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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Wed, 25 Apr 2007I got a new copy of Final Cut Express a week or so ago, and between that and some really neat new footage I'd shot with the camera strapped to the side of the bike, I needed to make a new video. So, I did. It's been very well received, once you discount the weird people who need to get a life ("please pronounce centrifugal differently" and "centrifugal force doesn't exist" are my favorites).
How many times can you say "countersteering" before it starts to sound really weird? Posted at 10:04 permanent link category: /motorcycle So, if you've been to my house, you've certainly seen the broken-down old piece of junk masquerading as a bathroom door. It's one of those cheap, hollow doors which are the favored choice of slumlords and homeowners too strapped or oblivious to get something better. Some time in its past, before I owned the house, it acquired a hole. I never noticed the hole when I was looking at the house, because when it was on the market, there was a little piece of framed art (needlepoint or something) hanging over the hole. I even thought to myself, "What a weird place to hang a little framed artwork."
So, I thought to myself from day one, "Maybe I should get that door fixed." It took me a long time to come around to the idea that I would have to replace it, and then that was at least as daunting as trying to figure out how one would repair a busted hollow door. Yesterday was my day to take some stuff (notably two other doors and the old kitchen sink) to a place called the Re-Store. They buy and sell used building materials, although they only wanted one door, and not the sink or other door. Ah well. But I figured that as long as I was there, I'd look and see if I could find a new door for the bathroom. I looked for a few minutes, thoroughly daunted by the collection of perhaps 200+ doors lined up and down a couple of aisles. I figured I'd poke through, not find anything, and have to order a door at Lowes or Home Depot (for which I was expecting to pay about $150). Imagine my surprise when I found a door which was close to the right dimensions, and pulled it out to find a perfect stylistic match to the rest of the doors in my house, and including a mirror on the inside! Now compound that surprise with the pleasure of seeing a $30 pricetag on it, and thinking about the $10 in store credit they'd given me for my old door. It was pretty nice. So, I bought the door, figuring I'd get to it in a few days. Not to be. I immediately scraped some paint off, then lugged it around to the bathroom to see how well it'd fit. Actually, it was really close. It almost looked like it would fit without trimming... Hmm.... I called my dad, and got his advice on how to proceed with the task ahead of me, and he set me up. I rolled down to Home Depot and rented a hand-planer, and picked up a new doorknob (the old one was of a matching slumlord quality to the hollow door). I cleared out the garage as a workspace, and set the door up on some sawhorses. The planer took a moment to figure out (the depth-of-cut adjustment being somewhat obscure despite the theoretically clear label on the knob). Zip zap, off came a few 32nds from the bottom of the door, and I tried it out. Around this time, I started to realize just how much a solid wood door with an inset mirror weighed. The door fit pretty well, but wasn't perfect yet, and I knew it'd need several more round-trips between the bathroom and the planer. I eyed the recently-emptied office next to the bathroom speculatively for about two seconds before I trotted off to retrieve the sawhorses and planer.
I set the door up on some shims I had left over from the kitchen project, and marked where the hinges should go. Then it was down again (I can definitely feel my arms this morning) for the chiseling. Fortunately, hinges are very standardized, so I was able to get the door frame set up by simply squaring the corners of the mortises and screwing the new vintage hinges into the existing holes. The door's old hinge mortises were in the wrong place, but provided an excellent guide for cutting the new ones. Next, I marked and drilled the hinge holes, and got the door up again on shims so I could attach the hinges. Amazingly, it only took about 10 minutes and a lot less grunting and swearing than I had expected to get it hanging and swinging freely. I broke the lockset out of its packaging (fortunately of the "snap together" dangerplastic instead of the "cut open and reveal self to plastic razor edges" dangerplastic), and read through the instructions real quick. Hmm. 2 and 1/8" hole saw? I cursed a bit under my breath -- I knew I had hole saws, but a 2 and 1/8"? I ran to the two or three places I had them. Nope, the first was a 1 and something. Out to the garage, where I picked up a 2 1/8" hole saw. Amazing! The absolute bane of doing any kind of project like this has always been that I end up spending more time driving back and forth between the store getting stuff I'm missing than I would on doing the work at home had everything been in place to start with.
The lockset was simplicity itself to fit, and the door swung shut with a satisfying click! I pulled out the camera and snapped a few shots. I was amazed it went so smoothly. I'd had horrible visions of endless fussing to get everything lined up, and nothing going right. Just the opposite was the case. It was even pretty cheap. I paid $23 for the door after tax (including my $10 trade-in credit for the old kitchen door). The hinges were $7. The lockset was $15. The planer rental was $14. And that's it! The rest was reused hardware or tools I already had. Grand total for a new bathroom door (and a considerably classier one than I had anticipated being able to get): $60. Whee! I should have done this years ago. Posted at 09:48 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 18 Apr 2007The Virginia Tech shootings seem to have re-invigorated calls for gun control. I'm sure you can find the articles, they're all over now. It's an interesting thing for me. I own guns, although I haven't used any of them for years, and no longer particularly care whether or not I do. So I have at least a theoretical interest in keeping guns available. I also grew up in a very anti-gun family, and I retain a lot of that sentiment -- the only things I've ever shot at have been made of paper or clay on a controlled firing range. The thought of killing anything, no matter the method used, is repulsive to me (part of the reason I'm still a vegetarian). So, I guess I'm what you could call a neutral party in the gun control debate. This provides me with the perspective to say that, honestly, it's never going to work. Gun control in this country will never be successful, if they keep going at it the way they are now. Let's go on a little historical journey. This is all from memory, so I'm probably getting some parts wrong, but the gist of it is accurate, and that's all I'm trying for. Back in the day, say, 600 years ago, your average European person (who would have been a serf or peasant in most areas of Europe) was not allowed to possess weapons. Tools were fine, which is one of the reasons you think of pitchforks and scythes when you imagine "popular revolt" -- people didn't have swords and daggers, so they used what they had. In order to carry a weapon like a sword (or, later, a gun), you had to be in one of several special classes: noblemen, military, some sort of guard function (which is close enough to military that I'll just lump them together) or an outlaw. This meant that your average person (roughly equivalent to today's middle class, although the comparison is only apt in terms of percentages of the population) went their entire lives without being allowed to legally possess or carry a legitimate weapon. Only a few priveliged people were allowed to carry weapons, and only a subclass of those people (ie, the nobles) were allowed to carry them while "off-duty." Fast forward a few hundred years. Europeans start colonizing America. It's a wild frontier. Not only is everyone allowed to possess and carry a weapon, it's practically mandatory, what with all the Indians and bears and moose and rabid killer squirrels and whatnot. It's a wild adventure. Everyone loves a wild adventure, and the country grows. As it grows, the mindset is firmly cemented that in America, everyone carries a gun. No longer is it forbidden for the average person to arm him (or even her) self. In fact, it's encouraged. Finally, everyman has one of the rights of a gentleman. But only in America. Now kind of fast-wind your way through history in America. Guns continue to feature in a lot of things that happened. Guns, in fact, are an integral part of the culture, all the way up to the present day. It's every person's right to carry a gun; it's right there in the constitution, right? Sure, you can read it that way. You can read it other ways too, but I'm not about to touch that debate. My point is that America was, in some very literal ways, founded on this idea of everyone being armed. In America, everyone has that previously "nobles-only" right. It's built into the culture. Anyone who wants to, provided they're not a convicted criminal or crazy-person, can buy a gun. Even convicted criminals and crazy-people can buy guns, if they go about it the right way. Why? Because the culture in America assumes that guns are a basic right, just like liberty and free speech. Even more than that, they're a means of distinction from "everyone else" (ie, other countries). Ok, so where does this leave us? There's a movement to "ban guns." They're dangerous -- they are: the only point of a gun is to put big, angry holes in things, and the only way that's really useful is if you're doing it to destroy something. So, granted, guns are dangerous. On that basis, they should be restricted (no one is actually talking about banning guns, they're all talking about restricting them to some sub-class of people who are allowed to have them). Everyone knows that an outright ban would never work. Other countries (take Britain or Australia, for instance) are held up by the pro-gun folks as shining examples of why it's bad to ban guns and take them away from everyone. Suddenly, a guy with a knife is a major threat to public safety. A whacko with a barely-tolerated hunting rifle is unstoppable. And that's the thing: barely-tolerated. People don't like guns in those places. People in America like guns. Guns represent our power, and our independence. Taking away Americans' guns is tantamount to emasculating them and enslaving them, or so goes the train of thought. The culture of America believes it, so it's true. The change isn't that we need to ban guns. The change is that we need to change our culture. It's a big, big task, bigger than any one person or even large group of people can do. It's a task which will take everyone in the country, and we're already evenly split on whether to vote for Awful Politician #1 or Awful Politician #2 for president every four years. If you want to get rid of the guns, you have to change the culture. It has to become not-ok to own or use guns, and it has to be a universal change. When we become a culture in which it's a faux-pas to own, carry or use guns, the gun control advocates will get what they say they want. Until that point, attempts at gun control will be just that -- attempts, and probably failed attempts most of the time. Crazy-persons will still be able to get guns, because some of them aren't crazy enough to register on our meters, like happened this last Monday in Virginia. Don't try to feed me a line about putting more and more restrictions on the sale or whatever. Not gonna work. If you don't change the culture, the guns will still be there, and anyone who wants one will be able to get one. Regulations are made to be circumvented, and you're talking about a country full of people who are proud of their circumvention skills. I'm not trying to advocate either the pro- or anti-gun position here (although as I re-read what I've written, I realize that I'm really writing to the gun control advocates of the world). I'm just throwing up a reality check. Shout all you want, protest and lobby Congress and do whatever, but until our culture changes, guns will be available. Until we stop glorfying guns, and start villifying them, nothing will change. Posted at 18:05 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 17 Apr 2007I've finished up the second countersteering video. (Did I mention the first one? I think I did, but just in case, they're both on this page.) I'm pretty pleased with it, and decided I might as well take the plunge and become one of the YouTube generation. With any luck, my new video is linked below:
There you have it. I have huge hair. Posted at 10:08 permanent link category: /motorcycle Thu, 12 Apr 2007This is a collection of thoughts I've had bumping around in my head for a bit. Just figured I'd get them out. CygoLite DualCross 200: I've already got a review up here. This is additional thoughts. The DualCross, now that I've used it, has some notable weaknesses. Probably the biggest one is the ridiculous mounting bracket. Some genius at Cygo decided to have the light cantilevered out way in front of the bar. It keeps your bars flat, certainly, but it also means that the light head has a huge lever arm when, say, going over bumps. I don't know about you, but bumps are an unavoidable part of riding a bike for me. The result? I've grown used to rotating the bracket back up to a useful position. (It's as tight as I can make it, too -- the bracket design suffers from more than one flaw.) The light, as I mentioned in the review, has multiple modes. The "primary" modes are accessible by briefly pressing a button. One button scrolls "up" through light levels, the other button scrolls "down." (I put those in quotes because in the secondary mode, up and down are meaningless, but the buttons work the same way.) The secondary modes are accessed by pressing either button for a few seconds, and then releasing. Then, it's a quick button press to scroll through the modes. What I find myself disliking is the unnecessary complexity of the interface. It offers four levels of light, which sounds great until you think about how you'll actually use it. For myself, I want the lowest level most of the time (the "being seen" level). If it's dark or I really want to get a car's attention, I want the highest level (which is bright enough to see where you're going). The middle levels never ever get used. Fortunately, with the two buttons, you don't have to scroll through all of them to get to high or low. Still, I'd rather just have two levels, or some way to program it so i could skip the middle two. In the secondary set of modes, you get four "special" modes: quick flash, slow flash, "walking" (or "very dim") steady light, and SOS flash. Here again, I only want two modes, but only one of them really exists. I want a medium-fast flash (fast is epilleptic-seizure-fast, slow is really too slow), and I want the super-dim mode. The SOS mode (at least for me) is the dorkiest waste of programming I've ever seen. I'll never use it, although I can see some mountain biker being really glad to have it, assuming he hasn't bobbled the light head straight off the bars. So, if I were in charge of this product for Cygo, I'd drop it to two modes (high/low and flash/dim), and I'd change how the buttons work. One button (pick one at random, I don't care) would switch back and