Neither Hail, nor...

Ciaran and I headed back to Whitelee today for what was planned to be a longer cycle. We decided to turn left once we got back to the spine road and head up towards the Drum Duff group of turbines. Depending on what the conditions were like we hoped to rejoin the spine road at turbine 79 or maybe even 115 (see map) and then return along the spine road.
Since the visitor centre has just reopened we brought lunch with the knowledge that we could get hot drinks if needed. By the time we left Troon it had just started to rain, but since it had been bright all morning we figured it would blow through, and it did.
It was near one by the time we actually started to cycle. I think I prefer starting from the spine road - you don't have the ski jump start from the visitor centre to turbine 40 and you don't have to end with that climb back up. It was quite windy but with the sun out it didn't seem so cold.
By the time we got tot he steep fast descent between 71 and 87 Ciaran was in good form and headed down the hill at good speed, with me behind him. At the bottom its gets quite rough with large fist sized rocks across the path. The plan is to go through it at a fast enough pace that you don't fall, keeping a light grip on the handle bars, and bouncing through the rough. As I watched, Ciaran bum left the seat and the bike left the ground. He headed left while the bike went right. Before I could call out all had come back together and landed and continued up the other side. I came along side and asked how he was "terrified but good fun".
We continued on our was from 88 to 29 which I think is the bleakest, most exposed bit of the trip. Sure enough it began to spit rain the droplets like ball bearings pushed by the wind. Luckily, that didn't last long - it turned into hail and we had to shelter. of course there was nowhere to shelter so Ciaran simply huddles in front of me while my back took the brunt of the showers.

Once we started off again Ciaran said that it was a bit too cold for him and could we just head back to the visitor centre. Of course we were exactly at the halfway point of our normal route so we simply agreed to head back to the car and not further into the windfarm. The trip down the spine road was difficult with the wind as strong as it was but at least it didn't rain (or hail) again.
Sadly our final run up the hill towards the visitor centre was spoiled for Ciaran by pedestrians - despite the good surface he couldn't get enough speed to get him far enough up the other side and had to walk the final little bit - he still needs to figure out how his gears work and how to best manage them.
All in all a great day with me very proud of his ability.
As we were packing the car to go home we bumped into Fiona's brother, his wife and daughter just heading out for their cycle - lets hope they didn't get any hail.

We also saw this rather odd trike. The guy got it down from the car and set it up. He seemed to steer by leaning and I couldn't see how he would pedal it, until he took a pair of huskies out of the car and tethered them into the harness.

Whitelees sheds a blade

Was out at Whitelees with Fiona on Saturday morning.
On the way in we noticed that none of the turbines were spinning with any great speed. Most were stopped but a couple were turning lazily in the wind. We initially thought that the wind speed was simply too low to spin the blades but re visited that decision when we turned to cycle into the wind. We did notice a turbine with only 2 blades and wondered if that had something to do with it.

I mentioned it to a few guys once I got back into the office and it turns out that the turbine shed a blade at about 0200 on Saturday morning, about 10 hours before we got there. The entire site was shut down while they investigated the cause. At least that makes sense, by the time we had finished cycling we could see staff working on the turbine nearest the damaged one.

After the Snow

The snow is finally away from Whitelee and Ciaran and I headed out for a cycle. He has never been cross country and was keen to see what its like.
I noticed through the week that the normal entrance is not available - they seem to be increasing the car park. That's good news as the car park was way too small, but we will have to go in via the spine road rather than the visitor centre.
Its amazing to see the place without all the snow. It was totally covered only 10 days ago, but apart from the reservoir still having some ice and a few isolated snow patches, you would never know. The roads aren't even all that wet!

 Given that Ciaran has never been off road he did really well. He took it easy down the first descent but opened up on the second one. There is a lot of loose rock and the surface is not good - he did well to keep control. He was more impressed when we got round to the other side and could see the hill we came down.

The H[ouse] is alive to the sound of music

I was sitting on the sofa one night. There was nothing particular I wanted to watch so i decided to put on some music. Rather than using my micro system I decided to use my mp3 player as it has other music which I've downloaded on it and the micro system pre dates mp3, CDRW and the whole DRM issue.
While I was listening to my music it occurred to me that I was using a huge amount of storage for the CDs I had on display. Everything on the shelves, and in the unit beside me, and the music I'd bought online all fit onto my mp3 player, which was only the size of half a deck of cards. There has to be new stereos with built in hard drives which can free up all this storage. If an mp3 player with 16Gb, FM radio and colour screen costs less than £100 18 months ago then there should be some nice systems on the market.
Only there's not.
Why? Apple have killed the stereo market. They have developed the iPod dock which allows an ipod to connect to a stereo and have its music played through the system, in a managed way. Of course I can connect my mp3 to the stereo via the line in but I have to pump the volume up and it drains the battery.
So is there anything other than Apple? Its seems that there is little choice. There is a cheap system but it has a locked in hard disk - I would have to rip all my discs again and there is no way to transfer tracks on or off the disk. There is the Brennan machines (very nice and tempting) but they lack a radio, not that i listed to the radio that much, but if I was replacing the AM/FM, CD, cassette player it had to be with more than just a CD player. Sony had just what i wanted but none were in stock n the entire western Scottish region (plus at over £800 it wasn't happening).
Since I had already ripped the music why didn't I just stream from my pc? The main reason is that the pc is about as far from green as you can go. Since my mp3 gives 18 hours playback from a single charge can I justify the CO2 generating pc being on just to push music out to another device?
USB support was my one hope. Many new stereos have a usb port where you can connect a thumb drive and have it play the music. I would take a drive with a sample of music and test the local systems. By now a few months have passed and there is less choice than ever in the shops. Most machines i looked would play the music as loaded onto the thumb drive's folder system. One system did however scan the drive and offer tracks according to artist, genre and album. So I went for it, the Phillips Streamium station. As it was ex display I got it cheaper but without a box or manual. I got it home and set it all up and have been quite pleased - until I downloaded the manual and found out that its the centre I really want as it has a hard disk I can push tracks onto.  A quick look shows this is a £600 plus expense, if it was available which is seems not to be. Ebay is a friend and I managed to actually get the centre cheaper than I got the station.
Once it arrived I set it all up but it seems to work best if you can network it to a pc as the control software is all pc based. Off we went for a wireless router for the house and with remarkable little difficulty I had a new network set up. The Pc and the centre are wired to the router, while the station upstairs in my bedroom and my netbook are both wirelessly connected. The xbox is now also wired into the net for its uploads. I can listed to music from the stereo which is stored on its hard drive. I can wirelessly transmit that to the station upstairs to listed to the same music or an internet radio station.
The only thing I can't seem to get is FM reception but who listens to radio...