Stuff I Like and Stuff I Have Done

Quotes from the Best Good-ol-Boy Scientist EVER

2011-05-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

"Mother Nature is gonna take us to the woodshed and we are going to provide most of the butt"
--Randy Julander

Well, we are about due for our annual blog posting. More to come soon, I promise.

In case you haven't heard, the state of Utah is sitting under historically high snowpack levels deep into May. The continued precipitation and low temperatures mean that we are not chipping away at the water runoff task at hand. At some point soon we are going to hit high temperatures and it is all going to come down in a short time period. There is a certain schadenfreude around the neighborhood as the mansions built on the river look poised to enter some class 5 rapids. But that's not nice.

Without a doubt, the best thing about the impending Waterworld apocalypse in the desert has come from an unexpected source: a good old boy hydrologist named Randy Julander. Julander has been appearing on the local news almost every night with analysis about the minor flooding that is already occurring. From what I can gather, Julander is a hydrologist employed by the USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service. I have no doubt that Julander is a smart scientist, but the best thing about him is that I have to rewind the news to rewatch the hilarious things he says. I think this guy could have his own show ala Bill Nye the Science Guy.

I first took notice of Julander when he dropped the gem at the top of this post. A short search of local news turns up some more. This guy is awesome. Sit back and enjoy:

"Sooner or later, Utah is going to heat up. It will be like filling a thimble with a fire hose." (ksl May 18th, 2011)

"Bottom line, it's like trying to stop a semi with a squirrel." (ksl May 18th, 2011)

"Mother Nature is going to take us to the woodshed," (ksl April 26th, 2011)

‘"It's not too late to buy a pair of waders." (ksl April 26th, 2011)

"What we're getting right here is Bubba's all-you-can-eat southern BBQ" (ksl April 26th, 2011)

"the first thing we ought to learn out of this is where we've been stupid. ... There's no kinder, gentler way to say it." (ksl April 26th, 2011)

"The minor flooding that we see in and around various areas, this is just the appetizer," Julander said. "We still have soup, salad, the main course and dessert yet to come. Every day that it is cool and wet increases the potential for much higher stream flows later on six weeks from now." (ksl April 10th, 2011)

"This will freshen what we already have. Anything after this will be icing on the cake," (ksl February 16th, 2011)

"And it's not just Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. It's basically all of the western states except Arizona and New Mexico," Julander said. "We're waiting for the chute to open and the bull to come out bucking, but he ain't moving, yet." (ksl May 18th, 2011)

"They're wishing they could get a little of what we have. (The wet weather) just continues to get worse. At this point, all you can do is open the chute, let her buck and hope your butt stays glued to the saddle." (ksl May 8th, 2011)

"It simply sends a message that climate is variable, and you can't count on having x number of good years and x number of bad years." (ksl March 12, 2007)

"Is this one bad year we're having in the middle of ten really good ones? Or, was it two really good years in the middle of say 15 years of drought? I wish I knew." (ksl Jan 30, 2007)

"All you can do at this point is open the chute, let her buck and hope your butt is glued to the saddle. And there is no shame in riding this beast with two hands!" (fox13, May 5, 2011)

"It is sweet," Julander said of the huge snowpack that Utahns depend on for water. "What can you say except for hot-diggity dog ... but if April is cold and wet, it's 'Katy, bar the door!"' (connect2utah.com, march 26, 2011)

and, reaching clear back to 1993:

"You can take the brick out of the toilet. There is still a lot of water that can stand to be stored in Bear Lake, but everyplace else in the state is looking good."

EDIT -- (I got an email from Julander himself after posting this. The guy is as cool and as gracious as you could possibly hope for.)

Dead Kennedys

2010-04-05T17:37:00.000-07:00

Seen on the commute this evening.

Colonel Conk moustache wax: $5.99
Genuine Stetson cowboy hat: $149.95
Audi S4: $45,000
Driving around Massachusetts with a Texas vanity plate that never, ever would have been allowed by the Commonwealth's Registry of Motor Vehicles: Priceless

Mary Jo Kopechne Chappaquiddick Ted Kennedy

Belting My Kids (into the Land Cruiser)

2010-01-31T13:30:00.000-08:00

After our experience last summer with our Utah Land Cruiser, we decided that we liked it so much that we would get rid of our supremely useful Honda Odyssey and replace it with a Land Cruiser. My honey feels that she has better visibility than in the van, and I feel very confident that this is a safe vehicle for my family to be trucked around in (see here). After a lot of research, we settled on the purchasing an FZJ80. You can read lots more elsewhere on the Internet about the intricacies of Toyota Land Cruisers, but I'll say here that many people think that the FZJ80 is the best LC ever. It was the last LC with a solid front axle (and serious off road performance stock), but it also has a reasonably powerful engine and a luxurious leather (not Corinthian, unfortunately) interior. We looked around for a while and found a 1997 LC that was really nice. It had been well taken care of and had been well maintained. The difference between this vehicle and the 1991 FJ80 is remarkable. Although they are very similar, the newer LC feels like a vastly more modern vehicle. Funny what some extra power, leather, and soundproofing can do.

The one shortcoming of the FZJ80 relative to the FJ80 is that the newer truck came with only 7 seat belts rather than the 8 in the FJ. For most people, this is not important, but we seem to use the 8th seatbelt a few times per week hauling kids and friends around. Interestingly, the two vehicles' seats are identical--it's just that Toyota took out the center lap belt in the third row seat in the final years of FZJ production. My understanding is that this was done because the US government began requiring shoulder belts, and this would have required some expensive engineering in the final year of a dying model. After some detective work, I found that the seat frames in the third row are identical to the ones in the older model. So I felt confident that it would be safe to back date our LC's seats, and I ordered a lap belt set from cruiserparts.net . Unfortunately, there are no brown seat belts available anywhere in the Toyota parts network anymore, so I settled for a grey one. It bolted right in to the third row seat, and now we have a Toyota original third row seat that holds three people.

Here are some photos:

Folded up the rear seats and unscrewed plastic cover on the seat stand.

Here is the Grade 8 bolt that holds the receiver (the part with the buckle) of the left side shoulder belt. I will take out this bolt and use it to hold two receivers--the driver's side shoulder receiver and the new receiver for the middle belt.

Here's my little helper using ratchets and screwdrivers on anything he can find. Nice shoes, kid.

Here are the two seat belts with the one bolt passed through them. I didn't need a longer bolt--Toyota didn't even put in a shorter bolt when they took out the third seat belt.

I did the same thing on the other side, replaced the plastic covers, and Voila! Here's the finished product. It works great:

Acorn-Fed Free Range Rodent (censored for the squeamish)

2010-01-17T05:41:00.000-08:00

In the last few years I have solidified my position as a carnivore. I don't really like steak THAT much, truth be told. I am committed to the IDEA of being a carnivore more than I am actually in love with the taste of red meat. Vegetarianism is great, don't get me wrong. Some of the people I love and admire most are vegetarians. But for me, somehow I feel that it is important for me as a homosapiens to pay a visit periodically to the food chain, if only to show it and my body that I do, in fact, still reside at the top. Doing otherwise would feel like letting down my ancestors who spent millions of years sharpening sticks and bringing down mastodons. Look, I never said I was normal. And the world would be a sad place without In-N-Out burgers, bacon, and chicken tikka masala.

My buddy D sees life the same way, I think. I know that we have both worried that our kids only have a vague idea that their chicken nuggets and Chinese beef and broccoli have their origins in an animal somewhere (not the broccoli, duh), but the connection is not clear. And if you are a regular reader in this space, you know that there is a glut of healthy, acorn-fed squirrels living in the oak trees in my yard. When D's wife H announced that she was hosting a Harry Potter party a few nights ago, D and I thought it would be a great idea to harvest one of the squirrels and serve it to the guests. Here's the documentation.

Before you read on, know that I have replaced the more gruesome photos with a cute book cover from Amazon. If you would like to see the real photo, you can click on the photo and you will see an enlarged photo of the real thing. Viewer beware--some of the photos show the insides of the animal. Also, you should know that the little fella passed on to the big oak tree in the sky quickly and quite painlessly. He lived a happy life right up until the last twenty seconds, when a foreign object traveling about 700 FPS passed through his liver and spine before leaving his body, with a spade handle finishing the job.

On with the show....

Shortly following the death, I put him in a freezer bag and buried it in the snow while I waited for D to come over and start the butchering.

D removing the squirrel from the bag.

The future meal, ready for what comes next.

Little pitch for my sweet knife here. It is a Spyderco Military S30V, a really beautiful and useful knife. Its open design allowed for easy and thorough cleanup after the job documented here. D Made a cut under the tail that didn't get into muscle or the digestive tract.

With that cut made, he stepped on its tail, grabbed it by the hind legs, and pulled. This essentially started to peel the squirrel's shirt up and off.

Shirt almost off...

Shirt off entirely (except for head).

Head and pelt removed and thrown away. We think the wound created a hernia, and in the final seconds some of the digestive tract tried to get out.

Checking the liver for spots. This is very important in assessing the squirrel's health. Spots would be a sign that we need to throw the squirrel away and wash our hands. This guy was very healthy apart from for the aforementioned hole in the liver. Notice the full stomach. It's the greenish balloon.

We cut open the stomach to show young E, who has expressed interest in the surgical arts as a career. Full of acorns and scavenged Iggy's bread. Healthy little dude. He had some fat stores, too.

Two legs ready for the frying pan.

Look closely and you can see the major blood vessels. No angioplasty needed here. Apparently eating acorns and chasing female squirrels around all day is a healthy lifestyle.

Brought the meat in to wash it in the sink. That's not dirt around the claws--it's residual fur. Feet were cut off and discarded.

D with the meat in a bag of ice and salt. Notice curious, curiously untraumatized, 8-year-old looking on.

We made a reduction of Trader Joe's concentrated chicken broth, white cooking wine, a splash of olive oil, and a few drops of Tabasco sauce. (Notice the brownies. They had to wait their turn.)

The legs going in.

Brazed legs on both sides, got nice caramelization from the reduction and meat before the slower cooking started.

Splashed some water, covered, and turned down the heat in order to cook through.

Hind legs took longer to cook through--they are thicker. The meat turned out beautifully. I feel that this cooking job respected the squirrel.

Eager kids(!) lined up for a bite of squirrel.

G's first bite. Squirrel on a toothpick? Who woulda thunk it?

The delectable R holding a leg.

Chewing it. It was very good. Best description is dark turkey meat. The reduction was heavenly, if I do say so myself.

The lovely L getting ready to tuck into a leg, as the Brits say.

Young A, with parents away in San Diego, tried squirrel for the first (and last?) time. And liked it.
G, laughing on the inside as a munches rodent.

G doing his best impression of Morrissey eating squirrel. Meat is Murder, dog!

An Innovative Ring Solution

2009-12-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

A close friend of ours made her husband's wedding band many years ago. She did this when she was working at a high school, using the jewelry-making equipment in the art studio during her off hours. She had a piece of aluminum lathed to the diameter of her husband's finger, and then wrapped bands of wax around the aluminum blank to build up a wax ring. The ring was then cast in gold from the wax pattern she had built up.

Fast forward many years to the present day. Not long ago, her husband lost this ring. I don't think it would offend anyone involved to say that her husband is her property, and that she had every right to put another ring on his hand as a signal to the rest of the ladies in the world that his is taken. She wanted to recreate the original ring, but she couldn't find the equipment to do this. In addition, she didn't have the measurements from the original. She made a drawing of the ring and worked out the likely dimensions of the original. Then she got a piece of jewelers wax and a ring-sizing ream from a jeweler friend. She started making a copy by hand, sawing off a piece of the wax and reaming it out. She didn't have a way to cut the outside diameter of the ring precisely enough, so I offered her the use of my lathe. She brought her accumulated jewelry paraphernalia over to our house, including a framed photo of him in which the ring is quite clearly visible. We measured the ring in the photo with a micrometer, and used a Bic Pen in his pocket for scale. We found a real Bic Pen of the same type, and solved for X to find the width of the real ring. Unfortunately, the estimate we came up with was quite different from what she remembered the true dimensions to be, probably because of lack of precision in the photo (which, parenthetically, we discovered to have been Photoshopped because the ring is on his right hand and his hair is parted on the wrong side, but his colleague's name tag appears to be normal. Sneaky.). So we went with her recollection of the ring's measurements.

We mounted a piece of the jewelers wax in the lathe and bored the inside diameter to match her husband's college ring that is known to fit well. Then we cut the outside diameter of the ring and two grooves, slightly radiusing all of the right-angled edges. I was worried that heat generated by the cutting process would deform the wax, so we held a piece of ice against the workpiece while it was spinning. Between cuts when we were discussing proportions, we hung a bag of icewater over the headstock of the lathe to keep everything cool and dimensionally stable.

The first ring we manufactured just didn't look right. Our friend came to the conclusion that it needed to be thicker--it was too thin (2mm)--and that the proportions of the three bands around the circumference needed to be changed to make the center band wider. She was right. The second iteration was about 3mm thick and the outer bands were reduced by .3mm each. Additionally, we made the outer bands of very slightly smaller diameter than the large central on. These changes made a huge difference in the ring's aesthetics.

