Lie 58E

Quick Xbox controler hack

2011-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Recently I found an old Xbox controller in my projects bin. Not having an Xbox, I decided to do something that was last popular five years ago, and make it work with USB.

Tinned and ready to go. Xbox controler cable on the left, USB + heat shrink tubing on the right.

For those of you playing at home, the Xbox controller is already a USB device. All you have to do is lop the existing end of the cable off, put the end of a standard USB cord onto it, and your done! The wires inside of my cord and controller were even color coded correctly, so all I had to do was match colors. There will be one extra wire coming from the controller, ignore it.

Soldered and shrink-tubed, if you were particular about things you could replace the shielding, but I didn't feel the need to.

I installed the XBCD drivers, plugged the controller in and all the functions were recognized. Since then I've been using it to control Orbiter, for which the controller works fine, but my reentry skills seem to leave a lot to be desired. So far all my attempts have been more meteor than space shuttle.

Fixing a Sticky SRAM X7 Rear Derailer

2010-12-25T14:44:00.000-08:00

I have a SRAM X7 rear derailer on my Big Dummy, and over the past few months it has stopped dropping into the highest gear. I dumped it in the parts washer a few times and that would clear up the problem for a short while, but sooner or later it would start hesitating again. John had a similar problem, and SRAM replaced his derailer, but I wanted to fix mine. Once you start drilling parts off your derailer, it’s not likely that SRAM will take it back, so don’t give them a hard time if you mess it up.

I replaced the steel pins in the derailer with brass tubes. This reduced friction on the parallelogram enough that even off the bike the derailer’s motion was noticeably smoother. On the bike, the derailer feels lighter and drops faster than before, and is perhaps only a little less crisp. The tubing does introduce a bit more play into the derailer, but this is only noticeable on the bench, and certainly isn’t large enough to impact shifting accuracy.

Step One: Break It More.

The derailer is held together by four semi-tubular rivets, which also function as the pivots for the parallelogram. The shop heads are easy to drill out with a 3/16” bit, and the ridges on the shaft behind the factory head will prevent the rivet from spinning if you use a light touch. Remove the bottom pin in the lower knuckle by drilling out the shop end and tapping it out with an awl and hammer. This pin also holds the spring and once removed unloads the derailer, making the rest of the operation much easier.

With the first pin removed, test the rotation of the other three pivots independently. When I tested mine the top plate was binding at both pins, but the bottom plate rotated freely. I decided to leave the bottom plate rear pin in place, and replace the other three pins. Drill out the pins that you need to replace, and set them aside. At this point the spring should be free, and the top plate of the parallelogram can be removed. This is as far as the derailer has to be disassembled.

Step Two: Make New Pins.

The pins are 3.969mm (5/32”) in diameter, and their length varies by their location in the derailleur. Rather than measuring the length of the removed pins, which may have been too short in the first place, and now had one end drilled down, measure the outside dimension of the plates at the pivot. The top plate is not square to the axis of rotation, so measure at several points for each pivot and use the highest value. Using the high value ensures that the new pin will clear the ends of the plate.

My local hardware store, and most hobby shops, carries round stock and tubing in small sizes. To replace the pins I chose 5/32” brass tube, and to secure it M3 30mm bolts with a pair of washers and a hex nut. If you chose to replace the bottom plate rear pin, note that it is considerably longer than the rest of the pins, and a bolt longer than 30mm would be required. Brass has the advantages of being cheap, available, and very easy to cut and work. The downside of the tubing is that it adds the risk of the tube crimping under load, but with the close tolerances on the plates and the knuckles should support the tube and prevent deformation. An option if you are able to make accurate cuts in round stock would be to use a circlip on either end, which would be simpler and allow the use of steel pins.

Cut the tubing to the width of the pivot plus a millimeter or so. So long as the length of the tube is greater than the width of the pivot the length does not have to be particularly precise. Since the pins length is specific to the pivot, mark the pins after cutting them. For 5/32” brass tube fine tooth hobby saws cut it well. Remove burrs and square the end of the tube with a bit of 200 grit sand paper, and remove any interior burrs with a #2 X-Acto knife.

Cut and deburr a short (15mm to 20mm) piece of brass tube to hold the spring in the lower knuckle during reassembly.

Step 3: Reassembly.

Reassembly has to occur under tension for the last two pins, as it is very difficult to install the spring after the pins. Attach both plates and the spring to the upper knuckle, and spread the plates apart. The exposed hook on the spring will loop around the lower knuckle bottom pin, slide it into the notch in the lower knuckle and slide the short piece of tube you cut earlier into the lower pivot hole until it is securing the spring and centered in the knuckle.

Pull the knuckles apart until you can align the top plate pivot holes and the lower knuckle. Slide the new pin for the pivot in. This will constrain the movement of the lower knuckle and make it easier to slide the lower pin in. Slide the lower pin in, which will push the brass tube holding the spring in place out, and transfer the spring to the new pin.

Once all the pins are in place, center them up on the knuckles and then install the washers and bolts. Apply some blue Loctite to the bolts, then thread on the nuts and tighten them down.

Test the movement of the derailer, the spring should drive it to its closed position from any point without hesitation or binding. There should be only a small amount of sideways play in the parallelogram. If everything checks out, install the derailer on the bike and adjust the shifting.

Aftermath

With the weather I haven’t gotten to out on any long rides, but so far the derailer is performing much better than before. We will see how well it holds up, but for now it was a fun project and improved the shifting for a very low cost. There are a few more photos of various parts on my Flickr.

Silca Pista

2010-06-07T19:28:00.001-07:00

Somebody at my shop threw an old Silca Pista into the metal recycling bin.

I took it back out.

