Dave's Blog

Ok, so I’ve received a few nudges from people who want me to follow up on my post about the Trek FX+.

Since I bought the bike back on May 12th, I’ve clocked up 685 and I’m still impressed with the bike and glad that I bought it, however it’s not been plain sailing. I’ve been dogged by maintenance issues and faulty parts constantly, in fact I feel like I’m only just getting to the point where I’ve ironed out all of the issues.

I’ve been using the bike for my commute into the office which is around 9.1 miles, and I generally take 45mins on average. The route I take is all on road cycling with heavy traffic, passing through Sutton then Croydon. I don’t go into the office every day as I have the luxury of being able to work from home twice a week, so in theory I should be clocking up around 50 miles a week. Obviously it hasn’t worked out like that, but either way, I’ve given the bike some serious road usage since I bought it. In fact, it’s fair to say that I’ve really enjoyed cycling in and prefer it over public transport whenever possible.

I’m going to list some of the main features of the bike and my comments on them before getting down to the maintenance issues I’ve had :

Motor
This is what we’re here for right? I have very little to say about the motor, which in itself speaks volumes. The motor is perfectly quiet at all times, I’ve never heard so much as a peep out of it, yet it’s always there adding a noticeable push to every revolution and on the steepest hills, I can turn the assist up to level 4 and sail up the steepest hills at around 13-15mph.

I’m comfortably averaging around 14-15mph for my commute, which means I can get to the office quicker than the train without the attendant disruption and effort of walking out of my way to go to the nearest station. The motor cuts out at 16mph and gradually reduces its level of assistance as you near the cut off so there’s no jolt from one mode to another, it’s all very smooth indeed.

Whilst this might sound a bit miserly, I find it to be more than enough, the motor lets me quickly build up speed as I have to stop constantly due to traffic and traffic lights, wasting all of the momentum I’ve built up. I’ve seen on the internet that you can put the firmware into ‘Sport Mode’ which will increase the cut out level but whilst I’ve thought about doing it, I don’t really need to so I haven’t tried this out yet.

There is a ‘Generate Mode’, which can be turned on manually, but frankly this is a bit of a gimmick, I don’t go down any hill long enough to make it worth adjusting the settings and I couldn’t honestly say how much power is added back into the battery, it’s certainly not noticeable on the battery charge status. However it does go into generate mode when you pull the rear break, this is much more useful as it’s automatic, but again I can’t really see much measurable difference, but I’m sure every little helps.

Battery Pack
At 2.5kg the weight of the battery pack is noticeable on the bike, in fact, I’d say that with the battery and the motor, the bike is very heavy and I’d have trouble cycling comfortably without any form of assistance so I generally cycle around at assistance level 2 (of 4) and push it up to 3 for hills. This seems to use around 85% of the battery for my journey to and from the office.

This is all important because the charging pack for the battery is a beast, it is heavy and bulky and puts me in mind of 1990s laptop charger units, this means that whilst it’s possible to carry the charger with you, you really wouldn’t want to, given the choice. The charging process is quick though and in spite of the lengthy list of dos and donts in the documentation, it’s easy to use and charges up in 3-4 hours or less.

The paperwork suggest that the battery is only under warranty for 600 charges, I’ve probably done around 60 charges in total and I’ve not noticed any particular reduction in the battery’s capacity nor have I ever been left without charge, which to my mind is the most important thing.

If I’ve had any niggle other than the weight, I’ve noticed that the battery pack tends to rattle around quite a bit when I’m going over poor road surfaces (namely, most of Surrey!), I’m sure it didn’t do this at first but it certainly does so now, I try to keep my bike running silently and it annoys me when there’s a rattle or squeak. I can solve this myself with some rubber and super-glue but I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Classic Controller
This is the little computer that sits on the handle bar, it doubles as bike computer and the control mechanism through which you adjust the level of assistance.

As a bike computer it logs Odometer/Trip counter/ Clock/Chronometer/ Average speed, which is all fine, however there doesn’t seem to be a group reset button, if I want to reset trip counter and chronometer I have to reset them separately, I’d be much happier if there was one button that reset all of the counters at once like other CatEye Computers I’ve used but this isn’t the end of the world.

