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i forgot, these are pretty cool (i don't have a pair but know people who do):

http://www.dacs-audio.com/Distribution/Soundman/soundman_main.htm

these would allow you to do a 2 person interview and get excellent stereo ambient tracks the rest of the time without the handling noise if you use camera mics. you'll still need rycotes (richmond film services).

btw lucas brunelle's helmet cam is great for shots when racing through traffic but it's going to be limited if you want a range of shots from different angles and not much fun for interviews. if you're going with 1 camera i would go hand held with a small camera on lanyard in case you need both hands on the bars. i've found a way of getting audio from a radio mic into my nokia n95 or video camera (for sync) as well as sending a signal to a separate recorder (email me for details). a radio mic would be great for interviewing folks on their bikes.

dan

canon hv20 or the newer hv30 have the best reviews for small hdv cameras. avoid avchd as editing can be problematic. minijack audio inputs only on these cameras so you may want a separate audio recorder (my preference) or a "beach box".
although a sennheiser 416 is the most weather proof directional mic it needs phantom powering and the wind gag will make it bulky so the best quality lapel/clip mic with minijack connector would be the most compact and easy to keep dry (in a food container) and will do for interviews/voxpops with 1 person at a time. i'd advise rycote windgag for the lapel mic as almost everything about the dd is exposed to the elements. don't forget headphones to monitor your audio and hd/hdv needs more light than sd even with night vision so if you have a fancy bike light (eg. dinotte) you find life easier.
if you can get your hands on a sony a1 (hdv) it doesn't have the picture quality of the canons but will be easier to plug a mic into.

dan (sound recordist).

a man goes into a pub and says to the landlord:
"there is a fantastic network across london for cyclists to use; it's called the road, the only problems with it are the way some people use it.
most cycle lanes are there for the convenience of the drivers and are more often a danger to riders.
make residential roads no faster than a cyclist.
scrap lights.
scrap badly driven cars.
more underground car parks to get the things off the road.
and pay people to cycle (in the long run it will cost us less)!"

landlord replies:
"alright mate, calm down. there are green routes that seem to encourage leisure cycling, maybe getting families to ride at weekends will be a big factor in changing trends - a bit like that program on tv last night ('the woman who stops traffic')."

man decides he'd rather drink beer elsewhere and leaves pub.

i don't want to spoil your fun or anything but skidding is 1 thing, stopping quickly is another.

an emergency stop should involve moving your weight back, this allows you to use more front brake (which does most of the work) and helps to keep the back wheel on the ground (which helps). if you ride fixed you've got the nearest thing to ABS braking that a (simple) bike can have, make the most of that. using your legs to control your speed on steep descents will help you develop the muscles for this (and skidding).

weight forward skidding is fun, trendy and profitable for tyre manufacturers. and a hop-skid can allow you to change direction quickly (like a hand brake turn), but locking your rear wheel is a stunt that is best to avoid (if you can) in an emergency situation. not least because if you end up side-ways in heavy traffic you will increase you chances of being hit from behind.

my personal experience is that i can stop my fixed (with street gears) quicker than a road bike (with similar tyres) because it's easy to lock the back of a road bike even when you don't want to. the only times i blatantly use skidding is when i end up off road and there's not enough front tyre to stop it from locking up and/or it's quite steep - obviously, it's better to lock the back than the front but still move the weight back if you genuinely want to stop or control speed.

SB's site was the mark of a genius - his desire, skill and enthusiasm for sharing his knowledge with the rest of us is a gift for anyone who wants to know anything about bikes. i know he was not into charity rides and i'm guessing he'd not think much of a statue or similar but for his online gain ratios calculator alone he deserves a tribute somewhere, somehow. a guardian of the zeitgeist, a genuine loss to the modern cycling era.

looks like i may have an opportunity to go sri lanka (columbo and candy) and i was wondering if anyone here has taken a bike or rented 1 and explored the roads on 2 wheels.

thanks.

i did stop to see if the driver was ok, he was, but he could hardly string a sentence together - he had most of the window in his lap, looking very startled like.
it'd would be a neat trick to do it by design. ninja cyclists could perfect the technique with hand fulls of the 'right gravel' to deploy under tyres.

at the top of pentonville road, just before the angel, i went over some gravel and stone pinged up and smashed the side window of the car driving alongside. neither of us could believe it.

what are the stronglight cranks like?

i thought he was checking the chainline...

