SteveDickinson
Cycling – Tubeless Tyres
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Cycling – Tubeless Tyres

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

A couple of months back I bough a new Trek Domane SL 7 2022 model. It is awsome. I could rattle on all day about how easy and comfortable it is to ride, but this post is all about tubeless tyres, punctures and, in particualr topping up the sealant.

Being a virgin to tubeless tyres I was a little wary when the bike arrive with tubeless tyres (I thought I was getting the 2021 model – which is fitted with tubed tyres by default). However I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, the upgrade to the 2022 model being worth at least £300, plus the kudos of having a 2022 model.

The techie at C6 Waterbeach (where I bought the bike) gave me the quick 101 on tubeless tyres, and when I got home I did some further homework.

  • Rule 1 – Do not over inflate. 80psi MAX – which for a tubed road bike is about the minimum you would want.
  • Rule 2 – Always carry a spare tube. Why? Becuase if the tyre is damaged to the point where the sealant cannot seal the hole, then you will need to fit an inner tube to get you home.
  • Rule 3 – Keep the sealant toppped up. The sealant does dry out over time and becomes less effective at sealing punctures. Recommended top period seems to be around 3 – 4 months.
  • Rule 4 – Inspect for punctures on a regular basis. It is surprising easy to pick up a puncture and not know about it. The sealants these days are remarkably effective at sealing small (1 – 2 mm) holes with minimal loss of pressure.

So my story, 3 months in to getting my new bike I am topping up the tyre pressures prior to a quick spin around the country roads of Cambridgeshire when I notice a white substance on the tyre – yep, I had had a puncture, which has sealed, but there was residue sealant on the outside of the tyre. The puncture itself was quite small (approx 1mm) and seemed to be well plugged.

Time to investigate what that means wrt; Sealant longevity, tyre usage, relacement tyre etc.

So, best as I understand it, with a good sealant (and we will come on to that in a moment), a small puncture such as this, ie <= 1mm, should not cause a problem. At the time of the puncture, the sealant will congeal in a fraction of a second and there will be only a small drop in pressure, and that certainly matches my experience. I usually run my Tubeless tyres at just under the 80 psi recommended max, and tyre pressure the next day was still well above 60 psi. Proof that the sealant will work sufficiently to allow you to complete whatever ride you are on and get you ‘home’.

What about longevity of the seal. How long should you continue to rely on it? Well reading the articles on the internet, the consenus seems to be that, for small punctures, you can rely on the seal and ride normally. A couple of well respected sites say they would not be concerned about putting an additional 1000+ miles on the tyre before replacing it.

A caveat to that is that you must keep the sealant topped up, preferably every 3 – 4 months. Beyond that it will start to congeal in the tyre and will no longer successfully re-seal the puncture should the plug ever detach.

Sealant Top-up Instructions for Fixed Inserts

The following instructions are as much for myself as anyone else, but if you find them useful, all the better.

First point – I am dicussing valves with Fixed inserts. Whether the valves are Presta or Schrader doesn’t matter, if the insert is fixed then these instructions will work.

  • For fixed inserts you need a free flowing, non viscous, sealant. Many sealants will only work with removalable inserts. So check sealant type. My recommendation for Fixed Inserts is Coffelatex. It scores excellant marks in many of the reviews, is inexpensive, and, in my experience, works perfectly for fixed insert valves.
  • Caffelatex
  • For fixed inserts you will also need the Coffelatex Injector. Inexpensive (< £10 and well worth it)
  • Caffelatex Injector
  • Step 1: Remove the Syringe : Tube connector from the Syringe Plunger and attach to the tube. Note: It is a VERY tight fit, but it is essential that the connector is securely fitted to the tube.
  • Step 2: Fully undo the value and release all the air in the tyre.
  • Step 3: With the valve fully open, attach the tube to the valve. With fixed inserts ignore the instructions on the Injector, you will ALWAYS need the brass adaptor, regardless of valve type.
  • Step 4: Rotate wheel so valve is at 3 o’clock or 9 o’clock and use a piece of fixing tape, or something, to hold the wheel at that position.
  • Step 5: Remove plunger from syringe
  • Step 6: Attach syringe to tube.
  • Step 7: Fill syringe with requisite amount of sealant (Usually about 50ml)
  • Step 8: Insert plunger and push
  • Step 9: Sealant should readily flow into wheel.
  • Step 10: Disconnect injector and tube from the value, and screw value shut
  • Step 11: Spin wheel 3 or 4 times to evenly disperse the sealant around the inside of the tyre.
  • Step 12: Pump tyre up to 60 – 80 psi.
  • Step 13: Clean any excess sealant off tyres, wheels, and particularly the clean the applicator equipement – I found hot soap water was good for the applicator, syringe, etc.

