Bikes
Yesterday, I intended to grease all the axles, install the new wheel, and adjust the derailer. At ~100 miles the mountain bike was getting way out of alignment. One click of the shifter would move 2 or 3 gears. Slowly rotating the pedals and wheels revealed a little stickiness. Like you could feel the bearings rolling around.
The front wheel went on with some effort, but I got stopped by the crankshaft. In all the bikes I’ve worked on, you remove a pedal, unscrew several things, and pull the whole thing out. Impossible on this bike. The nuts on the pedal arm/crankshaft were for appearance sake. Somehow the two are held together like a round peg in a square hole, literally. I guess they shrink the crankshaft with cold, before putting the two together. Christopher suggested I install a grease zerk like a car. I was going to table it and just put it back together, but an hour of trying to screw on a nut, which got off center every time and started rethreading itself, changed my mind.
Life is too short. A racing style with light frame and dropped handlebars could be had at Walmart for $210. That’s worth my time. The front wheel pops off and on easily. It fits in the car so much better. There were a few times fighting the mountain bike that I thought I would lose and rope down the lid of the trunk.
So, today I repeated last week’s Saturday course 40 minutes faster. 9.5 mph vs 14.5 mph. This silver little thing just wants to fly. It’s so much easier to push around.
One little annoyance. Click shifters suck. They are ALWAYS wrong. You should know your bike well enough to roughly (within 1 or 2 sprockets) know what gear you are in. If you don’t know you bike that well, you probably don’t really care. Maybe, I can figure out how to turn the clickiness off.
Solar iPod
The iPod Mini sucks the juice like crazy. It’s annoying in training, but will run dry on tour day. Not that it necessarily will get much use that day. Still, I would like the option. These are the links I found on making your own solar charger. It looks pretty simple.
Commercial chargers are $60+ and more likely $100. USB cables are 5V @500mA (2.5W). Some of these commercial ones only put out 5V @100mA (.5W). I’m not certain this would run the iPod for an extended period of time.
It should be simple enough to find a 5-6W small panel. The regular assumption is 50% of the max rated. Or 2.5-3W. Should be good enough for most small devices.
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Solar-iPod-Charger.htm
Update: 6/1/2008
Parts are ordered. Should be pretty easy to build. Had to ride w/o the iPod Monday, because it didn’t have a charge left.
TSS: Unicomp Customizer keyboard
Today, buckling spring keyboards are never or almost never shipped with computers. Fortunately, Unicomp has accomplished what Matias couldn’t and produced an excellent keyboard in the Customizer, which is based on the actual IBM Model M design. Keystrokes are crisp and precise. The “shadow key” problem that bedeviled the Tactile Pro is absent, and the Customizer itself is solid, recalling a slab of stone (see the picture below), unlike the fragile, mushy keyboards most PCs ship with. It’s also been durable, and in the months I’ve pounded on it..
Product Review: Unicomp Customizer keyboard
I like the old loud clacky keyboards. Maybe I’ll get one of these.
Garden WebSite Update
My vision for the garden website is continuing to evolve as I moderate what I want, need, and will update. Right now, I’m investigating using RealBasic to write a program that records various aspects of the garden and can output them to a website. Notes for personal observations, database for plant file info, the ability to store photos of a plant as it grows, disease progression, etc., calendar of when I have done things, the ability to search various specific websites on the internet for specific plant info. Notes can dump into posts on WordPress. The plant file database dumps into pages.
This would go much easier, if RB wasn’t a little bitch about not allowing databases on the $100 version. No way am I spending $500 on this highly experimental project just to get db access. However, RB kicks VB6 down flat and it has the ability to compile to Windows and Mac.
I’ve worked through this design process before at work. If something comes out the other end, it’s almost always rock sold and a very useful tool. A quick Google search showed that there are now gardening applications. A good personalizeable plant file db might be good enough to sell the whole thing. Then the blog connectivity. Then the notes. There is plenty of room to grow.
We’ll see.
Porting VB Applications to Linux and Mac OS X
Tasha Enloe
Monday morning while riding her bike around Soncy and I-40 with a friend, Tasha Enloe was struck by a truck and died quickly. Medivac pronounced her at the scene. Her friend is unharmed.
CSStars encourages people to give to her MS Bike Tour fund raising effort. Her goal this year is $1000. At the time of this writing she is $100 away.
A memorial service will be conducted at Boxwell Brothers Funeral Home, 2800 Paramount Blvd. in Amarillo tomorrow at 11:00 am. For cyclists who wish to pay respects by riding to the service, meet at the Gold’s Gym (Blackburn) parking lot on Tues May 27th. Leave time is 10:30 am. I think this is really on the 26th. It’s purpose is intended to honor Tasha.
