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It’s finally here!  I’m getting ready to head off to the Brompton US Championship bike race.  The race takes place at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia as part of the Philly Phlyer cycling day.  The grand prize is a trip to the Brompton World Championship in England.

The event requires that all participants ride a Brompton folding bicycle and british racing attire- a blazer, collared shirt and tie. Sports gear is strictly not permitted!

In preparation for the race, I’ve logged more than 1,000 miles on my Brompton M6L.  For a little speed boost, I’ve installed a new crank that gives me 8% higher gearing on my tiny wonder. 

I’ve mapped the route on Google Earth and inspected the course.  It doesn’t look all that different from a loop around New York City’s Central Park.

Download Google Earth KML File

With a little last minute advice from my friend Steven Huang, I’m taking Megabus and stowing my bike in the cargo bin under the bus.  It turns out that the Brompton and its nylon cover fits perfectly in $4 Dimpa bag by Ikea.  I removed the hinge clamps, added some extra padding in key areas and I’m good to go. Thanks, Steve!

Wish me luck!  More images coming soon from the actual event!

The Big Picture does it again-

Massive earthquake hits Japan

Japan: earthquake aftermath

Will others pick up on this amazing way of telling stories through massive pictures? Boston.com has been doing it since 2008.

The future is now-  According to the latest numbers released by IDC, smartphones have finally outsold PCs for the first time ever.

Q4 2010 worldwide units shipped:

Smartphones- 100.9 million
PCs- 92.1 million units

Of course these numbers are for a single quarter, but still.. the writing is on the wall.

37 Signals has posted a nifty tip for accessing your Basecamp account directly from the Mac menubar. 

Here’s a neat trick: You can use the new Basecamp Mobile UI as a Fluid menu bar app on your computer. That way you can get a quick view of your Basecamp projects straight from your menu bar.

The trick uses Fluid to create a new menu item.  Very cool!

I find myself using Dropbox to transfer large files around quite frequently.  For people I frequently share with, I have a shared folder.  But, when I’m sending one-offs, like podcast demos, it’s helpful to use a simple, public URL.

The only problem is that most people will click the URL and it will load within their web browser as an inline file with no obvious way to save or load into a more appropriate media player.  Fortunately, there is a simple trick to make these files download rather than display.

The tip for making dropbox public links download rather than display is to simply add ?dl=1 to the end of your link.  When this link is loaded by a web browser, it will download instead of displaying inline.

For example, a url like:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/555555/myaudiofile.mp3


Becomes:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/555555/myaudiofile.mp3?dl=1


When the iTunes Music Store initially launched in 2003, all music sold contained Apple’s “FairPlay” Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection as a way of preventing piracy. 

The iTunes Music Store no longer uses DRM.  The change was announced in the 2009 Macworld Expo keynote and was implemented by the end of January 2009.

Music files from iTunes Music Store containing DRM use the .m4p suffix while the DRM-free versions use .m4a.

The image below shows the visual indicators of music files containing DRM.

Today, all music purchased from the iTunes Music Store is DRM-free and presented in 256kbs AAC format (Advanced Audio Coding) with a .m4a suffix. 

dfbills notes: Strangely enough, some of the free songs given away for various promotions do still contain DRM.  These .mp4 files can be found in various samplers and even free “songs of the week.”

Today, I captured a few shots of the most amazing rainbow over the Empire State Building from the BMI offices at the World Trade Center. 

A big thanks to Raette for getting me to look up from my work. 

Ever since Safari 4 introduced page zoom, rather than just font zoom, I’ve been using it to view webpages on my TV setup.  This evening I finally decided to do a bit research to see if if a default zoom level could be set so that I wouldn’t have to hit “Command +” several times with search new Safari window or tab.

It turns out that the solution is quite simple.  The zoom level can be set in an external stylesheet.


body {
zoom: 135%;
}


The zoom factor is set with values of more or less than 100%.  On my setup, 135% seems just about right.

Save the values above to a new .css file, then go into the Safari preferences and chose Advanced.  Select your new stylesheet and all new windows will be zoomed appropriately.

This hint will work on both Mac and Windows Safari.  I’ve uploaded my stylesheet for anyone who’d like to use it.

Download Stylesheet

A view of the midtown skyline from Central Park Lake.

The proper wheel size setting for the Brompton’s Schwalbe Marathon 37-349 16 x 1 3/8 tires is 1321mm. 

Let’s hope the Kevlar belt and sidewalls keep me free of city punctures.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/cyclecomputer-calibration.html#ccc

1282mm