moved from livejournal

Cateye Update

March 31, 2008

Oh, I forgot to mention something. Remember the Cateye bike computer bracket problems I had? Cateye has replied to my email message saying that they’ll send me a new bracket as soon as they get in stock.

Also, the Sequentix P3 that I’m building on contract has been delivered. I think I’ll have something to do tonight.

Oh, and here is where I’m working on the theme / stuff for a blog over at nuxx.net, if any of you are interested. I think I have an idea for what I’m going to do…

(I’ll crosspost important/technical things, and for more personal-ish stuff I’ll just post directly here.)

Time Machine

March 28, 2008

I’ve managed to break Time Machine.

How?

This morning I briefly woke my machine, ejected a flash drive, then put it back to sleep. When I came home it attempted to start a backup then declared itself broken. I think Time Machine was in the middle of mounting its sparsebundle, or something like that.

This thread suggests that DiskWarrior can be used to fix the problem. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy of it.

I guess I’ll just axe the file and let it recopy everything.

computers moved from livejournal

Move to WP?

March 28, 2008

So, for eight months or so now I’ve seriously considered moving posts from here to an actual hosted blog install. I’ve always been rather against email and photo hosting which I don’t wholly control, so why should I keep a blog here, where I can’t control it?

This post here seems to show how easy it would be to move to a WP install… I might set one up on dingleberrypie or something as a test, just to see how it goes.

moved from livejournal nuxx.net

Go Adobe!

March 26, 2008

Well, it looks like Adobe has rather screwed up the Lightroom 1.4 release.

Last week (or so) I fired up Lightroom and was asked if I wanted to install the 1.4 update. The change list looked harmless enough, so I went ahead and allowed it. Everything seemed fine, but I started noticing some oddness with the EXIF Date/Time stamps being exported.

Tonight I decided to look into it a little more and realized that all the files were being exported with the proper date stamp, but a timestamp of 00:00:00. This was confirmed with jhead.

I first went looking to Adobe’s support site, in the Lightroom forums, and one of the first things I found was a link to this post detailing problems with Adobe Lightroom 1.4 and asking people to revert to 1.3.1.

From the details of the post and replies to the comments by Tom Hogarty of Adobe who writes the Lightroom Journal:

...raw files consist of two essential pieces: the block of data that was captured by your sensor and metadata to describe that image data. In this case, Lightroom would incorrectly update the metadata when you explicitly update the metadata. If you're not planning on using Lightroom you can certainly wait for the subsequent update and install it over Lightroom 1.4 if you prefer. -TH

What. The. Fuck., Adobe? You change the original RAW files?

Yes, it seems that they do:

Lightroom has written the time stamp EXIF field back to raw files since the product was launched. This is intended to provide compatibility to other products that ignore the same field written to XMP metadata. -TH

Er… wow. It’s supposedly only the metadata, but still… Wow. This is kinda not good.

I can somewhat understand why they do it, as if a user changes the metadata of the file it gets written back so that all apps which use those raw files can see the changes. But still, that’s a bit odd.

I don’t think the result for me is too bad, except when you look at the metadata of images exported with 1.4, the timestamp is zero’d out. (Example)

This kinda sucks. Hopefully Adobe won’t screw this up again.

(There are quite a few angry replies about this here and here.)

computers moved from livejournal

Fix-A-Flat

March 26, 2008

My First Repaired Flat
(Click for full size…)

I repaired my first bike tube flat today. I was able to use one of the wide patches to cover both holes from Saturday when a sheet metal screw damaged my tire, tube, and rim.

Repairing a flat tube seems to be pretty easy. I just removed the valve stem, flattened the tube, cleaned the area with isopropyl alcohol, scuffed it up with sandpaper, cleaned it again, applied the rubber cement, waited for that to dry, peeled the patch from the backing, solidly squished the patch in place peeled the protective top layer off, and called it done.

I then pumped up the tube a bit and let it sit for a while to see if it’d lose pressure, and it didn’t. I then re-flattened it, folded it up, tucked it in an old sock, and put it in my bag as a spare. Yay!

cycling making things moved from livejournal

Broken Cateye Strada Wireless Bracket

March 25, 2008

Broken Clip on Cateye Strada Wireless Bike Computer Bracket

Back when I got my bike I also ordered a Cateye Strada Wireless bike computer. It’s simple, but did just what I wanted: time, speed, average speed, multiple odometers, multiple stored wheel sizes, and a couple other little things. It also did all of this wirelessly. Nicely, the computer latches into a quick release mechanism, allowing the computer itself to be removed easily.

I would generally leave this mounted on my bike, taking it off only for washing, adjustments, transporting the bike on the car, and locking it up. I would imagine that the computer has been latched and unlatched, at most, 75 times since I got the bike. As you can tell from the wear marks above, it hasn’t been inserted and removed very much.

Today when I went to put it on my bike I noticed that it didn’t snap into place this time, and didn’t stay put particularly well. Looking at the mount (above), I noticed that the small retention clip is broken. This is really disappointing, as I rather like this computer. It doesn’t sit particularly snugly without the clip, so I’m going to have to either modify the clip, or acquire a new one. I could probably put a bit of epoxy in the groove the computer fits into. That may very well make it a tight enough friction fit that it won’t come loose.

I do wonder if this is a consistent problem, as the Cateye Small Parts Store is out of that part. Maybe I’ll just try contacting Cateye to see if they’ll just send a free one. After all, this is practically brand new.

cycling making things moved from livejournal

Free TiVo

March 25, 2008

I’m going to ask again:

Would anyone like my old TiVo?

If not, I’ll take it to the Salvation Army. I’m sure someone there will get good use out of it.

acquired things computers moved from livejournal

Tire / Wheel Damage

March 24, 2008

Tire and Wheel Damage
(Click to embiggen…)

Oh, also, here’s the damage which was done to my brand new bike tire and the wheel when I got a flat tire on Saturday. You can clearly see where the sheet metal screw went into the tire, along with where it exited the sidewall / bead area and damaged the rim. When riding along I suddenly heard a thump and slight scraping sound right before the decrease in pedaling ease, and this must have been the cause.

Being kinda busy and tired today I still haven’t patched the tube, but I’ll probably do that and grab a photo of the screw (yes, I saved it to photograph) and the patching tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or something.

Now I’m going to contemplate sleep. Despite the large amounts of food I just ate, I feel pretty tired.

cycling moved from livejournal

Stony Creek Bike Ride

March 24, 2008

Today’s Bike Ride at Stony Creek

Today I was off work, so I had a rather relaxing, but work-filled day. It started out with a now-typical weekend breakfast of yogurt, granola, coffee, and a banana. Then I showered, and decided to work on cleaning up my bike. A little while later my bike was freshly washed with a nicely oiled chain and clean brake rotors. After oiling the chain on Danielle’s bike^† I decided that I needed to go for a bit of a bike ride.

Since the weather was relatively nice (it felt like 40, even though the various online systems indicated it was only 35 or so), I headed up to Stony Creek Metropark. I took my car (with the bike rack) on the highway to get there, and while the rack was nicely stable, my car did seem to drag a bit. It’s clearly not as aerodynamic with a few bikes sticking up off of the back of it.

While at the park this time I ended up riding along the road. It’s a bit smoother and tends to have less water on it, and being a park the drivers are familiar with watching out for those on bikes in the road. I ended up doing two laps along the main road, with a jaunt down to the Nature Center between the two.

This was the longest ride I’d ever done, with the GPS clocking it in as 16.6 miles, and the bike computer at 17.05. Normally I wouldn’t think that is very much, but as anyone who has been to Stony knows, it’s nothing but rolling hills there. I think there is only maybe half a mile of flat pavement amongst all of that; where the main road crosses one of the dams. It was definitely a good bit of exercise.

After coming hope I ended up showering again, sitting around for a bit, then ordering a pizza and enjoying the majority of it with a Trader Joe’s 750mL beer and some TiVo’d entertainment (King Of The Hill, Colbert Report, Daily Show, and How It’s Made).

Here is the KMZ of today’s ride, and here it is in Google Maps, if you prefer to look that way. Again, this was logged with my old Garmin eTrex Legend. This time it was converted with GPSBabel for Windows, because the drivers for my USB RS-232 port are complete crap on OS X. They repeatedly hang, can’t be unloaded via kextunload, and just cause problems. Therefore, next time I place an order with Mouser I will be ordering a good FTDI development serial cable.

^† I never, ever want to oil the chain on a coaster brake bike again without either a workstand or a second person to help. That was not easy.

cycling mapping moved from livejournal

Flat Tire

March 23, 2008

Yesterday I decided to see if I could easily get near the Lakeside / shopping area via bike, with as little riding in roads as possible. This worked out well, except while riding along a small connector road which runs behind Meijer and Costco and whatnot, I got a flat. It was a sheet metal screw stuck nicely into the thin part of the new tires. Uggh.

It wasn’t particularly hard to change the tube, it was just a bit dirtier and colder than I would have liked. The area near there is still under construction, so there was a bit of water and mud that I had just gone through. It was also just above freezing, so the tire was really stiff and took a bit of effort to get back on to the rim. Oh, and the Blackburn Shorty pump took quite a while to get to get the tires actually full enough to ride on.

Ah well. At least it got sorted out. If you are interested, here is the route I took, with start and flat tire points marked, and here is the KMZ itself.

Oh, and those tires? They do great on the pavement, in snow, in a bit of mud where there was no sidewalk, and on grass. I’m pretty happy with them.

cycling mapping moved from livejournal