Snitches get stitches and all…
Although that might have a very different meaning at Hogwarts.
If you don't yet follow floccinaucinihilipilification, I feel like you're missing out. The comics are great, especially the occasional very weird interpretation of stories from Hogwarts.
… and it's one of the best interviews he's ever done. Hannah Gadsby is an Australian comedian who rose to fame with her Netflix Special "Nanette" (if you haven't watched it, yet, do so, it's amazing).
She's one of the few people who has managed to leave Stephen speechless and grapsing for words. It's absolutely delightful.
… and after many months he finally delivered.
The Bugle is one of my absolute favourite podcasts and I've been listening to it for about ten years now. A while back the podcast went independent again and they introduced an option to send donations. I opted for the GBP 10.— per month voluntary subscription which includes the perk of Andy telling a lie about you.
It took a while but in episode 4116, it was my turn and it was a good lie. If you want to hear it, you can find the epsiode on the Bugle homepage or you can listen to the bit directly on Overcast.fm.
Up until now I've only ever used wet lubes on my bikes in any conditions. Last year in the summer riding season, I had to clean my chain much more often than I liked because the tracks I started riding, having only really gotten into gravel cycling, were very dry and dusty. After the first big gravel ride this year, the chain, even though carefully lubed, was so full of dirt and sand, I decided to try a dry lube to spare myself the time spent on cleaning the chain after every ride and reduce wear and tear on the chain itself.
Having read a lot of reviews, I came to the conclusoin that the difference in performance between the various slightly higher priced dry lubes seem to be negligible and I ended up trying the C3 ceramic lube – Premium DRY Condition Chain Lubricant from Muc-Off for the simple reason that I've had good experiences with some of their other products over the past two years. The lubricant has now been in use on my gravel bike "Battle Cat" for ~ 200 km and I like it so far.
Application
In use
The only thing that I found surprising and mildly alarming was how quickly it washes off. I caught one rain shower towards the end of a ride and the lube was gone from the chain within a few minutes. Luckily I only had a few more kilometres to ride on tarmac before getting home, so I wasn’t worried about the drive train and I re-lubed the chain in the evening once it was dry again.
I can't help but end up in fits of laughter watching Amber Ruffin's segments on Late Night with Seth Myers, she's so damn good.
A few weeks ago my friend and colleague Pilar Garcia posted about a podcast dealing with all things hacking, INFOSEC, OPSEC, etc. in our company chat. I downloaded a few episodes and was hooked almost instantly.
Darknet Diaries presented by Jack Rhysider
I haven't yet caught up to the current episodes but I'm getting there. My favourite episode so far has been EP 6: The Beirut Bank Job where an InfoSec professional who is often tasked with assessing the physical security and processes of institutions accidentally infiltrates the wrong bank in Beirut.
San Diego Comic Con has happened and there was so much Star Trek news, I'm still giddy and grinning. To me, the most exciting thing was the new trailer for Star Trek: Picard.
Star Trek: The Next Generation was the series I grew up with. One of my English teachers introduced our class to it as a listening comprehension exercise and I fell for the series and the universe fast and hard. Even now TNG holds a special place in my heart and the old lady NCC-1701-D is still my favourite ship — closely followed by the Defiant, the Prometheus, and the Timeship Relativity, thank you for asking.
There's also a very, very selfish reason why I'm looking forward to the series:
It might give me a chance to meet Patrick Stewart in person at a future Star Trek convention, something I've wanted for more than two decades. There are only a handful of actors I admire as much as him and even fewer that I feel the irrational desire to meet.
The few hints dropped about Star Trek: Discovery are few and far and I'm really hoping they continue with the ambitious way of storytelling they begun in the first two seasons. I wasn't sceptical at all going into Discovery but I also had no expectations and I came out of both seasons positively surprised, which is always a good thing. Then there's going to be the Short Treks focusing on the crew of the Enterprise led by Captain Pike and to this I can only say: Stop screwing with my emotions and give me a series with this crew, already!
Last but definitely not least is the announcement of Star Trek: Lower Decks. The Lower Decks episode in TNG was great and having an animated series about the lower ranked crew members of a Federation starship, maybe with some zaniness reminiscent of John Scalzi's Redshirts thrown in, can only be a good thing.
I can't wait for all of this to arrive on my TV.
Diese Episode ist schon einige Zeit her aber unbedingt umpfehlenswert. Die Autorin Mela Eckenfels ist in eine Diskussion mit einem Arzt und Produzenten/Profiteur von Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln geraten und hat alles zusammengefasst und kommentiert.
Ich finde diese Unterhaltung gibt einen guten Einblick in die Diskussionstaktiken und die, aus meiner Sicht, fast kriminelle Bereitschaft Menschen in gesundheitlicher Not über den Tisch zu ziehen, und immer mit Hilfe von Angst und Versprechungen von einfachen Lösungen für komplexe Probleme.
A few days ago I posted a video by Gravel Cyclist and my own little tip for descending on gravel. Well today GCN published a video about climbing on gravel with the absolute cyclecross legend Jeremy Powers.
Personally, I think the tip regarding proper gearing choice is the most helpful. I wouldn't be able to climb a lot of the local paths with gearing as high as Powers's in the video.
Too high a lowest gear equals too much torque on the tyre equals a bigger chance of the back wheel losing traction and spinning out under the rider. The more loose/wet the ground, the more crucial it is not to lose traction in order to maintain a consistent cadence and conserve momentum while going uphill.
My local forests feature many a nice climb with gradients between 9%–20%. I run a 2× setup with 36/46 chainrings up front and an 11-speed 11–40 cassette in the back. This gives me a nice easy smallest gear with a gear ratio of 0.9 which has helped me get up all but the steepest inclinces on loose forest ground with my 700×40c tyres.
July has been very slow in terms of photography, among other things because I spent a couple of days in the hospital for an appendectomy and then some more days recuperating.
In August, on the other hand, I spent as much time outside and with my camera as possible.
For one there was the annual "Schueberfouer" fair in Luxembourg city and I got this nice snapshot out of it.
I went hiking a lot and especially enjoyed the various patterns and structures nature creates.
Of course, I always had our dogs with us and this led to me shooting some of my favourite pictures of Bijou. The first two because they're just pretty portraits of this amazing dog, the third one because she looks wonderfully derpy in it.
