Republished courtesy of: 8ch

Great photographer that our friend 8ch is, it took me a moment to realise what he’d captured.

He sent us the photo having passed it by chance last Friday evening: my old Ribble chained to a railing in Carfax, Oxford.

I won a few races on this bike in 1994 when I was still a kid. I lugged it around for years after I quit cycling and eventually, ahead of a big house move, I gave it to 8ch for whom it was probably much too small. Some time later, 8ch himself moved and he gave the bike away to a good home.

Fifteen or sixteen years later, it’s still out there doing its job. It looks to have all the same bits – even the dodgy old 105 brake and downtube shifter I put on temporarily after a crash and never got around to fixing. And yes, you can still see my name on the top tube.

Source: Newsweek

Julos Beaucarne’s Pagodes, Ferme de Wahenge

Hoegaarden is home to the world’s most famous white beer. When megabrewery InBev tried to move production to another facility in 2006, the quality of the beer suffered, so Hoegaarden’s tradition continues.

Surrounding the town are the vast wheat fields required to produce all that hazy liquid gold. This walk crosses a few of them, before heading into Wallonie and passing the strange Pagodes field at the Ferme de Wahenge before wending its way alongside the Grande Gette river until it becomes the Flemish Grote Gete back at Hoegaarden.

The renowned singer-songwriter Julos Beaucarne built the aforementioned Pagodes, thirty six in number and constructed primarily from industrial cable drums. A household name in Wallonie, he will be best known to many foreigners as the author of the texts on the E411 roadsigns, which include Cris et chuchotements (Walibi Wavre), Trois crayons dessinent le ciel (Vêves) and perhaps most memorably for La Molignée, Mélange étrange d’églises et de granges. The full list can be found in a Le Soir archive article.

• Walking route: Hoegaarden – Mélin – Saint-Rémy-Geest – Zétrud-Lumay – Hoegaarden (loop)
• Distance: 20km

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Hoegaarden

Home of the world's most famous white beer, the town of Hoegaarden is surrounded by the wheat fields required for brewing.

Map

Larger map of this route

I was disappointed to learn that Google had a hand in recent proposals on Internet neutrality.

Google-Verizon proposals: telling tall tales

These proposals purport to underwrite the future of an open internet. To quote the BBC story on the subject:

“The set of seven proposals guarantee equal access to the internet and call for the prohibition of wired broadband providers from discriminating between different kinds of internet traffic to ensure that no-one can pay to have their traffic treated more favourably.”

Ostensibly it all sounds laudable, but given that only wired providers would be affected, it’s only one side of the coin. The future, we are often reminded, is wireless and between them Google and Verizon have everything to gain as the market continues to grow.

56% of Americans have accessed the Internet wirelessly

- Pew Internet & American Life Project (2009) [Source]

I sincerely hope that, with these “compromise proposals” as it calls them, Google has backed a loser.

Self-interest and the public interest

According to the blog post above, Google aimed for these two goals:

1. Users should choose what content, applications, or devices they use, since openness has been central to the explosive innovation that has made the Internet a transformative medium.
2. America must continue to encourage both investment and innovation to support the underlying broadband infrastructure; it is imperative for our global competitiveness.

The only choice guaranteed by the first goal, given the content of the proposal, is Hobson’s choice. Even if access to everything is open, a two-speed wireless internet will dissuade users from consuming information and applications not already sanctioned by wireless providers and their online partners.

The ‘explosive innovation’ of which Google speaks is the fruit of unrestricted choice based on a level playing field of user access, whatever the connection.

Then there’s the second goal. Despite all the WTO-encouraged talk of stamping out protectionism, these proposals seek to bolster American interests in a global economy.

These are words designed to sound sweet to American regulators burned by the Comcast case, the American public whose jobs are threatened by cheap labour, cheap imports and massive offshoring and to Google and Verizon shareholders everywhere, who will no doubt be salivating in anticipation.

