Tom Fosdick

Tom Fosdick is a software architect whose experience ranges from low level coding through to product management, delivery and customer relationships. For nearly 20 years Tom has specialised in providing advanced technology to front line Emergency Services both in the UK and internationally.

The Peloton Diaries: The Bike Arrives!

by
Reading Time: 5 minutes

October 2020 – Previously: Doing the Maths

I did something perhaps a bit surprising for a rural outdoorsy type last month: my partner and I ordered a Peloton.

Naturally Peloton make it very easy to sign up. There was a 3 week lead time for delivery, which was a little disappointing, but understandable in the current climate. One surprising thing is that we needed to activate the account directly from the bike, so we were on trial accounts until it arrived.

If you want to save a few quid, don’t buy the official Peloton heart monitor, shoes or other accessories. You can get perfectly adequate equipment cheaper elsewhere.

If you’re new to the whole scene, so called “clipless” pedals are very popular with cyclists. The pedals themselves have a kind of sprung clamp which locks onto a “cleat” on the shoe. So you need special cycling shoes that you can screw the cleats into.

With the shoes, make sure that you buy a pair that have the 3 bolts arranged in a triangle. Lots of shoes have this system or are compatible with this and more. You’ll need to get (Look) Delta cleats, not SPD or any other system. The cleats themselves should cost no more than £10.

For cyclists you’ll be pleased to hear that the pedals on the bike are standard, so if you want to swap them for SPDs or something, you can (although you might want to check the warranty conditions).

The same is true of the seat; it’s the standard dual rail clamp, so if you want to change it for your favourite Selle Italia bum wedge, you can.

Delivery

They call you about 1/2 hour ahead of delivery to sort out the fine detail. There’s a range of options, from dumping it at your door through to carrying to to the correct room and setting it up.

The bike comes pretty much assembled; if you’re even a basic Ikea warrior, you shouldn’t be afraid of assembling it yourself. Be aware of the adjustable feet, however. Mine took a bit of wrestling to move initially.

Do be aware that the bike is very heavy. Unless you’re Hafþór Björnsson I’d recommend getting the delivery people move it to the right level of your building. It does have wheels on the front, so once the bubble-wrap is removed it’s a lot easier to shuffle around.

If you are going to self-assemble, look out for the small black screws for the tablet (display); mine were taped to a reddish piece of packaging around the mount (on the bike). I nearly threw them away by accident. There’s also a Velcro strap that, depending on the height you set the handlebars, you may want to use to make absolutely sure that the monitor cable doesn’t rub on the flywheel.

The last physical thing to mention is to check that the existing nuts and bolts are tight. For me, one of the ones in the handlebars was loose.

The tablet is very obviously Android based. Booting it, connecting to WiFi, updating the software and activating the account were straightforward.

Obviously the device will be streaming video, and that takes quite a lot of WiFi bandwidth. On the standard bike there’s a wired Ethernet port, so if you have problems with the WiFi you can plug a cable between it and your router. Apparently this is not there on the Bike+, so you might want to consider this if you’re choosing between the two.

First Impressions

The height of the handlebars and both the height and the horizontal position of the saddle are easily adjustable, with handy guides so if there are more people using the bike settings can be easily remembered and adjusted.

The saddle angle is adjustable, but it’s a bit more tricky and not the kind of thing you would want to do for every ride. The saddle itself is perfectly OK for me, but I’m a male lifelong cyclist with buns of steel. Saddles are such a personal thing; I could easily understand some people wanting to replace it.

One of the advantages of SPD pedal system over Look Delta is that it’s much easier to make dual platform pedals, ones that can be used with out without cleats. Unfortunately you can’t do that with the Peloton pedals, you have to clip in, even for a quick, casual ride. I suspect this will annoy me, in time, and that I’ll change the pedals to dual platform SPDs.

Hopping aboard, the first and most obvious thing is that the mechanism is super-smooth and remarkably quiet. You can wind it up to over 500 Watts and it’s still barely more than a whisper.

As someone who’s used plenty of spin bikes in commercial gyms, the flywheel feels a little light. However, the resistance mechanism is very silky and that goes a long way to compensate.,

The tablet boots quickly, but it does get a bit cranky if, say, you attempt an artistic dismount, fail to unclip properly and, in the process of faceplanting into a nearby aspidistra, manage to tear the cable out of the wall socket. If you plan to turn it off at the mains when it’s not in use, you may want to turn it on a minute or two before you plan to use it.

Having backed the tension adjusters on the pedals off a few notches I could look more at the tablet. It works well, its layout is intuitive to any user of smart devices. There’s a live, very clear measurement of cadence (how fast you’re spinning the pedals), resistance and a calculation of output power. If you want, you can fire up the “Just Ride” option and work with it simply as a training bike.

Bluetooth audio is an option, the standard bike has an aux out (3.5mm jack) and you can even cast the video to an external screen. I was surprised how good the onboard audio is though, it’s quite good enough for the purpose. We will see, in a few months, if I still think that, however. My finger’s already twitching over the SuperFi web site.
There’s no need to cast the screen (for regular use), the onboard is plenty good enough. Of course, you could run non-spin classes cast from the bike itself, but wouldn’t you just use your phone/tablet for that?