The next day, she took the wax pattern to our jeweler friend to have it cast. He told me that:

1) This was a big ring (her husband has very large hands).
2) That we could come and work for him if our day jobs don't work out. I was particularly flattered that his normal wax pattern guy was slightly offended that he (our jeweler friend) had used someone else to make this pattern, until our friend told him what I do for my day job (I am not a jeweler).

Supercut

2009-12-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

Perhaps it's the fact that I spent the two years immediately following the fall of the Iron Curtain just across the Adriatic from the disintegrating Yugoslavia. Or maybe it's that I think one of the greatest and most underrated films of all time is Mr. Wrong (starring Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman; halfway through the movie it magically sheds it romantic-comedy cocoon and emerges as a crazy psycho thriller). What does this have to do with the price of beans, you ask?

My little friend Pops had his first haircut last spring. I gave him a buzzcut in anticipation of a long summer of swimming pools and beach trips. And it worked wonderfully. Fast forward to the middle of a New England winter, and how has the buzz aged? Not so well, thank you. A good buddy who spent the mid 1990s in the Ukraine and I were riffing on just how bad the poor kid's hair looks, and somehow we determined that his coif makes him look like an early-90s Serbian gangster. Either that or Ellen DeGeneres having a bad (good?) hair day. Later that night, I woke up in a cold sweat with the realization that Pops needed a shirt with the Supercuts logo on it--a fitting exclamation point on the walking bad-hair advertisement he has become. I searched in vain for one from their official site, and finally just ordered one from cafepress.com . I am sure I could have found one at some ironic hipster Urban Outfitters type store, but I was able to order from the comfort of my bed from my iPhone. Here are the results:

Straight on:

What you see when he runs away from you:

A face so cute it nearly make you forget about the Balkans and the Russian mob:

The shirt:

I Spy With My Little Eye

2009-12-13T08:02:00.000-08:00

On our family trip to Washington DC this year, we spent an afternoon in the International Spy Museum. It is VERY cool. Really, the US government missed a big opportunity by not building a museum like this. I suspect, however, that it would not be as nice if it were publicly funded as part of the Smithsonian.

The photography room is one of the more interesting exhibits in the museum, especially if you are a geek. It contains all sorts of interesting cameras, from shoe cameras to aerial reconnaissance ones. One camera that caught my eye was a little SLR called the Pentax 110. It was the cutest camera I have ever seen. It looks like a 1/2 scale Pentax SLR, complete with interchangeable lenses:

(this photo borrowed from another website)

According to the information in the display case, the KGB issued these cameras to their agents in the '70s and '80s. I sat in front of the display, smitten by this little camera despite its associate with the KGB. It's ironic that the protector of the People's Party turned to the capitalist Japanese for camera technology.

In a testament to the power of modern technology, I pulled out my iPhone and started researching the Pentax 110 on eBay and Wikipedia, all while standing in the Spy Museum. It turns out that these cameras can be had complete with a few lenses

for a very reasonable price: The 110 film is available, but is quite hard to find. I bought one on eBay complete with three lenses, an autowinder (works, but I haven't used it), and a flash (ditto).

These are some photos from my first roll, taken around Boston and at Acadia National Park. The film is a bit grainy, and the colors are oh-so-retro 70s looking:

Rock wall at my work. I have always loved the sweep and height change of this wall. It is a little nugget of beauty I get to admire every day as I walk in to my office

An office building (my office)

A nice little Dutch Colonial (my home)

Friends Tal and Anita on the day of their engagement
(he proposed at sunrise on top of Cadillac Mountain)

A strikingly beautiful little kid I am related to

View from the lawn of Jordan Pond House Restaurant in Acadia,
purveyors of yummy popovers and double-billed credit card statements

Fillet MigDingDong

2009-12-05T13:54:00.000-08:00

We have a tradition of going camping in the summer in Vermont with a large group of friends. On one of the mornings we have a wonderful communal breakfast consisting of huge quantities of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and orange juice. In previous years, my good buddy Dave has capped the meal off by making a plate of what he calls "Weapons of Mass Deliciousness," basically dropping a glob of pancake batter into boiling bacon drippings to deep fry it. The resulting deep-fried biscuits are delicious and are, in fact, threat-level-red dangerous to the cardiovascular system.

This year we got to the end of the meal and I had what can only be described as a flash of culinary brilliance. Sitting at my picnic table, I noticed a package of chocolate Ding Dongs

and a plate of cooked bacon. Maybe it was the massive shock in my blood sugar level brought on by chugging straight maple syrup. Maybe it was the fifteen pancakes I had just eaten. Whatever the case, in one magical moment, I noticed that the Ding Dong resembled a fillet mignon in size and shape. Running with the similarity, I began imagining how one could prepare a Ding Dong in the manner of a fillet. Imagination soon became reality as I took a Ding Dong from its package, wrapped bacon around its circumference, and pinned the bacon down with toothpicks. Then I took the Ding Dong/bacon assembly and immersed it in pancake batter. This dripping mess went straight into boiling bacon grease. A few minutes on each side frying the plump morsel to a lightly crunchy golden brown and Voila!

By the time the Ding Dong was in the oil, a crowd of mocking healthy people had gathered to witness this culinary "abomination." Such is the price of genius. The jeers turned to silence as we pulled the Ding Dong from the oil and christened it "Fillet MigDingDong." A few brave souls dared to try it. The verdict? Crazy Delicious.

Battering:

Frying:

One side done, almost there:

Contemplating the first cut:

Workin':

Dave and Dan, declaring victory over bland health food:

Stiff Upper Lip Manufacturing

2009-11-27T03:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I wake up at night thinking about weird things like the causes of the implosion of the British car industry in the 1970s and 80s. I purchased a book entitled Whatever Happened to the British Motorcycle Industry because it seemed like it would document a similar decline in British motorcycles. Little did I know it would turn out to be an object lesson. Note that the book is manufactured in the UK. So here is a silent photo essay on British manufacturing:

Topaz Mountain, Afghanistan, err, Utah

2009-11-25T18:00:00.000-08:00

My brother-in-law Adam and I took the older kids/nieces/nephews to Topaz Mountain in Utah to rockhound while the younger kids went to the pool. It was a great time. The geography in this part of the world is beautifully stark. It looks very much like the photos you see of Afghanistan. And in the white FJ80 Land Cruiser, the illusion one has of driving across the Hindu Kush was even more powerful. The Cruiser performed flawlessly. It is really awesome. Like, I want to take it out behind the junior high and make out with it--that kind of awesome. I need to bring more of my eastern friends to this place so that they can witness the vastness and emptiness. Very, very cool.