forth between high and low beam. Hold it down to turn off, just like now. The other button would immediately switch to (or switch on) flash or dim mode, again hold down to turn off. Every once in a while, I want to switch from primary to secondary to get that fast flash, but I want to do it right now. Unfortunately, I have to hold the button for 2 seconds to switch it off, then hold it for two seconds again, to switch it on in secondary mode. Unacceptable, so I don't futz with the light and grab for the horn instead. The battery mounting system (consisting of some single-sided velcro and a strip of foam tape on the battery case) leaves something to be desired, but it generally seems to stay in place. It's not too big, and doesn't take up a water bottle cage. For all that's negative, the light has some phenomenal positives. In particular, the beam is huge, and really lights up the road on high beam. It spreads quickly, but has enough of a hot spot to be useful. I don't know why they crossed the beams like they did, that just seems like a gimmick, but the beam pattern is really good. The battery life is also excellent, particularly when you always use it on the lowest light level or one of the flashing modes like I do. Although I dislike the mount and the UI, I'm keeping it. Delta Air Zound: This is a horn which you fill up with a tire pump. It has a remote bottle that looks for all the world like a 500 ml pop bottle without a label (in fact, I'm pretty sure it is). This horn is functionally identical to one of those boating horns with the 6" long trumpet and the can of compressed stuff underneath. But WOW what a sound it makes! I was all proud of my motorcycle horns (I always replace the stock motorcycle horn with a louder unit, so I can actually be heard), but this thing is about twice as (apparently) loud as those motorcycle horns. I don't know who's got the right dB rating, but the Air Zound is at the top of my list for horns now. I'll never have another bicycle without one of these (at least, if it's destined to be in traffic). $20 at Amazon. Go buy one, right now, and put it on your bike. You will be amazed. Now, if only I could figure out how to mount it where I can reach it immediately. REload Bags shoulder bag: REload is a company that I first heard of when I passed by their little factory space on Capitol Hill last year. A bunch of young hip biker people were sitting around industrial sewing machines chatting and sewing together bags. It seemed cool, and when the time came recently to get a bigger biking bag, I decided to give them a try. Every bag they make is custom -- you choose the colors and the extra features. I ended up with a burgundy and grey bag that looks really good. I'm very happy with it so far. The strap hardware is a little funky, in that it's chrome-plated metal instead of the more normal nylon, but I guess it's more durable when it's cold out. So yeah, thumbs up on the REload bag. The one I got is the Small Civilian model, and I added dual front pockets, pen pockets inside, and a ballistic nylon base. My total price after tax was $140 or so. Their website is nowhere near as slick as Timbuk2's site, but their bags are of at least comparable quality, and REload will sew artwork onto your bag (for a fee). If you see anyone running around with a shoulder bag with art on it, that's probably a REload. Mountain Mirrycle mirror: This thing rocks. It pokes up where I can see it, and the mounting system is very solid. Complete and total thumbs-up on the Mountain Mirrycle mirror, if you like handlebar-mounted mirrors. Of course, you'll also want to have flat bars and a grip with a hole in the end. With all that, I don't have any problem with the mirror shifting unexpectedly, or even vibrating too much. I'd even consider putting one of these on a motorcycle. Very good stuff. Posted at 22:40 permanent link category: /bicycle So, I came across an interesting situation today. I was thinking about a trip I might want to make, and went to the website of one of my favorite airplane rental places. No comment on who, because he's a good guy, and I don't want to bring him negative publicity. This is a commentary on business practices and websites. I went to the website to find prices. I found my plane, and was pleased to see that the rate hadn't changed. Woo! I remembered that the last time I was in, there was a fuel surcharge, though, so I called to ask about it. Sure enough, there's still a surcharge of $10 per hour. That's all fine, but the website actually says, "All our prices include fuel" and strongly implies that other rental agencies have hidden fuel surchages and insurance fees. The fuel surchage isn't mentioned on the website. So, think about that for a minute. There's text on the site that says, "We don't have hidden fuel fees!" and there's a hidden (at least on the website) fuel fee. It's very obvious when you get in the office -- there are signs around saying "$10 fuel surcharge applies" and it's listed on the printed price sheet. So it's not exactly hidden to a walk-in customer. But what this guy doesn't seem to realize is that the whole world minus walk-up and current customers sees his business through the filter of that website. Say I'm