Today was the first long ride on the custom bike, so I can write an extensive first impressions review.
During the week, I had the bike configured as a commuter. I had my light wheels on the back, but my Brooks saddle, generator wheel, and lights mounted. In that configuration the bike handles very nicely, though it isn't fast by any means, especially with a load in the saddlebag. One problem I found was that I couldn't mount a full fender in front, because it would interfere with the cable runs on the down-tube. That's unfortunate, but I ordered a set of SKS Race Blades and hopefully those will work out.
This morning, I mounted my Thomson seat post, my Flite saddle, and my lightweight front wheel, and got a slightly lighter bike, but not by a whole lot. The front fork is scheduled to be replaced this week with the Ti fork, so the bike will get lighter but not a whole lot lighter --- the Ti bike is definitely a heavier than the Fuji, and my guess is it will end up being about 19 pounds in light bike configuration and 22 pounds in touring configuration, which is still miles lighter than my Heron Touring bike.
The handling remains the same on the flats and even on climbs. At low speeds, the low trail bike wobbles a bit more than the Fuji did, but I attribute that to the fit not being exactly dialed in yet. I expect that to go away once I get out a tape measure and actually try to replicate my touring position. I was, however, completely unprepared for the bike's handling on descents: this bike descends as though it was on rails, much more stably than the Heron or the Fuji. This behavior surprised me until I reflected on the bike's geometry. I had specified longer chainstays than the Fuji (43cm), which increased the stability, and a lower bottom bracket, which lowered the center of gravity. The two combined together gave me increased confidence on descents, to the point where my cornering speed is determined solely by my willingness to go fast with respect to prevailing traffic. The combination does affect climbing, however --- the bike does not appear to respond as quickly to standing hard on the pedals as the Fuji does, though it isn't anywhere as sluggish (or slow) as the Heron is.
The next thing to do, obviously, is to put a saddlebag and load it up and then descend a major hill to watch for obvious problems such as a high speed shimmy. My thinking is that a high speed shimmy is unlikely with this bike given how stable it is, but one never knows. For now, however, this ride is incredible!
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Lumotec Light Problems and Diagnosis
I've been using the Lumotec N and Lumotec Schmidt Switch headlights for the last 3 years, but have had really poor reliability with them (so did my brother). In the cases of most of the failure, it seemed as though all that was needed to destroy the lights was a sharp knock. Late last year, my 18-month new Lumotec N failed again. But a sharp jiggle to the wire brought it back, so I thought nothing of it. But when I moved the light over to the new bike, the light once again failed.
So this morning, I rode over to Pardo's house and we took the light apart and tried to fix it. The first observation Pardo made was that there was no strain relief at all on any of the wires. This made the prime suspect a broken wire. We fiddled about, but the light appeared to work once the casing was off. So we decided to call it a day and reinstalled the light. I then took the bulb out to clean it before riding off and it immediately failed. On examination, the bulb is held against a negative contact spring by the holder, and the positive contact is a spring. The positive contact is fine, but the negative contact had become corroded. A cleaning, however, did not solve the problem, so I suggested using tweezers to pull the contact out towards the bulb. That solved the problem, and the light is now reliable.
My conclusion is that the Lumotecs are not very well-engineered. According to Pardo, adding strain relief (which is routinely done, for instance, for objects such as cell phone chargers) adds a few cents at most. The contact spring should be stronger so that a year of jiggling and rain riding does not destroy it or cause intermittent failure. But my guess is the majority of these lights outlast the year warranty, so the manufacturers have no incentive to fix these problems.
So this morning, I rode over to Pardo's house and we took the light apart and tried to fix it. The first observation Pardo made was that there was no strain relief at all on any of the wires. This made the prime suspect a broken wire. We fiddled about, but the light appeared to work once the casing was off. So we decided to call it a day and reinstalled the light. I then took the bulb out to clean it before riding off and it immediately failed. On examination, the bulb is held against a negative contact spring by the holder, and the positive contact is a spring. The positive contact is fine, but the negative contact had become corroded. A cleaning, however, did not solve the problem, so I suggested using tweezers to pull the contact out towards the bulb. That solved the problem, and the light is now reliable.
My conclusion is that the Lumotecs are not very well-engineered. According to Pardo, adding strain relief (which is routinely done, for instance, for objects such as cell phone chargers) adds a few cents at most. The contact spring should be stronger so that a year of jiggling and rain riding does not destroy it or cause intermittent failure. But my guess is the majority of these lights outlast the year warranty, so the manufacturers have no incentive to fix these problems.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Review: Halting State
I seem to have become a bit of a Charlie Stross junkie lately, but I think I've finally caught up to his latest output.
Halting State takes an interesting look at the MMORPG and the upcoming link to reality TV shows. What if a massively multi-player role-playing game intruded into your reality? Better yet, what if the usual alphabet soup of government agencies decided to use a massively multi-player role playing game as a recruiting tool for its purposes? What are its implications, and what might one look like?
The plot revolves around two main characters, Jack and Elaine. Jack is a game programmer who was recently laid off, and Elaine is a forensic account with an insurance firm. When a group of Orcs decide to perform a cyberheist involving the central bank of a company hosting such a gaming service, Elaine is asked to lead the investigation, and she asks for a programmer/consultant to guide her through the audit. Both Jack and Elaine are avid consumers of role playing games, historic re-enactment societies and the such, and their combination of skills enable them to dig into the investigation in a way that quickly becomes a matter of life and death for them.
The plot is entertaining, and very plausible. I enjoyed the description of the graphical role playing games and it is quite clear that Stross did his homework. References to griefing and non-PvP zones are made throughout without explanation, and the reader is never talked-down to. The characters themselves, however, are not that interesting, and perhaps behave a little bit too much like wooden stick figures made to fit the plot. Nevertheless, it works.
Perhaps the weakest part of the novel is that it is written entirely in the second person. The use of the second person is something entirely germane to the role playing game genre, of course, starting from the Choose Your Own Adventure books. But in this particular context, it feels wooden and contrived. Perhaps because as a PC, you would never so stupid as to fall into the kind of traps or emotional pitfalls that the characters would. As an artifice, this usage cheapens what is otherwise a very entertaining book.
The book starts off slowly, and it jars a bit as it switches viewpoints between the primary and secondary characters. After the first third, however, it steps into high gear and becomes an obsessive page turner, making this an ideal airplane novel, though it comes nowhere close to matching Stross' best work. Nevertheless, not a waste of time at all, especially if you're a gamer.
Halting State takes an interesting look at the MMORPG and the upcoming link to reality TV shows. What if a massively multi-player role-playing game intruded into your reality? Better yet, what if the usual alphabet soup of government agencies decided to use a massively multi-player role playing game as a recruiting tool for its purposes? What are its implications, and what might one look like?
The plot revolves around two main characters, Jack and Elaine. Jack is a game programmer who was recently laid off, and Elaine is a forensic account with an insurance firm. When a group of Orcs decide to perform a cyberheist involving the central bank of a company hosting such a gaming service, Elaine is asked to lead the investigation, and she asks for a programmer/consultant to guide her through the audit. Both Jack and Elaine are avid consumers of role playing games, historic re-enactment societies and the such, and their combination of skills enable them to dig into the investigation in a way that quickly becomes a matter of life and death for them.
The plot is entertaining, and very plausible. I enjoyed the description of the graphical role playing games and it is quite clear that Stross did his homework. References to griefing and non-PvP zones are made throughout without explanation, and the reader is never talked-down to. The characters themselves, however, are not that interesting, and perhaps behave a little bit too much like wooden stick figures made to fit the plot. Nevertheless, it works.
Perhaps the weakest part of the novel is that it is written entirely in the second person. The use of the second person is something entirely germane to the role playing game genre, of course, starting from the Choose Your Own Adventure books. But in this particular context, it feels wooden and contrived. Perhaps because as a PC, you would never so stupid as to fall into the kind of traps or emotional pitfalls that the characters would. As an artifice, this usage cheapens what is otherwise a very entertaining book.
The book starts off slowly, and it jars a bit as it switches viewpoints between the primary and secondary characters. After the first third, however, it steps into high gear and becomes an obsessive page turner, making this an ideal airplane novel, though it comes nowhere close to matching Stross' best work. Nevertheless, not a waste of time at all, especially if you're a gamer.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
The Ti bike is ready
Notes from the build: first of all, the spoke holder doesn't quite work. The holes aren't big enough for me to thread spokes through properly, and looking at it now, I don't see how it can be convenient to use on the road. It only holds two spokes anyway, while I normally need four on tour. My guess is, I'll go back to electrical tape and carry it the way I normally do: taped to the seat tube. 57mm reach is a bit too much for the brakes. Pardo had to file down the brake slots to get the brake shoots to hit the brake track squarely. Not a major problem, but my guess is 55mm is really the limit of the tolerance, if you don't want to have to do what we did.
I haven't taken it for a long ride yet, but as far as short first impression rides go --- it rides like my beloved Bridgestone RB-1 or my Fuji, which is what I wanted all along, so that part of the bike is straight on! It's been a long wait, and our work is not quite done. I'll need the new fork, which I hope wasn't built to 52mm, and also a new seat post so I can transfer the Fuji's seat over for weekend riding. I've ordered a new handlebar so I can put on my favored carbon brake levers and bar-end shifters for touring. And of course, lights and fenders need to be tested (and mounting systems deviced as necessary). I need to consider a triple. But as of right now, the Fuji is sitting in my brother's garage, and that Heron already has a buyer. I will soon be down to one "do-everything" bike, a condition that I haven't been in since 1992. And just in time for the Munich move!
Saturday, February 02, 2008
Review: The Runes of the Earth
I first read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant way back in high school, right after The Lord of the Rings. The two trilogies are of course very different. First of all, I think Stephen R. Donaldson burnt out his thesaurus a long time ago. He is verbose, prone to using words and colors that you can guess at but would really need a dictionary handy to look up, and overly dramatic.
But this first set of books caught my attention because of its characters. The lead character is as anti-hero as they come (he rapes a girl in an early section of Lord Foul's Bane, which alienates many women readers I know --- and since women read more than men, that's not something that you really want to do if you want to achieve bestseller status). Abusive and rough, Thomas Covenant runs rough-shot over a vibrant fantasy world in such a way that you can't quite believe that he is supposed to be the savior. Yet the internal narrative of Covenant is such that at least, for a teenager going through the tumult of alienation, loneliness and despair, was very appealing. In fact, at the end of the first trilogy, his redemption and healing was very moving, and something I took quite to heart.
The second chronicles weren't as compelling for me, introducing a character, Linden Avery, who was abused in her own way as a child, but ultimately was too passive for me to want to pay a lot of attention to her. In fact, I was very surprised that I remembered almost none of the plot summarized in the leading section of The Runes of the Earth.
Has 20 years improved Donaldson's writing style? In many ways, it has. First of all, he seems much less dependent on a thesaurus this time, and his style seems much more stripped down, less extravagant and flowery, but more conducive to story telling. His character, Linden Avery, is still not as interesting a character to me as Thomas Covenant, but this time I'm much more interested in her (perhaps that reflects the changes in me, rather than the changes in Donaldson's approach). She's now the director of a hospital specializing in mentally injured patients, and has adopted a son who is autistic. One of her patients is Joan Covenant, Thomas Covenant's wife, who was difficult to manage, but when Covenant's son shows up to claim her and is denied, things start moving quickly, and quite soon, Avery is translated back to the Land, along with her son Jeremiah and Joan, and Avery starts a quest to rescue her son and redeem the land in the process.
Avery as a character is insecure, but much less in denial of her reality. As a result, she's much more willing to wield the power of the ring (there's much less of the impotence theme her in this book), and willing to take on more risks. She encounters many of the previous cultures in prior novels such as the Haruchai, the Ranhyn, and Ur-viles. Continuity and previously known facts are conveniently side-stepped through the common science fiction device known as time travel. If you suspend your disbelief, all this works, but perhaps one thing that escapes me at this point is why? I guess I should suspend judgment until I've read the remaining pieces of the series, but for now, if the first chronicles is about redemption and the second chronicles is about healing, perhaps the third chronicles is about taking risks. I will keep reading to figure it out, but cannot provide a recommendation until the story is complete.
But this first set of books caught my attention because of its characters. The lead character is as anti-hero as they come (he rapes a girl in an early section of Lord Foul's Bane, which alienates many women readers I know --- and since women read more than men, that's not something that you really want to do if you want to achieve bestseller status). Abusive and rough, Thomas Covenant runs rough-shot over a vibrant fantasy world in such a way that you can't quite believe that he is supposed to be the savior. Yet the internal narrative of Covenant is such that at least, for a teenager going through the tumult of alienation, loneliness and despair, was very appealing. In fact, at the end of the first trilogy, his redemption and healing was very moving, and something I took quite to heart.
The second chronicles weren't as compelling for me, introducing a character, Linden Avery, who was abused in her own way as a child, but ultimately was too passive for me to want to pay a lot of attention to her. In fact, I was very surprised that I remembered almost none of the plot summarized in the leading section of The Runes of the Earth.
Has 20 years improved Donaldson's writing style? In many ways, it has. First of all, he seems much less dependent on a thesaurus this time, and his style seems much more stripped down, less extravagant and flowery, but more conducive to story telling. His character, Linden Avery, is still not as interesting a character to me as Thomas Covenant, but this time I'm much more interested in her (perhaps that reflects the changes in me, rather than the changes in Donaldson's approach). She's now the director of a hospital specializing in mentally injured patients, and has adopted a son who is autistic. One of her patients is Joan Covenant, Thomas Covenant's wife, who was difficult to manage, but when Covenant's son shows up to claim her and is denied, things start moving quickly, and quite soon, Avery is translated back to the Land, along with her son Jeremiah and Joan, and Avery starts a quest to rescue her son and redeem the land in the process.
Avery as a character is insecure, but much less in denial of her reality. As a result, she's much more willing to wield the power of the ring (there's much less of the impotence theme her in this book), and willing to take on more risks. She encounters many of the previous cultures in prior novels such as the Haruchai, the Ranhyn, and Ur-viles. Continuity and previously known facts are conveniently side-stepped through the common science fiction device known as time travel. If you suspend your disbelief, all this works, but perhaps one thing that escapes me at this point is why? I guess I should suspend judgment until I've read the remaining pieces of the series, but for now, if the first chronicles is about redemption and the second chronicles is about healing, perhaps the third chronicles is about taking risks. I will keep reading to figure it out, but cannot provide a recommendation until the story is complete.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Review: The Atrocity Archives
The Atrocity Archives was Charles Stross' first novel, and the book that Jennifer Morgue follows.
When I read that it was Stross' first published novel, I set my expectations a little lower, but I shouldn't have. The novel blows me away. Rather than being a James Bond pastiche, this novel deals with the Bob Howard character in his native capacity as a technomancer, to use a hybrid term. As a bored system administrator in the Laundry, he asks for an attempt into Active status so he can do field work. The worst happens when he is finally given a chance --- it turns out that he has a knack for keeping cool when all hell literally breaks loose, and he is good at his job.
So when he is given another easy follow-up assignment and the damsel in distress is kidnapped, he follows his instinct and gets into deep trouble. The Laundry then tries to use his new-found love interest, Mo as a bait, and discover that things are not as simple as even the Laundry thinks it is.
I am blown away at how much better this novel is, even compared to Jennifer Morgue. Bob Howard isn't kept entirely in the dark the whole time and is in control, so you are not left wondering why he's a protagonist at all. The inter-departmental rivalry is fun, and as always, all the references to geek culture.
The Golden Gryphon press edition of this novel includes a second Bob Howard short story, The Concrete Jungle about an internal affairs investigation (also incredibly well written and interestingly put together), and an after word by Stross, an analysis of Spy fiction and Horror from his perspective (I think that his perspective is warped, but since I love his fiction, I'm glad it is warped in this particular way).
Some people do world building by drawing maps, putting together new cultures and languages, and then showing them to you. Stross does it one step better: he synthesizes a world out of everything we already know, putting together a gestalt from shared culture, and then providing a narrative thread that not only shows it to you but also grants a rollicking good time.
If I were to bring The Atrocity Archives onto a 12 hour flight, it would have been no problem. Sure, I'd read through it once in 3 hours, but then I'd probably spend the next 9 hours poring through it, looking for references I missed and stringing it all together one more time. Needless to say, this novel is highly recommended.
When I read that it was Stross' first published novel, I set my expectations a little lower, but I shouldn't have. The novel blows me away. Rather than being a James Bond pastiche, this novel deals with the Bob Howard character in his native capacity as a technomancer, to use a hybrid term. As a bored system administrator in the Laundry, he asks for an attempt into Active status so he can do field work. The worst happens when he is finally given a chance --- it turns out that he has a knack for keeping cool when all hell literally breaks loose, and he is good at his job.
So when he is given another easy follow-up assignment and the damsel in distress is kidnapped, he follows his instinct and gets into deep trouble. The Laundry then tries to use his new-found love interest, Mo as a bait, and discover that things are not as simple as even the Laundry thinks it is.
I am blown away at how much better this novel is, even compared to Jennifer Morgue. Bob Howard isn't kept entirely in the dark the whole time and is in control, so you are not left wondering why he's a protagonist at all. The inter-departmental rivalry is fun, and as always, all the references to geek culture.
The Golden Gryphon press edition of this novel includes a second Bob Howard short story, The Concrete Jungle about an internal affairs investigation (also incredibly well written and interestingly put together), and an after word by Stross, an analysis of Spy fiction and Horror from his perspective (I think that his perspective is warped, but since I love his fiction, I'm glad it is warped in this particular way).
Some people do world building by drawing maps, putting together new cultures and languages, and then showing them to you. Stross does it one step better: he synthesizes a world out of everything we already know, putting together a gestalt from shared culture, and then providing a narrative thread that not only shows it to you but also grants a rollicking good time.
If I were to bring The Atrocity Archives onto a 12 hour flight, it would have been no problem. Sure, I'd read through it once in 3 hours, but then I'd probably spend the next 9 hours poring through it, looking for references I missed and stringing it all together one more time. Needless to say, this novel is highly recommended.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Moving to Munich
It's official: I'm moving to Munich for six months to a year on a work assignment. I don't talk about work on this blog, so I won't say what it's about, but I'm excited. First of all, I've wanted to live in Europe for a while. The combination of bike-friendly cities, bike-friendly drivers, amazing roads for cycling, and beautiful scenery combine to make Europe Bikelandia. Even though I've lived car-free in the Bay Area, it is much easier to live car-free in Europe.
Why Munich? Well, Lisa loves Munich. I've only been there once, back in 2003, but I didn't spend much time in the city itself (just a day or two). But the easy access to the alps, the trains, and the beauty of the surroundings speak for themselves. Plus, one of my friends Stefan works in Zurich and visits Munich often, so we can ride together.
Of course, I'm not immune to trepidation. I've lived in the Bay Area for so long --- more than half my life --- I know where everything is, I can ride the roads without a map --- there are places I haven't explored still, and I am by no means out of love with this place. I love the good ethnic food, the diversity, and I enjoy the amazing weather. Leaving all this behind will be tough, even if it's temporary. The offer of an adventure like this, however, especially with the resources of Google behind me, is just too much to refuse. So here I come! And yes, I will document this adventure sporadically on this blog.
Why Munich? Well, Lisa loves Munich. I've only been there once, back in 2003, but I didn't spend much time in the city itself (just a day or two). But the easy access to the alps, the trains, and the beauty of the surroundings speak for themselves. Plus, one of my friends Stefan works in Zurich and visits Munich often, so we can ride together.
Of course, I'm not immune to trepidation. I've lived in the Bay Area for so long --- more than half my life --- I know where everything is, I can ride the roads without a map --- there are places I haven't explored still, and I am by no means out of love with this place. I love the good ethnic food, the diversity, and I enjoy the amazing weather. Leaving all this behind will be tough, even if it's temporary. The offer of an adventure like this, however, especially with the resources of Google behind me, is just too much to refuse. So here I come! And yes, I will document this adventure sporadically on this blog.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Review: Three Days to Never
I'm beginning to see patterns in Tim Power's books. Take a few historical characters that are well known, involve them in some secret occult organizations or happenings, stir rapidly, and serve. What I consider his best novel, The Stress of Her Regard involved the romantic poets (Byron, Shelley), gargoyles, vampires, and other such beings, locked into a struggle.
Three Days to Never involves Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, time travel, and the wiping out of entire lifetimes. Rather than narrate directly about these illustrious men, who have enough biographies that even a casual reader might detect falsehoods, Powers works at a second remove, narrating the story of Frank and Daphne Marrity, a father-daughter pair who stumble over the truth when Frank's mother dies --- first, that they are descendants of Albert Einstein, and second, that Einstein left a more terrible secret than the famous equation, E = mc^2. He left a time travel machine that would allow a user to potentially wipe out entire lifetimes, erasing beings as if they had never been.
Two factions, the Israeli Mossad, and a secretive occult organization that's bent on retrieving the time machine for their nefarious purposes. Complicating matters is a wild card, a version of Frank Marrity from the future, who wants his old life back.
Does all this sound confusing? It is. While the central narrative is easy enough to follow along, untangling these threads and motivations made the book unusually slow going for me. Further, I've read enough about Einstein's character to find the depiction of Einstein less than believable, which made the story less than real to me.
The novel rolls along fast enough, and while the ending is reasonable, left me less than satisfied. Too complex to be an airplane novel, but not quite there as a literary fantasy, I cannot recommend this except to Tim Powers fans. The payoff might not quite be equal to the reward.
Three Days to Never involves Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, time travel, and the wiping out of entire lifetimes. Rather than narrate directly about these illustrious men, who have enough biographies that even a casual reader might detect falsehoods, Powers works at a second remove, narrating the story of Frank and Daphne Marrity, a father-daughter pair who stumble over the truth when Frank's mother dies --- first, that they are descendants of Albert Einstein, and second, that Einstein left a more terrible secret than the famous equation, E = mc^2. He left a time travel machine that would allow a user to potentially wipe out entire lifetimes, erasing beings as if they had never been.
Two factions, the Israeli Mossad, and a secretive occult organization that's bent on retrieving the time machine for their nefarious purposes. Complicating matters is a wild card, a version of Frank Marrity from the future, who wants his old life back.
Does all this sound confusing? It is. While the central narrative is easy enough to follow along, untangling these threads and motivations made the book unusually slow going for me. Further, I've read enough about Einstein's character to find the depiction of Einstein less than believable, which made the story less than real to me.
The novel rolls along fast enough, and while the ending is reasonable, left me less than satisfied. Too complex to be an airplane novel, but not quite there as a literary fantasy, I cannot recommend this except to Tim Powers fans. The payoff might not quite be equal to the reward.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Casual Programming in Windows
The EEE PC makes a perfect nightstand computer, a more fully functional Chumby, if you will. Lisa wanted an alarm clock application. Here are her requirements:
Well, I program computers for a living, so I started working on one a couple of nights ago. It had been 4 years since I programmed windows, but since this isn't a full-featured application, I could take short cuts I'd never do professionally. For casual programming, one of the best languages around is Python. The python port to windows is robust and small, and even more important, there's a windows layer readily available. Of course, using the raw windows API to decode MP3s is a pain, so I searched for a python media library and got pointed to Pymedia, which astonishingly came with an example to decode an MP3 and play it.
I dug around for a volume control API for windows, found it, and hooked up the whole thing, and then I was done. The code is only 126 lines. Of course, there were weird things along the way, like finding a version of pymedia compatible with Python 2.5, so I had to uninstall and reinstall various different versions of Python and pymedia, but all in all it was pretty painless --- programming by googling for code snippets you want and then copy and pasting and debugging is pretty easy.
Of course, I didn't even attempt the time consuming stuff, such as putting in a fancy GUI or even having a UI at all. I start my alarm clock by typing ".\alarmwaveout.py 22:30". I'm a software engineer, so command-lines feel easier to use than GUIs anyway. If you could talk to a computer, you'd want to say, "Wake me up at 7:30am", and clicking around on spin controls and clicking check boxes just doesn't feel natural compared to that, while the command-line would seem to be quite a bit closer. There are no snooze features, and you hit control-C to stop the music. Hey, the goal is to get you to wake up.
All this ease of programming reminds me, however, that this is why there are many people who think that they are great software engineers just because they can program a computer to do stuff. Being able to code a simple application like this in no way qualifies you to be a software engineer, and unfortunately, all too often I interview candidates who are confused about that difference. But that's another topic for another day. In the mean time, Lisa's satisfied with the app, and that's all I care about.
- "Gentle wake". Slowly increasing volume until she wakes up.
- Music player --- plays any MP3 in our collection (stored on our RAID NAS server)
Well, I program computers for a living, so I started working on one a couple of nights ago. It had been 4 years since I programmed windows, but since this isn't a full-featured application, I could take short cuts I'd never do professionally. For casual programming, one of the best languages around is Python. The python port to windows is robust and small, and even more important, there's a windows layer readily available. Of course, using the raw windows API to decode MP3s is a pain, so I searched for a python media library and got pointed to Pymedia, which astonishingly came with an example to decode an MP3 and play it.
I dug around for a volume control API for windows, found it, and hooked up the whole thing, and then I was done. The code is only 126 lines. Of course, there were weird things along the way, like finding a version of pymedia compatible with Python 2.5, so I had to uninstall and reinstall various different versions of Python and pymedia, but all in all it was pretty painless --- programming by googling for code snippets you want and then copy and pasting and debugging is pretty easy.
Of course, I didn't even attempt the time consuming stuff, such as putting in a fancy GUI or even having a UI at all. I start my alarm clock by typing ".\alarmwaveout.py 22:30". I'm a software engineer, so command-lines feel easier to use than GUIs anyway. If you could talk to a computer, you'd want to say, "Wake me up at 7:30am", and clicking around on spin controls and clicking check boxes just doesn't feel natural compared to that, while the command-line would seem to be quite a bit closer. There are no snooze features, and you hit control-C to stop the music. Hey, the goal is to get you to wake up.
All this ease of programming reminds me, however, that this is why there are many people who think that they are great software engineers just because they can program a computer to do stuff. Being able to code a simple application like this in no way qualifies you to be a software engineer, and unfortunately, all too often I interview candidates who are confused about that difference. But that's another topic for another day. In the mean time, Lisa's satisfied with the app, and that's all I care about.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Macbook Air Analysis
The non-Mac-fanboy analysis of the new Macbook Air is very interesting. Here are a couple of blog entries by others:
Both of them miss the really obvious point: portability constraints aren't usually caused by the Z dimension (i.e., thickness). They're caused by the X and Y dimensions (breadth and length). When trying to stuff a laptop into a Carradice saddlebag, for instance, the limitation is not thickness but length and breadth. Similarly, that's also the constrained when you have a small backpack, suitcase, or when trying to use the machine on an airliner's seat-back tray. In fact, I don't see how a thin laptop helps anywhere in the area of portability, other than squeezing the weight down to 3 pounds, which my Thinkpad X-series laptops have always been at, and those laptops have far fewer compromises in terms of available ports, features, and price.
Obviously, if you want a 3 pound Mac, you have no choice but to get the Macbook Air. However, as a practical matter, it is not terribly portable, and not especially light. For the price of the Macbook Air, you can buy a fully loaded EEE PC, and still have enough change to buy a plane ticket so you can actually get in the air. And the EEE PC is a whole pound lighter, fits in a handbag, and also has more ports than the Macbook Air. So I don't know what problem the Macbook Air is trying to solve, other than to help beautiful people look even more fashionable.
Lots of other commentators complain about the lack of an optical drive. I don't see it as a big issue --- I've lived without an optical drive on all my laptops for 3 years now, and just attach an optical drive whenever I need it, which isn't often. For me, the point of a laptop is for it to be thin and light. If Apple had made the Macbook Air a 10 inch machine (just big enough for a full size keyboard) with a touch screen (to eliminate the touch pad), with a 2.5 pound weight, it would be seriously considered as an ultra-portable. As it is, I suspect that the only folks who'll buy it are the fashionistas and of course, the Mac fanatics who will buy anything with an Apple logo on it.
Both of them miss the really obvious point: portability constraints aren't usually caused by the Z dimension (i.e., thickness). They're caused by the X and Y dimensions (breadth and length). When trying to stuff a laptop into a Carradice saddlebag, for instance, the limitation is not thickness but length and breadth. Similarly, that's also the constrained when you have a small backpack, suitcase, or when trying to use the machine on an airliner's seat-back tray. In fact, I don't see how a thin laptop helps anywhere in the area of portability, other than squeezing the weight down to 3 pounds, which my Thinkpad X-series laptops have always been at, and those laptops have far fewer compromises in terms of available ports, features, and price.
Obviously, if you want a 3 pound Mac, you have no choice but to get the Macbook Air. However, as a practical matter, it is not terribly portable, and not especially light. For the price of the Macbook Air, you can buy a fully loaded EEE PC, and still have enough change to buy a plane ticket so you can actually get in the air. And the EEE PC is a whole pound lighter, fits in a handbag, and also has more ports than the Macbook Air. So I don't know what problem the Macbook Air is trying to solve, other than to help beautiful people look even more fashionable.
Lots of other commentators complain about the lack of an optical drive. I don't see it as a big issue --- I've lived without an optical drive on all my laptops for 3 years now, and just attach an optical drive whenever I need it, which isn't often. For me, the point of a laptop is for it to be thin and light. If Apple had made the Macbook Air a 10 inch machine (just big enough for a full size keyboard) with a touch screen (to eliminate the touch pad), with a 2.5 pound weight, it would be seriously considered as an ultra-portable. As it is, I suspect that the only folks who'll buy it are the fashionistas and of course, the Mac fanatics who will buy anything with an Apple logo on it.
Review: The Jennifer Morgue
Charlie Stross has written The Jennifer Morgue as a new genre of fiction that I'll now call geek fiction. You might think, what about Cryptonomicon? Is that not geek fiction? The difference is this: while nearly every geek reference in Cryptonomicon is explained, almost none of the geek references in Jennifer Morgue are. That means that mainstream audiences attempting to read Cryptonomicon won't have any problems, but those attempting to read this book will flounder, making this an ideal book for a true test of geek-hood.
So what sort of geek background would you need? First of all, you need to know most of the computer terminology. This includes not just the usual USB drives, hacking into Windows XP Media center, and other paraphernalia, but also references to Alan Turing, for instance. Then, a knowledge of many fantasy literature tropes s assumed, including HP Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, etc. Finally, stir in a good chunk of the Bond Mythos, and you're all set for a book that only a geek would love.
The plot, such as it is, centers around the usual Bond story of a megalomaniac trying to take over the world by retrieving an ancient device of doom. Our hero, Bob Howard (a reference to Robert E Howard), is sent to investigate and do his best to thwart his plans. Of course, rather than being a suave, well-equipped man of action, Bob Howard is a computer nerd who feels naked without his PDA, and instead of an Aston-Martin is given a Smart car. When confronted with a femme fatale, Bob does not know how to respond, and of course, the said female turns out to have a demon riding her, and has even darker secrets.
The book (and the protagonist) does not take itself seriously. Whenever anything can be played for laughs, it is. For instance, here's the technical briefing:
We've added a Bluetooth host under the driver's seat, and a repurposed personal video player running Linux. Peripheral screens at all five cardinal points, five grams of graveyard dust mixed with oil of Bergamot and tongue of newt in the cigarette lighter socket, and a fully connected Dee-Hamilton circuit glued to the underside of the body shell. As long as the ignition is running, you're safe from possession attempts. If you need to dispose of a zombie in the passenger seat, just punch in the lighter button and wait for the magic smoke. You've got a mobile phone, yes? With Bluetooth and a Java sandbox? Great, I'll email you an applet --- run it, pair your phone with the car's hub, and all you have to do is dial 6-6-6 and the car will come to you, wherever you are...
As the plot unfolds, Bob gets into deeper and deeper trouble, but the scenarios never end up being less funny, and believe it or not, there's even an explanation for all the Bond-like nature of the plot. I was giggling and chortling all through the book.
In addition to the main novel, there are two short pieces in the Golden Gryphon Press edition of the book. One is another short piece about Bob Howard involving the strange kind of office politics that occur in the kind of organization he works for. The other piece, The Golden Age of Spying is a satirical analysis of the fiction of Ian Fleming, and an interview with one of Bond's villains.
All in all, this is a great book, and I'm surprised I didn't discover it earlier. I'm going to be hunting down (or buying) a copy of The Atrocity Archives next. Needless to say, highly recommended if you're a geek. A muggle should stay away, for there are things muggles are not meant to know.
So what sort of geek background would you need? First of all, you need to know most of the computer terminology. This includes not just the usual USB drives, hacking into Windows XP Media center, and other paraphernalia, but also references to Alan Turing, for instance. Then, a knowledge of many fantasy literature tropes s assumed, including HP Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, etc. Finally, stir in a good chunk of the Bond Mythos, and you're all set for a book that only a geek would love.
The plot, such as it is, centers around the usual Bond story of a megalomaniac trying to take over the world by retrieving an ancient device of doom. Our hero, Bob Howard (a reference to Robert E Howard), is sent to investigate and do his best to thwart his plans. Of course, rather than being a suave, well-equipped man of action, Bob Howard is a computer nerd who feels naked without his PDA, and instead of an Aston-Martin is given a Smart car. When confronted with a femme fatale, Bob does not know how to respond, and of course, the said female turns out to have a demon riding her, and has even darker secrets.
The book (and the protagonist) does not take itself seriously. Whenever anything can be played for laughs, it is. For instance, here's the technical briefing:
We've added a Bluetooth host under the driver's seat, and a repurposed personal video player running Linux. Peripheral screens at all five cardinal points, five grams of graveyard dust mixed with oil of Bergamot and tongue of newt in the cigarette lighter socket, and a fully connected Dee-Hamilton circuit glued to the underside of the body shell. As long as the ignition is running, you're safe from possession attempts. If you need to dispose of a zombie in the passenger seat, just punch in the lighter button and wait for the magic smoke. You've got a mobile phone, yes? With Bluetooth and a Java sandbox? Great, I'll email you an applet --- run it, pair your phone with the car's hub, and all you have to do is dial 6-6-6 and the car will come to you, wherever you are...
As the plot unfolds, Bob gets into deeper and deeper trouble, but the scenarios never end up being less funny, and believe it or not, there's even an explanation for all the Bond-like nature of the plot. I was giggling and chortling all through the book.
In addition to the main novel, there are two short pieces in the Golden Gryphon Press edition of the book. One is another short piece about Bob Howard involving the strange kind of office politics that occur in the kind of organization he works for. The other piece, The Golden Age of Spying is a satirical analysis of the fiction of Ian Fleming, and an interview with one of Bond's villains.
All in all, this is a great book, and I'm surprised I didn't discover it earlier. I'm going to be hunting down (or buying) a copy of The Atrocity Archives next. Needless to say, highly recommended if you're a geek. A muggle should stay away, for there are things muggles are not meant to know.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Mossberg pans the EEE PC
And of course, he misses the whole point of the machine, which is that it's cheap, it's super light, and the full size keyboard makes it possible for someone like me to type a travelogue on a plane trip. It also lets you view videos, blog on vacation, read electronic books (i.e., substitute for the $400 kindle), make phone calls at cheap internet rates, play music from your ipod via its speakers, and make video calls to folks back home for free.
I'm guessing that if the EEE PC had an Apple logo on it instead of an Asus logo on it, Mossberg (who's never ever panned an Apple product) would be raving about it now, rather than panning it.
I'm guessing that if the EEE PC had an Apple logo on it instead of an Asus logo on it, Mossberg (who's never ever panned an Apple product) would be raving about it now, rather than panning it.
Review: Sigma 2006MHR Bike Computer/Altimeter
I wrote a short review of this bike computer last year right after our tour of the alps, but after a full battery cycle with the bike computer, I decided that a full review was in order.
First of all, I have a lot of experience with Sigma's older bike computers, namely the previous generation BC 2006 (circa 2003). Those wired computers proved to be extremely reliable, surviving many years of use, with only a battery change every 3-5 years. But the old computers didn't have an altimeter, so I had to carry a separate altimeter, which was a bit of a bother, so when Sigma announced the MHR 2006, with both altimeter and heart-rate function, I resolved to get one if I could find one at a reasonable price. REI had a massively good deal (20% off) at the time, getting it down to a price that was under $100, so Roberto and I both bought one.
The computer has capacity to do two bikes worth of distance and time measurements, as well as showing a grand total. This is accomplished by keying the computer to a given sensor, which means that you'll have to buy a second sensor unit (about $30) to make use of this functionality. The older sigma models had a button on the back that you pushed to flip between two bikes, and it turns out that I actually like that better, not just because of the savings in costs, but also because if you swap wheels with different tire sizes on the same bike, you had the option of having a different setting for each wheel size, while on the MHR2006 you have no choice but to tweak the wheel size settings.
The nice thing is that the MHR2006 was designed for you to easily change settings without having to poke at setting buttons with sharp objects (which was what you had to do with the old models). The setup is extremely consistent, with one button to go into settings mode, one to scroll through the options, and the other two to tweak numbers up and down. Well thought out, and sensible. Even better, settings and statistics are retained between battery changes, so you can swap batteries without losing data. The only complaint I have is that when you switch between metric and imperial, the computer doesn't automatically recompute your stats in the new regime. Seems like if you're going to brag about a 32-bit processor you might as well include some firmware to do basic calculations. Maybe they don't have floating point numbers in that thing.
Installation was an easy task, with the magnet the only item that needed a tool (which is provided in the box). The magnet screws onto a spoke, the sensor goes around the fork blade with a rubber band, and the computer mount goes either on the handlebar or the stem, also with a rubber band. That's it. The box also includes a strap for hiking (you get no distance information but you do get altitude and heart rate), a heart rate monitor bra strap, and a pin tool to open up the battery compartment (woe to you if you lose this tool!).
I only used the heart rate monitor strap a couple of times. No matter how hard I try, I can't get used to wearing a bra, which is why I'm not a serious biker. The altimeter, however, proved extremely accurate during the tour of the alps. When calibrated, it read within a few meters of the summit sign, except when the summit sign was wrong (which happened often in Italy), where the maps would then usually agree with the altimeter but not the summit sign. One key of the accuracy of the altimeter is that the unit includes a thermometer, which is used to adjust the altimeter readings.
The thing that bugged me most about the MHR2006 was that after 4 months or so of use, the computer would occasionally get stuck, reading 0 or reading a fixed number for some time and not registering miles. Since the unit has a low battery warning, I assumed that the unit was being unreliable, and not that the battery was dead. In fact, the transmitter does not have a low battery warning! So all that time, the transmitter was intermittently sending out signals, while the head unit was heroically trying to interpolate between the signals. Believe it or not, while the battery was somewhat still delivering power, this heroic interpolation came pretty close to being quite accurate! Replacing the battery today made all the problems go away, and now the unit is behaving correctly again.
Having a transmitter battery only last effectively 6 months seemed pretty low to me, but glancing at the Amazon reviews shows that apparently the unit ships with pretty bad batteries. Sigma sells a stack of 10 CR 2032 batteries at a time, apparently indicating that this might be a power hungry unit. Certainly, it seems like my days of replacing a battery every 3-5 years might be over, if I decide to settle on this unit as my main computer. At least, all the components that need power (head unit, transmitter, and heart rate monitor bra) use the same battery, so you have no need to stock different sizes.
Another annoying thing is the trip meter. It has insufficient range for a multi-day tour. Basically, if you run over 999 miles or kilometers, it zeroes out and starts again. Not a big deal, but the first time it did that I didn't have the manual handy and thought that the unit had somehow reset itself (or that I had done it by accident!). Probably not a common complaint for most cyclists. There's also no download feature, so you can't download the data and graph your heart rate against incline or route, for instance, but units like that cost 3 to 4 times as much as the MHR2006, and have even worse battery life, so I think that's a reasonable feature to leave out.
All in all, I'll give this computer a cautious recommendation, with the above caveats. My biggest complaint is having to carry the pin tool and extra batteries on tour (especially if the weather might turn cold, since the battery's voltage can drop dramatically in those cases). Otherwise, the unit seems fairly accurate and reliable.
First of all, I have a lot of experience with Sigma's older bike computers, namely the previous generation BC 2006 (circa 2003). Those wired computers proved to be extremely reliable, surviving many years of use, with only a battery change every 3-5 years. But the old computers didn't have an altimeter, so I had to carry a separate altimeter, which was a bit of a bother, so when Sigma announced the MHR 2006, with both altimeter and heart-rate function, I resolved to get one if I could find one at a reasonable price. REI had a massively good deal (20% off) at the time, getting it down to a price that was under $100, so Roberto and I both bought one.
The computer has capacity to do two bikes worth of distance and time measurements, as well as showing a grand total. This is accomplished by keying the computer to a given sensor, which means that you'll have to buy a second sensor unit (about $30) to make use of this functionality. The older sigma models had a button on the back that you pushed to flip between two bikes, and it turns out that I actually like that better, not just because of the savings in costs, but also because if you swap wheels with different tire sizes on the same bike, you had the option of having a different setting for each wheel size, while on the MHR2006 you have no choice but to tweak the wheel size settings.
The nice thing is that the MHR2006 was designed for you to easily change settings without having to poke at setting buttons with sharp objects (which was what you had to do with the old models). The setup is extremely consistent, with one button to go into settings mode, one to scroll through the options, and the other two to tweak numbers up and down. Well thought out, and sensible. Even better, settings and statistics are retained between battery changes, so you can swap batteries without losing data. The only complaint I have is that when you switch between metric and imperial, the computer doesn't automatically recompute your stats in the new regime. Seems like if you're going to brag about a 32-bit processor you might as well include some firmware to do basic calculations. Maybe they don't have floating point numbers in that thing.
Installation was an easy task, with the magnet the only item that needed a tool (which is provided in the box). The magnet screws onto a spoke, the sensor goes around the fork blade with a rubber band, and the computer mount goes either on the handlebar or the stem, also with a rubber band. That's it. The box also includes a strap for hiking (you get no distance information but you do get altitude and heart rate), a heart rate monitor bra strap, and a pin tool to open up the battery compartment (woe to you if you lose this tool!).
I only used the heart rate monitor strap a couple of times. No matter how hard I try, I can't get used to wearing a bra, which is why I'm not a serious biker. The altimeter, however, proved extremely accurate during the tour of the alps. When calibrated, it read within a few meters of the summit sign, except when the summit sign was wrong (which happened often in Italy), where the maps would then usually agree with the altimeter but not the summit sign. One key of the accuracy of the altimeter is that the unit includes a thermometer, which is used to adjust the altimeter readings.
The thing that bugged me most about the MHR2006 was that after 4 months or so of use, the computer would occasionally get stuck, reading 0 or reading a fixed number for some time and not registering miles. Since the unit has a low battery warning, I assumed that the unit was being unreliable, and not that the battery was dead. In fact, the transmitter does not have a low battery warning! So all that time, the transmitter was intermittently sending out signals, while the head unit was heroically trying to interpolate between the signals. Believe it or not, while the battery was somewhat still delivering power, this heroic interpolation came pretty close to being quite accurate! Replacing the battery today made all the problems go away, and now the unit is behaving correctly again.
Having a transmitter battery only last effectively 6 months seemed pretty low to me, but glancing at the Amazon reviews shows that apparently the unit ships with pretty bad batteries. Sigma sells a stack of 10 CR 2032 batteries at a time, apparently indicating that this might be a power hungry unit. Certainly, it seems like my days of replacing a battery every 3-5 years might be over, if I decide to settle on this unit as my main computer. At least, all the components that need power (head unit, transmitter, and heart rate monitor bra) use the same battery, so you have no need to stock different sizes.
Another annoying thing is the trip meter. It has insufficient range for a multi-day tour. Basically, if you run over 999 miles or kilometers, it zeroes out and starts again. Not a big deal, but the first time it did that I didn't have the manual handy and thought that the unit had somehow reset itself (or that I had done it by accident!). Probably not a common complaint for most cyclists. There's also no download feature, so you can't download the data and graph your heart rate against incline or route, for instance, but units like that cost 3 to 4 times as much as the MHR2006, and have even worse battery life, so I think that's a reasonable feature to leave out.
All in all, I'll give this computer a cautious recommendation, with the above caveats. My biggest complaint is having to carry the pin tool and extra batteries on tour (especially if the weather might turn cold, since the battery's voltage can drop dramatically in those cases). Otherwise, the unit seems fairly accurate and reliable.
[Update: I've switched to the Garmin GPSmap 76CSX for touring, and am finding it such a satisfactory bike computer that it might very well replace all existing bike computers]
Building a Custom Frame (Part IV)
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| Frame building |
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Review: Picasa
I love Picasa, as much as it is possible for me to love a computer program I didn't write. You might think that it's ingenuous for a Google employee to review a Google product, but when I talk about features of Picasa to other Googlers, they always say, "I didn't know that Picasa can do that!" So think of this as a "Picasa secrets" guide if you wish.
First of all, Picasa is blazingly fast. In fact, I once timed it running in a virtual machine on MacOS X, and even in a virtualized window, Picasa starts up faster than iPhoto running native. Picasa does everything that I as a software engineer would want to do to improve the user experience --- background threads do the thumbnails generation and indexing, unlimited undo and redo is provided because image manipulations are not done on the image itself, but rather, a record of the manipulations are done so you never lose data. (In fact, this trips up a number of naive users because you have to use "Save a copy" if you want a copy of the picture on disk)
I also run Picasa on my EEE PC. What? I'm insane, right? That thing's got a 4GB hard drive, so how could it possibly store the gigabytes of photos that a modern digital camera produces? The answer is, it can't. But I can use Picasa on the EEE PC to show pictures directly off the SD card. The way you do this is that rather than tell Picasa to import the pictures, you use the "Add Folder to Library" feature, and add the entire SD card. This displays all the pictures taken so far on that card, and now you can use the slide show feature, delete the pictures you don't want, etc. All at the hyper-fast Picasa speed. Ah ha, the veteran computer user says, what happens if I pop that SD card out? Picasa gracefully sees that the folder has disappeared, and you no longer get to manipulate those pictures. No problems whatsoever.
During the Virgin Islands trip, members of the Rya Jen crew started worrying about losing their pictures or their cameras or their SD cards. So I offered to back up their pictures for them. To do so, I plugged in my 20GB ipod to the EEE PC, then plugged the SD card into the laptop. When importing the pictures, Picasa has a dialog box that by defaults dumps the pictures into your documents folder(and as another example of thoughtful design --- Picasa starts generating and showing you the thumbnails while presenting you with that dialog box!). Look for the browse button and redirect it to your ipod (which must be data capable, of course). Viola! All the pictures get sucked over to the 20GB ipod instead of the 4GB EEE PC hard drive, and everyone's pictures got backed up that way. (Incidentally, the ipod is by far the best external storage solution for the EEE PC, though you don't really want to leave it attached when you're on battery because it's a major power suck) One note about this feature, please leave the radio button for "leave the pictures on the SD card" setting untouched.
I've also mentioned that the "I'm feeling lucky" button for image manipulation does everything right for underwater pictures. Use it liberally, since you can always undo if you don't like the results. The straighten feature is also great for pictures that are just a bit lopsided, and it works amazingly well. You can also create photo albums from existing pictures --- the quick way to do that is to apply the star to the pictures you like to select, and then "select starred", then say, "copy to album." This does not physically create a copy, but instead creates an album that names them. This way you can create multiple albums from a single photo shoot for different purposes.
I hope this review gives you an idea of the power of Picasa, how it can be used, and what the possibilities are. If there are any limitations of Picasa, it's mostly that it's manipulation capabilities aren't up there with Adobe Photoshop. But Picasa is free, and Photoshop costs $700 or more, so there you go. And yes, I've tried Lightroom, and Aperture. No contest. Picasa is faster, and better at its job than the expensive programs. It suffices to say that if Picasa ran on the Mac, I might not have reformatted my MacMini to turn it into a windows box. Picasa is highly recommended.
First of all, Picasa is blazingly fast. In fact, I once timed it running in a virtual machine on MacOS X, and even in a virtualized window, Picasa starts up faster than iPhoto running native. Picasa does everything that I as a software engineer would want to do to improve the user experience --- background threads do the thumbnails generation and indexing, unlimited undo and redo is provided because image manipulations are not done on the image itself, but rather, a record of the manipulations are done so you never lose data. (In fact, this trips up a number of naive users because you have to use "Save a copy" if you want a copy of the picture on disk)
I also run Picasa on my EEE PC. What? I'm insane, right? That thing's got a 4GB hard drive, so how could it possibly store the gigabytes of photos that a modern digital camera produces? The answer is, it can't. But I can use Picasa on the EEE PC to show pictures directly off the SD card. The way you do this is that rather than tell Picasa to import the pictures, you use the "Add Folder to Library" feature, and add the entire SD card. This displays all the pictures taken so far on that card, and now you can use the slide show feature, delete the pictures you don't want, etc. All at the hyper-fast Picasa speed. Ah ha, the veteran computer user says, what happens if I pop that SD card out? Picasa gracefully sees that the folder has disappeared, and you no longer get to manipulate those pictures. No problems whatsoever.
During the Virgin Islands trip, members of the Rya Jen crew started worrying about losing their pictures or their cameras or their SD cards. So I offered to back up their pictures for them. To do so, I plugged in my 20GB ipod to the EEE PC, then plugged the SD card into the laptop. When importing the pictures, Picasa has a dialog box that by defaults dumps the pictures into your documents folder(and as another example of thoughtful design --- Picasa starts generating and showing you the thumbnails while presenting you with that dialog box!). Look for the browse button and redirect it to your ipod (which must be data capable, of course). Viola! All the pictures get sucked over to the 20GB ipod instead of the 4GB EEE PC hard drive, and everyone's pictures got backed up that way. (Incidentally, the ipod is by far the best external storage solution for the EEE PC, though you don't really want to leave it attached when you're on battery because it's a major power suck) One note about this feature, please leave the radio button for "leave the pictures on the SD card" setting untouched.
I've also mentioned that the "I'm feeling lucky" button for image manipulation does everything right for underwater pictures. Use it liberally, since you can always undo if you don't like the results. The straighten feature is also great for pictures that are just a bit lopsided, and it works amazingly well. You can also create photo albums from existing pictures --- the quick way to do that is to apply the star to the pictures you like to select, and then "select starred", then say, "copy to album." This does not physically create a copy, but instead creates an album that names them. This way you can create multiple albums from a single photo shoot for different purposes.
I hope this review gives you an idea of the power of Picasa, how it can be used, and what the possibilities are. If there are any limitations of Picasa, it's mostly that it's manipulation capabilities aren't up there with Adobe Photoshop. But Picasa is free, and Photoshop costs $700 or more, so there you go. And yes, I've tried Lightroom, and Aperture. No contest. Picasa is faster, and better at its job than the expensive programs. It suffices to say that if Picasa ran on the Mac, I might not have reformatted my MacMini to turn it into a windows box. Picasa is highly recommended.
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Bicycle Wheel
When I first proposed the Tour of the Alps in 2005, my friend Mike Samuel was running 16 spoke wheels, which I thought was unacceptable for a 200 pound guy. After all, I was the guy who would be stuck fixing if it broke. Hence started the Google tradition of organizing a wheel building workshop before a major bicycle tour (1000 miles or so). The workshop became popular and somewhat of a Google tradition.
Things took a turn for the better when Pardo, the guy who taught me how to build wheels (and easily one of the best mechanics I've ever met), joined Google last year, just before the 2007 Tour of the Alps. When Google organized the G2G (Googlers teaching Googlers) series of classes in November, we proposed this class for the series and was accepted.
Google has been kind enough to post the videos from the lecture section of this class on YouTube for all to enjoy and learn. The comment thread on this blog post can be used for questions, but the usual disclaimers apply.
Things took a turn for the better when Pardo, the guy who taught me how to build wheels (and easily one of the best mechanics I've ever met), joined Google last year, just before the 2007 Tour of the Alps. When Google organized the G2G (Googlers teaching Googlers) series of classes in November, we proposed this class for the series and was accepted.
Google has been kind enough to post the videos from the lecture section of this class on YouTube for all to enjoy and learn. The comment thread on this blog post can be used for questions, but the usual disclaimers apply.
- The Bicycle Wheel (Video: Part I)
- The Bicycle Wheel (Video: Part II)
- Pardo's Lecture Notes
- The Bicycle Wheel (The textbook for the class)
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Review: Garmin GPSmap 76CSx
My brothers bought me a Garmin GPS for my birthday. This unit, the 76CSx is a marine GPS, meaning that if you drop it into water, it will float. As with almost all Garmin units, it is rated for IPX 7 water proofing --- do not take it diving with you! From my perspective, this unit has several important features:
I loaded up the unit with Bluecharts v9.5 North Americas for the Virgin Islands and discovered what a rip-off that was. You literally pay $100+ for each tiny chart available to you. It was amazingly costly. The North America City Navigator package was much better ($120 for all of North America). As an aside, you do not want to buy map packages from Amazon.com, as they usually have out-of-date versions of the maps (links provided in this entry reflect where I bought mine). Maps are locked to the specific GPS unit, so you can't share maps unless you buy the maps pre-loaded into a mini-SD card. The downside of doing that is that you don't get to put together way points, etc. on your computer and then download routes to your GPS unit.
All in all, I'm pleased with this unit, and will use it on my cycling trip in Europe this year as well. Recommended.
[Update: I have a post with tips on using this unit]
- Runs off AA batteries, for easy replacement of batteries. (Carrying spare batteries and replacing them on the road is much cheaper and easier than carrying a spare charger, for instance)
- Anchor drag alarm, which works surprisingly well.
- mini-SD card slot, allowing 2GB of map downloads.
- Handleba Mount, for easy use on a bike
I loaded up the unit with Bluecharts v9.5 North Americas for the Virgin Islands and discovered what a rip-off that was. You literally pay $100+ for each tiny chart available to you. It was amazingly costly. The North America City Navigator package was much better ($120 for all of North America). As an aside, you do not want to buy map packages from Amazon.com, as they usually have out-of-date versions of the maps (links provided in this entry reflect where I bought mine). Maps are locked to the specific GPS unit, so you can't share maps unless you buy the maps pre-loaded into a mini-SD card. The downside of doing that is that you don't get to put together way points, etc. on your computer and then download routes to your GPS unit.
All in all, I'm pleased with this unit, and will use it on my cycling trip in Europe this year as well. Recommended.
[Update: I have a post with tips on using this unit]
[Update 2: I have a way to turn the unit into a useful touring tool, by turning on Piaw Routing]
Resources
These are the books we used to plan our trip. The cruising guide is a classic, and comes with every boat you charter in the Virgin Islands. But it's better to have your own copy for planning purposes. The diving guide was very good, especially if you were to do your own dive trips. The Lonely Planet guide was used for planning the first portion (the dive vacation).
Things I learned on this trip
We rented 3 kayaks --- one tandem and 2 singles. One of the singles never got used. We discovered that the tandem kayak was a major pain to deploy and stow, so next time the right thing to do is to have 2 singles. We did not bring enough snorkels, flippers, and masks. Snorkeling is by far the most fun thing you can do on a regular basis in the virgin islands (I never got sick of it!), so I think it's important to have a full complement of snorkeling gear for everyone on board.
We either need longer boat hooks, or more practice picking up mooring buoys. One possibility is for me to train crew to drive the boat while I pick up mooring buoys. But the big thing is more time maneuvering the boat under power, and more practice. Anchoring, by contrast, where I've had lots of practice, posed no such problems, especially in the virgin islands where diving to check your anchor is so easy to do.
Equalization is a useful diving skill. Even when snorkeling I would frequently equalize. This is a great technique --- previously, I'd always just bore the pain.
Speaking of diving, it's a horribly expensive sport. Horribly horribly expensive. Maybe if I rent gear and put it on the boat and use the boat as a dive platform, it becomes a bit cheaper, since I only then have to pay for air and rental gear and no guides. But then there's the problem with everyone else on the boat who's not a diver. Maybe I need to run a divers only trip if that's the case. I'm not sure what to do about this. Perhaps dive vacations are incompatible with sailing vacations, and I should keep them separate, the way I keep photography vacations separate from cycling vacations.
Clearing customs is a major pain (it costs money too, but that's mostly because of the cruising permit). On the one hand, I half-wished I had listened to Matt Romain's advise to charter out of the BVIs directly --- I would have done so if 40 foot boats with 3 cabins weren't such a rare commodity. On the other hand, St. John was really truly beautiful. I'm not a party animal --- I don't enjoy loud parties, and to a large extent, it felt many times like the BVIs were one big party. St. John, by contrast, was a place where you could pick up a mooring buoy and not hear any boats next to you all night. I wish I had more time to explore it.
A 40 foot boat sounded big to me, since my last cruise was on a 29.5 footer. But now that I've had the experience of putting 6 people on one, I'm not sure I would do it again. First of all, you run out of water quickly, especially if people feel the need to take showers, and on a boat where you're sharing cabins, a shower might not be optional. Secondly, it is a bit tight. Perhaps a catamaran or 4 people on the same 40 foot boat (with 2 cabins) might work out better.
We brought board games but were always too tired or had too much going on to play. Maybe I need to run a board gamer oriented cruise one of these days.
Larry once wrote that For me, skippering a boat would not be a vacation, but I'd long since figured out that Piaw was not wired in the same way I was. Ten years hence, I'm feeling a bit older, and the burdens of being a skipper feel a bit more pronounced than they used to. Perhaps a crewed charter might be in order just to see what it's like (or maybe I can just go along on somebody else's trip, so it's not my name on the charter), but more likely, I just need to get better at delegating, and do it often enough to have confidence in what I do on the boat. Bottom line: cruising more often than once a decade is probably what I need to keep my skills sharp.
Oh, and before I forget --- warm water is really really nice. Really nice. In fact, after this, I'm not sure I can tolerate sailing in cold water ever again. Definitely, a cold water cruise will not get my heart beating the way a warm water cruise would.
We either need longer boat hooks, or more practice picking up mooring buoys. One possibility is for me to train crew to drive the boat while I pick up mooring buoys. But the big thing is more time maneuvering the boat under power, and more practice. Anchoring, by contrast, where I've had lots of practice, posed no such problems, especially in the virgin islands where diving to check your anchor is so easy to do.
Equalization is a useful diving skill. Even when snorkeling I would frequently equalize. This is a great technique --- previously, I'd always just bore the pain.
Speaking of diving, it's a horribly expensive sport. Horribly horribly expensive. Maybe if I rent gear and put it on the boat and use the boat as a dive platform, it becomes a bit cheaper, since I only then have to pay for air and rental gear and no guides. But then there's the problem with everyone else on the boat who's not a diver. Maybe I need to run a divers only trip if that's the case. I'm not sure what to do about this. Perhaps dive vacations are incompatible with sailing vacations, and I should keep them separate, the way I keep photography vacations separate from cycling vacations.
Clearing customs is a major pain (it costs money too, but that's mostly because of the cruising permit). On the one hand, I half-wished I had listened to Matt Romain's advise to charter out of the BVIs directly --- I would have done so if 40 foot boats with 3 cabins weren't such a rare commodity. On the other hand, St. John was really truly beautiful. I'm not a party animal --- I don't enjoy loud parties, and to a large extent, it felt many times like the BVIs were one big party. St. John, by contrast, was a place where you could pick up a mooring buoy and not hear any boats next to you all night. I wish I had more time to explore it.
A 40 foot boat sounded big to me, since my last cruise was on a 29.5 footer. But now that I've had the experience of putting 6 people on one, I'm not sure I would do it again. First of all, you run out of water quickly, especially if people feel the need to take showers, and on a boat where you're sharing cabins, a shower might not be optional. Secondly, it is a bit tight. Perhaps a catamaran or 4 people on the same 40 foot boat (with 2 cabins) might work out better.
We brought board games but were always too tired or had too much going on to play. Maybe I need to run a board gamer oriented cruise one of these days.
Larry once wrote that For me, skippering a boat would not be a vacation, but I'd long since figured out that Piaw was not wired in the same way I was. Ten years hence, I'm feeling a bit older, and the burdens of being a skipper feel a bit more pronounced than they used to. Perhaps a crewed charter might be in order just to see what it's like (or maybe I can just go along on somebody else's trip, so it's not my name on the charter), but more likely, I just need to get better at delegating, and do it often enough to have confidence in what I do on the boat. Bottom line: cruising more often than once a decade is probably what I need to keep my skills sharp.
Oh, and before I forget --- warm water is really really nice. Really nice. In fact, after this, I'm not sure I can tolerate sailing in cold water ever again. Definitely, a cold water cruise will not get my heart beating the way a warm water cruise would.
Day 13: January 5th, 2008
Rain hit the slightly opened hatch above my face, spraying mist on me and waking me up at 4:55am. I ran around closing all the opened hatches on the boat, and then settled in to making pancakes. As I did so, the crew started to stir --- no mean feat as many of them had apparently stayed up till 1:30am the night before. As folks worked on breakfast and lunch, I started clearing the deck to prepare for departure.
My heart stopped as I looked up. It was beautiful. The sky was all in different colors, and it looked very much like an island paradise looked. Our charter terms had us returning the boat by noon, but it's really 11:00am or so, as we had to get our boat refueled before returning it to CYOA. So I hurried the crew along, and at a little past 7:00am, asked Przemek to come up to help me raise anchor so we could get going.
With the electric winch, the anchor was raised without any ado whatsoever, making it the smoothest "anchors aweigh" call I ever had the pleasure of hearing. I powered the boat out of the bay, and called the crew out to see the beautiful sights before I put them right to work again. Yes, I am a slave-driver. As before on our early sails, it rained, producing lovely rainbows, but even though we raised the sails, the wind did not cooperate --- the 18 knot winds we had yesterday did not cooperate , even as we sailed between St. John and St. Thomas.
Past the trio of Cays, the wind picked up again, but it died down because we were in the wind-shadow of St. John just a little later, and I had to power up the motor and motor sail our way towards Charlotte Amalie. Even with the engine at cruising power and the sails up, it would take until 10:30 before I spied the opening to Charlotte Amalie harbor, where we ate a hurried packed lunch in anticipation of rapid action. I hailed Yacht Haven Grande and got approval to use their fuel dock, but it wasn't at all easy to find the fuel dock, which was a little out of the way. Spurred a bit too much perhaps by the clock, I went into the fuel dock a little too fast, but fortunately Lisa was handy with a fender and there was no problem.
In a week of sailing, Rya Jen had only used $36.60 worth of diesel fuel. The fuel gauge had not budged at all, from where it sat, so I guess the fuel gauge was busted. We hailed CYOA on the VHF and they instructed us to hang out near their slips and someone would come out by dinghy. I then went through the gates to the marina office with the fuel-dock boy, and paid for the fuel. Our departure was easy enough, with plenty of shore help to allow us to leave the slip, and before we knew it we were headed back to Frenchtown Marina, from whence we had came 7 days earlier.
Chris came out on his dinghy and we quickly unfurled and furled the sails for him so he could see that our sails were in good shape. I then handed over the helm to him, thereby giving up responsibility for Rya Jen. But our travails were not over, for we had to help Chris dock, which turned out to involve a bit of waiting for the winds to die a bit, where upon he had to reverse the boat, have me hand the bowline to shore-help, and allow him to come into the slip. With that, our sail was over but not our journey, since we still had to clear customs.
Customs and immigration was at the ferry building 3 blocks away, but we were not prepared for the amount of waiting we had to do. Clearing customs was not a problem, though the lady behind the counter asked why I had cut it so close, arriving at 11:55am when the office closed at noon. She was apparently in a hurry to get out, so took my form perfunctorily and told me to wait for immigration. In front of us in immigration was another boat. The master of the boat, which was a fully crewed charter, told us that two ferry boats had just pulled in, which meant that the immigration agents would service both of them before talking to us. "Clearly, they've never heard of queuing theory," declared Hector.
Well, the long wait meant I got a chance to query a professional skipper as to how to approach the virgin islands. First of all, they had a long motoring day to Virgin Gorda, which was where they cleared customs. Apparently, Virgin Gorda's customs agents aren't too picky, so even if you arrive at night, you can wait the next morning before clearing customs and they won't bother you. It also meant that all their sailing was downwind. The man also had a low opinion of Soper's Hole, regaling us with stories about all the stupid nit-picky things the customs and immigration agents there did.
Another little tidbit I got was that apparently the best time to visit is between October and December, and May. That was the best weather as you could apparently get really poor weather the time of year we did our trip. "But you got lucky this year, as the weather's been exceptionally nice. We got our bad swells in early December this year." I filed this away for future reference. Of course, when you have twin totoros on board, the weather gods are literally with you.
It was 12:15pm before the ferry was all cleared and we got our customs agents on our side. It didn't take them long to clear both our boats (she wanted to go to lunch too!), and we were back at Frenchtown Marina, where the crew went to eat while I finished checking Rya Jen back in. Chris had been busy, and said that the dive check (unthinkable in the Pacific Northwest) had showed that we brought back the hull even cleaner than we had left. The boat's systems and fittings were all still in place, so the only problem we had, mechanically speaking was the propeller on the dinghy. They had replaced it already, and found no other problems so we were good there. Chris and I went over the entire checklist and I showed him where everything was, and gave them feedback on Rya Jen. After this, it was a matter of getting our luggage off the boat and cleaning up, so I took my shower, went to lunch with the crew, and came back and got everything off.
Finishing lunch, we got our luggage and cleaned up the boat a bit more, but it was already 2:00pm when I headed over to clear the boat one final time with CYOA. Chris was away, so someone else checked the boat out, and this time, he complained about the condition of the stove and sand in the cabins. We were feeling screwed for the security deposit at this point, since we had to depart, but then I realized the Przemek was actually not departing today, so I asked if he was OK with working with CYOA to address their concerns.
With this, we said farewell, grabbed a taxi, and headed to the airport, where our flight to Washington DC departed on time. On the way home, we discovered that our timing was just perfect, as a winter storm had just hit San Francisco the day before, creating air traffic delays all around the country, especially into San Francisco. We smiled and pulled on our sweaters, anticipating the cooler weather we would soon face.
My heart stopped as I looked up. It was beautiful. The sky was all in different colors, and it looked very much like an island paradise looked. Our charter terms had us returning the boat by noon, but it's really 11:00am or so, as we had to get our boat refueled before returning it to CYOA. So I hurried the crew along, and at a little past 7:00am, asked Przemek to come up to help me raise anchor so we could get going.
With the electric winch, the anchor was raised without any ado whatsoever, making it the smoothest "anchors aweigh" call I ever had the pleasure of hearing. I powered the boat out of the bay, and called the crew out to see the beautiful sights before I put them right to work again. Yes, I am a slave-driver. As before on our early sails, it rained, producing lovely rainbows, but even though we raised the sails, the wind did not cooperate --- the 18 knot winds we had yesterday did not cooperate , even as we sailed between St. John and St. Thomas.
Past the trio of Cays, the wind picked up again, but it died down because we were in the wind-shadow of St. John just a little later, and I had to power up the motor and motor sail our way towards Charlotte Amalie. Even with the engine at cruising power and the sails up, it would take until 10:30 before I spied the opening to Charlotte Amalie harbor, where we ate a hurried packed lunch in anticipation of rapid action. I hailed Yacht Haven Grande and got approval to use their fuel dock, but it wasn't at all easy to find the fuel dock, which was a little out of the way. Spurred a bit too much perhaps by the clock, I went into the fuel dock a little too fast, but fortunately Lisa was handy with a fender and there was no problem.
In a week of sailing, Rya Jen had only used $36.60 worth of diesel fuel. The fuel gauge had not budged at all, from where it sat, so I guess the fuel gauge was busted. We hailed CYOA on the VHF and they instructed us to hang out near their slips and someone would come out by dinghy. I then went through the gates to the marina office with the fuel-dock boy, and paid for the fuel. Our departure was easy enough, with plenty of shore help to allow us to leave the slip, and before we knew it we were headed back to Frenchtown Marina, from whence we had came 7 days earlier.
Chris came out on his dinghy and we quickly unfurled and furled the sails for him so he could see that our sails were in good shape. I then handed over the helm to him, thereby giving up responsibility for Rya Jen. But our travails were not over, for we had to help Chris dock, which turned out to involve a bit of waiting for the winds to die a bit, where upon he had to reverse the boat, have me hand the bowline to shore-help, and allow him to come into the slip. With that, our sail was over but not our journey, since we still had to clear customs.
Customs and immigration was at the ferry building 3 blocks away, but we were not prepared for the amount of waiting we had to do. Clearing customs was not a problem, though the lady behind the counter asked why I had cut it so close, arriving at 11:55am when the office closed at noon. She was apparently in a hurry to get out, so took my form perfunctorily and told me to wait for immigration. In front of us in immigration was another boat. The master of the boat, which was a fully crewed charter, told us that two ferry boats had just pulled in, which meant that the immigration agents would service both of them before talking to us. "Clearly, they've never heard of queuing theory," declared Hector.
Well, the long wait meant I got a chance to query a professional skipper as to how to approach the virgin islands. First of all, they had a long motoring day to Virgin Gorda, which was where they cleared customs. Apparently, Virgin Gorda's customs agents aren't too picky, so even if you arrive at night, you can wait the next morning before clearing customs and they won't bother you. It also meant that all their sailing was downwind. The man also had a low opinion of Soper's Hole, regaling us with stories about all the stupid nit-picky things the customs and immigration agents there did.
Another little tidbit I got was that apparently the best time to visit is between October and December, and May. That was the best weather as you could apparently get really poor weather the time of year we did our trip. "But you got lucky this year, as the weather's been exceptionally nice. We got our bad swells in early December this year." I filed this away for future reference. Of course, when you have twin totoros on board, the weather gods are literally with you.
It was 12:15pm before the ferry was all cleared and we got our customs agents on our side. It didn't take them long to clear both our boats (she wanted to go to lunch too!), and we were back at Frenchtown Marina, where the crew went to eat while I finished checking Rya Jen back in. Chris had been busy, and said that the dive check (unthinkable in the Pacific Northwest) had showed that we brought back the hull even cleaner than we had left. The boat's systems and fittings were all still in place, so the only problem we had, mechanically speaking was the propeller on the dinghy. They had replaced it already, and found no other problems so we were good there. Chris and I went over the entire checklist and I showed him where everything was, and gave them feedback on Rya Jen. After this, it was a matter of getting our luggage off the boat and cleaning up, so I took my shower, went to lunch with the crew, and came back and got everything off.
Finishing lunch, we got our luggage and cleaned up the boat a bit more, but it was already 2:00pm when I headed over to clear the boat one final time with CYOA. Chris was away, so someone else checked the boat out, and this time, he complained about the condition of the stove and sand in the cabins. We were feeling screwed for the security deposit at this point, since we had to depart, but then I realized the Przemek was actually not departing today, so I asked if he was OK with working with CYOA to address their concerns.
With this, we said farewell, grabbed a taxi, and headed to the airport, where our flight to Washington DC departed on time. On the way home, we discovered that our timing was just perfect, as a winter storm had just hit San Francisco the day before, creating air traffic delays all around the country, especially into San Francisco. We smiled and pulled on our sweaters, anticipating the cooler weather we would soon face.
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