Once back at work, my usual blogging time on the train trip to and from work disappeared, as my MacBook Pro died and I started riding to work more often.

I need to start blogging on a more regular basis, I looked at what I do on a regular basis and are passionate about. Food, cycling and web development and decided that I should try and blog more about what you can get for lunch under $10AUD. For those that don’t know me that well, I work in Northbridge, Perth’s Chinatown with probably 100 restaurants within 3 blocks, I enjoy lunch it is my big meal of the day and while I am watching what I eat, I have managed to lose 9kg in 11 weeks. Mainly through consuming 2500 calories on active days that I burn over 3500 calories. The big surprise for those who do know me is that after 15 years, I have started eating meat again.

So hopefully you should start seeing more regularly posts about things I am passionate about, food, cycling and web development.

I will not submit it, because Dave has not accepted any new submissions almost two year, my demo is far from the visual standard of most other design and I broke one major rule the CSS does not validate.

There are no hacks in the CSS just lots of browsers specific declarations like:

-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.66);

And even worse Microsoft specific declarations, which break the W3C rules for CSS

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=5, OffY=5, Color='#AA666666', Positive='true');

As I said in my presentation, the important thing to know about validation, is why your code does not validate, if you know that, then validation is irrelevant.

The aim is to show how you can use CSS2 and CSS3 to improve the experience of visitors using modern browsers, while not blocking access to those people still using older browsers like IE6. I want to convince the audience, that you can build sites that do not have to look the same in all browsers.

I will be looking at what CSS2 and CSS3 you can safely implement now. The main provision it must not break IE6. It does not have to work in IE6, just have a safe fallback position.

The presentation is not aimed at people who read Surfin Safari, CSS3.info or similar sites and then go off an experiment with what they have been shown. That is what I do

I know I will be covering those I covered indepth before like opacity/transparency and <a href=http://nickcowie.com/2008/font-face/”>@font-face. Are there any other CSS2 or CSS3 properties you would like to see me cover? Otherwise I might go all shock and awe with transitions ;-)

I am fan of procycling an particularly the grand tour events, the Tour De France (TdF), Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana. It all started years ago when I started cycling and SBS started showing selected stages. I quickly realised it is not the best cyclist that wins, but a combination of cyclist, team and strategy and I was hooked.

Back then, I did not look for information online while watching the TdF. I would always catch up the next morning with the results and preview that day’s stage. Over the years that has slowly changed. Last year, while watching the Tdf, I used FriendFeed to talk to cycling fans and kept up to date with various websites. Even managed to find streaming video to catch stages before SBS started broadcasting and some stages of the Vuelta.

However, everything changed at the Tour Down Under when Lance Armstrong introduced Twitter a large number of top professional cyclists. Once you found them you get a better understanding of what is happening and finding out the news quickly. For example Levi Leipheimer broken wrist and having to abandon the tour, the same way most news outlets did by a Lance Armstrong tweet. Again today’s abandoment by Tom Boonen via a Steven de Jongh tweet.

In addition to riders, you have twittering team managers, mechanics and other personnel, cycling journalists as well as other cycling fans. The big advantage of being in contact with other fans on twitter is you can find resources quickly, including streaming video, I watched every stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and Giro this year, thanks to Twitter. When races did not have streaming video or audio, there was a twitterfeed of what was happening in the race.

A few tips

Search on #procycling hashtag, find the hashtag for the event, for the Tour de France it is #tdf and open a search window in tweetdeck to follow a race.

Follow Steephill and Cycling Fans for the latest resources.

Go follow some procycling twitters and you will often find that procyclists follow other procyclists.

I have been using an inexpensive no name backpack to carry the necessary baggage (work clothes but not shoes, cycling clothes for trip home, tools and spare tube) for the ride to work for the last couple of years, and it has done the job.

However, I start riding the recycled single speed to work and that did not have mounts for drinks bottle. One of the reason I bought that specific noname backpack was it could also be used as a hydration pack. So I tried to use it as a hydration pack, and it did not work for me. The tubing was in the wrong spot, the provided bladder pack was difficult to use, the mouthpiece leaked and my CamelBak 1.5l bladders did not fit the pack.

Then purely by accident I saw the Crumpler Yee Ross on the Crumpler web site, a Crumpler backpack that can be used as a hydration pack. So I went to my local Crumpler store, check it out and walked away after purchasing last year’s model (more on that later).

A few days later it was pressed into service as a hydration pack with a CamelBak 1.5l bladder and it performed exceptional well, the routing put the mouth piece in the right spot and the CamelBak 1.5l bladder did it’s job providing me hydration. It was also far more comfortable to ride in than the noname backpack. The weight was well distributed, the shoulder straps where in the right spot for me and did not dig in.

I started using the Yee Ross as a regular backpack for all my other commutes and I am completely sold on it. The comfort factor has it.

Pros

• Comfortable, even with a moderate load.
• Works as a hydration pack with a variety of bladders.
• It is a Crumpler it will be durable.

Cons

• Smaller than most backpacks, need to pack carefully.
• Tight squeeze sliding a MacBook Pro in, not a problem with the Acer Aspire One though.
• It is a Crumpler ;-)

There is a difference between last year’s model which is made from thicker more durable material, has a waterproof pocket and wider belt straps than this year’s model which comes in more funky colours. So if you want one and I recommend last year’s model for durability and practically I would head into your local crumpler store now. I have owned mine for 8 weeks and I would highly recommend it.

This is my infamous bag that has been reported to the local Crumpler store on more than one occasion, because I had the audacity to stencil my blog URL on it, to clearly identify as mine.

Three years ago, I bought a Crumpler bag on the recommendation of a couple of friends, to protect my then laptop, an ancient and battered Ti Powerbook from my daily adventures. I had used at least four other bags, but none had the durability, protection or usefulness offered by the Part and Parcel. The fact it was a full blown courier bag, that I could use while cycling really swung it for me.

Shortly after purchasing the Part and Parcel, I was heading to Web Directions 06, so to clearly identify my bag from the other crumpler loving geeks at the conference. I created a stencil and using a small foam roller and acrylic paint put my blog URL on the top flap. I did not even get to the first workshop on the first day, without seeing an identical bag. I sat down to breakfast at a nearby cafe and at the next table was an identical bag sans URL.

Over the three years, I have used the bag with a number of different laptops, including the current MacBook Pro. The Part and Parcel must be doing a good job, because the MacBook Pro is far less battered than Ti Powerbook was at the same stage of it’s life.

The bag has been used on an almost daily basis to take a laptop to work. Except when I am riding most or all of the way in. I started using the Part and Parcel to carry clothes (a change of clothes for work, no shoes and cycling clothes for the return trip) and emergency tools for my 90 minute plus, 42km commute into work. The problem was after an hour or so, I would start losing sensation in my left shoulder, which had the bag slung over. This is the shoulder that has suffered a couple of major fractures and nerve damage in the past dozen years, so it should not be the same for you.

I bought an inexpensive backpack for the long cycling commute and continue to use the Part and Parcel for everything else, including the regular ride to the station with laptop.

I have used the Part and Parcel for a lot more than lugging a laptop, it has been used to carry a variety of objects various distances by foot and by bike and it does the job well.

Pros

• Durable
• Practical
• Looks good

Cons

• Not that comfortable after an hour with moderate load.
• Too popular.
• Brand fanatics

Conclusion

I am very happy with the Part and Parcel, it is a practical and durable courier bag that doubles as a laptop bag. And yes I would recommend it to anybody who needs a laptop bag and particularly anybody who cycles.

I have just finished reading The State of the Web survey results. I was surprised by the results of the survey of current web practices, I always considered myself an early adopter of design and development practices and technologies when it comes to HTML, CSS and the ilk. With an early adopter audience for this survey, I expected to be in the middle of the pack of with my design and development practices.

Well I am with my choice of OS, Tiger on the laptop, XP (not my choice) at work, browser of choice Firefox 3 (well 3.1 beta) and even our work environment with linux, apache, PHP, PostgreSQL and MySQL. But then things do take a surprising turn.

Around 25% of respondents test sites in a mobile browser, 33% use microformats, 4% use RDFA (it has been in my footer for a couple of years now), 4% use @font-face (I was one of the six respondents to use both TTF/OTF and EOT formats), all things I do and most for a year or two (@font-face excluded).

So I am ahead of the early adopters and this scares me. Because for the last two years I have not been pushing my craft, I have been reading less, particularly leading edge web development blogs and up until a few weeks ago not experimenting.

So if I have lazy for the last couple of years, why am I still ahead of the pack. Wishful thinking is that most people have been gaining knowledge with javascript libraries and frameworks, as well as back-end frameworks. A couple of areas I need to invest some time in, but looking at the survey results I could still be classed as an early adopter with javascript libraries and frameworks and my back-end skills have never been good.

Instead I believe not enough people are pushing their skills, not spending enough time seeking out what other people are doing, learning new and cool stuff and just having fun experimenting. Well I am not going to be one of them, so I hope you will at least join me for the ride if you are not going to push yourself.

While I do not consider myself one of the brightest mind in the Australian web community. I am more than happy to contribute. So what would you like to see me contribute?

