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  • Hell Toupee

    There were still patches of snow on the ground from the weekend’s Ocsnowber Nor’easter, but it was a nice night for trick-or-treating, at about 45 degrees. I had our light on from 6-9 but still only served 10 kids, and 6 of them were in one group! I do my best to be a welcoming house: porch light on, jack-o-lantern out, and I always play some “appropriate” music, but very few kids come through our neighborhood for some reason. My “All Hallows Eve” playlist includes:

    Bad Moon Rising — CCR
    Bela Lugosi’s Dead — Bauhaus
    Black Magic Woman — Santana
    Bright Yellow Gun — Throwing Muses
    Burnin’ For You — Blue Oyster Cult
    Culling of the Fold — Decemberists
    Don’t Fear the Reaper — Blue Oyster Cult
    Everyday is Halloween — Ministry
    Gallows Pole — Led Zeppelin
    Hell — Squirrel Nut Zippers
    Highway to Hell — AC/DC
    Institutionalized — Suicidal Tendencies
    The Mariner’s Revenge Song — Decemberists
    Monster Mash — Bobby Pickett
    Monsters in the Bathroom — Bill Harley
    One Halloween Night — SteveSongs
    People Who Died — Jim Carroll
    Prince Nez — Squirrel Nut Zippers
    Psycho Killer — Talking Heads
    Run Like Hell — Pink Floyd
    Shankill Butchers — Decemberists
    Werewolf — SteveSongs
    Werewolves of London — Warren Zevon
    Zombie — Cranberries

    In the afterlife
    You could be headed for the serious strife
    Now you make the scene all day
    But tomorrow there’ll be Hell to pay
    –Squirrel Nut Zippers, Hell

  • Virtually Impossible

    I received a new laptop at work, which is always a treat, but also always a pain trying to get the necessary programs and data migrated from the old one to the new one. My usual crutch is to create a “virtual” copy of the old laptop to run on the new one for the transition period. I end up using the virtual copy less and less as time goes on. Then eventually, I run short on space on the “new” laptop and have to delete the old copy.

    I’ve done this through my 2 most recent laptop transitions, and also used the same technique when we got Susan a MacBook to replace an old Dell laptop. The biggest problem I’d had to date was a licensing issue with Susan’s — the Windows license on it was an OEM license, and when going to authorize it, it wouldn’t take my semi-legitimate MSDN license. I finally wore someone down on the phone until they let the registration go through.

    With this laptop, though, I’ve had nothing but trouble. And it has nothing to do with the new hardware, AFAIK. I started with my favorite Virtualization engine, VMware. They offer a free “Player” application and also a free “P2V” application for taking a Physical computer and creating a Virtual copy of it. Even getting the P2V process going was challenging, though, as it required software running on both systems, and dealing with Windows permissions, with the old laptop being a member of the work domain, and the new one not yet. And then copying 62 GB over the wireless network wasn’t going very quickly, so I cancelled the process then connected the two systems to the wired network. At that point, name resolution stopped working in one direction, making other things that much more difficult. The process, once I was able to get it started, did go much quicker over the wired network, though. Starting up the newly created VM in Player, though, did not go well. It started with a BSoD related to some supposedly missing file. A little web searching led me to running a “repair” from the install disc, which got me to the next error, which was a different BSoD. That one seemed to have to do with the VM being configured with one kind of storage, and the installed system expecting another kind. You might think the P2V process would manage all of this appropriately, or at least I would, but you’d be wrong, or at least I was wrong. Anyway, after many fruitless hours of web searches, regedits from the repair console, extracting VMware disk metadata from the virtual disk file, modifying it, and re-inserting it, I gave up. I’ve never had such a miserable experience with VMware.

    On to Microsoft. Sure to be a slam dunk. Well, the new version of Virtual PC is weird, and is implemented as some shell extensions so it doesn’t even really look like an app. I first tried an application that converts virtual disks from one format to another. I can’t really remember the failure mode of that attempt, but the VM wouldn’t boot. I was willing to accept this, given the heritage of the virtual disk file, and the myriad of changes I’d made to it since first making the image. I then moved on to creating a virtual disk with a Microsoft (sysinternals) tool. I figured I’d try a “simpler” wired network this time, with both nodes on a small hub, but the throughput was terrible. I then remembered that it really was a hub, and not a switch, and I disconnected the other system I had plugged in there, and disconnected the internet connection, and then things really moved along quickly. When I came back a few hours later, though, the app complained that the network connection was lost. Didn’t look it to me, but what do I know. I re-configured the two computers’ network interfaces to have static IP addresses, and I addressed the shared folder for storing the newly created virtual disk with the IP address of the target instead of its name. But that new copy ended up having an even weirder failure mode. The VM would begin to boot, but then simply power down. No BSoD, no error message, no nothing. I did some searching but my GoogleFu failed me, and I could find no similar reports.

