Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
Tue, 15 Dec 2009
So, if you've been following along, then you know that I was drooling over the Canon G11 a while ago, primarily for one reason, and one reason only: low-light performance.
The G10 is a fine camera in almost every respect, but it was disappointing in its low-light abilities. For those, it's pretty grainy and annoying, and feels like it lets the side down, if only because everything else is so excellent. It is a pleasure to use otherwise. Despite all that, I really wanted to get my hands on a G11.
I finally realized that yes, low-light performance really was a big priority for me. This, coupled with someone who was interested in buying my G10, made the decision pretty easy. I've now been using my new G11 for about 5 days, and wanted to make an intial report.
First and foremost, holy crap does this thing do low-light well! The first time I took a real picture in a dim restaurant (as opposed to playing around with ISO settings and taking test shots), I was astounded. The quality is excellent, and although there's grain, it's really not that bad.
ISO 1600, .4s, f/2.8
ISO 1600, .2s, f/2.8
ISO 1600, .8s, f/2.8
ISO 250, 1/100s, f/4
One of my few complaints with the G10 was that the shutter release button was kind of mushy feeling. This, sadly, remains true with the G11. There's not really any tactile feedback to the shutter button, and so you can't tell when you've got it pressed half-way (a critical tactic when taking pictures with any kind of autofocus camera). There's a light that flashes, eventually, but that only comes on after everything gets locked in, so it's significantly delayed feedback. This is a huge disappointment because other Canon cameras I've used have had excellent shutter release buttons, and those were much cheaper cameras.
I was unclear on whether I'd like the fold-out screen on the G11. My first impression, when I handled a G11 in a store a month or so ago, was that the screen felt a bit cheap compared to the brick-like solidity of the G10. I haven't really changed that assessment, but in use, the screen of the G11 doesn't feel as cheap as it first seemed. It still falls down compared to the G10.
However, the benefit of the articulated screen became apparent in use. I knew in the abstract that it'd be nice to be able to take pictures from different angles, but the reality of it was better than I'd expected. I would still be perfectly happy with a fixed screen like the G10 has, but I can see the utility of the folding screen. The big one that I'm still looking forward to is taking waist-level candid shots, so I can hopefully get pictures of people who don't have that frozen, "Oh shit a camera!" rictus about them.
The G11 seems to continue the tradition of the colors on the camera's screen being a bit more vibrant than they appear anywhere else. This can be disappointing, but as long as you keep in mind that it happens, it's acceptable.
Everything is sufficiently similar between the G10 and G11 that all my G10 accessories still work: the fisheye lens add-on, the case, the spare battery. The G11 feels almost exactly the same in my hand, although the buttons on the back feel a bit more crowded with the extra furniture required for the flip-out screen -- I've found myself accidentally pushing buttons more on the G11 than on the G10.
An interesting change on the G11 is that the scroll wheel on the back is now part of the four-way rocker switch. This makes the four-way easier to use, but the scroll wheel harder to use, as if you apply too much pressure while scrolling, it'll activate one of the four-way buttons. It's an acceptable compromise for me, and I'm not honestly sure which setup I prefer.
So, my impression from the first few days with the G11 is quite favorable. I'm very pleased I made the leap. I'll be sad to see the G10 go, although the trade-offs between the two cameras definitely make the G11 the one I want to keep.
Posted at 10:57 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 07 Dec 2009
How the universe says, "Screw you, hippie!"
I decided, given an unexpectedly free evening, that it would be a good night to go to the range. Given that it's somewhere below 30 degrees outside, the truck was the logical vehicle to take for this venture.
I loaded up, put the thing in gear, released the clutch, and... it wouldn't move. Finally I coaxed it forward, but something was clearly Wrong. I took a very low-speed stroll around the neighborhood, figuring maybe it was some ancient grease that needed to warm up a bit or something. Half a mile later, I stopped, and checked the brakes, to see if one of them was sticking. Sure enough, I nearly burned my fingers on the left rear brake.
Ok, so that brake drum is sticking. Crap. I definitely couldn't drive any distance with things in this condition. I also know I'm going to need the truck later this week, and so I decided to sit down and see if I could resolve the problem. I always enjoy problems that might be solveable with a Big Hammer.
Fortunately, Ford designed their rear brake drums the right way around, and once you get the wheel off, the drum just pulls off. Well, that's what it's supposed to do, but that doesn't work out so well when there's a brake shoe pressed hard against it. Out came the little hammer, and I slowly worked the drum off the axle.
There was nothing obviously wrong, and a bunch of fiddling finally allowed me to discover an adjuster wheel. I turned it in the "less" direction, and amazingly, the brake drum slid back on beautifully. A few test adjustments and fittings, and it appeared that I was good to go. Back on went the wheel, and I tried again.
After a few initial twangings and pingings, like the sound of a wooden ship under moderate winds, it seemed... No, it was stuck again. The drag came right back. Crap! So I pulled back into my driveway, and set the parking brake. More twangs, pings, creaks and ratchet noises occurred. Thoughtfully, I pulled out again, and tried my luck once more. Much to my surprise, the dragging rear brake had stopped dragging, and all seemed to be fine.
I glanced at the clock: 8 pm. I'd started this whole escapade at 7. There was still time to go, but it would be a brief session. I did another circuit of the neighborhood, just in case, and carefully checked for dragging brakes. All seemed to be good, so I finally pushed onward.
I made my way toward the freeway, stopping once to confirm that the left rear brake wasn't heating up -- all good.
Then, as I was about to get on the freeway, I noticed that my dash lights seemed a little weak. In fact, yeah, the voltage gauge was looking pretty limp. Double crap! I turned around and came back. The alternative, of getting somewhere between here and Bellevue, or worse, between Bellevue and here, with descending temperatures destined for the teens, and a truck that wouldn't run because the battery had crapped out, seemed too stupid to contemplate. Clearly the battery was struggling, and possibly the alternator wasn't up to the task. I'd rather find that out sitting in my driveway than somewhere on a cold, bleak freeway.
So, back I drove, noticing the voltage gauge get a little bit lower as the trip progressed (all 5 miles of it). Sure enough, the voltmeter revealed just under 12V at the battery terminals (it should be 12.8 or higher, particularly just after driving like that -- under 12 is kind of a death sentence for a car battery in that point in time).
It's comforting to think that at least the bicycle won't suffer from being too cold.
Posted at 20:45 permanent link category: /misc
Sat, 05 Dec 2009
I just posted pictures from the Comedy Fist Fight show last night, and we had this hilarious moment with Ms. Becky Poole. Neither of us is doing anything unusual to affect our height.
Posted at 21:36 permanent link category: /theater
Occasionally, I end up with a really good picture out of a Spin the Bottle shoot. Yesterday was no exception:
Posted at 13:32 permanent link category: /theater
Wed, 02 Dec 2009
The Weekly apparently can't get enough.
The Sunbreak thinks we're ultra-lowbrow.
All featuring photography by yours truly (although my copyright notice fooled them -- I should have said "photo credit to Ian, copyright to Annex"). Ah well. I don't really care about bylines.
Posted at 13:44 permanent link category: /theater
So, for the last 9 months (sorry for the serious delay there), I've been riding with this Monkey Light on my front wheel. It's pretty cool.
When we last touched on this story, that was my feeling as well. Prety cool. I remain, clearly, unswayed.
What I can now tell you more about is living life with the thing.
So far as I can tell, no one has tried to steal it, and no one has crashed into me from staring at it. I do get the occasional thumbs-up or someone looking intently at it, but nothing problematical. I've stood the bike up on its rear wheel and spun the front to show off the light at a stoplight on about a dozen occasions so far, and I expect I'll keep doing that as long as people express interest.
The battery life is pretty good. With three 2500 mAh NiMH rechargeable AAs, I get many weeks of daily 30-50 minute runs with it running on the lower brightness setting. I have only charged the batteries about 4 times since I installed the light 9 months ago, but I've also mostly left it off for a lot of that time. Now that the days are shorter, and I'm using it every day, I expect I'll have to charge it every month or so. The low-battery warnings (a set of yellow X patterns, followed by red X patterns as the batteries run down) seem to come on with no warning. The difference between "dim" and "bright" (you have to switch from off to dim to bright to off in that order, every time) becomes visibly less obvious as the batteries wear down, but the low-battery Xs still surprise me when they show up.
I've come up with some favorite patterns in the rotation, but I'm not sufficiently motivated to figure out the menu system to set them as high priority, or however it is that that works.
Overall, I highly recommend this light if you're into side visibility that's more interesting than yet more blinky lights. It's a nice feeling to ride around and think that I'm putting a little bit of whimsy out into the world.
Posted at 11:30 permanent link category: /bicycle
Tue, 01 Dec 2009
This is a short one. Every once in a while, I'll go out searching for myself, to see what kind of incriminating evidence I can dig up. Today, instead of incriminating evidence, I found a Scot who is shockingly similar to me.
Posted at 10:48 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 30 Nov 2009
Normally, in November, I would be feverishly typing away on a novel. For instance, in 2006, I came up with my first novel, Troublesome Cargo. The next year, I came up with my favorite long-form project so far, Hybrids. In 2008, I was ridiculously busy, and did NaNoWriMo, but I really phoned it in with The Curious Adventures of Heinrich von Klausheim. Definitely not my best effort.
This year, perhaps soured by the effort of 2008, I decided to try something different. My first novel hit the requisite 50,000 word mark in 12 days. My second in 14 days, and it ended up being 85,000 words. Clearly I was capable of the task. So this year, I decided to try writing a play.
Enter NaPlWriMo (pronounced "napple-rai-mo"). The goal is similar to that of NaNoWriMo: write X amount of text in 30 days. Since a play is obviously different from a novel, the requrement is different too. Instead of writing to 50,000 words, the goal is 75 pages of 12 point Courier text.
I started out much like I had with Hybrids (where I decided to see if I could write a story based simply on a word I'd heard on the news one day: "hybrids"): I started with a phrase. Someone mis-pasted the phrase, "Then, she stole my jacket and cell phone" into an IRC channel (online chat room sorta thing) I frequent. I liked the phrase, and thought I'd try writing a play around it.
I was in no rush, unlike with the novel attempts in the past, because I had clearly demonstrated my ability to be a wordy firehose, and 75 pages didn't honestly look like a very daunting goal. So I tried to get my mind worked around the unique limitations of writing for the stage: limited locations, limited characters, nothing too outlandish and hard to stage. Doubtless experienced playwrights would have something to say on this kind of self-limitation, and I'd be interested to hear it, but that's how I handled things.
The effort ended up taking 25 days to finish, which included at least three days on which I didn't write at all, and a few days where I made only a token attempt at getting any writing done. It was finished on the train down to Portland to hang out with my family for Thanksgiving. Today, I finished a first-pass edit to clean up obvious inconsistencies, giving me a fairly readable and not too unbearable 77 page play. I still haven't come up with a title yet, so I've just been calling it NaPlWriMo 2009.
Click here to download the PDF of NaPlWriMo 2009
The play ended up being centered around time travel, and the enforcement of time travel regulations, based on a universe where timelines split every time a decision is made. It's an interesting exploration for me, and notably, I finally feel like I had some success creating believably unique characters. Previously, I've always felt like every character in a book was more or less myself with something added or subtracted. Whether my "believably unique" characters have anything more than a paper-thickness of depth to them is a completely different question, but I'll take progress where I can get it.
Bret Fetzer, Artistic Director of Annex Theatre, made some (perhaps half-joking) motions about wanting to do a reading of it, and I've been considering talking to him about it. We'll see what happens. Maybe we'll see Nigel and crew on stage at some point in the future.
Of course, because I finished in the allotted time, I am allowed to post this striking graphic on my blaggs:
I iz a winnar!
If you find yourself with constructive feedback regarding my latest foray into literary endeavors, please feel free to email or comment on FB, where this will end up in an hour or two. Hooray for creativity!
Posted at 16:52 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 12 Nov 2009
I have taken a few random pictures in the last couple of weeks, and thought I'd share them here.
This is a flower that was mysteriously growing out of a planter box on my deck. The weird thing is that it was blooming and happy in 50 degrees and rain in early November.
This is the Aurora Bridge, as seen from the Fremont Bridge. I was riding on my way to the theater, and this image was too good to pass up. It was taken at twilight, and was pretty stunning in the half-light.
Finally, if you're in Seattle and want to see some of my photography "for real" instead of on a screen, I'll be putting up a gallery show at Annex Theatre, which will open November 27th, the day after Thanksgiving. Some of the pictures from this set of photos will be up on the walls. Come see a show, see the photos, and have a drink! We'll have three shows a night during this time, Fridays and Saturdays, including Penguins, Episode 1, in case you missed it the first time around.
Posted at 11:25 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 09 Nov 2009
Just in case you've always wanted to know how much power a well set up (but largely unmodified) 1972 Honda CL175 makes, have I got a treat for you!
I took my racebike to the dyno at Ducati Seattle this weekend, and did a few pulls on the dyno. I wanted to get a snapshot of how the engine is behaving before I go tearing into it this winter to clean a few things up. Specifically, the cam is getting timed, and the head/cylinder interface at least is getting cleaned up, if not actually decked a few thousandths.
I'm undecided on decking the head, because that will involve a whole bunch more work vs. just timing the cam.
Fortunately, I have the CL175 streetbike (which is even now getting a teardown and rebuild) as a test-bed for engine changes. I'm looking forward to some fun this winter.
Posted at 14:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Mon, 02 Nov 2009
That is, National Play Writing Month. I've decided this year that rather than write another novel, I'd try a new challenge, and write a play. I've been doing a lot of theater lately, so it seems like a fairly logical match.
If you'd like to follow along, hit up the script and hit reload every day to see the progress I've made.
The goal is to write 75 pages in 30 days. I'm already at 13+ pages in two days, so as with novels, I don't think the volume of output is going to be my challenge. Writing with the stage in mind is curiously constraining, but also a very interesting challenge. The play got off to a rocky start so far, but seems to have settled down nicely. Where it goes from here is definitely anybody's guess.
Posted at 23:43 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 29 Oct 2009
How Not to Do It (an ongoing series)
Just now, my phone rang unexpectedly. I glanced at the number: an unknown 1-800 number. I answered tentatively: "This is Ian."
Before I got the second word out, a recorded voice drowned me out: "This is Aetna calling with important information about your..." blah blah blah. Ok, sure. Up next: "This important information is for Ian Johnston. If I'm speaking with Ian Johnston, please say 'yes.'" So I say, slowly and clearly, "Yes." In the middle of this, a triple chime sounds, followed by silence. The voice repeats, "If I'm speaking with..." and I wait for the ill-timed chime before saying "Yes" again.
All fine so far. However, next comes the bit where we cross the line. "We need to confirm your identity by checking some data. Please press or say your birth date..." followed by instructions on formatting.
So, there are some important bits of information which never go from me to you unless you really, really need to know them. They are:
- Birth date
- Social security number
- Driver's license number
- Credit card number
- Bank account number
- Mother's maiden name
- Home address
Why? Because that's all data that can be used to steal identity, either establishing credit in my name, or any of a variety of other forms of ID theft. Yes, some of it is widely available, but that doesn't make me any less likely to tell you, unidentified and unidentifiable other party, what it is.
So, to whoever designed this clever system, you really need to work on your etiquette. If you're phishing, good riddance. If you really are Aetna, figure out a less intrusive way of identifying who you're talking to. This felt like a scam in the making.
Posted at 10:38 permanent link category: /misc
Wed, 28 Oct 2009
This is just a quickie, in case you're interested. I'm getting myself and my race bike out to Ducati Seattle on November 7th to put it on the dyno, and see how much power it's making at the moment. This is preparatory to installing the adjustable cam and setting the cam timing precisely, which should result in a bump in power. I'd like to have a "before" picture.
Anyway, if we can get other folks out to Ducati Seattle for some dyno time, Mark (a fellow racer) thinks we can get the hourly rate reduced from $100 to $60/hr, which would be pretty cool. If you're interested in joining me, give me a shout by email. No guarantees that the price will change, of course, and Mark thinks we'll need at least 6 bikes to make the jump.
In other news, hooray for progress! I got my adjustable cam finished a few weeks ago, and am now doing a top-end rebuild on the street bike's engine, so I can test it out and see what kind of a difference it makes. This also frees up another cam to modify (although that likely comes later).
Posted at 15:45 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Mon, 05 Oct 2009
I can't say I have a ton of experience with the final-session races, but being early October, you're definitely in for a crap-shoot as far as the weather goes. For our last race of the WMRRA season, we had cold mornings with spectacular afternoons: full sun and into the high 60s at least.
My racing has, for the last few sessions, been steadily improving. Two sessions back, I was running about 2:15 per lap. Then last session, in September, I hit a personal best of 2:13. This session was a huge surprise to me: I not only had a "best lap" of 2:11, but for the second race, I turned 2:11s for pretty much the whole race!
I'm still 10 seconds off the fast guys' time, but with a 2:11, I'm finally keeping up with a few folks, which is a nice feeling.
I have three "most memorable moments" from this last session.
The first one came during practice on the first day. It was the second practice, and I was doing really well (I'd later learn that the one lap I managed to finish was 2:11, smashing my previous best time). I came around to the entrance to the Bus Stop for the second lap, hotter than I ever have, and was all set to blast through there like a champ when suddenly the engine spun way up, and I started slowing down.
It only took a moment to realize what had happened: my shift lever had finally, catastrophically, touched down. I'd been grinding the rubber off it for a couple sessions, as I had it adjusted really far down to provide me with comfortable shifts. It was aligned in such a way that it was the first part to touch down in a left-hand corner, and I kind of knew in the back of my mind that sooner or later I'd end up in the wrong gear because of it.
I tried to keep going, but when I upshifted out of the Bus Stop, the shift lever clung to my boot like glue. I looked down, and realized that it must have been quite substantially scraped up, and there was now a dime-sized raw spot on my boot where the shifter had taken hold. I shot my hand up, and laughing that my petty "comfort" concerns had finally come back to bite me, made a slow lap back to the track exit. I was able to fix the bent shift lever with some big pliers, and a bit of work with a file.
For the second memorable moment, I was keeping up pretty well with Tim Fowler, who's one of the medium-fast guys, in the first race on Sunday. If he did up his bike like Tim O'Mahoney has done, he'd probably be around 2 minutes per lap, but right now he resides in the 2:08 to 2:10 category, which put him in my sights for this race.
We were nearing the end of the race (although I probably would have sworn it was the middle at the time), and exiting the Bus Stop (a particularly tight and technical turn just before the straightaway), I was close behind Tim. I have just a little bit more power than he does, so I was actually able to creep up behind him. As we were going down the straight, I was drafting in behind him, and gaining quickly, when I saw the flag waving. In a spurt of optimism, I pulled out to pass him just as we passed by the flag, and thus the official timing line. I figure I just about had my front wheel even with his rear wheel when we passed the line, so I didn't quite pass him, although I passed him shortly thereafter, before turn 2.
Excited at my reasonable finish, I kept up my pace, but slowed down a few times on the cooldown lap. Tim passed me going into turn 3 (which he always does), and I followed him, curious if I could still keep up with him. It should have occurred to me at the time, but didn't, that Tim was keeping his pace up, and definitely wasn't letting up at all. Finally, around turn 5/6/7, I realized that I wasn't seeing any yellow flags, like the corner workers usually fly once the race is over. As I passed turn 8, it clicked: was that actually a checkered flag we had passed? Then as I got into turn 9, where there should be a big sign saying "PIT," I realized it was not a checkered flag we had passed. There was no PIT sign. The race was still on.
I was still running close behind Tim, and figured I could pass him in the straight again, and maybe even do it before the timing line. I kept close through the Bus Stop (the next turn after turn 9), and passed him through the kink just before the timing line. Sure enough, there was a waving flag this time, and it was the checkered flag.
I was faked out the first time through because I don't think I've ever passed a white flag (which indicates one lap to go) before. I'd always been lapped by one of the big bikes, costing me a lap, and meaning that the only flag I'd ever seen waved like that was a checkered flag. Oops!
The third memorable moment also involved Tim. For the last race, he and Ron Blocker from Portland were trading passes ahead of me, but both were solidly beyond my grasp for most of the race. Ron has a decidedly fast bike, and he's pretty good through the corners, a combination which is guaranteed to leave me in the dust.
Thus it was with great surprise that, on the final lap (having carefully scrutinized the first waving flag I saw to make sure it wasn't checkered), I came upon the following situation: Ron and Tim and Arash (who's way faster than me, but had slowed down so as to have someone to race with) were all packed pretty close together through turn 9, and packed even tighter into the Bus Stop. There, some kind of alchemy happened, and both Tim and Ron just weren't accelerating. With someting approaching glee, I swerved around Tim, and followed several bike lengths behind Arash into the straight. Clearly I wasn't going to catch up to him before the line, but I was actually gaining.
As we crossed the line, Arash was maybe a dozen feet in front of me, and Ron and Tim had disappeared behind me. That was a pretty odd feeling.
After the races, of course, I discovered why I had done so well: Tim was chasing an intermittent misfire in his engine, so that he wasn't able to accelerate or maintain speed as well as normal. That was true for both races, as I recall. Ron had somehow lost 4th gear (his top gear) midway through that last lap, managed to actually break and fix his shift lever while riding along, and once again lost 4th exiting the Bus Stop that last time.
So, really, I gained those places by dint of having the most trouble-free bike. Still, it's a victory, and I've gained places more than once because I've had less trouble with my bike than other riders.
For all the excitement of passing people and gaining places, my real victory comes from my own lap times. To have gained two seconds between sessions is nothing short of remarkable for me. I'll take it. Of course, come next season, I'll probably be back to 2:25 laps, but that's the way it goes, I guess.
Posted at 14:55 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Sun, 04 Oct 2009
Just a quickie to point out that I took pictures at Spin the Bottle on Friday, and there are some really good ones in there. For instance:
Enjoy!
Posted at 06:44 permanent link category: /theater
Thu, 01 Oct 2009
There's something just delightful about living in a city with small businesses. I popped my head into Clear Cut Plastics in Fremont, and 5 minutes later walked out with a hunk of black plexiglass 1/2" thick, and 6.5 by 15 inches. That's enough to make three lensboards.
The best part? It was a scrap, so it cost a grand total of $3.29. Some quality time with the miter saw, mill and rotary table, and I'll have a beautiful lensboard or three.
Posted at 13:18 permanent link category: /misc
Wed, 30 Sep 2009
I decided to do a quick-n-dirty layout of a Korona lensboard, and figured my work might come in handy for others. I need to redo this sheet a little bit, as it's not entirely clear how things are laid out, but it's too late to modify just now. I'll post another one soon that's more illustrative, with more description on the sheet.
So, for the Google-bot: if you have a Korona (Gundlach) 5x7 view camera from the 1910s, and you need a lensboard for it, you're probably looking for this:
Lensboard plans for Korona 5x7 camera (v1) - PDF file
I plan to make mine out of plastic, probably black ABS or something similar. The 42mm hole is good for anything that is mounted on a Copal #1 shutter, such as the 210mm Schneider Symmar-S f/5.6 lens I'll be putting in mine. I'll probably make it out of two thicknesses of 1/4" plastic (since we still live in an SAE world, sad to say) glued together, with the larger piece milled down to 6mm where it matters, at the top and bottom edges. It's a .35mm difference, but it'll mean the difference between the board working and not working.
Important note: I am not an expert! I just took some measurements off my existing lensboard and stuck them into a CAD drawing. I probably got something wrong, your mileage may vary, etc.
Posted at 23:51 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 29 Sep 2009
Every once in a while, I'm struck by a random whim.
In going through old negatives a week or two ago, I came across one of a friend from highschool, Amy Tarlow. I remembered it being a decent picture, and on the negative it looked good. I didn't do anything about it, just kind of filed that data away.
Tonight, I was chatting with Amy on Facebook (the evil blog-killer), and randomly mentioned this negative I'd run across. She was interested to see it, and I (not having a scanner) lamented not having a light table available. Then, it occurred to me that I could tape the negative to the monitor, and that would be a kind of light table...
It's hardly something to get thrilled about, but I thought the outcome was pretty interesting, and actually quite acceptable for a quick-n-dirty try at coming up with a useable proof. Tape negative to monitor, load blank page in Firefox (handy all-white screen), shoot with G10. Voila, instant ~4 MP copy of the negative. Load it into Photoshop, tweak the levels (the negative is a bit overexposed and contrasty, but workable), et voila!
In related news, I'm getting close to being ready for some 5x7 shooting action, which will almost certainly involve the acquisition or construction of a light table to check out negatives. I have a modern 210mm lens (Schneider Symmar-S f/5.6 in a Copal #1 shutter) sitting on the living room table, which only awaits a lensboard to make it complete. I have a spot-meter on the way, and dark cloth waiting to be installed in the bathroom. It's close.
Posted at 23:52 permanent link category: /misc
Fri, 18 Sep 2009
For those of you waiting with bated breath, I did finally get the truck all sorted out. When I bought it, I had a pre-purchase inspection done, which revealed that the DPFE sensor was the cause of the Check Engine light I'd noticed.
On something of a whim, I went into the Car Quest store across from my workplace earlier this week, and asked if they carried the replacement sensor. Indeed they did, and once I got a look at it, I realized it would be foolish to ask someone else to replace it -- two bolts, two tubes and an electrical connector. This is a job anyone could do with two wrenches and a little bit of patience.
So I replaced the sensor, and disconnected the battery for 10 minutes, to clear the check engine code from the computer. I drove it everywhere I went for the next few days (which was actually kind of gross, and I managed to get a parking ticket, because I'm so out of practice with parking habits), and when I went into the emissions testing station yesterday, they gave it an immediate pass. Previously, it had reported "Not ready" twice, which I now think was the computer cleverly insisting that the busted DPFE sensor really was important to the process. I had been concerned that I wouldn't get it past the emissions test in time to avoid the late fee for transferring the title. Fortunately, that all worked out just fine.
I'm glad that whole thing is done. I've parked it, and am back on the bike, and surprisingly happy about that. Driving around my 17 MPG resource hog wasn't enjoyable at all, and it was a real relief to throw a leg over the bicycle again yesterday.
Posted at 10:55 permanent link category: /misc
Bloggers Disappear, Friends Wonder
I've got a little roll of friends' journals and blogs that I check daily, but for the last month or three, it's been pretty arid out there. Tumbleweeds, like.
Where'd everybody go? I suspect I know, and I know the painted hussy you're all hanging out with. It's Facebook, isn't it. Oh sure, 420 characters is plenty of space to say something, and it's fun to play with what you can pack into that constrained space, but we want to know your in-depth thoughts as well. We want to see your stories, your successes and failures in more than a brief paragraph.
Even worse, maybe it's Twitter. Oh, Twitter looks good, but you end up jittering around like a meth-head, barely able to string two coherent thoughts together. An ADD service for an ADD nation.
Well, I'm here to tell you, break the addiction! Come back to your long(er)-form writing roots! We miss you, and we promise to read what you have to say with eager brains and ready comments, snarky or sincere as the entry warrants.
Posted at 09:47 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 15 Sep 2009
New Truck Reveals Consumer Winners, Losers
I finally succumbed to the vague desire I've had for years, and got myself a small pickup truck for heavy errands that won't fit on a bike. It was a surprisingly involved process, including two trips to Bremerton and about three weeks of waiting around for various events to happen.
Of course, once I finally got it back to my house, it was time to start dealing with all the necessary transfer-of-ownership, insurance, and potential repair tasks. This flurry of activity has reminded me exactly why I dislike owning vehicles at all.
First, there was the insurance. My long-time agent retired earlier this year, and my account was transferred (through some alchemy I don't understand) to a different agent, whom I will, for the moment, refrain from identifying in the hopes that things get better once it all settles down.
My first call to this agent was to establish roughly what insurance would cost for this truck. This yielded a figure of $56 and change per month. This was an acceptable number to me, so I proceeded with the arrangements. After this call, there was a fair amount of waiting around for the aforementioned delays with the seller. Finally, I was ready to head over and buy the thing, so I called the agent back.
"I'm ready to start the insurance on this truck," quoth I. "Great," quoth she, "we'll just need a month's deposit to start that up. That'll be $127." "One moment," quoth I, "days ago, the number was $56. What giveth?" "Oh," quoth she, "there's no possible way you got a figure of $56, that's half the lowest rate I can imagine."
I was understandably upset at this development. There's no possibility I'd misunderstood the first call, I had the notes to prove it, and a very clear memory of how it'd gone. Something was seriously amiss, and I went to lunch that day very angry and frustrated. This $127/mo business was way too rich for my blood. I sent a text message to the seller, saying it was off and that I was unhappy with insurance as a concept. I may not have used exactly those terms.
I called the agent back after lunch, after I'd had a chance to calm down a bit. I was transferred directly to the agent (I'd previously been dealing with office lackeys, as far as I know -- I don't recall ever having talked to my previous agent directly), and after a fairly tense, "Calm down, Mr. Johnston, let me see what's going on here," type conversation, it came out that the correct rate for me was in fact $53 per month. Ok, fine. You people need to talk to each other (and she said that's exactly what they did, and gave me the impression that my name was now well-known at their office as an example of how not to handle customers). I gave my credit card number, and asked to start the insurance coverage, as I would be picking up the truck that night.
There was yet another delay with the seller, who'd lost track of the "Yay I paid it off" letter from his loan company, and I called the agent back a few days later to say that I hadn't actually bought the truck yet, and to not start coverage yet. The conversation was somewhat vague, as I didn't know when exactly I could pick up the truck as we waited for the bank to main a new letter to the seller.
Then, when I went to complete the transaction the second time (which went alright, revealing only that I needed an emission inspection to complete the transaction), but in the rush to make the ferry, didn't remember to call and start the insurance. I figured, due to the vague conversation I'd had with the agent as regards "don't start it yet," I was probably covered, and made the trip back without incident. Then it was the weekend, so I waited until Monday to call the insurance agent back and confirm that all was copacetic, and that I had proof-of-insurance cards on the way.
"Ok, we'll just need $107 from you to start coverage." I believe I have never sounded more like I wanted to reach through the phone and remove a person's jugular vein with my teeth than during that conversation. It's probably a good thing there were no witnesses to my actual appearance, as I'm sure it involved the words "red" and possibly "incandescent."
Not only had they not charged my card when I first called and said, "Start the coverage," they'd once again utterly misspoken as regards what the charge would be. So had I gone that first time and picked up the truck, I would have had zero coverage, opening me up for a $500 lack of insurance ticket if anything had gone amiss enough to involve the polizei. And of course, the entire weekend that I was driving around trying to deal with emissions inspections and the like, I was technically uninsured, although the drone on the other end of the phone assured me that they would have covered anything in the event of a collision. That's so encouraging, thank you.
It also developed that the $107 charge was because they needed two months of payments to start coverage. Of course, how silly of me not to have known that. I'd first assumed it was because my coverage premium had changed yet again. Why was I told it would require one month previously? A misunderstanding, naturally. My misunderstanding? Not that I can tell. As I explained to the woman on the far end of the phone call, I don't object to paying the required amount to do it right, I object to receiving false information, repeatedly, with apparent disregard for what effect that might have on my situation. (Such as making me try to cancel the purchase, having determined that the whole situation was beyond my means.)
In theory, I now have insurance coverage for the truck. I have a printed-then-scanned-then-emailed coverage card saying so, in any case. I'm just waiting for the first bill, which I expect to show that my payment is $107 per month.
The second story to come out of this whole situation is much less amusing/complex. The truck's electro-brain hasn't collected enough data to tell the state's electro-brain whether it's polluting too much or not. The state has requested that I "go drive more." As my friend Chris commented, "We can't test your emissions, you haven't polluted enough."
The winners and losers here are much clearer: I called two shops for advice on this situation, after the state-recommended driving didn't come up with enough data. The first call was to Bill Pierre Ford, where the service adviser defaulted to, "Yeah, we can diagnose that, it'll start at $100." He was fairly coarse about the whole thing, giving me the impression I was troubling him unnecessarily.
The second call was to Precision Tune, where I talked to Bob, the general manager. He was extremely helpful, pleasant, knowledgable, and came up with the advice, "No really, drive more." This is to be followed by a free scan of the computer at his shop to see if it's collected enough data. If it fails to pass emissions for any reason, he told me about the $150 exemption: spend $150 or more trying to fix a failed emissions check, and you get the check waived for two years, whether you fixed it or not. Bully for Bob, and I suspect you can guess who I'll be talking to about getting problems fixed.
This can be taken as a lesson, all you business types: your first contact with the customer is important. I will forever more suspect my insurance agency (who has me somewhat locked in) of being a pack of incompetents, and it will take very little to prompt me to initiate the potentially-arduous process to transfer my account to a different agent. A pleasant and knowlegeable phone-talker beats a gruff and knowlegeable phone-talker. Can you afford to turn away business?
Posted at 12:38 permanent link category: /misc
Wed, 09 Sep 2009
I was inspired today, by some random inspiration particle sleeting
through space, to pull out my grandfather's
great-grandfather's 5x7 view camera.
For my own future reference as much as anything else, it's a Korona 5x7 camera, and I was able to find two lenses for it: one about a 200mm, the other about a 140mm. The 200mm(?) lens is a Bausch and Lomb 5x7 Tessar 1c, with no size marked, mounted on a 1900s-looking ACME shutter (pictured); f/4.5-32, T, B and 1s through 1/300th. The 140mm(?) lens is a Wollensak 5x7 Symmetrical Wide Angle with a Wollensak Betax shutter; marked apertures are f/16-128 (with a large uncalibrated section on the adjuster that looks like it might go down to perhaps f/9), speeds are T, B and 2s through 1/100th.
Korona 5x7 field camera
Close-up of the larger (200mm?) lens
Update: Thanks to information at The Camera Eccentric, I now think that the B&L lens is a 7.5" (almost exactly 190mm) lens. The 1920 B&L catalog lists the lens at $75, or $100 with a shutter. Also included is the code word "Haggle," presumably to make ordering by telegraph cheaper (telegraph messages were charged per word).
The Korona catalog from 1910 lists approximately the camera I have, making that a reasonable guess as to its age -- the 1905 catalog doesn't list it.
Posted at 22:54 permanent link category: /misc
Fri, 04 Sep 2009
In the last few days I've had some suprising events work out around me.
The first was to do with my projector. A couple of years ago, I made some changes to my home media life: I ditched pay TV service and the TV I'd had (which had its own story, having been passed between friends since college), and I got a projector.
The projector was a good choice, and worked well for me, but in the last few months, every time I'd turned it on, it started making this terrible grinding noise. I knew what that meant: dying bearing. I figured it was probably a fan, so I pulled it off its ceiling mount, and opened it up. There was the horrible noise, but no, it wasn't coming from any of the fans. Huh, though I, what else could make that noise?
Then I dug a little bit further, and realized what was going on: the color wheel's bearing was dying. The color wheel is a little translucent wheel that sits in front of the lamp, and filters the light a few hundred times per second. Each time a different color is up, the miniature mirror array in the projector moves to light up those pixels which should the that color.
It's a pretty good system, but with the bearing on that wheel dying, the projector obviously had a very limited lifespan. I couldn't replace it without risking damage to the whole thing, so I decided to throw myself on the mercy of the manufacturer, Sharp, and see what they said.
Imagine my surprise when I heard that this projector had a 3 year warranty! Imagine my further pleasure when I called up Costco, where I'd bought it, and discovered that I had gotten it in October, 2006. The repair probably would have cost a few hundred dollars -- cheap enough to be cheaper than getting a new projector, but possibly close to the original purchase price of the thing, which had been marked down and on closeout.
That pleasurable surprise was amplified as I worked with Sharp: they sent me an electronic shipping label, for overnight shipping to their factory. Two days later, I received an email saying it was headed back to me, again by overnight shipping. A day after that, I had it back in my hands. Wow! I had really expected the warranty repair to take weeks, if not a month or two. Go Sharp!
The next pleasant surprise came from an even more unexpected corner. When I moved into my house in 2000, I ordered DSL service through a now-defunct company called Bazillion, which was bought by Speakeasy when it croaked, so I've been a Speakeasy customer for most of my time in this house. Unfortunately, my house is about twenty seven thousand feet from the Central Office, which means that Qwest won't even acknowledge that DSL is possible, and Speakeasy could only get a nominal 144k connection speed out to me. Even that was something of a lie, actually testing around 90-100k. Maybe twice the speed of a 56k dialup connection.
Of course, the alternative is Comcast cable service, but Comcast has been on my villians list for a long time: bait-and-switch pricing, high-pressure sales tactics to get you to buy TV and internet service together, port-blocking and traffic-shaping (techniques to limit the customer's access to the internet in various ways), and a reputation for being evil cusses to deal with when anything wasn't exactly as you hoped.
So I avoided Comcast. In 2007, when I tried and failed to sell my house, I decided to swallow my pride, and give Comcast a try, figuring it was 2007, and it was reasonable to expect higher broadband speeds in Seattle, one of the tech centers of the world. The conversation went something like this:
Comcast: Hi, thanks for calling Comcast. Can I have your social security number?
Me: What? No.
Comcast: [a little hurt, but rallying] Ok, then... can I have your driver's license number?
Me: [increasingly annoyed] Uh, no.
Comcast: Ok, well, you're pretty much SOL then. You can to into one of our stores, where they can record your driver's license number...
Me: <click>
I can't stand businesses that need your social security number for no greater reason than "we want it," so that pretty much killed things right then and there. I called Speakeasy up and re-established my DSL service, all 144 thousand shimmering bits per second of it.
Then, a few months ago, I somehow heard about Comcast Business. A little bit of research later, and I realized that this was the answer to my desire. Comcast Business is a separate division from the consumer folks I'd talked to before, and is in the business of providing no-nonsense bandwidth to small businesses. It costs a tiny bit more (not very much more, once those bait-and-switch "introductory rates" on the consumer side expire, as it turns out). The service it provides is straight service, without traffic-shaping, port-blocking, or any of the other crap that made me want to shoot Comcast into the sun.
And, perhaps most importantly, when I called them up to set up service, I talked to someone in the Seattle area, who asked for the service address, and some questions about what kind of service I wanted. There was no mention of SSNs, or security deposits, or any of the abhorrent nonsense the consumer division seems prone to. I was not pressured to add TV or voice service to my order. The service was explained in clear (if techy) language that was music to my ears.
Imagine my further surprise when I found that the installation appointment was for a 2 hour window! Comcast is famous for informing their victims that their installation appointment will occur some time between 8 am and 6 pm on a given day, and you'd better be there, or there will be a fee! And if Comcast fails to show up, oh well, we'll schedule you for another day-long period of waiting for that indolent knock on the door, maybe a week or two away, because hey, we're a busy corporate monolith!
On the day of installation, the installer called me early in the day and asked if it would be alright if he showed up early. I agreed that that was fine, and he was there about half an hour later (exactly as he'd predicted), and about an hour later, I had internet service. He was pleasant to deal with, knew what he was doing, and did it well and quickly.
Since then, I've been able to watch streaming video (a rare treat!), download and upload files with impunity, and generally have an honest high-bandwidth experience. DSLReports' testing tools have informed me that, depending upon where I connect, I'm getting between 5 and 20 Mbps download speed, and between 1/2 and 6 Mbps upload speed. Comcast calls this service 12/2, a nominal 12 Mbps download, 2 Mbps upload. It costs $59.95 per month, or about $4 less per month than I'm paying for 144k iDSL service from Speakeasy. Wow. Wow!
So it's been a rare period of consumer success for me these last few weeks. I'm so used to companies exerting themselves strenuously to anger me that it's a bit of a shock. Don't worry, I'll come down off the cloud soon enough, I'm sure, but for the moment, it's nice to know that it's still possible to get good service without feeling like I'm some company's whipping boy.
Posted at 08:10 permanent link category: /misc
Fri, 28 Aug 2009
Tonight is the last night of Penguins at Annex Theatre, and what a run it's been. Our biggest house was 83 people, out of 99 seats, and tonight's set to break that record with a sell-out audience. As of this afternoon, pre-sales were already up to the mid 70s.
One of the reasons? Maybe something to do with this:
Yep, one of the most-consulted "What shall we do tonight?" publications for our intended audience not only featured Penguins at the top of the list, but my photograph integrated with the headline.
We win. I'm immensely happy to be part of the juggernaut.
Posted at 19:08 permanent link category: /theater
Fri, 21 Aug 2009
There it is in black and white
First time I've actually captured my own byline in a print publication. Pretty cool. On top of that, it's a fantastic review. Sure, it's just a sidebar in a throw-away free weekly, but it's a sidebar that will probably increase audience. I'll take it.
Granted, that text over there is teeny-tiny, so click on it to see the huge-size version. Whee!
Posted at 16:31 permanent link category: /theater
Thu, 20 Aug 2009
So, one of my initial (and continuing) gripes with the Canon G10, which is now my carry-around camera of choice, is that 14.7 megapixels is just too much. I don't need that much data. I'd be so much happier with a smaller number of pixels that work way better in low light.
To my complete and utter surprise, apparently Canon agrees. They just announced the new G11.
The thing that caught my eye? 10 MP sensor, supposed to be way better in low light. Right on! Also, boo, because now I really really want a G11. I'll still probably wait until dpreview.com does a thorough review; I have a G10 already, so unless the G11 is actually quite noticeably better, I won't bother.
Of course, this could be very good news for anyone wants to buy a used G10 from me in a few months...
Posted at 16:19 permanent link category: /misc
Wed, 19 Aug 2009
Penguins is up, and it's getting good reviews.
Time and again, Penguins shocked its opening-night audience -- a late-night Capitol Hill crowd, no less -- into hysterics.
And,
Helping things immensely is the cast, a uniformly excellent crew directed by Bret Fetzer, who keeps things fast, sharp, and funny.
And, perhaps one of the best bits for me personally, my name is under the photo at the top of the page. I think that may be my first actual byline in a real (ie, on paper) publication.
There's also a very positive review by The Examiner, a paper I hadn't been aware of until finding this review. The examiner says,
Not for the easily offended, and not intended to be, Penguins plays with the kind of tongue-in-cheek violence and euphemistic humor you might find in Death to Smoochy.
And,
For those interested in the bawdy nightlife of comedy, it's well worth the trek down to Annex Theatre for an affordable evening of laughs
Two out of two? Right on! I haven't been able to find any other reviews yet, but I'll certainly post them here when I do.
If you want to come see Penguins, you'll have to act fast. It's only running this coming weekend, then next Friday, and that's it. This Friday and Saturday (the 21st and 22nd) are Pay What You Can, while Sunday's show is full price ($10 general admission, $7 TPS members, $5 students w/ID). The closing night show, on the 28th, is also full price; after these reviews and the positive word-of-mouth I think we're generating, don't be too surprised to find closing sold out.
To buy tickets online (which I highly recommend, although you can't do PWYC online, only at the door), hit Brown Paper Tickets. It's the only way to get advance tickets and ensure that you'll get in.
Posted at 14:29 permanent link category: /theater
Wed, 12 Aug 2009
I recently ordered one of these things, a converter lens for the Canon G10 that gives it a .20x fisheye view.
The results are pretty interesting:
Click for full-size original image, (2.6 MB)
Not bad for a $60 lens. If you look at the Amazon link, you can see my thoughts on the lens.
Posted at 14:37 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 11 Aug 2009
Go here for more pictures taken by fellow rider Tim O'Mahoney, including a few of yours truly. It's on some kind of "you must sign up" service that I'm not willing to sign up for, so I don't have a demo picture to show you here.
Look for bike #823 with a yellow number plate -- that's me. These were taken at the kart track on Friday.
Posted at 15:00 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Sun, 09 Aug 2009
I had a really good time at the race this weekend, although I seem to have plateaued at 2:14 as my fastest time. There were a bunch of folks up from California, and Aaron Frank, a staff writer for Motorcyclist magazine, was there to do an article on 160 racing. He was a really nice guy, and a fast rider. I'm glad I got to hang out with him over the weekend.
I ended up actually getting to race, with some of the Californians. It was cool having other people around who are about my speed, although my lap times suffered from it -- I couldn't concentrate purely on doing it exactly right, and had to split my attention to also figuring out how to get around the guy in front of me. A new wrinkle, but a welcome one, and if not getting my time down a second or two is the price, I'll take it.
There was also a day at the kart track on Friday, and there's nothing quite like a go-kart track on a 160 to produce the following effects: incredibly sore legs; painful wrists; face-splitting grins. Since there's no possible way to ride more than 10-15 minutes at a time on the kart track, I ended up spending a lot of time photographing as well. I kind of wished I had brought my SLR, but the G10 put in a good showing for itself:
Aaron Frank (of Motorcyclist magazine) showing us how it's
done on one of the hairpins at the kart track -- click for gallery
I also took pictures over the weekend, but not very many, and none of people racing -- if they were racing, I was out there, too! Marcia (I think that's her name, in any case, Tim O's girlfriend) put on an amazing spread on Saturday night, after the Sounds of the Past races. It was a real blow-out, and garnered universal praise. There's nothing better than being served a feast, unless it's being served a feast for free.
My riding was alright, but nothing too special. I switched main jets on Saturday night, and ran with the new jets on Sunday. They should have made a noticeable difference, but I didn't notice anything, so who knows what happened. I did get an opportunity to ride the bike Tim prepared for Aaron, and it was a real eye-opener. My bike is a dog. That thing is fast, and I'm making it my project this winter to build a motor to Tim's plan. He did it in three weeks, a winter's probably enough time for me to try the same thing! I seriously think I'd pick up 3-5 seconds just by having a bike that performed that well, without changing anything else.
I also had a couple friends come down for Saturday, which was a really cool surprise. Andre showed up, and was my assistant for the Le Mans start race (on which, duh, the camera completely failed to work, I swear I'm about to give up on the whole video thing); he held the bike ready to go, so I could sprint to it once the cannon went off. Jeniffer also showed up, and the money quote from her was, "I swear, coming down here is like crack," as she looked at all the vintage race bikes, obviously lusting after at least half of them. Andre (who you should vote for as Seattle Public Schools board member) also took video and pictures of me riding, which he said he'd post later, and I'll include a link here when he gets those things up.
For the pictures I took of the non-kart-track portion of the weekend, click here:
Aaron Frank (of Motorcyclist magazine) proudly wearing his
second place trophy; did I mention he was fast? -- click for gallery
There's my quickie report. If you weren't there, you should have been. This was a really fun weekend, and I'm glad I got myself down there despite schedule entanglements. Next, of course, I dive into tech week for my next show, Penguins, which is a delightfully sacriligeous romp of a latenight at Annex, but also means that I don't actually get any breathing room until next weekend. And next weekend, I'm going to sleep for 17 hours straight.
Posted at 21:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Wed, 05 Aug 2009
On the way into work this morning, I noticed this Tesla Roadster. It was sitting in front of the Fremont Google offices, naturally.
Posted at 10:00 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 03 Aug 2009
Not that we're producing any posters for Penguins, the upcoming late-night show at Annex Theatre, but I had this idea for a poster. At the photo shoot yesterday, I got a couple of the actors to pose in about the situation I'd imagined, and today I spent a few minutes dinking around in Photoshop. This is the result:
Penguins opens on Friday, August 14th, and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 11, and Sundays at 8, until the 28th. You will kick yourself if you miss it.
Posted at 14:27 permanent link category: /theater
I recently bought an 8 GB compactflash card for my camera. I'd run through the 4 GB card before, and wanted to not have to repeat that experience, particularly when I was shooting RAW images, which are 5x the size.
So, I bought this one:
No problem, I thought. Good stuff.
It got put in the camera bag as a backup for when I'd need more space. That occasion arrived yesterday, in the form of a press photo shoot for Penguins, the show for which I'm designing props.
So, I set the camera to shoot RAW for maximum flexibility, and went at it. My usual habit is to shoot a series of 5-10 pictures, then review them quickly to see if I got anything good. I tried, but when I hit the "play" button to go back and review, the screen showed "Busy..." And it stayed like that. For a long, long time.
Finally, it started playing back pictures for me, but the little CF light (which indicates activity either reading or writing to the memory card) was on solid still, and it was sluggish. Pictures I knew I'd taken weren't showing up.
I realized the card must just be desperately slow to write. Over the course of the shoot, it was absolutely agonizing waiting for this thing. I'd swear my 4 GB card wasn't this slow.
So just now I did a test. I shot 5 RAW images in quick succession, and timed how long it took until the CF light turned off. For the new 8 GB card, it took about 39 seconds. For the old 4 GB card, 15 seconds.
Seriously? What the hell did you build this card with, Kingston, molasses? I bought the card in part trading on the Kingston name, which I'd generally thought trustworthy. It's rated for 133x speed (aka 20 MB/s), which is in theory faster than the 15 MB/s rated 4 GB card. Obviously not the case. I think this one's going back to the factory, if Amazon will take it without the original packaging. If not, it's going to some worthy charity. I certainly don't want it cluttering up my life.
Posted at 09:15 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 30 Jul 2009
Thanks to a tip from Stephanie, I picked up the August copy of Seattle Metropolitan magazine, and flipped to page 107. There on the right, we find the "MetPicks" sidebar: "Five August events you won't want to miss."
And bringing in the #3 spot, we find:
PENGUINS, EPISODE 1 Playwright Scot Augustson busted guts with the profane puppets of his Sgt. Rigsby silhouette shows. He's found another filthy outlet for his Python-esque cheek: This stage parody of gratuitous HBO dramas, which imagines an ongoing turf war between nuns and priests. Stunned by sacrilege? Stay home. [Annex Theatre, Aug 14-28]
Almost verbatim -- they listed the old opening date, and I've updated it to be correct.
Now that's some positive pre-press I can get behind!
(If you haven't been sufficiently in the loop, I'm designing props for Penguins, including a delightfully obscene Ken doll, enough guns to arm a whole brace of adventurers in The Matrix, communion wafers, and a host of other sacriligeous items. The script kicks ass, the cast kicks even more ass, and it's gonna be one hell of a show. Literally.
Opens August 14, 11 pm, and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 11, and Sundays at 8 until August 28 at Annex Theatre. Don't miss it!)
Posted at 22:29 permanent link category: /theater
Sometimes, you just have to roll with it
I was helping a friend with some photo stuff last night, and we were trying to sort out a question about my camera, which she'd borrowed for a trip. As I was taking test shots, she said, "Oh, I've got great guns, get a picture of them!" referring to her recent attendance at the gym, and improved arm musculature.
True enough.
She agreed that I could post the picture as long as I didn't name her, and a well-timed head movement blurred her face. Done.
Good guns
Posted at 15:02 permanent link category: /misc
Sometimes, there's just nothing to say. The only context you need to know is that this picture was taken in the men's bathroom, next to the door.
I watched over the course of about a week as new post-it notes were added to the display.
Posted at 14:49 permanent link category: /misc
Wed, 29 Jul 2009
A Brief History of a Car Free Life
Way back in 1999, I bought my first motorcycle. It was a BMW R65LS, a sort of Star Wars stormtrooper-looking beast, but I really liked it. In fact, I liked it so much that I went on to buy another two BMWs, a Moto Guzzi, three Kawasakis, and three Hondas, of which I still own two Hondas and a Kawasaki.
And really, that's where this all starts. I'd been more or less obsessed by cars for my adult life until that point. Cars were cool, they represented freedom, and speed, and sex appeal, the whole nine yards. I had, you might say, bought into the hype.
In my life, I've owned a variety of cars, pretty much continuously, until the last one, a 1992 Honda Civic. In about 2002, I was living with my girlfriend (who had a Jeep Wrangler), and I basically got around by motorcycle -- at the time, a 1995 BMW K75. If I was doing it by myself, I went on the motorcycle. If she and I were going somewhere together, we'd take the Jeep. My little Honda ended up sitting for months at a time.
Finally, I saw the writing on the wall, and decided it was time to sell the aging car. I liked it, it was a fine car with nothing major wrong, but it was neglected. On top of that, I was paying something like $70 a month for insurance. I listed the car on Craigslist, and it sold a week later for about my asking price. I was now, technically, car-free.
Of course, there was still the Jeep, so I wasn't actually living without access to a car. I just no longer owned one. It was a sort of technicality.
Well, that girlfriend and I parted ways, and I realized that with her Jeep went my ability to carry anything larger than a loaf of bread. I lived the single life for a while, but I also found and bought a Honda Goldwing sidecar rig. This thing was so big that it might as well have been a car. It certainly got car-like gas mileage, around 25 MPG most of the time.
Eventually, the sidecar rig had fallen into disuse due to poor mileage and the comparatively high effort to drive it. Then, in September 2006, I had an epiphany: no matter what, no matter who you believe, we are going to run out of fossil fuels. There's a finite supply. We may run out next year, or we may run out 100 years from now, but it's going to happen. In addition to that, evidence was strong (despite the Bush administration's efforts to suppress the facts) that human activity was contributing to significant changes in the world's climate. And the real nail in the coffin for me: the vast majority of the food we eat is fertilized with petrochemicals. When the gas runs out, it's not just that we're suddenly all pedestrians, it's that our food production gets slashed.
This epiphany brought home the fact that I could no longer stand by and do nothing. I pulled out my bicycle, and cleaned it up, determined to ride it to work every day. I only live 5 miles from work, and that's an easy bike ride -- I'd proved it every time (you know, once every 6 months or so) I'd ridden in previously.
So of course the first thing I discovered was that my bike had a cracked head tube. It may or may not have been under warranty. Unwilling to let this stop me, I went out and bought a new bike, figuring I could sort out the old one later. I started commuting by bicycle. Since that day, I've bicycled to work (and many other places) the vast majority of the time. I'd guess I've ridden a motorcycle to work perhaps 20 days in those nearly three years.
Now, if there's one thing that was suddenly true, it was that I'd gone from being able to carry a loaf of bread to being able to carry very little indeed. I didn't want a rack on my bike, so I was limited to what fit in my shoulder bag (in fact, I probably could carry a loaf of bread, but it might well get squished).
After some wrangling -- ok, a lot of wrangling -- I got a replacement frame for my old bike. Only, I already had my daily rider, so what was I going to do with this (incredibly stout, semi-downhill) spare frame I now had? The answer quickly became obvious: build a cargo bike. I built it up and bought an Xtracycle Free Radical subframe, which is an add-on that fits on any bicycle frame, and turns it into an ass-kicking power-house cargo bike.
Even better, after some thought (and a particularly near-disastrous trip with three cinder blocks perched on the Xtracycle's deck), I determined to build a cargo trailer for my cargo bike. With my friend Jesse's considerable assistance, we welded up a two by four foot trailer, and the Freight Train was born. The trailer's rated (by my conservative estimate) for about 100 lbs, and is large enough to carry a huge variety of things.
So, my daily life now consists of a bicycle ride to work and the theater, cargo rides to go shopping at the grocery store or Costco, motorcycle rides to places further afield, and rarely, very rarely, a rented Zipcar when there's no other way to do it. I even have studded snow tires for my commuter bike, and was perfectly able to get around last winter, even climbing a hill I wouldn't have been able to walk up, due to the packed ice.
The cargo bike now has about 1150 miles on it, and the commuter is pushing 5300. My monthly gasoline consumption (by which I mean direct consumption, unfortunately) fell from around 20 gallons a month to around 3. I still see the inside of cars to some extent, but I now spend an average of a few minutes a month inside a car, versus the hours and hours I did before motorcycles. It's not a perfect life, but it's an improvement.
Posted at 10:01 permanent link category: /misc
Sun, 19 Jul 2009
I've been riding the CL175 streetbike around quite a bit lately, enjoying the tiny, lightweight bike. In the last month or so, though, the engine had started making this odd clattering noise, particularly when it was cold.
On a 35 year old bike, even when it only has 14 thousand miles on the odometer, odd clattering noises are not at all comforting. My mind ran through some of the chilling possibilities: bearing wear on the camshaft or crankshaft, either of which would require tearing the engine down and possibly replacing huge chunks of it; broken pieces in the valve train, potentially causing more damage for each revolution of the engine; a broken camchain tensioner, leaving the camchain to flop around inside the engine, messing up valve timing and shaving chunks off the engine case... The possibilities were myriad and daunting.
I decided, however, to try the simple solutions first. The simplest is to adjust the valves. If they're out of adjustment (gap too wide) they can make ominous clattering noises like what I was hearing. After a certain amount of grunting and swearing (because nothing's ever easy, even on super-simple vintage bikes like this one), I got all the valves adjusted. I found that the intake valves were both fairly loose, and one of the exhaust valves was loose. Not enough to cause the clattering, I thought, but enough to cause performance problems. So no matter what, it was a fine thing to do.
Imagine my relief when I started the motor, and the doomful clanking noises were no longer present! It was a beautiful moment, and one that I felt like sharing (and here we are). It's so nice when the solution you really want to work is the one that actually does work.
Posted at 12:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Wed, 15 Jul 2009
I'd better hurry up with this story, before it escapes completely from my mind!
The defense attorney initially called some fairly uninspiring witnesses: a couple of friends or acquaintances of Larry (our defendant). One testified that Larry had been paid for jobs in a particular way (with $50 bills), and another testified as to his living situation.
Earlier in the process, during jury selection, the defense attorney had made a big deal about what we would think if the defendant didn't get up and tell his own story. The general concensus in the room seemed to be that, while not technically incriminating, it would introduce doubt about him. Certainly based on what we'd seen so far, I think the jury would have come to a guilty verdict pretty quickly -- of course, I don't know that, since we weren't allowed to talk about it, but that's the impression I had.
So with this setup in place, there was a little thrill of surprise that ran through the jury when Larry was called to the stand. Alas, I won't possibly be able to do his testimony justice, but I'll do what I can.
His story, told through a series of mumblings, speaking too fast, two people speaking at once, objections, instructions from the judge to answer the question at hand, giant plot holes, logical loops, etc., was about as follows (I've assembled the story much more coherently than he told it):
He was driving along, minding his own business, but looking for drugs, at 3 am. Danielle leapt out in front of his car, or possibly flagged him down, and asked if he was looking for drugs. He said he was. I lose the thread at this point, but somehow this evolved into a long conversation on the sidewalk between Larry and Danielle, which included a trip into the friend's house, next to Danielle's apartment building. This was to call the dealer. She came back out, and they went down to the area next to the house to do some resin hits (smoking out of a used pipe which still has crack residue, but no actual fresh drugs). They came back up, and Danielle disappeared into the house again, to call the dealer and see what's up. Larry clarified at some point that this was to be a "breaking bread" arrangement, where he would by drugs through Danielle's dealer, and split the drugs with her as a courtesy for using her dealer.
At some point, the dealer shows up in a shiny black SUV with heavily tinted windows, a thumping stereo, and chrome wheels. Larry has, by this point, given his $50 bill to Danielle, and she takes it with her into the SUV. It then drives down the block, possibly making a U-turn at some point, where it disgorges Danielle. She comes back bearing a baggie with 5 rocks of crack, and leaps into Larry's car. They drive down to an alley, where she directs him to park.
They slip inside a garage which numerous individual policemen have already testified was so securely locked up that they felt no need to search it, and proceed to smoke some crack. Danielle does an heroic amount of crack (an entire rock in one hit, as Larry says), goes all wild-eyed, then announces to Larry (and here he imitated her face and words), "I'm gonna suck your cock!" She proceeds to yank down his pants in an ecstasy of crack-high, and starts going at it like a milking machine (I'm pretty sure Larry didn't use this similie, but it's what he was trying to indicate). Meanwhile Larry is looking down in horror at the scene playing out below where his belt would be if he were wearing one, and thinking to himself, "Wait, but... I have a girlfriend... Wait.. Stop..." but fails to actually say any of these words or give Danielle any indication that he wants her to stop.
Events were a little unclear at this juncture, but somehow Larry got his pants back on, and handed Danielle another $50 bill, for the purpose of acquiring more crack -- the first 5 rocks were just a sample, to make sure she was selling him high-quality drugs. There was also a counter-story that the $50 he gave her was for services rendered in her putative role as a prostitute, although he was clearly confused on that point. She then departed the scene at speed, and he figured she was making off with his money, with no intention of delivering the promised crack cocaine. He caught up to her and detained her, while having probably seen her stuff the $50 into her purse. Maybe.
They go around onto Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd again, and had another long conversation. Possibly she went back into the friend's house to call her dealer again. At some point (there's a gap here where either the story was too incoherent, or my own memory is starting to fade), they end up a couple dozen feet up the street, and she has some kind of a seizure. He searches her purse, and discovers an asthma inhaler, which he tries to administer, thinking all the time that she's OD'd on crack, and he's going to be blamed with the death because it was his crack that did it. The inhaler gave up the ghost after two and a half puffs, but she seemed to revive a bit.
Now her attitude has changed, and she's threatening to go get her brother and beat the crap out of him, for reasons which were never entirely clear to me. He takes it as a real threat, and beats a hasty retreat, headed down past the friend's house, trying to take a shortcut to get to his car, which is parked in the alley behind the house. He gets caught up in the undergrowth and trees which dominate that section of the block, and gets turned around. He's panicking, convinced that at any moment he's going to be beaten within an inch of his life for an offense he doesn't understand.
He blunders back to MLK, where he runs up the street and around a corner. He finds some bushes, and plunges into them, to hide and avoid his beating. He hears several footsteps rush by, and is starting to think maybe they've given up when he hears or sees a dog running towards him.
The dog savagely attacks, ripping up Larry's arm, swinging him to and fro like a ragdoll (note that Larry is a stout man of about 220 lbs, and the dog has been described as about 15 lbs). He sees the dog's controller, a policeman, standing off an indeterminate distance, pointedly looking at the birds with his arms crossed. Poor Larry is calling to the policeman to help, to call off the dog, he didn't do anything wrong! The policeman is deaf to his cries, but finally deigns to take notice of the situation, after a period of 30 to 60 seconds, and calls back the dog. He completes the ignominy by handcuffing Larry and arresting him.
