Stuff-mo-tron

Tue, 31 Oct 2006

Yes, I will in fact be up at midnight tonight, getting in my word count for the day. Hopefully I can get a bit of a jump on it. Plus, you know, hanging out with friends and competing to see who can get to 1666 words first.

So, earlier this year, I bought myself a Grundig FR-200 to keep at work. It's a radio which can be powered by a hand crank, making it an excellent emergency-preparedness item. I actually ended up cranking the thing for about 2 minutes almost every day, and listening to the news in the afternoon.

Yesterday, I went to crank it up again, and to my surprise, it almost immediately went POP, and cranking was suddenly interrupted every 1/5th revolution by a little grunty feeling. Clearly I had popped a tooth off one of the dynamo gears. Oh well, I thought to myself, that was fun while it lasted.

Then, today, I remembered that this had happened, and did a little bit of searching around, to see if I could locate a parts list, and maybe figure out what the specs were on the gears. I thought perhaps I could find a replacement, since nylon gears tend to be relatively standardized.

I came across the manual for the radio, and there, on page 7, I was reminded that the radio has a 1 year warranty! Ah-hah! I called the listed support number, and got the grumpiest-sounding guy I've encountered in a long time on the phone. "Uh-huh, this happens from time to time," he grumbled. "Try not to crank it for ten minutes." He took my name and address, and said he'd be sending me a new set of crank gears. Woot! That was surprisingly easy!

So, thumbs up to Eton (the parent company of Grundig) for standing behind their warranty based only on a punter's word as to purchase date -- no grilling for receipts, or warranty cards, or anything. Most excellent.

Now, of course, I have to figure out how to replace the gear cluster. One problem at a time.

Mon, 30 Oct 2006

So, I found a website selling the Cygolite headlight I want to get. I go through all the rigamarole and BS of creating an account (since there is no other way). I get to the point of checking out, and type in all my vital, wallet-draining details. I hit ye olde submit button, and it pops up a little window saying, "you can't pay with a credit card. Select another payment method."

I'll give you one guess as to whether alternate payment methods are listed on this website. You'd be right if you guessed "none."

Ohhhh-kaaay. It's now hard to believe this business is actually, well, in business.

I got myself over to REI tonight to look at a couple of bicycle headlights I'm considering as successors to the current headlight's throne. I was going to do a simple write-up in here, but decided to do it full-on style (sort of) as a proper review.

The temperature on my little gizmo said 33.3° F. That is, about 1° C. I biked in anyway, wearing more layers than I really needed.

Unfortunately, what I neglected to really cover was my head. My ears were freezing by the time I arrived, and I felt the distinctive taut feeling of an ice cream headache developing. It's mostly gone now, fortunately.

So, proof I can ride in quite cold circumstances, at least. Even with the cold, I was still too warm (in a way) when I arrived. I still have some work to do on appropriate levels of insulation.

Thu, 26 Oct 2006

My brother called and told me that my bad-wobbly feeling on the motorcycle sounded exactly like having underinflated tires. Definitely, but I'd already checked that, making sure the tires were inflated properly. That was my first thought too. We'll see soon if it was the shock or not. Hopefully one turn of preload will do the trick.

The down-side to all this bicycling is that it's harder to motivate myself to work on the motorcycle when it needs it, and when I do make a change, I'm not riding frequently enough to always tell the difference.

If you think you're going to see me at a Halloween party in the next few days, please don't click on the following link. Anyone else, I'm pretty happy with how my costume turned out:

Yeah, should be fun. I've really got to do something about being able to see without glasses, it screws up a lot of costume ideas for me.

Wed, 25 Oct 2006

No, not that. It's when you're riding around on a motorcycle, and at every turn the tires feel uncertain, like maybe they'll just start sliding for the heck of it.

I noticed it on the Ninja 250 a few weeks ago, roughly coincident with two events: adjusting the rear shock, and suddenly riding a bicycle a lot more. So, I'm not actually sure of the cause, but I'm guessing it's the shock.

I just got in from adjusting it to have more preload (making the spring a bit stiffer). It's a small adjustment, just one turn of the ring (my previous adjustment was to loosen the preload by two turns, since the ride was too harsh). Hopefully it'll be a good compromise between harsh ride and vague tires. If necessary, I'll go right back to the harsh ride I had before, it was vastly preferrable to feeling as if the tires might slide at any moment.

Tue, 24 Oct 2006

It's too soon to say for sure, but I've gone 2 days on the new bicycle rim tape with no flats. That beats the odds, but not by much. I'll have to see at the end of the week how many flats I've had to deal with (hopefully zero!).

Fri, 20 Oct 2006

I bought the new bike on September 16th. I put the new tires (and therefore new tubes) on a week or so later, and was done on the 26th. Today is the 20th of October, which makes it 24 days since September 26th.

