simon's scratchpad

I hate to say it, but I don’t post many reviews of products.  The Roberts radio we bought yesterday, however, deserves some serious praise!

We were looking for a radio with on-demand internet service (last.fm), DAB, FM, an iPod dock and reasonable sound quality.  That is NOT what we got.

Instead, we got the Roberts Stream 83i.  The 83i does not have an iPod dock, nor does it have reasonable sound quality.  It has incredible sound quality.  And I mean incredible!  It is loud, full and hits the highs and lows required of a hardcore trance track (a good test in my opinion).

It seemed expensive to us at the current retail price (£150) but when we shopped around at John Lewis it was clearly the best equipped radio for the price, especially seeing as our iPod has laid uncharged in a drawer for >6months.

The Stream 83i also looks like a proper radio, it has physical buttons, an aerial and proper turn-dial knobs.  It fits in really well in our lounge.

The last.fm experience is great, you can love and ban tracks from the unit or the remote, select playlists or play tag and artist radios just like a PC client.

The DAB sound quality is as good as I’ve heard it, as is the FM receiver.  Local media requires a DLNA-enabled server (a Vista or Win7 machine for example) or a USB stick with MP3s on it.

Overall I am extremely impressed with the Stream 83i, I could easily see it replacing our >£500 component system as we phase out CDs.  It really fills a room with sound (if you’ve heard a Bose system, it’s like that!)

I have used Dropbox for a good few years now and find it an invaluable tool for file sharing, backup, versioning and sync across the many machines I use. Click here to get a free account with some bonus space! Recently I have started developing multiple websites on my server and was using a combination of editing files over ssh and using SFTP to push updated files to the server.  This has been a slow and cumbersome development strategy but I hadn’t thought of a better way, until I thought about Dropbox’s latest feature: selective sync.  This would allow me to have a folder in my Dropbox that syncs to my web server, and contains all the files for my web sites!  Using Dropbox to store all my websites means that I can develop easily from any computer (even my phone) and share a website’s files with other developers for rapid development.

tl;dr: After a Windows Update, Windows told me that I was a victim of software counterfeiting and told me to buy another license for Windows 7.  I used “Activate Windows” (in the start menu) and clicked “Activate online” to fix it.

EDIT: There is a forum about this here.  There is a lot of information there, the jist of it is to confirm your copy of windows is genuine by using http://www.microsoft.com/genuine or using the Windows Activator.

After trying to change the default application for Python files in Ubuntu using the standard method e.g. here, the default did not change.

If you right-click on a file, select properties and the “Open With” tab, you can pick which application to use.

Simple, no?

I was originally planning to re-use the drive train from my old bike for this new project.  When I ordered my new wheels I had assumed that my current bike used a cassette for gears, turns out its a freewheel.  This gave me two options: buy a new 7-speed cassette and still use the rest of the drive train, or go ahead and buy a new drive train.

A brief inspection of my current drive train led to the decision to buy a whole new set.

I had been into The Hub Cycle Works previously for a query about forks and they seemed very knowledgeable and pretty friendly to boot.

So this morning I took as much of the bike as I have built so far to the hub to discuss options.  I had a quote from an online shop which was obviously for inappropriate parts, the chap in the hub showed me what was available and we agreed on a shimano deore groupset + shifters, cables etc.  The quote was a little a high so I managed to wiggle the price down by 15% and get them to finish all of the rest of the bike for free!  (Cutting steerer tube to length, fitting headset, fitting stem, installing bottom bracket, servicing brakes…)

Bit of a bargain if you ask me!  Pictures to follow of old bike and new.

My order from AllTerrainCycles was for the frame, handlebar, stem, headset and some grips.  The picture below is of the more important bits.

I am just waiting for a spacer and post-mount adapter from Wiggle (when buying a 203mm disc brake I had assumed that it would come with an adapter to allow the use of the 203mm disc, apparently not).

Luckily I have a friend who works in a bike shop who has agreed to let me use a headset press, bottom bracket spanner and pipe cutter.  So hopefully will have the bike together early next week!

From ChainReactionCycles I ordered a RockShox Tora SL Coil 2010 Poploc fork (yeah it’s a mouthful!) and a larger, 203mm Avid BB7 brake set.

The disc is absolutely massive and the forks feel great.  Just waiting for the AllTerrainCycles order (expected on the 8th or 9th July) and I can put it all together into a bike!

For comparison here is a picture of my old front disc and the new one on top:

So I have decided to build a new bike, bastardizing parts from my horrible 5 year old halfords POS.

I decided to use ChainReactionCycles, Wiggle and AllTerrainCycles after much searching of reviews, prices and delivery options etc.

From Wiggle I ordered a 160mm Avid BB7 and a Shimano Deore wheelset which had the rimtape, inner tubes and tyres already attached.  I paid a grand total of £3 for delivery, and got the huge package within 18 hours.  Definitely recommend these guys and I will use them again!

So anyway the wheels look like this:

The Avid BB7 needs no introduction!  It is officially the best mechanical disk brake available, and it looked like this: