Labours of Love

Sometime back I saw a tweet by @pervocracy (the account has since been locked):

types of websites that exist anymore:
- algorithmic feed of whatever makes the rat keep pushing the lever
- we hope you enjoyed your 3 free articles
- ENABLE NOTIFICATIONS? SHARE LOCATION?? GET NEWSLETTER???
- labor of love by an actual person, last updated 2009

Fortunately, some websites from the last category still exist. And some – praise be! – are even updated.

Here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of labours of love by an actual person:

• Pink Floyd's The Wall: A Complete Analysis by Gerald Scarfe
• The Fish List (fisheye lenses database) by Luca Vascon
• Coconut Stamps by Lin Yangchen
• Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info (now maintained by others)
• Typography for Lawyers by Matthew Butterick
• Ian's Shoelace Site by Ian Fieggen

I focused on websites made solely (or primarily) by just one person, as opposed to, say, Wikipedia, which is a collective effort. I also didn't include resources which are not websites per se, like this Google Sheet about mini PCs. And finally, the list reflects my own interests, but I'm sure there are many such labours of love which are still out there. If there are any that you know of – whether existing, or late lamented – let me know in the comments!

Syncretism on Rangoon Road

I was cycling past this shrine on Rangoon Road in Singapore (that's my bike in the photo), when I noticed that it has Taoist deity Tua Pek Kong cohabiting with Hindu deity Ganesh.

In front of Ganesh, there is a bottle and a can of Strawberry Fanta. Ganesh keeps healthy.

Bike Friend

Of all the things I've owned or used, a bike, to me, feels most like a person – like a friend, even.

The inscription on this bike, which I saw one night when walking back from Toa Payoh Public Library, made me smile. "Always be with you."

Unity, Equality, Love & Bicycles

My (borrowed) bike on the Ohlone Greenway, California

Copenhagen Bicycle Culture – Part 1: People

My favourite thing about Copenhagen is its bicycle culture. This post is more about people: the plan is for this to be a three-part series, but given what a tardy blogger I've been of late, I wouldn't hold my breath.

I. The Cargobike Girl

The true emblem of Copenhagen is not the mermaid but the cargobike, a.k.a. the Copenhagen SUV. Most of these can carry over 100 kg (plus rider) and as such are a viable alternative to cars, at least over short distances. But some people take this to extreme lengths.

The girl in the photo is my friend's sister, on her way to the airport to pick up her parents. On the way back, the parents rode the two bicycles, while the cargobike doubled up as the luggage-van.

II. The Long John Dad

Cargobikes with two wheels, known as Long Johns, are also a common sight (in fact they were invented in Denmark). The most popular brand, the Bullitt, is put to all sorts of uses: Copenhagenize has a list which includes such oddities as the Summer-Wading-Pool Bullitt, the Power-Station Bullitt and the Sperm Bullitt. But they are most often used as a child-carrier.

This man was test-riding Long Johns trying to decide which one to buy, and the kid was loving every minute of it.

III. The Custom Cruisers

Roaming around Vesterbro on a weekend, we ran into an organised ride by a club for people with bizarre homemade bicycles: the Copenhagen Custom Cruisers. They are like a wholesome, pedal-powered version of the Hells Angels. This image, which I found on their Facebook page, may just be the greatest photo I've ever seen.

IV. The Tallbike Guy

While the Custom Cruisers display a preference for elongated bikes, others, inspired by Chicago's historic Eiffel Tower bikes, prefer to extend them vertically.

Pictured above is the third tallbike I've seen in Copenhagen. The first one, a two-wheeler, stopped next to me at a red light. The rider told me he built it at home by welding one frame on top of another. I asked him why, and he replied, "Why not?" Then the lights changed: he vaulted nimbly onto the saddle and sped off, leaving me open-mouthed.

V. The "Grand Old Man of Velomobiles"

In an environment with ample resources and no natural predators, bicycles in Copenhagen have evolved into all sorts of rare and unusual forms. At the Bicycle Innovation Lab where I volunteer, I ran into Carl-Georg Rasmussen, creator of the Leitra velomobile. He was kind enough to invite me to a tour of his workshop in Herlev, which I hope to do someday.

VI. The Bus Driver

Last month, as a steward for Copenhagen Bike Pride, I was tasked with riding at the back of the parade to block the road. (We had permission to go on the main road because there were too many of us to go the bike path.) At one point, there was a bus right behind me, followed by a double-line of cars. I offered an apologetic wave to the driver, but after that I was too embarrassed even to look in his direction: we were inching forward at what seemed like an agonisingly slow pace, and all I could think of was how annoying it must be for him and his passengers.

This went on for about 10 minutes, but to me it felt like hours and hours. Eventually our routes diverged: as the bus veered to the left, the driver honked twice. I looked at him with trepidation, but he was waving at us with a broad grin on his face. It almost seemed like he would have joined the parade if he could!

The Little Mermaid

One of my happiest memories of my time in Copenhagen is of going to see the mermaid at dawn.

The first time I saw her was on a sunny afternoon. The waterfront was teeming with tourists, some of whom were clambering up to pose and take selfies with the statue. I kept my distance and resolved to come back at a quieter time.

Towards the end of my stay, I woke up one morning at 4 am. Unable to go back to sleep and having nothing better to do, I cycled across the city to the waterfront. On the way, I stopped on Dronning Louise's Bro (which some Copenhageners call hipsterbroen or 'the hipster bridge') to watch the dawn breaking over Sortedam Lake.

Some tourists were passing by. 'It looks like my asshole!' one of them shouted at me, for no apparent reason. 'Yours is redder,' I shouted back, and his friends went 'Ooooo.' I'm usually not good at spur-of-the-moment comebacks, so I was pleased with myself.

I reached the statue just before sunrise. There were only two other people there, and they – like me – quietly sat on a bench overlooking the statue and the sea.

Many visitors find the Little Mermaid underwhelming or kitschy, but I've grown quite fond of the statue (in any case, I have a soft spot for disappointing monuments). Even with crowds of tourists swarming around her, she seems dignified and aloof, her gazed fixed on some distant point on the shore; of course in the original fairy-tale, unlike in the Disney movie, the Little Mermaid suffers unbearable torments but does not get her man.

The two other people on the scene were 18-year-old guys from Belgium, returning home after a walking holiday in Sweden. Their ferry arrived the night before and their train was in the morning, so they spent the night on the beach. At one point, they said, it got really cold.

It struck me – not as a cause for regret, just as a fact – that this is the kind of thing I once used to do, but these days I'd be more likely to book a cheap hotel (except perhaps in the company of Bunty, with whom all bets are off).

I turned 30 last year, and it feels like a more significant threshold than turning 18. Lather was 30 years old when they took away all of his toys; his mother sent newspaper clippings to him about his old friends who'd stopped being boys. And the poet Brian Howard said, 'Anybody over the age of 30 seen in a bus has been a failure in life.' I cheerfully take buses and, like Lather, draw pictures of mountains that look like bumps, but I may be less likely to sleep under the stars in northern latitudes.

The Spider Parable

Tintin readers may be familiar with Araneus diadematus: it was the spider which sat on Professor Phostle's telescope, leading him to think there was an enormous spider travelling through space.

This line made an impression on me when I read it as a kid, so although Araneus diadematus is not found in India, when I saw spiders in our house, I would often mutter to myself, "It's an Araneus diadematus! An enormous Araneus diadematus!"

Now that I am in Cambridgeshire, a beautiful specimen lives in our back garden.

She likes to spin her web across the garden gate, which unfortunately means that each time I take out my bicycle, I have no option but to tear the web down. For over a month now, I have been – reluctantly – destroying her web on an almost daily basis, but the next morning I find it has been rebuilt.

If I were Robert the Bruce, I might have drawn some sort of life lesson from this.

Terms of Use

My CQA page (linked in the sidebar) answers most queries which readers may have about this blog (and several others besides), but it has hitherto been silent about terms of use. I don't make any money from this blog, so I'm not too fussed about asserting copyright over the content as long as people behave with common decency.

On a few occasions, people have been kind enough to email me asking if they can link to a post or use an image. Most recently, someone from tokyobike NYC – a bike company – emailed me to ask permission to use one of my photos (this is where they shared the image, and here is the post where it originally appeared).

So, to save such people the time and effort of having to contact me to ask permission, I hereby introduce The World According to Sroyon terms of use.

I toyed with the idea of adopting Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, but in the end I settled for something that's even more flexible and non-legalistic (or, to use a Creative Commons phrase, "human-readable").

Balkan Portrait 3: The Cyclist

Piaţa Muzeului in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca is a popular haunt for university students, so fashionable bikes are no rare sight. Even so, this one stood out. The owner said he got it second-hand at a great price.

When I asked if I could take his photo, he not only assented, but put his foot on the bench, deliberately took out a cigarette from his satchel and lit up. I took several photos, of which this one is my favourite.

Dream Tricycle

I got to work early this morning, so once I had finished filing yesterday’s emails and making my to-do list for the day, it was doodle-time.

2 months and 13 days ago, I had a (very pleasant) dream involving a curious vehicle – an old-fashioned penny-farthing, but with two rear wheels. Passengers could stand on the rear axle, but had to backpedal constantly, as one does on a rolling log, to avoid falling off.

My work notebook is filled with sketches of this contraption drawn from various angles, some more detailed than others. Here is a sample.

The black cat did not feature in the dream, and is in the drawing only to show scale.

Guessing the Light

Last weekend I was in Bath, taking photos of snow with a manual camera.

My light meter, like all in-camera light meters, measures reflected light (as opposed to incident light). It is calibrated to assume that all objects are midtone grey, i.e. reflect about 18% of incident light. This works fine in most situations, but when it meters an object that is unusually reflective (such as snow), it is fooled into thinking that there is a great deal more incident light than there actually is. Following the meter reading would therefore result in an underexposed image – grey snow. Taking photos of snow, or other scenes with unusually light or dark tones, thus involves an element of guesswork.