In that time, I've had 7 flat tires. I've had an average of one flat every 3.4 days. If you only consider days I've ridden the bike (three days a week for the last 4 weeks, or 12 days), I've had just more than a flat every other day.

Yep, flat number 7 occurred on the way into work today. Front tire, with the nick in a suspicious location, about the same spot I saw on a previous flat. I'm developing a theory that I need to replace my rim tape. It's certainly cheap enough. I'm certainly sufficiently tired of flat tires.

Thu, 19 Oct 2006

You know how you have these tasks which you put off forever, figuring they're going to be the most difficult thing in the world? I keep running into them and trumping them (which is good, I guess). The sidecar wheel was one of them, last night. Way easier than I'd feared.

Along the same lines, I finally sat down, and found and read the documentation on how to get SpamAssassin running on my server. For some reason, I'd convinced myself that it was very difficult. Not, as it happens, the case.

In five minutes of searching, I found the write up (hey, right there in the main documentation, where I'd never tried looking...), and within half an hour, it was all working like it's supposed to. Now I'm sitting here, anxious for once that some spammer should target me a little bit. It's kind of a weird feeling.

Another one of those "you never seem to get to it" things is a serious writing project. I've done some writing, of which the non-awful stuff is available over on dangerpants.com. There will be more shortly, since I have story which I'm going to read at a Halloween party, and which will be published there once I've had my little debut.

Anyway, I just sent email to my friend Brian, asserting my intention to write a novel in 30 days. I've watched friends do it for a couple of years, and it doesn't seem like such a difficult task; I've just never tried. I've got two rough ideas bouncing around my head, one a sci-fi story, which mostly exists as a couple of scenes, and the other the world and characters introduced in Devon vs. the Agents.

Either one seems likely. I tried writing a sci-fi story in the past, and it became a real slog, as I had to define a whole world as I wrote the short story; I'd want to do a bit of background work before I started on another sci-fi story. The Devon story seemed to flow right out of me, almost without effort. This recommends it for a 50k-words-inna-month type project. I'll have to see what I feel like as November 1st gets nearer. Despite the higher initial workload, I find myself drawn more to the sci-fi idea right now.

I went to roll on into work on the bicycle this morning, and discovered that the front tire was (finally) flat. I'd been expecting it for a week or two, ever since I got the last front flat. Interestingly, it didn't appear to be that little pinch I'd noticed which failed, although the leak didn't identify itself until I had the tire up to nearly full pressure again.

So, I spent 15 minutes swapping in a brand new tube, checking for pokey things in the tire, applying talcum powder, and preinflating the tube. All the things which should work to make the front tire as flat-free as possible. Hopefully this is the last one until I actually get an unpreventable flat.

In other news, it was misting today (for those who aren't from Seattle or other rainy climes, that's the kind of rain where it's a bit heavier and downward-trending than an actual fog, but not so heavy as to form really satisfying rain drops (which would be a drizzle), with the end result that you get this uniform dampness from being in it, rather than splotches of true soaked wetness; Seattle has lots of words for rain, what can I say). I decided to pull out the rain cape again, in a test to see if it would have any effect on water hitting my legs.

The short answer is I don't know what effect it had. My shins are not dry, but they're not uncomfortably damp, either. I have a feeling it helped, but probably not as much as I was hoping. That's partly due to having too much stuff on my handlebars (most importantly, lights to make me more visible). The cape is also just a mite too small for me, and I feel somewhat constricted riding in it. In particular, it's nearly impossible to do anything with your hands other than have them on the handlebars. The cape is too restrictive to allow crazy motions like, say, signalling turns.

I also arrived relatively damp under the cape, because humans have this crazy cooling system which works on the principle of evaporation. Unfortunately, with the cape in place, no evaporation. Still, it was far better than if I'd worn my non-breathing rain jacket.

Finally, I definitely noticed a slow-down due to wind resistance this time. The trip into work has more quality downhill time, and I didn't feel like I was moving as fast (although the speedometer suggested it wasn't as big a difference as I perceived). I was also working harder to move over the flat sections.

So, despite all the negative-sounding verbiage, I do like the rain cape. I think it's a better choice (as a concept) than the rain suit, particularly as my goal is to do this bicycling thing with as little extraneous work as possible. It's certainly been working so far: I haven't bicycled this much since I was living a mile from work, downhill all the way in.

Wed, 18 Oct 2006

I finally jacked up the sidecar, and pulled off the wheel. I've been needing to do this for months, since I discovered an axial crack near the hub in August or so. I've been putting it off, since I had absolutely no clue how to do it, and didn't really have the patience to sit down and figure it out.

So I finally went out and tried the method suggested by Aaron, the previous owner. Sure enough, it came right off, no problems at all. Well, that was easy!