I highly recommend this as a fun day trip from the SLC metropolitan area. We brought hammers and screwdrivers to pick for topaz, though I would recommend bringing a rock pick if you go. We all came back with a few decent topaz. Here is a list of stuff to bring:

1) Tools (hammer and screwdriver at a minimum)
2) Hat with neck protection
3) Water
4) Food
5) Ziploc bags for the topaz you find

Where we went:

View Topaz Mountain in a larger map

Some photos:

Setting off on the trek, six cousins

About 30 minutes into the voyage

Where we parked to hunt for topaz. We were 100 yards up the hill from this spot.

Afghanistan shot

Another Afghanistan shot

Leaving a geocache. Got to use low range and lock the center differential

Some of the priceless gems I found

One in a Billion

2009-11-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

Photos from last summer. I am behind on these posts.

I have decided that the best way to get to know a foreign city is to bicycle around and sort of fit in with traffic and life. I went on a business trip to Beijing and to this end bought a sweet folding Dahon Curve D3 bicycle at a Dahon store in Beijing. It wasn't a screaming deal--maybe 25% less than it would have cost in the US. It is, however, a fantastic bike. Highly recommended. I was able to get it into the hard-sided Samsonite I brought along with me, but that required a bit of disassembly. Biking around Beijing is still fun. If the Chinese government doesn't get ahead of the car situation there, we won't have too many more years of cycling in Beijing. Here are some photos:

Notice that I brought my Garmin eTrex along with its handlebar mount. I left a breadcrumb trail on my rides so that I could find my way back to the hotel.

The Square:

Dusk on the Square. Pretty odd to think about what this place means to so many people, mostly outside China. One gets no hint at all of this now...

And I Dwelt in a Tent

2009-10-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

Not much to say here. Just picked up a Mombasa roof top tent on craigslist. Put it on top of the Cruiser. Now I will win when:

1) We camp with all of our friends.
2) We set up our car for Halloween trunk or treating. Stand back, fishes.

Cruisin

2009-06-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

Last year we (well, actually our good friend Jonah) bought a Suburban for our big family trip to the western US. It was cheaper than renting a car for the three weeks we were there. At the end of the trip, we left the 'Burban with my brother to sell it.

This year we are doing the same thing, and my intention this time is to buy a vehicle we will actually want to keep. We have lots of friends who could make use of a family vehicle for trips out West, too. So a few days ago, I found a 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser (know to Cruiser aficionados as the FJ80) online for a good price. The seller sounded like a good guy in my phone conversation with him, and he gave me his mechanic's number to follow up on questions I had. The bottom line is that I bought a vehicle sight unseen with only some photos and conversations to go on. Many generous relatives offered to go and pick it up for me. My sister and niece made the two-hour round trip to pick it up. My sister even floated the money for the purchase (I should probably send her a check, huh?). Awesome! The truck will be waiting for us when we get there.

The Cruiser has 235,000 miles. In my research, I have been surprised to learn that the old Land Cruiser motors have pushrods and are derived from a 1950s Chevrolet design. They are durable motors, if a little underpowered for the task. The FJ80 was a bit of a hybrid, with the "new" style body but with the old engine. My old Porsche 912 was the same thing--motor from the old 356 and body from the new 911.

The body has a little rust, but I will touch it up and frankly am not too worried about it. I will remove the brush guard on the front and try to take off the rubber strips on the sides. The biggest problem was the missing third-row jump seats. Fortunately, I found a guy online parting out a 1991 Land Cruiser nearly identical to mine. It had grey cloth seats and a set of jump seats. A few bucks later, and they are on their way via UPS. They need to be cleaned:

The most important task will be to do something to honor the white Land Cruisers that keep the civilized world in business. What do I mean by that? Turn on the TV and watch. Peacekeeping in Kosovo? White Land Cruisers. UNICEF in Mongolia? White Land Cruisers. UN Food Programme in Africa? White Land Cruisers. CIA and Special Ops in Afghanistan? White Land Cruisers. To really do this truck justice, I am going to find just the right decal to put on both doors. So here I need your help. Below are some photos I have found around the web of white Toyotas with cool door decals. What are your thoughts? What door decals does this truck need?

The plain jane UN Cruiser / 4-Runner / Nissan with black UN letters :

A British Cruiser in Gaza with the Union Jack and Emergency Aid:

A UNICEF Cruiser:

A UNDP Cruiser:

A UN Food Programme Cruiser:

Well, and here are a few that I could make into decals. They are really insider jokes, but they might get a few guffaws from impressed people. See if you can name these references. If you get the Ace Tomato Company one, you will be my best friend:

What are your thoughts?

Dynolicious

2009-03-18T05:30:00.001-07:00

I hope none of you would be immature enough to download an application to your iPhone that uses its internal accelerometers to create a synthetic dynamometer that can estimate your car's power output and performance. Furthermore, I hope none of you would pull over to the side of the road on the way to work, wait for traffic to pass, and then do a 0-60 run just to see if it worked. I just hope.

And for the record, the reported stats on the car are:

Horsepower: 160
0-60: 7.6

The difference between these figures and the actual observed ones on the chart is due to driveline drag (for the HP number) and driver (lack of) skill.

(My dad's first reaction on seeing the above graph is that the blue line is just the first derivative of the red line. Cool, huh?)

Putin Whips it Out

2009-02-20T05:48:00.000-08:00

Alright, up to now I have only used this blog to describe a narrow little slice of my reality. Just handy projects and stuff. I don't know if what follows is a harbinger of posts to come, but I like my little idea so much that I have to put it out there.

You may have seen this in the news this week:

I got to thinking about this, and I can't get away from my own little harebrained conspiracy theory to explain it. Actually, it's just conjecture to explain some data points, not a real conspiracy theory. So here goes with the background facts:

January 2007
China shoots down a satellite to demonstrate that they have the capability and that they are real players in the new world. (Another little conspiracy theory of mine about this one is that China did a messy job of it on purpose in order to deny that orbit altitude to others in the future. But I have no basis for that conjecture.)

February 2008
The US shoots down an ailing satellite, ostensibly to save the Pacific Ocean from a tank full of hydrazine. But the consensus view is that at least part of the motivation was for the US to let people -- especially China -- know that we have a big one, too, and that they should think twice before pointing their satellite interceptor at one of ours.

February 2009
A dead Russian satellite and a living Iridium satellite collide. The Iridium satellites are really only used by the US Military and a few oil platform workers and CNN reporters.

The grand explanation: Russia's satellite was not dead, and it was guided into the Iridium on purpose to show that Putin has a big one, too. The satellite-satellite intercept is a more elegant solution in some ways than what the US and the Chinese did because you can just park the killer satellite up there and wait until you need it. My suspicions about this have been aroused at least in part because no one has said anything about these intersecting flight paths being either predicted or, alternatively, a complete surprise. Surely if the dead Russian satellite was on a stable trajectory and the Iridium was, too, then the computers in Colorado Springs would have seen this one coming months ago and warned Iridium to burn some fuel to move their satellite. I bet somewhere in the bowels of the government there are analysts looking for evidence that the Russian satellite was communicating or that it made some propellant shots in the period leading up to the impact.

