thewashingmachinepost




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a tv reprieve

cycling tv

after failing miderably to watch any of the uci track meet from manchester last weekend on cycling.tv, i surmised (incorrectly as it turns out) that owners jumptv had altered or upgraded the codec used for live streaming. that such a codec actually exists is not in doubt, and that it plain doesn't work on a mac is also beyond doubt. however, having logged in today (sunday 9th november) to hopefully watch the cyclo cross from pijnacker, after a great deal of buffering in the media player, i finally achieved sound and vision - so i must apologise to those at ctv for jumping to conclusions.

incidentally, i did try to contact jumptv's technical support during the week, but they don't list ctv as one of the supported channels, so that went nowhere. then i e-mailed info@jumptv.com as listed on their website, and that bounced. tenacious to the last, i then e-mailed their press department to point out that i had already published an article regarding he manchester viewing debacle, and that i'd like a bot more info for a follow-up.

still awaiting a reply

however, brian and anthony can be seen and heard on a mac on ctv once again. and the sun has just come out on a wet and windy day on islay.

posted on sunday 9 november 2008

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don't tell me you didn't see it coming?

solo jersey vote

every year, on 25th december, we get christmas, followed exactly a week later by new year's day - it's guaranteed, and not up for discussion. and in the same fashion, though admittedly not on a specific date, you can pretty much guarantee that paul at solo will have the annual poll to choose next year's classique jersey, or at least the country that will feature on its screen print.

as you may have had the pleasure of seeing recently, the mighty dave t was happy to take a shine to this year's england jersey because it is the land of his birth, and because he rather favours the design. but for next year, we'll be celebrating the 25th anniversary of robert millar's king of the mountains win in the tour in 1984, and after chris hoy's superb haul of gold medals at this year;s beijng olympics, do i really have to point out which would be the most appropriate country to choose?

because if your vote happens to fall on any other country, i'll make sure that your web browser only displays the gaelic version of thewashingmachinepost. and you wouldn't want that to happen would you? (at the time of writing, scotland is trailing badly - you have been warned)

solocc.com

posted on sunday 9 november 2008

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museeuw mf5 zurich - carbon/flax frame

museeuw mf5

we've gone from the wooden hobby horses of the late ninteenth century, through heavy steel frames, to much lighter steel frames, aluminium alloy frames, titanium, bamboo and even beryllium, before carbon fibre saw the light of day in the shape of a bicycle frame. currently there is more than one method of making carbon into a bike: tubes, lugs, wrapovers, monocoques, then several different grades of carbon weave; you pays your money, you takes your choice.development continues apace, but not always in a straight line - one particular bicycle imprint has veered off to the left by constructing tubes from a variable flax/carbon mix. do the museeuw range of frames live up to the pr hype? does adding something that also makes fine linen make one iota of difference to the hardened cyclist?

because i'm an inquisitive sort, and because i'm generally rather cynical about this sort of thing, i have been riding a museeuw mf5 zurich over islay's finely crafted roads (always good to maintain a healthy sense of humour), and though far from being islay's museeuw authority, i found out stuff.

read more

posted on saturday 8 november 2008

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two wheels good - but gone

two wheels

you can't fail to have noticed the increased coverage and acceptance that cycling has gained since beijing. almost everything that has been tried over the past few years to encourage increased cycle use has palled by comparison - a state of affairs that is not only quite incredible, but very acceptable too. there have been more column inches in the regular media in the past few months than the last couple of years put together. add this in with the government's drive against childhood and adult obesity, the need for more economical and greener forms of transport that will mitigate against global warming, and it's hard to see how cycling can fail at the moment. there used to be a business saying in the nineties that no-one ever got fired for buying ibm. the modern corollary might be applied to printing cycling articles in the mainstream press.

however, while all is looking rosy and fine in the garden, the guardian newspaper, which could have been seen to be at the forefront of cycle promotion, has seen fit to dispense with its thursday two wheels column in the g2 section without so much as a bye your leave. started in 2005 and up until early this year, written by one of the finest writers in the uk - as well as a top road and cyclocross rider - matt seaton, two wheels managed the almost impossible by being all things to all cyclists, not an easy task. it was entertaining, finely worded and was an unmissable part of a thursday. a good few years ago now, the comic used to run adverts entitled when thursday comes - with both the latter and two wheels arriving on the same day, cyclists were well sorted.

matt stopped writing the column in february of this year, though not before publishing a compendium of some of his finest moments over the years, ostensibly because his real job at the guardian had become all consuming, leaving little time to present two wheels to the standard that we had become accustomed to. with one or two exceptions, his successors pretty much dragged the column towards the cycling gutter, seemingly concentrating on the downsides of commuting in a city - not something that pertains to every guardian reader. matt always managed to leave his readers in a better state of mind at the last word than they were at the first. sadly, no-one seemed to have noticed that part.

i certainly wrote on more than one occasion to complain about the drop in standard, all to no avail, and possibly if many more did likewise, we gave the guardian just the excuse they needed to dispense with its services. the official reason is reduced pagination in the g2 section, but it's noticeable that the motoring correspondent still has a full page in the colour magazine every week, and since stephen fry's dork talk has gone, there's plenty of space to fit two wheels in there.

so, two wheels is now gone for good. i hope the editor who made the decision lives to regret it. a curse of three punctures on them.

matt seaton's book of the same name is available from guardianbooks.co.uk price £8.99

posted on friday 7 november 2008

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ten points, a memoir - bill strickland. hyperion books 241pp $23.95 (£14.04)

ten points - bill strickland

for my fiftieth birthday last month, mrs washingmachinepost gave me an ipod touch, somewhat of a major step up from my little red ipod shuffle. not only can i see which recording i'm about to be deafened by, but it's possible to play movies such as road to roubaix or the brooks saddles documentary and watch them on the clearest of screens. and in a similar fashion to a computer, it's possible to change the wallpaper to suit my style of the moment. the wallpaper, however, sits at the back of everything, while all the clever bits happen in front.

ten points proves it's the same in the real world. glance or read through any of the continuous stream of cycling books that appear on the shelves (about four or five) of waterstones, or any other sizeable bookshop, on the run up to christmas, and find that they're all about cycling - all about cycling. bill strickland knows that real life goes on all around, and has experienced the courage to lay bare his real life in print. and while we know cycling to be the meaning of life, the universe and everything, it pretty much has to fit in around, between or over all else. because it would spoil your reading of the book, i'm not going to tell you why the book is entitled ten points - this is one of those essential books that every cyclist needs to read cover to cover, in order to pin their place in the firmament: you'll find out why when you read it.

'we get through our lives by insulating our emotions and sensory perceptions...how the hell could you clear your e-mail in the morning if you succumbed to the infinite pleasure to be found within a banana muffin?

to pin bill strickland's place in the firmament: he's the senior editor at bicycling magazine in the usa, one of those crazy chaps that rode rouleur's crazy bet this year, and a very worthy literary contributor to the very same journal's 2008 photography annual. some people can write, some people think they can (remind me of anyone?) and some just blatantly can't; bill can. ten points is a beautiful book, both in the way bill deals with some very harrowing times in the strickland lifetime, as well as some delights on skinny wheels and bendy bars...

'i was holding the wheel. i was not getting dropped. then i was tumbling down into my own body, gasping and choking and trying to stick my head up above my exhaustion to snatch a breath as ten bikes or more streamed past me...'

...and in the way that the writing just won't let you put the book down. wordsmith would be to undervalue. my review copy arrived from the usa on tuesday afternoon, and i've read every page before putting fingers to keyboard and provide this review. i couldn't put it down.

like many of us, bill strickland is no champion, but cycling is just like carbon fibre - tightly woven under his clearcoat, and always there whatever else is happening in life. the desire, and possibly the need, to succeed in the world of criterium racing that inhabits his being, is on a parallel with our own trials and tribulations of both greater or lesser relativity. if you have been a reader of matt seaton's the escape artist, ten points will also float your chainset - not the life of a sheltered professional who only has to get on his/her bike each day and ride. that life is understandable; the pain and suffering can often be alleviated by the thought of a healthy paycheck at the end of the year. we mere mortals put ourselves through a proportionally similar degree of pain and suffering which is only wallpaper to our real life, coming out the other end still with a smile on the face.