Corporations and public policy

We have reached a point in time at which corporations can now define public policy by the front door. Where once lobbyists had to ply their trade in hidden corridors, today the democracy of money and influence is out and proud.

The Apples, the Microsofts and now the Googles of this world are no longer content with telling us what to buy.

These proposals on the future of the internet show us that pervasive product marketing is no longer enough. A corporation now needs to be willing enough to dictate our future, our moral principles and how we should live.

Whilst working for a company obsessed with customer service, I once learned that 95% of customers won’t bother to report a problem, they’ll just go elsewhere.

That figure is probably higher still on the Internet, where anonymity and choice are key aspects of the customer experience.

Support personnel at the Belgian edition of online recruitment website Monster clearly have much to learn about customer service.

Since the last time I updated my profile, Monster has ajaxified, widgetised and fetishised many of its interfaces. Most of them work fine.

However, I wrote to Monster the other day about a problem in Firefox with the tabs in their My Profile page. When I click these tabs, I explained, the content below is supposed to change. Instead, the click event is not being captured by the appropriate script so that the browser is navigating away to an error page.

Here’s an abridged reply from Davide Palaia of Monster Global Customer Services:

Dear Mike Padgett …

First of all, I would like to thank you for putting this to our attention, I will contact the right department and investigate for you.

However I would suggest you to either clear cache and cookies of your FF or eventually, if you still notice some difficulties, download Internet Explorer … [My emphasis]

I rest my case.

Cancellara surveys the crowd at Sint Niklaas

When I was a young cyclist, the end of the Tour de France felt like the end of the world. The Vuelta was a spring event back then and the World Championships, Paris-Tours and Lombardy were still distant.

Here in Belgium, as in neighbouring France and the Netherlands, there’s a thriving post-Tour criterium circuit to enjoy while you wait.

Today in Sint Niklaas, the police shut down the town centre in the late afternoon. Hordes of beer and sausage sellers set up their stalls. Then the crowds turn up. In droves.

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Sint Niklaas Criterium

After the Tour de France, it's time for the post-Tour criteriums: two hours of showboat cycling in a town near you!

For a couple of hours in the failing light of a summer evening, a bunch of local Davids take on the Goliaths of the sport. Bitter rivalries are played out once again with a knowing smile. Meanwhile the spectators dish out encouragement or mild abuse just the same as if this were the Ronde.

Schleck and Cancellara smile and speak awkward niceties into a pre-race microphone. The pace is never allowed to get too high, even if Ivan Basso is wearing his best painface. Vinokourov lurks deep in the bunch: he still has to get to San Sebastián in good condition for tomorrow’s Classic.

Even in the absence of a genuine competitive element, the Flemish passion for cycling goes freewheeling around this circuit. Kids climb the barriers for a better view. Girls admire the legs that just rode 3,000km. Demure old ladies suddenly lose their reserve and bawl out for a local hero.

This is showboat cycling, the closest thing on two wheels to exhibition tennis or professional wrestling. And it’s terrific.

As often happens in the European district of Brussels, a protest took place right in front of us yesterday afternoon. On this occasion, the protester was Greenpeace and the subject was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In front of the Berlaymont building – home of the European Commission and perhaps the symbol of the EU in Brussels – activists smeared themselves in a substance resembling oil and carried yellow banners.

In late May, I’d noticed the banner for the Commission’s Green Week, held barely weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. The logo seemed stylistcally reminiscent of Greenpeace’s own.

The purpose of Green Week was to highlight the effect of climate change on biodiversity and the Commission’s intent was to discuss policymaking in that domain.

The Commission sees Europe as a leading contributor to global environmental policy. Indeed, the current college of Commissioners, in office from 2010 to 2014, is the first to feature a Commissioner with a portfolio specifically dedicated to climate change.

A concerted response from world governments to environmental problems has been famously slow, but the scale of the Deepwater disaster – the massive leak is still not secure – also illustrates the responsibility and accountability of corporate businesses operating on a global scale.