Larry has meanwhile dropped the crack cocaine and crack pipe he was carrying, somewhere there in the bushes where he'd been hiding. Possibly he threw them from him, possibly he just dropped them; both stories were related. He was still clutching the $50 bill and Danielle's purse, though.
Thus endeth Larry's story. I have to say, my head was spinning by the end of it -- the story was so completely different from all the previous testimony that I was having a hard time integrating it into the narrative and facts that we already had. I remember thinking to myself at the time that his story placed them in about the same locations at about the same times as her story. Obviously, her story hadn't included any drugs at all, and the various policemen who'd testified hadn't mentioned any drugs. Indeed, the dog hadn't given any indication of drugs either, which seemed unusual.
The story as I wrote it includes the cross-examination by the prosecuting attorney. Her questions mostly served to clarify or amplify one or two of the less-clear parts of his story. I had the impression that if she weren't in a courtroom, her reaction to his testimony would have run along the lines of, "You have got to be kidding me."
The trial wrapped up pretty quickly after Larry got off the stand. Closing arguments were brief, and the defense attorney's closing argument was almost comical in the extent to which it didn't refer to the trial. He pulled out a lot of quotations, and went off on a tangent about justice and the jury system and such vague things as slide completely out of my memory. The state's closing argument was comparatively rock-solid, and reiterated the facts of the case, which didn't look good for Larry.
Up next: deliberations.
Posted at 15:28 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 02 Jul 2009
In a potentially misguided attempt to both provide less incentive for the crows to scream about at 5:30 in the morning, and to follow my doctor's advice to eat a high-fiber diet, I just picked over 6 lbs of cherries off my tree. Dang.
Posted at 12:35 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 29 Jun 2009
New bars make all the difference
I installed new handlebars on the CL175 this weekend, as you can see above. I just came back from the first test-ride with them, and it is amazing the difference they make. The bike feels more solid, control feels more positive, my arms are much less stressed due to the levers finally being aimed right. It even felt faster, although that had to be 100% perception, because the bike's performance hasn't changed. Certainly more sporty.
So that's very positive news. The bars are the $25 Street Master bars you see at every motorcycle shop, the Drag model. I'll assume they mean drag racing, and not drag queens. I had to drill and mill the bars a bit to accomodate the internal wiring used by the CL175 -- the wires from the switch pods run through the handlebars, plus there's a locating pin in the switch pods to keep the wires from getting pinched due to pod rotation or sliding.
I would have been happier with the pods and grips further inboard, for a narrower profile, but as a practical matter, they had to be out that far for everything to fit. My knees are now a bit in the way for sharp turns out of driveways or other slow-speed maneuvers, but I think the peg relocation will solve that pretty easily, so that's probably the next step. I have all the pieces, just have to start making them.
I'm very pleased with this change, the CL175 is even more appealing to ride, now, and I think the new pegs and new seat I have planned will contribute even further. It's so nice when a change works the way you want it to!
Posted at 13:15 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Fri, 26 Jun 2009
I just uploaded some new video to YouTube for the first time in quite a while. This time, it was footage from a practice session on June 13th, where I was following a new rider around to see what help she might need. Not much, as it happened, and it was nice to be able to record her as well, so she can see what was happening.
Thus, with no further ado:
Posted at 11:23 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Sun, 21 Jun 2009
I had a surprisingly full day yesterday, but I had the camera with me the whole time, and ended up taking a few pictures as long as I was around and about. Let's peruse, shall we?
Charlie (I think that's his name), who was scared by the camera
Cory Nealy's BBQ, where we were watching the Sounders FC
game
Kim Nyhous walking the dog and a small child at Becky Bykowski's
birthday party
Becky Bykowski, the birthday girl herself
John McKenna, who obviously loves his hat
Keith Hitchcock puts on his best muffin face
Chris Comte, Pamala Mijatov and Bret Fetzer arrayed to watch an
impromptu puppet rendition of "Rebel Yell"
Posted at 10:29 permanent link category: /misc
Sat, 20 Jun 2009
I was asked to work on a photo shoot for Spin the Bottle Jr. this weekend, and Bret specifically wanted a fisheye effect they used for a previous show. So I went out to Glazer's and rented a fisheye lens.
A fisheye is something I've wanted to play with for a long time, but could never justify. They're pricey lenses: I found a used one for $450, and the new ones run for $650 and up. So the opportunity to rent one was more than I could pass up.
So without further ado, let's move on to the pictures, shall we?
Myself as a terrifying troll-person (photo by Liz Cortez)
Myself as a nose followed by some other facial features (photo
by Liz Cortez)
Ron Sandahl (and myself if you look at the very bottom of the
frame -- this lens is wide)
Liz Cortez demonstrates another magnifying effect of the fisheye
lens
And that's only what I came up with in the first few hours of my temporary ownership of a fisheye lens...
Posted at 08:58 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 18 Jun 2009
The following day dawned, and I was starting to figure out which bus I needed to catch to be at the courthouse on time. My daily stair-climb performed, I dropped into the jury room, where we socialized for a while. The court sessions seemed to start between 5 and 15 minutes late pretty regularly, so we usually had a fair amount of time to chat.
The big witness the state presented this day was Danielle, the alleged victim of the crime currently under question. There may have been a witness before Danielle, but the even was unmemorable.
Danielle turned out to be a 28 year old woman who arrived at the courtroom in a heather grey ARMY sweatshirt and sweatpants, and clearly 8 months pregnant. As we learned, this would be her fifth child. We got some preliminaries out of the way, and then it was down to the story.
Danielle's story was pretty much the same one the prosecution had outlined in the opening statements. There were a few little detail differences, but none of them were substantial, amounting to things like confusion about exact times, or exact words spoken: things I wouldn't expect to remember.
What was interesting to me was the prosecutor's final question: "And how did this event make you feel, Danielle?" This after she'd described all the things that had happened: meeting up with Larry, chatting, driving unexpectedly to the abandoned house in the alley, the attack, the asthma attack she faked to get him away, and his leaving with her purse. She immediately teared up, and described how she now always looked over her shoulder, and couldn't get close to a man, and how much it had affected her life. The defense attorney of course objected to the question, but was quickly overruled by the judge.
The striking thing about this last little bit, and everyone on the jury noticed it, was that Danielle had only gone about four months between the attack she described and becoming pregnant. It couldn't have been that hard to get close to a man again, apparently.
When the defense attorney stepped up to cross-examine Danielle, he was almost visibly licking his chops. He barraged her with questions, and she answered pretty well, but several times he succeeded in confusing her (he was confusing us too, which seems like a bad move in a jury trial), and she finally got upset at the treatment. The major points of contention were how she and Larry had first met at 3 AM, whether they'd met at this convenience store ("The African Store" everyone kept calling it, although it was just a convenience store run by Ethiopeans, who had a small section of African products), whether they'd traded numbers, and so on. He certainly produced some inconsistency in her answers.
I can't say that I honestly recall any witnesses between Danielle and the end of the state's case. There may have been another police officer or two, but they were unmemorable at this distance of a few weeks from the event. As I said before, all the police testimony boiled down into nearly identical stories from slightly different angles.
The practical upshot of this testimony was that I was left with the impression of someone who hadn't told the whole story. She seemed sincere enough, but there were a few little gaps that left me wondering what she was omitting. She didn't come across as particularly smart -- the state attorney had described her as "street smart," (apparently in Danielle's own words), but that didn't really come across. She actually seemed to be a remarkably naive, unintelligent woman, for whom those weaknesses finally settled catastrophically in the form of this attack.
At the end of all this testimony, and as the state rested its case, I had a hard time imagining how Larry was going to get out of this one. I mean, really, it would have to boil down to his word against hers, except that all the evidence available supported her story. I hadn't come to a decision, but I was also curious to see how the defense would try to recover from all this.
This seems like a good place to stop. Up next, the defense's shocking case!
Posted at 12:01 permanent link category: /misc
Wed, 17 Jun 2009
This is something that's interested me for some time. Take the phrase, "I cried myself to sleep."
As a phrase, it's a bit evocative. It connotes sadness, and in the empathetic individual, might give rise to a certain amount of actual emotion.
But how does it compare to reality? How do those five words really compare to the hot wash of emotion, the choked-up throat, the burning intensity of eyes filling with tears and splashing, hot and unbidden down the cheeks? Where is the pungent, cathartic unbottling of emotion which caused this event in the first place? How does it describe the slow descent into restless, saddened slumber, or awaking to a bleary hopelessness in the black of night? Even this entire paragraph only captures a shadow of the real event.
For all that we have an evocative and flexible language, we rarely actually make use of it. When we do, it really only presents a thin mockery of the actual emotions and events described. How much better would it be (and, also, how much worse) if the full import of emotions and feelings could be described?
(Can you tell I've been reading overwrought classic novels again? Really enjoying Jane Eyre.)
Posted at 14:04 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 16 Jun 2009
A friend mentioned this flourless chocolate orange cake. I have to say, that looks really good. I may have to give it a try...
Posted at 16:46 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 15 Jun 2009
According to the timing information at mylaps.com (our clever new timing system's website) I've set a new personal record: a 2:14.443 lap at Pacific Raceways.
I'm definitely getting better. I just wish I had anyone else to race with -- everyone else is way ahead of me.
Posted at 10:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Tue, 09 Jun 2009
In a shocking twist, I've signed myself up to perform, on a stage, without a musical instrument.
I've done this before, but it's not a common event. In 3rd grade, I played Schroeder in "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown." I couldn't tell you how I did. It was 3rd grade. I'm impressed I memorized all my lines.
The only other non-musical performance I've done was perhaps 5 years ago, at a Neither/Nor cabaret night, a now-defunct event put on by the now-defunct Bald Faced Lie. I did a dramatic reading of the Time Travel Spam, set to a too-loud Yello track (tech rehearsal? what's that?). That went pretty well, aside from the fact that some people couldn't hear me over the music.
Other than that, I played and performed cello in an orchestra from 3rd grade on. So, I'm not exactly a stranger to getting up on stage and performing, but it's not something I've done solo very much.
The other twist, and the one that I am assured changes the game, is that I'll be reading my own work. It's a story I started writing about a year ago, and never finished. I was writing it on my oh-so-clever Alphasmart Dana (the device on which I wrote two of my novels), and ended up leaving it to sit for a while. Bad choice: the Dana has the old Palm Pilot habit of wiping its memory if the batteries run all the way down. Oops.
So that first draft of the story went away. Suddenly, this weekend, I was inspired to try writing it again. This was a good choice: the first draft was getting longer and longer, and I couldn't figure out how to reign it in. I'd imagined a short story, and it was getting into novella territory. When I wrote it again, with a very conscious audience of Spin the Bottle, brevity came much more easily.
The final story (which I will publish after I've read it, currently scheduled for September 4th) is only about 1500 words, and includes all the elements of the first draft. A very pleasing outcome for me. That's more like what I wanted in the first place. On top of all that, it times out to about eight and a quarter minutes when I read it aloud, and Spin the Bottle has a 10 minute limit. Perfect.
The story is to be read in the final slot of the evening, which is traditionally reserved for smut. What I wrote is pretty tame for smut, but it's much more risque than my normal subjects. It's a nice diversion from my normal topics.
But, the problem, I am assured, is that reading your own work is a completely different ball of wax from reading what someone else wrote. I can't see it, but I'm also not a performer, particularly compared to Bret Fetzer, who gave me this warning. He's read dozens and dozens of his own stories on stage, so I assume he's got a slightly better handle on it than I do.
So if I get a strange gleam in my eye and dive for my bag when we're hanging out, chances are excellent that you're about to get a preview of the story, and I'm about to try my hand at reading in front of an audience. Assuming we've got eight and a quarter minutes free, of course.
Posted at 23:26 permanent link category: /theater
Mon, 08 Jun 2009
The crunch time came on Wednesday morning: we were seated in the jury box, and there were no more dismissals for cause. One by one, the lawyers dismissed people who they didn't want, for whatever reason. I felt something like my internal pressure rising with each one, expecting to relase of being selected, but with each, "Your honor, the defense would like to thank and excuse juror number 19," that passed by, I was skipped over.
Finally, both sides agreed they were satisfied with the panel, and to my amazement, I was still sitting there. The rest of the jury pool filed out of the courtroom, and I assessed the situation: of the original group I'd sat down with, perhaps 8 remained, and another 6 had been added from the extras, for a total of 14. We'd all sit on the case, and two alternates would be selected at the end, and dismissed, to be called up if for some reason someone had to drop out from the primary group.
Opening arguments started without any delay. The state prosecuting attorney went first, and outlined the basic scenario: a woman (who we'll call Danielle) met a man (let's go with Larry) at a store called The African Store. They conversed, and she naively traded numbers with him. Larry was sitting next to his defense attorney, and it was hard to imagine who would trade numbers with him, but I'm not Danielle.
They met a couple of weeks later, Larry hailing her from across the street at 3 AM on July 5th last year. They talked for a bit, then he invited her over to have drinks at his place in Fremont. She got in his car, and he headed the wrong direction, turned too soon, and was suddenly parked in a dark alley. Finally her spidey sense started tingling, and she walked away quickly. He called after her, got agitated, and followed. She tried to calm him down, and managed to at least get them back out on the main road.
Unfortunately, at this point, it all went very wrong, and he dragged her down an embankment, his finger poised to poke out her eye, his arm around her neck. This was the point at which the attempted rape occurred, and he tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. She refused, and was dragged to another spot where he threw her in the blackberry bushes, stole her purse, and ran away.
The police found him about an hour later, after Danielle called 911. She got a huge response, eventually having 5 or 6 police cruisers parked along the sidewalk, and a K9 unit called out to search for Larry. He was found half a block away, hiding in the bushes, still clutching her purse. He even tried to wrestle the dog, putting it in a headlock, receiving several nasty bite wounds into the deal.
The defense opening statement was considerably less memorable. He didn't necessarily disagree with the scenario outlined, but he raised some important questions, which would become clearer during the rest of the trial.
In short order, we had our first witness, one of the police officers who responded to the scene. It was a little strange, the first cop we listened to didn't have a whole lot to do with it -- he was the second officer to respond, and didn't really have any contact with Danielle. He did find Larry's car, and helped out a bit, but he didn't have a whole lot to say.
Next up was the investigator who would take over the longer-term case, who interviewed Danielle the following Monday. She talked about how Danielle had acted, and what she said in statements. Nothing remarkable, really, just confirming the story we already knew. The defense attorney cross-examined her, and drove home the point that everything she knew came from Danielle's account of events.
There followed a bewildering array of police officers, who have all melded into my memory into one meta-officer who took the stand, explained his or her job to the prosecuting attorney, and stated the same facts over and over again. The dog acted this way. The defendant was found clutching a purse and a $50 bill. The scene of the incident appeared this way. The victim had these injuries. The defendant fought with the dog. And where possible, the defense lawyer stepped in and reminded us that except for the physical evidence they saw, the whole story came from Danielle.
We finished for the day, having only been sent away once or twice. The defense attorney repeatedly asked to see the judge at the sidebar, for a quiet conversation out of the jury's hearing (to clarify some point of law, I assume, or to give the defense attorney a talking-to when he was being obnoxious). Finally, the judge gave up and just sent us out when he started asking for a sidebar conversation.
Some time that day, I had pulled out the cheap deck of cards that lives in my shoulder bag, and taught everyone on the jury how to play Hosenabe (or Pants Down), a game which was readily accepted, and became our primary pastime when we were sent back to the jury room. It's simple and easy to play, while still being involved enough that it's not brainless.
By this time, I'd also cemented my habit of taking the stairs instead of the elevators. Unlike at work, where there are only four floors including the parking garage, I entered the courthouse on the 1st floor, and attended court on the 8th. These are courthouse floors, too, so they're no mere 10 feet per floor: each floor is about 20 feet tall, so I climbed about 160 feet straight up, twice a day. The rest of the jury got used to me showing up winded, and I didn't feel like such a complete slug. I couldn't bike to the courthouse, due to a lack of safe bike parking, so the stairs kind of made up for the 10 miles a day I suddenly wasn't riding.
Up next, we meet Danielle.
Posted at 17:05 permanent link category: /misc
Sun, 07 Jun 2009
I was just looking through my pictures from the latest Spin the Bottle at Annex, and came across this gem:
Haven't been to Spin the Bottle yet? You're missing some good stuff.
Posted at 10:33 permanent link category: /theater
Sat, 06 Jun 2009
If you've been following me on Facebook, you'll know that I've been in jury duty for the last few weeks. Since May 20th, in fact.
The first few days were uneventful. The most interesting thing that happened was that I was selected for a 5-week trial (yikes) but was dismissed for not being able to reasonably take 5 weeks off work. For all I know, they're still looking for jurors on that one.
Then I was selected for another jury on the morning of the second day. I was kind of hoping not to be selected, but such is life. I went up to the courtroom, and ended up sitting in the box. That was Thursday. A bunch (maybe 75%) of the jury pool was dismissed for various hardship reasons, most to do with precarious job situations. There were perhaps 20 of us left by the end of the day, and the judged called an end to things a bit early. We didn't have to be back until the next Tuesday, since Memorial Day fell on the Monday.
Tuesday arrived (after an interesing and eventful trip to Spokane for racing, a story which is currently underway, don't worry, I haven't forgotten it), and I was still sitting in the box -- in the jury box proper, and so definitely on the jury unless bumped for some reason. However, by my reckoning, I was also in an excellent position to be bumped. I was undecided whether I wanted to sit on the case. We knew it was a criminal case, so at least it wouldn't be two greedy jerks suing each other for a gazillion dollars over some worthless trifle.
Finally, we started on the Voir Dire process, which is where the lawyers ask questions of the jurors to weed out those they don't want to sit on the trial. This was done with the Donahue method, which doesn't actually involve walking around a TV audience with a microphone, but the method is somewhat similar.
Each lawyer asked questions of the whole group of jurors (all 50 or so of us, the 12 in the box, and the rest of the pool sitting in the audience). For instance, since the trial was (we now knew) at least related somehow to rape, we were asked about how we'd feel if a man was falsely accused of rape. The defense attorney in particular spun crazy, hard-to-follow theoretical situations then tried to pressure jurors into making judgement calls on them. One such situation was that a given juror had a really nice pen, and another juror decided to take it, then he asked a bunch of questions which were so off-kilter that I don't even remember what they were, but they inspired everyone on the eventual jury to label him as a douchebag, and worse.
The attorneys were interesting, in and of themselves. Aside from presenting this douchebag persona through the trial, the defense attorney reminded me of a combination of two Simpsons characters: Lionel Hutz (incompetent lawer), toned down to about 50%, and Dr. Marvin Monroe (a doctor who was killed off in the first few seasons). He looks like the doctor, and acts a bit like the lawyer. His arguments were objected to regularly by the prosecutor, and mostly upheld by the judge. His presentation was somewhat pandering and could be quite condescending. Fortunately, although we agreed in our sentiment for him, the jury didn't let this influence the facts of the case.
The prosecuting attorney reminded me of the women you see on local news channels, presenting the weather or anchoring -- blond, skinny, but strangely unattractive. She even had the perfectly straight, bottle-blond bob. Appearance aside, she presented a much more competent-seeming case, and the defense's occasional and clumsy objections were usually overruled. We agreed in the jury room, once we were allowed to discuss it, that her case could have used improvements too. Still, she seemed much more professional and upstanding than the defense attorney.
You may have noticed that I've mentioned no names, and I don't intend to. Obviously, some of what I'm writing is not complimentary, and I don't see any reason to connect unkind words like these with people who are doing their jobs as well as they can. I also don't want to refrain from describing the full experience, so this seems like a good compromise.
Finally, we reached the point where the dismissals for cause (ie, "I can't be unbiased where rape is concerned") were done, and we got to the pre-emptory challenges. This is basically where a lawyer says, "I don't like that juror," and kicks them off the jury. This was the phase where I expected to be dropped, as I had talked a great deal, including at one point calling back to the defense attorney, in a plainly annoyed manner, "Your question is misleading!"
And, this is a long story. I'll be breaking it up into parts. Up next, getting selected, and opening statements. Maybe the first few witnesses if I'm feeling up to it.
Posted at 02:57 permanent link category: /misc
Sun, 31 May 2009
I decided last night that I'd head out and finally catch Picasso at the Lapin Agile, which was playing at Balagan theater. I've got a couple of friends in it, and it seemed to be getting good buzz.
I decided, since I recently replaced the tach drive oil seal in the CL175, to take it out again. It's a little goofy to ride very far, but Capitol Hill isn't a bad trip, and I wanted to see if I could figure out the appropriate change to make to the carburetors to fix a mid-throttle weakness.
The ride up to the hill was fine, and I provisionally decided on the carburetor change I wanted to make (drop the needles a notch, since the mid-throttle feels a bit rich). Unfortunately, as I was riding up Pike, just about to turn to the cross-street where I was intending to park, the engine suddenly died as if the key had been switched off: engine not running, headlight off, no brake light, etc. Bad news.