    At this point I was feeling pretty beat up, but in doing some research on the VHD file format (Microsoft’s virtual disk format), I read that VirtualBox also supported it. So I figured, what the heck. Since it doesn’t require making a new virtual disk, but was just a quick download, the cost to try was low. But of course that failed to boot as well — just gave me a blank screen. However, I was able to go into the settings and figure out by myself some changes to try (mainly the bus on which the virtual disk was configured), and was able to get the VM to boot. It certainly took a lot of doing to get to that point. Even so, the story doesn’t end there. The VM would boot OK, but I couldn’t access the network. The error in Device Manager was that not enough resources were available for the device. And there were a handful of devices in that state, not just the network interface. I tried deleting old hardware drivers, etc., but never got those errors to go away. Some internet research later, I learned that installing their “Guest Additions” solved many errors. So I did this, but still no luck. Some more searching (my GoogleFu had returned!) later, I came across someone who had the same problem, and his solution was to change the PCI bus driver. I did this, and voila! All was well.

    All in all, it was a surprisingly miserable experience to get to this point. But thank you, Virtual Box, for coming through in the end!

  • I Want to Ride my Bicycle

    So I’ve been riding my new bicycle around town, but in the wimpy freewheel mode. Yesterday I got my courage up to flip the rear wheel around and give the fixed gear mode a try on the ride to Tyler’s soccer game. And today, I went for a longer ride — Arlington Center to Lexington Center on the Minuteman Trail. Including the short bit from home to the bike path and back, it’s just about exactly ten miles.

    It takes some getting used to, I’ll say that much. I stopped in Lexington Center at the water fountain, as the bike doesn’t yet have a water bottle cage. So essentially it’s five miles of continuous pedaling. So there are a few things that are tricky. First is getting started. I’m very accustomed to having the pedals stationary when getting my second foot in the clips. No such thing now. Must get the pedal oriented and the foot in while the pedals are moving. It’s challenging. Second is while biking: there are times when I’m used to coasting a bit. Usually, it’s when I get out of the saddle to go over a bump more gently. It’s very disconcerting to be mentally prepared to stop pedaling, and to have the pedals not cooperate. Also very jarring to say the least. Finally, stopping can be a bit tricky. When riding a “normal” bike, you have the ability to adjust your pedal position when stopping. Not so with a fixed gear — the pedals are where they are.

    But aside from starting, going, and stopping, it’s really easy. Sheldon says that “It takes a couple of weeks of regular riding to unlearn the impulse to coast, and become at ease on a fixed gear.” We’ll see.

  • My Bike

    Having largely completed Clara’s bike, I moved on to my bike. This is the bike I bought in High School, early 1980’s, from the bike shop that was at the edge of our neighborhood (The Bike Rack). It cost me about $300 at the time. I rode it all over during my High School year, or at least as far as I ranged back then. I wasn’t allowed to have a driver’s license until I was 18, so there wasn’t much driving for me in High School, though of course I did get rides from friends. Anyway, back to the bike. It got a lot of use in those years, and I brought it up to college with me, though with some trepidation given the reputation Cambridge had for bike theft. I didn’t use it a lot in those years, but when I needed to get off campus on my own, or even to the other end of campus, it was handy. One of my roommates borrowed it once, and the back wheel got stolen. He graciously replaced it, even before bringing the bike back, but that made me even more anxious about riding it. Or more precisely, parking it. I had a Citadel “u-lock” and the idea was you’d remove the front wheel and lock it up along with the back wheel and the frame to something sturdy. But what a pain, and you end up scratching up the fork ends.

    After college, the bike saw even less use. And after getting married (or maybe it was just before), Susan and I bought snazzy new Specialized mountain bikes, which meant that the old bike really languished after that, sitting in basements, attics, and other random storage areas. I had a $10 price tag on it at a yard sale once, as it had gotten a little rusty in some parts, and someone offered me $5 for it. I hate yard sales. As if $10 wasn’t enough of a bargain. I couldn’t let it go for that, so it sat in the basement some more, but its presence there began to bug me. So a few years ago, I stripped it of all its parts, and began to strip the paint from the frame. It sat for another year or two, and last summer I got “inspired” to turn it into a single speed/fixed gear bike, and did a lot of research. The trickiest bit was getting a special rear hub that would allow some front-back adjustment of the cog (to tension the chain properly) even though the rear dropout was essentially vertical. I eventually bought a set of wheels on eBay where the rear wheel had this special White Industries Eccentric ENO hub. The pair of wheels, all built up, cost about a third less than the hub alone would have, brand new. Seemed like a good deal. But then it sat some more. Oh, and the new wheels are size 700c, while the old ones were 27″ so the conversion necessitates a longer reach brake.

    This summer, we bought Clara an old road bike that she and I fixed up for her. Part of that job was having the frame painted (or more accurately, “powder coated”). I thought I could perhaps get a discount getting more than one frame done, so I got both frames ready. That didn’t turn out to be the case, and it turned out to be quite a bit more expensive than I’d hoped, but I’m very pleased with the end result. After essentially finishing her bike, I started on mine. I bought about half the parts via eBay, and others through a couple of online bike shops, and even some parts/tools from local shops. At this point, there remain but three original parts: the frame, the fork, and the seatpost binder bolt. After that, there are a few things I bought used: the wheels, the seatpost, and the saddle. Beyond that, everything on the bike is new. Which means the project cost more than it was worth, but it has been a fun and interesting project, and I learned a lot doing it. Plus, I still have my old bike and all the sentimental value that carries.

    I rode it for the first time last Friday. I had it set up in fixed gear mode, but felt a little freaked out in that mode, so I switched it to single speed (by simply flipping the rear wheel around!) until I could get comfortable with the bike as a whole. Hope to make the switch and get some practice riding “fixie” soon. I expect it will take some time to get used to it.

    Here’s a listing of most of the components:

    Frame: 1981 Panasonic DX2000
    Fork: original Tange
    Rims: Mavic Open Sport
    Rear Hub: White Industries Eccentric ENO
    Front Hub: some Nashbar sealed bearing hub
    Headset: Velo Orange Alloy Headset, in JIS size (not many choices in that size!)
    Stem: Nitto Pearl 120mm
    Handlebar: no-name Bullhorn style
    Bar Tape: Arundel cork
    Bottom Bracket: Tange sealed cartridge
    Crankset: Sugino XD
    Pedals: MKS Sylvan Prime Track Pedals
    Toe Clips: MKS (NJS Stamped :-))
    Brake: Tektro R536 Caliper
    Brake Level: Tektro RX 4.1
    Cross Lever: Cane Creek
    Seatpost: SR Laprade
    Saddle: Selle San Marco Island Ponza

    [set_id=72157627702767481]

  • Clara’s Bike

    Ever since she briefly rode a friend’s road bike on vacation last year, Clara has been wanting a road bike of her own. There are kid-sized road bikes available, but they run $700 and up! So I scoured Craigslist, and eventually came upon a 1977 (I think) Fuji Junior, which is a kid-sized road bike, built on 24″ wheels. Nice. Picked it up for $60. Seemed like it had been garaged for a long time — grease was very dry, but the bike and its parts didn’t seem beat-up or anything. So, Clara and I took the bike completely apart with the intention of getting the frame painted nicely and generally overhauling all the moving parts.

    Brought the frame in to the powder coater just before we left for two weeks of vacation, and picked it up shortly after we returned. It looked awesome! It cost more than I expected or hoped, but it was beautiful. Clara picked out a nice teal, which doesn’t seem to be rendered quite accurately in the photos below. We’ve been working together over the past couple of weeks to clean and re-grease all the components and re-install them on the frame. It’s come along very nicely.

    The biggest headache, somewhat surprisingly, has been the wheels. The new standard in wheel measurement is from the E.T.R.T.O. and is now an ISO standard. Wheels labelled 24″ may be one of (at least) 4 different sizes: 507, 520, 540, or 547. These numbers represent the “bead seat diameter” in millimeters. Turns out, the version of 24″ on this bike is the 547, which is by far the least common. It seems to also be known as “S-5” a proprietary Schwinn size. After much searching, I came upon one tire that would fit, and ordered a pair plus tubes, even though they are bigger (wider) than I’d like. They are more like “comfort” tires than “road” tires. They are listed as 1 3/8″ where the old, cracked ones on the bike were labelled 1 1/8″.

    On the plus side, the tires do fit on the rim properly. On the down side, they are so much bigger, that the rear tire rubs against the brake hardware. I’m currently searching for a better option. Over the long term, I’d hope to upgrade from these heavy, chromed steel rims. Not only are they heavy, but chrome rims are notorious for bad braking performance. Seems that the best option for wheels that offer a better selection of road tires are the 520mm variety. The rear wheel wouldn’t be much trouble — everything is fairly standard on the back, most importantly the hub spacing is 126mm, for which hubs are still available without *too* much trouble. On the front, however, the hub spacing is an odd size — 91mm, which shows up in references as a “low end” hub. No hope of replacement there, which means to replace the front wheel, I’d have to re-lace the current front hub to a new rim. But even putting together all these parts leaves the issue of whether the new wheels would be too small — brake reach is the key issue here, because I’d be losing 13.5mm in radius, thus requiring brakes with 13.5mm more reach, which I suspect will also be tough to find.

    So for now, the bike is going back together with all the original hardware, with wear-and-tear items replaced: tires, tubes, brake shoes, cables, housing, handlebar tape, and ball bearings. Probably didn’t have to replace the bearings, but wanted to do a good/complete job. But it’s honestly been a bit hard putting all these old (& often heavy) parts back onto this new-looking frame. I hope, over time, to replace a lot of the components with new, improved, lighter ones. But almost certainly by then, I’ll have spent as much as (if not more than) a new bike would have cost, and Clara will have outgrown it. But perhaps it can be sold at a premium on Craigslist as a small but nice bike for a small woman, or a generous parent…

    [set_id=72157627516205690]

  • A Late Start to the Season

    Mere hours after the Bruins season came to a victorious ending, my bike commuting season has begun. This morning, I biked the sixteen miles in to work for the first time this year, which took me an hour and seventeen minutes. I forget how that compares with previous years, but I’ll assume it’s somewhat slower. It certainly felt so, but my expectations were low: making it here in one piece is good enough. Let me tell you, tele-commuting is much easier! 😉
    There’s a biking blog I like to read called EcoVelo, which is written by a guy who is something of a bike fanatic, and I mean that in the most complementary way possible. I read with envy about his commuting in California, with its almost always beautiful weather, and I look at his pictures with lust in my heart. I could probably do my commute six months of the year, reasonably, without too much cold weather gear. But I know that when the temps are in the forties, my hands can get painfully cold in less time than that. In contrast to the dedicated bike paths, and quiet rural roads through wildflower-filled fields described by Alan, my commute is along heavily trafficked, narrow roads, frequented by trucks going 40-50 mph. Keeps me awake and moving, though! Plus it motivates me to get an early start on the day.
    Most drivers are reasonable, but occasionally I encounter one who clearly expects me to ride in the shoulder (or what they undoubtedly think of as the “bike lane.”) I’d like to explain to these folks: “See this painted line here? This line represents a contract between road users and road maintainers. The road maintainers promise that they will work to keep most of the storm drains and broken pavement on the right side of the line. They will sweep all the sand, broken glass, debris from car accidents, random screws, nails, etc. to the right of that line. They are saying, if you keep your big, four+ wheeled vehicle and it’s inch thick steel-belted radial tires on the left of the line, you will be safer. Now, do you really think it’s right to expect me to ride my vehicle, balancing on its two, eighth-inch thick tires, there? Really??”
    My commute route:


  • More Pony Tails than an NFL Game

    We’re here at Dilboy Stadium in Somerville to watch the Boston Militia take revenge against the DC Divas. The Divas beat us in our opening game, and gave us our only defeat on the season. Tonight’s game is the last of the season. It’s clear that these are the two most competitive teams in the league. The Divas haven’t lost, and in fact only two teams (the Militia being one) have scored on them at all. And our results are pretty similar. Our most recent win was something like 70-0.

    Anyway, good family fun at a reasonable price, and walkable (< 2 miles) from our house! 20110611-062533.jpg

  • Ouch!

    Life gets busy at times. And then there’s the un-cooperative weather. Mix in some natural laziness, and you have the perfect recipe for a late start to the biking season. Yesterday, though I finally got our fleet of bikes out and got them ready for riding. For me, this means washing off the winter dust, inflating the tires, a quick lube of the brakes and derailleurs, and Bob’s your Uncle! Then I put the bikes away for the night, but they didn’t spend very long in the basement, as this morning we took a family ride to one of our favorite local diners, at Bagels by US on Mass Ave. After that, we continued up Mass Ave. a ways into Lexington, but not as far as the center, and then we hit the Minuteman Bikeway and cruised back home. We then watched the small Memorial Day parade,

    which we almost always do (I remember my dad being with us last year). This year, Clara and I followed the parade past their first stop (right near our home) and into the cemetery, and heard all the speeches, many of which were sobering reminders of what Memorial Day is all about (hint: it’s not about shopping).
    Then shortly after noon, I headed out on the bike again to Lexington Center, to meet up with my friend Mike, to go on a longer bike ride. It was challenging, to say the least. A loop a little over 20 miles, which was about 10 miles more than my legs felt up to today. My excuse is that Mike’s legs were fresh starting at Lexington, but mine already had about 13 miles on them before we started out together. It was both good to get out, and yet miserable. Mike and I are often pretty equivalent riders, but he’s already got more than a couple hundred miles on the bike this season, so he’s way ahead of me, and that’s where he spent most of the ride. Here’s a picture of me from the ride:

