Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Wed, 24 Oct 2007
There's been a lot of stuff going on, and rather than make a bunch of little posts about them, I figured I'd just wrap it all up into one.
Bicycles: I took those silly clipless pedals off. The final straw was when I realized that I'd put multiple, visible dents in my floor right where I put the shoes on. The cleats were clearly causing damage every day, and it wouldn't be long before I'd tear up thousands of dollars worth of floor work.
Yeah, grand, the system let me pedal a little bit more efficiently. Not possibly worth the trouble and annoyance of having to carry multiple pairs of shoes around.
Motorcycles: Surprisingly, there's activity on this front. I'm going tomorrow (well, today technically) to look at a 1972 Honda CL175, which is a very small "offroad" bike which can be easily converted for track use. I'm thinking much more seriously about doing vintage racing next year, and this would be a great bike for it. It's over in Indianola, which is a place I've never been before, so that should be an adventure all by itself. It's interesting to think I might own a motorcycle as old as myself.
The CL175 in question.
Nerdery: Bet ya didn't know that was a category. Well, it is for this post. Last week, I broke down and ordered an Alphasmart Dana, which is a sort of laptop-lite. In fact, I'm writing this entry on it. So far, I can tell you that the keyboard is quite nice, better than most laptops. The screen leaves a bit to be desired in terms of contrast and anti-glare. I'm going to have to get some kind of anti-glare shield for the screen.
The reason I was even thinking about something like an Alphasmart Dana is that I'll be participating in NaNoWriMo in November. I did really well last year, somehow finishing fifty thousand words in 13 days. At that rate, I have to try again. Last year, I used my trusty, dusty Model 102 for the task, but lamented that its memory was so small that I actually filled it several times, so that it got in the way of the writing process. I thought to myself, "If only this thing talked USB and could take modern memory cards." Well, guess what the Dana does? It's essentially a modern Model 102 with a bigger screen and more memory/connectivity options, but it's got the same long battery life (25 hours claimed). I was also tempted by the Alphasmart Neo (at 700 hours battery life -- sheesh!) but decided that 25 hours was "good enough" and that the ability to run Palm apps was pretty compelling.
Anyway, I'm not regretting the choice, and I'm looking forward to another speed-novelling adventure. I've got an idea for the next one, and it's even a bit more fleshed out than the first one was. We'll see how that works. Just don't expect a lot of posts here while I'm doing that.
House-ery: Or something. I sold the wardrobe on Sunday, so I actually have everything completely out of storage now. Of course, I've been busy enough at work that I've completely neglected to actually tell the storage place to shut down my account. Hopefully I can remember tomorrow.
Now, of course, comes the challenge of unpacking all those boxes...
I think that's enough for now. The clock tells me it's nearly 1 am, and I really really should be asleep. Should have been asleep hours ago, but sometimes you just gotta play with the new toys...
Posted at 08:42 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater