list and susbscribed on 17 February thinking that it might be enjoyable to chat to other Mac users in the sussex area. The info at the  Sussex Mac Users’ Group website certainly suggests that this is what it is for.

Unfortunately what is not explained at the group’s website is that  the email discussion list receives and distributes promotional emails from retailers such as Cancom UK.

Two days after I joined an email was sent to the list from a Cancom UK representative with the subject title: On the subject of Quark….

But if you go to the Quark 8 page at the Quark website you will see that in fact a 60 day test drive is available from there. So, there really is no need to go to Cancom UK to get a 60 day test drive.

On the same day, 19 February, an email is sent to Sussex Mac Users’ Group asking:

Six minutes later Cancom UK responds:

What is not mentioned is that you can buy it from Amazon UK for £59.80 at this time. You will not have to pay any delivery charge with Amazon’s Super Saver Delivery option.

On 25 February an email is sent to the discussion list with the subject title: “expanding hard drive”:

All the following emails I quote take place in the thread “expanding hard drive” on 25 February.            

Within thirty three minutes of the “expanding hard drive” enquiry an email arrives from Cancom UK:

By now I’ve had enough of this, so I send an email myself:

This is followed by a contribution from another list subscriber addressing the Cancom UK representative:

The Cancom UK representative responds to my email:

And the Cancom UK representative responds to the other subscriber’s email:

He refers to the special offers he is going to continue to send, such as the Quark one. That’s the 60 days free of charge trial which you can get from Quark by simply going to their website. 

A different retailer, someone with a very large graphic “signature” in their email advertising services for Macs and PCs sends an email to the list:

One retailer defends another. The retailer refers to the iWork suite “offer” but of course iWork is available at Amazon for less than that offer as I’ve pointed out. It is revealed that the person enquiring about whether it is simple or not to upgrade the hard-drive in her Mac got an email giving a quote for her to do this job off-list as well as the quote to do the job on-list.

To this email I respond:

There then follows a series of emails which are in favour of being offered these “discounts”:

First:

Second:

Third:

Fourth:

Fifth:

I now send the following email:

Having unsubscribed I don’t have any knowledge about the discussion which followed however I felt that my expectations of the Sussex Mac Users’ Group were very different from those of the other participants.

I do feel that the description of the group at their website should be changed. That retailers use it for promotion should be explicit. It is not possible to view the messages in the list before subscribing because the archive can only be read by members.

Getting a Romanian <-> English dictionary is surprisingly difficult. At present there is only one available new, Dictionary English-Romanian Romanian-English by Mircea Manolache, from here on in I am going to call it the Manolache dictionary. Some months ago I bought the Manolache dictionary from Amazon but I’ve found that for me the dictionary has problems.

When I look up words in the Manolache dictionary the accents are different from those of my Teach Yourself Romanian book. All Romanian I see in print agrees with my Teach Yourself Romanian book and my Romanian Grammar book, but not the Manolache dictionary. Maybe there is a different system for accents historically and this was changed at some stage. Anyway the Manolache dictionary seems to put accute accents over ‘e’ and ‘i’ frequently. The one over the ‘i’ is particularly confusing because the Romanian I am learning does put an accent over the i, the circumflex but not at the same times as the accute accent in the Manolache dictionary.

For me this disparity meant that I wanted to get another dictionary, but it really seems that the Manolache is the only Romanian <-> English dictionary currently available new.

At Amazon I noticed N.T.C.’s Romanian and English Dictionary by Andrei Bantaş. This is available only second-hand, and so must no longer be in print. From Amazon, of course, I could not tell if the accents were going to be as I wanted them, so it was a gamble. Things were not made easier by the review by Morven Fyfe-Stoica who wrote:

The dictionary was actually coming from a shop in the USA, so it took a week or so to get to me. When I opened it I was delighted to see the accents as I wanted them, no acutes over the ‘e’s or ‘i’s.

The next question in my mind concerned that of Morven Fyfe-Stoica’s review, that the Bantaş dictionary does not give the genders for the nouns. However I could see that the genders for the nouns are included, beside peşte for fish, is sm., abbreviation for substantive masculine, beside peşteră for cave is sf., abbreviation for substantive feminine and beside petic for patch is sn., abbreviation for substantive neuter.

I think that if you are looking for a Romanian <-> English dictionary the one to get is N.T.C.’s Romanian and English Dictionary by Andrei Bantaş. You can’t get it new but it is worth picking up second-hand.

The Moulton Bicycle Company has a new website and it looks lovely.