The hose was cracking at the ends, the chuck needed a new washer and isn't schrader compatible, and the gauge was smashed. Oh, and the pump couldn't go over about 30 psi without leaking around the plunger seal. With most pumps this would mean that it was indeed trashed, but unless you've hit it with a car, Silca pumps just don't die.

I cut down the hose (reusable spring hose clamps made this a snap), replaced the chuck, and installed a new spacer and leather washer kit on the plunger. I don't care about the broken gauge, but I could have replaced that as well.

Total retail cost for all the parts I used: $14.

The pump now works wonderfully, is compatible with presta and schrader, and can hit over 200 psi. And if any of the parts fail, they are generally available at either a local shop or on order from QBP.

As a side note, the barrel of the pump is made from nicer tubing than most bikes. Including all of my bikes. Awesomeness. I'm very tempted to mount it under the boom tube of the Sea Goat as an over-sized frame pump.

Update 1/23/2011 : Replaced the smashed gauge with one from a different pump that failed. Yay for common parts standards!

The Electric Electra

2010-03-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

This repair was interesting. I thrive on oddball requests, but sometimes bikes come in where one look sends me running the other direction. Sometimes, I don't run quite fast enough.

I got called down to do a brake adjustment on the bike, and immediately noticed that it had a hub motor, and that the axle was significantly larger than the 9x1 QR that the fork was designed to take. To make it fit, the dropouts had been filed out, and the torque on the anti-rotation washers had distorted them further (750W motor). The brake adjustment was needed because the wheel had slipped down in the dropouts, which I pointed out. I also recommended that we not do any further work on the bike unless the safety issues were cleared up.

The owner agreed, and we worked up an estimate for fixing most everything. The existing fork would have to stay, as there isn't a 26" fork with an extended threaded steerer that fits a 14mm axle currently available. The wheel could be spaced out to 100mm to fit the fork instead of the fork being forced to fit the 80mm hub. The rear rack had failed, and would have to be replaced. The rear wheel would be rebuilt with a new rim and spokes to take the weight of the rider and the battery pack.

I figured that this would take about a day of work and billed it accordingly, plus an allowance for parts. At the end of the first day I realized I'd made a bit of an error in the time estimate.

I had made 2 trips to the local Ace, one for hardware to adapt the mount for the battery to the new rack, and the second to find 14mm, 1.5 pitch nuts to use as spacers on the axle. I'd designed and produced the mount, declared it fit for service and mounted the battery and the rack. This took a few pretty enjoyable hours of measuring, scribing and drilling 16 holes accurately with a hand drill. The results were worth it however, as it came out looking very nice, and is extremely sturdy. The front wheel was an entirely different can of worms.

There was a nipple that had come off rolling around in the wheel, it was horribly out of true, and the electrical connection terminated at the motor controller. To work on the wheel a good half of the electrical system had to be removed and the wires punched out of the molex-style connector (to pass through the 14mm nut). The front wheel took more than a few hours of work, and although it tickled my problem solving side, the design is incredibly heinous.

The second day was spent building the rear wheel (fun), and putting everything I'd taken apart back together (frustrating). All told, I spent 15-20 hours on this one repair. At the end of it I was confident that it would hold up to any reasonable road ride.

When he picked up the bike, I found out that he'd been riding an incredibly heavy and overpowered bike over curbs. Which perhaps explains why everything was destroyed.

The Great White (Bike)

2010-03-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts about working in a bike shop is that I get to meet people that are awesome, and who I might otherwise never cross paths with. Recently, a Davisite welded up his own longtail cargo bike, and I've gotten to put on a few of the finishing touches, such as reaming out the seat tube and facing and tapping the parts that need it. Which in and of itself is always fun, but that I'm doing it on a bike that someone built and cares about, makes it much more rewarding.

It's due back in so that we can see it all built up, hopefully I'll be there to take a picture or two and post them up here.

Tire Tire Liner Fail.

2010-03-02T00:41:00.000-08:00

A very nice couple from West Sac stopped by the shop and asked us to replace their tandem's rear tube, which had sprung a leak on the ride over. I was summoned forth to complete said task, and while they were getting entered into the system I chatted with the husband. He mentioned that it was surprising that the rear had gone flat, as he'd "put two tire liners in there."

Sadly, doubling up on tire liners is not a particularly good idea, and so I figured that a pinch flat was likely the cause of his leak. I was correct, but I'd underestimated the extent of the problem.The entire tread of another tire had been stuffed in there as well. Since the actual tire is an old Schwinn 26" the tire they stuffed in there was slightly too small, and because it was in one piece (unlike commercial tire liners) it couldn't expand to seat properly. So it absolutely chewed the tube to pieces as it moved around on each rotation of the wheel. To make matters worse, the second liner had deteriorated and cracked lengthwise in several places, which was also wearing through the tube.

I took out all the extraneous liners and put in a new tube, which worked fine. I explained what had caused the flat, and he said, "So my fix was the problem...Oh man, my wife's gonna kill me!"

What to do with 75 pounds of oranges?

2010-01-14T16:11:00.001-08:00

In a word: Marmalade. Evil Mad Scientist Labs cooks up a batch, and gives tips on scaling the recipe. The real gem is their parting line, "You may recognize our technique as one common in mathematics. We have reduced a difficult problem (what to do with 75 pounds of citrus) into a problem whose solution is well known: what to do with many jars of marmalade. QED."

Reminds me of Cooking for Engineers, and Cooking with Engineers.

This "Facebook" Thing,

2010-01-13T01:12:00.001-08:00

Oh, Facebook. You and your privacy issues.

Once again Facebook is in the news for doing things that you may or may not want it to do with the information you've given it. The clamor this has been generating on the tubes is, per the laws of the Internet, totally out of proportion to its actual significance. It is implied that the changing policies of Facebook in regards to privacy will shake the foundation of our beliefs is a way that hasn't been seen since the second coming of Bush.

