Flash ads are a plague and a pestilence on the Internet, and the Feed

I’m working here and I’m having to type slowly because there are so many Flash ads in the tabs open in the search window that my normally zippy computer has become a tortoise. Sometimes if I don’t wait for the on-screen action to catch up to what I’m currently doing, keystrokes get lost in the transition and I have to go back and re-type, and re-typing seldom turns out as well as the original thought. Even if the original thought was a run-on sentence. Those I can fix in post, usually with a little judicious application of punctuation. Recovering the original thought and re-typing is next to impossible given my brain damage. And I have to go back and recover my thoughts because of excessive flash ads miring my computer in overhead. This is why I consider then to be a plague and a pestilence.

Opening today’s news is some sad but not really sad news from MS. Mississippi man responsible for the 2009 death of a Dutch cyclist dies in federal prison The sad thing is he died in prison, the not-really-sad part is he died from natural causes, not from a brutal prison yard beating. Unlike the person he murdered he died a peaceful natural death.

A cyclist in CA is dragged by a pickup truck. 70-year-old bicyclist struck by pickup truck in Whittier The cyclist was thought to have been riding salmon which means the driver was driving in one direction while looking in another. The usual school of thought is riding with the flow of traffic will avoid these kinds of wreck, as if not looking where you are guiding a ton-and-a-half or more of lethal weapon is OK to do. But until LEO start charging drivers in cases like this that’s really the best advice. Infrastructure to get cyclists away from idiot drivers to prevent. And that is only if the cyclist was riding salmon in the road, if he was hit riding on the sidewalk this was entirely the driver’s fault for failing to yield to traffic on the sidewalk.

A plethora of links from BikingInLA. Morning Links: Killer Chula Vista driver had multiple priors, faces up to 15 years; and not so fast on Olin case I’m always “WTF were they thinking?” when I read about an impaired driver with multiple previous convictions killing a cyclist…

NYPD almost gets it right. Crackdown On Drivers Not Yielding To Pedestrians Means Lots Of Tickets In Park Slope Sixty-one tickets in 2 months is a crackdown? That’s what they should be doing all the time! Actually about twice that, since that is exactly the way most pedestrians die in NYC.

More on the cyclist clotheslined in the UK. Cyclist injured after hitting rope strung across cycle path in Merseyside and Cyclist could have been killed after yobs stretch rope neck-height across path I hope the perps they caught are charged with acts of terror and sabotage, because that’s what setting a mantrap across a cyclepath is. Reading the updated link I find that this is so, preliminary charges do fall under the UK anti-terror statute.

Still in the UK more on the cyclist killed by getting thrown off his bike in front of a car after hitting a pothole. Wife of cyclist killed by pothole criticises council and Coroner: “No doubt” that pothole caused crash that killed cyclist 10 cm is a pretty deep pothole and could have been fatal depending on the shape of the edge. The description of the location makes it sound very likely the edge is extremely steep and abrupt.

I see this as the foundation for an epic cargo bike. Fat little kids’ bike from Wal*Mart I have built many bikes based on Mongoose hubs from a Wally World bike, the hubs are nearly indestructible after a rebuild to get rid of the crappy bearings. The price is right as I can normally pick up Wally World bikes from the curb on trash day because the owners did not know how to change a flat, or discovered that it was cheaper to buy a new crappy bike than to replace worn-out tires and a bad chain.

This e-assist bike shows the benefits of pedalec control over throttle-demand control. 2014 A2B Alva+ Electric Bicycle Test Ride And Review: Charge Ahead Max speed with throttle only, a hair over 15 MPH, max speed with pedalec control, 30 MPH (on the same road?). Human and electric combined is really the best way to go. My best experimental results with e-assist used a motor connected to the cranks and required the rider to pedal to get assist.

Infrastructure news as we have a slight slowdown in killing pedestrians. Pedestrian Deaths Edge Down, Following Unexplained 3-Year Rise I don’t know if they are thinking to correlate VMT to pedestrian deaths (not in actual numbers but trends, when VMT trends up do pedestrian deaths trend up also, and was there a decrease in VMT, or a flattening in VMT growth to accompany the down trend in pedestrian deaths.

More infrastructure news from OR as changes made to the driver’s license tests begin to promulgate to the hinterlands. Oregon’s bike-friendly driving test at work The big problem with changing laws and testing new drivers is all the old drivers that never get tested after they get their license at 16 no matter how old they are.

A blip about a possible bike share down the road from WoaB? Bike Sharing Coming to Dallas Apparently the light rail is too expensive ($5/day) for quick trips and something cheaper that also allows more stops to shop along the way would be better.

And I normally never cover races but this is just amazing, race or not. Iditarod Invitational cyclist rides fat-tired bike to mind-boggling race record He would have finished mid-pack with the dog sleds had they been running together? 100 miles a day +/- on a MTB for more than 10 days? That’s freaking amazing.

Ever have one of those days when riding a bicycle? Now you can share the joy (nsfw but who gives a rat’s…) FUCK OFF, IT’S MY LANE TOO The most visible colors are the lemon yellow and the gold.

Last link is to a cute reminder that operating a motor vehicle is probably the most dangerous thing you do all day outside of EOD. Friday Afternoon Cartoon: T-Rex Nails It on Auto-Centric Urban Design I’m not going to say Ryan North is a genius, just that he’s insightful.

And those were all the links that gave me fits today…

Billed @€0.02, Opus