A small hill on the way to London has finally been surmounted. Rob has integrated his site into a content management software package called WordPress. The beauty of this, you see, is that when he needs to update or edit something on his website, all he needs to do is […]
Across the Eurasian Continent by Bicycle
I had a thought this morning…yes, it hurt. They come out of the blue, these thoughts…. Do I really need a PDA on this trip? The reason I am thinking of taking one is so that I can type up a daily diary. Having the diary in data format would speed up […]
Pre-Departure (147 days): No Need For a PDA?
If I don’t have some sort of Japanese input device, then I won’t be able to do Japanese diary posts on computers that don’t have the Japanese language pack on them. I can type Japanese on my PDA, and then directly copy that into the computer I’m working on a […]
Pre-Departure (146 days): I do need a PDA after all
Ah yes. After many months of waiting and confirming what I wanted, the bike has finally arrived. The bike is a German made HP Velotechnik Street Machine GTe (review: Bentrider Online), but I ordered it from Myron at Blue Ridge Cycleworks in Virgina, USA. Basically, Myron has a set price for […]
Pre-Departure (142 days): Bike has arrived!
I had my initial jabs today in preparation for the trip: Tetanus booster Hepatitus A and B Rabies Total cost for these four jabs was 17,850JPY. I have to go back in three weeks time for another round of Hepatitus jabs and for a Typhoid jab. The Typhoid one has […]
Pre-Departure (132 days): Injected with diseases
I redesigned the header of the site so that a random photo displays each time a page is refreshed or accessed. It is simply a div with an image background randomly displayed, with a gif file masker to make the corners appear round: The white area is actually transparent, allowing the […]
Pre-Departure (132 days): Random photo display in header
OK, so this bike is hard going up hill. But I’m sure (I hope) that it’s just about getting my legs used to the new movements. I’m sure speed up hill will increase. However, going down hill is another matter. It’s incredible. Not only is it fast, it holds the […]
Pre-Departure (130 days): Downhill is rediculous
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TEST
The mish for the last day or so has been to include an RSS feed of my own blog to my own site. The feed is displayed on the home page, so that people can see the most recent blog entries, along with a short excerpt from them. The thing […]
Pre-Departure (129 days): RSS description length
I arrived back in Beppu yesterday from three days riding around Oita Prefecture (and a wee bit into Miyazaki). The event was the Annual Oita Charity Bike Ride, organised by the Oita JET group. The charity was raising money for schools in Vietnam (www.roomtoread.org). The total distance of the ride […]
Pre-Departure (125 days): 5th Annual Oita Charity Ride
DSC05086 Originally uploaded by 1 4 d e g r e e s. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see if this flickr blog posting thing works. This is to see […]
Pre-Departure (125 days): A bike on a cliff
I’ve thought it would be handy to have some cards to hand out to people when I tell them about my trip. Especially I wanted something with the website address on it. This is a design that I came up with over the last few days. The bike silhouette was […]
Pre-Departure (123 days): ‘Business Cards’
The HPVelotechink Street Machine GTe comes with front and rear suspension as standard. I upgraded to the lighter Meks Carbon AC front shock and DT-Swiss rear airshock. While both shocks seem to be very high quality, the reality is that they are moving parts that are affected by water and […]
Pre-Departure (113 days): Bike suspension boots
The second round of jabs went smoothly today. This time was: Hepatitus A (second shot) Hepatitus B (second shot) Rabies (second shot) Typhoid The total cost for this session was 45,000yen (ouch). The culprit was the typhoid shot. There are no typhoid vaccine supplies within Japan, so it had to […]
Pre-Departure (111 days): injected with diseases – second round
Everyday you learn something new…some frequent visitors to this site may have noticed that for the best part of a week, 14degrees.org was not online. This was due to what I assume was a kind of ‘hacking robot’. One day I go to access the website, and I got a […]
Pre-Departure (105 days): Website hacked
I noticed yesterday that there was water spitting out of the top of the suspension forks on my bike. The damper cap (indicated by arrows) was loose, and it seems as though it got water in there on Saturday when I was riding in the rain. This can’t be a […]
Pre-Departure (90 days): Water in the suspension forks
Added a new nifty feature to the top page today – Get Recent Comments. This is a plugin for WordPress. Very handy little plugin that gives me masses of display options such as length of comment excerpt, post time, comment date etc etc. You can see it in action at […]
Pre-Departure (76 days): Display recent comments on posts
Has been a busy weekend: New slideshow photo gallery. Big ups to Rich for letting everyone know about it on his blog. Even bigger umpa lumpas to Yuan.CC Web Experiments for making it so easy to make a slideshow for your site using uploaded flickr photos. Video page. Will be […]
Pre-Departure (71 days): MULTIMEDIATED!
Another zoomy video for you. This one is of my daily commute to work. I live at about 10m above sea level, and work is at 350m. It’s a big hill, but after a few weeks it’s a no brainer. The total distance is 12km. These videos were shot on […]
Pre-Departure (67 days): new video – the daily slog
Long time no post… Just in case any readers feel like they need to brush up on their Japanese, here is my media briefing document (pdf 1.3MB) that I’ll be handing out to some local Japanese newspapers and TV stations either this week or the next. I hope to get some […]
Pre-Departure (58 days): Trip overview document
As expected, having my videos uploaded to my server has caused a big spike in bandwidth use. Currently this month’s bandwidth usage is 3.5GB compared with 250MB last month. My bandwidth limit is 5GB. Therefore considering that I only uploaded the videos halfway through this month, next month would definitely be suspect if […]
Pre-Departure (57 days): Bandwidth issues
On a scale of cheap processed cheese to thick and creamy Swiss fondu, this video is dripping with fondu. I have made a video where I am describing the recumbent that I’ll be riding on this trip. It sounds more like an infomercial than anything else. But the goal of […]
Pre-Departure (50 days): New video
Yes folks, I am again in China, interviewing nervous high school kids to see if their English is up to par for studying at Asia Pacific University, my workplace. I had some time to take a wander this evening in Tianamen Square and the Imperial Palace. I realised that I am […]
Pre-Departure (43 days): I be in ‘da China
Those Chinese make a mean birthday cake. ‘Twas very good indeed. I dunno how my workmates found out that it was my birthday, but at dinner with some local school teachers, they got a cake made just for me…stoked. I will post a couple of pics to the site once […]
Pre-Departure (42 days): Tianjing, China
What trip to Beijing would be complete without some Peking Duck? That was the main dish tonight. My Japanese workmates were quite adamant that the skin was the most delicious part of the duck. A bit too rich for me… And for those who need to brush up on their […]
Pre-Departure (42 days): Peeking in on the duck carver
I was never too happy with the fact that viewing videos on my site required viewers to click on a link, and be taken to an outside site (Google Video). Therefore, I have changed things around a bit where the videos now open in a popup window, along with a […]
Pre-Departure (37 days): For video viewing pleasure
Today’s savings: 57g Total savings to date: 57g Today begins a series of posts on reducing the weight of my gear that I’ll be taking on the trip. Not one measley one gram will escape my obsessive eye. This war on weight is in part inspired by another recumbent rider, […]