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Category: making things

Founders’ Centennial IPA

Founders' Centennial IPA poured into a glass. This is nicely hoppy.

Tonight’s beer is Founders’ Centennial IPA, a nicely hoppy 7.2% IPA. I like this, although I think that I may have liked the Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest a bit more.

Speaking of alcohol, today I was hoping to bottle some cider which I’d put to age almost a year ago. It’s become completely clear simply from settling in the carboy and hopefully will be good. Because it’s clear, when bottling it I’m going to have to add some yeast so that it’ll carbonate properly. Because Cap’n’Cork was closed when we got there I wasn’t able to get the yeast and thus the bottling has been put off until Tuesday. (They are also closed on Mondays, and I need some nice flavorless champange yeast for this task.)

Hopefully sometime around the end of next month I’ll have two cases of nicely aged hard cider available. I’m sure Danielle will love this.

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Stony Creek Mountain Bike Videos

I mounted my old Coolpix 5400 on the handlebar of my bike in order to get some video of bike rides.

Yesterday I decided to go for a bike ride at Stony Creek, but before doing that I grabbed some small pieces of non-slip foam and some cable ties and strapped my old Nikon Coolpix 5400 to the handlebars of the bike. (This is how it looked when riding.)

The resulting videos aren’t great, as being mounted on the handle bars made the video jerky and noisy, with every little movement, bump, and vibration translating into shake, blur, and noise. However, I think they are interesting enough, and in one of them you can even watch me fall.

These videos are only short, couple minute segments of what I feel are some of the more interesting pieces of single track at Stony Creek. Length was limited by the recording time of the camera.

Here’s the videos on YouTube in high res, including the one of me falling (#3):

· The Pines #1
· The Pines #2
· Roller Coaster #1
· Roller Coaster #2
· Roller Coaster #3 & Me Falling
· Roller Coaster #4
· Roller Coaster #5
· Marker 26 to 25
· Back to Parking Lot

The original, and thusly higher quality, MOV files straight out of the camera at https://nuxx.net/videos. Just be warned, they are large:

· stony_creek_15oct2008_pines_1.mov (46.3 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_pines_2.mov (46.4 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_rollercoaster_1.mov (45.9 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_rollercoaster_2.mov (25.5 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_rollercoaster_3.mov (24.8 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_rollercoaster_4.mov (45.7 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_rollercoaster_5.mov (38.8 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_to_parking.mov (46.6 MB)
· stony_creek_15oct2008_up_mount_sheldon_26_to_25 (22.5 MB)

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Pulped Data is Secure Data

A week's worth of receipts in a Tupperware container after having been soaked in warm water and pulped with a stick blender.

I’ve had a small stack of scraps of paper on my desk for a little while now, each bearing rather important passwords. I’d intended to burn them, but that is a hassle with both my neighbors wondering why I’m burning things out front, finding a can to do it in, etc.

Wanting to clean up my desk a bit I decided to destroy the passwords in a different manner: soaking in a pint glass of water, then pulping with a stick blender.

This worked so well that I took the week’s worth of receipts which I’d just entered into Quicken, soaked them in a larger container of water, and pulped them as well. I thought about then experimenting with making some new paper from this pulp, but I don’t have any screening handy, nor do I need another project.

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My New Single Speed

The emergency single speed conversion done to get home. I ended up using the 22 and 13 tooth rings.

I’ve been thinking that it’d be nice to have a single speed bike to ride, but I didn’t want to acquire one this way.

Today I ate a very large breakfast then set out with the intention of riding to Lake Orion and back, then to Metro Beach and back, hoping to break 90 miles today. After riding just about four miles and getting to the intersection of 23 Mile and VanDyke, just when I was feeling warmed up, something felt odd when shifting. Looking down I saw that my rear derailleur was canted to the side with the chain coming off of the top jockey wheel. As soon as touched the assembly to try and reposition things the derailleur came off, as seen here.

I ended up doing an emergency single speed conversion by shortening the chain, tensioning it up as I could, then riding carefully home. I had to make a total of three adjustments to the chain, because I found that if I had the chain on anything but the smallest rings it would drop off and skip around.

Even after settling on the two smallest rings I had to be very careful because occasionally the chain would bounce a bit and climb up one gear, putting so much tension on the chain (and BB) that it was nearly impossible to pedal. When this happened I’d have to remove the rear wheel, re-seat the chain, then keep going again. This had to be done at least six times in the four miles home. Eventually I found that if I pedaled gingerly, never pedaled when going over bumps, didn’t apply much force when going uphill, and coasted as often as possible I was generally fine. I could

Now to figure out what to do… The Shimano SLX group is tempting, or maybe the SRAM X.9 stuff. One thing I know I won’t be doing for a while is riding my bike.

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Chainstay Protector from a Tube

An old tube cut into a 1" strip and wrapped around the chainstay to quiet down chain slap.

I’ve been wanting a chainstay protector to cut down on the noise from chain slap, but I both didn’t want to pay for one. I also particularly don’t like how most aftermarket bike accessories come plastered with logos like this Lizard Skins-brand one. So, while waiting for my biking clothes to get through a late-night wash cycle I took an old tube, cut it into a 1″ strip, wrapped it around most of the chainstay on my bike, and cable tied it in place.

This idea was inspired by this photo of an On-One Inbred Summer Season 456 with what appears to use this same setup. I really like the minimal look of it.

To cut this piece of tube I stuck a piece of 1″ masking tape on an old tube, cut along both sides of the tape, squared the ends, then scrubbed off the non-stick powder from the tube with a sponge. It was wrapped so that what was the inside of the tube is facing out, making for a consistent gray look. I would have liked to wrap more of the chainstay, but with the rear derailleur cable running under the chainstay there wasn’t a lot of clearance. The area of the chainstay which had taken the most damage (and thusly chainslap) before is covered, so it should work well.

Chain slap is the clanking noise made when the chain bounces and hits the chainstay (or other parts) while going over bumps or drops. Not only does it make a loud clanking noise, the impact usually chips up the finish on the chainstay.

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Bike Photography and GPS Fixin’

Yesterday I headed out to the grand opening of the Skills Park at Stony Creek Metropark. I’d intended to ride a bit, but I ended up spending most of my time there just taking photographs like the one above. (That one was taken by sitting under the gap in the Flo the Fro stunt and using the Peleng 8mm fisheye. If you’d like to see more of the photos, take a look at the album entitled Stony Creek Skills Park Grand Opening.

After getting home and meeting up with Danielle we went and got food, swung by my work to pick something up, went to Best Buy to grab a pack of universal screen protectors for my new phone (eek, expensive!), then I came back here and fixed the Garmin Edge 305 I’d previously mentioned. My first attempt was to bridge the connector PCB to the main one with wires, but there wasn’t quite enough room for them. Instead I just ran the battery pack wires directly to the related test points on the main board then sealed the thing up with hot melt glue.

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Crooked Tree

Another (quite blurry) view of my bike leaning against the crooked tree on The Snake at Stony Creek.

I really like riding past this tree on the portion of the mountain bike trails known as The Snake at Stony Creek Metropark. This tree keeps leaning further and further over, and I imagine that soon it’ll actually fall and make for a log to be crossed. There’s something I really like about coming around that corner and having to lean under it.

Yes, I know the photo is really blurry. Sorry, it was getting dark and 1/7th of a second is hard to hand hold, especially after climbing a bunch of grinding hills. Here is a clearer photo of the same tree and my bike, but from an angle which doesn’t show the tree and trail as well. Also, a few more biking photos have been posted to my catch-all biking around local places album, if you’d like to see them.

Next time I’m out I’ll try and take a picture of the corner at the top of The Snake which I previously couldn’t make it past, but was able to easily ride through twice (out of two attempts) tonight.

A friend of mine is having problems with his Garmin Edge 305 GPS. He’s reported that it will periodically turn off while riding, which seems to be attributable to the battery contacts in it losing contact briefly, so he asked if I’d take a look at it. It seems that the unit has a set of pressure contacts which connect the battery, speaker, and USB connector to the main board, held in place when the unit is glued shut. This set of flexible pins has to make contact with this PCB while the whole unit is mounted on a bicycle bouncing down rocky and rooty trails.

I think that to fix this I’m going to fit two wires for power from the non-contact part of the pads on the back panel to test points on the main PCB. This should ensure that the power connectors are always good. USB and speaker probably aren’t as critical, and I don’t want to try and cram too many wires into a housing not designed for them. I’ll give this a go tomorrow as tonight I’m relaxing.

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Car-Based Data Tank

I look forward to Wireless USB becoming a reality because then I can easily put some sort of large flash-based device in my car, powered from the car, and use it for backups. As my car is generally where I am I think that it would be reasonable to use such a device for backing up personal financial data and other things like that.

Sure, I’ll have to incorporate some manner of both encrypting the communication and the data on the disk, but that shouldn’t be too difficult.

It’d be interesting to try it now via Bluetooth, but it’d make the availability as a disk volume (for easy backups) a bit more complicated.

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Doughnet Adapter

The Doughnet Adapter, as seen on 15-Jul-2008. This was assembled in 2000 or 2001 from a Compaq loopback adapter and Dunkin Doughnuts doughnut hole. The N label (done in Sharpie) has faded with time.

This is the Doughnet Adapter, a very special network adapter I assembled in 2000 or 2001 from a Dunkin’ Doughnuts doughnut hole and a Compaq loopback cable. It has occasionally been branded with an N, but this seems to fade a year or so after it’s written.

I’ve kept the Doughnet Adapter in one of the overhead cabinets in my cube since I made it, finally bringing it home tonight so that I could photograph it.

A few months back I broke off a small piece from the bottom and tasted it. It is rancid, but still quite sweet and smells faintly of vegetable oil.

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Smart UPS 1400

Old Yuasa batteries from my Smart UPS 1400 and the new Rhino version (part SLA-17-12 from Rage Battery) which will replace them. Also shown are the cables, fuse, and fasteners.

This post is being brought to you by a bit of energy supplied by new batteries which were just installed in the old Smart UPS 1400 in my office.

On Wednesday evening I ordered two new batteries from Rage Battery, part number SLA-17-12, which are direct replacements for the cells in the OEM Smart UPS 1400 battery. They were delivered today, so I used the parts from the old pack (bus, fuse, screws, nuts, harness) to build them into a replacement pack which I then stuffed that back into the UPS housing. After a brief test it’s now all sitting back on the rack, charging, smoothing power, and waiting to protect things at the next power glitch.

Thankfully the replacement TiVo HD was delivered today as well, so I think I’ll go put that into place while Danielle cooks dinner.

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