I’ve been looking at writing more of my blog posts on my iPad. However, up until I’ve recently been using Flickr for storing all my images and displaying them on my site. This has worked well in the past but has been a long winded - on the iMac, the image is copied into iPhoto and then uploaded to Flickr via that. Adding the image to the blog post is achieved by inserting the image using MarsEdit.

I’m a keen Strava user and have been for some time. I upgraded to Strava Pro last year in preparation for my training for the London Bikeathon but let it lapse after I finished that ride - I couldn’t quite justify the cost of it without a training aim. However, I found that occasionally I still wanted to access stats that where inaccessible or not shown on Strava and that’s when I discovered Veloviewer.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been writing a lot more in Markdown. Markdown is simple and easy to use, as I’ve pointed out before. Whilst nValt offers a good search function to find data within a note, I’ve been exploring additional details that I could add to files to make them easier to find. Well, it turns out that MultiMarkdown supports meta data or headers, something I didn’t realise even though I use MMD more than vanilla Markdown more often than not!

Recently I’ve made some new purchases for the Brompton. Nothing to fancy or special but upgrades I believed were now required. Cleats I’d held off on getting cleats for the Brompton for about a year now - however, the wet weather of the winter was making me think that that they were a good idea. In the recent weather, my feet have been slipping all over the pedals - I hadn’t quite yet managed to have my feet come off, but it had been close.

I’ve been using a tablet since I got my iPad 2 for a Christmas a few years back. I eventually upgraded that to an iPad Mini which I’ve then had for almost the past two years. I’ve briefly experimented with an Android tablet (the Tesco Hudl and Hudl 2) but I haven’t been impressed with them. I just don’t get on with Android it seems. However, I’d been debating if I wanted to upgrade the iPad.

I’d been a fan of Dr Drang’s table tidy script for Markdown, especially the one he’s recently updated here. However, he’s a BBEdit user and I don’t use BBEdit. I’m a fairly basic user, and I’ll stick with Textastic, nValt and Byword for my writing (LaTeX and Markdown respectively), so I didn’t think I could use his code. Turns out I’m wrong. The Script Dr Drang seems to write most of his scripts in Python.

Recently, I’ve been having to take more and more stuff into the office with me. I change in the office every morning and work have recently given me a laptop. As such, I’ve found that I’ve outgrown the Brompton S bag - come weekends when I’m staying away, I have to resort to using a backpack. Likewise, any day I fancy swimming, I have to take an additional bag. After lamenting on the London Brompton Club Facebook page, it was suggested I try a saddlebag as I can’t really use the T or M bag on the Brompton and even the full size O bag isn’t recommended for the S type handlebars (though I have in the past managed to fit the T type onto my S type handlebars which was interesting trying to brake and steer!

Recently, I decided with some regret, that one of my Brompton’s would have to be sold. The P type had been used for some long rides - it was the reason I was able to get my first taste of bike touring (Loughborogh to London) earlier this year. However, I’ve only ridden it a few times since then - even the 100 mile ride I did with the Brompton Club for the St Crispins Day night ride was done on my S type.

After buying my Brompton and using it on few rides with the London Brompton Club, I came to the conclusion that for the longer rides, I would need to get myself something to drink from - I’d already got myself a white O bag to match the Brompton, thanks to one of the Brompton owners selling one. However, whilst the bag is handy for carrying my tool kit and inner tubes, it’s not that helpful for holding a drink for easy access.

(This is a very delayed post from September that I forgot to press send to blog on! A number of photos are used with permission.) Saturday saw me take on the role of ride leader for the first time in the LBC group with a ride I’d planned from Hatfield to Cambridge. I’ve ridden this route in the past before, so I knew what to expect. I’d originally planned to do this ride in August but postponed it until September.