Dave's Blog

I’m selling my Kona Dawg on eBay if anyone might be interested, feel free to pass it on. Price is nominally £550 but I’m happy to accept a lower offer from friends or relations. It’s served me well but in all honesty, I’ve not ridden it enough and I could do with the extra cash to pay for the new bike.

Size
Frame size M(17″)
Colour Platinum/Black
Frame tubing Kona Clump Light 7005 Butted Aluminium/5″ travel

Component List
Note that those parts which have been upgraded are marked with an Asterisk*

Rear shock Fox Float R
Fork Marzocchi EXR Pro 120mm
Headset Aheadset STS
Crankarms MTB Evolve DH Chainset*
Chainrings 44/32/22*
F/D Shimano Deore
R/D Shimano Deore XT
Shifters Shimano Deore
Handlebar TruVativ LE Riser
Stem TruVativ XR 3D Stem (HS-05-XR)
Grips Kona Jackshit
Brakes Hayes Hydraulic HFX-9 XC
Brake Levers Hayes Hydraulic HFX-9 XC
Front Rim Sun DS2-XC
Back Rim Mavic EN 321 Disc Rim*
Specialized BG2 Sport Saddle*
Thompson Elite Seat post*

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here other than through Twitter, but last month Julia decided that it was time to move on and gave her notice at her job as a Recruitment Consultant at Crone Corkill. Well the good news is that yesterday, she got offered a new job for an interview she went for last week. More money, better environment and all that good stuff, so Hooray! Apparently the interviewers said that “She knocked our socks off!” in the interview, how good is that? I don’t think I’ve ever had that kind of feed back.

The bad news (there’s always bad news) is that it doesn’t start until the end of November. So December’s rent is still looking a bit iffy in my mind, but she’s going to pick up some temp work this month to cover it. So it could still be a budget Chrimbo, depending on how things pan out, but I’m sure we’ll cope.

Speaking of Chrimbo, we’re off to my Parent’s this year, up in their Bungalow in Suffolk. Should be a really nice relaxed time, involving pie and lounging. Also, I’m doing the Christmas dinner to give my Mum a break, I’ve been practicing roast dinners for a couple of years and I think I’ve finally got it down. I’ve booked Christmas Holiday from 15th of December to 11th of January so I’m going to seriously relax and work on some projects I’ve been meaning to get done for a long time.

I thought I’d share this article from the Beeb about central heating and how it’s impacted society:

The first of October is “central heating day”, when many people switch on their radiators for the winter. Central heating is just another mod-con of contemporary living, but it’s done much more than warm us up.

…

“People don’t wear clothing to keep warm any more. One of the social norms is that people can go around in shirt sleeves at home or in the office. So central heating has changed the way people think about clothing.

“Rather than put extra clothes on, they put the heating on. It used to be that if it got cold, you put a jersey on and if it got warm you opened a window. People don’t have an expectation that they will have to change the way they behave in cold weather.”

[Link]

Ok so I’m very behind on this, but I’ve just uploaded the photos from the 12th of September when we went to the pub. Why? Well, because we can and we hadn’t been to the pub with Julia’s friends for a while.

We started off in the Fitzroy Tavern then sauntered down to the Intrepid Fox, many many many beers were drank, in the end we bailed at 10pm … 8 hours in the pub is enough for anyone!

Pictures from the evening :

I don’t normally bang on about this sort of stuff, but for the last couple of years the harassment of ordinary people taking photographs has been something that was on my radar as a worrying trend on which to keep an eye.

During this time I’ve read numerous articles describing how the police have been misusing their powers to delete people’s photographs and interfere with them under the blanket of the Terrorism Act, train-spotters and plane spotters, even tourists having their holiday snaps removed. The fact that they aren’t allowed to do this doesn’t seem to matter when social compliance gets involved in the issue, people just see the uniform and get intimidated into doing whatever the police want them to do.

Why does this bother me? Well I’m certainly not a hippy type nor am I really fussed about public protest and all that malarky, but I’m certainly the type to whip out a camera and take photographs of things, mostly for this blog and sometimes just for general amusement. I generally have a digital camera with me or at least my mobile phone and I don’t want to get into the situation where I have to have an argument with a police officer because I want to photograph the late trains or whatever.

Anyway the good news is that some sense seems to be finally prevailing. The Met have just published more guidance to their officers basically explaining what they can and can’t do, it’s well worth reading through and knowing your rights. Personally I’ve only had good experiences with the police but it never hurts to know your rights.

Here’s a copy of the Met’s Photography advice taken from Here :

Guidance around the issue has been made clear to officers and PCSOs through briefings and internal communications. The following advice is available to all officers and provides a summary of the Metropolitan Police Service’s guidance around photography in public places.
Freedom to photograph/film

Members of the public and the media do not need a permit to film or photograph in public places and police have no power to stop them filming or photographing incidents or police personnel.

Photography and Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000

The Terrorism Act 2000 does not prohibit people from taking photographs or digital images in an area where an authority under section 44 is in place.

Officers have the power to view digital images contained in mobile telephones or cameras carried by a person searched under S44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, provided that the viewing is to determine whether the images contained in the camera or mobile telephone are of a kind, which could be used in connection with terrorism. Officers also have the power to seize and retain any article found during the search which the officer reasonably suspects is intended to be used in connection with terrorism.

Photography and Section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000

Officers have the power to view digital images contained in mobile telephones or cameras carried by a person searched under S43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to discover whether they have in their possession anything which may constitute evidence that they are involved in terrorism. Officers also have the power to seize and retain any article found during the search which the officer reasonably suspects may constitute evidence that the person is involved in terrorism.

Section 58a of the Terrorism Act 2000

Section 58a of the Terrorism Act 2000 covers the offence of eliciting, publishing or communicating information about members of the armed forces, intelligence services or police.

Any officer making an arrest for an offence under Section 58a must be able to demonstrate a reasonable suspicion that the information was of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.

It should ordinarily be considered inappropriate to use Section 58a to arrest people photographing police officers in the course of normal policing activities, including protests, as without more, there is no link to terrorism.

There is however nothing preventing officers asking questions of an individual who appears to be taking photographs of someone who is or has been a member of Her Majesty’s Forces (HMF), Intelligence Services or a constable.

I’ve been pondering the idea of migrating my LiveJournal into WordPress for some time. WP is finally at the point where I’m going to use it as my primary blogging tool. I’m in the middle of setting it up so that posts will cross post to my Livejournal as friends only entries to allow people to continue to read as normal, but comments will probably have to go via WP, if I can get it right.

The good news is that the Twitter updates won’t be appearing on here, so for those of you who have been getting irritated with the micro-blogging, rejoice!

In the mean time there might be some weirdness until I get the settings tweaked.