I once thought of YouTube as being primarily a way to share fuzzy old VHS and camcorder recordings from the '80s, but there's some really slick, professional content on there now.

One of my favourite creators is Jay Foreman. I like short (less than 15 mins) documentaries. They're a much better match for my attention span than 30 minutes or an hour.


Nice to see the Transporter Bridge get a mention at 4:22.  Used to go over it often as a kid,in my parents' car. In later years I often cycled there and back from my mum's house.

Wordle 260 4/6

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Didn't take long this morning, but - without intending to, I broke my rule of always using a viable solution on each go.

It can be a good strategy to use a word you know doesn't fit, but I don't like to do that.

I stick to the roads as well. Once or twice I've had car drivers gesticulating and pointing at the cycle path, but I ignore them. The cycle paths are often strewn with bits of broken glass, excess gravel and mud, and as my colleagues have observed, people with dogs.

There are one or two lanes I frequent that are not often used by cars, and people sometimes walk along them right down the middle, or in groups spread across the lane like a sort of perambulated cycling obstacle. Unfortunately I don't have a bell (I always take them off if supplied) so I just shout EXCUSE ME, in as polite a way as possible.

I was going to go out tomorrow rather than today but my dhb shorts arrived from Wiggle, and I thought I'd brave the cold north wind and try them out. I thought I'd do the eastbound route for 20 miles or so then come back. Conditions didn't really seem to suggest a longer ride than that.

The eastbound route is actually a bit north-east-ish, at least as far as Eastwell. So actually I had a blend of sidewind and headwind to contend with and it had become a bit of a struggle after 20-odd miles. As I stood at the entrance to a garden furniture depot to the east of Six Hills, contemplating the famous Loughborough skyline in the distance and munching a cheese & onion pasty, a light rain started to descend. I did think I should probably turn for home, at this point. But Eastwell (my default Fondo endpoint) was only six miles away so I pressed on.

The rain got a bit heavier. Not a lot of fun propelling yourself uphill with a wind blowing stinging cold rain in your face. But - I was a lot more comfortable after turning back at the Eastwell crossroads, especially when the rain stopped.

Stopped to buy provisions at Burton on the Wolds on the way back and had a sandwich and doped myself with a Malteser bar at the log near Cotes, where I took this pic.



The rain started up again shortly after this, but it was light and only lasted 15 minutes or so.

Mostly listened to footy on 5 Live.

I passed a young man deploying a hazard warning triangle behind his white BMW near Six Hills as I pedalled east, and he was still there sitting in his car nearly two hours later on the way back. Waiting for the AA or similar, I assume. Poor lad.

Annoyingly my Garmin bike computer only lasted five hours on its charge, and I had to track the last 12 miles or so using a GPS app on my phone.

The shorts fit well and are very comfy. I'll probably save them for longer rides.

Back on 62.37 miles, dead on sunset. Lovely sunset as well with the tall trees in the village silhouetted in front of a glowing orange sky. Good timing.

Pretty tough one that, at least in parts, but ultimately satisfying. Pleased to have got the March Fondo in early.

https://www.strava.com/activities/6778969870

And what might they be? I'm not familiar with the term.

I hadn't heard that, but on Wednesday or Thursday I heard a very bleak scenario posited by one of the various military strategists interviewed by 5 Live. His fear was that the sanctions might prove frustrating enough to provoke Putin into a minor attack on one of the NATA countries in the region, perhaps a token military target in Poland.

If that happens, all bets are off!

But my hope is that internal pressure in Russia will force him to back down somehow. Even something like Facebook going off the air there must have an effect.

Got it in three myself today, first time in a while.

Wordle 259 3/6

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The cruellest M*A*S*H episode of all, today. Henry gets to go home, but the writers kill him off.

If you're really bothered there are apps out there that you can use to synthesize a track and upload it to Strava. Happy to help if you want to do that.

Tweeted just 17 hours ago. You just never know what's around the next corner.

Sad news. Heart attack, apparently. Only 52.

Slim's handy guide for adding an image on your computer to a post.

Go to: https://imgbb.com/

Click the START UPLOADING button.

Select the image file you want to use. If it's very large you may wish to click the edit button and resize it.

When you see the 'Upload complete' message, click on the thumbnail. This will take you to a webpage with your image on it.

Right click the image and do "open image in new tab" (this works in Firefox and Chrome, there should be a way to do it in other browsers as well).

From the new tab, copy the URL from the address bar. Then use it to insert the image in the post editor in 'img' tags, like this:



.. hope this is useful.

Wordle 258 4/6

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Once again, a lot of deliberation over the fourth word.

Quote from: Rufus_the_dawg on March 04, 2022, 10:06:36 AMThanks for this Slim but would need a standalone dac linked to a server? I have conventional CD amps speakers. I also like to own the hard copy.

I use my PC, connected to an outboard USB DAC / amp. I have Paradigm monitor speakers connected to that, but I use Sennheiser headphones a lot as well.

I use a Linux utility called Clementine to play music. Organises everything nicely based on the tags.

I do have a standalone CD player but haven't used it for years.

Not only on paper, but not all of them are implicated in the Kremlin's nefarious activities.