The answer to this turmoil came to me in a dream last night.

Just Kidding. Honestly, this has been apparent to every sane person on the Internet (all three of us) since Facebook (or the Internet) first existed.

If you don't like the changes, delete your account.

I've been debating doing so, simply because I don't use Facebook for anything. I'm quite sure nobody actualy derives any meaninful use from Facebook, unless you count stalking as a meaningful use. Facebook is free, you voluntarily put information on it, and the only thing more annoying than Facebook's rapidly changing policies is the whinging morons who bitch about privacy, call in the EFF and then keep using Facebook. Or worse, they start a "One Million Strong For Privacy on Facebook" group.

If some nice 20-something walked up to you on the street and told you that they'd hold on to all your personal information, photo albums and journal entries for free, for however long you wanted, would you give them to him? And would you be surprised when he tried to sell them?

If you have an online personality you don't want leaking into the physical world (or the opposite), then don't tie it to your actual name, birthday and photo. Or give it to strangers to hold.

10 mm Barrel Adjusters

2009-11-04T21:26:00.000-08:00

Some mountain levers come with threaded 10 mm barrel adjusters. Interestingly, these levers also seem to be the type that gets frequently run into the ground, trees or brick walls. Unfortunately, we don't stock 10 mm barrel adjusters, as they are relatively rare.

Yesterday I had a repair that needed a new barrel adjuster, but it wasn't budgeted for or ordered on the tag. The simple fix is to add a large washer to a lipped ferrule, so that the housing will be held in place and not slip down into the lever. Of course, this removes the functionality that a barrel adjuster would give, which is unacceptable in a customer application.

The kludgey fix is to slap a washer on an undersized adjusting barrel so that it can't fall through, but then the post of the adjuster can wiggle around, which is very poor form. Adding a sleeve for the post is a good idea, but because the levers are slotted you need a slotted sleeve.

My solution is to use a barrel adjuster with an outer diameter of 10 mm with helical knurling. I used a drill and a vice to drill it out to an internal diameter of 6 mm throughout its length, which also removes the threaded post. This makes a perfect sleeve for a 6 mm standard barrel adjuster, and threads in due to the knurling. Putting a washer behind the locknut transfers the force to the lever housing, so it is just as strong as the original, and won't pull through.

The cost in parts and time is trivial, and the end result has all the functionality and strength (or more) of the original.

Bikes

2009-10-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

I love bikes. I love working on bikes. Writing about bikes is pretty fun too. Here is the start of the tour documentation, http://bc-mextour09.blogspot.com. I've got all the twitter posts from Steve and I up, plus some other stuff. Still have lots more to put in, but, it's a start. Let me know if it all makes sense to you.

I'm Lazy, Sorry.

2009-10-14T19:01:00.001-07:00

I'm really lazy. Which is why there have been no posts about my bike trip yet. Sorry.

I'm glad that I live in a world where the mascot of the Japanese Broadcasting Company, Domo(-kun), is appropriated by U.S. mainstream culture, culminating in his appearance on cups at 7-11. Awesome.

http://kitsunenoir.com/blog/2009/10/08/domo-invades-7-eleven/

Brilliant ad.

Robert

New Life Type Stuff!

2009-08-31T21:30:00.001-07:00

So, I have a job, and a place to live. I got both within a week of getting back to Davis, and I'm super stoked on both of them. I'm living in a house with professionals and grad students, which is cool. I have my own room, and a garage that I can store stuff in and make projects. I got a job with B&L Bikes, as a mechanic. It's a pretty big change to be working in a really professional shop, but it has certainly been making me a much better wrench. Having to check other mechanics work, and have them check yours really highlights what you do and don't know. At this point I'd say I need to work the most on speed across the board, as well as consistency. I have yet to be hit with anything where I was totally lost, but my number of jobs per day is really low. It's also a change to be in a situation where you really only want to do what is on the tag, as you are not getting paid and don't have the time to fix everything on the bike. At the Bike Coop it was generally OK to futz around on one bike for awhile, fixing most everything, and then negotiating payment afterward. But that's not something you can get away with in a shop, particularly a busy one.

On the super upside, I have my own stand, bench and tools. Including a truing stand. Which is about the most awesome thing ever. It's also really cool to have fat stacks of parts, sales people to deal with customers, and to get paid to do something that I think is pretty enjoyable. Overall, no real complaints.

It does highlight how much more bank I could make if I had my own shop, which I sort knew with the Coop; but damn, full on shops pull down some bank. Seriously.

Davis is also flat. Davis is so flat that I inadvertently took Kristina on a 32 mile bike ride today, and she didn't die. Overpasses are the largest hills for 20 miles in any direction. This is bad, because people actually ride bikes here, which means the cops actually ticket bikers. (Of course, it supports an insane amount of bike shops, which provides me with a job.) There has been a steady increase in traffic (bikes, peds, and cars) as we approach the start of the school year. I can only imagine how nuts the end of September is going to be.

So, I've got a job, and a place, and some free time, kinda. Perhaps there will be real blog posts again soon, and perhaps I'll get the bike trip stuff up soonish.

Robert

The Aftermath

2009-08-16T14:25:00.001-07:00

I've been back from the Bike Coop Tour '09 for a week now, and it's been a trip. I feel like the tour was decades ago, just because of the amount of stuff I've been trying to cram into my days. One of those things that I'm cramming into my days is getting the documentation of the tour digitized and presentable, my goal is to have it done by the end of the work week. But really, 43 days worth of pictures, poorly written journal entries, and memory is a lot of data to work with.

What I can tell you now is how weird it is to be back in the "real world." By the end of the tour, you don't compare the last 40 days to the preceding years of your life, you're just thinking about the tour. But after the tour, making comparisons between how I spent the last 6 weeks, and how I spent this week is unavoidable.

The biggest change is sleeping. I've slept for not enough hours of the night starting in middle school, and really only get enough sleep when I have nothing at all happening in my life, or am sick. During the tour I was on a relatively regular sleep schedule, going to bed around midnight and waking up at 7-8am. Now I'm back on my insane sleep schedule, which involved going to bed last night at 3-4am, and waking up at 8am this morning. I may take a nap soon, but won't go to sleep until pretty late tonight. I blame this on A. Electricity, and B. The Internet. Both of them let me apply for jobs, check up on friends and do other stuff late at night, when I should be sleeping.

My diet has dropped below my normal resting requirements, and far below what I was eating on the tour. I'm doing one meal a day most of the time, and feel fine. I've also only had one beer this week, which is at least a 7-fold reduction in my drinking. I think I've lost weight this week, but can't be sure.

Then there are the little things, like seeing people around, interacting with a larger number of people each day, and being in one place. It's a little weird to wake up in the same place, and be doing stuff in the same city area every day. It's actually mildly disorienting, although not necessarily boring, as I still have a lot to learn about the layout of Davis.

It's also nice having music again.

Butchering a Brooks saddle

2009-06-07T06:08:00.001-07:00

I was perusing QBP and noticed the Brooks Imperial, which is the B-17 with lacing holes and an anatomical cut out. I'd been experiencing some discomfort with my B-17, and consequently lowered the nose, which has solved the problem. Of course I now have more weight on my wrists, which is not beneficial. The B-17 was designed for setups that are bar-seat level, which being too tall for my own good, is practically impossible on my bike, particularly when I'm in the drops. Since the only apparent differences between the B-17 standard and the B-17 Imperial is the number of holes, I think I'm going to go whack a few new ones into my saddle and see how that goes. Hopefully I won't destroy a nice saddle in the process....

(Brooks helpfully has images of the Imperial from directly above, making determining the dimensions of the cut out a simple exercise in geometry.)

Graduation from the Bike Coop

2009-06-06T20:57:00.001-07:00

I suppose last night was the last official Bike Coop meeting that I'll attend as a part of the Coop. It's a bummer that I won't be able to keep working with at the fine folks at the Coop, and keep learning
stuff from them. Nora made a diploma for all the Coop members who are leaving, which was really nice of her. I'll be hanging mine up on the wall, right above the one from UCSC.

In related news, I'm selling off my extra stuff in hopes of raising enough scratch to go on a Coop bike tour from Vancouver to San Diego. We'll see how that goes.

Robert

Well, that's over.

2009-06-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

Last "Gotta write this term paper in one night, lets do this, Whooo!" night of my undergrad career. I told myself I'd post the paper as motivation, so even though it's pretty dismal, here it is, the last term paper.

Telescopes have an incredibly rich history, having been influenced not only by leaps of the mind but those of technology as well. In the 401 year history of the telescope it has taken on many forms, and wildly different structures. It has also progressed from observing visible light to cover the other ends of the electromagnetic spectrum: radio, infrared, x-ray and gamma ray telescopes are now operational. All this started with a simple optical telescope, in 1608.

The refracting telescope appeared in a near mythic fashion in late 1608. Like Athena, it seemed to spring forth fully formed from the minds of a few men. In this year, three people presented documents to the effect that they had invented the telescope, or similar device for enlarging distant objects: Hans Lippershey, James Metius, and Zacharias Jensen (King, 30-32).

Lippershey is most commonly credited with the idea (King 30), and not all works acknowledge the other two men. It should be noted however that lenses for spectacles were being made for at least 80 years before this point (Willach 94). The theory behind a telescope was understood, and there was no shortage of scholars mucking about with lenses at the time. Thus, it is somewhat surprising that an otherwise unremarkable man should somehow come upon a means of making an effective telescope where so many others had failed.

His merit was twofold: he was an excellent lens maker, or was able to produce lenses rapidly enough to select only those of high quality. He not only produced the first telescope, but the first binoculars, which require pairs of identical lenses (Willach 95). In addition to his ability, he had an excellent insight: he used a diaphragm with a small hole in it in front of the primary lens (Willach 95). This seemingly trivial modification made all the difference in the world: by using only the very center of the lens, where there is less spherical aberration (distortion caused by the shape of the lens) and avoiding the edges of the lens, which tended to by less perfectly ground, the resolution of the telescope was vastly improved. This made it a useful instrument, and this was rapidly propagated. Less than a year later Galileo had constructed his own telescope and was making observations.

James Metius and Zacharias Jensen also put forth instruments, within weeks of Lippershey (King 31,32). Thiers were however of a much poorer quality (King 32), and were perhaps copies of Lippershey’s original. (Adding a diaphragm is an obvious alteration, and an easy one to make once it is known of (Willach 95).) It has also been noted that Jenson was a counterfeiter of coins (perhaps also telescopes), and ended up fleeing the country to avoid prosecution (King 32).

The refracting telescope uses lenses as its optical element. It was the state of the art in optics manufacture at the time, but several physical properties of the lenses limited the telescopes. First, lenses are subject to spherical aberration (fig. 1). As light enters the lens, it encounters the surface at a steeper angle as it approaches the edge. This causes the light at the edges to be focused in front of the light from the center, making it impossible to achieve focus using the entirety of the lens. As it noted earlier, a diaphragm that limits light to the center of the lens alleviates this problem, as does reducing the curvature of the lens so that the variation in the incident angle of the light is less. However, reducing the curvature of the lens increases the focal length of the lens, requiring a much larger instrument. Chromatic aberration is another issue with lenses made of a single material: Light of different wavelengths bends at different rates in a given material. This has the effect of focusing different colors at different points, separating them out as a prism does (fig. 2). This effect would appear as a colored halo around the object being viewed, and interferes with good viewing. Again, the flatter a lens is (the longer the focal length) the less this effect is noticeable. This is why light passes through a window undisturbed, but a prism has the effect of separating light.