Fortunately, I was literally a couple dozen feet from 11th when I ran out of momentum, so I duck-paddled the bike to the turn and into a parking spot on the side of the street. I didn't have time to work on it just then, so I left it parked and went to the show.
After the show, I came back and did some poking at the bike. I checked the fuse (looked fine), unplugged and replugged previously troublesome connectors, looked over anything else that might be the cause of the problem. There really wasn't anything I could see. I finally pulled the fuse out so I could check the size of a replacement (you never know), locked up the bike as best I could, and walked down to the bus.
Much later that night (between the walk to the bus, the bus ride, and the walk home from the bus stop, I figured I must have spent about an hour on a 20 minute motorcycle trip), I was able to pull out the multimeter and check the fuse: no connection!
This was a bit of a hallelujah moment for me. The bike had previous done this trick, where it would shut off like someone had flipped a switch, but then it would come back as if nothing was wrong. This was incredibly frustrating, because there was then no way to find the problem and fix it. I had to sit back and hope it would manifest again in a situation that wasn't too unsafe. I'm just lucky it died when it did, instead of riding down Aurora, or on the freeway.
Visual inspection of the fuse revealed no problems -- it hadn't blown from a short or something. This was very good news, and I realized it explained the whole problem: in one of the end-caps of the fuse, the link had probably vibrated loose over the life of the bike. It was now probably waving around and occasionally re-connecting in a way that would perfectly explain the off-on faults I saw before. I've seen light bulbs do this before, but never a fuse.
So, I'm off soon to bus back to the hill, new fuses clutched in my nervous claws. In the absolute worst case, Jesse has offered that he'll be passing through Seattle on his way back from a dirt-biking weekend later today, and he could give me and the bike a lift back to my house. Fantastic timing!
Posted at 10:22 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Mon, 25 May 2009
There's a fair amount of writing I need to do to describe the weekend I spent at Spokane, but first, a picture:
That's the sunset on Saturday night. More to come.
Posted at 15:06 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 19 May 2009
Every once in a while, Nature throws a curve ball at you:
The weather seems strangely appropriate to my mood tonight, a weird mix of many things. (Yes, that's a vague statement. No, I'm not going to explain it any further.)
Posted at 20:34 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 12 May 2009
Someone on the F-160 mailing list (a list for 160 Vintage racers) mentioned shoving a track-vendor hotdog into his peg as a substitute for a peg slider, and it inspired me to find this clip:
Hopefully clear enough from the visuals and the tone of voice, the only helpful clue I can provide is that TUV is the German equivalent of the DMV, sort of, only every change to a vehicle has to be approved by TUV. Suffice to say that bike customizers and TUV don't usually get along.
Posted at 16:51 permanent link category: /motorcycle
I'm working on a full report of this weekend, but I'll give you the quickie review.
Basically, I didn't have a very good time. There was a lot of self-doubt and wondering why I was bothering. I didn't have any overt problems, no crashes, no big goofs, just a steady stream of "why am I doing this?"
This was all capped off by a range of annoying things, from the GoPro camera (which has always been spotty, but was at least kind of working last year) completely crapping out to dropping my shift linkage to coming in dead last, behind a new rider who hadn't even come to practice on Saturday. He was literally riding his first laps around the Pacific Raceways track on Sunday, and it was only his second time out on a track, ever. Humbling and thoroughly demoralizing.
Still, I loved hanging out with the racers (although the new guy rubbed me the wrong way somehow), and being at the track, and all of it except the actual riding around the track "competing" for last place.
I'm not giving up yet, but it's hard to be too fired up about the whole thing right now. It was also a massively over-committed weekend for me, so I was operating on far too little sleep and a pretty constant feeling of stress.
I'll mention it here when I get the race report finished -- it's mostly done, I just have to add pictures.
Posted at 11:10 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Fri, 08 May 2009
I've gone over my lists, prepared my stuff, cleaned and adjusted. I think that I'm about as ready for the race this weekend as I could be. And if you look hard, you can see that I'm (temporarily) sporting two cameras:
For a laugh, I might try turning the one on the handlebars around to aim at my face so you can all see the weird faces I pull as I race. I'll be curious to see how well both cameras work, since I had such generally spotty luck with the GoPro last year. The camera on the handlebars is an Oregon Scientific ATC-2000. The one on the left fork is a GoPro Motorsports Hero (who comes up with these names?).
Posted at 16:42 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Wed, 06 May 2009
Ages ago now (so it seems) someone got hold of my debit card number, and rang up a few inconsequential purchases. My bank (WaMu/Chase) caught it and called me up. I said they weren't mine, and they cancelled the card. At the time, they also said they were placing the order for the new card, and I should expect it in 7-10 business days (up from 3-5 in the WaMu days, as I recall).
So, I started making a lot more trips to the bank, and carrying a checkbook with me. Turns out I use a debit card a lot. I knew this already, but it was really driven home after it was shut off this time.
As I neared the end of my 7-10 business day purgatory, I happened to think to ask the teller if he had any insight into when the card had been sent. He looked over my account records on his screen, then looked up with an innocent expression, and said, "I don't see an order for a new card here..." Sigh. He placed another order for a new card. Apparently the person I was talking to in the fraud department either didn't do it, or messed it up somehow.
Finally, last night, I got my new card in the mail. Something like a child at Christmas, I ripped open the envelope to pull it out. Imagine my horror and surprise when I saw that my new card was "enabled with Blink[tm]!" The little radiating-waves icon told me all I needed to know: my new card contains an RFID chip.
Companies that insist on pulling this kind of stunt invariably say that their RFID stuff is completely unhackable. Invariably, within a week of its release (sometimes much sooner), the system is hacked and the hackers gain access to the supposedly encrypted information.
Now, this is all fine and good if we're talking about a magnetic stripe or something. You have to pry the card physically away from me to read that. But RFID can be read at a distance. In fact, at quite a distance, as far away as 30 feet. All your basic hacker needs to do is get within 30 feet of your RFID credit card, passport, etc. to read the data from it. That data will almost always be encrypted in some way, but history has taught us that it won't be encrypted very well.
So, here I am, sitting with essentially a ticking time bomb in my hands, practically a give-away to any criminal with a laptop and a jacked-up RFID reader. I'm sure Mastercard won't tell anyone what exactly is contained in the data, but it's enough that I can wave it in front of one of their terminals, and complete a transaction.
There are ways to prevent this scenario, ranging from professional RFID-proof wallets to very basic homemade wallets and even comparatively high-art steel-cloth wallets. The theory is always the same, though: wrap a layer of metal around the RFID chip in question, and it can't receive the energizing radio waves, and can't respond with the sensitive information inside. Even keeping your card in the same pocket as your keys can have the same effect.
Rather than spend much money or time when I already have a perfectly serviceable wallet (and one that I actually quite like, one of these extremely thin wallets), I decided to take a much more... homemade approach (but not as bad as the duct-tape wallet). I made a tinfoil envelope for the card.
This has the advantage of being as effective as the RFID blocking wallet, while costing no more than the price of a small piece of tinfoil and some packing tape. It also fits in whichever wallet you may prefer at the time. In truth, I now carry 4 RFID cards, and could probably stand to have a full wallet with RFID blocking capability, but the only one I care about is that damn debit card.
Honestly, the chance of my getting scanned by a malicious hacker is relatively remote. But it annoys me to no end that companies like Chase are willing to build in fraud-enabling tools like this. And for the price of a little bit of tinfoil and packing tape, I'd rather be a slightly paranoid safe than sorry.
Posted at 14:41 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 30 Apr 2009
The last few weeks, I keep finding myself not sleeping very well. One of the reasons is that I'll be mulling over a mechanical or design problem as my mind wanders from topic to topic, and I get stuck on it.
A week or two ago, I woke up to the realization that I'd designed quite a workable folding welding table, having worked out the offsets in the hinges to get it all to fold up nicely. This morning, I woke up to realize that I'd been running over the process of machining these velocity tubes Michael made and showed me:
I'd worked out, in my sleep, that by his description, their length was predetermined by the angles he'd chosen to cut them at (3° for most of their length, 9° for the last bit, and 6° to smooth the transition from 3 to 9), although that length was longer than what he made.
It's a bit odd to wake up and realize how much work I've been doing while, at least in theory, resting. This might explain why I've been feeling a bit sleep-deprived lately.
Posted at 16:56 permanent link category: /misc
Tue, 28 Apr 2009
I had an early day today, and decided at the last moment to stop by Online Metals to see what they had in their cutoff bins. In actual fact, they had a great deal, and the only thing that kept me from going crazy is the fact that whatever I bought, I'd have to cart it home in my shoulder bag. Even with this constraint, my back hurts from the 13 lbs of metal to which I limited myself.
Specifically, I got metal for two interesting projects. The first is for the street CL175: footpeg relocation. The footpegs on the CL175 are provided by this heavy steel bar which runs under the frame. You can kind of see it here:
The main footpeg is the bigger one, on the right. Anyway, that peg is in a weird spot for me -- I really expect my footpegs to be further back, and a bit higher. Well, for the race bike, I ended up making these thick steel reinforcement plates for the passenger pegs (further back, and folded upright in the picture above); why not make new reinforcement plates like on the race bike, but extend the plates down a bit? That would put the pegs exactly where I expect them. It would require some extra engineering for the shifter and brake pedal, but that's nothing I haven't solved before.
So, I picked up some more 1/4" thick steel plate to make those peg relocators.
The other project I have in mind for the latest haul of metal is velocity tubes for the race bike. Fellow racer and inveterate tinkerer Michael Bateman made up some velocity tubes for his development bike, and forwarded me the dimensions -- no problem to make. That would be a fun project that might even make a practical difference: velocity tubes smooth the airflow into the carburetors, which should at least theoretically allow the engine to run a bit more efficiently. As I understand it, non-laminar airflow into the carbs reduces the amount of air they can suck in per piston cycle, which reduces the amount of air-fuel mix, which reduces the amount of power possible. It's probably not a difference I'd see on a dyno so much as while riding (with the attendant moving, chaotic airflow), but I also don't race on a dyno.
Now, of course, I find myself wanting to read up on the design of velocity tubes, to see if I'm headed in the right direction. If so, I've got enough metal to make 3 pair of tubes, I'm pretty sure.
Posted at 17:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Tue, 21 Apr 2009
Being, as I am, interested in matters of safety and public perception, I'm thinking of running a brief study.
I propose to sit at a popular four-way-stop intersection in Fremont, at 34th and Evanston, outside the PCC, and record who stops. The vehicular categories will be: car, bicycle and motorcycle. The types of stop will be: full stop, rolling stop, pause, and ignore. I will observe for a set period of time, probably 15 or 30 minutes, just to get a feel for what's actually happening.
This is an intersection which gets a fair amount of traffic of all types, including a lot of bicycles. Once collected, I'll publish the data here.
I would be very interested if others wanted to join me in this task: pick yourself an intersection, and record who does what for a while. For clarity, let me define my terms:
Car: any enclosed, three-or-more wheeled vehicle, powered by something other than human power (ie, gasoline, diesel, electricity, etc.).
Motorcycle: any open, two- or three-wheeled vehicle, powered by something other than human power (ie, gasoline, diesel, electricity, etc.).
Bicycle: any open, two- or three-wheeled vehicle, powered primarily by human power (including electric-assisted bicycles).
Full stop: coming to a complete stop so that all forward motion is ceased. A bicycle track-stand counts as a full stop, since the bicycle moves backwards.
Rolling stop: slowing to a near-stop without actually eliminating all forward motion.
Pause: slowing for the stop sign, but not coming to a near-stop. This is a judgement call on the part of the observer.
Ignore: rolling through the stop sign without significantly slowing down.
As I was planning this study, walking back from about 5 minutes observing this intersection, I watched a motorcyclist with a severely under-clothed passenger, roll through a stop sign as if it didn't exist. Nothing like motivation, eh?
I would also like to say that this study is not intended to promote the stop sign as some kind of godlike traffic safety device. I actually find stop signs fairly annoying in their profusion (visit Europe, and you'll be hard pressed to find a stop sign anywhere). This is a study to see who's paying attention, and who's obeying the laws we have.
Posted at 13:16 permanent link category: /misc
And people seem boggled when I yell at them for riding their bicycle through a stop sign:
From Facebook, today. Reasonable, non-violent people react to bicyclists.
Posted at 11:02 permanent link category: /bicycle
Thu, 16 Apr 2009
In the last few days, I've been working pretty hard at making theater happen. If you haven't been following along, I'm designing lights and doing photography for Love's Tangled Web, at Annex Theatre. I'm also doing a ton of other little tasks, as always happens in fringe theater, but that's neither here nor there.
In a normal production, I'd expect to be doing the second full run tonight, the night before opening. I'd still be frantically chasing down problems in the lights, both the plot and cues. If I was a clever monkey, I would have taken the week off from work (I usually figure this out a few days before the week I should take off, which always makes me feel like a moron). I wouldn't be panicking, but I wouldn't be all that far from it. One of the reasons I've never written about this stuff before is that it's so overwhelming at the time that I simply don't have time to sit down and write about it.
As I've cleverly implied, I am not in that place of near-panic now. This show has gone amazingly well, all the way from the meet-n-greet until now. Things have happened on time or ahead of schedule. We're getting our 6th(!) full tech run tonight. People have been delightful to work with. There have been no big clashes of ego, and no disasters, whether ego-induced or not. My employer even declared a week of vacation (to get us to burn off vacation hours) this week, the perfect time for me to have a week off. We open tomorrow.
Thus it was that for the last few days, I've found myself walking out to get dinner at some reasonable hour, a feeling of contentment settled upon me like a cloak of finest ermine. All has, for quite a while now, been right with the world. It's a fantastic feeling.
Of course, I'm still busy as hell, but I'm not freaking out. Nothing feels like it has to be rushed. It's all just... ok.
Oh, and I suppose I can't tease you about photographs without offering up some evidence of the photographic goodness. Click on the below picture for a gallery of photos that we're sending out to press, and feel free to share them yourself:
Click for press
photos
Posted at 16:56 permanent link category: /theater
Fri, 10 Apr 2009
That default standard picture set
Enjoy! Click on "High Res" for 14.7 megapixel versions
Posted at 15:15 permanent link category: /motorcycle
After a gonzo few hours spent fanatically measuring the CL175's clutch, and consulting with one Michael Bateman, we determined the problem: the previous owner of my bike had put in the wrong clutch parts.
Michael, inveterate tuner and hopper-upper that he is, has replaced more clutches than god, and had some spare, correct-size clutch plates for me. He sent them along, and I got them on Wednesday. In a brief fit of madness, I installed them after I got home that night -- of course, I didn't get home until 11 pm, which is so far past my "Do not start in on new projects" hour that it's not even funny. However, the job was easy, and I was done half an hour later.
Today, I finally had winnowed enough free time out of my schedule (mostly by missing sleep) to get oil poured back into the engine, and the footpegs reinstalled. I fired up the bike and gave it a few test-runs along the shoulder, and the clutch felt just right. I decided that it would be worth riding it into work today.
The trip was effortless. It's amazing how much of a psychological difference a correctly working clutch makes. The engine and transmission are always connected when you expect them to be. There's no limit on how far you can hit the throttle before you have to worry about breaking the clutch loose. The bike is suddenly grounded and centered.
I'm still floating on the happy cloud of working-clutch, which is delightful. I think I might even take the bike out to my traditional photo spot (which has been disrupted by years of construction), and take my now-traditional round-the-bike photo set. And, happy day, I have the new G10 to do it with. It's all coming together.
Posted at 12:14 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Thu, 09 Apr 2009
In a brief fit of madness, I thought of a cool picture. In a longer fit of madness, I ran in to grab the camera and a tripod, and actually take the picture.
Posted at 14:07 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Wed, 08 Apr 2009
At the Love's Tangled Web load-in this weekend, I ended up capturing more neat photos, two of which I wanted to share here:
Max Reichlin tests lenses on an ETC par lamp
Max again, demonstrating a clear lens, and providing a good
silhouette
Max is the Annex tech director, and was instrumental (ah-hah, oh, that's a joke most people won't get) in getting load-in finished quickly and efficiently. The bad joke is that each of those fancy light-casting thingies we put up this weekend aren't called "lights," they're called "instruments," like "lighting instruments."
I know. Shoot me now.
Posted at 08:49 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 06 Apr 2009
My exultation at the clutch being fixed on the CL175 were, let us say, premature. Possibly foolish. Turns out that when you run a wet clutch without oil, its grip increases. Who woulda guessed?
Indeed, when I checked the oil after that oh-so-successful run, it was off the end of the dipstick. This is disturbing, as I'd checked it before, and it was in the middle of the range. Hopefully that was just me misreading the stick, and not something more ominous.
When I topped up the oil again, the ol' slip-n-slide clutch was back. *sigh*
So, I spent most of today (having taken the day off after a very theater-intensive weekend) in the garage, playing with the clutch.
First thing, lemme give you some vocab, so I don't have to clutter up the rest of this little story. The circular thing in the center of that picture above is the clutch.
Friction plate: One of 5 discs in the clutch which is covered in a friction material, something like cork. Also called a friction. Visible as the brown-edged fingers in the picture above.
Steel [plate]: One of 5 bare, flat steel discs in the clutch, interleaved between friction plates. Not visible in the picture above, but they're spacing the friction plates apart.
Dished steel: The last steel plate on the engine side. It's just like a normal steel, except that it has a slightly concave shape. This allows it to either push the stack out (like in the picture above, note the gap between the last brown friction plate and the back of the clutch basket), or allow it to go closer to the engine.
Pressure plate: The outer-most plate of the clutch, it's the big silver plate you can see with the upside-down B marked on it.
Ok, so the previous owner did a bunch of stuff with the clutch, he said. He claimed that he installed new friction plates, and new springs. In the condition I got it, none of that was obvious, and today I finally figured out why.
It turns out that the friction plates he got are 3.5mm thick. They're supposed to be 3.0mm thick. He must have installed them all, seen them nearly falling out of the clutch (once you take off the pressure plate, the plates are free to fall out), and decided something was wrong (which it was). Only, he must have figured that he installed that dished steel backwards.
In its stock configuration, the CL175 clutch has the dished steel installed like in the picture: pushing the stack of plates further out. With the correct thickness friction plates, this results in a stack that's the right height when you have 5 frictions, 4 flat steels, and the one dished steel.
Well, he must have figured, that doesn't look right, so the dished steel must go the other way. So he installed the dished steel the other way round, which ends up looking like this:
If you look toward the outer end (this is the view of the clutch without the pressure plate installed), you can see that there's a bit of a gap between the end of the sliver clutch basket (the thing the friction plate fingers slot into). This stack is too short, and this is the state I found it in.
When the stack is too short, the pressure plate doesn't exert enough pressure. It doesn't compress the springs enough. Well, with these extra-thick friction plates, when the dished steel goes the other way, the stack is too tall. This means that, although the pressure plate is now exerting about the right amount of pressure (a bit more than is ideal, but that's better than the other way), it's also so tall that when you pull the clutch lever, the pressure plate hits the cover that normally keeps all this stuff inside the engine. See the first picture, and note the recently-added scuff marks about halfway between the bolts and the outer edge of the plate.
Pulling the clutch lever causes that circle in the center of the last picture to push out. This pushes the pressure plate out. This allows a bit of a gap between all the plates, and the clutch is no longer engaged. It only moves a couple of millimeters, but with this too-tall stack, that's enough to scrape metal against metal in a most ungood way.
Anyway! The practical upshot of all this is that this bike is grounded until I can get the right friction plates. A racing friend says he's got a stack of stock parts he'll send me, so hopefully I'll see that in the mail in the next few days. Then I can put it all back together and it should just work. Finally. I hope.
Posted at 19:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Fri, 03 Apr 2009
I had intended to ride the CL175 to work today, but when I turned it on and hit the starter button, I received a pathetic little click noise, and the electrical system died. I poked at it for a second, but realized that I couldn't deal with it just then. I rode the Ninja 250 in, suddenly thankful that the 175 hadn't pulled this trick far from home and late at night.
When I got back tonight, I broke out the multimeter and started checking things. It actually only took about 3 minutes to find the problem: one of the two connections off the battery was heavily corroded, although it looked good from the outside. I cleaned that up, slathered it with dielectric grease, and was good to go.
I decided that my first mission, given how reliable the bike had been so far, would be to Sears, to pick up some tools. I picked out a reasonable set of wrenches, a multi-tip screwdriver (bane of anyone who's ever had to turn a screw down a narrow hole, I can tell you right now), and a pair of pliers. I also grabbed a sparkplug socket, but couldn't find a T-handle driver despite stopping at three different stores. I'll either order or make one.