1. How to layer Flash and HTML using an iframe. So you can place HTML over Flash or Flash over HTML and it to render consistently as expected in OS other than windows, ie Mac and *nix.
2. How to use JavaScript to manipulate links on webpages. I was asked to identify all external links on 6,500 web pages, clearly identify them to visitors, get them to open in a new window and even provide a message they where leaving the site (yes it is bad idea). I did it all with JavaScript, that degraded gracefully and the HTML could validate to strict.
3. Tips on how to build webpages that will work in Internet Explorer for Windows Mobile 6.

Or something totally different? Let me know.

If you have wandered across my flickr stream lately you might of noticed a couple of photos of my latest bicycle. So here is the story behind it. I regularly commute the 2.5km to and from the train station each day. Until recently on self destructing cheap chinese hybrid, that is in desperate need of replacement. So when the latest bulk rubbish collection occurred in our suburb, I decided to see if I could find a suitable replacement. Unfortunately I spent the weekend clearing our shed of 10 years worth of junk to have a good look locally.

A few days later, on the way home in the bus (it was raining heavily), I spotted a suitable candidate in a neighbouring suburb. It was a steel framed road bike, I was hoping for a steel framed mountain bike, but it just lying there, looking for a new home. So in the half light of dusk and in pouring rain I grabbed that bike and what looked like the remains of another heavily abused road bike that was lying underneath it for spares.

One closer inspection, the first bike I spotted was a 25 year old taiwanese road bike, from a time when the taiwanese went for quantity not quality. While the frame was in decent condition, in addition to a destroyed set of front wheel bearings which put the bike of the road many years ago. all the no name components (wheels, brakes, cranks, stem etc.) as well as being poor quality and heavy, they where badly rusted and unusable.

The abused bike was a japanese entry level racer of similar vintage. The frame was badly corroded by rust and damaged by a previous owner aggressively fitting a kickstand. The components including Araya rims, Sunigo cranks and chain ring, Cherry cable pull breaks, SR stem and Shimano shifters and gears where is suprisingly good condition and while the steel components, the bars, rims and cranks had surface corrosion, a single treatment of rust convertor fixed that.

So I spent $60 of new tubes, tyres, chain and brake cables (well $85 if you include tyre liners). Stripped two bikes down, cleaned the components, cleaned and repacked the bearings. The rebuilt one bike out of the parts, using the heavy but serviceable taiwanese frame, the japanese components, a seat I had taken off my mountain bike a couple of years ago, a set of pedals I was going to put on my mountain bike and after a few hours later I had a new commuter which is fun to ride.

Why another bike when you have 3?

Was the question Angie asked. I already have a good road bike bike and a good mountain bike, but neither are really suited for the commute. A dual suspension mountain bike with soft rubber is best suited to hammering singletrack and clambering over obstacles not a couple of kms over bitumen, with a little dirt and some kerb hopping thrown in, neither is my road bike. Plus I don’t like the idea of abandon either at the train station, even though most days I get a bike locker.

So that leaves the hybrid. Well the hybrid is just a cheap piece of mass produced rubbish, bought a few years ago from a discount store when I did not know better. It got me back into cycling, but that is it’s only virtue, built to the cheapest possible price, poor quality control and components. It is failing terribly, both wheel are buckled, the gears are interesting challenge, it needs to go to the bulk rubbish collection.

Why recycled not new?

Why not, I wanted a bike to commute to the train station, I could get what I needed by recycling someone else’s trash. Instead of buying a cheap bike from a discount store for a few dollars more. I wanted something reliable and durable, my experience with cheap new bikes is they are anything but reliable and durable.

If I wanted something new that was reliable, durable and suited to the job in hand, I would need to spend more and make the purchase from a specialist bike store. However, after spending a few hundred dollars on a bike would I feel happy leaving it at the train station, probably not.

Why singlespeed?

Back to reliability and durability, I just want to be able to grab the bike and ride to the train station each morning with minimum maintenance. I am sure I would of got the six speed Shimano Deore rear derailer working again. However, with my road and mountain bikes the rear derailer needs regular maintenance to perform at it’s peak. Without proper maintenance, worn or poor quality parts it is annoying to apply extra force to the pedals and the bike to shift a gear or two, like what happens now with my hybrid.

Also the commute is relatively flat, both my house and the train station are at the top of hills, but neither inclines are steep. The current gearing of 40/17 is more than required. I have used 40/15 without a problem, but the chain does not run true and I not ready to step up to 52/20. But for the commute one gear is enough.

All the cool kids have fixies

Why did I not I go for the simplicity of fixed gear (pedals directly driving the rear wheel, so if you stop pedalling the rear wheel stops turning). Two reasons, the parts I had made a singlespeed and I have had interesting experiences pedalling around corners, as the motorcyclist in me leans heavily and pedals have dug into the ground. This is not something I wish to repeat, particularly as the way home involves a long downhill straight (which I have be known to break the local speed limit on my roadie), a roundabout with a 270 degree turn and a short uphill section, which I try to hit at maximum possible speed.