Saha and I often shoot with film, and because film is less forgiving and not all things are midtone grey, it helps not to be wholly reliant on the light meter. To develop a better sense of light (and also for fun), we sometimes play a game. One of us will point at, say, a wall, and call out a film speed and an aperture. For instance, “ISO 200 at f/8.” Then we both guess the shutter speed, and we check it against the light meter.

This photo is from the day Saha and I test-rode tokyobikes in Shoreditch: I over-exposed by one stop to get the right exposure for the light tones.

The label Sports has now been changed to Sports/Games.

A Brief Discussion on Love

This Sunday’s cycling trip took us to Victoria Park, where gathering clouds created a dramatic backdrop to the autumn foliage.

The building on the right is the park café, where we stopped for a bite to eat. Everyone else was feeling cold, so I was drawing a considerable amount of criticism for taking my time over my sandwich, coffee and carrot cake. I thought they were overreacting (it wasn’t that cold), and to substantiate this I pointed to a couple who were boating on the lake in their shorts.

Saha:	My god, how are they wearing shorts? It’s freezing!
Natalie:	But it’s different with them. They are in lurve!
Saha:	That doesn’t help! Have you not watched Titanic?

Two Tings

It is generally better for public signage to be precise rather than vague, but you feel things may have gone a bit too far when the Regent’s Canal Towpath Code of Conduct prescribes not only that you ting, but also the appropriate number of tings.

Old School Close

Another Sunday, another cycling trip with Saha, another amusing street name.

None of your newfangled closes in Bromley: they like their old-school ones just fine, thank you very much.

Ha-Ha

Saha and I went for a cycle ride this morning – a great route which included Greenwich Park, Blackheath, Gilbert’s Pit and the Thames Barrier.

On the way we saw this sign which would appear to be mocking motorists (and indeed cyclists).

In fact this is not a misplaced display of juvenile humour on the part of the civic authorities: Ha-Ha Road is a real road, named after the Royal Artillery Ha-Ha. This is one of my favourite street names in London, probably second only to Of Alley.

tokyobike

tokyobike opened their first store in London this year. Surely, of all the vehicles devised by the ingenuity of man, the single-speed bicycle has to be the most beautiful.

Coffee in the Shadow of a Battleship

Our neighbourhood park, Island Gardens, overlooks the river Thames. The park has an outdoor café, where we often go on weekends for breakfast or afternoon tea. The coffee is unexceptional, but I like the view of the river.

For the last few days though, a large, unattractive object has intruded on the view: a battleship is moored on the river as a safety measure for the Olympics.

There are other safety measures in place, besides the battleship. Surface-to-air missiles have been installed on the rooftops of apartment blocks, and people have been arrested for not smiling, and for ‘cycling in a group north of the river Thames’.

সাইকেল ভাড়া

This week London’s cycle sharing scheme celebrated its second birthday. For a while now I have been using these bikes to travel to work. Not everyone is a fan of the sponsors, but I like how the computerised docking terminals have a large number of language options, including Bengali.

London, 7:45 pm

All day I was craving a cycle ride, but the Barclays bike terminals were down because of some computer failure. In the evening, I could take it no more, and borrowed Saha’s cycle for a spin.

On Westferry Road, there is a small wharf overlooking the Thames. I reached it just in time to see the sun go down behind the Central London skyline.

Notes from Okinawa

Some anecdotes from a diving and snorkelling holiday in Akajima in the Okinawa prefecture, with friends from work.

We saw flying fish from our dive-boat, and this excited me as much as anything we saw underwater. There are no two ways about it: animals that can both swim and fly are cool.

Our diving guide spoke only Japanese. Before each dive, she would brief us about the dive plan, attractions and dangers. I could follow most things she said, but I wouldn’t be able to understand something like “establish neutral buoyancy,” or “the sting of the blue-ringed octopus is potentially fatal.” My friends, who are Japanese, were happy to translate, but it hurt my pride to ask them for help.

After each day’s diving, we gathered in the dining hall of the dive shop to fill our dive logs. It had an extensive library on local fish, coral, shells and reptiles. Everything was in Japanese, but fortunately the encyclopaedias had taxonomic names in the Latin alphabet. So the exercise went like this: each plant or animal we had seen would be identified (occasionally after some debate) by reference to an observer’s guide written in Japanese, then someone would look it up for me in the relevant encyclopaedia to find the taxonomic name, which I would then google to find the common English name and copy it in my dive log. This was almost as much fun as the actual diving.

When cycling to Nishihama beach, the most famous beach on the island, we came to a fork in the road. Shun said “Go right.” I asked him how he knew, and he said “Just feel the beach.” It was undeniably a Quote, but I am not sure whether he could in fact “feel the beach,” or had looked at a map beforehand. His credibility took a hit the previous day after he claimed that he fought an octopus underwater.

We dived about ten days after a typhoon, which is when the water is apparently clearest. On top of that, we enjoyed cloudless skies and an upwelling, which make for excellent diving conditions. Underwater visibility was an incredible 40 metres. Experienced divers were shaking their heads in disbelief, saying they had rarely seen anything like it. Shun, who knows how sad I am to be leaving Japan, said it was Japan’s farewell gift to me.