Happy 10,000 km, Duke!

A few weeks ago, Duke hit 10,000 km on the speedo.. (technically incorrect as this is a 2nd speedo as I ran him into a ginormous pothole in the countryside and we both went sliding. His forks were mangled and his speedo stopped working and I had to ride him back to Bristol for a replacement (they only had KM ones and not Mile ones) before repeating the first (of many) London trips.)


Duke is actually the second Duke -a bunch of no-lifes stole the old Duke, so this is the new Duke.


Anyways, I like Duke a lot, and will always speak fondly of him. Duke has changed my life (silly as it sounds!): I've been many a place with him, had a few accidents here and there, and I've been fortunate enough to visit many places as a result. He rarely fails to start (he struggles a bit when his heart is a bit cold) but he is cheap to maintain, easy to fix if anything goes wrong, and costs little to run! So here is my tribute: Long live Duke! Bring on the summer and those twistys!

Duke's stats:
Current Miles/KM: 10,808km+ (on this speedo)
Motorbike type: Learner/commuter
Engine: 125cc, I think it's air cooled and is CDI
Top speed: 55mph (passenger/fully loaded), 62mph (just me, down the motorway)
When he's happiest: In pretty countryside or after a wash!
When he's unhappiest: Me stressing him out through gaps in rush hour London traffic =(
His home is: the Cardiff Valleys
Furthest travelled: Harlow, Essex.
Special features: His big topbox, phone charger, halogen lamp (a luxury!), being Welsh =D

Carey Street motorcycle bays

I always smile a bit when I see innovative solutions for bikers in cities or means of parking for motorbikes - such as the parking bay on the right in this picture =)


(Carey Street, WC2)

Balls are touching...

Balls are touching... it's what I did on Friday, so read on. Work is looming over my head like a big grey cloud... But here's my fix!:

The last 3 weeks have been a series of [rather dramatic] highs and lows for me, and I've found it hard to come to terms with everything, but that's cool, it's for the best. On Friday I met up with some pals to go play pool at Rileys, which was easily the best thing I've done in a while. Like the others I hadn't touched a cue for some time, so y'know, we were all a bit rusty. Within an hour or so.... we were playing a little more competitively (it's a good thing, I can assure you).. but of course, Rileys was always about socialising rather than competing. Earlier today, I met up with another good friend, and we had a good chat for some... what, was it 5 hours+ or something? I don't think I've had a conversation with a single person for so long (!!). It was great to catch up and see her new flat, and all my worries were eased away... (well I hope her's was a little, my apologies for being a not-such-a-good guest!). But today I really felt she understood me, was there to listen to what I had to say and like, of had some good ideas and advice, so thank you. Today was my turning point, that point where the little light bulb inside my head goes *ding!* and I know what I'm doing in life all of a sudden again! (i.e. not being silly!)

On another note, as part of my big "phase" of distraction, I've gotten a new phone, which I've found rather feature packed. So I've been installing various ROMs (software that makes the phone go "tick"), softwares... So much so, that I'm working on a holder for my motorbike to use it's GPS feature. Note: Skip to the end of the post if you're not interested in the build!

The basic setup is basically a metal bracket (used for roofing that I got from Toolstation), attached to a waterproof case (meant for valuables when outdoors, from eBay) with some nuts holding it together and a BIG dollop of Araldite epoxy. The phone is able to charge and output audio via a splitter cable (from eBay), although it won't take calls since this would require finding some way to answer the call - i.e. the phone is inside a case, the only workaround is a button from a handfree headset, and that's not possible due to the nature of the setup. So I figure if I get calls I'll just ignore them until I pull up.

Sorting out the basic holder was simple enough. The holder will be mounted onto the mirror attachment. However, since the mirror is attached to handbars which rotate as you steer, the movement presented the next problem. Cheap wires/cables to bridge the steering (such as the typical cheap ones used in the splitter as seen above) would just not be able to handle the outdoors/rain/stress and would fail in pretty soon. I went to Maplins to buy some decent speaker cable which had 4 wires, removed one (since stereo uses 3) and was able to squeeze this into a normal 3.5mm jack. The power lead was automotive cable with a USB and mini USB plugs at either end, so it's essentially a power-only hardcore USB extension. I DIY-soldered my own cables so that I'd have some which would withstand the steering.


With the cables made up, I plugged the phone into my amp and the power to the usual charger. Bingo, it works fine and charges as it should.


The final job was making connectors ready for the outdoors, I'd already thought about the case for the phone. However, I wanted to be able to separate the USB cables from the splitter rather than waterproofing them by gluing them together. So I found a small plastic case from some old electronics to cover the plugs.


So that's it. The splitter is permanently held in place with the epoxy, tomorrow I'll mount it and give it a go, although I'm still waiting for the proper cigarette lighter socket-to-USB adaptor to arrive in the mail. I'll post a few more pictures later in the week!

Here's two good tunes which are on my playlist (might not be to everyone's taste I know)






Tomorrow is the start of another week, I'm some 2 weeks behind in study now, but I hope to catch up this week.

I've been looking at the way I work my life recently, and picked out a few sucky bits which I figure this academic year I'll work on! Well, there's quite a number of things I want to do now, so I need to take some initiative to work on myself. I've also been made to realise that I was never that inspiring towards others, sure I was good at being supportive.. but there is a line drawn between being supportive and being inspiring. Well, so I've been led to believe...! Sorry I was not there for you... I'm sorry to the various pals I've "neglected" a bit over the last year or so, you're not forgotten =P


"Live the dream" .. as a good pal always says..

so LIVE THE DREAM! I won't be scared of stepping OUT of my comfort zone this year!!

Take care all,
Have a fantastic week - I know will!!

Stay Happy, don' be sad... happyyyyyy =)

Cheap as chips...

Heres a good one for you... the topic is cheap electronic items you can find on eBay.

It really has me beat on the whole "I dont understand how they sell something so cheap and tack on some really cheap postage and ship it from Hong Kong" analogy. Normally you can find bargain electronics for around 3 pounds upwards, even 2 pounds, and that might or might not include postage... these sellers are based in Hong Kong (and 95%+ of the items recieved actually come from Hong Kong with HK stamps and HK postmarks, there is a very small few that are actually shipped from China, but I haven't had one of those for a few years now)

Well im buying a cigarette lighter socket splitter that costs £1.04 including postage. Goodness knows where their returns are......... if I was to slap on some UK postage once it got here and send it back the other way, it'd cost more than £1.04.

Never mind packaging (They'll bulk buy envelopes but thats still money) or the actual product itself (which would include importation and transit costs from China into HK as well as material costs).

Soooo.... Any ideas?

P.s. the splitter is to install some creature comforts on Duke so I can power my phone and other bits and bobs.

P.s.s. the halogen bulbs that I bought for Duke that looked the "bees knees" sucked balls. Lovely to look into (and blind yourself) but absolutely sucky at night, if anything worse than the original BA20d bulb that went in there before. I'll get round to sorting it out at some point. Thankfully I am rarely out in the country at night so no bigg