I pulled the wheel off and set it aside. But, wait, what's that? There's some schmutz on the brake disc... Oh.

The brake caliper is leaking, or something. It's covered in grime, and I can only guess that it's brake fluid, since there's nothing else there to be producing oil. As far as I know, this brake caliper was last current in about 1969, so I can only imagine that finding a rebuild kit for it is going to be less than simple. Sigh Finding a replacement, even less possible. Putting on something different is conceivable, in that it's probably a task I could accomplish, but that's far from a cakewalk as well. On top of all that, I was only given a 50% chance of success at the wheel shop.

Thu, 12 Oct 2006

I hate to make a post which is simply a link to something else, but this project took my breath away, and I actually started trying to figure out how much it would cost to buy one of these things when they're available. (I'm not going to, but wow is this cool.)

Tue, 10 Oct 2006

I left a few things dangling over the last few days. Here's how stuff turned out:

Tsukamaki: I finished wrapping the sword handle, and even got some of the more obnoxious hishi-gami (little paper thingies) tucked under the ribbon where they're supposed to be. It hardly looks like a professional job, but it's good enough for a Halloween costume.

Total time spent: about 8 hours. That includes a lot of folding, cutting and folding newsprint (black fingertips and all), studying pictures, saying to myself, "uh, what?" and turning my head sideways, and a lot of tugging that ribbon as tight as I could while intricately folding it around little triangular paper wedges. It was actually pretty fun.

Bicycle flats: I put a new tube in the rear tire last night, and it's holding up so far. Of course, so is the front, where I know there's another puncture lurking in the wings. I'll have to get that changed after work today.

Monday in general: ended up being much more pleasant than the start would suggest. Nothing specific to point to, things just went better than I might have expected given the rough beginning.

Mon, 09 Oct 2006

I woke up this morning feeling fine, ready for a bicycle commute into work. I stretched out my legs, and ate a spot of breakfast. Got my stuff shuffled into the appropriate bag.

I got myself all geared up -- high-viz vest, shoulder bag, helmet, gloves. After this point, things started going wrong.

So yeah, Monday isn't treating me that nicely so far. On the positive side, I've received a bit of advice which will hopefully help me avoid these flats in the future. Seems the advised procedure is to fill the tube with a bit of air before levering the tire back on, to help avoid getting it pinched.

After today, I sure as hell hope that's what I was doing wrong. Five flats in under a month, all of them pinch flats, is driving me to distraction.

Sun, 08 Oct 2006

I went out this afternoon, to ride the bicycle to Northgate. I was all set to do the healthy, eco-friendly thing.

But as I pulled the bike from its little nook, what should I notice, but that the front tire was completely flat.

Now, several days ago, I rode out to Lowes, a mile and a half distant mostly via bike trail. As I was pulling into the parking lot, I noticed the bike felt mushy, and looked down to see my rear tire rapidly deflating. I hadn't run over any obvious hazards. When I found the leak, it was facing toward the rim again.

On the ride back, no problems. All seemed fine. Obviously not, though, as today the front was flat. Again, I didn't seem to hit anything -- why the flat?

I patched the hole, and it was facing right at the tire's bead. Ok, obviously something is wrong here. The two constants are me (ie, the mechanic's hand) and tires/rims/tubes. The tire isn't letting anything through (and in any case, the cuts are always facing the rim, where glass and the like can't hit the tube). I don't feel like I'm running over anything nasty, yet I appear to be getting pinch flats (I don't know what else to call them -- little tiny slits, as if a very tiny and restrained prison inmate shivved my tube shyly, just once to see if it worked).

I do hear an ominous crinkling sound as I inflate the tire after each patch. I had assumed it was the patch wrapping crinkling, but maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, this makes three flats in less than a month. On my previous bike (26" wheels vs. the 29ers I have now, and 1.75" wide tires vs. the 35mm/1.38" I have now), in 8 years of riding, not one flat. Never. This is just a little frustrating.

I guess on the positive side, this has forced me to be prepared for flats, and I'm rapidly figuring out how to deal with them. Now I just need to figure out how to prevent them. Also on the positive side, and completely aside from flats, I've managed three bicycle commuting days a week for two weeks. That's pretty damn good after many years of perhaps one bicycle day every 6 months.

Fri, 06 Oct 2006

For my Halloween costume this year, I wanted to have a katana (Japanese samurai sword). I thought about it, and did a bit of research. Eventually decided that although I would really appreciate getting a real sword, a fake one was probably a far better idea from a legality standpoint.

So, I did yet more research, and found myself tempted to pay upwards of $70 for what amounted to a slightly curved stick. In this case, a boken, or wooden practice katana. Fortunately, I paid a visit to the local martial arts supply store, where they had one and only one kind of boken, and it was $14.06 after tax. Good enough. I came away with a relatively inexpensive practice sword which might even be functional should I some day decide to pursue a currently vague interest in Aikido.

