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First Longish Ride Of The Year

Published March 6, 2009

Standing in the basement, very sweaty, wearing an MMBA jersey after my first longish bike ride of the year (36 miles).

Here, have a dorktastic, slightly out of focus photo of a very sweaty me, complete with an indentation from the Coolmax Shorty that I wear to keep sweat from running down my face.

Tonight after work I went on my first long-ish bike ride of the year, totaling just over 36 miles. I left my house just before 6pm with the intention of riding to Metro Beach, but turned around about two miles from the park (at Crocker and Metro Parkway) because it was starting to get cold.

In the low laying / windless areas the temperature was much closer to freezing, so heading back home through parks and over the low-laying streams was a bit bitter at times. Thankfully once I got closer to roads again things warmed up to today’s nicely comfortable weather.

During this I was only insulted by random strangers a handful of times; typical for riding in this area. Three people honked at me, but the passenger in one of the vehicles strangely apologized. Two people shouted things, including a very loud and almost horse sounding “fucking freak!”, and one person came within 6′ of hitting me as I crossed an intersection and they made a 35MPH right hand turn. (I’m certain this person saw me, as my bike was fully lit up, there are bright street lights there, and I made eye contact with both the driver and the female passenger as they began their turn.)

This was also the first time I was able to try wearing a cycling jersey while riding, and I must say that I found it quite a bit more comfortable than the $9 workout t-shirts from Target that I’d worn last year. This may prove to be a problem, because these jerseys aren’t cheap. Maybe I can find a way to get a bunch at a discount or free… Hmm… I do think I’ll probably be buying this Dogfish Head jersey as soon as they sort out their pricing error. (It currently says $50 discount, but has the original price as $49 and the discounted price as $99.

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Random Bike Things

Published March 6, 2009

Here’s some random bike things which you may or may not care about…

· After a bunch of shifting problems while riding during the really warm day a few weeks ago I determined that my shifting cables and houses needed to be replaced. Tonight I replaced them, finding the cables intact but the ends of the housings rusty and the innards dirty. I’d had the parts since before I went on vacation, but finally got around to it today.

Cutting the cable was very easy with Dremel cut-off discs and a razor blade and awl for cleanup. I then dripped some Triflow in each end of the cable, fitted the end caps, then assembled everything Shifting is now as smooth as it was when my bike was new a year ago. I’m sure there’s a bit of fine tuning I’ll have to do as the cables stretch, but things seem nice so far.

· I washed my Specialzed bike tonight so that I could replace the shift cable, and at the same time also washed the Bianchi Single Speed. It didn’t really need it, but most bike washing time is spent setting up the hose. So, why not?

· The forecast tomorrow is for highs near 60°F, so I’m hoping to get out for a ride tomorrow after work. I’ll start towards Metro Beach with the intention of riding there and back, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do the full 46 miles. We’ll see. This will be my first longer distance ride since last fall.

· I’m not so sure about the On-One Mary Bar that I’ve been borrowing. The Bianchi handles very nicely with it on the bike, having a nice twitchy feel that I can’t wait to try on single track, but on longer rides (as Bob and I did last night up through River Bends and back) the slightly odd positioning makes my wrists hurt. Maybe some Ergon grips would help. I do like these, and would probably want them on the riser bar the bike came with, so a purchase wouldn’t be lost money.

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End Panel Mockups

Published March 5, 2009

Cardboard mocked up front panel with the v1.0 / Prototype PCB in the enclosure. Production panel will be 1.5mm thicker.

Tonight after a profanely busy day at work I did cardboard mockups of my current SDrive NUXX front and rear panel artwork. I’m mostly happy with it, but as my printer seems to stretch things out slightly on the page I have to double-check a few things (toggle switch hole and DIP switch markings, in particular), but I think that what I have is close to the final artwork design.

Here is an image showing the rear panel with SIO connector, reset button, etc. Note that the ugly blue switch caps were used because I don’t like them, so I was willing to throw them away on a prototype. The other switch caps may be seen here. I think I’ll be putting black on the front panel and red on the reset button on the rear. It’d be nice if a dark gray cap was available, but Digi-Key nor Mouser seem to list one.

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SDrive NUXX Is Working!

Published March 3, 2009

The SDrive NUXX up and running, with the SDrive by C.P.U. software running on the television behind via my Atari 800XL.

Today I learned a little lesson about programming AVRs†. After sorting that out I was able to properly use the SDrive NUXX‘s onboard programmer with no problem. After that I thought it should have been working, but the device wouldn’t work. Poking around I found the AVR running, but then found that the SD card slot was only getting about 1V, which is far below the 3.3V it requires.

This problem turned out to be caused by the LE33CZ 3.3V LDOs that I’d ordered from Digi-Key. As can be seen here, when fed 5V the LDOs were putting out just over 1V whose datasheets I had read wrong. I stupidly missed the “from bottom” note on the pinout section and been both fitting and testing the part backwards. (This is another thing to fix in the v1.1 / production run.)

For testing last night I worked around this by feeding the SD card 3.3V from a benchtop supply, everything worked great. The following morning I understood my mistake and fitted the parts properly, and now the benchtop supply is no longer needed. The 2GB SD card I’d picked up for cheap at Micro Center worked great, and I had no problems loading most of the .ATR images which I’d tried.

There’s still a couple problems with the PCB, but I’ll sort those out before the production order. Most notably there is the missing traces in the programmer, then I also screwed up the switch marking silkscreen for the front panel. Whoops!

At least it’s working. Yay!

Continue readingSDrive NUXX Is Working!
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Electronics Woes

Published March 2, 2009

Completed board, connected via a M-M DB25 cable to a PC, for programming.

After returning home from a really great vacation Sunday morning (more on that later) and sleeping, I got to work on the SDrive NUXX PCBs which had arrived last week. While the boards themselves look good and went together well, I’ve yet to get things working right. I first had some problems getting the chip programmed, but patching two missing traces (my fault) and powering the target device sorted that out.

Tonight I found that as soon as I set the fuses on the AVR, even after a successful program, the chip can no longer be accessed by the programmer. I believe this is because the programmer is then trying to talk to the chip at too high of a rate, but I’m not completely sure. Also, the option for setting the programmer to the slower mode (using PonyProg2000) is seeming to not work, so I’m not completely sure what’s happening.

Now it’s time to just relax and get ready for tomorrow. That’s another day of work, then maybe some bike riding. After that I can get back to working on this, and hopefully figure it out.

More photos are available on pages 2 and 3 of the SDrive NUXX album.

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Nike Ajax Hercules at SF-88

Published February 26, 2009

Teaser image from a vacation showing a Nike Hercules missile at SF-88, the National Parks Service Nike Missile site just north of San Francisco.

Here is a teaser image from when Jeff and I went to the Nike Missile Site in Golden Gate National Recreation Area today. This site, formerly SF-88, is probably the best preserved, best restored Nike site in the country. While there we were shown the inside of two of the command and control vans, were able to go down in the magazine, ride on the elevator holding a missile, and generally wander around.

While riding the elevator down into the magazine we were told that we had to “keep a hand on the missile”, which felt very strange. I presume it’s an effective way to ensure that one doesn’t get caught in what is a gigantic pinch point, but I felt strange touching a museum piece, much less a former nuclear missile. Here is a video that Jeff took of the missile elevator in action from inside the magazine.. We both have more videos and photos than this, but they haven’t been uploaded yet.

After visiting the launch site and being shown around the vans, we started hiking up towards the IFC (Integrated Fire Control) area, which was located on one of the higher peaks overlooking the launchers. It turns out that we took the not-quite-right trails, ending up on one peak over from the IFC, about 500′ away. We could have made it over there by winding our way up steep hills and through brush, but as there were clouds beginning to envelop the mountain tops, sun getting lower, us having no extra water, and no visible hole in the fence on the side of the were facing we headed back down to the car.

Thus far this has been a great trip. Visiting friends, meeting new people, eating lots of good food, and just generally having a relaxing, nice time. Not to mention the weather… It’s like Michigan in May.

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Two Credit Cards

Published February 21, 2009

This morning after waking up I checked my email on my phone and found an authentic-looking fraud alert from HSBC, the bank which holds my most-used credit card. This informed me that HSBC believes one of the recent transactions on my account is fraudulent. I then tried to sign into HSBC’s online banking stuff, only to find my account disabled.

Calling HSBC I was informed that a merchant through which I used my credit card “approximately 18-20 months ago” reported to MasterCard a compromise, and my credit card info is now available publicly. This info was used by someone who manually keyed in a $4680.22 transaction at Tahitian Noni International (Wikipedia), a MLM shop out of Provo, UT. I also told that while they currently do not know which company was compromised, this information should be available to me upon the completion of MasterCard’s investigation.

Save for the fraud, this is just the system working as its supposed to. Unfortunately the timing is a little inconvenient. The charge has been delt with, and a new card with new account number and card and such is being sent to me. As I’m leaving for the San Francisco area this evening and now without the ability to use my ‘normal’ credit card, I’ll have to fall back on the backup one. This card doesn’t pay cash back, has a high interest rate, and generally doesn’t get much use. I probably should also call that card company and inform them that there will soon be charges coming from all over the country so that this one doesn’t get flagged / turned off. I guess this is why I carry two credit cards.

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Nokia E51 and Kensington Expert Mouse For Sale

Published February 18, 2009

I’ve got a Kensington Expert Mouse (Trackball) and Nokia E51 for sale. Both are in like-new condition. The trackball was only used for a couple hours, until I decided I didn’t like it. The phone was used for a couple months, but after the recent acquisition of the G1 / Android, I don’t really need it.

Here are photos of the Kensington Expert Mouse: 1 · 2 · 3
Here are photos of the Nokia E51: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12

In case you don’t know, the Kensington Expert Mouse is probably the best trackball made. It’s got a pool ball sized ball, four large buttons, and a scroll ring around the ball which serves the same function as the scroll wheel on a mouse.

The Nokia E51 is a very nice Symbian Series 60 phone with a metal case. It’s quad band, has a SIP client for VOIP goodness, a nice browser, great screen, and 802.11 connectivity. I really like this phone, I just no longer use it. It is completely unlocked, so it’s not tied to any particular operator, SIM, or anything else. Any SIM should work in it, anywhere in the world.

For the Kensington Expert Mouse I’d like: US$50
For the Nokia E51 I’d like US$180

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