Predictably, on these issues governments seem even more reluctant to intervene.

In addition to my earlier article on Getting started with a Garmin eTrex H GPS for walking, here’s a brief explanation of how I create routes and transfer them to the eTrex H.

Before we get started, there are a few points to mention:

• We’ll be using proprietary software and map products on Windows XP or above
• When creating a very basic route, we have no real need for waypoints, just via points – so I won’t be discussing waypoints here
• Sometimes the workflow might seem a bit convoluted, but as a routine I’ve gotten used to it and it will probably apply to almost any basic Garmin handheld device, not just the eTrex H!

Using Mapsource

As I explained in my Getting started… article, I use Garmin’s Mapsource software to plan and create routes, which doesn’t ship with the eTrex.

Mapsource (v6.15.11 illustrated here but v6.16.x works the same) is surprisingly clunky for a desktop software client. As the main interface between the eTrex H device and the computer, however, it’s pretty much essential and I can live with its limitations.

So with that in mind, let’s start up Mapsource now.

Drawing a route

First we’ll need to select our map product. Assuming it’s properly installed and unlocked, select it.

Select the map product you want to use

We need to find the starting location for our route. I often use Google Earth or Google Maps to do this: a satellite view offers a more human picture of car parking facilities and other features.

Use the Find menu and the Hand tool in Mapsource to drag to the location. The “+” and “-” keys will zoom in and out respectively.

Now select the Route tool and click on the map at the desired starting point.

Click on the map at the desired starting point

Point by point, draw a route out on the map. If you’re walking, you’ll obviously want to stick to paths and trails rather than proper roads. Mapsource isn’t too intuitive when you make mistakes, so try to minimise them wherever possible, making use of Edit > Undo / Ctrl Z. If you do need to go back and edit your points, then you should learn how to do that with the Route tool. Since I need to keep this article simple, I won’t cover it here.

Tip!

When drawing out a route, I again tend to use Google Maps or Google Earth with the pictures layer(s) turned on. This helps me ensure I don’t miss any beauty spots or places of interest (because people tend to take photos of them).

Showing the picture layer in Google Maps

Tip!

Always think of the real world when planning a route:

• Shorter is not necessarily easier or safer
• Map data (especially Garmin’s own topo maps) can be infuriatingly inaccurate, so check for updates and also your paper map
• Little details on the PC can help a lot on the trail – for example, if I’m going straight over a crossroads, I eliminate doubt by placing my next via point after the crossroads

Placing a via point after the crossroads

Caution!

It’s important to remember when drawing that the eTrex H only accepts a maximum of 125 points per route. This limit increases as we go up the food chain of Garmin GPS models. So what can we do with a long and/or complicated walk? The options are limited but I don’t mind. More on that below in the Preflight section.

Once you’ve finished drawing out the route, you might want to save it. The default file format is GDB, a Garmin proprietary format specific to Mapsource and as such not necessarily transferable to other software. Personally, I stick to GPX, which is an XML standard (albeit proprietary itself) and supported by all software and devices I’ve so far encountered.

Preflight

Years ago, I used to do graphic design. After the creative work was finished and in order to send the artwork off to the printer, a final – and sometimes highly technical – workflow would usually be necessary: Preflight.

In the same way, if because of length or complexity the route contains more than 125 via points, we will need to do another workflow before we can transfer our route to the eTrex H. If the route contains 125 or less via points, you can continue to Transferring GPS routes to the eTrex H.

With longer routes, we need to consider one of the following options:

1. Cutting out superfluous via points to get the total down to 125 points – this is easier than it sounds, because a clearly-defined trail rarely needs every kink to be marked with a point
2. Dividing a big route into multiple smaller routes – this in turn triggers another eTrex H-specific constraint, the grand total of points across all routes cannot exceed 500!

If you can’t work around the point limitations of the eTrex H by option 1, then option 2 will work for all but the most complicated routes. You just need to be comfortable with the idea of switching routes on the fly during your walk.

So speaking personally, the only practical inconvenience for me is having to keep an eye on the device when I know we’re nearing the end of one route, because then I’ll need to switch to the next one on the list.

Tip!

Cutting out the flabby via points or splitting a big route into a series of smaller routes could be a big headache. Mapsource certainly won’t help us.

Enter the resourceful Dutchman Edward Sackman and his brilliant WinGDB utility. Alongside Mapsource, I use WinGDB almost as much.

WinGDB is a multitool of functions that the folks at Garmin neglected to include in Mapsource, including facilities for route simplification (based on some excellent mathematics) and splitting. You can output the results to a file or to another instance of Mapsource.

Edward Sackman’s WinGDB (v3.44 shown)

If you’re planning more complex routes and you’re willing to accept the eTrex H’s limitations, then spend some time getting to know WinGDB.

Transferring GPS routes to the eTrex H

Without Mapsource or an alternative [1], you cannot transfer routes or tracks to or from the eTrex H because the serial interface cannot be read like a disk in the way that we might do with, say, a digital camera. So you’d otherwise be reduced to entering the points on the device manually, which is no fun at all.

So far we’ve prepared our route using Mapsource, so let’s go back to it now.

If you’ve installed the correct drivers for your eTrex H (see the Getting started… article for more information), transferring routes to it is simple using the Transfer > Send to device... menu:

Be sure not to pull out the cable or stop the operation before it’s finished. Also check the device to confirm that the transfer has completed. If your route contains too many points, the device (not the computer) will truncate it and display a message to that effect.

And finally, as this is serial and not USB, be patient because the transfer process can take a while!

Footnotes

1. “… or an alternative”: alternatives to Mapsource as an interface between a computer and the eTrex H are rare. GPSBabel is one example of which I have no personal experience. Most of Garmin’s other, higher specification devices are more simply managed since they feature removable memory cards ↑

Barjac is a patchwork of narrow streets and unexpected squares, long shadows and the langorous, whispery silences of endless afternoons.

With peace comes expansion and Barjac has long since outgrown the natural advantage of its hilltop position. Newer houses spread out along new roads, welling up like fresh water from the fountain basin of the town square, before petering out in the dusty plains beyond.

Barjac’s community mixes ever fewer suspicious locals and ever more leathery expats. Colourful posters in shop windows advertise events that always seem to take place after you’ve left. In the windows themselves are the fruits of artisanal activities, priced high enough that few visitors will trouble the windchimes hanging from the door.

The French spoken in Barjac sounds like French spoken underwater. You can count on one hand the people who look like people who live here, yet the town has two driving schools.

Last year, while passing through Roussillon I imagined that tourism was tolerated as a necessary evil, that when Summer was over life could start again like Spring postponed.

Here in Barjac, some of those who arrived as tourists have never left, to judge from the names on letterboxes. The distant march of the hammer and drill is getting louder. And to keep this town breathing, yet more tourism will be needed.

New life is being breathed into Barjac, but some may be uncomfortable with the form it’s taking.

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Barjac

A small, medieval town on the northern edge of the Gard, not yet completely swamped by tourists.

This wasn’t our first visit to the Pont du Gard, one of the world’s finest remaining examples of Roman engineering. We came here during a short holiday in 2007 in similar, baking temperatures. Finding ourselves at a loose end and in the area, I wanted to come back and get a few more photos.

The aqueduct was built in the middle of the first century AD to swell the hard-pressed wells of Nemausus (Nîmes). The stone blocks of which it consists are sometimes huge and so accurately cut as to negate the use of mortar.

At the time of writing and unlike most other UNESCO World Heritage Sites, here there’s a cost. You’re actually paying for the facilities rather than the Pont du Gard, but at €15 per vehicle per day, a flying visit offers less value than taking along a picnic.

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Pont du Gard

One of the world's finest remaining examples of Roman engineering.