These limitations required that telescopes be very long relative to their diameter. Instruments that were capable of resolving the moons of Jupiter needed to be about 30 feet long (King 36) and ranged up to 150 feet in length (Hoskin). Johannes Helvius created his 150 foot telescope and suspended it using a mast and a collection of block and tackle to raise and lower it (Img. 1). One can readily see that it would be incredibly difficult to properly align this telescope, and to track objects with it. Furthermore, the lens diameter was still very small, less than a foot. By having such a small aperture, a very small amount of light could be received. Modern telescopes have an effective aperture that ranges from a few inches up to ten meters. A larger aperture allows you to see fainter objects, assuming that the quality of the rest of the telescope remains the same. This was simply not the case for refracting telescopes of this day, and despite Galileo’s forays into lens making, he was unable to significantly improve the design.

Despite these limitations, these telescopes opened up an entirely new world of observation. In his first year with the telescope Galileo made a number of key observations. He saw four moons around Jupiter, the craters of the moon, the motion of sunspots, and the millions of faint stars that form the Milky Way (King 37, 39). He also observed the rings of Saturn, but lacked the resolution to discern that it was a flat ring, and not a part of the planet itself (King 38). Galileo’s observations through the telescope reinforced his attacks on geocentricism, and certainly contributed to his disfavor with the papacy. The refracting telescope would remain the cornerstone of observation until 1663.

Mirrors a so commonplace now that we rarely give them any thought. Yet the bathroom mirror in your house is far superior to anything available to scientists in the 18th century. Mirrors were produced from polished metal, and so the reflectivity of the surface was limited to how well one could polish a given metal. Speculum metal, a alloy of copper, tin, zinc and arsenic was the standard for mirrors (Manly 3). This alloy had a high reflectivity and was stiff enough to hold its own weight. Unfortunately, it still only reflected 40% of the light that it receives, a dismal percentage (Manly 22). In certain formulations, such as the one that Newton devised, the reflectivity was as low as 16% (King 77). In comparison, the Gemni telescopes on Mauna Kea were recoated recently, and obtained a reflectivity ranging from 93-98% in the visible spectrum (http://www.gemini.edu/node/110). Speculum metal also tarnishes quickly, requiring a resurfacing every 2-3 months (Manly 22). In large reflecting telescopes, such as the 40ft reflector that William Herschel made, the mirrors could weigh over a ton, making removing them for polishing a harrowing experience (Manly 22). Despite these limitations reflecting telescopes had some great advantages over refracting telescopes.

Reflecting telescopes could be made much shorter for a given magnification: Newton’s first reflector was 16 inches long, but had a magnifying power greater than that of a four foot refractor (Watson 129). The Newtonian reflector used a simple spherical primary mirror, a flat secondary mirror, and used a convex lens in the eyepiece (Fig. 3). Newton felt that this gave a better view, as it was easier to make a flat mirror and focus using a lens. Many smaller commercial telescopes still use this design, as it is relatively straightforward. It also places the eyepiece towards the top of the telescope tube, which is advantageous for smaller (tabletop sized) telescopes as it alleviates the need to stoop down. A contemporary of Newton, Cassegrain, produced a design that placed the eyepiece at the rear of the telescope, using a second parabolic mirror to send the light through a hole in the primary mirror (King 75) (Fig 4).

This arrangement had the advantage that the concave and convex mirrors reduced the aberration experienced, but suffered from the fact that the parabolic mirrors needed could not be accurately ground at the time (Watson 131). A similar design, by James Gregory failed for the same reasons (King 71). It used a concave secondary mirror rather than the convex that Cassegrain utilized (King 71). This had the effect of requiring a longer telescope, as the secondary mirror had to be placed beyond the focal point of the primary. In contrast, the secondary mirror in Cassegrain’s design is placed roughly halfway to the focal point of the primary. In this way Cassegrain found a very elegant design, which has become the basis for almost all modern reflector telescopes (Watson 131).
Newton was a vocal opponent of Cassegrain’s design, and as such very little work was done on it until mirror technology had advanced sufficiently for high quality parabolic mirrors could be produced.
It would be an error to leave William Herschel out of any dialogue on reflector telescopes. If a patron saint of polymaths were to be elected, he would certainly be in the running. Self taught in astronomy at the age of 35, Herschel chose to survey the sky, and became and avid collector of stars and nebulas (Cambridge 235). He also designed and constructed his own reflecting telescopes, up to a 40 foot-long reflector with a four foot primary mirror. It differs from all other reflectors so far mentioned, in that it has no secondary lens. Rather, the primary lens is viewed from directly from an eyepiece set in the side of the telescope tube (Manly 22). By reducing the number of optical elements that the light encounters Herschel was able to achieve a much brighter image than would be seen in a comparable Newtonian (Manly 22). Due to the size of the 40 foot telescope, Herschel rarely used it, preferring to use a 20 foot telescope of the same design (King 133). However with these smaller instruments, Herschel was able to first observe Uranus, and speculate extensively on the composition and location of nebulas, discovering 2,500 (Cambridge 240). His sister was instrumental in assisting him in his efforts to categorize nebulas, but was also an astronomer in her own right. She used a wide aperture low magnification telescope to search for comets, of which she found eight (Cambridge 232, Watson 178). The telescope that she used would have been difficult to make as a refractor, as the lenses available would have limited her to a narrower aperture, a detriment when attempting to scan large sections of the sky.