Removalable Inserts

With Removalable valve inserts I found the easiest, (and cleanest) is to:

  1. Remove Valve Insert
  2. Attach filling tube adapter (the black bit) to value
  3. Rotate wheel until value is at the top.
  4. Attach filling tube to adapter
  5. Attach the bottle containing the sealant direct to the filling tube (i.e. Do not bother with the syringe)
  6. Rotate the wheel through 90 degrees.
  7. Gently squeeze the sealant bottle, squirting the sealant into the tyre.
  8. When requisite amount of sealand has been administered – rotate the wheel back to the verticle position and disconect everything
  9. Insert the value
  10. Spin the wheel to disperse the sealant
  11. Inflate to required pressure.
Post type: post

Quintic

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

A Quintic is the lowest order polynomial for which there is no known algorithmic solution. I chose Quintic as the name for my first Company, as there were five of us, and we were a disperate lot. Not surprisingly after 3.5 years there was a split. That company finally disolved in or around 2015.

In 2016 I started up another company called Quintic. I Quintic beacuse I like the name, and, as the previous company has c.losed down, its name was available. This company’s web site, (but not the company) is still active at www.quintic.co.uk

And, finally, if you search Google or, better still, DuckDuckGo for” Quintic Cambridge” you will no longer get any references to the 1995 Quintic company. Oh Yes!!!

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Printers

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

This blog is place for me to dump information about Printers. Over the years I have used a variety of printers. Initially (1995 – 2000) Epson was my manufacturer of choice, predominantly because of quality of print. For a short period I dallied with HP, because the convenience, but the quality of both their printers and print was not that good. More recently I have favoured Canon. Predominantly because of print quality, (I undertake a lot of Photographic printing) but the printers themselves are good quality and very reasonably priced.

All printers I have used for photographic work have been inkjet. I have had laser printers, but these were mono and used for business documents and correspondance. The quality of the the laser printers for text was way better than inkjet and faster print runs, but once my business model changed so that I was producing fewer reports I could not justify the cost .

When I say I could not justify the cost, the problem was the cost of the laser printers themselves. I was never at the top end, and I found at the level I was purchasing the feed mechanisms would wear out. The cost of replacing the feed mechanism was of the same order of cost as buying a new printer, which meant replacing the printer every four to five years.

That said, this was back in the early 2000’s so maybe things are different now.

However back to today. As I mentioned, for me now, Canon is the manufacturer of choice. I have two printers:

  • PIMXA MG5650
  • PIXMA Pro 100S

Pixma MG5650
Pixma MG5650
PIXMA Pro 100S
PIXMA Pro 100S

The MG5650 is the work-horse, text documents, scanning, and some photographic work – it does have individual cartridges for Cyan, Mageneta and Yellow, and produces acceptable images, but for my main photographic prints I use the Pro 100S. Supberb images upto A3 and at an acceptable throughput, once you have got past the startup time – which is annoyingly slow. (Canon claims a A3 image print takes 90 secs. I haven’t timed it, but that seems about right).

Loading Photographic paper in the rear feed is a little tricky, the paper has to be seated correctly in the guides, which you might think is obvious, but unfortuately, it is way too easy to sit the paper behind the guides, in which case it will not feed. And as an FYI, photographic paper is loaded print side up.

Printing

There are lots of routes to print a photograph, particularly if its an image format recognised by the OS (in my case Windows):

  1. Right Click on the filename and select Print
  2. Open the photo in the Photos App and select print
  3. Open the photo in an Editor (in my case either Photoshop or Affinity) and select print
  4. Use a print utility supplied by the Printer Manufacturer, in my case Canon

The problem is that you will almost certainly get a different result depending on which route you take. Colour Mapping,Iimage size, Border size, & Scaling if printing borderless can all vary. (I have even had examples of the image being clipped). When printing A3 this unpredictability is more than just annoying, it can prove to be expensive in both paper & ink.

I tend to use Affinity when printing, as it enables me to adjust colour & contrast. What I do find is that the image from the Pro 100 is shifted towards the blue-gray, which can make the result look ‘flat’. To compensate I generally find myself either exagerating the contrast, or rasing the temperature profile.(I would like the option to use Photoshop to print , but with Windows 10 the Print option crashes photoshop)

Canon Cartidges

As I said I like Canon’s print quality, and part of that quality is, obviously, down to their inks. However their cartidges are hordenously expensive. This year I did bite the bullet and tried the LCL equivalent cartidges both in the Pixma MG5650 (551’s) and Pixma Pro 100S (42’s).

So far, no problems. The cartidges have functioned perfectly, quality looks just as good, and they are at least a 1/3rd the price. Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer to stick with Canon, if only for the confidence of knowing that, should there be a problem, then I have a better chance of getting a resolution. However the price of the Canon cartidges is just too high. At full set of cartidges for the Pro 100S is basically £90. OK there are eight, but even so that, as an on going expense, is too high.

Another computer is using the printer

This is an error message that I have been getting with irritating regularity. I try to print from my Windows PC to my Canon printer and whilst it returns the status of the printer and ink cartidges, it refuses to print because it believes the printer is in use by another computer.

I searched the web to try to find a solution, and it appears that the problem has been around for some time. Since at least 2014. Microsoft say the problem is with Canon, and their usual suggestion is to reload the printer driver. Canon say the problem is with Windows, and their usual suggestion is to reboot the PC. Another suggestion, from a User with the problem, is to power off the printer at the socket, and then switch back on.

I finally came across the real culprit (at least for me it is), and that is the Print Spooler. To fix the problem on Windows 10. Type Control Panel in the windows search box and select the App. Go to:

Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools>Services.

Scroll down to Print Spooler and stop and start this service.

Works for me every time.

Post type: post

A Contract for the Web

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

A Contract for the Web

Tim Berners Lee launches Contract for the Web here. I hope that, if you are reading this blog, you have actually looked into what Contract for the Web is all about. Your first thoughts might be that it’s about ‘Nice’ people trying to achieve ‘nice’ things. You know, Parish councellors organising a litter pick up on News Years day. In fact it isn’t like that at all (or at least I am hoping it isn’t) . It is far more thought out than that, the contract is detailed, specific and, in large parts, measurable.

This last part is particularly important, because you know that initially everyone and their dog is going to sign up, at least in terms of governments that consider themselves democratic, and internet focused companies that want to publicize the fact that are Internet Friendly.

For the Contract to have any teeth, it has to be enforced. For it to be enforced you need to be able to demonstrate when someone (Government, Company, Individual) has breached the contract. To demonstrate that a breach has occured you need a defined framework against which conduct can be measured.

However, whilst having the contract specifics measureable is a pre-requisite of being able to enforce the contract. Of itself it is not enough. You need a policing agency to investigate posisible breaches, a judicary to decide if a breach has actually occured, and a proportionate consequence to breaching the code ( Reputational damage).

Early days, but let us hope that the Worlod Wide Web Foundation has the teeth to make this contract bite.

Sign up

I have signed up to the contract. I would urge everyone to do likewise. I believe that we need to stop Governments using the web for control of information, from spreading disinformation and for using it to spy on individuals. We need it to stop companies becoming more powerful than countries on the back of providing conduits for spreading mis-information, hurtful content, and stealing and selling private information, and we need it to eliminate the vitriol of bigotry and racism that individuals feel justifed in terrorising others with because they hold different views, or are from different backgrounds.

Leopards and Spots

However I notice, with a great deal of sceptism, that Google and Facebook have already signed up. I suspect as well that they have made substantial donations to the foundation. Let’s see if these particular Leopards can change their spots. If not, we are back to enforcement, and which counts for more, the contract or the donations.

Post type: post

Scams & Phishing

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

The following is a list of scam phone calls or phishing emails that I have received or delt with recently.

Home Appliance Insurance scam

7-Nov-2019. Just had a scam phone call from Jade at ‘Home Guard Care’ or some such company, informing me that my Home guard insurance policy had just expired, but as I hadn’t made a claim in the previous two years I could renew at a reduced price of £90.00 for two years, down from the £108 I paid two years ago.

Trouble is I do not have an insuance policy with this crowd. Now, according to Jade, I made a payment to this lot on November 5 2017. When I asked Jade to stay on the line whilst I went to check, Jade hung up.

This is the second time this lot has tried this scam. The phone number was withheld so I am unable to trace it back. Not that it makes much difference, because the phone numbers used are usually ‘one-off’s.

HSBC

Been informed that a number of suspious transactions have been notes on my HSBC account. Am provided with a URL to click on order to check. Just one problem, I do not have a HSBC bank account.

TV Licence

June 2020. My neighbour received an email proporting to be from the TV Licensing Authority stating that she need to to pay her TV licence Fee now that the licence is no longer free for over 75’s with a link on where to go to pay it.

The URL was obviously NOT the TV licensing authority, and the requirement for over 75s not receiving the pension top-up to pay for the TV Licence has been delayed until September.

Expect these types of scams to resurface come September.

Vodafone

24-Sep-2020. Recieved a text message from +44 7487 305443. Proporting to be from Vodafone. “We were unable to process your latest payment. In order to avoid fees, please update your information via https://vodafone.uk.id-01879.com/?v=2”

Amazon Prime

6-Oct-2020. Next door neighbour received an automated phone call message stating that her Amazon Prime payment of £35.02 was overdue and could she please call the following number to arrange payment. My neighbour does not have an Amazon Prime account, but due to Amazon’s dirty little trick earlier in the year of making it appear when ordering that you were not accepting their 3 month free trial, when in fact you were, a number of people were conned into opening Amazon Prime accounts. This blantant mis-direction by Amazon opened up a massive window of opportunity for the scammers and phishers.

Thank you Amazon

Microsoft Worldwide Web – Your Computer has a virus

Jan-2021 I thought this scam had completely run its course. But no. Still out there. In case it is one you have not come across, the scam goes along the lines of

“Hello we are from Microsoft and we have detected that your computer has a virus. If you help us we can remove the virus from your computer” What they want is either bank account details as you sign up for a phoney service contract or access to your PC where they will extract every bit of data they can and/or install key logging software.

Used to be a time when I would play along with the call just to see how long I could keep them on the phone. No fun anymore though. Now I just tell them they are lying, put the phone down and block.

HMRC

Feb-2021 Scam phone call saying we owe HRMC £85 and that the bailiffs were coming round to seize property and issue a court summons. Press 1 to speak to a representative about making payment.

Reported to HMRC.

Vodafone

Feb-2021 Email purporting to be from Vodafone saying that my account had been blocked. Link provided to unlock account.

Reported to Vodafone.

Lloyds

March-2021 Received the following text message – supposedly from +44 7810 098864

Lloyds: A request to add a new payee has been setup on 08/03 at 15:24PM. If this was NOT you please visit: https://lloyds.security-mobile-activity.com

DVLC

March-2021 Neighbour received an email purporting to come from DVLC saying that

  Dear Sir/Madam   Payment for the following vehicle is incomplete   Pay now  
 
RegistrationCorrect Registration
MakeCorrect Make
ColourCorrect Colour
YearCorrect Year
Tax BandCorrect tax band
Tax Cost (12 month)Correct 12 month tax
Tax Cost (6 month)Correct 6 month tax

Please click the following link to finish the payment process:   https://ww1.vehicleinformation.uk/payment-ac?e=sogcn4HcZPoySoL7rck2id8ndPL6I2rpZ1TTSi9W7YkFOQUAaDfGGdjeXwfE

Now most of the above is freely available on the DVLA web-site. Just type in a vehicle registration and you can gleen everything on the right hand column.

What you cannot get from the DVLA web-site however, is the association with an e-mail address. So, that someone has been able to connect those two dots is worrying. The above was reported to DVLA and report@phishing.gov.uk

HMRC

March-2021 Received email stating I was entitled to a Tax Refund from HMRC. HMRC do not use emails for this type of communication. Reported to both HMRC and report@phishing.gov.uk

Amazon

April 2021. Received an automated phone call proporting to be Amazon sayying that a purchase for £115.95 was made today. If I recognise the purchase then do nothing. If I do not recognise the purchase, then contact Amazon Customer Service by pressing button 1.

No idea what happens if you press button 1. Could be an attempt to get credit card / bank account details, or it could be a connection to a premium number.

Norton

Received several of these Autumn 2021 – Text message to mobile phone stating that your Norton Anti-virus is about to expire and click on link to renew.

BT

October 2021 – Email on one day, supposedly from BT, stating that their Broadband T&Cs are about to change. Next day another email again suposedly from BT, refering to previous day’s email, and requesting that you click on a link in order to renew your T&Cs.

Royal Mail

February 2022 – Received a very convincing email apparently from Royal Mail

Scam Email

What was really worrying was the link, which was to @royal.mail.tracking, but to an ISP in Iran!

Netflix

25-March-2022 Architypal email stating ‘Difficulty with Billing Info’ – please click on link. Not very convincing.

Post type: post

WordPress

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

Intro

I developed this Web site, along with Quintic utilising WordPress. Initially I incorporated WordPress into my own, self generated web site as a means of providing bloging functionality. I subsequently took the plunge and merged the two aspects of the site to produce an integrated web site. However, I was very specific about my site should look and interact.

There are a plethora of themes available with WordPress, and potentially one of them could have provided the look and feel that I desired. Indeed it is even conceivable that the default themes form WordPress could be readily customised to do what I wanted. Trouble is I did not know enough about WordPress to know how to verify if either of those two scenarios were possible.

So instead I decided to write my own theme. This blog is, in part, a historic recollection of my experience and the knowledge gained, and in part an actual day to day diary of what I have done.

Security

I had already taken the general advice on securing the site.

  • Access to Admin features was restricted to a defined set of IP address
  • Apache would not serve up Directory Listings
  • Apache would not serve up file content
  • Single Admin user.
  • Installed a security plugin to monitor activity

Low and behold, the security plugin – Securi – started reporting BruteForce attacks. The attacks had not succeeded in any actaul log-ins, but what was concerning was that they were using actual UserNames. In particular the user-name I had selected for Admin (Which was not Admin!)

That was disconcerting. How had the perpetrator managed to get hold of the UserNames?

It transpires that with WordPress obtaining Usernames is actually quite easy. If you submit a request https://www.site-name.com/?author=1, then, assuming Author with Id = 1 exists, WordPress will open up a page for that user and the url will contain the actual username.

All the attacker has to do is just go through 1, 2, 3…. up to however high she/he likes and will collect a number of Usernames.

I accept that getting the usernames is only a small step towards gaining access to the site, but it is one that I would rather not be that easy to overcome. Also, if you do have users to your site, then you really should protect their information.

As it transpires there is a relatively simple solution to this issue. The following lines of code added to the sites main .htacess file will ensure that, unless you are issuing the request from an Admin site, that the request will be ignored.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin [NC]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} author=\d
RewriteRule ^ /? [L,R=301]

PCs, Tablets, Smartphones

Next major WordPress project is to make my site multi-device friendly. I have duckduckgo’d how to make WordPress sites multi-media friendly, and I’ll be honest have not got very far. I do realise there would never be an easy, works for all, solution (Even though there are a couple of plugins that suggest they can) but I was hoping for some guideance on how to achieve it.

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Alexa & Audio Station

Posted on by Steve Dickinson

Background

I have had a Synology DNS NAS drive now for about five years. I bought it originally as a safe, central, (relatively) fast storage for my photos, of which I have literally tens of thousands.

I also uploaded all my CDs to the NAS. it meant I could listen to my music whilst working and could play it through my Hi-Fi without having to search racks and racks of CDS looking for the one I wanted (No I did not have my CDs classified and catalogued)

Two years ago I purchased and set-up an Alexa, really just to see what these devices were like. Lets face when tablets cost between £500 and £750 and mobiles between £500 and £1000, £50 for an AI based Smart Speaker / Home Assistant is nothing.

In fact it begs one of two questions:

  1. Are they selling AI Speakers at below cost in order to capture the market?
  2. Are Tablets and Mobiles over hiked?

Anyway that aside having got my Alexa, I wanted to be able to play my music through it. And that is when the fun started.

Initial Surprise

The first problem I hit, and one that really did surprise me, is that whilst Alexa may be connected to my network, it cannot / will not talk to any devices on the network directly.

Alexa will only communicate with devices via the Cloud. So, any devices that you have that are not cloud based cannot communicate with Alexa.

Synology Audio Station

Goods news for those with a Synology NAS drive is that one of the applications that you can download is Audio Station, and Audio Station can be configured to operate with Alexa.

The bad news is that whilst configuring Audio Station to operate with Alexa is relatively easy (see XXXX), getting Alexa to work with Audio Station is a whole different ball game.

Configuration Requirements:

  1. Audio Station install on Synology DNS
  2. Audio Station configured to operate with Alexa
  3. Synology DNS configured to accept internet traffic (i.e Broadband hub configured to forward at least one open port to the DNS)
  4. SSL Certificate installed on Synology DNS (Self signed certificates are not accepted by Alexa)
  5. URL on certificate, exactly matches url given to Alexa, exactly matches URL in Audio Station Configuration
  6. Port given to Alexa matches port identified in Audio Station configuration, matches prot forewarding set up on Hub.

Note: Steps 3 – 6 are only necessary because Alexa will not talk directly to other networked devices.

Audio Station Installation