    Sorry to have held you back, Mike. Maybe in a couple of months I’ll be able to keep up with you. We stopped for lunch at Fern’s in Carlisle, which is quite obviously a big biker hangout.

    Anyway, here’s what our route looked like:



    The last 5 miles I did on my own, after Mike got back in his car and drove off from Lexington Center. That part is included on the map, while my 5 miles up to Lexington aren’t. All told, I put about 40 miles on the bike today. Which is good. Though it doesn’t feel that way now. My legs, butt, shoulders, and neck all ache from the abuse.

  • Useful

    On Thursday (2 days ago) I ordered an electronics prototyping kit based around an Atmel ATmega8U2 microcontroller. The kit is called an Arduino, and I ordered it from Adafruit Industries (funny name, I know), and paid for UPS ground shipping. I’m glad I didn’t pay for 2-day or 3-day “Priority” shipping, because it arrived Friday, the very next day.

    The hardware is “open source” and there are many freely available open source tools for programming it. Tyler and I played around a little with it last night, and made it blink an LED. I played a little more after he went to bed and made it light up a series of LEDs in various patterns. Cute. The programming environment is C-based, so it is pretty familiar to an old programmer like me. Today (Saturday), I spend a couple of hours (chopped up into 5, 15 or 30 minute increments) and was able to make something, well, useful. It also uses a separate LCD display that I also purchased (seemed like it could be a fun add-on), and a temperature sensor that came with the kit. Using the display meant also using my nice new soldering station to solder 21 connections! Here it is:


    It is a thermometer that displays the temperature when you press a button. It displays for 5 seconds, then the display turns off to conserve the battery.

    I was partly inspired by a friend who also bought a kit and has been enjoying it. I had heard of Arduino starting a few years ago from the Make: blog and magazine. It is very popular among hobbyists and artists of a certain bent. It has lots of useful means of interacting with the real world, and a bevy of enthusiasts who have contributed lots of code and made add-on hardware for the platform. We have plans for a much more involved project, but for now, these little steps are still exciting.

  • We’re An American Brand!

    Growing up, my mom always bought me Toughskins. They may have had their own ads, but boy did I lust after Levis. I couldn’t even bother to ask — I knew there wasn’t enough money to buy me “expensive” pants. There did come a point however, maybe it was junior high, when there was perhaps a little more money, and when my desire to fit in outweighed my need to resist asking for non-essentials. There was a store, I don’t think it was actually a Levis store, but that’s about all they sold, at the local strip mall (the Hamden Plaza). At that age, I was given some money and allowed to walk there and buy my own pants. It was honestly something of a relief to be wearing the same pants that most everyone else was. At least the boys. For the girls, as always, there was more freedom. Chic, Jordache, etc. For boys there was Levis, and the occasional Lee or Wrangler, but by and large, it was Levis.

    Thus began my relationship with the brand. They had done their marketing well. They presented themselves as American as apple pie, as the saying goes. So aside from dress pants, I wore Levi’s exclusively for decades.

    But back in the 1990’s, Levi Strauss and Co. began using offshore manufacturing, while still using the Made in the USA label. Thus began my disillusionment, though I didn’t act on it for a long time. A few years ago, though, I did a little research and came across a web site that listed companies that still made jeans here in the U.S.A. Check out the list if you want to help keep your fellow Americans employed.
    I’ve bought jeans from both All American Clothing (including their select Carhartt jeans that are Made in the U.S.A.) and Pointer Brand, and have been happy with all of them. The All American jeans are pretty close in character to the Levis I used to know and love so well (though no rivets). The Carhartts are also Levis-like, and the only black jeans I could find in the crowd. I don’t see them listed on the site any longer. I have 2 pairs of the Pointers, one is the funky Hickory Stripe (think railroad engineer…), and the other are the regular jeans. My only complaint about them is that the pockets aren’t as deep as I am accustomed to, though the smaller (watch?) pocket is quite roomy.