Two other nice data points: First, the Kremlin has been acting old-school nuts lately (traitor spies being knocked off in London, the invasion of Georgia, etc.) trying to demonstrate that it is still a key player in the world. Second, Biden and others warned rather ominously before the inauguration that Obama would be tested by a crisis. This probably is not The Big Crisis, but it seems at least plausible that North Korea's decision to roll out a rocket test, Iran's decision to do the same, and Russia's involvement in a satellite accident are examples of each country feeling out the new president. In Tom Clancy books at least, this sort of thing is kind of a rite of passage for new presidents. I suppose that Obama ignoring the Russia thing is the right calculated move, because a strong response would just draw us into a stupid slap fight with Putin. A spat with the US is good for his internal support in Russian politics, with the bonus of making glorious mother Russia proud of having the technological wherewithal to humilate the Americans. So a non response is probably the right thing.

Or it might have been a space accident. Maybe I should check myself into the loony bin.

Imelda Marcos mit den 3 Streifen

2009-01-21T16:46:00.000-08:00

What does a man do when he is forced to watch the premiere of "Lost"* because it is his wife's birthday? Why, I get the iPhone out and take photos of all of my Adidas shoes. And then post the catalog online for all the world to admire.

A little prologue about this. It all started out innocuously enough. I have always known that Adidas fit my feet well. A few years ago, a friend gave me a pair of Adidas running shoes. The shoes were just slightly too big for me, but economic circumstanced dictated that I wear them anyway. This led to the discovery of something amazing: I had been wearing shoes 1/2 size too small all my adult life! These larger Adidas fit my feet better than any other shoe ever had. So the die was cast. Apart from the odd pair of Keens for the beach, Crocs for looking like a hippie, and dress shoes for not looking like a hippie, I am pretty much exclusively an Adidas guy now. If I find a pair of Adidas in my size that I like, I buy them without even trying them on. That's how confident I am that they will fit. This has only let me down in one situation--when I found that hiking boots should actually fit sort of snugly in order to prevent blisters (60 miles in Yosemite with REALLY bad blisters, more on that sometime). I also went down 1/2 size for my cycling shoes, and that was the right choice.

	Seattle, suede
	Yukora mid ATS, mesh / leather
	Samba, leather and suede
	Samba, leather and suede
	Cyclone, synthetic cycling
	ADI TR, suede
	Gazelle II, suede
	ADI TR, suede
	"Mexico 70" Gazelle, suede
	Country 73, leather
	"Vacation City" Marrakesh Gazelle II, leather
	Gazelle, patent leather
	Flavours of the World, France, suede
	Classic Skater Vulcan, leather
	CAMPUS II (The Original Games), synthetic / suede
	Calgary Winter Olympics 1988, synthetic
	Anzo Aprese Low, suede

*"Lost" is an improbably popular US television show. I recognized fairly early on that this was a show that was willing to be dishonest with its viewers. Call me cranky, but there you have it. It jumps the shark on every episode, has innumerable soap - opera - style - "everything - you - just - watched - was - part - of - a - dream" devices**, is loaded with inconsistencies, and in general is contrived to keep you coming back to see more schlock next week. For the record, I think the whole thing is some sort of big time/space bending magnet that allows time travel. Also for the record, I don't give a fat flying crap about it. It is the show I hear in the background while I am waiting to get the remote back so that I can watch "The Ultimate Fighter." For those of you who are asked to describe Lost to someone who hasn't watched it, here is my answer: Take equal parts "Bill and Ted," "The Sixth Sense," "Cast Away," "Twister," and "Lord of the Flies." Cut in a bunch of filler, and there you have it. "Twister," by the way, gets in there because of Helen Hunt's magical self-washing white shirt in that movie. Apparently there is a magical salon and laundromat the Survivors visit a few time per day.

**I know these flash-forwards and flashbacks and blah blah and have to do with time travel.*** So technically they aren't using this soap opera device. Even if the writers had this whole thing storyboarded as one big monolith before starting Season 1, I still feel they are being dishonest in the way they roll it out. But that's down to taste, and there's no accounting that.

***I have email evidence that I called this at the start of the second season. I am happy to acknowledge that some sad corner of the Lost community out there knew this before I did. I grudgingly admit that bringing Bill, Ted, and Marty McFly to primetime is kind of cool.

Totally Tubular

2009-01-12T23:03:00.000-08:00

I like good music, and I appreciate good sound equipment. Although I don't have an ear sensitive enough or educated enough to hear the difference between types of speaker cables, I can tell the difference between bad stuff and good stuff. I was introduced to "good stuff" by my good friend, whom I will call Friend 1. He took the dive into the hi-fi world with a handmade British CD player and amplifier and $3000 speakers. He has since upgraded significantly. Since becoming attuned to the existence of good equipment and the people who like it, I have discovered that I know a few audiophiles. They are nice people, difficult to distinguish from your average Joe (they are men, so "average Jane" wouldn't fit here). A good way to ferret out an audiophile is to speak effusively about how much you like the sound generated by a Bose system. This is sort of like talking about Velveeta at the Cheese Board in Berkeley. Turns out most of them HATE Bose stuff. One told me that he was stuck at a party where a Bose system was playing loudly and he actually became nauseous after an hour of listening.

Audiophiles come in many flavors. The more ecumenical of them appreciate flavors they do not themselves embrace, but that they recognize as being good. Truly confident ones don't criticize other flavors at all. Rather, they leave it to their equipment to persuade you that their flavor is the best. A few examples of my friends' flavors:

Friend 1: Nice audiophile equipment with mostly solid-state circuitry. Speakers that sort of look like normal speakers. Sound quality for a jazz CD that will make you cry. Probably into his system for about $10k.

Friend 2: Krell Amplifier with no cooling fans, instead milled out of a solid block of aluminum (about 300 lbs). B&W speakers that are curvy works of art. Apparently they (the speakers) leaked a gallon of oil onto the floor after a particularly loud New Years Eve dance party. (Is that cool or what to have speakers that somehow need a bunch of oil in them?) Were taken away and rebuilt by the manufacturer. Don't know how much he is into this system for, but it is certainly mid 5-digits.

Friend 3: Has a massive collection of '80s New Wave vinyl records. These play on a high-end turntable through incredibly heavy 7-foot-tall Magnepan speakers that are only like one inch thick. Some people buy a BMW 335i, but this guys owns a Toyota Matrix and about a BMW 328i worth of audio equipment.

There are other audiophile friends in various stages of craziness, but these ones help illustrate why it is difficult for me to find a reasonably-priced stereo system whose sound is pleasing enough to listen to. I have been spoiled.

So if it isn't obvious from the little projects you see on this blog, I'll say it here explicitly: For one reason or another, I have a real need to be using my hands to build something from time to time. Not every day or even every week. But I need to build a real object sometimes in order to feed a part of my brain that needs that sort of thing. What better thing to build than a stereo? I have relatively vivid memories of my father soldering together a Garrard stereo kit when I was three or four years old. They had to keep the project in a locked room so that I wouldn't break in and work on it myself.

In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of interest in vacuum tube audio equipment.
I won't go much detail here about this. Suffice it to say that 1) Vacuum tubes produce a rich sound--to some tastes it is better than sound from modern solid-state equipment; 2) I have a professional interest in the persistence of old technologies like vacuum tubes; 3) Tube amps can be VERY expensive; and 4) There is a rich selection of low-end DIY tube amp kits out there. Google around about all of this. You do not have enough time before you die to read all of it.

The Project

So I did a little research and bought a K12 tube amp kit from Arizona Hi-Fi. It appears that they are not selling these any more. The closest substitute seems to be the K-8LS kit. Note that this gives only 8 watts per channel. But, as you will find when you google around, people seem to think that although all watts are created equal, "tube watts" are more equal than others. And this kit has been very well reviewed by discerning audiophiles. The kit was easy to assemble. I was able to solder the whole thing together in an hour or two on a Saturday. The box is recycled from a Costco bamboo wood organizer system. I built the circuit board upside-down (I soldered in the components on the back of the board rather than on the front) so that I could make an enclosure with the tubes sticking out into the air as far as possible. I have not actually made the cover yet, but I will get around to it. This is important, as there are a few capacitor leads that carry enough voltage to kill someone. The only hiccup with soldering things on upside-down was the volume pot. The volume knob works in reverse--the 0 is on the far right, and 11 is on the far left. I think knobs work like this in the southern hemisphere, right?

To complement the amp, I got a set of what I like to describe as low-end high-end loudspeakers. They are PSB Alpha B1 bookshelf loudspeakers. Like the amp kit, audiophiles have identified these loudspeakers as having much higher sound quality than their price would suggest.

It took a few days for the tubes and speakers to burn in and for the sound to start to be really crisp. The little system makes a beautiful, warm sound. Even running on iTunes from my laptop, the sound is remarkably clean. The best validation of the system's quality came from Friend 2 above (the one with the megabuck Krell). I invited him into my office to have a listen, and he had me download a great test song, "Eclipse" by Joao Gilberto. I played it for him, and he couldn't get over the sound quality. He had been chasing down a ground hum in his system, so he was especially pleased with the dead silence during quiet parts of the song. Friend 1 suggested that I buy "The Köln Concert" recordings by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and "The Art of the Trio, Vol. III" by Brad Mehldau. On my little system, the Jarrett recordings in particular can make you cry. I have also had good luck working with "Music for 18 Musicians" by the Steve Reich Ensemble playing in the background.

The amp (note the volume--it is at about 3 or 4, not 7 or 8). The tube give off a nice warm glow when the music is playing:

Closeup of circuit board. Note that all the component locations are numbered. Makes for an idiot-proof assembly job:

One of the loudspeakers:

Back of the loudspeaker (Made in Canada!):

iPhone Photography: Add-On Lenses

2009-01-09T09:39:00.001-08:00

I bought two lenses for my iPhone in hopes of adding some capability to its camera. They were made for cell phones, but they work just fine with the iPhone with a little work. The lenses attach to the back of the phone with a strong magnet in the lens. The lenses mount to a metal washer that is affixed to the phone with adhesive. The iPhone doesn't have enough flat area for the whole washer, so I clipped mine back with wire snippers. The washer now ends right where the edge of the iPhone starts to fall away. I purchased the lenses expecting to use the zoom one most. But the macroscopic one turns out to be the best and most useful. Here are some photos of the lenses, of the mount on my iPhone, and of some things I shot at with the lenses. The first is a before/after shot of an office with the plain iPhone lens and then the 2X zoom. The next two are macro shots of my keyboard and of the inside of one of my watches. I could not read with my bare eyes the writing on the metal tab holding in the battery, so I took a photo and blew it up on my iPhone.

Not Too SMART

2009-01-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

Somewhere on the autoroute between Paris and Fontainebleau, on Bastille Day, in a car that weighs less than some motorcycles. Every crosswind gust is mortal combat. If you had the chance to find the Vmax of a SMART cabrio, I hope you would do the same.

An idiot's guide to Apple TV DVDs

2008-12-30T19:55:00.000-08:00

Short entry. We got an Apple TV to replace our DVD changer. Here is what I learned about ripping my DVDs (in Windows):

1) insert a DVD in your drive
2) copy your DVD onto your hard drive using DVDFab Decrypter
3) using the Apple TV presets, use Handbrake to make a movie file from the DVD file you just made. I usually use the Apple TV presets but click "Two-Pass Encoding" and "Turbo first pass". If the program has horizontal lines in it where there is motion, redo the file after checking "decomb" or "deinterlace"
4) Use MetaX to put nice tags on the movie file (Movie poster for the Apple TV display, ratings, synopsis, etc.)
5) Import the file into iTunes. I set up my iTunes library on a USB hard drive. This is cheap storage, and it means you don't have to use the Apple TV's hard drive.
6) When setting up the Apple TV, make sure to set it up to stream content out of iTunes rather than Sync with iTunes.

You're done!

Gangsta Wrap

2008-12-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not going to be able to do this project justice with the time I have tonight, but here it is in brief: I have been fascinated by DuPont Tyvek for some time now. I know that people make wallets and ground cloths (for camping) out of the stuff. Also, there are hazmat suits made from Tyvek. The cool thing about it to me is that it is like poor man's Gore-Tex. It is waterproof and breathable, and it costs about $50 for a 150-foot roll at Home Depot. As I understand it, Tyvek is difficult to sew, but special Tyvek tape can be used to tape Tyvek together and the resulting bond is as good as a sewn seam.

My favorite jacket, the one I commute on my bike in, is a vintage Marmot Gore-Tex shell. It is one layer of Gore and one layer of nylon. Basically like a heavy windbreaker. Somehow the air space between the Gore and the nylon allows me to bike in the jacket at any temperature between 15 and 50 degrees F. If I could find another Marmot EXACTLY like it, I'd drop $300 for it in a heartbeat.

So it occurred to me a while ago that I could replicate my favorite Marmot in Tyvek. For about $10, I got all of the hardware I needed at a sewing store: Zipper, Velcro, Elastic cord, Cord stops. I had a roll of Tyvek left over from doing our basement ceiling.