...to see if it would convert to a fixed.

http://www.liegeradinfo.de/hug_xr2.jpg

bianchi oscilator!

flip-flop 13/16 cogs with a 42 ring and enjoy controlled descents (without bouncing around too much).
you could even put a few cogs and a tool on the van - it's better than the extra brake for a freewheel. sounds like great fun.

what one best for beginner?

elegant and versatile, burrows/giant adjustable (2 tone if you can).
http://www.mdt-products.co.uk/products/126-adjust-stem/adjust-stem.htm
(crap picture btw).

a head version (better picture).
http://www.mdt-products.co.uk/products/140_aheadstem/aheadstem.htm

tom; gloves with metal plates has been my girlfriends request for sometime and i think it's for the same (paintwork) reasons.

chainmail gloves might do the same thing:
http://www.simplyworkwear.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Store_Specialist_Gloves_64.html

turpe; riding slowly to annoy the motorist ala critical mass is a very good form of revenge but as my previously detailed experience, delivering bikeability to 12 year olds wearing hiviz and helmets shows, some motorists will not only drive at you (a competent adult cyclist) but they will also drive at a bunch of kids.

i just want to say that i did not come off the bike and i was not hurt in any way yesterday. i am saying this because people have posted accounts above of incidents way more serious, where people have actually been hurt and the incredibly indifferent response of the authorities has truely added insult to injury.

too many lazy journalists writing articles about dangerous cyclists and too few forwarding qualified arguments for strengthening laws against bad driving. as cyclists we may have a responsibly to use the roads safely (if only to avoid fueling the crass arguments against us that distract from the real issues at hand) but legal recourse should not have to be preceded by serious injury in an RTA or an assault after expressing ourselves to the offending driver (kipsy). you may be lucky enough not be hurt on the occasion you come across that dangerous driver but it is surely only a matter of time before some one is. for most people a car is probably the most dangerous machine they will ever be responsible for. how many 'near misses' should we (as a society) tolerate a driver being involved with before we take away their rights to drive?

a while back i was delivering 'bikeability' in newham when a driver deliberately risked injuring trainees because he was irritated at having to wait for them. there was no collision, no body got hurt, but that does not change the fact that he demonstrated a willful disregard for other road users and should not be behind the steering wheel of a car. if (as described by others above) the police are not prepared to do anything on the occasions when a car has hit somebody and someone has been injured and there are witnesses (who are even in the police force) where does that put cyclists in the 'food chain'? i think people get into more trouble when they mistreat animals, which means we are basically unprotected by the law.

at the risk of sounding like a vigilante, if drivers don't perceive a risk to themselves from us as cyclists they don't perceive any risk at all-legal or otherwise. i suspect that if it were not for the expensive paintwork on their cars, even more cyclists would be injured and killed. in the absence of a change in the law and policing does this mean that a motorist has to die at the hands of a cyclist for anything to change!

i've made complaints about bus drivers, some of whom have definitely got a death wish.

08453007000 is the number and they get back in contact with you about your complaint with some details about what action they took. it seems that complaints do go on the drivers record and that tfl take the bad driving of buses more seriously than the police take bad driving by the public in general.

you must report any maniac who's managed to get a job driving a bus. i'm sure it's a stressful job at times but if they can't handle that they need to do something else.

btw, i'm very into taking pictures of bad drivers, their number plates and anything else that might establish who they are and what they've done.

flash memory prices are now low enough (c.$2.5/gig) to make it a give away media. they don't scratch, don't need a mechanic transport to use them and are smaller than cd/dvds. in 2 years i doubt there will be any tape or dvd based consumer video cameras and we'll be looking at our cd/dvd shelves with resentment.

i think i agree that the airbook maybe the new cube but externalising the the superdrive is not a bad thing.
i am a bit surprised at the number or ports on the airbook, it does preclude compatibility with a lot professional type peripherals that users might have hoped to use with such a machine.

teenslain; i'm fine, thanks.
but i do keep replaying the incident over in my mind wondering how it might have been much worse and what i would have done if i didn't do the right thing and trust the police to fuck all about it. the guy was totally out it and the more i think about it the more i wish i'd got him of his car, not for revenge but for public safety.

jimbojones; re reading the post to which you refer i think i can see why you thought i reported the incident 6 months after if happened. i'll go back and put a full stop in and you wont need to give me the benefit of the doubt.

does anyone know the quickest way to immobilise a motor vehicle (against the driver wishes)?

his blog his here:
http://hotscot.typepad.com/jason_macintyre/

platini; that's what i did, and it's not the first time that i have opted for the 'right' thing to do. but i really wonder how seriously they take it. a long time ago i was a victim of a hit and run at a set of lights, which i reported.(the preceding full stop replaced the coma that seem to confuse a reader as to when i reported the incident in question). 6 months later i got a letter from the police asking if i would take my own legal action against the driver as they did not intend to.
i think the police barely give a sh1t if you end up as road pizza, if your walking and talking after the incident they think you should carry on doing just that-on a pavement-and let them get on with playing cops and robbers.

having dark fantasies about a phantom cyclist who rides round round-abouts all day waiting to be 'wronged' by a motorist so that he can exact a brutal and highly publicised mutilation of the driver with the result that it puts the sh1ts up the all the air heads at the wheels of death machines.

i should consider myself lucky as i was not killed (unlike jason macintyre) or injured by the drunk that tried to drive me off my local round about yesterday evening.

i'm curious on the group consensus on what to do after such events; exact revenge, if you can, upon the car and or driver or put faith in the efforts of the police to take the appropriate action?

btw does anyone know how to trace a number plate? ie. name and address.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/01/16/bike-champ-macintyre-dies-in-van-collision-86908-20287088/