Lovely pint of ESB!

Bill, Bike & Beer in the garden of The Wych Elm pub in Kingston. Impossible to find - like a Mr Ben magical pub! Well worth it though. Manuel's cooking & beer keeping great.

Chris and Gillian get smoochie in 'The Villagers' pub

Excellent Home BBQ'd burgers were consumed with a dodgy pint of 'Charmflours' beer before changing to 'Hop Garden Gold'. Can't consume too much as I'm cycling back to Stoneleigh from Godalming later!

The Pleiades - reprocessed

Had a quick go at reprocessing my Pleiades picture from two weeks ago - mucked around with contrast and unsharp mask - only in ACDSee - nothing serious - pretty pleased with the results. Surprised at the number of stars visible given the light pollution.



I really want to make/buy a cheap/portable/small tracker now for correcting sidereral motion on my camera - new project!
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Who needs a car?

This is the most direct route to my friend's house in Downley near High Wycombe. 37 miles door to door.
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

New Road Bike

...So this is my new bike! As said earlier, the heart of the bike is the new Specialized S-Works Tarmac Carbon/Aluminium frame. Other components are new 2004 Dura-Ace 10 Groupset inc Hubs and SPD-SL Pedals, ITM Carbon Bar and Stem, SDG Bel Air saddle (from old bike) and a pair of sturdy Mavic Open Pro wheels. I picked up the bike from Sigma Sport in Hampton Wick on Thursday morning. 128 Miles later I can say its a great bike and completely different from riding my Rockhopper!
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

There And Back Again

So I decided to cycle back from Oliver's. a) didn't want to muck around taking wheels off bike. b) there were some hills from Saturday that I wanted to take my revenge on... Though it was much faster on the way back I managed to get lost twice near uxbridge and then Twickenham (adding on 4 miles). Sunday lunch and a chilled bottle of London Pride made an excellent finish!
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Should have gone the opposite direction

My first non-commute journey on the S-Works Tarmac bike - cycling to Oliver's in Downley (36 ish miles) God I'm knackered!
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Vote for Beaker and Honeydew!

I urge any readers to vote for Beaker & Honeydew in Cult Television's 'Top Screen Scientist Vote'. Does anyone else think Derek Sellin bares a remarkable resemblance to Beaker?
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

dodgy Swedes in King's Arms

This is the heart of my new bike which I hope to pick up tomorrow! Bit scary - my first proper road bike.The Specialized frame is half Carbon and half Aluminium. For geeks look at:- www.where-does-the-carbon-fiber-begin-and-the-aluminum-end.com.
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Lunch at the King's Arms

It's not so important how fast you go, it's how fast you pedal!

Got my new Cadence sensor wired up on my bike. Happy to see a nice average of 91 rpm! The first thing you notice about this log is that it shows my max speed (and max HR) is going up hill (30mins in to trip, going up slight hill near Clapham South) - not really that wierd - I'm pedalling at 102rpm in my biggest gear at that point - so its not surprising I'm going fast...
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Moon and Venus

The Moon and Venus on August 13th 2.2sec. 70mm. F/4.5. 4.40am
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

The Pleiades

The Pleiades. 15.4 sec exposure. 70mm. F/4.5. Nikon D70 on stationary mount/tripod - no tracking
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Zalman SuperFlower Cooler
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Doom3 Machine being built
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

New AMD 3500+
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

MB Install4
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Passing through Trafalgar sq. On my way to smithfield market

Verified location using SkyMapPro

Here's a skymap pro starmap - I reckon the Perseids Radiant is more or less east and almost overhead - I'll wonder downstairs and take a quick peek in case there's a break in the clouds - otherwise its going to be tonight - which is tricky as I'm out at dinner in town...
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

So its 4:40am in the morning - still cloudy

Here's the Perseids locator from the BBC Website:







I'm going back to bed !

Moonlight 'will not spoil' meteor show

BBC NEWS Moonlight 'will not spoil' meteor show

Yeah - but the clouds did! No wishes on a shooting star made tonight (which was a shame as I could have probably got lots of new gadgets with the 200 meteors per hour there is meant to be!). I'll set the alarm for before dawn - probably 4.45am - hope the clouds have gone. I was going to drive up to Epsom Downs as it is facing North and try and get some photos. Anyway - you're probably reading this on the 12th. Here's where to look tonight if its clear:



Hmm - just found those diagrams on the web - I think you'd have to be somewhere else in the world (maybe East Coast of USA) for them to be accurate - but the relative placement of the Perseids to constellations and other stars will be about the same (er - you'll have to adjust for equatorial shift/rotation around pole as well...)- just the whole view will be different time.



In fact the more I think about this - the more I think I should get another diagram up there.... what the heck - it'll probably be raining anyway so who cares.

Max Heart Rate cycling to work is 186bpm!

Used my Polar Heart Rate Monitor watch with my new T31 Transmitter strap yesterday. Downloaded the logs of speed, distance, altitude and Heart Rate to the computer (over IR link). You can see that my 13miles commute is made up of a lot of stop/start cycling. The Altitude is based on temperature (I think) therefore isn't that accurate - I'll try correlating it to a GPS log to make sure alt/distance is accurate. However in terms of HR logging its pretty revealing. I tend to cycle flat out all the way - peaking at 186bpm just before Clapham South Tube station (there's a little hill I try and sprint up). Going to add Cadence sensor to the bike to get a better idea of what gear I'm in/effort.
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Fleeting glimpse of The Worcester Park Observatory

If you look out of the window on the Stoneleigh to Worcester Park train you might wonder what the two silver domes are at the bottom of someone's garden.. Unfortunately they don't belong to me - but they were part of inspiration for me taking up Astronomy. For more information on who they belong to follow the link - The Worcester Park Observatory

New 'eye-candy' memory up and running in my PC

The blue curly lights are neon wrapped EIDE cables going to the DVD Writer and CD Writer. The Green and Orange cables are UV sensitive SATA cables going to Seagate Barracuda SATA Hard drives. The two vertical strips of green/yellow and a little red are the LEDs on my Corsair XL Pro DDR400 Memory. Finally there's a general UV haze coming from a cold cathode UV bulb

My god you have to breathe in a lot wearing this much lycra...[and this was before I ate 8 sausauges!]
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Stormy weather in London - calls for stronger beer than usual...

I never want to decorate again.

Lotte poses for a picture
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

BBQ Bill

I can't help taking control of Darren & Amanda's BBQ - as usual
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

How does you garden grow?

One good thing about our rather wild garden - you get fresh blackberries all summer!
(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

The remains of the day

in the pub

drinking with friends in stage door

After fitting my new Akasa 460W PSU and FarCry still crashing all the time I finally thought I'd try Memtest86. Very surprised to discover there's a whole lot of errors! Have repeated test with Microsoft memory checker - get errors too. Time to get some new memory. The latest fastest memory out there is this Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO XMS3200 1024MB 2-2-2-5 2x184 DIMM. And they've got flashing lights on top too (I can pretend my PC is the WOPR/Joshua super-computer from Wargames....)

(c) Bill Pinnell 2004

Mike and James in Berlin