Month: July 2018

Updates abound.

• I finally got my road bike back up and running- broken spoke fixed and both tires swapped over for new wider/lighter/not cracked rubber. I haven’t been able to take it out, mind you- the weather has been garbage for two weeks straight- but it’s ready. Though the saddle has some discoloration- I’m not sure what’s happened there.
• A new crankset, bb, and chainring for my mountain bike should show up today. I’m stealing the current bottom bracket from my mountain bike and installing it on my gravel bike, so the mountain bike needed some new parts. Nothing too special (Shimano XT, if you’re wondering), but it’ll also let me swap some cranks out on my wife’s (amazing) burrito slayer.
• Camera parts continue to come together. After far too long, I’ve decided to standardize my camera mounts around a Manfrotto 200PL plate system- so I’ve been (slowly) amassing enough of the plates and mounts to cover most of my gear.
• I finally did some video work too- just for practice. I’m feeling better about getting myself comfortable with the new camera (and lenses, and codecs and whatnot), so it’s good to have some stuff come out of camera looking pretty good, and then be able to process it nicely. Progress!

Mid summer.

• Road bike is fixed. A call to the builder confirmed my suspicions- the frame, built in the late 90’s as a full-blown race bike was built with what his notes say were “minimal” clearances. He was certain I could get a 25c tire through (which is still better than my current 23’s), and he thought maybe, depending, I might be able to squeeze a 28c through- but I wouldn’t know until I tried and there were too many variables to wager a guess. So: I ordered some 26’s (that should come today), and that should do the trick. I wasn’t willing to wager $200 on tires that might not fit, so 26 seemed like a decent place to start. I fixed the broken rear spoke, too- it was nice to get the new spoke in there, bring it up to tension, and have the rear wheel come right back into true. I might have built those wheels properly 20 years ago.
• Tracking down a re-foam kit for old loudspeakers is… annoying. They exist, but they’re a pita to get ordered and shipped and all that. So: on the list, but trying to find the most elegant solution.
• Looking at power management solutions for the rack system (again). I’ve got the 120v AC power mostly dealt with- planned, anyway. But the 5v DC USB powered stuff needs to be sorted out, too. While it’s convenient that so many things are USB powered, it’s annoying to have an endless array of tiny power supplies eating up space on a power strip. To that end, I’ve had good luck with Ankler PowerPorts (they do 120 AC to 5v DC with 6 ports), and the two I have are fully occupied, so… it’s looking like I’ll need a third to deal with the stuff in the rack. And some more USB micro cables, too.
• I’m about ready to start devoting some time to that new video series I mentioned a few weeks ago- building out a proper full-sized set of videos about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I’m pretty excited to work on something like this for the first time in a while, and I’m also wary of putting work out into the public like this (as it’s always rough on the ego).

Back at it.

• I broke a spoke and flatted on my road bike yesterday, so now I need to fix the wheel and deal with tires. The rubber on that bike is pretty old, and while it looked to be in ok shape, it has some cracks and signs of age- so that’s likely to be  a new set of tires. I need to find out how large a tire that bike will fit, so I’m going to try to get in contact with the builder and see what he can tell me. Ideally, I’ll be able to fit a set of Compass 26c (or, maybe 28c) extralight tires. Maybe even a second set for the gravel bike (they have a 26″ x 1.8″ and 26″ x 2.3″ I’ve had my eye on…)
• My Raspberry Pi 3 B+ came, and it’s up and running a Minecraft PE server. Setting up a Minecraft server on a RasPi should be easy, but because my kids play the PE variation of the game (via iOS devices instead of desktops), the sever software is more obscure, and finding a version that will run on a Pi is… annoying. Regardless, it seems to be working. Now I need to look into plugins and whatnot.
• The “new” stereo is up and running. As per usual with me, there are things to work out, but for right now it seems to be working ok. It looks like the speaker’s woofers will need re-foaming, but I’ll get that sorted.
• My Software Defined Radio came- it’s super neat to be able to listen to all manner of stuff floating around the airwaves. In theory, anyway, as my antenna is pretty small and I’m not finding many signals I can actually hear. I’m working on a better solution, so we’ll see.
• I still need to build my rack mount for my office. I don’t want to rehash all the things that have gotten in the way, but there’s just been no time to get it all done. Soon, I hope, as it’s nearly the only thing between me and a finished studio.

Whoops! I managed to blow up my bandwidth for last month, so this site was inaccessible for a few days. I’m back, now. Updates!

• I’ve gone through the media files for this site and thinned things out a bit- I foolishly left some photos at pretty high resolution (and thus larger file sizes…), so I’m hoping that’ll do the trick and keep bandwidth under control this month.
• I’ve been ill, so my riding has been pretty much nil for last couple of weeks- and now the weather is super-duper hot-and-humid, so… yeah. Biking is frustratingly on hold for a bit as I recover.
• As always, I’m an adaptor away from greatness: I was recently gifted a vintage NAD amp/receiver with some Boston Acoustics speakers, and those have becoming my new office sound system- but, as would always be the case, I’m short a pair of slightly obscure adaptors to make the final connections work. Typical.
• My kids are starting to play a bit more Minecraft- and now they want to play together in-game. That’s pretty easy at first- they all play on iOS, and the can see local games. But it’s fickle and requires the host to always be in the game- they’d like to share a game a be able to work on it whenever. So: I’ve a Raspberry Pi inbound to be built up as a local Minecraft server. Should do the trick.
• I’m still writing my newsletter. I just sent out #93 a couple of days ago, and (as per usual with newsletters) I had a few people immediately unsubscribe. That’s how it is- I get that. It’s just a drag to see your subscriber count creep slowly down every time you actually send something out. I’m trying to figure out what my goals for that newsletter are (or even what my purpose for it is). Am I writing it for me? Am I writing it for some imagined audience?