The buttons are easy to use, even through waterproof gloves and the bike is very responsive when making changes. A couple of times, I’ve accidentally turned the bike off, whilst trying to turn the lights on (Hold power button for 3 seconds), which is not great when you’re on the road. It’s a shame they didn’t add another button to switch the lights on and off, but this is only really a minor niggle.

Once during heavy rain the battery indicator showed as empty throughout the whole commute, which was a bit worrying but the motor was working throughout and the lights were on, so I’m assuming that was some kind of short or connection issue, it’s never happened again and generally the battery indication is very accurate.

Puncture proof Tyres
The tyres on this bike are Bontrager Race All Weather Hard-Case, 700x32c, which have been excellent. The route I take is covered with glass and bits of debris from car accidents (nice eh?) and not once have I had a puncture, which is all I really care about, these days I don’t take a puncture repair kit with me and I’ve never looked back.

Maintenance
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve had an uphill struggle with the maintenance of this bike, before I go any further I want to say a huge Thank You to Dave and the team at Fudges Cycles in Epsom, who have bent over backwards to resolve any faults I’ve had. I’d happily recommend them if you’re in the area, their details are below:

Fudges Cycle Store
21-23 Upper High Street
Epsom, Surrey KT17 4QY
01372 744 116
Train: Epsom Rail Station
Open Mon-Thu,Sat 9am-6pm; Fri 9am-5pm;

So here’s a summary of the maintenance issues I’ve had since May, i.e. in the 3 months since I’ve owned the bike:

• 1 x Saddle Replaced
• 2 x Pedals Replaced
• 1 x Lights Rewired
• 2 x Brake Block Replaced
• 5 x Spokes Broken

Maintenance Log

09th May 2011 – Test Ride & Purchased

10th May 2011 – Picked Up

14th May 2011 – Taken back to Fudges, next day pickup. Lights not working, problem with wiring fixed, also had kickstand removed, noticed a slight grinding noise on journey home. No charge.

19th May – Constant grinding noise around 15-17mph and on application of rear brake

20th May – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. Grinding was due to a faulty brake block, the metal backing was twisted and rubbing against the wheel rim. Block replaced. No charge.

24th May – 100 miles

14th June – 200 miles

24th June – 300 miles

27th June – Taken back to Fudges, next day pickup. Broke the saddle and a spoke on the rear wheel snapped off. Saddle was replaced for free with a generic one, spoke was replaced at the cost of £1 for the spoke and £15 for the servicing. Fudges suggested that I avoid pot holes and bumping up and down the kerb to prevent spoke damage.

07th July – 400 miles

14th July – Taken back to Fudges, next day pickup. Snapped a spoke and buckled the rear wheel. Spoke was replaced at the cost fo £1 for the spoke and £15 for straightening the wheel up.

05th August – 500 miles

06th August – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. Broken spoke on the rear wheel, spoke was replaced for free and £15 for the servicing. Fudges suggested using a backpack rather than a pannier to try and keep the weight off of the back wheel.

14th August – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. Broken spoke on the rear wheel, spoke was replaced at the cost for £1 for the spoke and £15 for the servicing. Fudges suggest that if it happens again, to replace the rear tyre with a wider one to help absorb the impact.

16th August – 600 miles

17th August – Taken back to Fudges, 2 week pickup. Broken spoke on the real wheel. At this point nothing I can do other than lose 2-3 stone overnight can be recommended. After seeing people complain on the internet I’ve asked them to go back to Trek with the issue and see what Trek has to say, I’m starting to lose my patience.

30th August – Picked up from Fudges. Trek sent a completely new set of heavier gauge spokes, the rear wheel was rebuilt using the new spokes with longer reinforced nipples for strength. Also a wider puncture proof tyre (Specialized Infinity Armadillo Tyre 700 x 38) was added to the rear wheel to help cushion impacts. Cost £25 for the new rear wheel, no service or other parts charged.