My (Garmin) Heart monitor connects easily and works flawlessly. It doesn’t complain if I don’t hook a heart monitor up, which is good because the things annoy me. I only use one to get a baseline every so often.

So far I’m impressed. It’s definitely the best piece of home gym equipment I’ve ever owned – but there again it’s also the most expensive. Will it live up to the price-tag? I’ll let you know in the next update!

Be sure to check out the other articles in the series:

The Peloton Diaries: Doing the Maths

by
Reading Time: 4 minutes

September 2020

“That,” I thought, looking at the TV advert, “is a cracking business idea”. Market a swanky bike at the cash rich, time poor urbanites. I bet every subscriber has an Apple watch, suckers!

Peloton? Pah!

Scotch Mist

It will not surprise you to learn, then, that I absolutely have not placed an order for a Peloton bike and I definitely do not have a Peloton subscription. I would also like to point out that the parrot is not dead, it’s resting. Beautiful plumage, the Norwegian Blue.

What on Earth possessed me to get on board this particular train then?

When I was a kid I cycled everywhere. Fitness just happened whilst I was seeing how many of my mates I could jump over. But as I got older my life got bigger and the all beer and pizza diet started to take its toll.

To cut a long story short I joined the gym at the university where I worked – and I loved it. But, it was right on campus and it was incredibly good value.

Then I moved to back the country and the nearest gym was not only a 20 minute drive away, I caught the manager sucking a lemon before he told me the price. It wasn’t very good, either. The economics, both of money and time, switched. It became far more effective to have a home gym.

The problem is that home CV equipment just isn’t made for people like me. I’m a serial killer of exercise bikes, cross trainers and especially treadmills. In order to keep the price down, they have to make economies. I understand that. Actually, if it gets people who would otherwise do nothing up and active, I support that.

Sadly, as you move up the price band, they add features instead of making the machines stronger and more durable – and that really pisses me off.

The only piece of equipment that’s survived is my turbo trainer and I hate it.

Yes, I know, you can get scenic ride apps, you can ride with other people on Zwift and yes, I know, it doesn’t have to be a race. There are even blog articles on how to set up your bike and a turbo trainer to use with the Peloton app.

I was pretty determined to make it work for a while, but cycling magazines explain my problem in a nutshell, “A turbo trainer is a great way,” they say, “to get through the winter”.

That’s not what I’m trying to achieve; you see I was never a cyclist. I didn’t obsess about the Tour de France or the Giro d’Italia when I was a kid, I read about people crossing the Sahara, or riding through Nepal. I wasn’t really interested in racing bikes, I wanted to use a bike to do mad things and have crazy adventures.

You do not have crazy adventures on a turbo trainer. Well, not if it’s mounted on a flat surface, anyway.

The advantage of a spin bike is that it’s a very simple piece of equipment. This means it’s possible to build something of professional gym kind of quality at a price that’s accessible to the home market. Something that I really, really hope I’m not going to break.

When I say “accessible”, the up-front cost of Peloton is still a little eye-watering. It’s the main reason why I had initially discounted the idea. The economics of it only work if you think about it long term.

There used to be a dedicated spin gym only a few miles away. They charged £6 a class. At first that sounds cheap, but if you do 4 classes a week that’s £104 a month. A Peloton subscription is £20 a month, but you have to find somewhere in the region of £2000 in set-up costs (or take a finance option). Working on that 4 class basis, that means you break even in about 2 years.

The cheapest local gym subscription I could find was £63 a month for a limited, “off peak” deal. If we equate the restrictions on that account with those of Peloton, then the break even point is 4 years. I know a lot of people who are paying £100+ a month for gym subscriptions they use at most twice a week.

There’s another thing to consider; will other members of your household use it? If you’re prepared to stump up £40 a month you can load them all up. As I’m married to an even bigger spin-bunny than me, it turns out to be a very attractive option.

Now, I have an admission to make. I’ve been writing this article like it it’s my journey. In many ways it is, or it’s my half of the journey, but it wasn’t me that pushed to sign up to Peloton, it was my partner. In fact, I was pretty heavily against it – until I started looking at the longer term economics. For us it just made sense, we never really used much in the gym that we can’t in some way replace with the Peloton bike and other classes from the Peloton App.

Your economics may be different. If you’re a circuits person, or more heavily oriented towards weight and strength training then the comparison will be more difficult and the numbers might not work for you.

It seems like the numbers work for us and a first glance at the app looks promising. Will it work out? You’ll have to wait ’til the next update!

Be sure to check out the other articles in the series:

Please Just Mute Geoff.

by
Reading Time: 3 minutes

In 2011 I became a remote worker. I was really surprised how easy it was, but I was working for the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hull so if we couldn’t make it work, that would have been a very bad sign.

COVID-19 has changed the game completely though. For us accustomed remote workers the results have been positive; in many ways it’s making our lives a lot easier. Over the past few months, however, we’ve been watching, and trying politely to advise, the rest of the world as they catch up with many of the social aspects.

