I like riding on my bike.

I like riding on my bike, it's not quite a Jaguar, but it is fun.

I like pushing hard up the hills and getting my heart racing.

I like splashing through the puddles and watching the wave ride up on either side.

I like scooting past rows of traffic.

I like feeling awake during the day.

I like that it is faster than catching the bus.

I like matching the perfect gear for the wind and incline so that you keep up a crusing speed.

I like avoiding the cows on the way home.

But most of all I like the gliding along feeling, almost like flying, that you get as you cruise on the flat bits.

What Fuel Crisis

Currently we are going through another fuel crisis with the truckers protesting in the streets and every news broadcast suggesting that there is no way we can survive if the cost of fuel stays the way it is. If a household spends over ten percent of their income on fuel then they are apparently in "fuel poverty" if they have to spend more than forty percent of their income on fags, booze, sky TV and clothes does that push it into "entertainment poverty"?

I think that I have a solution. We can't reduce the tax on fuel as it is there for a very good reason, to reduce our dependence on carbon fuels. As the tax office are benefiting from the increase on fuel duty as the price rises then they should have some cash to spare. If we where to give that back to the general population and businesses in an even way it would ease the burden on people while still encouraging the increased use of alternative fuels. Each person or business would get an even dole out regardless of the mileage they incur so the individual with the large gas guzzler would get the same handout as the person who always takes the bus. The haulier would get the same tax break as the battery company.

Maybe if fossil fuels have a cost that is more representative of their real affect on the planet then we might finally start to take the alternatives a little more seriously. If individuals or companies that think they are dependent on fossil fueled vehicles start to feel the pinch then they will start to seriously seek alternatives. For a while the cost of transport will rise but in the west we can more than afford that but after a time as we start to depend more on the alternatives the overall price will drop.

I think that it is the role of the government to give the markets a little nudge now and then to make sure that we have a longer term future. They should make the tough decisions for all our good and not knee jerk reactions to get the popular vote.

Outsoursing Comment

I have outsoursed my my comments to Disqus, mostly because it had the most Web2.0 name. It should now be easier to comment here if I ever post any content that is!

Planet Choffee and a small shift

I setup Planet Choffee some time ago as a place to aggregate all the many places that I seem to feed stuff into the web from. It is now ticking along nicely and so that is where you should be looking for when you want to see what I am up to. My blog posts are mostly small comments so I will probably move those over to a service like Pownce. I tend to upload photos to various sites so this should pull them all together and it also catches all the stuff that I find interesting on the web as well.

So go have a look and maybe add the master feed to your reader if it's not to noisy.

Thanks

Lucky bird shit

If a bird shits on your cycle helmet when you leave it at the station overnight is that still lucky?

Ubuntu Hardy and suspend to RAM

The latest version of Ubuntu finally allows me to suspend to RAM so that I can quickly sleep my laptop or shut the lid and have it save power, starting up quickly again. Not only that but it also allows me to do that with the kvm modules still loaded. This means that I can have a number of virtual machines running and not have to worry about shutting them down befor putting my laptop to sleep. ( I might need some more RAM now!)

CSV files in python

I spent some time today working out how to deal with commas in a quoted csv files ( ie. 123,"sd,sd","sdggg" and that comma in the middle) when it suddenly dawned on me that I would not be the first to have tried this. Low and behold the python csv module:

import csv
csvdata = csv.reader(open("yourfile.csv", "rb"))
for line in csvdata:
    print line[2]

As per usual python comes with batteries included so it's always worth checking the library reference first before wasting some time thinking.

Bang up to date with ipv6 and all that.

You can now access this site using ipv6. Yippeee. Aren't I ahead of the game?

The main site now has an ipv6 address but if you want to test your ipv6 support then you can visit http://ipv6.choffee.co.uk/ ( Note if you get an host not found error then you probably don't have ipv6)

IPv6 by the way is the next generation internet protocol giving a metric shed load more network addresses and a lot of other benifits such as roaming and automated routeing and address configuration. It is only just now starting to be supported by some ISP's but the more people that use it the quicker it will become the norm and we will all be happier.

Sandwich tip of the day

When making sandwiches late at night don't be tempted to lick the mustard off the knife.

Party Coach

Friday night trains should have a party coach.

On the overnight ski train that we went to Tignes on there was a party coach that had no seats, a small bar and some music and subtle lighting. The benifit of this is that if you want to party you can head on down to the disco but if you want to sleep you can. I think that all trains in the UK should have this on Friday nights as this would move the large groups of people who are off for a weekend of parties into their own area and keep the rest of the train a little less busy for those who want to sit in peace.

Sort of the opposite of the quiet coach.