31st August – Taken back to Fudges, same day pickup. A constant ‘pinging’ noise on wheel revolutions didn’t sound quite right. New nipples were too long for the custom spokes provided by trek, reinforced nipples replaced with shorter ones and the wheel was rebuilt. No charge.

09th September – Taken to Evans Cycles Croydon, same day pickup. Pedals replaced with DMR V8 pedals in Black. Cost £28. I used Evans as they are nearby work and the constant grinding and squeaking from the pedals had gotten to the point where I was embarrassed to cycle down the street with such a cacophonous accompaniment.

Conclusion
All in all, the 2010 Trek FX+ has been a brilliant purchase, it’s enabled me to forgo public transport and get back to a more active lifestyle. The commute is now doable, to the point where I don’t really think about ‘having to cycling in’, I just do it and enjoy it. The only times I really grumble is during heavy rain but buying the right clothing has made that less of an issue.

However, whilst the electric components themselves are all I could hope for, some of the other components are not of a high standard in my view, having spent £1,500 this is a little disappointing. You can see that most of the money has gone into the electric components rather than the other aspects of the bike. Pedals, V-brakes, saddle and lights are all from the lower end of the market and it’s a glaring contrast.

These components, combined with the constant issues I’ve had with the spokes of the rear wheel have made this bike a real labour of love, in the last month I’ve ridden the bike a lot less simply because of the time it’s spent in the shop. With the new heavier gauge spokes and the newer components, I finally feel like the bike is now ‘sorted’ and at the point where I can rely on it for my commute to the office. Of course I’ll be happier when I’ve added another 500 miles without breaking any more spokes!

In spite of everything, I’m still a big fan of this bike and I’ll happily recommend it to people who want to get into cycling but aren’t quite fit enough to get away with it yet, but do be aware of the potential maintenance issues, especially if you’re a heavy bloke like myself.

Thanks to Dan and Tarah, I went to see Bill Bailey on Sunday night in Greenwich. No thanks to all of the engineering works, which seemed specifically designed to prevent me from getting into town from Epsom. But still, thanks to no less than two cab journeys, trains and tubes, I eventually arrived.

I was racking my brain to think where the venue was, but as it turned out, they’d just slung up a marquee in the National Maritime Museum, which seemed to do the trick, I was quite surprised at how small the gig was, it’s difficult to judge but there can’t have been more than 1000 people there.

Here’s the tour spiel which sums up the content quite nicely :

Dandelion Mind

Featuring Bill’s trademark musical interludes, observations and stories of the road, Dandelion Mind will be based loosely on the theme of doubt (or will it?), as we follow Bill from his real-life saga of being trapped by the ash cloud, to his barely contained rants about celebrity, TV, creationism and Michael Winner. He demonstrates new instruments, both ancient and modern, he sings an internet love song, a lament about punk heroes, Iranian hip-hop, and plays a mean folk-bouzouki.

Thomas the Doubter gets a new look, and Darwin’s curious obsessions and the myth of intelligent design are all worked over in Bailey’s own surreal style. He revisits the music of his youth, with a brand-new French Disco re-working of Gary Numan’s hit, Cars, played in his own inimitable way, and maybe some Wurzels-based remixes of classic German techno. Just your normal Bill Bailey gig, then.”

I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though the man himself looked about as stiff as a wooden board thanks to a slipped disc, he didn’t hold back and will probably regret some of the more enthusiastic jumping around.

Unfortunately I ended up with a restricted view thanks to a support girder which seemed to be in the exact spot that would hide Bill Bailey for 85% of the time, but we chose those seats, so there’s a lesson for the future.

One thing that bugs me every single time I go to a show or gig or just about any performance is the whole charade of the encore. This isn’t anything against Mr Bailey in particular, it happens all the time. Just do the show, without all of the marching on and off stage to riotous applause. It’s either unthinking slavery to tradition at best, or extreme vanity at worst and I wish people would do away with it.

Seriously, what is the point of the encore? Why not just start and finish as planned without the sophistry of marching off and on the stage 5 times.