Advice for others

Recycling an old bike is relatively easy, it does require some specialist tools, but if you are buying your parts from your local bike shop, they will usually help you out. The labour is the easy part, picking the right bike to recycle is the challenge and requires the luck.

And I will back on the scrounge next year, looking for a decent steel frame preferably in a large size and any other quality components that fall my way.

Final word, one other thing to add to your shopping list, new brake pads, 25 year old brake pads do not stop as you as you hoped.

Greg Dwyer is collecting material on the proposed internet filtering in Australia. So I am sharing my thoughts and particularly my experience with the filtering software I now look after at the State Library of WA, with you as well as Greg.

The library started using filtering software after a few incidents involving members of the public accessing pornography on public access computers in open areas of the library. The filtering software is provided by a major international provider and has a blocking list updated twice a week.

When I was given control of the filtering software, I had a good look at what sites where blocked and particularly the exceptions that where added by my predecessors, because the filter was also applied to the staff internet access and with very conservative settings, blocking a number of categories.

Amongst the surprises, where:

• World movies pay TV channel website is classified as pornography and blocked.
• A site aimed at provided very basic health information (including sexual health) to pre-teens was classified is sexual material and blocked.
• The website of a well known Australian gay and lesbian book store is classified as sexual material and blocked. Even though the same books, often with more details are available through Amazon, which is not restricted in anyway.
• An online Australian store specialising in horror DVDs was blocked. I believe graphic violence is the category. However, the great majority of the DVDs could be purchased on Amazon with equally graphic descriptions, which is not restricted in anyway.

So what will happen if a book is published in the US and is refused classification in Australia. A good example would be a book on voluntary euthanasia, which while topical in the US, there is no reason for Amazon not to stock it. Unfortunately such a book would be refused classification in Australia. So how would the Australian filtering regime deal with Amazon selling the book and making excerpts available on the web?

Block access to the Amazon site. This would appear to be normal course of action, if a site has any restricted content, the whole site is blocked. So how would the Australian Government deal with international criticism of their action of telling a retailer in another country what the can or can not sell in any other country, by punishing them, by blocking access to the Australian market?

By blocking access to the pages pertaining to that book on Amazon&#8217s site. There are a number of issues:

• There is a lot more work involved in blocking individual pages than sites.
• Page blocking fails with dynamically generated content.
• Why block pages on some sites and block complete sites on other occasions. The have and have nots of filtering, treating Amazon and other big sites differently from smaller retailers without the clout.

Ignore it, because it is too difficult. Which again raises the issues of the have and have nots of filtering, treating Amazon and other big sites differently from smaller retailers without the clout.

Our filter setting where changed last year after discussions with senior management, to just pornography and malicious sites. Since that time, the number of pages blocked has fallen dramatically and there was only one issue. A member of the public was behaving inappropriately when accessing pornography on a public access computer.

A review of the filter log found that the person tried and failed to access 17 different pornographic sites, before succeeding on the 18th attempt. Further investigation of the log files, indicate that this was not the only time multiple attempts to access pornographic sites was made. Often more than 20 failed attempts are made, before either success or giving up, which appears to be a rare success. While the filtering software is good and blocks access to the great majority of pornographic sites. Repeated attempts by a determined person will gain access to pornography.

With the reduction in the number categories has also reduced the number of sites blocked, it still appears to be a small proportion of false positives. It is very frustrating to be researching a web development issue, only to find the site which may have the answer blocked. Particularly when you access the site by other means (laptop with 3G broadband card or mobile phone) and find no reason why that site should be blocked. It happens in less than 1% of all sites I try to access, but it is frustrating for me and I always have alternative methods available. It will be more frustrating for our clients who are researching obscure topics and do not alternative access.

Based on my experience, I would say the filter will have not have the desired effect that Senator Conroy or the Government desires:

• People seeking pornography or refused classification material will keep trying until they find the material they want. Filters may block the majority of this content but can not block all of it. There is a lot of that material on the internet and people we keep trying to find it until they succeed.
• People seeking very specific information, will get frustrated as on occasions site they are referred to are blocked for no apparent reason.

The commercial implications for web commerce could be quite dramatic, will the Australian Government block access to Amazon and eBay for displaying and selling RC material? Will the government compensate to retailers for lost income when their sites are incorrectly blocked? How many retailers will use the filter as a weapon, by complaining about competitor sites dealing with adult content? Will specialist retailer sites be blocked, while the the more general retailer selling the same products is not?

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