First mission accomplished, I realized that I was close to a freeway entrance, and the bike had been working very well. It had a bit of a lag around 7-8k RPM, but picked up again after that. Tuning comes later, though. So I stuck in the ear plugs, strapped on the helmet, and turned my tiny mount toward the freeway.
Surprisingly, the little 175 did very well on the freeway. I had no trouble keeping up with traffic, and I realized that my previous diagnosis that the clutch was still slipping was incorrect. That was a nice moment: I could check off "freeway worthy" and "clutch works correctly" at the same time.
I rode from Northgate south to 50th, and turned around. On my southward leg, I noticed that I hit something above 80 MPH indicated (I didn't notice the exact peak), although at that speed I was just barely creeping ahead of traffic, so it was probably more like 70 MPH. There was a bit of steam left, but not much. If I'd had more room, I probably could have squeezed another 5 MPH out of it, but that would be absolutely it.
This is actually quite encouraging, because I don't think the racebike goes any faster, and it's noticeably lighter, with a fresh top end. I'll have to get the GPS on there, and see if I can get a proper top speed rating.
After I got home, I looked at the odometer and was surprised to see that I'd travelled over 20 miles. Of course, the odometer may be just as optimistic as the speedometer is, so it could have been more like 16 or 17 miles.
The bike definitely generated some oil-leaking smells, so I've got some tracking down to do. I noticed a bit of oil under the clutch cover, which has a marginal gasket, and most oddly, a tiny puddle of oil on top of the clutch cover, where it had apparently come from under a screw head. That will bear further investigation.
However, for all that, it was a very encouraging ride. I got some emergency-stop practice in, so I have a better idea how the bike stops (well enough, but after a relatively fierce initial bite, the brakes don't go much further; definitely not as brakeful as the Ninja). I still need to change the rear tire, but it's acceptable for the task, for the moment.
It was nice to finally get a ride on this bike that I've had sitting in the garage for more than a month!
Posted at 21:01 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Thu, 02 Apr 2009
I was preparing to depart for the day a few days ago, and debating my choices. I've been a bit under the weather this week, so I've been motorcycling to work instead of bicycling. The day would be long, including a morning errand, then riding to work, then after work riding up to the theater on Capitol Hill.
I looked between my two choices. On the one hand, the Ninja 250, my trusty "modern" bike. On the other, my new-to-me '73 Honda CL175. Eventually, I decided on the Ninja as being the bike I'd rather see sitting out in the rain (the CL didn't have air filters installed, and I didn't want rainwater trickling down into the engine).
What was weird was the thought that occurred to me once I had reached this decision: "No, I'd better take the big bike."
Ok. The Ninja 250, the girliest of girl's bikes, is now the Big Bike.
Let's review, shall we? Peruse with me my wall of bikes. Down there, in the middle of the page. There are ten motorcycles listed.
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First off (I know, they're in an odd order, I'm not sure what I was thinking), my very first motorcycle, was a 1982 BMW R65 LS. This stunning powerhouse made around 50 HP from the factory, which means when I had it, it was probably making about 45, given age and infirmity. It weighed about 450 lbs. |
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Next up, we have the 1995 BMW K75, which saw me through a surprising number of miles. This bike actually was a bit of a powerhouse, making around 90 HP, but it also weighed more, at nearly 530 lbs, or more like 550 once it had all the sidecases and fairing attached. |
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The next contender was my 1983 BMW R100S, which was actually an R100RT with a funny fairing added. Looks good in that picture, doesn't it? It wasn't quite so delicious by the time I got it rolling out of the freight facility, a journey which I wrote about at the time. The R100 produced around 60 HP, and weighed about 500 lbs. |
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My next motorcycle was also my first new one, a 2002 Moto Guzzi V11 Le Mans. Neat bike, all the character of an old BMW, but brand new and amazingly stiff (a good thing). It made about 90 HP, and weighed in near 560 lbs, and was the largest-displacement bike I've ever owned. |
| We'll skip the Goldwing sidecar rig, since a sidecar and a motorcycle share almost nothing in common from a riding perspective. I will say that this rig weighed around 1000 lbs, though. | |
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My next bike was something of a revelation. I had been wanting a Ninja 250 in a sort of vague way for years. I finally got one, and was impressed -- but not by the power. The Ninja 250 makes about 28 HP, and weighs in at around 350 lbs. (All weights, by the way, are in the fully-fueled, ready-to-ride configuration.) |
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After that, I went a little crazy, and decided that this inline-4, 750cc bike would be a great choice. The 2005 Kawasaki Z750s. My second new bike, it was probably my least-wise choice. It was sold before I'd had it a year. It produced around 84 HP, and tipped the scales at about 460 lbs. |
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This bike, the 2006 Ninja 250, is the first bike from this list which I still own. In fact, this is the bike about which I thought, "No, I should take the big bike." This little 350 lb, 28 HP pipsqueak has become the "big bike." Lightest, lowest-power bike I'd ever owned, up until... |
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The 1973 Honda CL175. (I'm skipping the first CL175, since that's a race bike, and it doesn't really count in this tally.) This pavement pounder was purchased about a month ago, and given the compression, I'd guess it's making around... oh, call it 10 HP. With some tuning and timing and adjusting, I can probably get it up to 11 or 12. Ride-ready weight? In the neighborhood of 275 lbs. |
Yes, when you get right down to it, size really is a matter of perspective. The Ninja 250, a bike which 99.9% of US motorcycle riders would consider a little tiny girl's bike, is now my "big bike." And ya know what? I really like it that way.
Posted at 22:43 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Tue, 31 Mar 2009
I dropped my new G10 in the mail today for an exchange -- see the previous entry for the dead pixel picture.
Having had a chance to work with the camera for a bit, I have some more-refined opinions on it. The first issue I came up against was that ridiculous viewfinder. It only shows a portion of the full frame; opinion varies between 77% and 88% depending on who you ask. Unfortunately, it suffers from sufficient parallax that it's only centered on the frame for fairly long shots (over about 20 feet away). This is always a problem with rangefinder cameras, but it seems pretty bad on this camera.
I was unable, at first, to get the diopter adjusted correctly on the viewfinder. I'm used to the adjustment being somewhere in the middle of the range, but on this camera, it was so near one end that I was convinced I was doing something wrong. The result of all this is that the viewfinder is pretty much useless for composing a picture without post-process cropping.
This means that in order to actually use the camera, you have to turn on the LCD screen. I have no aesthetic problem with this, but it's a serious power suck. Depending on who you believe, the battery's good for 250-400 shots with the LCD on, or 1000 with it off. In truth, the LCD-on battery life needs to be measured in hours, not shots, since it's the constant adjustment of aperture, focus, and video processing that really kills the battery. When the screen's off, the camera only "wakes up" to take a picture, whereas when the screen's on, it's constantly taking pictures, and just coincidentally records the one it happens to see when you hit the button.
The shutter release button, as I mentioned previously, was pretty mushy. On my other Canon cameras (this is my fourth), there was an obvious detent at the half-shutter position. Not so on this camera. There is a detent, but it was hard to feel, and more than once I accidentally tripped the shutter when I meant to set the focus and exposure. I was particularly disappointed by this, since this is supposedly a high-end camera. Hopefully the next one feels better.
My impression, despite what I just wrote, was overall positive. I found the camera to be nice to hold, and the controls to be fairly intuitive. I was beside myself with excitement when I discovered that finally, finally there's a way to create a new folder without resetting the image number. Of course, you can't include that menu item on the otherwise clever My Menu, so you still have to go digging for it. This is a serious omission, considering that I want to hit that checkbox almost every time I pick up the camera for the day.
I was impressed with the low-light performance. All the reviews go on and on about how crappy the noise is on high ISO shots, so I was really prepared for the worst. Imagine my delight when, in actual dark conditions inside a theater, the camera took some great pictures without resorting to high ISO! Image stabilization is your friend.
The LCD, once you turn it on, is incredibly clear and bright. It's even got an antireflective coating on it, something that not even my SLR has. As someone else griped, the picture looks better on the camera's screen than it ever does anywhere else. Of course, that same reviewer was also poo-pooing RAW mode, so I frankly distrust his opinions about quality (but he's right, pictures that look gorgeous on the camera lose something on the big computer screen).
I wish the camera wasn't quite so big. I made it worse by getting a large case for it, since I intend to carry it everywhere. I couldn't find a case that was sufficiently padded, capable of carrying a spare battery (the batteries are huge, like three dominoes stacked together compared to the previous single-domino sized battery), and still small. I may end up making one out of neoprene. The case I have makes the whole thing a bit too big to be practical in my shoulder bag.
Like I said, overall I'm pleased with it, and am looking forward to the replacement. If it solves the shutter button mushiness in particular, that will make me very happy. If not, I'll figure out how to live with it, but what a disappointment from an otherwise excellent camera.
Posted at 16:55 permanent link category: /misc
Sun, 29 Mar 2009
It finally looks like a bike again
I spent most of today out in the garage, working on the CL175. It's been sitting, patiently awaiting parts and free time, for over a week now. The parts arrived last week (and I was able to sneak away from my theatrical duties long enough on Saturday to retrieve them), and today, finally, I wasn't under pressure to get anything done or meet any deadlines.
Wrenching time.
I think I made a much bigger deal out of the steering bearings than I really needed to. I chilled the steering stem/lower clamp overnight in the freezer, along with two of the bearing races. The heat gun came out and warmed up the lower bearing, so that it would expand a bit. The freezing temperature shrunk the stem a little bit, and when I dropped the hot bearing onto the cold stem, it dropped perfectly into place. No hammering required. Beautiful!
The shells went into the frame using a similar method, and within an hour I had the stem and bearings re-assembled and (mostly) happy. And indeed, most of that hour was spent fretting over the pieces, checking and double-checking that I was doing things in the right order, with the right parts, in the right orientation. The nature of the beast is that if you do it the wrong way around, you basically have to destroy the part to remove it, and this was a $50 set of bearings. Don't want to blow that kind of cash on rushing.
The rest of the day was spent slowly re-assembling the rest of the bike. I got new handlebars, but that's a project for another day. I cleaned up the fork tubes (one of which was pretty heavily rusted, but fortunately clean where it needs to be clean for the slider to work right), and got them reinstalled. Back went the headlight and turn signals. Back on went the handlebar, and it finally started to look like a motorcycle again, instead of some kind of modern-art-with-engine.
As long as I had the front wheel off, I pulled off the crusty old front tire, and levered on the shiny new one, a process which took me much less time this time around than it has in the past. Even so I had to re-do it a couple of times until I got everything together in the right order. The new tube had a pesky support washer on the valve stem that liked to drop off and into the tire at inopportune moments.
By the time evening rolled around, not only did it look like a motorcycle again, but I actually felt confident enough to try riding it. I pulled it out to the shoulder in front of my house and took a couple of test runs in first gear. The steering was beautiful, but the clutch certainly didn't feel like it was at full strength.
I pulled on the riding clothes, and took it out for a proper spin. The clutch was (and is) indeed a bit weak. I think now that maybe the 1973 model year got a very slightly different set of clutch parts, resulting in new clutch springs for "a CL175" being a bit too short. Fortunately, I have an excellent plan to turn some spacers on the lathe to solve that problem, although I would have been perfectly happy to not have to open up that engine cover again: it means draining the engine oil yet again, which is getting tiresome, and resulting in distressing quantities of oil-soaked cat litter on the ground.
One of the problems revealed by the test ride was that the steering bearing wasn't adjusted properly, and that was my final task of the evening. It required a depressing number of iterations to get everything right, although it included one hilarious moment where I pulled off the adjuster nut, not quite thinking straight, and the entire front end dropped out of the frame. I was glad I wasn't filming that moment, but it's funny in hindsight.
The final tally for the day is one new set of steering bearings (correctly adjusted), one new tire, and a basically-functional bike. I just have to create and install those spacers on the clutch springs, and it'll be ready to go ride around. That's how I'll discover whatever's really wrong with the bike...
Posted at 22:33 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Fri, 27 Mar 2009
I was examining a picture I took yesterday, of some cherry blossoms. I had taken it with the new camera, and was actually using it as a bit of a manual-focus test, since the camera insisted on focusing near the top of the tree instead of on the blooms that were in the foreground -- a fault I can excuse, since there's a manual option, and I assume the sky through the branches was a way more attractive focus target.
Anyway, as I was looking over this picture, my eye was caught by this weird flaw in the image:
The inset is a 100% crop as highlighted
I looked at a few others, and sure enough, it was there, too. I took a picture with the settings all cranked around so the whole frame was black, and it was there too (so not a flaw in the lens). I guess I have a dead pixel.
The question now is whether that flaw is worth exchanging the camera or not. As you can see, it's invisible when the image is shrunk down to something I'd use on a website, so it's really only something I'd be aware of if using the full-res picture. Still.
UPDATE: I decided to send it back, we'll see if the next one arrives without dead pixels. I also realized that I'd quite like to see if a different unit will have a shutter button that's not quite so mushy. Although that was one of those flaws I was willing to live with, I'd rather not, given this extra problem.
Posted at 12:53 permanent link category: /misc
Mon, 23 Mar 2009
I just received my new toy: a Canon G10. It's either a porky compact camera, or a slim SLR replacement, depending on who you choose to believe. Reviews are copious and mixed, although generally very positive. The stupidest thing? 14.7 megapixels. Yes, this camera has almost 50% more resolution than my SLR does. That's just goofy.
Anyway, of course the first thing I did was start snapping random pictures, and I thought I'd post one here in all its terrifying glory:
Click for the Ludicrous Size (3.2 MB) image
My immediate take on it, as a replacement for my venerable Canon S410, is that it's nowhere near the same class, and so it's hard to compare. It's much bigger and heavier, but it also has clever things like an image-stabilized lens, and, of course, more than 3x the resolution. But the main thing, the aspect that really nailed it for me, is that it includes full manual control. If I want to shoot at 1/200th of a second, and only 1/200th, I can. If I need to keep the lens wide open at f2.8, I can. It's an excellent replacement in almost every way. Pity it's so (relatively) big, though.
I will almost certainly have refined opinions after I get some time to play with it. Oh, but I already have my first gripe: the shutter release has a very mushy feel about it, making the half-press point hard to find. The S410 beats it hands-down on that count, which is pretty weird considering how much higher-spec the G10 is supposed to be.
Posted at 11:52 permanent link category: /gadgets
Thu, 19 Mar 2009
One of the things I'm doing for the upcoming OCTV A-Team show at Open Circle is re-recording the opening voiceover. Since this is an unusual activity (the first time I've actually used the little home studio I set up in the basement), I figured I'd take a commemorative photograph.
Ian tries to look "surprised by the photographer" at the camera.
Posted at 09:03 permanent link category: /theater
Wed, 18 Mar 2009
I've reached that point in fixing up the new CL175 where I didn't properly anticipate which parts I'd need, and so for each little operation that requires something I don't have, I now get to call up the dealership and order it.
The conversation inevitably ends with, "Ok, that should be here in 5 to 7 business days." Thus, what would have been a two-hour operation turns into a week-plus-long operation. I could order these parts online, but I've always seen about a two-week wait on those parts, so it's not really an improvement. Plus, although the parts are cheaper online ($3.70 vs. $5.20), there's also the $6 shipping fee.
Fortunately, the parts I'm now waiting on ($5 worth of dust seal and a weird-size washer) don't necessarily prevent me from doing other work, so I'm not completely stuck. Still, it's frustrating to be part-way through a task, and then realize that you're missing a part, and that this necessitates taking a week-long break to finish it.
Posted at 10:25 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Mon, 16 Mar 2009
I have often fantasized about a new outlet for democracy: nailing bad drivers.
I was pondering this subject today as I was walking home, after I had to precipitously reverse course to avoid being hit in a crosswalk, by the driver of a Kvichak Marine truck who had eyes for other vehicular traffic, but not pedestrians. The way it would work is like this: every driver, biker, motorcyclist and pedestrian would get two things. One would be a transponder, like an RFID chip or something. The other thing would be their tag gun.
The transponder identifies each road user uniquely. The tag gun reads the transponder from up to about 500 feet away (note that this is all in the realm of fantasy, there are many practical problems, which I'll get to). When a driver/biker/ped pisses you off, you aim your tag gun at the offender, and hit the button. Ideally, it would have some interface to indicate what the offense was, but even a generic "negative brownie points" system would be useful. The first shot is the only one that counts, so you can "shoot" the offender multiple times without skewing the system.
The tag gun would upload its hits on a regular basis, possibly via cell networks, or by plugging into your computer at night.
As a road user accumulates demerits -- and there would have to be some kind of hard-won compromise on how many points per day/week/month constitutes "enough" -- the police would drop a friendly "you're being a jerk" ticket in the mail for you. The fine would have to be carefully compromised too, but I'm thinking something like $50. Get enough jerk tickets over the course of a quarter/year, and you graduate to bigger and bigger fines per ticket.
The beauty of this (highly theoretical) system is that it is, pure and simple, democracy. The threshold would be set high enough that some sociopath tagging everyone they see can't result in a ticket, but if you're really driving/riding/walking like a jerk, you'll be called on it. It will be a sufficiently anonymous system that there's no real chance of retribution. It would be a novel way of enacting the saying that "an armed society is a polite society." If your driving is offensive, you get fined, whether there are police around or not.
Of course, there are many excellent reasons this system would never work (which is why I've only dreamed about it, not ever considered doing anything with the idea): technically, RFID only works at relatively short ranges (up to a couple dozen feet, I think); the act of tagging someone, if at all obvious, could spur the tagee to acts of road rage; the ability to selectively target do-badders at any distance would be poor, so you'd end up tagging a whole cluster of road users half the time (although the threshold would solve that to some extent). There's also the problem of getting such a system enacted into law. I'm sure there are some extremely powerful lobbies which would oppose it.
It also suffers from some frustrating limitations on the tagger side. I'd want to be able, for instance, to tag people at different levels: drunk drivers get the heftiest tag, while people who fail to use their turn signals, or jay-walkers (assuming I cared about jay-walking) get a relatively weak tag. It would be an expensive system to roll out, since you'd have to set up each citizen with both transponder and tag gun. Both those items together, assuming massive economies of scale, would probably set back the government at least $100, for a total cost in the billions before you even consider the infrastructure or legislative requirements. If such a system were implemented in one locality only, it would be nearly useless except as a way to unfairly target local residents.
Such a system also offers breathtaking sociological implications. Assuming that the transponder has to be integrated into the vehicle, this would not only allow differentiation between the vehicle and the driver, but it would also enable both speedy recovery of stolen vehicles, and Dick-Cheney-wet-dream levels of movement monitoring. It also raises the issue of licensing (even in a very limited way) bicycles and pedestrians, which opens the door to another huge can of worms.
So, like so many clever ideas, although it has some neat primary effects, it wouldn't be worth the secondary effects. I still fantasize about tagging bad drivers when I encounter them, though.
Posted at 13:51 permanent link category: /misc
Thu, 12 Mar 2009
Once again, Ms. Ellie McKay makes my day for strange yet journal-worthy portraits:
That's from the Meet and Greet we had last night for Love's Tangled Web, the next show I'm working on (this time as light designer). She seemed very happy with the Party Mints.
Posted at 13:24 permanent link category: /theater
I realized a few days ago that the CL175 I have may actually be the perfect beginner bike.
It's lightweight, at about 300 lbs in street trim. It is not dangerously powerful, while still having enough power to keep up with (and surpass) traffic. It develops its power low down in the RPM range, which makes it very friendly, particularly for new riders who might be put off by having to rev the engine way up. The seat height is quite low, and the riding position is neutral. The brakes are effective enough without being too powerful.
What a pity, then, that the only way to get one is to troll classified ads for months at a time, and even when you find a gem, it still needs some very daunting work.
Posted at 13:21 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Tue, 10 Mar 2009
Ever since I sold the sidecar rig, I've been pondering whether I wanted to get another motorcycle or not. One of the fatal flaws of the sidecar rig was that it was freakin' enormous -- so big that I couldn't fit it into the garage with all the other stuff that lives in there. But another motorcycle, well, that'd fit with just a bit of clean-up.
I had been eyeing Suzuki SV650s for a while (years, in fact), and almost decided to get one. But then I found out that Suzuki is sort of discontinuing them, only making the model with the fairing, which I don't like as much. I looked around for one for a while, but eventually gave up when I got too close: I realized that although the SV650 is a cool bike, I'm just not willing to give up the weirdo cachet that comes with riding a Ninja 250.
Of course, one of the things I really like about the 250 (which ranges from "very small" to "a girl's bike" to "lame" depending on which mainstream motorcyclist you ask about it) is its very smallness. With that smallness comes adequate power, and pretty good gas mileage. There's only one motorcycle I've ridden which gets better gas mileage, though: my Honda CL175, now dressed for track duty (and thus thoroughly illegal for road use).
