Stuff-mo-tron

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.

Sun, 29 Mar 2009

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.

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...

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:

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

Mon, 16 Mar 2009

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.

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.

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.

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...)

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