I’ve just gone and got myself a new graphics card and monitor for my PC. I thought relying on seven year old technology was perhaps leaving me behind the times a little, so I purchased an Sapphire 9800 Pro graphics card (in a fetching red colour) and a nice LG 17″ TFT monitor (cheers for the reccommendation Simon).

The monitor is an absolute revelation. I knew the old one was on the way out, but I hadn’t realised just how far it had gone. All of a sudden white shows up as white, and I get a full set of greyscales without fading down to black about two thirds of the way down the scale. The colours are pretty damn good too, at least to my untrained eyes.

The video card is pretty sweet too. Its really rather quick (unlike its Catalyst control software, which feels like its running through thick, gloopy treacle) and is happy to go up to ludicrous resolutions should I feel the need to. Maybe its the retrogeek in me, but it seems faintly ridiculous that I should have 128mb RAM on my graphics card. The old one had a grand total of 4mb – and that seemed like absolutely loads at the time.

Now with all this stuff, I thought I’d give online gaming another go. So I fired up Unreal Tournament. Frustrating is the only real word that I can use to describe it. There are now so many new levels, skins, sounds, weapons and other mods out there that you spend more time downloading and installing them than you do actually playing. Then when you do you come up against players who have been practising for far far too long. I think I managed about fifteen seconds without getting killed once.

Sod that then, lets give Battlefield 1942 and Desert Combat a go. That’s more like it. I can play for whole minutes at a time without being killed. Again, people are just far far too good at it, especially those of them who can strafe the Apache gunships quite so well. More practise needed there too methinks. Its ace fun playing it cooperatively though. Myself and my housemate log onto the same server, get onto the same team and then attempt to use teamwork to capture the bases and so on. It rarely works out but its great fun and very rewarding when it does.

So, online gaming exhausted, I thought I’d fire up Photoshop. Huh? What’s this? You mean I’ve got space to have all of the palettes on screen and see all of the image? With only one monitor? Wow.

I’d best quit that before I start getting creative or something.

In no particular order (the player will be in shuffle mode anyway)…

Someone has put up a load of posters at work, with the slogan:

There is nothing you can do
That can’t be done

Is it me, or is there really some sort of stating the obvious thing going on there? That’s just another way of saying “You can do anything that you can do” isn’t it?

Someone was trying to be clever and it went horribly wrong. Or am I being a complete sap and missing something blindingly obvious?

I’m sat here in front of my PC, drinking a gert big glass of Robinsons Summer Fruits Squash. Its really cold, and tastes like those cheap freeze-it-yourself ice pops, the red ones. I approve.

I’ve got Chain Reaction Cycles open in one tab and Merlin Cycles in another, weighing up my options. I want to put gears on the Stiffee, or perhaps get some disc wheels for it.

You see, I like it as a singlespeed, but its a complete beeeyatch to get it up the hills. I seem to remember that Dave H had trouble getting gears to work on the front of it though — the mad chainline led to chainsuck galore at the first sign of mud (the chainstay is testament to that). I can probably afford to nine-speed it though.

Once I’m up the hills though, the completely useless brakes do little or nowt to give me any confidence in the thing. Fairly non-technical descents are fine, but as soon as it gets tricky I get scared silly (no change there then). So getting a set of disc-brake compabible wheels with nice wide rims would be a nice upgrade. I’ve already got a pair of Hope E4 brakes – they need a seal kit and service but that’s not exactly an expensive process.

The thing is though, a decent set of hubs is quite expensive. I can get a set of wheels based on Shimano Deore disc hubs for under £100 – but I’ve had a set of those before and they weren’t the most reliable hub. Spec some nice Hope XC hubs and suddenly the price goes up to about £170. Expensive, but they’re nice bits of kit.

Oh what to do, what to do… oh now look – I’ve gone and procrastinated the whole evening away. Winner!

So, there was Friday night. There was much drinking and dancing. Good night all in all.

Then there was Saturday. There was getting up in the morning, feeling like crap, eating a fry-up and heading over to the Forest of Dean for a bit of DH biking. Pedalabikeaway has been transformed with the addition of a new toilet block with showers!

Alex was going particularly big, launching some very hefty step-downs and gap jumps. Nick wasn’t, largely because his brakes are completely shagged (much like the rest of his bike). We really ought to club together and get him some new ones. Met James from Stopadoodledoo and got free stickers, which was cool.

We watched The Ladykillers in the evening. Pretty good film. All in all a very good day.

Sunday came a few hours later (need more sleep!). Got up, ate three of your finest boiled eggs and headed out to play on bikes again — only up Leckhampton Hill this time. I rode the newest track first, and we really weren’t getting along at all. I struggled to get down from the path to the trail, which is never a good sign, then ended up wearing the trail on one of the off-camber bits.

The second run saw me ride the old chute instead, which was a marked improvement. I nearly lost it big stylee a bit further down, when I grounded a pedal at speed and it kicked me right up in the air, so my hands were the only thing left connected to the bike. It was a symptom of my rear-shock playing silly buggers – it was bottoming out very very easily. Time to send it off for a service and get a heavier spring methinks. Pity I can’t afford it right now…

The final run was much better though – down the old Ridge/slalom track. I was right on Gary’s wheel until I span out in a muddy berm. I ended up running down the trail! After that I could feel the confidence coming back – I don’t like steep drops at the best of times, but I flowed down these quite nicely.

Then somewhere near the bottom, Gary had the idea of tramping straight on through the woods, instead of groung around the 180 berm, so we could meet up with the bottom third of the other tracks. So off we go up a bit, then whoop down the drop and clatter crunch skshhhhh through loads of undergrowth. There’s definitely potential for a traverse through all that though – its almost as if there already was one once upon a time.

I cleaned both of my bikes when I got back. That’s pretty much unheard of.

So that was my weekend. Pretty damn good all in all. I need an early night tonight though. Can someone remind me to go and get a new seatpin-collar for the Stiffee tomorrow? Cheers.

[Based on old Golden Grahams promotional postcard that’s lying around]

So, remember how I was telling you about my Halloween a couple of months back? Well Lewis finally got around to getting the pictures developed – I’ve bunged some of them up in the gallery for you.

I’m a little scared of us now.

Who would have thought it? Thick snow on the top of Cleeve Hill.

After a nice XC ride through the snow up there, I caught up with Brett and Gary who were boarding in the stuff! I spent the afternoon racing them down the “piste”. Its amazing the grip you can get in the snow! Was it bad of me to go jumping down the tee-off points on the golf course? I don’t think it counts when they’re covered in powder :)

There’s a bunch more pictures in The Gallery.