The Dean Website. AKA The Exploded Micro-Family

Been meaning to mention this for a wee while, after Johnathan talked about his adventures rock climbing with a bike in Taiwan, we did the Huanghuacheng loop for my birthday, this is a loop I particularly like as it involves some really nice scenery and some bike carrying through some of the clearest water available close to BJ.

What we did not expect was that we would screw up directions completely and do it the *really* hard way. Enjoy the pix, I hope they are on par with what Taiwan offers! Not something you can do if you are one or two, we *really* needed that human bike chain! Also check Andi’s pix – go to News after entering the (beautiful!) Flash site.

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Now playing: Rotterdam Termination Source – Poing (DJ Partyraiser Remix)
via FoxyTunes

This is something I did just before setting out for a MOB ride, and I don’t recommend doing that for the first time. You will find that you spill oil everywhere and getting oil on your disk brakes + pads is not recommended. Nor on your clothes, pets, baby or jibadeng (why would you want to do that anyway and who knows the correct pinyin for the beast? )

So, here are some pictures to explain the process. This is using the ‘My Little Bleeder’ kit from Hope, and a Hope Mono Mini setup but it will work chabuduo the same for other Hope hydraulic brakes. If you do not have the kit, I suggest getting one, or if you are with the MOB, asking nicely

First. Read the instructions. Don’t start to do anything. Did you understand them? Good. Ignore this post. You are obviously looking for something else. If not, read on…

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Until I can somehow find a WSP (Web Service Provider) that allows me to host large files (ie 20GB of space or more) has secure SMTP, IMAP and POP3 access, the usual LAMP type setup and can run Gallery 2.0 along with WP and everything else I want to throw at it (Ruby on Rails for example) then I am stuck with kludging on this site.

This is a pity, I have a large number of pictures that could well go out there. Flickr is useful, but is a huge dustbin as well, with just a search on Beijing coming up with thousands upon thousands of pictures, nearly all of them just holiday snaps of no use or interest.

At least Porta is really beautifully designed, although it needs some tweaking to get it to be really 100% useful. It is very fast in generating pix, but totally non-interactive, in other words, once out there, the pix are static, just paintings on the wall. Why infomaniak cannot get its act together and ramp up PHP memory and have decent libraries beyond a basic GDLib drives me crazy, as they are otherwise really good.

So, enjoy the MOB pictures from Bai He  from KHM, they are really good. And there is another one here of the ride to Machang on the 1th of May

Finally get round to putting link up to these pictures I took at the race. It was great fun, very good track, a bit short at 40K overall but quite demanding. Probably the best MTB race here in China.

As usual some of the best things out there are found when looking for something completely different.

Apparently there is a project for doing . The original was with cars, eg the famous Citroen escapade.

One of the guys is doing this as part of a round the world on a … penny farthing …

Now one his site he has this link to a guy who did one … a hundred and twenty years ago… He came to China. Go to his page to find out how to read the book. Brilliant, really fun and well written. FanKwae we are indeed!

After my friendly bike shop did something strange with one of the bolts on the XTR middle chainring of my bike, and spending the best part of the Huangshan race having my chain fall between middle and outer ring and me lose two more bolts. Return to Beijing and then on to another shop where the only competent bike mechanic in town lurks. Ask for bike cleaning. Forget to mention the missing bits but do mention problem with wheel. ‘no problem’ it is fine. We will see. [Read more →]

so things will be weird for a while…

its ok lah now..

Being away means that one is dead. Virtually at any rate, but as far as all you folks out there are concerned, most likely, dead ,-)

Seeing as some people are still looking at the site, I have come to the conclusion that only robots are visiting, or else some poor soul still trying to find that elusive ‘passed out’ or ‘donkey’ magical link…

I have spent a very interesting two weeks in Egypt, details and pix to follow, time and baby Victor permitting!

Mes remerciements au ‘Guide du Routard‘ pour un guide superbe sur l’Egypte! Et puis aussi au ‘Cairo: a Family Guide‘ qui m’a permit de découvrir des morceaux du Caire plus méconnus. Attention, les plans sont vraiment biens, mais une fois sur place, ya plus rien qui semble correspondre. Les rues au Caire sont vraiment chaotiques et demander de l’aide s’avère parfois pénible (=bakchich – idem sortir une carte ou un plan veut dire qu’on est une proie facile). Les policiers qui contrôlent la circulation sont souvent très aimables.

ATTENTION aux voyageurs seuls ou par paires: près du métro Nasser au Caire, j’ai eu une rencontre étrange, une voiture sans signalement s’est approchée de moi alors que je faisais l’erreur de regarder un des plans près de la station. D’abord amical, ce fut rapidement: “your passport please”. “I do not have my passport with me”, “is it at your hotel?”. “I am staying with friends”. ” please come with us”. Sur ce c’est “no, I do not know who you are”, ils me montrent une carte (vraisembablement une carte d’identité standard) tout en arabe, donc illisible pour moi, “i am not going with you, I do not know who you are” etc.. Pour finir, soudain “OK, you can go” et ils repartent en trombe. Leur donner un passeport ou n’importe quel papier et encore pire, monter dans leur voiture veut dire ennuis en tout genres. Car ce sont des escrocs. Prendre son GSM avec et appeler un ami, le consul, ou la police du tourisme. Et partir, de préférence dans une rame de métro car il y a toujours des policiers dans le métro. Autre arme, utiliser l’appareil photo du G pour prendre leur no de plaque, mais en dernier recours seulement, un refus ferme mais poli devrait suffir.

Looking for a recipe for apple pie came across this one which I may well be doing tomorrow

Via this page then wandered over to this lovely blog with lots of sewing stuff recently inherited

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Here is latest video of baby Victor playing in his ‘aquarium’. He is reaching the hitting at things stage. He has a vague idea that things are happening around him. He also seems to understand that the camera is ‘looking’ at him. cute

Victor_playing_with_himself.wmv

Previous videos that may or may not be elsewhere:

after_shower_he_feels_happy-2006-11-17.wmv

baby_does_not_like_this_shower-2006-11-17

baby_has_first_bath_in_swimming_pool_pt1_2006-12-14

baby_has_first_bath_in_swimming_pool_pt2_2006-12-14

baby_has_first_bath_in_swimming_pool_pt3_he_likes_2006-12-14

baby_in_bed_refuses_to_be_happy-2006-12-02

baby_in_daddys_arms

changing_babies_nappies_ah_so_much_fun

First Video after being born

little_baby_victor_in_cot_at_hospital_pt3-2006-11-13

victor_inconsolable_2006-12-09

wrapping_victor

Have fun!