But yeah, my normal grumblings about encores aside, brilliant night. We walked Jules back to the high street to admire his new shiny car, then after seeing him off, ambled down to the riverside to catch the boat back to Woolwich. On the way we happened past Bill Bailey himself on his way to the pub, I can’t say I had the courage to say anything to him but Tarah thanked him for a great night, and indeed it was.

I didn’t take any pictures really, but there was a blue spotlight that caught my attention and I couldn’t help but snap Jules and Tarah, it came out quite nicely considering it was using my HTC Desire.

It’s been ages since I’ve blogged anything so I’m trying to get back into the habit of writing, sadly for everyone else, I find it easier to write about what’s enthusing me at the present, and that’s a computer game called StarCraft2.

I seem to have spent most of this weekend playing Starcraft2, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve played around 20 missions so far and I think I’m down to the last few and I *still* haven’t unlocked all of the technology.

I’ve always found that really annoying with RTS games in general, the whole restricted development during a campaign. In many games it’s used as a sort of tutorial, get players used to one set of units and gradually introduce more. But Starcraft seem to have gone to the Nth degree with this where I’m at the point of completing the game but there are units I still haven’t been able to use, I find that annoying as hell.

This means that while you’re plodding through learning various units, the tactics that you’re employing are liable to change or become obsolete in a full game without any restrictions. To my mind this always separates things out so that you have the campaign game and then the completely different multi-player game. I guess this is why with games like Supreme Commander, I’ve always preferred playing skirmishes against the AI lacking anyone else to play against.

Another thing that’s been annoying me is the lack of unit formation. I think I’ve been spoiled with ‘Sins of a Solar Empire’, where your fleets would automatically form themselves in the most optimal way, with heavier units and capital ships to the front of the fleet and the more support oriented units to the rear. There’s nothing like this in Starcraft2. If I want my medics to the rear, I need to put them in a separate group and micro manage them away from the slaughter. I’d love it if you grouped multiple units, gave them a move order and then they turned up in a sensible order. I’m sure some people would say this is about the skill of the player, but then I’m used to more strategic games with a much higher level of view. SC2 seems to be more about close view, skirmish fighting.

So yeah, that all said, I’m really enjoying the game, the campaign missions are really quite varied with gameplay devices that I’ve not come across before, like lava flooding low level areas every time interval, and playing missions as an alternate race through the narrative device of an Elan crystal which allows you to relive your alien buddy’s experiences.

I’ve also quite liked the Wing Commander style of intermissions where you wander around the ship and interact with various people and objects by clicking on them, which feels particularly old school. And of course the general plot and story line are very entertaining and the rendered video cut scenes are of a breathtaking quality, just like Warcraft3.

Hopefully I’ll be able to finish off the campaign soon and get down to some AI skirmishes so that I get a feel of the real game.

I recently read on Lifehacker that Trillian, has been released as Trillian Astra, a newer spiffier version. I felt that I should test this out and here I am a month later, hitting the ‘Uninstall’ button. This isn’t a comprehensive review or anything, just my user experience.

Many years ago, I was a proselyte of Trillian. It was a fairly unique piece of software back then that through developer APIs and some slightly dubious channels, would wrap all of the different Instant Messenger protocols into one client which would jointly manage all of those protocols. After a year or two of use, I even bought it.

Over the years though, it proved to be heavy on resources and was actively disliked by people like Yahoo and Microsoft who would continually change (Upgrade!) their protocols breaking Trillian on a few occasions. The File transfers rarely worked properly, the Video was awful and it became pretty apparent after a while, that it was only going to be going downhill. So I stopped using it and switched to Pidgin and then later the portable version for my USB stick.

I was curious to see what the new Trillian would bring, unfortunately, it hasn’t been a revelation on any front. I’ve been using it to wrap MSN, AIM, GoogleTalk and Skype. Additionally there were plug-ins for my email and twitter so I’ve been using those too.

