Wheelsmith 50mm Carbon Clinchers - Review

This site has been very music focused over the last few months so it's probably time to address the balance with a bit about cycling. It would be cheap of me to make reference to my recent win in the tourdepance vuelta so instead I shall give you a quick review of a new set of wheels that have recently come into my possession.
[EDIT] N.B. This is just a first ride review, I'll be posting an update when I've got some proper miles on them and can talk about how they hold up.
These are they:

They're a set of 50mm Gigantex carbon clinchers in the new 24mm width, built onto wheelsmith's own hubs with Sapim CX ray spokes. You can find them in the price list at £740 inc shipping.
I went with clinchers because even the idea of the hassle of a tub puncture puts me off them. Carbon because I wanted something lighter than my current wheels, and deep section because they look nice and if there is an aero advantage to be had, I want it.

So in chronological order: firstly I cannot recommend highly enough the service from wheelsmith. I ordered them on the friday, they were built up that afternoon and arrived on monday afternoon. All the while Derek was also available to answer my dumb questions via e-mail after we'd had an initial chat on the phone.
Almost needless to say they're as true as the scales of justice both horizontally and rotationally.

Secondly then, some numbers. weight excl skewers but inc rim tape = Front 687g, Rear 828g, total of 1515g. Not too shabby at all for a pair of deep rim clinchers.
Wheelsmith supply them with some nice light titanium skewers that weigh 44g the pair and they also include a set of carbon specific brake blocks. More on braking later.
I stuck a new pair of 25mm Michelin Pro 4 Service Courses on and with skewers, tyres and tubes the total weight came to 2205g for the pair. They're replacing a set of Planet-X model Bs with Schwalbe Luganos that weighed in at 2665g so I've saved nearly half a kilo but it's a fine example of the law of diminishing returns.

On the bike they look like this:

After much pressure (mainly from certain people who didn't do quite so well in the fantasy Vuelta) I have swapped the valve caps for black ones. Actually it wasn't much pressure at all, the yellow ones look naff.

Which brings us to thirdly, how do they ride?
Well despite my cunning attempt at a scientific control, this is where we leave all the numbers out of it and start getting into stuff like "feel" and "seemed like" and all that. If you're ok with that then read on, if you just want the numbers then that's your lot.

For the first ride I kept the tyres at the same pressure as I'd been running the (23mm) Luganos (but I might well drop this a bit, particularly over the winter) to try and minimise the variables and, with a similar aim in mind, headed out on a route we knew pretty well: fairly flat, 7-8 mph headwind on the way out, following on the way back.
Being a fair bit lighter I did feel the old "spinning up quickly" effect and generally stamping on the pedals resulted in a sprightly leap forward. Averaging about 18 mph or so outwards I cannot honestly say that the wheels felt any different to the model Bs on the flat. In order to provide an effective control I swapped bikes with my mate (also on an ultegra-equipped pro carbon but still with the old model Bs) unfortunately the change in set up made far more difference to the feel than any kind of kit change (though it did highlight my need to clean up my bottom bracket).
I did notice (or so I believe) the reduced weight going up the hills but I also noticed that as we picked up speed (between 30 and 35 on a couple of downhills - told you it was a flat route) that I was going quicker than I had previously. How much of that is psychosomatic I couldn't say. Similarly though, as we pushed on a bit on the way in, the faster we went the more my mate struggled to keep up. Last time we went out the boot was on the other foot.
Initial impressions therefore seem to back up the standard suggestion that the faster you go the more any benefits will take effect. This makes sense given that wind resistance increases as a square of your speed.

One final word on braking, I haven't used these in the wet yet, in the dry the braking has been fine, not noticeably different to my alloy rims. I will update this post when I've got some wet miles in.

Any questions?

Et tu McVitie's?

Dear McVitie's,
I am not happy with your new packet sizes, not happy at all. What, in the name of all that's holy, made you think that people who have been buying your products all this time would suddenly want fewer biscuits in the packet? Did you imagine that all across the country people were discarding, unwanted, the last half dozen biscuits in the packet? Throwing away your produce for fear of over-eating? Filling up store cupboards with the remnants of the packet twisted tight shut, never to be re-opened?
When I reach for a packet of dark chocolate hobnobs I want 300 grams of rich chocolately oatey goodness, not 262. If I want to eat an entire packet of dark chocolate digestives, and frequently I do, then I want to eat 400 grams of the king of biscuits, not 332.
For years we have had these measurements and whole journeys and adventures have been planned around the correct amount of biscuits being available in the packet.
My world has been rocked and I am most, most disappointed.
Yours Sincerely
Drew the-chocolate-fiend Stephenson.

King of the meh

Is it me or has the King of the Mountains title become a bit devalued in the Tour de France recently?
The overall race lead is always going to be the daddy obviously but I'm certain I can recall, in my youth, a period where the polka-dot jersey was considered a bigger prize than the green jersey.
Now it seems to be a bit of an add-on, a bit like the white jersey for the best young rider. It's a nice thing to have but nothing to get too excited about.
Is this just because, with Cavendish regularly featuring in the points competition, the British press have given it that much more prominence? Or have we created that bias ourselves by focussing on the Manx Missile's success?
Has there been a bit of a dearth of top-flight climbers recently that has meant the competition has been swamped by GC contenders instead?
Or is it, as I opened with, just me? Is the polka-dot jersey still as important as it ever was to everyone else?