Herschel’s work on nebulas was continued by William Parsons, who was equally seized with a fascination with large mirrors. He constructed a massive reflector, using a 6 foot primary mirror (Cambridge 253). This impressive instrument allowed him to see the spiral structure of M51. His sketch of the nebula as compared to modern photographs is incredible, and a great improvement over previous drawings of the same nebula (Cambridge 255). See Images 2 and 3.

It was about this time that the refractor began to advance again. Newton’s theory of light seemed to squash all hope of rendering a lens free of chromatic aberration. In a calculated move against public opinion, various people experimented with lenses, attempting to circumvent the issues which had plagued refractors in the past. Leonhard Euler provided a theoretical basis from which John Dollard experimented with achromatic lenses (King 147). Initially these attempts used water between two glass lenses, however these were very high in spherical aberration (King 148). He then hit upon flint glass, which is has a higher refractive index than ordinary glass or water (King 148). By combining a series of flint and crown glass lenses he was able to produce the first achromatic lenses (King 148). His son John went on to produce and market these lenses, but the general state of glass making limited the size of lenses to about 5 inches (King 150, 176). Pierre Guinand would next advance lens making, by increasing the ability to produce high quality glass.

Lenses above 5 inches generally contained imperfections which rendered then unsuitable for good viewing (King 176). Pierre Guinand’s method of creating high quality flint glass enabled the production of full 9.5 inch aperture refractors (King 178, 180). The Dorpat refractor constructed by Fraunhofer in 1824 is considered the first modern achromatic refractor, and is an impressive telescope. It was clever in all ways, being not only optically fine, but utilizing a equatorial mount and counter weights which allowed it to be moved quite easily despite its 14 foot length (King 182-183). In this way the Dorpat refractor serves to illustrate the resolution of all the issues that the refractors of Galileo’s period suffered. Being of a manageable length and mounted in a way that facilitates observation, and having a set of good achromatic lenses it could give reflectors a run for their money.
Fraunholfer’s contributions ran far deeper than his telescopes however. He invented the spectrometer, which may be the single most important piece of equipment that has been attached to a telescope. Not only does it allow for determining the composition of various luminous objects, the matter that we cannot see between us and said luminous objects, the composition of out own air, it also allows us to determine the speed of objects relative to us. Unfortunately he was not as interested in the spectroscope as in optics, and so he did not expand it to its fullest potential. He did however note the absorption spectrum of the Earths atmosphere. The lines that he noted and lettered (Img. 4) are still known by his name (Watson 238).

In 1864 an amateur astronomer named William Huggins, armed only with a modest refracting telescope and a spectroscope solved a question that had baffled even Herschel. Are nebulas amorphous collections of gas, or are they aggregates of stars that are too dim to resolve? The answer is yes. Huggins looked at the spectral lines for several nebulous objects and found that the diffuse objects had a defined, narrow, spectrum, indicating that they were illuminated clouds of gas (Watson 239). In comparison stars had a more complex emission pattern, which one cold see by taking the spectrum of various stars. By doing this Huggins also established that the elements present on Earth exist throughout the visible universe, thus proving the common chemistry of both (Watson 238). He is credited with starting astrophysics, and popularizing one of the most useful tools we have in conjunction with optical telescopes.

As refractors continued to improve, the theoretical limit for their size was eventually found: as lenses increase in size, they begin to sag. This is particularly an issue for lenses, as they have to be suspended by their edges which out of necessity leaves the center unsupported. It seems counterintuitive that glass should sag, but it certainly does. If you have the opportunity to manipulate a large plate glass window its flexibility will be readily apparent. This limits lenses to about 40 inches in diameter, a size which was achieved in 1897 with the Yerks refractor (Watson 244). A 48 inch refractor was completed for the Paris Exposition Universelle but it was decommissioned after the end of the exposition (Watson 245). The second largest refractor in the world today is the refractor at Lick, measuring 36” and completed in 1888 (Watson 243). The refractor at Lick is not only notable for its size but also its location: it was the first mountaintop observatory in the US (Watson 243). The shift to mountaintop observing reflects the increasingly institutional method of astronomy, with the scientific community forming and specialization with in it becoming the norm. The need for better seeing resulted in the use of mountaintop observatories, which were possible due to the institutionalization of astronomy. This is a notable departure from the majority of astronomical observation using telescopes: as can be seen with Herschel, Galileo, Huggins and Newton, it was the case that telescopes were built where the scientists were. Now it is quite the opposite!

Reflectors were certainly not left out of the turn of the century surge. A new method for producing mirrors was discovered: the chemical deposition of silver onto glass (King 262). This produced a mirror with much higher reflectivity, into the 90% range, making it more than a 100% improvement over speculum metal. The glass used is easier to work with than speculum metal, and significantly lighter, and replacing the coating can be done chemically rather than via regrinding the mirror (King 262). This method is generally so superior that all large telescopes are produced with some variant of this process, and such that the cutting edge telescopes produced today are large reflectors, ranging in size up to 10m. Bear in mind that that is ¾ the length of some of the larger telescopes that used speculum metal.

Lastly, there is a telescope about which few people know, but which is particularly interesting. The zenith telescope utilizing a mercury mirror is a particularity in the field of telescopes. Much work goes into making sure that the mirrors are aligned and stable, and are designed to have rigid mirrors to give the best viewing. Thus it is a bit counterintuitive that mercury, a fluid, should be used as a primary mirror. But when placed in a shallow rotating pan, centripetal force causes it to assume a parabolic shape, the depth of which corresponds to the speed of the rotation, and is independent of any small defects in the pan (Manly 12). This method is limited to pointing vertically, hence its use only in zenith telescopes, but is an effective solution.

