Isn’t it nice to know that you can take your bike into any bike shop and get it fixed? Even if you’re in Mexico, France, Italy, Montana, or even India? If they don’t have the part to fix your bike, they can easily order it and have it fixed in a day or two. Well, it wasn’t always that way. You see, in the 1970’s the International Standards Organization (ISO) spent years of painstaking work involving over 30 nations to develop standard sizes, thread pitches and specifications for common bicycle parts like bottom brackets, hubs, freewheels, head sets, etc…
Before the ISO endorsements were made, each country had its own standards. Even within a country, you could find different standards for different manufacturers. A bicycle made in France used different parts all around than a bicycle made in Italy or the United States. This made life difficult for both the bicycle dealer trying to help a customer, and also for the customer who had purchased a bicycle with standards not common in their area.
While rifling through my 1970’s Bicycling magazines, I found an article on this while the standards were still in development, and it brought to mind many situations that are occurring now in our industry today.
While we have always tried very hard to manufacture our bicycles using standard size parts and specifications to make things easy for our customers, many manufacturers are now veering far from the ISO standards in an effort to create what’s called ‘proprietary’ parts. These are parts designed specifically for that particular frame. It can be something as small as the part that holds the rear derailleur to a carbon frame, or something major like a specific bottom bracket that’s only available from that manufacturer.
I think people should be aware of proprietary parts as they can make life difficult for the customer, as well as the bike shops trying to help that customer. This is especially true for the cyclist touring foreign countries.
Replaceable derailleur hangers and the problems they can pose
Replaceable derailleur hangers Several years ago, I wrote an article called ‘Chaos, the new standard‘. That article holds so much truth even today that I thought a follow up was in order. So, here it goes. A company that’s been around for 51 years, as we have, will tell you the importance of standards. This is a short article detailing one such detour that we took in the 1980’s.
What are standards, and why should you care? If you are a person who wants to buy a bicycle that you will ride for 20 years plus, then standards mean a lot to you. For instance, I ride a Rodriguez road bike the we built here in 1999, and I’m still riding it today. I consider myself a Forever Bike person. I will still be able to buy parts for this bike in 20 years too. Any part that needs replacing we will have in stock. That’s because it’s built around ISO standards (International Standards Organization). ISO standards were settled upon by the bicycle industry in the 1970’s in an attempt to make sure that people could get their bicycle fixed in just about any country, and well into the future. It’s worked miraculously….until recently.
Dzisiaj z polecajkami w końcu zmieszczę się w jednym poście.
Saint Deamon, album "League of the Serpent" - to po prostu niezły power metal ze Szwecji, utrzymany w stylistyce morskiej i pirackiej. Nie jest to nic niezwykłego, a sam zespół już znałem, ale to naprawdę dobrze brzmi i tworzy atmosferę rodem z mórz i oceanów. Warto sprawdzić, jeśli ktoś lubi takie klimaty.
Signs of the Swarm, album "Amongst The Low & Empty" - kiedyś napisałem o deathcorze, że dobre zespoły mają parę kawałków niezłych, wręcz hitowych, ale całe płyty męczą, gdy ich się długo słucha. W przypadku SotS jest trochę inaczej - nie umiem wyróżnić tutaj żadnego numeru, ale całość po prostu dobrze brzmi, o ile, oczywiście, komuś nie przeszkadza sam deathcore jako gatunek. Raczej ciężka odmiana tego nurtu.
Fiddler's Green, album "The Green Machine" - nigdy nie pisałem chyba o tym zespole, a to kolejny przedstawiciel celtyckiego punka, choć raczej z tych łagodniejszych. Nowy album nie jest czymś ani lepszy, ani gorszym - po prostu niezłe folkowo-punkowe granie i jak to bywa u Niemców, dużo tutaj zapożyczeń melodii z innych miejsc. Jeśli chcecie poznać ten zespół, to raczej lepiej kojarzy mi się płyta "Drive me mad" i to nie tylko ze względu na okładkę.
In this map of a celestial hemisphere — compiled from data from the #eROSITA telescope — the colours reflect the wavelengths of X-rays. Hot gas haloes surrounding galaxy clusters have broad-band emissions (white), as do black holes (white dots); diffuse emissions have long wavelengths (red); and in the central regions of the Milky Way, dust blocks longer-wavelength emissions, so that only short-wavelength X-rays are visible (blue or black).
Słuchając #darko trochę czuję się stary, bo przestaję rozumieć nowe trendy w @muzykametalowa . Dla mnie to brzmi bardziej jak jakaś forma metalowego artyzmu. Sztuki dla sztuki, wysoka technicznie, jednak niewciągająca... melodycznie.
Lub inaczej, ten kawałek brzmi tak jakby ktoś chciał zrobić w czterech minutach przekrój umiejętności i wrzucił wszystko, co miało sens.