Anyway, for the costume, I wanted it to look a bit more real than a simple curved stick. Not to the extent of making it look more like an actual blade, but rather in a bit of decoration for the handle.

Enter this site on tsukamaki, or how to wrap a katana handle to get that cool diamond-negative-space effect. Suffice to say that it's an ancient Japanese art form, and takes years of practice before you start turning out handle wraps which a master practitioner would deign to spit on, or perhaps set fire to. So of course I figured I'd do a good enough job for a Halloween costume in one or two sittings.

As it happens, I'm actually doing pretty well. It looks a lot like a katana handle:

My fingers hurt from pulling the ito (that's a fancy word for cheap polyester ribbon) tight, and folding the hishi-gami (a fancy word for small triangular pieces of paper). That handle represents two 3 hour sessions of sitting in a chair and carefully tucking ribbon under pieces of paper while simultaneously holding it on the far side of the handle, so it doesn't all unravel. I'd probably do a better job if I had four hands, but I seem to be making it work with two.

Fortunately, it's going pretty quickly at this point. I should be able to finish up in another hour or two of work. Not bad for a first attempt. Obviously, I've still got a couple of years of practice to do before I can expect any imperious spitting from my betters.

I'm helping out the current production of Slow Children, again in the capacity of Master at Arms. I'm also supplying them with stage guns, since I have managed to collect a few over the years.

I had two when I started out with this show. One was a copy of a Beretta 92, and the other a copy of a Walther PPK. I bought the Beretta copy new for the first production of Slow Children, so it felt entirely appropriate to re-use it this time. The Walther copy came from a pawn shop, on someone's tip that they had a blank gun or two there.

So I got a call about a week ago. It was the stage manager, calling to say that the Walther had broken. Specifically, the safety lever fell out. I went down that night to make sure it was still safe to use. It appeared to be, so I gave it the green light. I got a call the next night, saying it had broken further: the firing pin fell out. Turns out that on that model, the firing pin is held in place by the safety lever. Oops.

I felt bad for Imogen, who was getting new instructions every night, and had started out saying, "I'm a gun-hating liberal, this is really weird feeling," as she hefted the thing for the first time.

So, I decided that for the good of the production (cause I'm a freakin' softie, apparently), we should get another blank gun in. I looked around a bit, and decided on a .357 Detective Special, since it was a revolver, and revolvers have fewer parts to break.

When I dropped that off, I noticed something: the pamphlet which came with the revolver listed all these part numbers... That suggested to me that perhaps parts actually are available for these things (I'd figured that since they were so relatively inexpensive, they were just "throw-away" items). Hmmm!

Sure enough, a bit of poking around found the Kimar FAQ. They will send you parts, if only you know the part number! Oh, but the broken gun is the one I got used, naturally without a manual.

I took a chance, and filled out a form requesting the part anyway. I figured it couldn't hurt.

To my delight, I had an email in my inbox this morning from Susanna Chiappa, saying that a new safety lever was on the way. Hooray! I love it when broken things can be fixed, instead of discarded!

Wed, 04 Oct 2006

Normally, with a title like that, I'd be telling you about a monster SUV that tried to crush me. Not so this time.

I decided to ride the motorcycle in this morning after I got a late start; the bicycle would have been on the slow side, particularly as it was after traffic (which defines, to some extent, how late I was). No more than background levels of driver stupidity were detected for the majority of the drive.

I turned down Fremont Ave, which is a popular bicycling route (that's how I get into work on the bicycle myself). At 35th street, I usually swing into the left-turn lane to avoid the utter traffic craziness which is "downtown" Fremont. As I crossed 36th and was preparing to move into the left turn lane, a bicyclist I was about to pass suddenly swerved sharply in front of me, crossing my path to get into the left turn lane. It wasn't a scary moment, but it left me a little cross that this cyclist had pulled such a foolish stunt.

I pulled up next to her, and said, "you might want to look next time, I almost ran into you when you pulled out like that." We conversed for a moment, and she asserted that she'd looked, and not seen a car, and so decided it was ok to pull out. At the moment she'd pulled out of the bike lane, we were going about the same speed. She didn't look over her shoulder (and had no mirror), and didn't signal.

"Sorry, I guess I didn't see you, I was looking for cars," she said. I had a very brief internal forehead-slapping moment, and said, "bicycles and motorcycles have the same problem with visibility," or something. The light turned green and we both pulled away. I let her go first, since I figured (correctly) that she'd cross my path again to get over to the outside of the road. I waved as I went by, although I don't think she'd assumed I was angry (since I wasn't).

Note to bicyclists: watch out for all vehicles. I would have smushed her just as flat as a car would have.

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.