I was looking around for another Honda 175 at the same time I was looking for an SV. I found a few, but they were invariably in terrible shape (being 35+ years old, and now viewed as ridiculously small, and usually treated as being insignificant). I looked at one that was "mostly there," partially disassembled, sitting out in the rain. Pass. I found one that was almost, but not quite, running (but also very corroded and cruddy looking). Pass. I finally found one that looked fantastic, but the seller was asking way too much for it. Pass.
Only that last one, I had offered to buy it for $1000 (he was asking $1400, so it was a long-shot, since people are rarely willing to accept that they've priced something way too high, no matter what it's actually worth). The guy came back asking for $1200, which was just too much for me, and I said no. I thought that was it, until I got an email about a week later saying he'd take $1000.
We signed the papers, and handed over the bits a week ago. I now have a 1973 Honda CL175, in surprisingly good shape.
Of course, it wasn't all smiles and giggles. The seller neglected to inform me that by dropping that last $200, he'd also be withholding part of the package, the new old stock original Honda service manual (which had made my eyes light up, and was part of the reason I ever made the offer in the first place). I had to find that out days after we'd finished. He actually had the gall to offer to sell it to me for $30. Once I outlined the deal from my perspective ("Are you seriously telling me that now that we've signed and traded money and bike, you're changing the deal?"), he relented.
The bike itself, although in very good shape, has a few very pressing problems. I was able, for instance, to drive it home (a story in its own right, although one that would mostly consist of me saying, "And then I had another terrifying moment, but it went ok").
However, the list of problems was daunting, as far as getting the bike home safely: the electrical system turned out to be missing a ground connection, which meant that the headlight and taillight were roughly as bright as a single votive candle; the steering head bearings have a powerful detent at center, which means that steering force is uneven -- this is a frightening thing to have on a two-wheeled vehicle, where steering equals balance; the clutch was assembled wrong, or has the wrong springs, or something, so that anything over about 1/3 throttle causes it to slip. I solved the electrical problem (it took me over a day of working on it before the blindingly obvious problem made itself known to me), and now have parts in hand to fix the steering and clutch.
One of the things I wanted to do with this bike was to get it registered as a collector vehicle, and to do that like I wanted, I needed a vintage plate. I found one via one of my racing friends, who had a small collection. My bike is now registered with a 1973 era licence plate, and never needs to be renewed. It's a cool deal.
The process of getting that plate registered was, however, a bit bizarre. I want to call it Kafka-esqe, except that I stood in one spot the whole time, and the licensing agent did all the hemming and hawing.
I went up to the nearest licensing subagent to my house, and was seen immediately. After I'd explained what I wanted to do (title transfer, registration, and collector vehicle status), there ensued the most unbelievable display of ineptitude I've ever seen. The person behind the counter read the instructions, and re-read them. She explained to me (several times over) that she'd never done this before. She consulted with her manager, and a coworker (several times over). She got up and consulted instructions elsewhere in the office, coming back with a photocopy of the sheet in question. She explained to her manager that she still had pneumonia, "but I'm not contagious." The computer system confused her (to be fair, it's one of the awful state systems that would confuse anyone, based on some ancient VAX machine in the basement of a dusty office building in Olympia, accessed via serial lines). She entered the data wrong (several times over) despite following her own careful instructions, calling out each step as she went.
When it was all over, I'd spent nearly an hour standing there, having completed a transaction that really should have taken about 15 minutes. I wasn't annoyed exactly, as much as I was completely amazed. In the middle of all this, she'd actually looked up at me with something of a winking expression on her face, and said, "and I've been here for 30 years," implying that she really knew her job well. I didn't say anything, just nodded and smiled. I did a lot of that: nod and smile.
And thus, the story of the new CL175 so far. We'll see what kind of travail is involved in replacing the bearings, and I'm intensely curious to see what the previous owner (who said this was his first bike, and the first one he'd worked on) did to the clutch. Once I have those two problems conquered, the bike will actually be somewhat rideable. I still have tires coming in to replace the ancient rubber that graces the wheels now, but that's less urgent, and less daunting, since I've done it before. (I've done the steering bearings on a Ninja 250, and the clutch on a CL175, too, but who knows what kind of excitement will be revealed once I get the cover open...)
Posted at 13:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Tue, 24 Feb 2009
The ride was essentially uneventful. I got one verbal compliment on the lights, one thumbs-up from a little kid, and otherwise very little reaction. Of course, I can't know what people in most of the cars were thinking, but hopefully I was more visible to them.
I noticed from some more-distant observations that the light really is visible nearly 360° around the bike. As long as something wasn't blocking my sight line (such as a wheel, fork, frame, etc.), I could see the lights. When they spin around the wheel, they're pretty eye-catching.
I got up into the low 20 mph range, and didn't notice the imbalance in the wheel. However, in the spirit of fixing that which ain't broke, I decided to make three changes. The first change was to move the light as far towards the rim as I could and still have one of the zipties capture two crossed spokes. This prevents the light from sliding outward at higher speeds. Having the light further out increases its sweep speed, making the patterns persistent at lower speeds-over-ground.
The second change was to safety-wire one of the attachments. This makes the light visibly harder to steal, which will hopefully be enough deterrent for those times the bike gets parked outside. Having all the racebike gear turned out to be pretty handy -- MonkeyLectric recommended using a heavy paperclip, which would have been pretty annoying to install. The safety wire is hardly the last word in security, and anyone with diagonal cutters (such as anyone with a multitool, really) could have it off in a minute or less.
The final change was the real "fixin' what ain't broke" choice: I added counterweights to the wheel. It ended up needing 49g of lead opposite the light to get it almost in balance. The wheel is still slightly heavy on the Monkey Light side, but my front wheel is now considerably closer to being balanced than it's ever been before.
Of course, the downside to this is that people pay good money to lose less than 49g off a front wheel. Adding that much seems a bit ludicrous, but I'm curious to try it out. Might make riding more pleasant. Might make riding more work (this is almost certainly the case), but hopefully not by too much. It's worth a try.
Check back, I have pictures to add, but they have to wait while I perform some vital computer maintenance.
Posted at 20:46 permanent link category: /bicycle
MonkeyLectric Monkey Light -- initial impressions
I just received my Monkey Light, and eagerly tore open the packaging. I ordered it in the Eco Packaging, which uses less material that I'm just going to throw away anyway -- huge kudos to MonkeyLectric for making this an option! It came in a ziplock bag with some paper crumpled up as padding.
The first impression was pretty favorable. The unit itself feels solid, and appears to be well-built. The "clear hard coat" over the LEDs was a bit unevenly applied, but appeared to have full coverage. Not a complaint, just an observation.
It comes with two photocopied sheets, one with installation instructions and illustrations (more illustrations than instructions, really) that made it pretty obvious how to install. The second sheet contained a lot of the copy that's available on the website, plus the all-important instructions on what the various buttons do.
I didn't spend much time delving into the menus, since they basically seem to limit the lights to less options. I don't really care about that yet. I was interested to note that the power button cycles from off to "efficiency mode" to "high power." This works well for me, since I'll be running it in efficiency mode (which is about 2/3 the visual intensity of high power) most of the time.
Unfortunately, it didn't appear to then be a single-click to power off, instead requiring a double-click through high power mode before it shuts off. This is typical of bicycle lighting products, but I figured with the obvious brains available inside the Monkey Light, they could have engaged a 5 or 10 second timer so that whichever mode you're in, the next click on the power button turns it off. A minor upgrade (or option to include) for the next version, perhaps.
Waving the device back and forth in front of my eyes wasn't satisfying (although I did see the patterns), so I ran down and installed the thing on my bike.
Installation is about as straightforward as you can imagine. Three zipties, three rubber pads, and it's done. I debated a bit on the placement, eventually opting for shoving the light almost down to the hub. The trade-off is that it won't move as fast, so the patterns won't look quite as cool as if it were out at the rim, but it also won't unbalance the wheel quite as badly.
Some quick initial tests suggest that the current placement isn't optimal, but I take too many hills too fast to risk the severe unbalance that would come from having it further out. I'll probably relocate it towards the rim once I get home, and can add some counterbalancing weight on the far side of the wheel. Even with its current placement, the bike was wobbling on the stand pretty severely at 15 mph indicated. This makes sense -- the wheel is now dozens of grams out of balance, if not over a hundred.
I'm pleased with the light, and at least based on initial impressions, would recommend it to anyone who's interested in increasing their bike's visibility. I'll report back after it's been through some rain, and after I get it mounted farther out on the wheel.
Posted at 11:23 permanent link category: /bicycle
Mon, 23 Feb 2009
I was torturing friends on irc with the garlic bread I just made. Then I realized, hey, why not torture people on my journal, too!?
Garlic bread
The recipe (although I didn't measure so this is only approximate):
- 1/2 cube butter, warmed and softened
- 2 large cloves garlic, crushed
- about 1 tsp dried oregano
- about 1 tsp dried thyme
- about 1 tsp dried basil
- about 1/2 tsp paprika
- about 1/2 tsp black pepper, fresh ground
- a few drops hot chili oil
- Sourdough bread
Pre-heat oven to 400° F. Mix the butter and spices together until well blended. Spread butter mix on thick-cut slices of bread, as heavy as you like (more tastes better, but obviously will be higher fat). Place bread on a cookie sheet or tin foil for softer bread, or a rack for crisper bread. Bake at 400° F for about 8 minutes, check in frequently and pull the bread once it's bubbling and/or golden brown. Broil for 30-60 seconds to get a crispy top layer, but be vigilant not to burn the bread!
Ready to serve after cooling off for a minute or so. Easily multiplied for larger quantities. The photo above was taken having used about 1/8 of the mixture per slice.
Posted at 18:50 permanent link category: /misc
Fri, 20 Feb 2009
To the woman in the white SUV at 105th and Dayton
When you are turning left, you are expected to yield to oncoming traffic, whether that traffic is propelled by gasoline, electricity, or human power, such as a bicycle.
If that traffic honks its horn at you because you are turning directly in its path, the appropriate response is not to stick your tongue out. The appropriate response is to stop and realize that you just commited a traffic infraction that can result in death, even if it's not your precious life on the line.
Seriously. Sticking your tongue out? Who the fuck approved these people for driver's licenses?
Posted at 18:51 permanent link category: /bicycle
Wed, 18 Feb 2009
I rode out to Monroe tonight, to look at a CB350 someone was selling out there. He was very nice, and pleasingly literate (it seems sometimes that Craigslist sellers and buyers acquire just enough of letters to post their ad), and the bike was in reasonable but not great shape. It wasn't running, and the rear brake was permanently engaged, and there was plenty of corrosion everywhere (not enough to really freak me out, but enough to make me inwardly groan about how much cleaning it'd require).
The bike was, in short, worth roughly what I'd thought about offering him, or $600-700. He was asking $900, which is just too much for a non-running bike of this type and vintage.
In any case, I took a ton of pictures of everything I could think of, thanked him, and aimed the Ninja homewards. The ride back was cold, but the night sky was clear, and the heated vest was doing its job, and kept me comfortable.
I found my thoughts wandering over the bike I'd just looked at. It was obviously in need of some work to even get running: rear brake needed some kind of attention, carbs probably needed help, there was a loose connection somewhere in the wiring (the seller said it was probably the kill switch that was wonky, but also mentioned something about a wire further down the chain). It had what looked like vintage early 70s tires, which meant that before I could even think about riding it more than a "Yay I got it running" victory lap around the block, it'd need new tires and tubes. The gas cap didn't latch shut, missing a small steel pin necessary for the latch to work. The title, I was horrified to see, had been signed over to no one in 2005, which meant the 15 day transfer period (and its associated penalties) had expired at least 3 years ago.
In short, it was weeks from being rideable, depending on how fast new parts arrived. It was probably months from being in reasonably good condition, and in those months, I would start racing, design a show, and have who knows what else come up to consume my free time.
As I pondered these things, and thought back to how heavy the 350 felt in my hands (stuck brake aside), I realized that a 70s 350 is just more bike than I want. I really like the feel of the 175 that I race, and I liked it on the street -- no need for the bulk and power of a 350.
Then, I realized, buzzing happily along on my Ninja 250, I ride so little anymore that getting any other bike is pretty much overkill. I love the Ninja, to the point that replacing it with an SV650 left me feeling uncomfortable. Why did I want to supplement it with a cranky old vintage bike? Seeing all that corrosion, and all the work that would need to go into the 350 (and would need to go into any reasonably priced 175, too), I just couldn't imagine wanting to do that.
It's fine for the race bike. I've conquered the big problems, it's all refinement now. The thought of starting over again was just daunting.
Maybe, thought I to myself, what I really need... is no bike at all.
A radical thought. Perhaps what I already have is exactly what I should have.
Posted at 21:27 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Sun, 15 Feb 2009
I helped tech the Shoshinz show at the Jewel Box theater in Belltown last night and tonight. It was a great deal of fun, and I'm looking forward to working with them again. The shows were well attended, and the audiences seemed to get it.
But the real reason I'm posting this? I'm kinda famous now. That's a post on their blog, which I cannot read, but it does feature a picture of me, and the text "AWESOME" (I'll ignore that they went to see "Awesome" that night as well, and assume they're talking about me).
Yay for fame!
Posted at 02:12 permanent link category: /theater
Mon, 09 Feb 2009
Last Wednesday, a bicyclist was killed in Ballard. It was morning commute time, just before 9 am, and he was blitzing down a hill toward the center of Ballard. There's been some controversy over exactly what happened, but that's not really what I want to talk about.
The general concensus, regardless of the details, is that the bicyclist was coming down the hill with some reasonable speed. A van pulled into traffic in such a way that the bicyclist was unable to avoid hitting it. For whatever reason, whether intentional or not, the bicyclist "laid 'er down," or fell off the bike. He collided with the van, and ended up under its rear tire, sustaining injuries that would leave him dead within a few hours.
The situation he found himself in was essentially an impossible one, for a couple of reasons. He was by all accounts going pretty fast. He moved in such a way that would have been safe if the van had pulled into the flow of traffic instead of turning across it. By the time he realized the van was turning instead of joining traffic, he was too close to affect any changes that could have saved him.
The driver of the van, according to accounts, was pulling out pretty quickly, trying to get the U-turn in before a wave of oncoming traffic arrived. In her haste, the driver almost certainly didn't see the bicylist coming down the hill, and the rest is history.
There were a series of mistakes made in this situation, and that's what I'm really writing about. I feel like the driver's mistake was pretty obvious, and not worth discussing (there's already a lot of acknowledgement that bicycles are hard to see). The bicyclist's mistakes, on the other hand, are not normally discussed, and this will eventually kill more riders.
The first mistake the bicyclist made (none of these are necessarily more or less important, so I'm starting at random) is practically built-in to a bicycle rider: "Must preserve speed." Riding a bicycle is hard work. Unlike in a powered vehicle, hitting the brakes is the option of last resort for most bikers, because it takes so much work to get going again. In fact, it's not that bad, but that's the mental attitude that develops. I suffer from this myself.
This attitude leads to a lot of the behavior that non-bikers find offensive: swerving through traffic, blowing stop signs and lights, etc. If you don't slow down, you don't have to speed up again. It also means that if a car pulls into your lane, it makes a lot of sense to swerve out of their way rather than slow down.
The next mistake the bicyclist made was that he assumed how the van would behave. Most likely, he saw the van pulling out, and thought, "This guy's going to join traffic southbound, so I'll swing wide of him on the left." If the van had behaved as predicted, this would have been a safe if somewhat obnoxious maneuver. However, the van didn't do what the rider had predicted, and started tracing a U-turn, so that it would be headed up the hill, to the north.
The final mistake was that the bicyclist may not have understood how his bike worked. I don't know for sure, but many bicyclists I have met suffer from this problem. They don't understand emergency stops. I'm not saying anyone doesn't know how to use their brakes. I'm not saying they don't understand how to stop the bike. I'm saying that they've never practiced an emergency stop.
This is absolutely standard practice in the motorcycling world. New riders are taught to practice emergency stops, if they go through any of the training programs available to them. Get thee into a parking lot, goes the wisdom, and practice running up to 15-20 mph and then stopping as fast as you can. As a motorcyclist, I do this myself, at least once a year, and am amazed every time at how much grip that front tire has.
Yet, for bicyclists, there is no such encouragement. A bicycle, I think the common wisdom must go, is a low-speed recreational vehicle. It requires no skill to stop, because a bicyclist will never pass about 12 mph. Likewise, once you've mastered balancing a bike (which is actually mastering countersteering -- if you can stand upright, you've already mastered balance), no thought is given to riding, beyond some simplistic rules: don't ride in traffic; wear a helmet; etc.
One dead cyclist from Ballard has recently proven that this is not the case. He was going about as fast as a 50cc scooter can go, and that requires a license (this is definitely not a screed in favor of licensing bicyclists, I'm just pointing that fact out). He was going as fast as (possibly faster than) my average speed, when I'm riding a motorcycle. He was going fast enough that training and skill were required.
What can we learn from all this? What is the lesson? I think there are a few.
First and foremost, if you ride a bicycle, and ever get over that mythical 12 mph limit, you need to do some training in emergency stops. Get your bike out into a parking lot. Wear long sleeves and long pants, wear your helmet and your gloves. If you have pads for knees and elbows you might want them, too -- braking is dangerous, and you might as well practice with as much safety as possible. Ride it up to a decent speed: 15 mph or so. Pick a mark, and when you hit that mark, start braking as hard as you think you safely can, with both brakes. Keep your eyes up, not fixed on the ground (this is hard, but will help you not fall over when you come to a stop, among other things).
If you're like me (I tried this exercise this weekend), you'll lock up the rear tire -- this is fine, the way to deal with a locked rear tire is to leave it locked and come to a complete stop. It's not as efficient at slowing you down as a rolling rear tire is, but that's not a big deal, and definitely not something to worry about at first. (If you try to release a locked rear tire in a real panic braking situation, it's possible to flip yourself off the bike due to the tire fishtailing, so just ride it to a stop every time.)
Practice your stops as many times as you can stand. Start with relatively mellow stops and work up the braking pressure. I got to the point where my fingers were unwilling to squeeze the front brake any harder, and the rear brake was consistently locked. Based on my experience, I am probably going to look for a 203mm front brake disc to get more leverage out front.
The next exercise is more mental, and you can practice when you're riding. I think of it as the "What if?" game, and I play it on the bicycle, on a motorcycle, or in a car. The way it works (you're probably way ahead of me, but I'll sketch it out) is that you look at a potential threat, such as a car waiting to cross your path at an intersection, and think, "What would I do if..." and make up a scenario. What if that car darted across your path right now? What if that car on the shoulder pulled a U-turn from the curb? What if that bus didn't see you were passing, and started to pull out?
When you start thinking in these terms, you will start riding more defensively. Given that in 100% of collisions, you'll go squish while the car driver will wonder what that thump was, it's in your best interests to ride defensively. This defensive thinking must include the option, "I would slow down as fast as possible." If you fall into the "preserving momentum" trap, you're just as doomed as the bicyclist in Ballard.
If you ride in traffic, you need to treat yourself exactly as you would if you were driving a powered vehicle. When you start ignoring the rules of traffic (not the laws, I'm talking about how people expect everyone around them to behave), you become unpredictable. Bicyclists are already at a tremendous disadvangage in almost every way: underpowered, nearly invisible, completely vulnerable. Anything you do to increase your disadvantages (such as behaving unpredictably) has the effect of multiplying them, not just adding to them.
If you only take one thing away from this article, practice emergency stops. You can do it anywhere (check for anyone behind you first), and even a little bit of practice could save your bacon when confronted with a real emergency. You'll know how fast you can stop, your fingers will know how to behave on the brake levers, and you won't be surprised at what happens (for instance, the rear wheel locking up). This is practice that can save your life.
(Update: I just ordered a 203mm disc and new caliper mount from Price Point -- total charge: $37. I forgot upgrading disc size was both easy and comparatively cheap.)
Posted at 02:53 permanent link category: /bicycle
Tue, 03 Feb 2009
If you're a Consumer Reports online subscriber, they just released a series of motorcycle and scooter tests, including the Ninja 250. This is apparently the first time they've tested two-wheelers since 1981. Interesting move, and (thankfully) their advice is very practical, and coincides nicely with advice I'd give to new riders. So it's nice to know they're on the right track, but it's also nice to know I'm on the right track.
Posted at 11:14 permanent link category: /motorcycle
More stories from the front lines
This last saturday, I decided to try stopping in to Aurora Suzuki, to see if they had any SV650s I could ogle. I headed out in the late afternoon, and when I got there the shop was mostly empty of customers.
I wandered (well, limped) around a little bit, checking to see if they had any of the padded shorts I've been looking for as proof against future bicycle spills (they've got energy-absorbing padding on the hips, tailbone and quads, which would have made my recent bicycle crash a much less painful event). No luck there, so I wandered (limped) back to where I'd spotted two SV650S bikes. I'm not really interested in the S version, which has a little fairing, and (most importantly) a more sporty/uncomfortable seating position.