Moulton bicycles have been manufactured for 50 years by several companies but recently Alex Moulton Bicycles in Bradford on Avon and the “Moulton part” of Pashley in Stratford upon Avon came together to form this new company, the Moulton Bicycle Company. Now the full range of space frame Moultons appear on this single website.

I think the Price Icon idea is rather good. According to the website:

“Moulton bicycles range in price from £900 to £10,000 depending on the model and specification. The price icon gives a relative scale for the price of each model in the range.”

I guess the prices vary from country to country, maybe even dealer to dealer, but it is good to know at a glance that the TSR 9 is cheaper than the New Series Double Pylon.

I really like the Heritage page. This gives a historical overview and key dates in the development of the Moulton Bicycle. This heritage illustrates that the Moulton bicycle has been designed as a full alternative to the classic diamond framed bicycle. Because the Moulton bicycle has small wheels often people mistake it for being a compromised folding bicycle design or something like that.

So, all in all, I feel the new website is a great success!

For some years I’d been using one of the high tech contemporary jackets with synthetic materials and for the first couple of years it faired pretty well but as it got older it started to leak quite badly in the seams.

I was very attracted to the idea of waxed cotton as the seams are just as well protected as the rest of the garment so in October 2007 I bought a Carradice Duxback rain jacket.

It gets used a lot, for the the jacket is by far the most used cycling clothing item because I use it while commuting. Only in the summer do I go without it. It seems to be wearing well. It is not yet old enough for me to assess durability of its weatherproofing but indications are good.

There are pros and cons and things to be aware of with this jacket.

The hood is great in that it allows you to look over your shoulder while you are wearing it. It seems to be cut in a particular way to facilitate this. A problem with the hood is that if it is not worn on the head and hanging down while it is raining then the hood rubs against the back of the jacket and will create a damp patch. In light rain I find this is a nuisance because there is a tendency for me to put the hood on for a while, then take it off. The hood can be unzipped completely.

When I bought this jacket I got the largest one they make. My waistline varies a fair bit over the year and when it is larger then the jacket starts to become quite close fitting. This jacket is not very big and I think that the smaller sizes must be really quite small.

The jacket only has one pocket on the back. This is a normally shaped pocket on the right side of the back, it’s not one of those wide ones going across the whole of the back. For me this is okay but some people might like more pockets.

There is no lining, just a bit up at the top near the collar and in the hood. I like this because in mild weather I can wear a light shirt and the jacket, it is an ideal combination. If I want another layer when it is colder I can put one on.

Overall I feel good about the Carradice jacket.

Owing to an improvement in the recycling facilities in Hove we can now recycle telephone directories. I never knew why it was that we couldn’t but at least now we can.

I wonder why we get them in the first place. I haven’t used one in years. It just looks to me like an incredible waste of paper to keep distributing them to everyone willy nilly.

Reinforcing my point rather, I got two identical yellow pages recently. I put them straight into the recycling box as you can see in the pic.

Isn’t it crazy?

There are two things I really like about iWork ‘09. The outliner in Pages and iWork.com. The later suits me very well indeed. I find myself doing quite a lot of collaborative projects. The last one I did I used Google Docs. While Google Docs gives 100% editability to all participants the actual Google Doc that is produced is not very pretty. I would then have to create something nice from this.

With iWork.com the uploaded document is not editable like a Google Doc, but rather participants can leave comments on it. This is fine by me because that is all that is required. However the actual document is a very nice looking thing. It is much easier for me to update the nice looking iWork document with the contents of the comments by the others, rather than convert a Google Doc into something presentable.

For those that are creating newsletters and that kind of thing with Pages iWork.com would be really a fabulous thing to have.

I have one concern about the iWork.com which is the email that is automatically sent out to the invited participants. This is an HTML email with a link embedded in a graphic to open the iWork.com document in their browser. The problem is that if they are using a plain text only email client then I suspect they are going to be receiving an incomprehensible mess. The actual link is shown at the bottom of the email that is sent but it is approximately one mile long. There doesn’t seem to be any Plain Text Alternative included with the outgoing email. What I’d like to see is a plain text alternative with a short link that would not be in risk of having line breaks inserted by the email system.

When cycling in the rain the best clothing item I know of is the bike cape. In the US this is known as a poncho.

I have two in fact. One is a cheap yellow plastic one that has lasted for years and is still good today. The only real problem I had with it was that it was just a bit too small for me. For short commutes this was no problem, but with longer commutes then it was a nuisance.

In November 2007 I bought a new cape from Carradice. It is the Duxback Rain Poncho (Super). You can see it at their website here. In that pic there are the trousers, spats and jacket. I also have the jacket but I’m saving writing about that for a future post. I bet you can’t wait!