In the past 400 years telescopes have evolved from very primitive tools to incredibly sophisticated devices. They have consistently remained on the leading edge of technical innovation, even spurring it in some cases. Over the years the nature of astronomy as a discipline has changed as well, from being a hobby of those with the intellect or means, to a formal discipline within the scientific community. (This was a general trend in all fields.)

Works Cited

Hoskin, Michael. Ed. “The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy” Cambridge University Press, 2008.

King, Henry C. “The History of the Telescope” Sky Publishing Corporation, 1955

Manly, Peter L. “Unusual Telescopes” Cambridge University Press, 1991

Watson, Fred. “Star Gazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope” Da Capo Press, 2004.

Willach, Rolf. “The Long Road to the Invention of the Telescope” American Philosophical Society, 2008

Website of the Gemini Telescope, http://www.gemini.edu/node/110, accessed 6/5/2009

Figure 1. Public Domain, Mglg, uploaded to English Wikipedia, retrieved on 6/5/2009

Figure 2. Public Domain, Lucas V. Barbosa, uploaded to English Wikipedia, retrieved on 6/5/2009

Figure 3. Public Domain, Tmoore, uploaded to English Wikipedia, retrieved on 6/5/2009

Image 1. Copyright status unknown, assumed that it has lapsed into public domain. Author Unknown.

Image 2. Sketch made by Lord Rosse of the Whirlpool Galaxy in 1845, lapsed into public domain in the United States. Retrieved 6/5/2009.

Image 3. Author: NASA and European Space Agency, Jan. 2005. Public domain with attribution. Retrieved 6/5/2009.

Protests at UCSC

2009-05-22T09:22:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of protests at UCSC. I would guess Cal has more, but I'd say that UCSC is at least second in rate of protests. Many of these are organized by students, which is good, I like it when people take initiative. Unfortunately they tend to be a bit silly, or at least misguided: When there is a protest every other week, you have to have a really huge protest to get anyone's attention. Most UCSC protests don't pull the kind of numbers that they really need, by about a power of 100. 200 people at a protest is great, but we have classes bigger than that. The recent budget issues have prompted a uptick in student protesting, not to mention it's the spring, so the weather is good enough to march around again. Many (several?) of the recent protests have featured a dramatic but counterproductive (in my opinion) tactic: the walkout. While it may make a statement to your professors, it really doesn't hit the university where it hurts. The UC system could care less if you are in class or not, you already paid them. Furthermore, you're missing a class that you are at least hypothetically in to learn something. Chanting about accessible education while squandering your opportunity is a little two-faced in my book.

I have a solution to this, and I promise it will work: this is a sure thing.

The reverse walkout.

Go to all the classes you can. Do all the homework. Take all the tests. Do well, learn interesting things. Be a respectful student. Be a well-rounded student (we need more scientists that can write well, and more writers that understand science). But don't pay your reg fees.

As so many people have been yelling recently the UC is a corporation. It needs your money, tax money, and private donations. It wants your money. The UC system is like the Cookie Monster but it wants cash. Education isn't necessarily it's primary goal. But you can vote with your money. Don't attend a UC. Or don't pay the UC if you do attend. Tell other people not to go to the UC if you feel that strongly about it. This would cause a much larger reaction from the UC, which is used to having students protest fee hikes, but is not used to having people actually learn. And heaven forbid they learn for free. Think about it guys. I'd love to see people learning and the UC not making money off their desire to gain knowledge.

(Because we're all here because we want to learn, not because you get a shiny degree at the end with UCSC on it, right guys?)

Teaching and Learning

2009-04-18T19:11:00.001-07:00

I'm teaching a UCSC class on the Bicycle and Culture with some other students this quarter, and I'm finding it very interesting. I've done a bit of public speaking in the past, and have taught people when I was in 4-H, but this is something else entirely. It's such a multilevel, many headed operation that it's really a mind bender at times. We're dealing with students who are essentially our peers, a group of student teachers who are all peers, a faculty adviser, and through him the university hierarchy. In working with all these people and groups, there are a lot of goals that we are expected to hit, and sometimes the disjoint between goals, expectations, and reality is hard to negotiate. For example, we would love to go to a city council meeting about bikes, but it's double booked with a lecture that has a guest speaker. Is our teaching more important, or is showing them how activism works, and interacts with the governmental process more important? It's a very simple question for me, but with each person you add in the decision process, the question becomes exponentially more complex. How these decisions ultimately get made is very neat, and makes me want to go study a bunch of similar situations. I suspect that very similar patterns of thought and archetypes will be displayed across similarly sized groups (5<N<15).

It has also been proving a good touchstone for my people skills. (Which is a lame term.) According to the feedback I've gotten from my co-facilitators, I'm not terrible at public speaking, and can write a lecture. It has shown that I need to work on the structure of my talks a bit, and do at least one verbal run through of the whole talk beforehand. I felt like I missed a few points that I really wanted to hit, and repeated myself on some points. I'm having a really good time interacting with our class though, and in particular my section. For the most part everyone seems motivated, and happy to be there, which makes my job much easier. Compared to leading the paint crew (which didn't always want to be there) this class is much easier to lead. The planning is significantly more complex though.

Robert

Converting a French Tandem 28mm headset to 1 1/8"

2009-04-07T23:32:00.001-07:00

Headsets, stems and the frame all have to fit together accurately to work well. Unfortunately, standards have changed frequently over the past 30 years, as the threadless headset was introduced, and France got with the program and adopted international standards. Another unfortunate part of this is that many french built bikes were imported into the US, and so it is very possible to come into possession of a bike using french standards. (Doubly bad because some of the french bikes are in really good condition, and are pretty nice frames, for being 30 years old and french.)