a private pilot from New York, and I'm planning a trip out to the Seattle area, and am looking for a place to rent a plane. It's going to be a bit of hassle anywhere, so I want low rates and my particular plane type. He's got one, and his rates are pretty good. Neat! Imagine my surprise when I get there and discover that there are hidden charges. Yes, current customers and people who call or walk in will get the whole story. But if they saw your website first, they're going to be annoyed, and might even be distrustful -- you said right on your site, no hidden fuel surcharges! If you're reading this and you have a business and a website, you might keep that in mind. Your website is your storefront to the entire world. It says a lot about your business. Don't let it mislead your potential customers. Posted at 11:52 permanent link category: /aviation Mon, 09 Apr 2007Apparently, without knowing it, I've been part of a group all these years: a group of people who are making it their business to use cycles (I'll use the generic term, since I'm referring to both motorcycles and bicycles) as their daily transportation. I'm not sure that there are any clever websites out there that I could link to which describe this, but it does seem to be something of a movement. I'm getting this impression from reading BikeForums and other random places. The bicycle contingent is more vocal, probably because they really get that self-righteous "I burn no fossil fuels" attitude worked up. But really, both groups, motorcyclists and bicyclists, seem to exist. What's interesting to me is that I came to it out of my own reasons, and without really being prodded by anyone else. I was proud to be able to say, "Actually, I haven't owned a car since [whenever]." But then, I like being weird, and living without a car is definitely weird. It's kind of a pity that being carless is such a weird thing, though. Our appetite for easy transportation seems like it's bound to be our undoing, as we fight wars and slowly destroy our living environment to facilitate the pratice. Fortunately, we're not "killing the planet" or any such nonsense. The Earth will survive, as will a lot of interesting life forms. Just maybe not us, and maybe not a lot of the life forms we value. For all that, this insatiable appetite for energy is long-standing. The whales were almost hunted into extinction because of demand for whale-oil for lamps. (Either the first or one of the first lighthouses in the Puget Sound area, on Whidbey Island, ran on whale oil for years, for instance.) That was in the middle of the 19th century, and it's easy to find other examples further back: Scotland was once entirely forested until all the trees were cut down for firewood and buildings. Now, it's a barren-looking land of low scrub and peat moss for the most part; it's been that way for millenia. Anyway, to bring this all back around, I'm looking forward to a neat future, if only I can help convince everyone else to reduce their energy usage. With things like transportational cycling, decentralized power generation (think solar panels and little wind turbines on every house, or even methane-powered fuel cells, running off garbage heaps), and better urban planning, we can go a long way towards fixing up a future that could otherwise be viewed as pretty dismal. Gotta run, it's bicycle time! Posted at 17:58 permanent link category: /bicycle Wed, 04 Apr 2007If all goes right (cross fingers), I'll be getting an Apple Macbook tonight. So, that's significant for a number of reasons:
That last point is the exciting one. I have a Plan. Until now, I've been a many-computer person. It's practically been a defining feature of who I was. Go into my house, and there are computers everywhere. An old laptop there, a tower case there, etc. When I moved out a few weeks ago, I had 8 computers, not counting things like the Tandy 102 or palmtops. The Plan is this: get rid of everything. Just use the Macbook. Radical, eh? The rationale is that in the last two years, I've used a computer for the following tasks:
Well, all those things are easy to do with a Mac. In fact, the Mac excels at some of them, while some of those tasks are so lightweight as to be simple for even a generations-old computer such as I use. The key breakthrough was realizing that where before I thought I'd need Windows to run the audio editing software I had (which is almost the only reason I still have a Windows machine at all), actually I could do it on a Mac too. And hey, a Mac is essentially a Unix machine (my preference is to use Linux for most things). So, a Mac would actually make a decent computer for most of the stuff I want to do. Then I started looking around, and found a great deal (which turned out to be so great it didn't exist, but that's the "joy" of Craigslist, I guess). Then I found another great deal, and spent my monies, and here I am. (Since I started writing this, I have concluded the purchase of my new Macbook, and am using it to type this even now!) I guess the next step is to get all the stuff I care about off the myriad computers I have lying around, and get rid of them! Hooray for simplification! Posted at 19:53 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
