With the new saddle onboard and the updated brakes starting to bed in I went on a looping cycle around Castletroy, in the search for a nice loop that is pleasant to cycle with as little problems as possible. I’ve found that the cycle lanes on the south side of Castletroy (Groody link road, Monaleen Road, SchoolHouse Lane) are not suitable for cycling a road bike at normal speeds (20-35kph) as the surface is rough and rattley with broken surfaces and really poor path-road interfaces. Some places on the paths are rough even at walking pace! I’ve found it is better for my safety to be on the road and able to maintain speed and visibility for roundabouts instead of possibly surprising some poor motorist. Some of the cycle paths are good for kids and people ambling along, but not really for commuters or sport cyclists. It’s a pity that there is little desire to fix the problem and less cash available to implement the fixes. Then again, with a County Council that in all their [lack of] smartness put a pedestrian crossing within the average modern car braking distance from the exit of a roundabout across two lanes – there’s little hope of getting sane and coherent cycle paths that go from A to B.

It was a pleasant enough road cycle, and one of the best bits was accelerating away from cars at the Golf Links Road traffic lights by the Spar, and overtaking cars on the way down to the roundabout! Just under the road speed limit in the are so all legally too.. 56.7 kph according to Node2, 56.09 kph according to Cyctastic.

Seeing was reasonable, but not that good. I got a few videos of Jupiter, one of Mars, and a few of various bits of the moon. all to be processed at a later date. I tried a few 30 sec exposures of M42′s core – came out pretty well even accounting that I was using the 2x barlow to reach focus.. The trapezium was clearly resolved, as were the colours and Herschel’s “Mackerel Sky” pattern of the brightest part of the nebula. After waiting for Mars to clear the treetops to my southeast, I took off the 8″ from the LXD75 and put the Onyx onto the mount. I tried a few widefileds of M42 without much look, the streetlights were washing out the image. So I pointed high to the east, and aimed at M51.

I set the camera to no ISO noise reduction, and auto long exposure noise reduction was set on so that the camera would subtract a dark frame for each light taken. First impression was that I could get the cores of M51 and NGC 5195 and a tantalizing hint of spiral arms at 10 sec @ ISO 800. So I set it off to run out the battery at 1m exposures. I got 14 minutes of exposure, each one a bright orange :( But after downloading and working in IRIS, I got a reasonable image with mag 15 stars and mag 13.5 NGC galaxies in the image. I’m still working on it, but I’ll add it to this post when it’s done.

Very nice short session that wound me down nicely from the evening’s work, and these quick grabs of suitable stargazing time have really made me thankful that I got the 80mm Onyx and the alt-az mount. Setup is minimal and the cooldown isn’t a big issue compared to the Newts.

2nd hand 2011 Trek Madone 4.5 frame in 54 size (black/red), 105 compact chainset, 105 grips/shifters, 105 front brake, tiagra rear brake, Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels, Bontrager Node 2 bike computer, Vittoria 700*20 wheels.

First impressions? Light. Comfortable enough, but I’ll swap out the brakes and the tyres for ones that will better suit my weight. I’ll also have to get a pump that will work with the tubes…

The new road bike should be ready to go now – that’ll mean a good chance to get road fit to prepare for the upcoming French episode! I’m so looking forwards to having that bike available for use..

While I’m not in college I have my midweek 3-day weekends available again – giving me a chance to properly wind down and relax before the next semester of college, and the summer of Thesis. Another 2 weekends left in the month..

So, the US doesn’t even have it own SOPA law passed, and there are already people strongarming Spain into putting something similar. Notwithstanding the fact that Spain’s copyright law is not compatible with SOPA..

Corroberation: http://boingboing.net/2010/12/03/wikileaks-cables-rev.html

US – please get your attempts to corrupt our laws off the table for good, and tend to your own corruption and bribery issues please.

Wow. Just wow.

Looks like anytime I’ll be flying to Canada I’ll happily pay more not to be a criminal or to be inappropriately groped or otherwise interfered with and fly via locations that do not operate TSA “checkpoints”…

Or do you see the Occupy* actions as something bad as you wish you were one of the 1% with everything that that entails? Personally I fully support the Occupy* and I have hope that something useful comes of them, not just a heavy handed blackout and riot police action (see Oakland – disgusting from the so-called Land of the Free, but not unexpected given the route taken from Sep 11 to 1984..)