The order of battle (go slowly and think through this stuff before you do it. It is basically a 5-hour IQ test--it forces you to figure out what 3-dimensional shape will result from the joining of 2-dimensional panels, and then you have to invert shapes mentally):

1) trace pieces from panels of coat, inside and outside, using a sharpie. Cut them out. (I purposefully left the DuPont Tyvek Homewrap logos on the outside).
2) tape up the liner, and tape up the shell. Use small pieces to go around corners. Only tape one side of the liner and shell (no tape against skin when wearing it, and no tape seams exposed on shell)
3) Turn liner inside out (tape next to skin)
4) Turn shell inside out (tape exposed)
5) Put on liner over shell.
6) Be really smart, think ahead, and tape the two together. Include zipper. Leave a gap so that the whole thing can be pulled inside out.
7) Reach into a gap (I left the bottom of the shell and the liner unattached--the waist part) and grab the inside of the hood and pull it so that the liner/shell turns inside out. It should now be right side out. Think of this as having a ziploc bag inside-out and then pulling it so that it is right-side out.
8) You probably forgot something, so be ready to go back and turn it inside out, or inverted, to tape whatever needs to be done.
9) The hood was the hardest part.
10) Don't panic if you messed up--you can always cut something out and then tape in a patch.

I went out to run the snowblower in 20 degree weather with the jacket on. In 2 hours outside, it was fantastic. The only problem was that the zipper came unstuck from the tape around my mouth. I think it is an area of high stress, and the condensation from my breath didn't help. I will probably go back and sew the zipper to the Tyvek tape and then tape over the stitching. I also am planning to throw the jacket in hot dryer for ten minutes in order to get the adhesive in the tape to really fuse to the fabric. The Tyvek starts out feeling like very stiff paper or sail cloth. After the construction process and a few wearings, it has softened up. If I had to do it over (which I may at some point for fun), I would make it a little larger. I think the stiffness of the Tyvek makes the coat feel tighter than the Marmot equivalent.

Also, nb, the photos of the parts below are all taken from a specific height. You could probably blow up the photos to make patterns if you were really excited about doing it. Also, nb, this will be a high-visibility coat for biking, but it blends in with snow like nobody's business. Be careful.

The pile of panels:

Sleeves:

Hood parts:

Back panels:

Hood parts:

Chest panels:

Sleeves:

Taped up liner sleeve:

Liner back and chest panels taped together:

Liner sleeve joined to torso (back and chest) panels:

Hoodless liner and shell:

Wearing liner inside out (tape side in):

Shell over liner:

The whole shooting match (getting ready to go out to shovel):

Can I get an endorsement deal? I look like Ricky Bobby:

Rack It!

2008-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

The Civic needed a rack, and I didn't like the Yakima/Thule ones out there. They look too "added-on" to me. The Civic Si has nice rain gutters. So I started looking around at other cars with OEM racks and similarly-shaped rain gutters. The Acura MDX suv has a very similar shape, and it's made by Honda, too. I bought a set on eBay and cut them down to the width of the Civic's roof. I drilled holes of a large enough diameter to put blind nuts called "Plusnuts" into the roof. I primed the bare metal exposed by the drilling with POR-15 so that it wouldn't rust. Then I gooped tons of silicone sealant in the holes. The racks required some pretty serious angle grinding to get them to fit down in the gutters, but they look totally stock now.

Shifty Character

2008-10-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

I will probably edit this later, but right now I am going to post something rough so that I can get help from the Internet community. In a previous post, I described my ultimate commuter bike. Here it is with its new 700c Reynolds Ouzo Carbon Fork. (Brakes and tires are being updated as part of this change):

I LOVE the Shimano Nexus 8 Premium (red band) hub on the bike. Unfortunately, Shimano does not offer a shifter for this hub that fits on road bike handlebars. As a result, I am stuck with mountain bike handlebars. (I actually cornered a Shimano engineer at Interbike to talk with him about this. Another guy was doing the same thing as I walked up to him. So this seems to be something people want.) I go back and forth on whether I actually need a road bar, but I feel it is a technical challenge to figure out a way to adapt another shifter to work with the Nexus (and Alfine eventually). The challenges are:

1) The Nexus requires a cable pull between shifts that is different from any other shifter out there except for the Nexus-specific shifter.

2) Internal hubs need to have the cable very precisely controlled or the mechanisms will wear quickly.

So in order to figure out just how much cable the Nexus shifter pulls I used a Sharpie to put a dot on the exposed part of the cable next to the shifter as a reference. I measured the full travel of the dot from 1st to 8th gear. Here is a table with what I measured:

inches	mm	actual step mm
0.124	3.1496		gear change
0.327	8.3058	5.1562	1-2
0.528	13.4112	5.1054	2-3
0.732	18.5928	5.1816	3-4
0.990	25.1460	6.5532	4-5
1.149	29.1846	4.0386	5-6
1.350	34.2900	5.1054	6-7
1.555	39.4970	5.2070	7-8
		5.1925	avg

I believe that there is supposed to be uniform spacing between gears, which means that my shifter is not the most precise instrument in the world, at least on its location of 5th gear. I imagine that somewhere at a Shimano plant the plastic castings have the detent hole for 5th gear just slightly off. Or I have a piece of sand in mine. This non-uniform gear spacing might explain the little noises I heard that led me a few months ago to tear down the whole hub in a fit of mechanical paranoia. I did not find the metal shavings I had imagined were in there. It looked beautiful. But that is a post for another time. Based on these measurements, I feel pretty comfortable saying that increments between gears is 5.2 mm. Now we have something to work with.

So, what is the cable pull for shifters out there. Taking information found around the web (specifically this very good article on Shimergo (combination of Shimano and Campagnolo components), I found these cable pull figures:

	Cable Pull
Shifter	(mm)
Shimano 6	3.2
Shimano 7	2.9
Shimano 8	2.8
Shimano 9	2.5
Shimano 10	2.3
Campag 8	3.5
Campag old 9	3.2
Campag new 9	3.0
Campag 10	2.8
Sram (1.0) 7	4.5
Sram (1.0) 8	4.3
Sram (1.0) 9	4.0
Shimano Revo Nexus 8 (mine)	5.2

So, what to do?