You can see mine in the pic above. There it is taken from the back. It’s not a very photogenic item and not very flattering when worn.

The great thing about the cape is that it goes over the bars and hands and is tent-like. The bottom is open and so it remains well ventilated. It is rather an old fashioned thing but it beats the very hi-tech modern designs of bicycle clothing imho. When I do wear the cape I confess I feel a bit like the District Nurse, but I haven’t got the uniform to go with it.

For a long time I have dismissed the possibility of recumbent bicycles for wet weather cycling simply because there is no way you could wear a cape on one. However I see there is a German company called Alfred’s AWS buiding cape-like things for recumbents. I don’t know if they would be regarded as clothing or fairings. It all looks rather complicated compared with simply wearing the cape on the regular bicycle but it is good to see that such things exist.

The Sun newspaper has printed a rather good article about ghost bikes which can be found here. For those outside the UK I will mention that generally The Sun is associated with being right wing and pro car notably with a regular column by outspoken car enthusiast Jeremy Clarkson.

Amongst others they mention James Danson-Hatcher who was killed whilst riding his bicycle in the South Downs close to where I live. A ghost bicycle was placed where he died.

In a short film I made with a team called The Right of Way we mention James Danson-Hatcher at the end and film the ghost bicycle. The film can be viewed here.

I read in the Brighton Area Cyclists email group that the ghost bicycle in the South Downs has been removed. The Brighton based cycling pressure group Bricycles has been campaigning for a lower speed limit on the road where James was killed but this has not been introduced. I know the road well and cars drive along it at a very high speed.

I remember filming the ghost bike, it was very poignant. I did it with my filming friend Hyun-suk Yoo. It was cold and windy and the cars were going past at very great speed. There was something utterly heartless about the traffic. I felt angry that their desire to drive so fast is considered more important than someone’s life.

The final shot of the film is of a cyclist who is crossing the road where James was killed. He has dismounted and is crossing with great care. I felt this scene showed that it is indeed the car drivers who rule here.

I don’t think I currently use any third party desktop utilities on my Mac. I have to give it some thought because what actually constitutes a desktop utility is not very clear. I don’t even know if the term desktop utility is used these days.

To me it means something that is designed to assist with using the GUI of the Mac. It might be some system of toolbars, or maybe some form of contextual menu enhancement. Generally the destop utility will assist with locating files and folders, look after text clippings, run scripts, that kind of thing.

The Finder in Mac OS X is, imho, so well worked out that it just doesn’t need these little programs. Instead of improving the Finder they just add unnecessary complications.

I used to feel the same way with the classic Mac OS. I did use one desktop utility for that and it was the Behierachic Apple Menu extension. I remember that with the classic OS I tried out many of these desktop utilities and even bought a couple. All over the web there are people praising them for this and that. The price of these desktop utilities is usually fairly low and so there is a tendency to download them, try them out and be quite taken with their ingenuity and novelty and then buy them. Usually it’s a mistake. After a while they turn out to be more trouble than just using the Finder and so they stop being used. At least that is my experience. With Mac OS X I do try out these utilities from time to time but I now have the rule not to buy until the trial period has come to an end, and this rule has saved me some money.

OS X comes with a desktop utility called the Dock. It is the best I’ve ever used and I am a big fan of it. The Dock does deal with the big problem of the classic Mac OS which was that icons on the desktop would be covered by open windows and become inaccessible. For an OS which makes such use of icons, dragging things onto them, or launching/opening things by double clicking them, this was a problem. As well as solving this problem the Dock is a very powerful thing in itself allowing a lot of functionality with apparent simplicity.

So, I say all hail the Dock!

You can’t keep an icon for all of your progams in the Dock. Well, for those you don’t use so often, the icon is available in the Applications folder. This you can access very quickly and easily as you know. It is in the “Places” part of the Finder sidebar unless you removed it. You can use the shift-command-A short cut or use the “Go” menu to take you there.

Text clippings can be dragged to the desktop or any open folder. As can so many things.

So, for me the Finder is great and imho a far better environment than those funny third party desktop utilities.

On Monday we had good thick unapologetic snow in Brighton & Hove. As I write, on Wednesday, it has gone but it might come again judging by the weather forecast. I took some pics. The one in this posting is of my back garden.

I have really rather enjoyed it. I write from the very smug position of having spent the last few months working on various projects from home, so I have spent the winter in my house. I have been venturing out for various purposes but always at times that suit me which is much better than having to commute every day as I have done in the past.

So for me the snow has been very welcome.