By and large, with the occasional nudge, it seems that everyone has now learnt the core lessons. I’ll talk about them at another time, for now I want to talk about something that doesn’t seem to have made it into culture yet: the etiquette about muting in a meeting.

Background noise happens. It’s a fact of life. Whether it’s the builders next door or your partner on another call or a small Yorkshire terrier inexplicably named Fenrir, it happens. What’s more, for a variety of reasons, sometimes background noise can get amplified to unpleasant levels and broadcast to the entire meeting.

Two things we need to establish:

  • Being on mute is not a sign that you’re not contributing, or not intending to contribute. It’s a sign that you’ve learnt the shortcut key that your system uses and that you respect the other people in the meeting. It’s very rare that you need to speak instantly and without warning. Get used to CRTL+D – talk – CTRL+D (if you use Google). It just basic politeness.
  • It’s not rude to mute other people if you’re getting background noise from them. Most systems allow this. If you’re using one where only the meeting organiser can mute other people, then it’s part of the organiser’s job. Obviously, if it’s convenient, point it out and ask the person to mute themselves, but if Tracy is talking and Geoff’s geese suddenly get spooked, then mute Geoff.
    Believe me, you do not need unsolicited contributions from geese in any meeting.

There are a couple of ancillary points. In the above case Geoff might have no idea how loud the geese are, because he may be using really good noise cancelling headphones. That algorithm might be entirely different to the one used for the meeting, which might think that geese are really important contributors who need to be put front and centre. Background noise doesn’t mean that anyone’s doing anything wrong or that they’re being inconsiderate. It’s not a conflict situation, don’t treat it like one.

Finally, please invest in (at least) basic equipment. Laptop mics are awful, not in the least because of how far they are away from your mouth. What’s more, if you so much as look at your keyboard whilst using a laptop mic, the whole world will know about it. A good, basic headset is a huge improvement over a laptop mic.

The headset I use is one of these. There are a lot of similar headsets on the market at a similar price. If I worked in a noisier environment I might have paid for the advantage of active noise cancellation, but for me it’s not necessary.

If we bake these things into business culture now, if we make them protocol, it will make our lives just that little bit easier and our workplaces just that little bit more productive.

What Have We Brits Learnt Through #blacklivesmatter?

by
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’m working on some longer stuff, because one thing that has made me realise is that there are a lot of assumptions being made about racism and there’s a lot of bollocks being talked.

In the meantime, a few bullet points:

  • We still have institutions here in the UK that treat people differently according to their race.
  • We still have tropes and stereotypes in our society that disadvantage people of colour.
  • We still have an embarrassing number of actual, conscious racists (and weird conspiracy theorists).
  • A majority group can easily overlook the problems it causes a minority.

For you, personally, not being racist is a good start. If we are to end racism however that is not enough.

You can do more simply by looking within yourself to see if you have unconscious biases. I’ve been an active campaigner against racism for about 25 years and I still find the odd little quirk in me.

You can do more by listening to minority groups when they try to explain ways in which our society discriminates against them.

You can do more by reading, watching documentaries, etc. “Natives” by Akala is a good start. In recent years many good resources have been produced when it comes to the experience of black people in the UK.

Accessible resources about other forms of racism are more difficult. For instance, I learnt about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre when I was stood in Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar). A lot of what I’ve learnt about other forms of racism comes either from visiting other countries or from talking directly to people in the UK. I’m currently trying to collate some resources on this.

You can do more against racism by taking action. These days taking action against racism is not so much facing down neo-Nazis in the street. You can still do that if you want, you can also attend protests, shows us how effective that can be. Fighting against racism is so much more than that, though.

The simplest action you can take is to be overtly against racism. Talk about it, make being against racism normal. The key point to understand and the most difficult to communicate is that conscious racism is really only the tip of the iceberg. A lot of the values, systems, traditions, institutions of our society were formed between 1555 and 1833, when England (latterly Britain) was involved in the slave trade and inherently a white supremacist society. Serious attempts to end racism only started in the 1970s. We’ve made good progress in eliminating active, conscious racism but we still have a very long way to go before we can say that we’ve ended racism.

The ship of state does not turn quickly and one person can only push so hard on the rudder. Some people can push harder than others, of course, but the more hands we have pushing the faster the ship will turn.

It’s a long journey, we know that, but we will get there.

How to Spot a Racist, Method #473

by
Reading Time: < 1 minute

When angry people are protesting on the streets things do sometimes boil over. Opponents of the protests will seize on this immediately, firstly as an attempt to discredit and devalue the protest but also to distract attention from the cause. Opponents of protests have even infiltrated them and deliberately tried to start riots for those very purposes.

Of course the media machine – be it social media or traditional media – of those opponents will go into overdrive, trying to draw maximum attention to any riots and looting (and even fabricating stories about it).

Right now a lot of people around the world are very angry at the institutional racism of the Police in the USA and the continuing abuse and murder of innocent black people. There is no argument that the police in the USA is institutionally racist. The evidence is overwhelming. The question is who thinks it a problem and who does not.

The people that do think it’s a problem are amplifying that message.
The people who think the police should be racist are amplifying the messages about riots and looting.