I was looking over one of the S's, answering some basic questions I'd had (such as: where's the oil filter, and what type is it? how do they route the exhaust pipes? what does the seat actually feel like?), when one of the salesmen wandered over. He looked to be a decade or two older than me, and looked like a fairly sensible, down-to-earth kind of guy.
Suzuki Sales Guy: Any questions I can answer for you?
me: No, thanks, I'm just looking really. Oh, actually, yeah, do you have any non-S model SV650s?
SSG: Nope, sorry, this is all we have left. I think production is over. They're being replaced with the Gladius.
He handed over a brochure which showed a nearly useless shot of a motorcycle leaned over, away from the camera, and some specs, the only one of which stood out to me was the noticeably higher weight.
me: Oh, ok, thanks.
SSG: Hey, so what are you riding?
me: (with a certain amount of dread, knowing what comes next) A Ninja 250.
SSG: (not obviously smirking) Oh yeah?
me: Yeah, although I've been riding for a while. I think this is my ninth motorcycle. Hey, do either of these SV650s here have ABS?
SSG: No, no, the ABS option wasn't very popular. You know, experienced riders don't really want ABS.
This was news to me -- I wanted ABS. The ability to stop without flinching because you're worried about traction sounds like a godsend to me.
me: Really? Well, I guess I'd think they're wrong, but that's a personal opinion, I won't press it on anyone else...
SSG: Oh yeah, but real riders... Like, me, I've been riding for 40 years, ABS just screws ya up. I mean, when I'm taking a corner and find that I'm drifting wide, I like to tap on the rear brake, slide the rear tire out a bit, whack the throttle again, and tighten up my line that way. With ABS, you can't do that, it won't let you lock the rear tire. It just does this [chugging sound, accompanied by wide-eyed hand-waving]... I'd probably crash!
me: (trying not to let my jaw hang open) Uh-huh...
I was out the door less than 60 seconds later.
I remembered, via this experience, why I have long avoided going near anything that might be even remotely called a sportbike. This guy was a classic example of the kind of douchebag salesman that seems to fester in that environment. Sliding the rear tire to tighten your line? Yeah, maybe on a track, but on the street? That's the kind of insane riding that would make anyone with any appreciation for safety turn white. It's riding at 9/10ths of your ability. It means you have nothing left if anything goes wrong, and there's always something ready to go wrong on uncontrolled public streets.
This guy is why motorcyclists have a reputation as assholes. He's the sort who inspires lawmakers to write laws banning motorcycles. And worst of all, he's installed himself in a position where he can shower his tales of "experience" and "wisdom" on incoming riders who are usually screwed up enough to start with. Like we really need more 18 year old testosterone-washed motorcyclists on vastly overpowered machines with visions of racing glory in their heads blasting around public streets, trying to drift through corners because some dipshit salesman fed them stories like this.
Suffice to say that I am again inspired to avoid Aurora Suzuki. I had lost that sense over the years since I was last seriously in there, but it's been well and truly reinstated.
Secret hint to Suzuki Sales Guy, on the 1000:1 chance he's reading this: the way to handle that situation next time is to nod, and say, "Oh yes, ABS. I'm afraid these bikes don't have that option, but I think the '09 SV650S models are still available with ABS. Would you like to order one?" After I've left, you're welcome to turn to your buddies and say, in a high-pitched, nasal voice, with your eyes crossed, "Do you have ABS on this bike?" while mincing about with your wrists flopping. I know I'm a pansy in your eyes, but shoving it in my face is a great way get me to leave and never come back. It's also one of the poorer sales tactics in the world.
Posted at 06:24 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Mon, 02 Feb 2009
I put the Goldwing sidecar rig up for sale last week, and it looks like I finally found a buyer. With any luck, the sale will close on Friday.
Of course, this means the end of an era for me. I don't expect to have another sidecar rig. It was interesting, it was a worthwhile experiment, but in the end, wasn't fulfilling enough to stick with. I could see making up a bicycle sidecar as an interesting project, but that's a remote possibility at this point.
I found that the sidecar required too much power (from the motorcycle) and too much effort (from me) compared to a solo bike. Granted, you can't really carry anything on a solo bike, compared to a good sidehack, but I didn't find that carrying things was a mission I was called upon to perform very often.
For my cargo needs, I've been pretty happy with my cargo bicycle, and with the addition of the trailer, it's quite capable of hauling an impressive size and weight of stuff. It won't go great distances like a gas-powered vehicle will, but it was good enough to get me and 90 lbs of gear down to South Seattle and back for SketchFest last year.
However, for all that this is the end of an era, it might be the start of another. I've been thinking for years, "Hmm, the SV650 looks like an interesting bike." I test-rode one a few years ago, and found it to be almost too good -- too powerful for daily riding in traffic, and possibly too tempting to do stupid things with it.
My mission, however, has changed. Now, I ride a bicycle most days and for most things, and the motorcycle has again been relegated to the "fun weekend vehicle" role. The fuel mileage it achieves is no longer as important (although it's still important), compared to when I was riding it every day. The motorcycle is still an important back-up, such as now, when I'm suffering from an injury that prevents me from bicycling.
For years, back in the early Naughties, I thought to myself, "Hey, that Ninja 250 looks like a pretty cool bike..." And it took me years to finally go out and get one. Once I did, I was so happy with the result, that I now ride a Ninja 250 as my exclusive road bike, including long trips, such as to Montana and down the west coast. This is the long way of saying that the whole thing turned out pretty well.
So I can't help but think that the time may have arrived to pursue another years-long, "That bike looks pretty cool" thought. It worked out really well last time.
But this time, there are competing thoughts. The early 70s Honda CB350 looks like an interesting bike, and strikes me as being a very likely fun city bike. I liked riding the CL175 around city streets before I converted it for race track use, but CB350s seem to be a bit easier to find, and should offer better street power.
The calculus between these two choices is pretty different, though. If I got an SV650, chances are good that it would completely displace the Ninja 250, and I'd sell the Ninja. I'd be sad to lose the Ninja, since it was very well broken in, and is very well set up for me with its suspension and brake modifications. If I went the CB350 route, it would strictly be an alternate to the Ninja 250. The Ninja would definitely stay as the reliable, modern bike that I could take on long trips without second thoughts.
The CB350 has a much lower initial price (I could probably find one for under $1000 without any trouble at all), but a much higher secondary and ongoing cost: I'd probably have to put hundreds of dollars (and many many hours) into fixing it up, and it would never be as reliable as an SV650. The SV, on the other hand, has a considerably higher initial cost (probably around $4000-5000 for a good used 2007 or 2008 model -- new bikes appear to be practically unavailable, as the model I'd want has been discontinued), plus about $1000 in modifications I'd want to do right off the bat (suspension and brakes, much like the Ninja 250 received). However, it would then be, by all reports, practically maintenance free (excluding oil changes and chain maintenance, of course).
I haven't made any definite plans. After all, I'm still quite happy with the Ninja 250. There's no requirement to replace it, and no real impetus beyond a vague desire for something different. We'll see what happens -- it may well be that the used bike market makes the decision one way or the other pretty obvious.
Posted at 14:59 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Sun, 25 Jan 2009
After my crash last Monday, I decided in the afternoon to get myself in to the doctor. The pain in my hip seemed to be getting more intense, and taking on the edge that says, "This isn't just muscle pain, suckah!"
In the mean time, I crammed myself full of ibuprofen (which didn't help a whole lot) and Liz came down at the closing whistle to take me home -- I clearly wasn't going to ride home in that condition; I could barely walk.
The doctor visit came and went, with the doctor expressing the desire that I sling myself into an MRI machine to see what sort of clever rearrangement of bones and tendons I'd managed to effect. I called up, and got myself set up for a scan the same day, in the afternoon. After a very pleasant but painful day slacking on the couch with Liz, we trundled down to the Swedish campus for the test. She was dropping me off, to go tend to her own errands.
To my delight, I found a free wheelchair at the entrance and with a nod from the information desk, plopped myself into it. Suddenly I could move much faster than before. On foot, I was making a step every second or two. Give that a try if it doesn't impress you -- it's damn slow. And I wasn't taking big steps, either, these were like, "shove foot forward 12 inches; pause; try again." Little baby steps. So the wheelchair was a most welcome addition to my life, however temporary it might be.
I wheeled myself over to the elevator, and discovered that one of the many joys of the wheelchair is that they take a lot of room in an elevator. On the appropriate floor, I signed myself in, and after 10 minutes of paperwork and a mere additional 15 minute wait, was on my way into the lair of the MRI machine.
Here I was instructed to slip out of my clothes and into the obviously much more comfortable dressing gown my helpful assistant pointed out. "Let's see, you're pretty tall," he said to himself, then, pointing at a pile of dark green gowns, said, "go ahead and slip into one of those." After several minutes of very very slowly divesting myself of my garments, I pulled open the dark green gown to find it was roughly the size of a three-person army pup tent. I extended my arms fully to the sides, and grasping the corner of each gown flap, wrapped it around me. I asked Liz later, and she said that if a person doesn't fit into one of the two sizes of MRI machine they have at the hospital (ie, someone who'd need the full extent of my tent-gown), they have to go to the MRI machine at the zoo.
The tech laid me out on my techno-slab, and I was slowly trundled into the machine for roughly 40 minutes of lying perfectly still in a coffin-like tube while something that sounded like a broken bilge pump rat-a-tatted at me at varying pitches. This was the 20th, inauguration day, and the tech had given me headphones on which I could listen to KUOW, the local NPR station, as they covered the Obama-related festivities. (Suffice to say that I didn't make it to any inauguration-day festivities myself that day, but I feel I had a pretty valid excuse.) I felt exactly like I was trying to sleep on a small, becalmed sailboat, in a quarter berth which was a bit too small, and next to the bilge pump which would. not. shut. up.
The first test they did was a location-scan, so the machine could figure out (or show the tech) exactly where I was situated. It apparently involved the highest power of the machine, and felt very much like tiny imps were plucking at all the muscles in my lower abdomen. It was a very odd sensation.
Every once in a while, the tech would say something like, "Ok, the next test will only take 11 minutes," only he'd forget to turn down the radio, so what I actually heard was this sort of dream-like confusion of voices as whichever NPR reporter would continue with his story, while a discontinuous voice would meld in with weirdly-unrelated news. The headphones were all-plastic, piping the sound in quite literally, through plastic tubes -- magnetic headphones would have been ripped off my head fast enough to remove my ears, I suspect.
Eventually, about 30 tests later, I was done, and surprisingly warm. The tech explained, after I asked, that yes, in fact, an MRI was roughly the equivalent of a precisely-metered microwave oven. (He didn't say that, I extrapolated it from his explanantion about stimulation of hydrogen atoms and radio-frequency energy.)
I asked for and received a chance to review the pictures they'd gotten. It was a bit like looking at a black-and-white picture of what my lower abdomen would look like if you cut it cleanly off at whatever point we were looking at. If he panned quickly through the layers, you could make sense of the shape of legs and hips and such. Pretty interesting -- my legs looked like nicely marbled steak, which I guess is about what they are. He said he wasn't allowed to do any interpretation, but he did point a noticeably-larger pocket of fluid inside my right hip joint that wasn't there on the left.
And with that, I was trundled out and on my way. No more paperwork to fill out, etc. Here's the elevator, off you go! All told, I'd only spent an hour and a half there, and I had entirely expected to wait two hours before even getting into the machine. Crazy! The joys of going when they're running on schedule, I guess.
The next day, I got a cryptic phone call from my doctor's office. "Dr. Flooblejabble [not his real name] said to tell you that there are minor changes shown on your MRI," said the woman on the phone. "'Minor changes?'" quoth I. "That's all he said," she explained. Uh-huh. "Thanks," said I, and hung up. I'll be having a little talk with the good doctor about his willingness to do things like discuss my results with me on the phone. Trying to figure out his cypher left me with a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day.
However! The excellent thing about that morning was that the night before I'd had my first anti-inflammatory pill. The good doctor looked slightly appalled when I told him how many ibuprofen pills I was shoving down my gizzard every 4-6 hours, and set me up with "the maximum dose you can take" of some prescription anti-inflammatory. "So that way, we know you're at the maximum and don't have to worry about your liver exploding," he said. If he'd had reading glasses on, he would have looked over them at me severely.
And indeed, I had awoken that morning feeling noticeably better. I was definitely still broken, but I was walking much faster, and it no longer felt like someone had gone after some key muscle groups with a cheese grater. I was able to sit at the computer and pretty much work a normal day, albeit at my house instead of at the office.
Each day after that, I'd wake up feeling noticeably better. Walking got easier and easier, until today, when I feel very nearly normal again. There's still a bit of soreness there, and I can tell that certain motions will be rewarded by more or less searing pain, but it's pretty cool to feel mostly like a normal person again. Hooray for anti-inflammatories!
So, if you've been sitting on the edge of your seat for the last week, that's what's been happening. I'm scheduled to see Dr. Floobenjabble again on Tuesday, when I might have definitive word on what exactly "minor changes" on an MRI might be. Hopefully we can also sort out a better arrangement regarding certain peripheral issues such as speaking in plaintext over the phone.
Posted at 17:37 permanent link category: /bicycle
Mon, 19 Jan 2009
I was riding into work this morning, thinking whatever thoughts I normally think on my ride into work. There had been frost on my deck, but the roads seemed clear, so I was buzzing along at my normal clip.
Coming down N 50th toward Fremont Ave, I downshifted a couple gears to take the turn as I normally do, slightly annoyed that a car had just passed me too close. I was peripherally aware of a biker standing on the sidewalk, but I thought he was waiting for the crosswalk or something.
I turned into the corner, and with extreme consternation noticed that my bike was no longer under me. I hit the ground before I had any clue what was happening, and tumbled, noting in a sort of detached way that my helmet was scraping along the pavement. There was a bloom of pain in my right hip, and suddenly something heavy plopped down in front of me as I slid to a stop -- my shoulder bag, I realized.
I lay there trying to disentangle my thoughts, testing bits of myself to see how damaged I was. The pain in my hip was subsiding, but it was obviously not going to be happy in the near future. Nothing was obviously broken, so I started getting up.
"Oh, I wish I'd seen you," said the biker on the sidewalk, "I just did that exact same thing. There must be ice there." Thanks. I picked myself up with a severe limp on the right side, my hip explaining in bright flashes of pain that it was, in fact, extremely unhappy at the abuse. I got my bike onto the sidewalk. I didn't spare it much attention, but nothing seemed overtly broken.
Slightly Helpful Biker asked if I was ok, obviously about to get on his way. He'd taken a moment to scoop some dirt out of a nearby planter and spread it over the area where the ice probably was. I said I was probably fine, but that my hip hurt. "Ok, I'm off to work then," quoth SHB, and rode off.
I sat there, my glasses entirely fogged over (all the heat I'd generated in riding rising to coat them), and just stretched out on the sidewalk for a minute to see if I could stop shaking. I tried to assess what had happened.
I came around the corner, and the bike just went away. Obviously, it was ice, or something so like it that quibbling over definitions was pointless. I bore the brunt of my fall on my right hip, although my shoulder was also unhappy. I could move, and I didn't seem to have broken any bones.
I painfully hoisted myself back on the bike, after several false starts getting my leg over the seat. Fortunately, the path ahead of me was entirely downhill, and so required practically no effort. The worst part was limping up to my office to check into the meeting that caused me to be on the road 30 minutes earlier than I normally would have.
Now, several hours and 1200 mg of ibuprofen later, my hip is the obvious casualty. There's a little bit of road rash on my patella, and my shoulder occasionally twinges (amazingly, I don't appear to have broken my collarbone), but I've got a patch of road rash on my hip that I can just cover with an open hand, and I walk at a highly comical and halting .3 MPH or so. Fortunately, sitting upright is completely pain-free, it's just standing upright and walking that sucks. Even more fortunately, I don't seem to have impaired my normal computering abilities at all.
So, what did I do right? Helmet, baby. That helmet absorbed what would have been a painful if not deadly sideways whack, and kept the side of my face off the ground as I slid to a halt. Conveniently, I was wearing long pants and a slippery windbreaker that I believe kept me from getting worse road rash than I did.
What did I do wrong? Well, I have a hard time classifying it as "wrong" exactly, but I didn't anticipate the black ice. The road had been clear of ice that I could tell, and I had no indication there was ice around this corner. I was complacent about road conditions, when I knew it was cold enough that ice was a possibility, if not likely.
Given that the two-wheel crashes I've had now were both low-sides, and both landed me on my hip, I'm starting to think that some padded biking shorts are called for. They would have materially reduced the injury I received today, and would have made my racetrack motorcycle crash less painful, although that crash didn't result in any lasting injury.
I find it interesting, although predictable, that my motorcycle crash caused me less damage than my bicycle crash. On the motorcycle, I was going about 70 MPH, but I was also riding a tiny bike (ie, I sit close to the ground) on a racetrack (ie, no curbs, cars, gravel, etc. to deal with), and I was leaned way over, so that my butt was inches from the pavement. On the bicycle, I was only going about 18 MPH, but I was sitting at least 3.5 feet off the ground, and wearing less protective clothing. The difference between less than 12 inches and over three feet is considerable, and that's where the real injury came from.
So, I have a feeling I'll be working from home for the next few days, and may investigate getting some variety of cane or crutch so I can walk at a speed faster than a snail's pace. Hooray for dangerous pursuits!
Posted at 11:13 permanent link category: /bicycle
Thu, 15 Jan 2009
I just called to confirm: University Honda on Capitol Hill is going out of business. Today was their last day.
me: I'm calling to dispell a rumor.
her: I'm afraid it's true.
me: Augh, suck! Why?
her: I'm afraid we can't pay our bills any more.
So, if I've harped on you in the past to buy your helmets or whatever locally, so the local shops don't go away? We failed.
Posted at 17:34 permanent link category: /motorcycle
I was asked to take official pictures for Blind Spot, Annex's latest production. It was a lot of fun, taking both bio pictures, and media pictures. I hope I'm not ruining anyone's fun by posting this, but I was particularly fond of how Ellie McKay's picture turned out:
To see the rest of them, you'll just have to go see the show, which opens tomorrow night. The bio pictures will be on the wall in the lounge.
Posted at 14:54 permanent link category: /theater
Mon, 12 Jan 2009
Put on your super-nerd hat: I just got back the analysis from my latest Ninja 250 oil change!
Sounds like either my engine's not "maturing" quite right, or they're not experienced enough with little motorcycle engines. I'd believe either.
If I can remember, I'll change the oil again at 12,350 miles and see what difference that makes.
Posted at 14:57 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Sat, 10 Jan 2009
About a week ago, mother nature dumped another load of snow on Seattle. I wasn't having any of it, though, and levered my studded tires on my bike, bound and determined to get to work the next day -- I'd spent too many days stuck at home between holidays and the previous snow storms.
But then, once I had the snow tires on, it wasn't all that late... And I had this new camera I got for Christmas...
So I shot a little snow-ride video.
I had a terrible time getting the AVI file generated by the Oregon Scientific ATC-2K into a format Final Cut Express would use without losing the end of it (apparently the "30 fps" claim by OS is... optimistic, but they leave it in the video headers, which screws up conversion software). Finally, though, I found the answer: MPEG Streamclip, a free video conversion utility. It was able to take in the AVI file and spit out a DV file that actually included the end of the video.
Posted at 10:30 permanent link category: /bicycle
Tue, 06 Jan 2009
Woot! Soundtrack 1.5 works again!
So, when I upgraded my Intel MacBook 13" to the latest Mac OS X (10.5, aka Leopard, he said, loading up keywords for other worthy Google-searchers), suddenly my copy of Soundtrack, the sound editing software that comes with Final Cut Express HD, stopped working.
It would just hang, spinning the flaming beachball of doom at me, as soon as I tried to do anything. It was making this odd clicking or buzzing noise at me. And it made me want to punch things, which is, of course, never a good thing.
I've been toying with different ways of fixing it, but none of them worked at all, it would always do the same hang as soon as I'd hit play or record.
This morning, despairing that I was going to have to buy the new version when I'm otherwise happy with what I have, I stumbled across this page:
Soundtrack Pro 1.1 may quit unexpectedly with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Misleading title aside, it contained the answer! I followed the instructions there, and turned off this "Switch Hardware Sample Rate to match Document" option. Instantly, the clicking/buzzing noise went away. I enabled a track to record, and hit the record button. Woo! The track started filling up with me making ridiculous noises!
And then, bliss, it played back, too!
So, if you've been suffering from this vexing and otherwise undiagnosed problem, give this a try. No guarantees, but it solved my issue. Yay!
Posted at 18:36 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater