The London Biker

A little while ago we met a very nice chap called Michael Field at the Daily Telegraph Adventure Travel Show - we had a good talk to him and he told us the best way to keep ourselves dry on the road.

After we got back Michael dropped us a line and very kindly offered to send us some bits and pieces to help us get our kit ready. I must be honest I’ve never really believed in after-market waterproofing - we’ve all been there and bought the sprays and the liquids and everything in-between from the camping shop - so when I put the jacket in the wash this weekend I wasn’t holding out much hope.

My jacket is three years old, it’s never been washed and to be totally frank it was not really very waterproof around the tummy area. I’ve always put that down to the way my tummy pushes against the front and desperately tries to escape

So into the washing machine the jacket went, following the instructions on the tech wash bottle - 30 degree hand wash cycle - out it came dripping wet and not very much cleaner than before - but Michael had warned me - use the tech wash first otherwise the waterproof wont work.

Given the beautiful weather this weekend it was dry in a couple of hours, so went back in on a 40 degree wash, gentle cycle, slow spin with the waterproof liquid. To cut a long story short, it took six hours in total to wash the jacket, dry it, wash it again and leave it dry once more. It’s not a task I’d do in anything but the best of weather.

Allowing for British weather I didn’t have to wait long to test the application. This morning it was throwing it down, a perfect opportunity to see in action the wonder proofing that Michael had promised. I rode for an hour in the rain, constant but not heavy, fully expecting to have to change my top when I got into work.

Arriving in west London I noticed something very odd, the water, as it was hitting my jacket was beading, gathering in little balls before running off all together. It’s not 100% efficient but most of the water simply wasn’t staying on the fabric. Getting into the office I pulled the jacket off to discover no wet spot - nothing at all - bone dry underneath.

These two products form the basis of the Nikwax range, and frankly if everything else they produce works as well as these two, then it’s a name I’ll trust in the future.

June 21st and 22nd is fast approaching and as everything is slotting into place here, the sign up is ready to go live. We’re releasing about 400 tickets this year, and given how quickly they sold out last year I’d keep an eye on the blog and on backstage.bbc.co.uk this week.

Lots of exciting things to talk about and not very much time to get it all done!

Choosing a tent to take overland is never an easy task, do you go for weight? What about material? Cost? All very important questions, but ultimately I think it boils down to how you work with the tent and how it works for you in return.

I know, slightly strange to be talking about forming some sort of bond with something as silly as a tent, but after all this small, insubstantial shelter is going to be your home for the next goodness knows how long, why not take some care in what you chose? Why not take into account how you feel about your home?

With that in mind may I introduce the first tent that has made me feel something about how it’s put together - the Coolabah swag bag from Burke and Wills - distributed in this country by www.theaussieshop.co.uk

It’s completely made of canvas, both it’s best and worst point. I remember when I was a kid camping with my dad, a massive six person tent that took up the entire rear of the car, and took about a week to put up. It smelt bad when it rained, if it rained for more than a couple of hours you’d get a fine mist working its way through the material. But it seems even with the oldest tent material in the world we can have a bit of an update.

I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is, but it’s more ‘waxy’ and even though I’m yet to test it in the wet I can quite believe the claim from Burke and Wills that once it’s been wet, the seams expand and it’ll deal with everything but the worst of the weather. They suggest before you use it you take it out and give it a good hosing. Makes sense.

It’s certainly a ‘choice’, once I’d decided that I didn’t want to take a tent that took a lot of time to put up, and decided that I didn’t need a tent that I could get changed in etc, then the one man options became more sensible, the problems as ever boiled down to how you get in and out when it’s raining and where do you sit if it rains.

I’ve looked at a lot of one and two man tents, but all the modern ones just seem to be far to complicated. I’ve been looking for something that I can pull off the back of the bike un-roll and get in - complete with sleeping mat and bag. With the Coolabah I’ve finally found it. It ships with a foam mattress that frankly I’d be comfortable with as my main bed, but practically it’s just too big and doesn’t roll to a sensible size. I’ve now replaced that with my Exped Downmat (from Traveldri-Plus) and my sleeping bag - it now rolls up to half the size but it’s still fairly wide. If you’re on a narrow bike with no panniers you may struggle to find a way to fit it on. My bike, just like me, is quite wide and with 54 litre panniers on either side this isn’t going to cause me a problem.

The attention to detail is superb. As you get into the tent through the very accessible top door and put your head on the pillow you notice immediately how well put together it is, how close all the stitching is and how good the material is. I was very impressed when I saw a handy little loop for my torch and a series of pockets just above my shoulder for those little things like phones and glasses. I was slightly concerned about storage for things like my camera, but actually there’s so much room down by your feet that I stowed both my stills and video camera there without noticing them during the night.

There’s enough space inside to comfortably move around during the night and even change your undies and put some trousers on, but putting a top on is a bit difficult and you’ll need to poke your head out to achieve the more space conscious dressing activities.

The design is perfect, rather than the usual crawling into your tent you use a door on the top of the tent, very coffin like. In reality this means you can lie down and look out at the stars, either directly or through the mosquito net before pulling the canvas door over your head for a totally dark night. There is a door at the very end you can crawl through - but frankly - I don’t fit - I do like the fact you can leave the canvas on the end open with the net down however.

In summary, a great tent, very well made and once you’ve pulled out the supplied foam mattress and replaced it with a more sensible version just right for putting up each night very quickly. The only issues are with the size once rolled up - if you can deal with that and can find a sensible way to cover yourself in the rain (think tarp and poles off your bike) then go for it.

Utter utter bliss….

I’ve almost deliberately not blogged about my super boss leaving the BBC and heading for pastures new - he’s off to run Kangaroo. But with the amount of traffic and questions I’m getting from the nice people of the press perhaps this is the easiest place to comment.

There’s been a massive amount of talk in the developer community about who should replace him - Ian points out the Tech Crunch article where Mike has written an open letter asking for us to open more of the data that the license fee payer has already paid for - I don’t want to have a go at Mike too much because he’s put me on a list of people (vote now!) who could replace Mr Highfield - Mr Cridland is leading the way right now.

However, it’s a wonderful thought, and Mr Forrester and I have been working really hard to make that happen for the last 18 months - the BBC actually has a department set up to make this happen - it’s called backstage.bbc.co.uk - but it’s not as effective as it could be. Lots more work to do on opening our stuff. But there’s a shift happening and it’s really cool. Developers inside the organisation feel as strongly about this as start-ups and developers outside do - we all want to make our stuff available, in the best format and easiest method for people to re-use.

For the first time since I’ve been back at the beeb there’s a real vibe about making that happen. Mr Highfield has supported that, in fact he’s actively encouraged it to happen, both in the broader ‘making things happen’ sense and in the more practical making money available to run things like Mashed. He has a massive amount of respect from me for doing just that, and I’m sad to see him leave.

As for his successor - that’s not for me to say - there will be a group of people vastly more qualified than me to make that decision - I’m always happy to comment and proffer my extensive (ha ha ha!) knowledge should I be asked - but I wont be doing that in public. Sorry.

From a post I made over at Horizons Unlimited - these are my intial thoughts after using the Asus as a primary machine for a week whilst being away - full review to follow in a month once I’ve used it properly.

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Okay so a quick update before the full review gets going - I’m using the ‘wee beastie’ as my primary machine whilst I’m away with work at the moment - so it’s getting heavily used each day.I’ve been scared about messing with the OS too much as I’m away from another machine that will help me fix it - but I have updated all the software and run the advanced mode - had a little explore of Xandros as a distro and played with it’s more esoteric features.

OS - Xandros is a bitch if you’re used to more power and flexibility in your OS, it’s perfect for the Eee, but it’s going as soon as I get a chance to flash to Ubuntu - YMMV depending on your computer know-how and it’s not something I’d recommend for the feint of heart. The boot time on Ubuntu if done properly is only 5 seconds longer than Xandros - worth the wait IMHO.

Build quality - fantastic, very sturdy little machine, been thrown in and out of my bag all week with no visible abuse - comes with a handy little neoprene bag to keep it’s beautiful baby blue cover nice and pristine - no use on the motorbike yet.

Keyboard - takes some getting used to, and even after a week (I’m a touch typist) there’s no illusion that I’ll be putting out 20 page documents - but I can type at about 80% of my usual speed and for blog posts, forums and email that’s sufficient.

