There are a ton of ‘here’s my commute’ helmet-cam videos on YouTube. Some feature extreme examples of SMIDSY, sorry-mate-I-didn’t-see-you. If your commute is often spiced up with bad driving, consider fitting a small video camera. It’s what I did in the video above (also available on ).
Of course, fitting a camera on your handlebars won’t capture the moment when some texting idjit hits you from behind but, for those with seeing-red problems, riding with a bike-cam may just calm you down. You can stay serene behind the lens, surreptitiously filming the rants and raves of the apoplectic motorist you’ve just dared to impugn.
from on .
Even with this many LEDs, there will still be the driver that knocks you down and says: “Sorry, mate, I didn’t see you.”
YouTube is so all-powerful, it’s crazy. Because it has such a bonkers big global audience it can serve ‘related videos’ to millions of viewers, and the other online video sites don’t stand a bloody chance.
I’m not really complaining, I love the fact my have had 794,900 total views, but I put a lot of effort into promoting my on yet it’s now been overtaken by the same video placed on YouTube at a later date and given zero link love.
Do you obsess over your best bike? Or just like looking at it lots?
Simon o’Hagan, deputy comment editor of British newspaper The Independent, has just said some great things about the Bicycle Anatomy video on the Indie’s blog.
This gives me an excuse to embed it here again.
from on .
I love the way Simon let’s slip he’s just a little bit in love with the droolsome shapes of his mount:
“I don’t think I obsess over my bike…I do find myself sitting and gazing at it sometimes.”
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In 1994 I was the presenter of CHAIN GANG, a six part magazine series on cycling, produced for Tyne Tees TV and Yorkshire Television.
One of the show’s interviewees was Jason McRoy, Britain’s first truly global MTB superstar.
The video below contains footage - with permission of Tyne Tees and Rose McRoy - of Jason more than a year before he starred in the famous MBUK video, Dirt.
Vimeo has a . I didn’t know that. Do now. , a staff moderator, added my bike vids, including . Thanks, mate.
I don’t yet have an HD camera, but when I do I’ll def load hi-def vids to Vimeo. When you embed Vimeo vids they don’t play in HD. You need to go direct to the site. This is no chore, it’s a beautifully designed site.
If you have fast broadband and a desire to view online vids in 1280×720, is the place to hang out.
This is from Eurosport and features some funky graphics and, of course, Kraftwerk’s emblematic TdF anthem.
There’s lots of other HD content on , such as:
from on .
Don’t forget, it’s not HD until you go direct to .
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Comments ()
Apr 02, 2008
Bicycle Anatomy 101
from on .
I’ve produced the above video for bike virgins. Click on full screen or go to the for the video in a wider format. The video zooms into bike parts and names them. It’ll hopefully get newbies up to speed on ‘bike talk’.
It might be aimed at people who don’t know their dropout from their seatpost but even enthusiasts will get a kick out of the music. It was created from twanging and fiddling with some of my bikes.
I recorded the sounds (my favourite is the disc rotor pinging) and then music maestro Greg Johnston turned my disparate recordings into ‘bespoke’ music. The track is now on Libsyn (or subscribe to my ): it’s an MP3 called Bong. Psst. Twang. Whirr. Psst.
If you like the music and you have an iPhone, download this free ringtone and manually place in iTunes to sync, or subscribe to the for the download and sync to be automatic.
Don’t like hi-res Vimeo? Here’s the video on , Metacafe, DailyMotion, Stupid Videos, Sclipo and Viddler
Check out the credits at the end for the list of folks who helped me nail the technical aspects of the vid. It was especially helpful to get the American ‘translations’ for bike part names.
I’d really appreciate your feedback on the video and, of course, would love you to pass it on to any newbies who you think would benefit from a crash course in bicycle anatomy.
All future QR.tv vids will be on Vimeo and Apple TV
I love YouTube. It was the first kid on the block and gets huge numbers of visitors. The have had 464,993 views between them. A has had 71,233 views. YouTube is great for quick vids but is not so hot on delivering hi-res footage.
To date I have also been loading some vids to the Quickrelease.tv podcast on Libsyn and . These were OK for iPod viewing but, after watching HD podcasts on the latest incarnation of the Apple TV, I’m going to deliver the vids in Apple TV’s m4v format.
Despite the name, the Apple TV podcast-to-movies-to-Flikr set-top box thingy is syncable to a PC as well as a Mac. In fact, with the latest software, it doesn’t even need a computer of any sort, just an HD TV.
If you’ve not got an Apple TV, the next best thing is to watch videos loaded to . I’ve just created an account and will load all future vids to as well as . I’ll continue to place lo-res vids on YouTube.
Here’s the first Vimeo vid:
from on .
It features a load of kiddie bike racing at the beginning and then leads into a bike mechanics training session for the Newcastle Phoenix kids.
I was really surprised at how enthusiastic they were to fix their own bikes. Some of the older kids had never mended their own punctures, always letting mum or dad get on with it.
I hope the Weldtech session by mechanic Jeff Beach gets them to do their own bike fettling. After all, if the older kids want to go out for long rides by themselves, they’ll need to know some bike tech basics.
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