Monday, February 23, 2009
Tour of California Stage 8
Lance Armstrong finished 7th overall, but appeared happy with his form. Floyd Landis, the only other man to have won this race before, finished back in 23rd place overall, but had recovered well after his pre-race training accident.
The Tour of California is now 4 years old, and continues to grow from strength to strength. This year's race had the best start list to date, and also enjoyed the best support from the public. I'm already looking forward to the next edition.
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Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tour of California Stage 7
Rinaldo Nocentini (AG2R) put one over a very elite break, including the likes of Fränk Schleck and George Hincapie, to take the win at the end of Stage 7 in Pasadena. It was the first showing from AG2R in this year's ToC, but he and his teammate, Martin Elmiger, were very animated in the final circuits leading up to the finish.
Overall, Levi Leipheimer holds onto his 0:36 lead over Dave Zabriskie, with only one stage to go, albeit possibly the toughest stage of the race.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Tour of California Stage 6
General classification after stage 6 1 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Astana 24.12.00 2 David Zabriskie (USA) Garmin - Slipstream 0.36 3 Michael Rogers (Aus) Team Columbia - Highroad 0.46 4 Jens Voigt (Ger) Team Saxo Bank 1.10 5 Thomas Lövkvist (Swe) Team Columbia - Highroad 1.29 6 Lance Armstrong (USA) Astana 1.46 7 Robert Gesink (Ned) Rabobank 1.54 8 Janez Brajkovic (Slo) Astana 1.59 9 Christopher Horner (USA) Astana 2.13 10 Francisco Mancebo (Spa) Rock Racing 2.15
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Friday, February 20, 2009
Tour of California Stage 5
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Tour of California Stage 4
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tour of California Stage 3
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Tour of California Stage 2
General classification after stage 2
1 Levi Leipheimer (
2 Michael Rogers (Aus) Team
3 David Zabriskie (
4 Lance Armstrong (
5 Christopher Horner (
6 Janez Brajkovic (Slo) Astana 00:38
7 Thomas Lövkvist (Swe) Team
8 José Luis Rubiera (Spa) Astana
9 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Liquigas
10 Robert Gesink (Ned) Rabobank 00:39
11 Oscar Sevilla (Spa) Rock Racing
12 Jens Voigt (Ger) Team Saxo Bank 00:40
13 Ivan Basso (Ita) Liquigas 00:42
14 Thomas Danielson (
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Monday, February 16, 2009
Discovering New Music
Tour of California Preview
Not for the first time in its short history, the Tour of California will be the focus of everyone with an interest in Pro-Cycling, and not just the fans in the
In my opinion, however, the ToC will be different. Lance is a racer, and winning on home soil is important to him, and to his cancer awareness cause. Levi Leipheimer, winner in '07 and '08, and Lance's Astana teammate, might be his biggest obstacle in achieving this objective. Levi came 2nd to Fabian Cancellara in the opening prologue on Saturday, but Cancellara withdrew early in Stage 1, leaving the door open for Levi to take control of the race. Stage 1 surprise winner, Francisco Mancebo of Rock Racing, holds the yellow jersey for now, but that might have changed by the time the peloton arrives at the end of Stage 2. Lance sits in 5th overall at 1:05, and he might fall into the supportive role, but if Levi should stumble, he’ll jump at the chance to take leadership of arguably the most important race on the
Another big name rider making his comeback after his 2 year doping ban is ’06 winner Floyd Landis, riding with the OUCH Team. He’s sitting in 29th overall, at 5:08, an improvement on his 90th position in the Prologue, but his performance was undoubtedly affected by a training crash on Friday; I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on him in the coming days.
And what of Tyler Hamilton, the other big
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Wednesday, February 11, 2009
iTunes vs MediaMonkey (or Why I Hate iTunes)
- First up is the program download, and Apple's attempt to con you into downloading Safari and QuickTime along with iTunes, as if, at 65Mb, the download wasn't big enough already. Then, if there's an upgrade, you have to download the whole program again. And Aplle issue lots of upgrades. For bandwidth limited South Africans, this can be an expensive 'free' program.
- iTunes doesn't automatically import your music; there is no way to 'watch' a folder. If you don't use iTunes to rip your music, then you have to manually point iTunes to the new folder. MediaMonkey allows you to set up folders that it 'watches', and then automatically loads the files.
- Cover Flow is an awesome bit of eye-candy, but iTunes management of Album Art really sucks. If you don't have access to the iTunes Store (like us in SA) then it is a completely manual operation. Sure, there are plug-ins, but why isn't it built in. MediaMonkey searches Amazon and shows the options based on Artist, Album, etc, then auto tags your matching files, using the recognised ID3 tagging format, and saves a copy of the Album Art to the folder. iTunes saves all the Album Art to a folder it sets up in My Music, and not to the ID3 tag.
- The main purpose for a lot of people using iTunes is syncing with their iPods. Sure, iTunes works seamlessly in this task; it couldn't be easier. Or could it? I have an 8Gb iPod Nano, and about 16Gb of music. This confuses iTunes, and the only way to ensure that the music you want on your iPod actually loads, is to manually uncheck the little boxes next to all the songs you don't want to reduce to your iPod capacity (in my case 8Gb). Then, everytime you rip/download a new album, you have to uncheck more songs. MediaMonkey (yes, it even works with iPods) has a much better solution. In the options for each device you connect to your computer you can select which playlists you want to sync, and then there is a checkbox which directs MediaMonkey to fill your device to it's capacity. Then, everytime you sync, it replaces the songs you have listened to, and replaces them with new ones. Your iPod remains fresh.