The basics are pretty simple to work out with the usual contact list, double-click to talk kind of options but the actual setting up was a bit of a struggle, I found a lot of the interface to be counter-intuitive and it took a good hour to get everything the way I wanted. Once I had it all setup, it seemed to run fine for the basics, chatting on different protocols works fine although the display options are a bit too much for my tastes so I had to switch everything to a minimum setting.

At first I was impressed with the fact that there was a Skype interface, Pidgin doesn’t offer Skype, nor does anyone else to my knowledge because of the way Skype works. However actually trying to use it was a joke, in order to use Skype, Trillian fires up a Skype client in the background and hooks all the messages, I wouldn’t mind this too much if it wasn’t for the fact that all of the sounds still play, and you can see the skype client sitting in your system tray. The final let down with this is that it crashes Trillian every single time it closes. Wonderful.

There are plenty of little bits of added value with trillian, although when you think about it these are just perks rather than good reasons to be using it. Things like setting an away status sets custom text like “Away since 16:34 (GMT)”, or chat windows which show you details and timings about when the other person responded last and how long they’ve been online for. There’s also little notification windows showing what the actual message is (like googletalk). But really whilst these are nice, they haven’t changed my life for the better.

The mail and twitter feeds are pretty pointless. The mail client has a slow rate of update and offers very little options once it has decided to recognize the new mail. With mail if you want to do anything other than preview your mail (Good for Plain-text only), it simply shells your client/browser. Although you do get a delete and mark as read option which is nice, but I still found that I had to open up a proper mail client if I wanted to do anything more.

The twitter feed is clunky and not a patch on even the most basic of browser clients, offering a poor list of the top N tweets and telling you when there are new tweets but the functionality is pretty restricted. It’s more useful than the mail client in that you can reply and even post your own tweets but the whole thing is very uninspired and I found myself using the twitter extension in googlemail more often than not.

All told Trillian Astra doesn’t offer anything on top of Pidgin other than a swishier interface and an attempt at Skype interfacing. It stretches for some big things but those are implemented badly or with such limited functionality that you’ll be opening a different tool to do the job within five frustrated minutes. It’s not portable requiring a number of runtimes to be installed alongside it and there’s a memory leak in it somewhere which was chewing up about 1mb a minute on my system.

In summary, I’ll be going back to Portable Pidgin all is forgiven!

I’m seeing series 2 of Dollhouse starting to appear on the internet, it’s a sign of how bad that program was that even though I could download it, I really can’t be bothered.

I’m not saying I haven’t tried, we watched the whole of the first series begging for it to get better but we just couldn’t get into it properly, I think we only really made it to the end of the first series because we had nothing else to watch.

I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so bad, but the whole thing just seemed to strike a discordant note with me. The story was interesting as was the concept and the actors were hardly green. I think it might have been the lack of empathy I had with any of the characters, the character archetypes were dull and lacking any depth which made them all just seem like poorly drawn caricatures of real people. Maybe because there was less banter about it, or maybe it was because when there was any, it seemed so artificial.

Julia is an avid Buffy/Angel fan and we both loved Firefly, so you’d have thought that one of us might like it! This makes me wonder if any of you managed to get along with it?

Either way, I don’t think I’ll bother with the second series, not unless there’s a serious drought in terms of anything to watch!

I’ve been using Latitude now since it was released and to be honest it seems very much like a social network thing. I.e. you get more out of it when more of your friends use it, until then it’s just a bit of show off tech that has no massive use.

Right now I only have a few friends using it but I’ve seen a glimmer of it being useful on two occasions:

The first was meeting one of these friends in the pub. Said friend was late and I could see exactly where they were and work out how long it would take to get there. The other time was a reversal of this, they were already at the pub and I used it to hone in on exactly where the pub was located.

The other time I found it useful was when I was in London for the day and noticed I happened to be nearby someone, so I messaged them and asked if they were free for lunch, seeing as we were a stone’s throw away.

So kinda useful but I’m not blown away yet. Is there anyone else out there using latitude? If so, then feel free to add me to your friends list using my google mail account (See the Contact details on this blog or the first post on my LJ) or throw me a message.

Also if you are a latitude user have you found any real uses for it that I’m missing?