She will be missed.
Riding the MS150
So, I’ve been thinking of riding the bike tour again. This year about this time I always think about it. Now’s the time to start training. Well, April really, but May will work.
Some things happened that made the idea and the training more appealing. Sara showed me how to shove a bike in the trunk. Never considered this before. When we rode the backseat didn’t fold down. Jillian sent out an online donation link for her March of Dimes run. Hadn’t seen that before. Makes it really easy to collect money. People can use their credit card and it’s really quick. And then I’ve been digging up old memories the past year or so and reevaluating them.
The bike tour was a very significant part of life growing up. I did it like 7 or 8 times. From 13-18 then once or twice more. The years kind of blur. At the end it wasn’t any fun. A lot less help from people. Fewer sponsors. The National Guard dropped out. Really miss those 6×6 trucks. The bike tour is the reason I have large calves even though I don’t work out.
Anyway, why not. I’m not doing anything, except getting fat.
There’s a bike log I put on the blog to show how much I ride. The best route so far is going out I-40 on the West side of town to Helium road. Park in the Gander Mtn parking lot and then ride out on the access rode. There are overpasses at the 1, 3, and 6 mile points, which gives you a 2, 6+, or 13 mile ride. The access rode isn’t used too much. It’s pretty level, a few low hills. The biggest killer is that the wind seems to always blow. This knocks down your speed by 2+ mph one way and you get it back on the other direction.
My bike kind of sucks for this. It’s a full suspension mountain bike. The smooth ride is great. Grip shifters, 26 X 1.75 tires, and straight handle bars. The tires aren’t very knobby, but the handle bars are killer given that the wind is always going. Dropping down out of the wind can mean 2 mph in speed.
Last weekend, I rode some to see if this was something I wanted to do. If I could do it. A surprising thing happened. I didn’t get sore. At all. So, I rode two days later. Nothing. Then I rode 13 miles two more days later. Again nothing. That’s when I called Dr Jessica. She thinks it’s the Yoga. Lot’s of stretching. Today, I pushed it to 19 miles and I can feel some soreness. Mostly, from my ass and the seat having disagreements over who should be tenderized.
Tasha asked if I wanted to join her team. So, I’m already signed up. My web page is here. It’s the Jewelry Box and More team.
Thinking about this bike..
Good reviews here. People using it for very long distance touring and commuting. Changing the gears for mountain climbing.
Lots and lots of bike reviews. List many cycles and why they are good or good at their job.
The consensus seem to be that this a good value. Everyone recommends waiting till REI puts it on sale for 15-20% off.
Not a lot of choice in Amarillo. REI has real stores, but sells through the internet.
My current Walmart bike is great for training. Very heavy, lots of suspension, wide tires. If I can just find a 26″ X 1.5″ front wheel with quick release. That way it fits in the trunk without a big fight.
Water Bottle
This was an interesting happenstance..
So, I was really noticing the plastic taste of the water bottle near the end of the ride when it warms up and has sat in the bottle for an hour. It occurred to me that this problem may have been solved. It’s been 20 yr since I started really riding and we scrapped by, literally. But now, I can afford just about anything reasonable.
I asked someone at work and she mentioned 2 possibilities; Polar and Camelbak. Then I started wondering how I would solve this. A thin foil liner in a plastic bottle would be a good way to solve this. This is very easy to envision.
Today, I stopped at a bike shop after work and they happen to have Polar bottles. Bam, there’s my idea. Well, sort of. The outside of the bottle is transparent and you can see a layer of foil in there. The inside is still plastic, but I’m amazed that my idea and someone’s implementation lined up so well.
water bottle on REI
Lifehacker: XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center
You don’t have to mod your classic Xbox to run the best free media center application around anymore: Dedicated developers have ported the Xbox Media Center (XBMC) software to the Mac, and its killer features will convince you to abandon Front Row forever. The latest XBMC on OS X beta dropped last week, and it’s as stable and useful as ever. Dubbed the “throw out your Xbox” release, XBMC for Mac 0.5 beta 1 adds the key feature that finally puts your media center Mac under the TV where it belongs: remote control support. Let’s take a look at how you can (and why you want to) replace Front Row with XBMC on your Mac.
