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Month: September 2010

Surly Chainring, Tire Swap, etc.

Published September 16, 2010

This rainy Thursday was used for some necessary bike work. I’ve finally resolved my chainring issues by acquiring a new Surly stainless steel chainring, 104mm x 34t. This was fitted with some short alloy chainring bolts, the chainline was tweaked by doing some fancy math and then removing one spacer removed from behind the the cog, and I re-adjusted the chain tension.

I also fitted a Kenda Small Block Eight to the rear of the bike and a beefy 2.4″ wide Schwalbe Racing Ralph to the front. I’ve been liking this exact setup on my Titus so I figure it’ll be good to try here as well. It’s fast rolling but works wonderfully over sand and loose stuff, and should be great until the snow flies. I think I’ll try and test it out tomorrow evening. It’d be nice to try it out at Addison Oaks, but after both working and racing there this past weekend (for which these podiums) I’m not sure I want to ride it so soon.

If you’re interested, here are two photos of me from the race (1, 2) which were taken by Andrea Tucker during the race. I finished 10th out of 14 in my class, which I don’t think was too bad, seeing as I’d never done three solid laps (the length of the race) of this trail before. All of us working the race had also arrived at 7am to set up everything, and then Erik and I set out on a fourth lap afterward to clean up the trail. It was definitely a tiring day.

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LiveJournal Is Dead

Published September 7, 2010

For as long as I’ve been making posts on nuxx.net/blog, since back in March 2008, I’ve been automatically cross-posting things to my LiveJournal account ‘c0nsumer’. In recent years LiveJournal (LJ) has become markedly less interesting as folks move to other social networks and abandon the blogging format. I’m not about to give up a place to post random thoughts, images, and technical info, but I don’t think that I’m going to keep contributing such things to LJ.

I’m currently working on backing up my LJ account so that I can archive it somewhere, but as my account became unpaid this evening I suspect it won’t be long before I abandon LJ entirely and post solely here. I may even consider using Facebook, where I’ve maintained a minor presence so that I could view other people’s pictures. I’ve been a bit hesitant to use it for any real content, but as it reached critical mass a few years ago I really shouldn’t continue to ignore it.

So, I think that’s it. While LJ does offer some benefits such as ACLs to restrict access to posts (which I don’t use) and email notifications of replies to comments, I think it’s time to move on. Within a few days I’ll likely uninstall the LJ crossposter from WordPress, make a final post pointing back here, and bid the online social blogging platform that I’ve used since May 28, 2002 goodbye.

UPDATE: It turns out that the expiration of my LJ account does not remove my ability to automatically cross-post. So while I no longer have much of an interest in using LJ, I may as well continue cross-posting to make it easier for others to read.

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New Tires!

Published September 3, 2010

I’ve been noticing some odd vibration from the rear of my car lately, and on Wednesday it was noted that my rear tire was starting to look a bit low. Today was a good day to take my car into the shop, and it was found that my rear driver’s side tire was super-worn on the inside edge, with intermittent vibration wear, and had a nail in it. With 54,134 on the set of tires they’d also lived their life, so I didn’t mind getting new ones.

My car rides much better now, doesn’t have an odd vibration from 69MPH – 74MPH, and it should be much nicer to go into winter with fresh tread to drive on. I do think I need to rotate my tires a bit more this time around, though.

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MySQL Help (phpBB and aMember)

Published September 2, 2010

As some of you know, I do many of the “webmaster” activities for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association. As part of this, I’m trying to do some MySQL stuff, but I’m really not sure where to start since it seems to be way beyond my abilities. So, I’m going to write it up here and hope that someone can help. Please? Help?

Thank you very much in advance for any help you can provide.

I’ll put it below the fold…

Continue readingMySQL Help (phpBB and aMember)
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Australian Yogurt (Yoghurt?)

Published September 1, 2010

This morning I ate a cup of Wallaby Organic Yogurt which Danielle purchased on clearance at VG’s. While tasty, I was a bit confused by the printing on the lid claiming that it’s inspired by “Australian yogurts”. Prior to this I’d never heard of such a thing, and apparently I’m not the only one confused by this designation.

I figure that this wording is simply a way of making a food sound more interesting by implying that it’s foreign. After all, foreign foods are better; especially those from exotic lands like Australia.

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