You turn your back for one minute...

And you get a fantastic piece of copyright fuckupery like this
Norwich city has, for some unexplained reason, installed a load of painted gorilla figures around the city.
Guess which one has triggered a copyright dispute? The Ironman one? The Batman one? The Optimus Prime one perhaps?
Nope, it's the Freddie Mercury one.
Really, what a fucking ridiculous claim and what a stupid thing to do by the The Mercury Phoenix Trust - seriously, what the hell do they think they're doing?
Idiots.
Simple, simple idiots.

The Complete Manifesto

A while ago I started writing and posting a manifesto for the content industry. This spread over 15 blogs and about 10,000 words in the end. Obviously at this point a blog stops being a convenient mechanism for reading it so I've given it a bit of a polish and stuck it in a .pdf here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0z6bKK0uOagRGVxT0dfNW1ZYTQ/edit?usp=sharing

Please read, comment, critique and share as much as you like.
Thanks
Drew

Prototype (or There is a Change Coming)

There is a change coming.

A bunch of smart people, wanting to talk to each other, came up with a variety of bits of code and protocols
and tried them out.

Bits failed, bits succeed, bits got bolted together, pulled apart and stuck back together again.

An on-going prototype that is still evolving today, even though the testers make up about 50% of the planet
and the cost of the total failure of that prototype would be catastrophic.

I’m talking about the web* of course. The internet, the information super-highway**, this mesh of connections and conversations. From the actually-quite-hard-to-visualise wi-fi hotspot to the tangible words that you’re reading now; it’s still a prototype.

Because what’s coming next, the next set of prototypes, is the transition from virtual to actual. It won’t just be your phone / tablet / pc that’s connected, it’ll be your fridge, your luggage, your bicycle, your house and your 3D printer. All of these will be connected and communicating to each other. Hopefully with you in the middle of it all…

3D Printers may just be producing simple plastic parts at the moment but the price is coming down to real-
world levels, metal-matrix devices are in development and some very smart people are thinking about how
carbon structures might be “printed” at a near-molecular level.

There is another level of business and personal disruption coming, but that brings with it another iteration of
the usual challenges, and these are the biggest threat to this next level of interconnectedness.

It’s not the limitations of technology, it’s not the limitations of raw materials nor is it some hypothetical
limitation of mankind’s ability to handle the “future shock.” The biggest threat is the status quo.

The status quo of large vested interests’ control of political representatives.

The status quo of copyright and patent law being so broken that they no longer promote innovation and
creation but actively inhibit it.

The status quo of the groundless legal-action that drives a new competitor out of business, not on merit but
on the threat of an un-payable bill.

The status quo that measures value by the number of ideas locked up rather than the number shared.

This can’t continue.

From a practical perspective, it’s a war that can’t be won. The most effective mechanisms against illegal file-
sharing are not threats of disconnection, not Digital Rights Management software, not multi-million dollar law-suits or night-time raids on flamboyant businessmen in foreign countries. People, ignore, discard and work around these things. No, the most effective methods are making the product legally available at the right price, in the right format and at the right time to meet the customer demand.

For ethical reasons too, it needs to change. Every day people across the world are dying because ideas
that could have saved them are locked up in intellectual property. As the technology progresses, it will be
increasingly unethical to ship something halfway round the globe if it could be printed in your garage from
locally sourced materials. If knowledge can be shared instantly and at nearly zero cost, how do we ethically
explain the withholding of that knowledge?

Copyrights and Patents can still serve a very valuable purpose, but not in their current form. We need to
go back to the reason for their existence and start again before they lose all credibility and go the way of
Prohibition.

There is a change coming. Maybe we could try a couple of prototypes first…

* though if you removed the “wanting to talk to each other” bit and changed your perception of the word
“code” you could equally be talking about capitalism. But I’m not.

** I always think of Clive James when I hear this phrase.

A Manifesto for the Content Industry 14. Do not sue your customers.

I know this is the same as 1 but it’s so important I thought I’d say it twice.*

Well here we are at the end and you’ll be relieved to know that this final entry will be very short.

The bottom line is that, as part of the content industry, your business exists to serve your customers.

If you choose to provide a service that is worse than the competition (be that legitimate or otherwise) then you can expect to lose customers.

If you choose to provide a service that excludes certain sections of your potential customer base then you can expect to lose customers.

If you choose to provide a product that is more restricted that that offered by the competition (legitimate or otherwise) you can expect to lose customers.

And finally, if you choose to treat your customers like criminals, and make them feel like criminals when they do support you, you can expect to lose customers.

But, as I’ve hopefully explained, you don’t have to choose to do any of these things…

* With reference to Red Dwarf: “Kryten: A superlative suggestion, sir, with just two minor flaws. One: we don't have any defensive shields. And two: we don't have any defensive shields. Now I realise that, technically speaking, that's only one flaw; but I thought it was such a big one, it was worth mentioning twice.”