A really cool place called Jtek engineering makes a device called a ShiftMate, which seems to be a pulley that alters the pull ratios by using two different sized diameters on one pulley wheel. Using the information on Jtek's website about where their product fits, along with information about the sprocket pitches of common sprockets, I think I can calculate the ratio changes that the different ShiftMate wheels are capable of. First, sprocket pitches from around the web:

Cassette or Freewheel	Sprocket Pitch	Code
	(mm)
All modern 5 and 6-speed	5.5	S5/6
All standard 7-speed	5	S7
Campagnolo 8-speed	5	C8
Shimano 8-speed	4.8	S8
Campagnolo 9-speed	4.55	C9
Shimano 9-speed	4.35	S9
Campagnolo 10-speed	4.15	C10
Shimano 10-speed	3.95	S10

And now put it together with the Jtek information in a spreadsheet and solve for the ratios that Jtek must be using. I should point out that this Jtek device is very clever. At first I thought I was making a mistake because the ratios I solved for were either 1+ a little bit or 1- a little bit. But it looks as though you can set up the shifter to pull on the small diameter of the wheel or on the large diameter of the wheel (placing the "output" cable to the derailleur on the pulley diameter that the shifter cable is NOT on). So this makes sense. Each wheel is capable of doing one ratio or the inverse of that ratio. (PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE NOT OFFICIAL FIGURES FROM JTEK. I AM CERTAIN THAT I HAVE SOME ERRORS IN MY CALCULATIONS. YOU SHOULD CONTACT THE COMPANY TO GET THE RIGHT FIGURES) Anyway, here they are. Very cool:

JTEK Product
#1	shifter	pull mm	der	shift ratio	cass	sprock pitch	calc pitch	pitch diff	implied jtek ratio
	S8	2.8	S	1.7	C8	5.00	5.00	0	1.050
	S9	2.5	S	1.7	C9	4.55	4.55	0	1.071
	S10	2.3	S	1.7	C10	4.15	4.15	0	1.061
	C8	3.5	C	1.4	S8	4.80	4.80	0	0.980
	C9 old	3.2	C	1.4	S9	4.35	4.35	0	0.971
	C10	2.8	C	1.5	S10	3.95	3.95	0	0.940
	C10	2.8	C	1.5	S9	4.35	4.35	0	1.036

#2	S9	2.5	S	1.7	S8	4.80	4.80	0	1.129
	S9	2.5	C	1.5	C10	4.15	4.15	0	1.107
	S9	2.5	S	1.7	S10	3.95	3.95	0	0.929
	S10	2.3	S	1.7	S9	4.35	4.35	0	1.113
	C9	3.0	S	1.7	S8	4.80	4.80	0	0.941
	C9	3.0	C	1.5	C10	4.15	4.15	0	0.922
	C9	3.0	S	1.7	S9	4.35	4.35	0	0.853
	C10	2.8	C	1.5	C9	4.55	4.55	0	1.083

#3	S9	2.5	C	1.5	C9	4.55	4.55	0	1.213
	S10	2.3	C	1.5	C10	4.15	4.15	0	1.203
	C9	3.0	S	1.7	S9	4.35	4.35	0	0.853
	C10	2.8	S	1.7	S10	3.95	3.95	0	0.830

#4	S8	2.8	C	1.4	C8	5.00	5.00	0	1.276
	S9	2.5	C	1.4	C9	4.55	4.55	0	1.300
	C8	3.5	S	1.7	S8	4.80	4.80	0	0.807
	C9	3.2	S	1.7	S9	4.35	4.35	0	0.800

So, the question now is what to do with this information. I need at least an 8-, 9-, or 10-speed shifter. If I bounce the Jtek products (including their inverse ratios) against all of the shifters in my table, I find a few possible solutions:

		jtek (i is inverted)
	Cable Pull	1	2	3	4	1i	2i	3i	4i
Shifter	(mm)	1.05	1.10	1.20	1.30	0.95	0.91	0.83	0.77
Shimano 6	3.2	3.36	3.52	3.84	4.16	3.05	2.91	2.67	2.46
Shimano 7	2.9	3.05	3.19	3.48	3.77	2.76	2.64	2.42	2.23
Shimano 8	2.8	2.94	3.08	3.36	3.64	2.67	2.55	2.33	2.15
Shimano 9	2.5	2.63	2.75	3.00	3.25	2.38	2.27	2.08	1.92
Shimano 10	2.3	2.42	2.53	2.76	2.99	2.19	2.09	1.92	1.77
Campag 8	3.5	3.68	3.85	4.20	4.55	3.33	3.18	2.92	2.69
Campag old 9	3.2	3.36	3.52	3.84	4.16	3.05	2.91	2.67	2.46
Campag new 9	3.0	3.15	3.30	3.60	3.90	2.86	2.73	2.50	2.31
Campag 10	2.8	2.94	3.08	3.36	3.64	2.67	2.55	2.33	2.15
Sram (1.0) 7	4.5	4.73	4.95	5.40	5.85	4.29	4.09	3.75	3.46
Sram (1.0) 8	4.3	4.52	4.73	5.16	5.59	4.10	3.91	3.58	3.31
Sram (1.0) 9	4.0	4.20	4.40	4.80	5.20	3.81	3.64	3.33	3.08

In particular, it looks like the Jtek 3 and 4 could make SRAM shifters work. More later.

Suburban Life

2008-09-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

This summer we did a big grand family trip to Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. The best rate we could find for a rental car for this period was $2000 for a minivan. Most of the cars I have owned have cost less than this. So I asked my friend Jonah to check out a Suburban I found on Craigslist that cost less than this. He was nice enough to check it out, negotiate on the price, and then leave it for us when we got there. It ran beautifully and had better AC than we could have hoped for. We left it with my brother to sell at the end of the trip. All in all, two thumbs up. (This photo was taken just before dawn at the Grand Staircase Inn in Cannonville Utah. We had a great stay there--highly recommended)

160 Horsepower is the new 300 Horsepower

2008-05-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

You've heard people (usually 50-year-olds) say that 50 is the new 35? Well, I am discovering that 160 horsepower can provide just as much automotive engagement as 300 horsepower. It is making me like my Honda Civic Si more and more. What's funny is that what makes the Honda fun has a lot to do with its lack of power, if you can believe that. Don't get me wrong--this car has plenty of pep, and it can go fast enough to scare normal people. But the power it has is useable, fun, and refreshing, and this is the key to my growing affection for the car.

The Honda has now become the car I have owned for the longest. We are going on 1.5 years together, and I feel a strange lack of desire to get rid of it. This car gets a lot of things right. So I felt some validation when I read this article (note that this car is the newer version of my car, and my car is not an R-Type. But the principle they observe is what I am talking about):

Best Commuter Bike Ever Project, Part 4

2008-04-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

In the previous installment on this topic, I mentioned a Merlin titanium frame. The transfer of components happened, and I am extremely pleased with the outcome. I defy anyone to present me with a cooler all-around bike than this. For a while the bike was mounted with Ritchey Tom Slicks as skinny as road bike tires. The bike feels incredibly light and fast with them. Then I mounted big MTB knobbies for the snow, and it felt great. I am fairly certain that I could do some serious mountain biking on this with those tires. Then this weekend I mounted some wide slicks in preparation for going to Bar Harbor, Maine in a few weeks. This bike is a great trailer puller, too.