[Toshi]

the RX-8 sold yesterday! already have the deposit in hand. working out how to deal with the remainder of the balance today. bank transfer? cashier's check? the dude's in alberta...

with regard to practical cars and whatnot, i bumped a thread from 2004 on Zipcar. Thad seemed to like it back then, and i'm considering not replacing the RX-8 and going full-time bike + bus + Zipcar backup.

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106296

 

[Toshi]

yesterday and today have been absolutely beautiful here in seattle. it's also "bike to work day", so the burke-gilman multi-use trail was packed with all manner of lollygaggers. nevertheless, i cruised down it on the e-bike to take advantage of the sun and whip out the trusty 20D, which has seen all too little use over this stressful residency match season.

without further ado:

gasworks park e-bike glamour shots - april 16, 2008

that's the Space Needle and Queen Anne hill in the background across Lake Union

"Custom" U-lock mount made from four strategically placed zipties

Torque arm: 10mm crescent wrench, two hose clamps, and a ziptie

Center stand, like a motorcycle

Waterproofing and anti-theft/uglifying job on the motor controller

 

[WTGPhoben]

does the front wheel torque steer?

 

[Toshi]

does the front wheel torque steer?

not perceptibly. the torque arm is there to keep the dropouts from being ripped apart. T = F*d and all, and this lengthens d from ~10mm (dropout length, as it were) to 100mm.

 

[Toshi]

i broke my rack today. suck. it left me stranded, too -- i was in an area of town (down by the waterfront well away from seattle itself) that doesn't have weekend bus service, so i had to call jessica's mom and have her bail me out with the SUV.

moral of the story: "25 kg" rated rear REI racks may or may not fail when you load them down with 25 kg of stuff and head down a bumpy road (max speed recorded was 36.4 mph before the failure). 25 kg of stuff = monette double case with two heavy monettes inside + mute + mouthpieces along with the pannier with 18 lbs of lithium + dress shoes + dress clothes + full size screwdriver + allen key set. was returning from a gig.

i'm thinking of replacing it with a Tubus Cargo rack, which looks uber-sweet, is made of steel, and is rated for 40 kg!

(my torque arm also failed, but it's not as interesting to discuss and i know how to fix it.)

 

[Toshi]

a few days later and back on the road again:

a torque arm is being made by a seattle local on ridemonkey who is a machinist/toolmaker in the daytime! (he's going to weld disc tabs on an old steel fork from his basement and fabricate a torque arm running from the axle flats on the front hub motor to these disc tabs.) in the meantime i'm running with no torque arm. i dialed down the current limit to minimize torque.

the tubus cargo rack is in place, having required some modifications to fit. good thing i'm comfortable with the file and the drill these days! it's tubular chromoly and actually felt lighter than the solid aluminum one that it replaced.

finally, the gearing is now appropriately high, at 48-16t up from the stock 38-21t. according to sheldon brown's gear inches calculator that means i now have a spread from 48.8 to 119.4 gear inches.

119.4
103.1
88.5
76.4
65.1
57.2
48.8

119.4 is really, really tall. 103.1 is good for cruising on flat ground with assist, doing about 25 mph while taking load off the motor...

i probably won't be able to climb 11% grades as i did with the prior setup, but i shouldn't be doing that anyway since that steep of a grade necessitates slow speeds that are well out of the motor's efficiency range. it's happiest above 20 mph.

decked out for grocery shopping. doesn't the gearing make it look like a track bike? heh.

 

[Toshi]

today's ride. 20.3 mph average, and that's with stoplights, tooling around in the home depot parking lot, and the pretty decent hills near the end! (elevation profile at bottom of the really tall map)

 

[Toshi]

alexis, you still following this thread? you (and keith) would love this:

formula 1 user interfaces (ie, steering wheels)

sweet.

 

[Toshi]

it's gone.

i almost shed a tear, but didn't since i'm still chock-full of testosterone even without a car.

 

[Toshi]

sweet. i just got iPhone EDGE tethering over an ad-hoc WiFi network to work with my mac mini, even if only briefly and intermittently.

in part of my quest to live as cheaply as possible this upcoming year _not_ spending money on high speed internet is high on the list, as that's $600+ i could use for better purposes! while i'm not certain that i could live permanently with a tethered EDGE connection it'd serve as a bridge until i figured out how to crack my neighbors' WEP passwords...



(fun fact: when i went to work for the hotel group in portland back in early 2004 i lived for 3 weeks in one of their hotels. over that 3 week period my internet access at "home" was my nokia 3650's EDGE connection tethered over bluetooth to my Quicksilver G4.)

 

[Toshi]

\while i'm not certain that i could live permanently with a tethered EDGE connection it'd serve as a bridge until i figured out how to crack my neighbors' WEP passwords...

it turns out that cracking WEP probably won't be necessary! although my iPhone admittedly has better WiFi reception than my Mac mini, from the phone's perspective it nevertheless looks like there are at least 2 unsecured wireless networks around my new apartment, along with 13+ "secured" ones. population density comes in handy every once in a while.

the astute reader will note that my personal webserver, http://tjclark.ath.cx/, is offline, however, as it will have to migrate up north to jessica's place. free wifi wafting over the neighborhood's airwaves isn't good enough for it, since its proper setup requires access to the router's admin controls in order to have ports forwarded as they should be, etc.

 

[Toshi]

it turns out that cracking WEP probably won't be necessary! although my iPhone admittedly has better WiFi reception than my Mac mini, from the phone's perspective it nevertheless looks like there are at least 2 unsecured wireless networks around my new apartment, along with 13+ "secured" ones. population density comes in handy every once in a while.

grr. the mac mini's solid aluminum case, poor wifi antenna design, and 15 extra feet of distance from the street-side window meant going from 15+ networks with two unsecured and open ("NETGEAR" and "linksys", always nice to see ) to 2, both of which are WEPed. and since the drivers for the built-in "airport extreme" cards on intel mac minis don't support packet injection cracking WEP would be a non-trivial affair.

on the other hand, EDGE tethering is still working. latency is absolutely horrid and the connection completely goes silent if one tries to load multiple tabs simultaneously, but when doing a single task it is almost usable. download speeds with no other activity are just a hair under 20 kB/second.

this raises a non-trivial question: how cheap am i? i really want to live frugally this year, max out the 401k, and start with a solid base when i move to long island, but for someone as (used to being) connected as i am this connection is rough... i know, the perils of modern life, boohoo. realistically i should wait until after my surgery intern year actually starts to see if i'll even have any spare time to lounge around the apartment and surf the internet but i'm sorely tempted to find the cheapest pseudo-highspeed option (DSL perhaps?) and pull the trigger.

agh.

 

[Toshi]

while i'm not certain that i could live permanently with a tethered EDGE connection it'd serve as a bridge until i figured out how to crack my neighbors' WEP passwords...

from [my iPhone's] perspective it nevertheless looks like there are at least 2 unsecured wireless networks around my new apartment, along with 13+ "secured" ones.

the mac mini's solid aluminum case, poor wifi antenna design, and 15 extra feet of distance from the street-side window meant going from 15+ networks with two unsecured and open ("NETGEAR" and "linksys", always nice to see ) to 2, both of which are WEPed. and since the drivers for the built-in "airport extreme" cards on intel mac minis don't support packet injection cracking WEP would be a non-trivial affair.

[trying out ridemonkey's implementation of multi pass, er, multiquote. yay for being the squeaky wheel prompting application of grease to the site's innards... (i petitioned for this.)]

in any case my saga-of-limited-audience-interest has now come to a bit of an end. i hope. i bought a D-Link USB 802.11N (draft 2.0) dongle and got it working after quite a bit of head scratching with the drivers from the manufacturer of its original chipset, Ralink. RT2870 drivers work! and the range on this thing is sufficient such that i'm surfing over some anonymous neighbor's connection via "NETGEAR".

free internet access for the price of a new wireless adapter. score. i'm willing to pony up for hardware that'll continue to be useful in the future and offers capability not built into my precious little mac (draft N, namely -- my mac was from the 802.11g era).

 

[Solide Bullets]

seriously dude? I mean if you are indeed a doctor...what the hell are you doin tryin so hard to crack peoples codes? I mean don't get me wrong I bank off my neighbors too but you have gone above and beyond!

 

[DirtMcGirk]

I'm with Bullets on this. There's a point where being frugal is being a dick. "Borrowing" internet is theft really, so is "borrowing" electricity.

 

[WTGPhoben]

I'm with Bullets on this. There's a point where being frugal is being a dick. "Borrowing" internet is theft really, so is "borrowing" electricity.

yes, though the analogy is somewhat misleading in that as long as you're only using your neighbor's unused bandwidh, you're not really costing your neighbor anything. Where as with electricity you are. There's something to be said for the increased efficiency of "sharing" the next-door connection -- Less power consumption (only one modem and router), less hardware, the connection being used closer to its potential. I'm not saying it's ethical, but it's elegant in a way.

I suppose the the ethical route would be to ask your neighbor if you can share and throw him $10 a month (but aircrack works very well...)

 

[Toshi]

Whatever. When you pay back my six-figure student loans then we'll talk. (not directed to keith )

Keith: having a network with no encryption whatsoever and a SSID of NETGEAR is basically an invitation. I have no idea which of my neighbors it is - again, I'm in a VERY dense part of town with at least 15 public SSIDs in the air.

 

[DirtMcGirk]

So let me work this out...

You decided to go to Medical School.
You didn't have either the balls or the brains to join the military to have them pay for it.
Yet you think that those around you should shoulder the costs of your cheapness.

Dude, you are the worst kind of mooch, and in fact you're a thief.
You disgust me in every way I can conceive.

 

[Toshi]

With regard to electricity: is it theft if you plug in your cell phone or laptop in a public outlet? What if it's at a municipal park? A county hospital? A private company? Another person's house?

What if it's an electric car-sized chunk of electricity, say 20 cents for a "full tank"? What if it's 4/10 of a cent worth of electricity for my commute?

 

[DirtMcGirk]

Pay your own way.
Period.

 

[WTGPhoben]

Whatever. When you pay back my six-figure student loans then we'll talk. (not directed to keith )

Keith: having a network with no encryption whatsoever and a SSID of NETGEAR is basically an invitation. I have no idea which of my neighbors it is - again, I'm in a VERY dense part of town with at least 15 public SSIDs in the air.

Don't get me wrong, I was not condemning your practice if it's an open SSID with no security. Legally one might even consider that an invitation. I believe the legal term for it is "attractive nuisance". Like if you leave a bunch of dangerous tools on your front lawn in a neighborhood full of little kids and one of them comes onto your lawn and hurts themselves playing with them, you're at least partially at fault for providing them the ready opportunity to do so, even though they're not your kids and shouldn't be on your front lawn. Just because you didn't intend for them to be there doesn't mean you can't expect them to... And as such if you don't want other people connecting to your wireless, you secure it (even if the security is crappy), otherwise it's fair game...

 

[Toshi]

maybe it's karma (or the wet weather, or the phase of the moon) but my high signal strength NETGEAR WAP with no encryption disappeared today. i'm on another open network at the moment, but the strength is weak and the connection spotty. hmph.

 

[Toshi]

... and now i'm a Clearwire customer, so am only "stealing" electricity from the hospitals at which i'll be staff. Clearwire apparently uses EV-DO type technology, moving to WiMax? and is based out of the puget sound area. as a result Seattle itself has good coverage. $50 setup fee, waived $10 shipping fee, $35/month including equipment, one year agreement, 1.5 mbps down, 256 kbps up.

other options just didn't make sense: phone company DSL would require a phone line ($13.50/mo) + their own fees ($99 installation was typical), comcast rapes the consumer on setup and installation fees, and speakeasy dsl sans phone line was no bargain either. dialup itself wasn't even an option -- although i have UW's modem pool available to me gratis the local phone service in my area stipulates that it's not to be used for purposes of internet access or for more than 5000 minutes/month.

grr. more bills.

 

[DirtMcGirk]

Good, glad to see karma helped you along.

 

[WTGPhoben]

Disc mounts for a torque arm, that's over-engineering for sure (not that I disapprove). Have you got it set up yet?

In Biking related news, I have a newfound love for Fox. I sent my fork back to them because it was leaking oil (less than 1yr old) and they not only replaced the dust wiper but 90% of the rest of the fork. For free. The only thing left when I got it back was the top caps and the lowers. I can't imagine what was wrong with it, since everything seemed to be working ok more or less.

I rode my first Expert race ever on sunday in CT (Channel 3 MTB race on the root66 series). It was brutally hot (93 and really humid) and people were getting heat exhaustion, but I managed to keep myself from passing out for four laps and finished 11th (13min off the lead), which is about where I expected to be given the 4hrs of sleep I had the night before and the few annoyances that currently plague my bike.

My goal of being able to clear 18" objects at race levels of exhaustion has been attained, it seems, but my upper body strength is holding me back in technical sections at the end of races. Maybe I need to do some pushups...

 

[Toshi]

props on the expert finish. yeah, buildyourown finished it a few days/weeks back and i posted pics in the mammoth thread. he ended up using custom mounting points instead of being constrained to disc tab dimensions. here's one, with the rest in the thread: (link is to a single post)

 

[Toshi]

i went tandem skydiving today. 10k altitude, 30 secs freefall, and then i got to "steer" in all the loops i wanted on the way down. fun.

the surprising part is that jessica went, too!

 

[Toshi]

also, in camera news:

i'm going to unload the 20D on eBay soon, probably next week. looks like it's worth about $375 these days. then i'll hold out for the mythical 5D MkII. in the meantime i'll go cameraless, which will be ok given that i'll be plenty busy. this'll also be a good time to get the sticky usm focusing motor on the 50/1.4 looked at, a task that i've put off for literally years.

 

[Toshi]

the 20D worked fine over the weekend, yielding a good crop of photos:

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204320

and now it is listed on eBay! buy it! buy it! $0.99 starting bid, no reserve as is my practice.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110263356356

 

[binary visions]

Buy it? Didn't you suggest that the 20D shutter was "definitely failing"?



BTW, I didn't say so in that thread of pictures you took at the gardens (which were great shots), but that 135mm f/2 is pretty special. Makes me want to pick up Nikon's 135mm f/2 - pictures just have a really nice air to them.

 

[narlus]

the 20D worked fine over the weekend, yielding a good crop of photos:


and now it is listed on eBay! buy it! buy it! $0.99 starting bid, no reserve as is my practice.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110263356356

Optical Zoom: 5x

how can a body w/o a lens have an optical zoom?

 

[Westy]

Sounds like Toshi isn't just a theif but a scammer too.

 

[narlus]

Buy it? Didn't you suggest that the 20D shutter was "definitely failing"?



BTW, I didn't say so in that thread of pictures you took at the gardens (which were great shots), but that 135mm f/2 is pretty special. Makes me want to pick up Nikon's 135mm f/2 - pictures just have a really nice air to them.

the 135L f/2 lens i bought used in March is a fantastic lens!

 

[Toshi]

heh. the shutter has probably 24k actuations on it. can't tell exactly on non-1-series canon bodies since canon hasn't revealed its secrets. mtbf for the shutter is 20k for the 20D iirc. also, to clarify: what actually happened that caused me to freak out about the shutter 12 days ago was that 3 or so frames randomly came out maybe 4 stops underexposed as compared to their neighbors, and that an equal number of shots came out burnt white hot (maybe 4 stops over) by the external flash. now that i think of it it's more likely an external flash problem -- metering with the internal flash last weekend worked fine. hmph. oh well, done is done and the camera is listed.

in the auction i state the the camera is working fine now, and that the photos from this past weekend including that parrot were taken on it. these are true statements. (it's also probably true that the camera would be fine 99 shots out of 100 for the next 10k actuations, but i have the bug. i want full frame.)

caveat emptor.

 

[Toshi]

how can a body w/o a lens have an optical zoom?

the specs are autogenerated by eBay when you choose the 20D. don't blame me! what lens would be 5x anyway? hmph.

 

[binary visions]

the specs are autogenerated by eBay when you choose the 20D. don't blame me! what lens would be 5x anyway? hmph.

24-120?

 

[narlus]

full frame fever...

i hope Nikon comes out w/ their mid-priced FF body soon, to kick Canon in the ass.

 

[binary visions]

Looks like the D700 is a sure thing, and Thom Hogan suggests July 1st is the next big announcement date for Nikon.

In other news, I did my first portrait session with a buddy last week. I offered to take photos for his wedding invitation. Got some nice natural light shots - the Tamron 90mm is a really sweet little lens for not much cash. Guess the next step is to learn how to work a flash - something I'm pretty inexperienced with.

The more I play with the middle focal lengths, the more I like them... I have an old 75-150 coming today that I snagged off eBay for little money. Toshi, how do you like your 135mm f/2 for a portrait lens?

 

[Toshi]

i love the 135/2L for portraits, and think it will be even better on a full frame body. heard any new dirt on a 5D Mk II?

 

[binary visions]

Nothing reasonably reliable. Just the same old chatter that always happens between the release of new camera bodies.

If Nikon does indeed end up releasing the D700 tomorrow, Canon better get a move on with their release. The D300 and D3 were a one-two punch, a D700 would be a kick in the nuts. Not that they won't come back - of course they will - but that'll be three major bodies that they don't have a good answer to.

All this competition makes it a pretty good time to enjoy photography...