For the second year, I am running a Scottish Mountain Bike Orienteering (SMBO) race.

The beauty of these events is that, due to the fact that you decide upon your own route, they are suitable for all ages and abilities.
Whether you just fancy a short, easy pootle around some paths and tracks you may never have explored before, or you want to push yourself to the very edge of your abilities at the exciting, highly competitive top end. You can ride as hard and as far as you want.

When a news anchor laughs at the worst police sketch. Seems like this is all real.

Railbiking on an abandoned mountain railway looks like fun.

The datashine mapping project seeks to promote and develop the use of large and open datasets amongst the social science community. A key part of this initiative is the visualisation of these data in new and informative ways to inspire new uses and generate insights.

This particular map show Scottish commuting data. Unfortunately it's quite old though as it's from the 2011 census.

https://scotlandcommute.datashine.org.uk

It was Twitter that alerted me to the existence of an off road route from Inverness to Glasgow. It was called the BadgerDivide in a slight Scottish piss-take of the divide routes in other countries. This all started with the TourDivide, a 3500km route down the continental divide of North America, and one of the most well know adventure routes in mountain biking.
The BadgerDivide was slightly shorter at a mere 350km, but that just meant it could potentially be ridden in a few days rather than needing a long break from work and a load of organising.

I read a little about the route on the few web pages I could find. It seemed to be a new route, put together by Stuart Allen. It looked like it was possible to do it in 2 days. A weekend ride looked possible.

Christmas animation from MadTV

Binaural audio technology. I was sceptical but this is really good. You need to wear good headphones.

Close your eyes for this one:

In honour of the Debussy centenary.

"In a series of mind-bending demos, inventor Mary Lou Jepsen shows how we can use red light to see and stimulate what's inside our bodies and brains. Taking us to the edge of optical physics, Jepsen unveils new technologies that utilize light and sound to track tumors, measure neural activity and could eventually replace the MRI machine with a cheaper, more efficient and wearable system."

After years of taking part in the excellent Scottish Mountain Bike Orienteering (SMBO) races, I have finally been gently coerced into decided to run one of the events.

The beauty of these events is that, due to the fact that you decide upon your own route, they are suitable for all ages and abilities.
Whether you just fancy a short, easy pootle around some paths and tracks you may never have explored before, or you want to push yourself to the very edge of your abilities at the exciting, highly competitive top end. You can ride as hard and as far as you want.

Also, route choice is more important than pure speed, so if you aren't the fastest rider, you can compete by making good route decisions!