this isn't a brand new release - it was published in 2007, but it may not have placed itself on the periphery of your literary radar. hopefully this has now been remedied.

ten points will help you understand.

hyperionbooks.com

posted on thursday 6 november 2008

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who are these other guys anyway?

cent cols challenge

at a professional level, cycling is regarded as a team sport, even though there is the strange dichotomy that only one guy or girl wins. still it's often due to the selfless efforts of the others wearing the same jersey and riding the same bikes that helps that one person reach the top step of the podium anyway. yet it's not at all unusual for cyclists to train on their own. many an interview with some of the world's greats (oscar freire springs to mind) gives credit to the notion that many spend most of their off season and in betweenies, riding the kilometres alone, either under their own direction, or according to directions provided by their directeur sportif. to my mind, that is one of the bike's attractions - though i should underline that the only time i'm in training for anything is when i need an excuse to go out for several hours at a time.

it is also a slightly strange notion that, in the annual london paris ride, the organisation pays lip service to the idea of teams, even though many of them don't actually ride together at any time during the three days worth of proceedings. since the ride is organised (quite rightly) into groups according to ability and desire, it is possible for there to be one member of a particular team in every group. i haven't quite figured that one out, though there are other benefits of entering a team that make perfect sense.

and so to phil deeker's mammoth undertaking, the cent cols challenge, due for the off in mid-september 2009. i have featured this rather daunting ten day undertaking on the post before, and was very happy to meet up with phil at the cycle show in earls court last month (looking disgustingly fit - him, not me). the cent cols challenge, which covers approximately 2000km and around 30,000 metres of climbing was designed as a team event: four persons each in a maximum of eight teams. however, if we posit the entirely hypothetical notion that i myself should subject myself to those 2000km and 30,000 metres of gravity defying pedalling, i would be very hard pushed to find three others on islay to join me.

cent cols challenge

so phil has relented, or rather, become more accommodating; if you'd like to ride the event as an individual, or as a team of less than four, just let them know at the point of subscribing and, like captain picard's underlings, they will make it so. if individuality is your watchword, then nothing now stands in your way. it has to be said, however, that the thought of cycling all that distance alone (well, not quite, but you know what i mean) is not something that would appeal to me - it would be nice to have someone to tow me up a hill now and again.

and who would i brag about my power output to?

centcolschallenge.com

posted on wednesday 5 november 2008

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miles, and miles, and miles (and kilometres)

the mighty dave t

there are lots of miles out there. and lots of kilometres too, all lovingly paved with varying degrees of tarmac (some around here with precious little of the latter), ideal for those skinny wheels to roll over at differing speeds. and depending on your perspective of cycling, those miles and kilometres will have different meanings: if this is the end of your season, they can be thought of as your warm down. slow enough to keep the legs turning over, but not fast enough to feel the burn; but then if it's the end of a season, assuming you adhere to such, speed is no longer of the essence.

if your skinny wheels are halted by cantilevers, then there's an even chance your'e at the crest of the cyclocross season (and i'm hoping that ctv works on sunday, to be able to watch): lungbusting will be your watchword. fortunately, we're all different, and it may just have occurred to you that the race isn't won in the spring/summer, it's won in the winter, so at the moment a lesser degree of lungbusting may already be here, or on the horizon.

and all this is good and well, because it places the bicycle and its rider in its logical place in the firmament. some of us, however, have an entirely different displacement; we happily spend ludicrous amounts of folding stuff or flexible friends, on bicycles and components that would do justice to a pro continental racer (not that we have the legs to trouble them in competition), with no thought at all of having to pedal them in anger. those miles and kilometres that were observed at the top of the tree are just miles and kilometres to us; they hold no real fear, but consequently hold no real promise of competitiveness either. it's all just distance. oh, alright then, promising distance.

of course, i will pretend to myself that i am not one of the latter, since observing distance as just what it is, would not be seemly in polite company. the start of the sunday ride down uiskentuie strand to port charlotte is filled with purpose - one can hardly perform at one's full potential if going from the gun before the muscles are suitably warmed up, therefore 15km at 15kph isn't recreational, it's positively beneficial. it would never do to admit that i'm not in training. beijing may be over, but london looms in a mere four years.

whimsy aside, accepting that miles may just be miles and kilometres likewise makes cycling fun - there's ample time to fish around in that back pocket trying to dig out the last bits of a marmalade sandwich; stopping to put on a stowaway jacket; pulling up the last bit of the zip on a softshell; pretending you can just see the head of the chasing peloton in the distance (did i just say that out loud?). yes i can stamp on the pedals, yes, i can attempt to best the mighty dave t in the spedding sprint, but miles are still miles, and kilometres...

...they can take care of themselves.

posted on tuesday 4 november 2008

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is this any way to spend your spare time?

ant and dec

jez hastings and i spent many a long saturday, and the occasional mid-week hours, training ourselves to withstand the three days of the 2008 london-paris ride. happily the training paid off - both of us completed without any harmful effects and were able to smile sweetly under the eiffel tower. as you will have read at the time (didn't you?) we weren't the only ones taking part: three of our favourite commentators were also there to ride alongside - well, apart from anthony mccrossan who had his race face on and didn't take it as easy as brian smith, david harmon and myself. some of the time.

however, having made it to paris, jez and i returned to islay time - slowing down and cycling when it suited, rather than having to cover 150km in a minimum amount of time. and marmalade sandwiches and water have replaced torq gels and carbo drinks. messrs mcrossan and smith, however, stayed too long in the bar in the paris novotel, and ran out of excuses not to take part in another marathon sporting event. in this case, a real marathon in the city of new york.

if you're one for news watching, you'll know that the women's marathon was won by britain's paula radcliffe (2hr 23min 56s) and the men's event by brazil's marilson gomes dos santos (2:08:43) and it would be stretching credibility to expect two cyclists to be hitting those kind of numbers. but as someone who would struggle to run from the sofa to thewashingmachinepost bike shed, brian smith's time of 4:43:58 and anthony's 4:47:51 are to be greatly admired. a damn sight more than i could ever achieve. running as part of geoff thomas's team raising money for leukaemia research, both brian and anthony finished a few minutes behind former tour winner, stephen roche who was also trapped in the same bar in the paris novotel.

major brownie points to all those who took part, including londres-paris organiser, sven thiele (5:58). there's still time to help swell the coffers, so click the just giving links below and give the guys even more of a reward than they have already achieved.

 www.justgiving.com/amccrossan | www.justgiving.com/gtf-briansmith

posted on monday 3 november 2008

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chain-l no.5 - huile de chaine

chain-l no.5

when i was a small boy, i owned two bicycles: the first was probably on 24" wheels, though it would be straining the few remaining brain cells to remember if that's entirely correct (i remember the tyres being white) and no gears, while its successor was a raleigh twenty which, true to form, had twenty inch wheels and a sturmey archer three speed gear. and what seemed like a heck of a chore at the time, my parents insisted that the chain be oiled once a week at the very least. you will understand that this all took place in the days before chain lubes were trendy and came in big aerosol tins with 33 percent extra free. those were the days of the trusty cans of three in one oil off which you snipped the top of the applicator tube on the top, and dripped an entirely modest amount of the golden brown liquid onto each link, or roller, of the chain.

you may well have heard it said that the bicycle is one of the most efficient machines ever developed by mankind, reaching an unheard of rating in the 90 percentile range. it is possible that the latest belt -drives can equal this, but so far they have been confined to a single gear, so parity has not quite been achieved altogether. but in order for the bicycle to remain as efficient as possible (no use wasting energy), keeping the chain well lubricated is one of the more simpler pastimes that the operator can partake of, an operation that only occupies mere minutes. this i know, bcause i have just finished doing so. unfortunately, due to the influx of dry lubes and sprays, the art of oiling the chain has seemingly become a dying one.

the outer plates of the chain only come into regular contact with the outer and inner faces of the front gear mech on a well adjusted setup, so placing lubricant on them is a bit of a waste; the part of the chain that bears the heaviest burden, even more so than the bottom bracket (which has larger bearings anyway) is that tiny little roller bearing at the join of each chain link. making sure that it is soundly lubricated will help the chain last that bit longer, make your pedalling more efficient, and keep the drive train as silent as if it were new. i am not decrying spray lubes altogether (apart from wd-40 which is a bit too thin to be of much use on a bicycle chain), but their scattergun approach tends to place the lubricant pretty much everywhere around the cassette, chain and derailleur, instead of just where it is required, even if it came with one of those straws to fit the nozzle.

so after years of trying every snazzily advertised and proffered lubricant on the market, it is perhaps no surprise that i have now come full circle and re-adopted the method taught me by my dad - dripping a small amount of oil on each roller bearing of the chain. however, no longer are we confined to three-in-one. if a product could be judged by the cleverness of its name, my new found chain lubricant would sell by the truckload. you may well have read the heading and carried on to the crux of the article without realising: chain-l no.5 is a play on one of the world's most famous fragrances, chanel no.5. get it now?however, if it merely stopped there, it would be a good giggle and time to move on, so having giggled thewashingmachinepost is now trying it out, having applied some chain-l no.5 to the chains on the museeuw mf5 and brompton folding bike currently under test. generally this could be reckoned to be a very good time of year to test a chain lube, since the roads are filling with crud, and there is a veritable river (at times) of precipitation intent on washing off all that carefully applied oil. chain-l no. 5 is real oil, not a synthetic product; it's a blend of extreme pressure lubricants in a high film-strength oil base, but also includes rust inhibitors and other additives to improve longevity and wet-weather performance.

so it's not green then? actually it's a colour very akin to islay single malt, but i hear what you're saying. accordng to francis of chain -l, he didn't set out to create an environmental product. becuae this is a petroleum product, he's not making any bio-degradability or eco-friendly claims. if chain-l does its job as well as it claims, then the chain lasts longer, and you don't keep throwing old, used, worn ones away. you pays your money and you takes your choice.

chain-l no.5, is a very viscous liquid (thick), but is absorbed into the roller by capillary action, so you only need one drop per link. yes, it takes a few more minutes to apply than a can of spray stuff, but we're patient, fastidious people, so a few moments once a week is hardly going to eat into our precious training hours. i favour placing a drop on the rollers facing upwards from the lower section of the chain, the length that has just passed through the jockey wheels on its way to the chainring; since this is the side that connects face on, to the sprocket and chainring teeth, it makes perfect sense to me.

if you live in the usa, click through to chain-l.com for a list of dealers. if you're not close to a dealer or if you live elsewhere, you can buy a 4oz bottle (more than enough for about six months of lubing every week, i should imagine) for only $12 (£7.50) (francis says he can post a bottle to the uk for around $15 - £9.50 including postage). chain-l will be monitored on both test bikes before being applied to the chain on the company colnago in the fullness of time, and i'll let you know how well it works. meantime, at those prices, you could do worse than buy your own bottle and test it with me. if anyone asks, you're just putting on some chain-l no.5

chain-l.com

posted on monday 3 november 2008

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rapha winter jersey and winter cap

rapha winter cap & jersey

the animometer on my neighbour's shed is barely shifting, and considering we're right at the beginning of november, that's not a normal state of affairs. what is normal is the shower that appears to be hanging over bruichladdich at the other side of the loch, so one of the enormous pockets on the winter jersey will be stuffed with a stowaway jacket, appropriately emblazoned with rapha condor. sunday rides aren't training, or at least, they're not supposed to be, so it's always a nice idea to pop in the panasonic compact, along with a spare inner tube, multi-tool, c02 pump, and, just for today, a marmalade sandwich. it's a paddington bear thing.

of course, as i've just pointed out, it's the start of november, so ambient heat is conspicuous by its absence, and no matter what they tell you in perren street, the winter cap was designed especially for islay weather. unfortunately, my penchant for playing safe and wearing a catlike whisper, covers up the beluga and black panels, neatly matching the winter jersey and winter tights. all in blue. word perfect.

this time last year, i'd have popped a gilet on top; there may be no wind as such, but it will result in a permanent headwind as i travel faster than the still air around me. however, such is the march of progress that this year's winter jersey has that taken care of, with internal windproofing on the front and shoulders of the blue jersey. great what you can do with sportwool these days. i'm not getting any younger, so i allow myself the luxury of a slow start - there's no point in hammering myself down uiskentuie strand, and regretting it over the next fifty odd kilometres. for no particular reason, it dawns on me that it might be a nice idea to persuade debbie that warm croissants would go down a treat with a double espresso when we get back. debbie's on holiday at the moment, so next week will have to do.

as i wend my way through the bends outside of bruichladdich village, the shower that was seen hanging over before i left, seems not to have moved on, and i pull over for a couple of minutes to put on the stowaway. of course this immediately invokes the law according to sod, and the rain immediately goes off, so i stop a few hundred metres further on to put it back in its pocket. jez is out with his three kids, sporting new found stamina after slogging their way through half of the wind and rain battered braveheart course last weekend. with carl riding shotgun, we shepherd them back through bruichladdich and head towards bridgend.

michael (spartacus to his friends) has a pair of legs spinning like a wind turbine, so i nip alongside to see how many chainrings are on his small t-mobile giant, and tell him how to change to the outer ring. better cadence, more speed, and mark cavendish needs to watch out. trying to keep the route as flat and simple as possible, we head for the abattoirenberg forest - even though they've chopped half of it down - and the vestiges of cyclocross at the junction of the glen road and the high road. you'd think the roads budget would stretch far enough to replace the tarmac, but obviously that hasn't been accounted for so far. the girls are doing fine, though spartacus and i did lose them, jez and carl, behind an exiting tractor and had to stop for a while to allow catch-up.

rapha winter cap & jersey

spartacus has acquired the knack of taking any rise in the road a la robert millar to add to his cavendish skills already in the bag, and the long downhill to springbank splits us all up, as those with superior weight freewheel further and faster. heading back down the strand in the opposite direction, spartacus signals his interest in winning the spedding sprint before deb's, so, in the manner of the world's finest domestiques, i shift in front and offer my rear wheel to tow him towards the finish line. unfortunately, his older sisters have similar intentions, brotherly love being ditched in the quest for sprinting fame, but in the true lead out spirit, i pull off with about fifty metres to go and allow him to rocket across the imaginary line separating the can-do from the has-been.

the reward is an extra helping of mini-marshmallows atop a mug of steaming hot chocolate; i'm sure cav would share the sentiment. my double espresso goes down a treat, along with one of those little caramel biscuits you only ever get with a coffee. the marmalade sandwich, by now only vaguely resembling the shape it had when i made it, goes down just as well. carl has a slice of carrot cake. the return trip to bowmore is dry and a few kph faster.

don't you just love sunday mornings?

the rapha winter jersey retails at £130 ($230) only £5 more than the original from several years ago. you can have black/black or navy/black, though i prefer the epithet beluga. the winter cap is available in its new guise of black/navy, along with black green and purple (what happened to the light blue one?) at an entirely commendable £35 ($55).

rapha.cc

posted on sunday 2 november 2008

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compression/decompression

flip4mac

i know that there are a number of you out in the technical world who have expressed frustration with cycling.tv, a frustration that seems embedded in the technical fol de rol that accompanies the programming and browser experience. something that started off as the saviour of the televisual cycling experience, has gradually got worse everytime they update their website, seemingly hellbent on complicating things beyond everybody's ken.

this is slightly exaggerated if you, like me, try to watch on a macintosh; owners jump.tv stream all the cycling broadcasts using windows media, and since microsoft ceased macintosh development of windows media player several years ago, those of us on this computing platform have to employ a plugin called flip4mac to allow streaming through apple's quicktime player. i have petitioned them on several occasions over the years to switch to flash media streaming, as used by the bbc, but this has fallen on deaf ears.

with the manchester track cycling on this weekend, i renewed my subscription to the uci channel in order to watch, but trying to do so proved completely impossible, and i may just have found the reason why. the last live cycling i watched on ctv was the kalmthout cross race two weekends ago, and it worked just fine, but it seems that there is a screen codec for wmv files that will not work at all on apple macs, and it may just be that jump and subsequently ctv have implemented this in their broadcast files. in which case, if you're on a mac, ctv, anthony and brian may have become another piece of cycling history.

i am conducting a follow up to this, because i'm not very clued up on streaming video, and if this turns out to be the case, ctv will just have lost a proportion of its viewing public, and it's not our fault. if you're on a mac and couldn't watch this weekend's ctv broadcast, please e-mail and let me know.

cos i'm technically miffed.

posted on sunday 2 november 2008

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