Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Now that wasn't so hard, was it
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.
We'll see what happens come November 1st, and more importantly, November 30th.
Posted at 20:56 permanent link category: /misc
Flat tire closure; the rain cape gets a real test
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.
Posted at 10:07 permanent link category: /bicycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater