nuxx.net – Page 144 – Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Ultimate Support Sport-Mechianic Bicycle Repair Stand

Published June 19, 2008

I purchased this Ultimate Support Sport-Mechanic bike repair stand from REI to hold my bike while working on it. It's quite useful.

After work today I swung by REI and picked up an Ultimate Support bike stand; the Sport-Mechanic model. (Here is a mirror of their catalog PDF, as the site is changing.) I really like this company’s stands, and as mentioned before, I have one of their display / floor stands for holding my bike upright when parking it.

This stand is quite useful, as I’m able to hold my bike off the ground and actually adjust things while pedaling, which is a nice change of pace. It was a hassle before holding the back end off the ground with one hand, pedaling with the other, and trying to see what wasn’t right. That said, I’m not sure if it’s really worth its cost.

The stand was $159 (plus 6% sales tax), and while I’ve found that online I could have acquired it for $20 less, including free shipping, at least this way I had the option of returning it if I didn’t like it. I also ended up getting two Park Tool items, the FR-5 Cassette Lockring Tool and SR-1 Sprocket Remover / Chain Whip, which are needed for taking apart my rear wheel.

I’m almost tempted to return the stand, partially because I can get it for so much cheaper online, and partially because I’m not sure if I really need it. I shouldn’t be buying expensive things that I don’t need and/or won’t use enough to make them worth the money spent. I’ll decide this tomorrow or over the weekend.

I also spent a bunch of time tonight washing my bike, cleaning up the drive train, and lubricating and/or adjusting the parts that needed it. The chain was cleaned in a solvent bath then checked for wear, which showed that it’s stretched 1/32″ over 11 links. Being half worn out it looks like I’ll end up replacing the chain sometime this year if I keep riding as frequently as I have been.

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How To Use Consolas with cmd.exe

Published June 19, 2008

Back in January I mentioned that I have switched to Consolas as my preferred monospaced font for on-screen work. As part of this I switched cmd.exe to using it as well, but doing so was not a trivial matter. If you wish to do so, here’s how in a couple of nice, easy steps:

1) Get a copy of Consolas. You can either get it here direct from Microsoft, or I also have a copy of just the .ttf files here.
2) Add the fonts to the machine by dragging and dropping them into %WINDIR%\Fonts (eg: c:\windows\fonts) or add them using the Fonts applet in Control Panel.
3) Add a string value called 00 with a value of Consolas to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Console\TrueTypeFont. Importing this .reg file will do this for you.
4) Start up cmd.exe and you’ll now be able to change the font to Consolas. I suggest saving the changed properties for future use.
5) Note that despite changing the selected font at this time, it does not actually change in the window. You must now reboot the computer (not just log out, but actually reboot) and then log back in.
6) Fire up cmd.exe and you’ll see that the font being used is now Consolas, as shown above.

Note that the window shown above has the font size set to 14 point. For what it’s worth, I run the console on my laptop (with a 1400×1050 display) at 14 point, with a window width of 150 characters and height of 70 characters, as can be seen here.

I also use Consolas in PuTTY running at 11 point, 80 columns and 50 rows and in Notepad++, also at 11 point.

One last thing to remember is that this font was designed to be used with ClearType, Microsoft’s implementation of subpixel rendering. Without this it’ll look like poop.

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To Metro Beach and Back

Published June 18, 2008

After getting home from work and quickly eating some “dinner” (English muffin with cheese and butter, orange juice, granola and plain yogurt) I hopped on my bike and set out in the direction of Dodge Park. I ended up riding there, through the park, then down to Metro Beach and back and back to my house.

Per my bike computer I was moving for 3:05’28, I went 44.51 miles, the moving average was 14.4 MPH, and my max speed was 23.4 MPH. I stopped for five minutes or so at the end of the path in Metro Beach (where the photo was taken) to eat a Carrot Cake Clif Bar and a number of times for traffic / lights / pee breaks, but never for an extended period of time.

The weather was really nice, somewhere in the mid 60s the whole ride, little wind, and nice overcast skies. Most of the ride back was in the dark, and while I had lights I’d never done such a lengthy night time ride. Part of it also involved the windy paths through Dodge Park, which was a little unsettling at first, but ended up being quite a bit of fun. I’m very certain that the blinking headlight contributed greatly to people seeing me; people seemed to notice me far more than in day time. The tail light seemed to ensure that people coming past me in the road didn’t just turn into driveways cutting me off.

All in all, this was an excellent, fun ride. After getting home I took a shower to degunk myself and shave, since going to sleep with a freshly shaved head and face on a cool evening with clean sheets is so wonderful it’s almost beyond description.

Here’s a couple more photos from today’s ride, all of which involve my bike sitting in front of something to show that I was really there:

· On the pedestrian bridge over Grosbeck.
· In the gazebo, looking at Lake St. Clair.
· In front of the Metro Beach Metropark along the canal.

Now, time to contemplate bed.

(And yes, the distance from my house to Metro Beach and back is shorter than I expected. I figured that it would be just over 50 miles. For the next long ride I think I’ll try heading up to Lake Orion. Maybe Saturday…)

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New Belgium’s 1554

Published June 17, 2008

Tonight’s beer is New Belgium’s 1554, which is listed as an “Enlightened Black Ale”. It’s made by the same company which makes the oft-mentioned (and overhyped, I’ve been told) Fat Tire.

This beer is quite good once appropriately chilled, and if I could get it in Michigan I’d probably buy it again. For now I’ll just enjoy this last glass of it figuring I won’t be getting more any time soon. (For reference, this was purchased at Cub Foods in Peoria, IL on Saturday night, along with some Soy Sauce, locally made crispy cheesey junk food things, an apple, and some muffins.)

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Scott Lamkin + Jessica Runck

Published June 17, 2008

This weekend I drove a total of 1040.4 miles, taking Danielle and I down to Peoria, IL for the wedding of my cousin Scott Lamkin to his girlfriend Jessica Runck.

I’m currently too lazy (busy?) to caption the photos, although I hope to get to that sometime this week.

I don’t envy the photographer’s job in working on the wedding photos themselves, as the ceremony was held in a hall at the Boy Scout Camp (Wakonda in Chillicothe, IL) which was lit by both high pressure sodium lights and cheap fluorescent lights. I’m not sure how one could properly color correct it, but you can see the weird color straight from the camera above.

The drive was fairly uneventful, although on the way there we passed through a storm alogn I-94 which provided ~80MPH headwinds and rain. I had to tail a semi in order to have a point of reference, then after getting through the storm we found rest areas without power, downed trees and billboards, and an overturned semi. On the way back we took I-80 / I-90 through Indiana and Ohio, mostly paralleling a rather large (and beautiful) thunderstorm the whole way.

We stopped by Danielle’s house to visit some with her family before heading back to my place, and when heading back on to I-75 for the remainder of the drive home a quite beautiful sunset presented itself.

Now I think it’s time to eat lunch. Maybe I’ll post more about this trip after captioning the photos.

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Peoria, IL

Published June 14, 2008

I just drove through downtown Peoria, IL in about five minutes doing the speed limit (55 MPH). I’d also forgotten just how flat some parts of the US can be, and we’re not even west of the Mississippi.

There was a tremendous storm encountered as we were somewhere in Michigan west of Ann Arbor which threw such blinding wind and rain at the car that I had to follow a semi’s tail lights in order to have any sense of direction. Thankfully it passed in about 20 minutes and the rest of the drive was relatively uneventful.

Dinner was eaten at Cracker Barrel where I had some cod, mashed potatoes, fried okra, cornbread, and some of Danielle’s food which she didn’t eat. Food there really isn’t that bad. It’s a bit salty and portions are huge, but it’s better than just eating fast food.

When we arrived at the hotel our keycard was in a lockbox and the staff was just shutting down for the night. When I asked about internet access the person just wrote down the password on a piece of paper and told me that “it’s wireless so it can’t detect your room so you won’t be charged [the $4.99 per stay fee]”. A quick connect to the AP with an SSID of goesh (I don’t know either), web-based login as user Sam Iam of Iam, Inc., access test to foxnews.com, and everything else is just an ssh connection to either Troy, MI or Reading, UK.

Now, sleep.

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Stinky, Dirty, and Happy

Published June 11, 2008

One of the teeter totters in the still-under-construction skill park area of the Stony Creek Mountain Bike Trails. This is being built by the Michigan Mountain Bike Association (MMBA).

I currently smell bad, mud is stuck to every major part of my body, and I feel very content. I’m also amazed at just how much water the skin on my head can wick from the rest of my body, only to sweat it out. (Yes, I have a big head and it is really oily and sweats a whole lot.)

Tonight my brother-in-law Craig and I met up at the Stony Creek mountain bike trails, as he’d just acquired a new-to-him bike and we wanted to do some riding. Not far into the trail we happened to run into the folks who were doing the regular Wednesday Night MMBA ride and tagged along with them. As we’d hit up The Pines earlier, we ended up covering all of the single track in the park, pretty much none of which Craig had been on before.

The ride was pretty uneventful and fun, and Craig seemed to do quite well for his first time on them with that bike. I almost fell once on The Pines when learning just how slippery mud is, but that wasn’t a huge deal. The mud after that just meant that both my bike and I regularly got sprayed with lumps.

After finishing up about 9.5 miles in the mountain bike trails Craig headed home and I took off to ride over to the still-under-construction Skills Park so that I could see it and hoping to meet up with Nick / Dirt. I’d been told that there were people there working on it this evening, but everyone had already left so I took a few minutes to down half a Clif bar (I was feeling a bit faint) and then headed back to the car and home.

Total distance today was about 14.5 miles, with more than 2/3 of that being off road, and primarily single track. I feel good.

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Download Tools

Published June 11, 2008

You all know those shiny download tools which open loads of connections on a file to try and get it quicker? Those are crappy and put lots of unneeded load on servers. Here’s an example:

I host this simple page for a friend of mine in the UK for when he needs US-based hosting or some place high speed to distribute files from. As part of this he hosts the animations found on this page, which overall aren’t very big. However, someone in Thailand (125.24.191.195) is deciding to get them as quickly as possible using some stupid download tool.

What I see is that the workload on the httpd is at ~277, up from it’s typical of 2 or 3. netstat shows lots and lots and lots of connections (currently 276) from that box, all of them established.

The http log currently shows 9291 these:

125.24.191.195 rowla.dyndns.org - [11/Jun/2008:16:58:34 -0400] "GET /justin/img/piston_std4.mpg HTTP/1.1" 200 32768 "http://www.wis.co.uk/justin/deltic-engine.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.00; Windows 98)"

Load on the box itself is .23, which is tolerable, so I’ll probably let this continue. If it’s still going at midnight I’ll take some action, but for now it’s just a bit of irritation. Yes, I know I could limit connections on a per-IP basis, but I prefer not to do this unless it’s actually a problem. If I do need to block that IP, I’ll probably just fail to return anything on that vhost to that netblock. Hopefully they’ll finish getting their file sooner than that.

If you’d like to see it, here’s the current netstat: netstat_11jun2008_1.txt
Here’s a capture of a minute or so of 45 seconds of traffic with that address. Note that each GET results in a whole conversation of only 10k or so: 11jun2008_weird_1.cap.gz

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iPhone 3G In My Future?

Published June 10, 2008

With Apple’s announcement of a new 3G iPhone, I think one might be in my future.

I’ve had my old Nokia 6600 since October 2004, and it’s just starting to fail. The screen is becoming dark and blue tinted, the photos (example) just aren’t that great, and some of the buttons are starting to fail. The battery on it is also really quite bad, and I have to charge it every day else it’ll fail.

Currently I pay around $47/mo after taxes for 600 anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekend, and no data via T-Mobile. If a plan via AT&T can give me ~300 anytime minutes and the same unlimited nights and weekends, along with a comparable data plan, for a somewhat similar price, I think I’ll go with an iPhone.

I need to be sure that it will work with my custom iPod setup in the car, which ties the line out into the stereo and power into the iPod for charging. I also want to be certain that when the iPhone is receiving power via the dock connector and playing that it automatically pauses when power is cut. I use this feature to ensure that the iPod automatically pauses when I turn off my car, and I’d like the iPhone to do the same thing.

I figure that I’ll probably end up getting a Bluetooth headset for use when actually talking to people while driving. I rarely do this so I’ll probably first try using my old headset first, then maybe get a new / better / longer lasting one.

Hopefully this will work out well and meet all the goals of getting a phone with a better camera, display, and battery, while at the same time providing me with a nice mobile network terminal and one less device to carry.

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It’s Raining Leaves

Published June 8, 2008

The storm on 08-Jun-2008 blew over one of the shrubs near my condo. It was partially rotted, and the storm seems to have broken it off and bent it over.

It seems that today’s storm took out one of the shrubs right near my condo. It was partially dead and located at a point which funnels wind during storms. (See this drift at the same point in 2005.)

I had just left Target when I looked up and saw what appeared to be The Nothing coming from the west, so I hopped in my car and headed north on Schoenherr. Before I could make the Michigan left it started, and all through my drive along Schoenherr from M-59 to home it was as if I was driving sideways through a rainstorm. After turning east on 22 Mile and hitting 40 MPH there was still rain pelting the rear window of my car and making streaks from the top of the windshield to the bottom.

While driving down Schoenherr I kept noticing large clusters of leaves falling out of the sky, and at a few points the road was littered with 5′ – 8′ branches. I even saw an overturned trampoline in the road.

After getting home and checking the radar I noticed that everything was beginning to take on a greenish cast and the rain was lightening up. I headed outside with my camera, but beyond the strange light I didn’t see anything indicative of a tornado. No wall cloud, nothing. Oh well.

Here is a detail of the base of the shrub pictured above. Some of the decayed branches can be seen, which is likely what led to the failure.

One other thing which I’d failed to mention previously is that someone has cut down the other shrub near my condo. I’m not sure why this was done; the only thing I can guess is that it’s to allow easy access to the gas meters.

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