Gatorskins 650C x 24mm

A big improvement - although I'm running them a little softer (120psi) I'm grateful I have a carbon seatpost with some give, because they're a harsh ride (24mm profile). Fast and efficient though. I did have a slide on a roundabout, so I suspect they either need some breaking in, or the rubber is a much harder compound. I was only going slowly, but it was damp.

SilverKeeper

The Lion-to-Cougar upgrade zeroes all of your Silverkeeper settings, so be warned if you rely on it. Also, v.2.0.2 isn't technically supported on Lion or Cougar, although it works great. Download it while you can!

Tyres for 650C

Well this week was a major PITA. I was just in the early days of a torrid new affair with the Anok FIBUA (snappy name for my new 650C commuter) when I had three p*nctures in two rides. At least 2 of the flats were caused by the Vredstein Fortezza TripComp folding tyres I was using, which appear to have deep cracks between the rubber compounds. They are also very soft, which I imagine translates into low rolling resistance and high grip. Not good for picking up glass and flints though. So they have been replaced with Conti Gatorskins, which are much prettier anyway. We'll see how we go, but safe to say eBay's not a good deal for these - they were about a quid cheaper brand new from Wiggle. Pics to come.

Gallery Map

I have added some rough geodata to many of the albums in the gallery here, and I have uploaded some new panoramas as well. And my Pompino was included in readers rides...

Finally, today's stage saw the rider take on the awesome Col de Sandy, also known as the Bedfordshire Pimple. It's short but harsh. This is a nice anti-cobweb lap with takes about 30mins and is 12km.

Cougar Fixes

Mountain Lion has caused a few issues, but generally still feels faster. Most annoying is the breakage of MacFUSE / MacFusion, which I was using to natively mount SSH volumes over a network. Although the 2.2.2b version claims to work with ML, it doesn't for me. The other gripe is that iStat Pro- a dashboard widget- doesn't show active processes any more. Not a big deal.

88g Cassette?!?

Safari 1, Opera Nil

The Mountain Lion improvements and under-the-hood tweaks to Safari have all but killed Opera on my machines. Even the Fedora netbook is going through a Midori trial, mixed with a sprinkling of Chrome… Ho hum, end of an era.

Cougar-Time!

Are there Cocoa engine improvements in Mountain Lion? My machine seems to render all sorts of things more quickly (like html in emails, and Safari is noticeable). Generally a little usability tweak, with some UI elements also getting a little clean-up. Will report as I go, but initial impressions very good. Installation was a breeze, and although some things reported incompatibilities, I stupidly didn't click the "tell me more" button. Not 100% sure I like the close ties between machine and .mac account, but it was inevitable.