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XBMC Turns Your Mac into the Ultimate Media Center
Passover Coke and Pepsi
In April of 1985, the Coca-Cola company announced that it was re-formulating its flagship carbonated drink, which to the horror of Coke fans everywhere, included a switchover to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Soon, the rest of the soft drink industry followed suit, and the classic taste of cane sugar-based sodas became practically extinct. Today, only a few small boutique soft drink companies still make sodas with refined cane sugar (or sucrose, made from sugar beets) a costly ingredient when compared with HFCS — but true carbonated beverage connoisseurs know and can tell the difference, as corn syrup has a characteristically cloying sweetness when compared to refined sugar. For nostalgic Coca-Cola lovers, unless you live in a foreign country that classic taste is but a distant memory.
Every late March and early April, for the two to three weeks leading up to the celebration of the Jewish Passover holiday season in the United States, Coke fans living in major metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations get their Real Thing, if only for that brief fleeting period. According to Jewish law, nothing made with chametz (any of a number of proscribed cereals and grains, including corn) during passover may be consumed — so in order not to lose sales from observant Jews during that eight day period, a small number of Coca-Cola bottlers make a limited batch of the original Coke formulation, using refined sugar. Needless to say, stocks run out quickly and fans of Passover Coke have been known to travel many miles seeking out supermarkets with remaining caches.
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Kosher for Passover Coke: Its the Real Thing Baby
9to5Mac: MacBook upgrade set for Q3
Apple is moving toward the release of a redesigned MacBook, a new report emanating from the company’s Asian Mac manufacturers claims.
AU Optronics Corp. and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. have been signed-up to produce flat-panel screens for the new MacBook models, confirmed the Commercial Times this morning, citing “sources”.
In line with Apple’s continued marketshare growth for its laptop offerings, Apple has set strong targets for sales of the new device, which MarketWatch claims is set for launch in the third quarter of 2008 (so that’s somewhere between July and September, people)
MacBook upgrade set for Q3
Googlepedia?
As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.
Making the information findable is one step, but it’s not enough. At some point scanning in physical data from books, magazines, etc. will have covered most of what is available. The next step is aggregating or centralizing information, sorted by relevance. This is likely when information in data sources is roughly stable and blogs, research, current events, etc. are mostly the new sources.
At first the internet had little relevant information. Then people joined the network and contributed their local information and participated in the greater whole. The initial problem of the web was lack of contributors. The method of finding data was just as successful using URLs or human evaluated directories (Yahoo). Then the next problem became too much information and finding or sorting by relevance. This is Google.
The next problem is organization or aggregation. To go beyond finding one or two or ten sources to finding a one reliable source. I would suggest a combination of computer generated search results of Google with human filtering like the Yahoo directory of 1997.
This then transitions like Yahoo to Google. Imagine a Google result page based on search results, but with a good degree of stability. The page itself contains content, 10 lines instead of 2-3, plus links out to more or the original sources. A sort of computer generated Wikipedia.
Content is generated from analyzing the sentences across many sources and generate a consensus. Also detailing pigeon holes, link outs, and differing opinions. This can be updated from references like research, gossip, or analysts/experts.
New content can still come in from a number of sources like photos from Flickr and video from YouTube. This is where image recognition software could be of use. Evaluating the relevance of the photo to the content. For example, a photo of Scarlet Runner beans is thus marked and there is space for 1-2 photos. The computer can tell the difference and pick a flower, profile, or seed pod image to place on the page.
BBC: Vatican says aliens could exist
Writing in the Vatican newspaper, the astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, said intelligent beings created by God could exist in outer space.
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The search for forms of extraterrestrial life, he says, does not contradict belief in God.
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Just as there are multiple forms of life on earth, so there could exist intelligent beings in outer space created by God. And some aliens could even be free from original sin, he speculates.
Vatican says aliens could exist BBC News
Rainy Day Today
Well, not yet. But hopefully.
It’s hard to find plant info..
As I research various fruits and vegetables for the Garden site, I’m noticing a surprising trend; lack of information on specific cultivars. The most consistent info is from the seed companies. A short 2-3 sentence blurb. And in some cases a 2-3 paragraph explanation
What seems to be missing is a Wikipedia for plants. Wikipedia itself has some information, but it is by no means complete and the context varies from scientific to cultural to gardening.
Then there’s the incompleteness of the information. Dave’s Garden seems to be a reasonable attempt. Users can upload pics and make comments. Usually, the specific cultivar is listed. However, it lacks any significant meat on the history, flavor, or cultivation.
There are many, many sources online. Each state has an agriculture department and some colleges as well. Of the 51 to 200 or 300 ag. centers, some have high quality information for farming and/or gardening. Then there are special interest groups on tomatoes or heirloom crops. Finding the relevant websites and evaluating them would be a full time job. Google is a great tool, but it’s not great at finding plant stuff. It’s really a shame that there is no consolidation or attempt at making this information easier to find.