Wi-Fi - works like a charm - in easy mode and advanced mode alike it finds and connects exactly like a windows machine, but perhaps not as simply as a Mac - easy to see what’s going wrong if it can’t connect and direct comparison between an IBM thinkpad and MacBook Pro show it sees the same number of connections, it is a little over-optimistic about signal strength though.

Web cam - what do you expect? It’s not as wonderfully clear as an iSight on the Mac, but then again it’s perfectly useable in everything except very strong back light - perfectly sufficient for Skype (once you’ve installed the Skype update).

Storage - I have the 4gb version and was left with a little over a gig after the OS instal - that’s a little tight but after using if for a week I’ve not had any problems - docs are quite small when saved in Open Office format (it ships with open office, but you can save the docs as MS Office should you wish), the video I download I’m dumping to my cameras 2gb SD card and I’m leaving my photos on the camera SD card, uploading directly to flickr. 

The built in SD card reader is well placed, it takes a while to soften up a little - I was slightly worried about how stiff if was when first using it - but no damage to the cameras SD card as it’s been in and out all week. If you’re going to run Windows I’d suggest you install it to a sep SD card or a USB memory stick.

I’m going to be buying an 8gb SD card from Amazon - £14.53 - to leave in there to store videos / photos etc if I really need them - but frankly I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.

Sound - the in-built speakers it ships with are not going to power your house party, but they’re perfectly useable if it’s quiet and you’re on your own - you’ll probably want to plug in some headphones though, and the volume from those if perfectly sufficient.

These are my initial thoughts and I’m sure they’ll shift as I play a little more - I’ll post here as I discover new stuff that may help others - my next step is too see if I can mess around with short AVIs I’ve shot on the stills camera to do video podcasting whilst on the road…..

So here I am at the show… it’s live over at miptv.com

It’s a rather strange set - dressed as it is to give the results in a mastermind style - very odd.

More here as it happens.

Photo’s as they go up over at - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattcashmore/

So very strange so far - but by far the best way I’ve seen to present what can be a very boring set of awards - great for those involved (they get cash) but not for those of us in the audience.

It’s descended into even more strangeness here as we reach half time - a really funny way to give away prizes - throw your business card (I forgot mine!) at the stage and get a helicopter ride or a mobile phone… now back to the awards. (Photos on the flickr stream of this happening)

He he…. Ashley has just been pulled up on stage and described as Yoda

Just noticed that Ingrid - the able assistant on-stage keeps changing her tee-shirt - quite funny and slightly odd - wondering if there’s a reason behind it.

On-stage host is turning into a bit of a letch…. but to be fair… Jason DaPonte is a very attractive man

Winners (BBC only):

• Mass Participation - Poltergeist 360
• Advanced mobile interaction with TV Content - Coded Vision
• New forms of web-based audio and video aggregation - Microstations
• New IPTV Concepts - Interactive Programme Templates

That’s it from the BBC categories - I’ll sign off now as the new Asus is complaining that its battery is low

Great event, very well put together and lots of fun.

Currently sat in a presentation by Erik Huggers at mipTV - very informative and a fantastic overview of what FM&T is currently doing.

In fact, I’m learning stuff about our business that I didn’t even know we were exploring…. perhaps we should make this available internally?

In my haste to get this post up yesterday I forgot to mention that the big announcement that Erik made during the speech was that we’ve been working with Nintendo to make the iPlayer available on the Wii - I’ve known about this for a while but keep forgetting we’ve not told anyone publically!!!

You can read about it over on BBC News

So I’m in Cannes, yes okay it’s the south of France, I have a tough job (it’s not very nice here as it happens - wind and rain). But today I’ve sat through all the pitches for the BBC within content 360.

Having run labs this year it’s interesting to see the ideas that are being pitched to the same briefs I’ve already spent two weeks working on with diverse companies in the UK - and I have another two weeks of working on them.

The same commissioners are here, broadly looking at the same ideas and I’m beginning to wonder how much of a pain it is for large organizations like the BBC to interact in a meaningful way with indies - the current models are unsustainable as we require more and more time from commissioners to look at ideas that at this early stage are very weak or simply just not for the BBC.

How can we pull all this together, or at the very least insert a filter further down the line without losing the gem of a fantastic idea.

I think there’s some lessons we can learn here - I’m just not sure what they are yet.