Recently, Kristina bought a tandem that happens to be french. It was in overall good condition, with a few issues that some wrench time quickly cleared up. One of the really annoying issues was that there was a ton of slop in the headset. I assumed that the problem was simply that the headset needed to be repacked and tightened. Kristina pulled the headset and repacked it, and I made sure that everything was clean (or rather really greasy) and tight, but the play remained. We rode it around for the next few days, until I noticed that the slop had gotten worse on the ride into campus. I decided that the problem was in the seating of the cups/race, the balls were too small, or that we had simply messed it up the day before. I took it into the coop, pulled the headset again, knocked out the cups, found the next size up of balls, faced the head tube, reseated the cups, and reinstalled the headset and fork. The headset was still super sloppy, but better than it was before. That's when I poked around the crown race and found that it was moving just slightly, but more than enough to cause the slop. Blegh.

Pulled the headset for the third time, and pried the crown race off with a tire iron, which should be fairly impossible, as the race should be pressed (with the setting tool, and a large hammer) onto the crown of the fork. Lo, there was a massive crack all around the crown. It seems like someone rebuilt the crown with some JB weld or had welded to the crown and machined it back down. At some point, the repair had failed, and the crown deformed and cracked, making it all broken and gross. Either way, there was no way to set a race on that mess.

The coop keeps a drawer of random headset bits, and bunch of 1 1/8" threadless headsets in stock, so I was banking on being able to find a used fork and headset that would be able to fit the tandem. And then I measured the head tube and headset bits. According to the internet and Sheldon Brown, I was looking at the rare french tandem headset. This is the black sheep of french headset standards, as it is not directly compatible with any other standards. (Note: The obsolete french 1" standard is interchangeable with other 1" headsets and forks as the head tube is the same size for all.)

After some fiddling and measuring with calipers I consulted the magic chart of headset sizes, and found that the french tandem standard is very close to 1 1/8" threadless, within a few tenths of a millimeter. The cups fit into the head tube with finger force alone and don't wobble, but they need to be shimmed up for a proper fit. (There are some specific tolerances for press fitting headset cups, and how close these need to be in size. Park Tools is a good reference, but for 1 1/8" needs 34.0mm cups, and 33.75-33.9mm head tube. According to the internet, beer cans have a sideall thickness of .09 ) I used a convenient beer can for this, using a single thickness with about a 2 cm overlap, which seemed to be about the right size of shim. I made them twice as tall as the cup, so that there would be some extra to hold it in place in the head tube. The order of operations for getting the shims in properly turned out to be super important. For your elucidation, I have included them below.

First, clean up the shims, and grease the head tube a bit. Hopefully this will prevent interactions between the aluminum and the steel, as well as making it easier to get the headset out later.

Stick the shim a little over halfway in. Slide the headset into the shim, making sure the edges of the shim are flush with the flange of the cup. The cup will be pushing the shim in, so getting everything square and aligned will make everything much easier. Press the cup in a smidgen, so that it locks in against the shim and the head tube, or else it will fall out at the worst possible moment. (Right before you get the press screwed all the way on.)

Press the cup in using the headset press.Slow and easy does it, and odds are the shim will squish out of alignment a bit. If it gets really ugly, it's best just to stop and make a new shim, as any can protruding defeats the purpose of facing the head tube.

Now do it again on the other side. Feel free to cry a little, and bandage any cuts from sharp can edges.

I was doing this at 3am after being in the shop for a good long time, so I might have been a little tired when I was working on this. But it was pretty frustrating. I think I ended up messing it up in some way twice on each cup, and having to pound them out and start again. On the upside, the old french tandem is now sporting a nifty disk brake and 700c by 1 1/8" fork. And the play is out of the headset, which makes it much easier to control now. Of course, if I ever have to replace those cups, I'll be very very sad.

Wooo, Tandem

2009-04-03T15:32:00.001-07:00

Kristina bought a tandem, used, which is ok because I happen to be affiliated with the excellent UCSC bike coop. Turns out that's a really good thing, because in the less than a week that it's been in our lives, I've done more hours of work on it than I've slept. A tandem is so totally worth it though.

Tuesday I spent a solid 12 hours in the bike coop. A shifter was replaced, (it broke on the ride in) the headset removed, repacked, reinstalled, removed, replaced, removed, crown race removed, a crack in the fork found, fork replaced, new headset, new disk brake, a wheel built up, and everything put back together for the ride home. At 4am.

Kristina did a pretty nice job building up the wheel, which was impressive given that it was her first wheel. We'll see how well it holds the true over the next while. I'll elaborate on the epic-ness that was that night of repairs, in particular the headset. It's a random french tandem size, and people really don't make headsets for it anymore.

This is also serving as a test for the brake and fork for my cross bike (which is what those parts were originally bought for). I figure if it can take Kristina and I pounding all over town on an heavy steel frame, then it should cope just fine with me.

Memories... (All alone in the moonlight...)

2009-02-19T14:33:00.001-08:00

I love email, in what is likely an unhealthy way. First, webmail is convenient: since it's in the cloud it's anywhere I am. Second, it's a semi-permanent archive of my conversations. As a person with a less than ideal memory,* and a preference for working from an actual document rather than verbal communication (side effect of less than ideal memory), I really enjoy having that archive.

I let my Hotmail account go for too long without logging in, and it deleted my emails. It was my primary email address from about middle school to the freshman year of college, when gmail came onto the scene. It's odd thinking about not having those emails to reference, even if I actually needed to do so very infrequently. For me at least, email gave those memories a greater sense of permanence, a tangibility. This is an absurd feeling, because emails aren't any more tangible than biological memories.

If those memories not reinforced by a digital keepsake are less "real" to me, does that suggest that I devalue the physical world in some aspects? Or am I losing memories that are impossible to capture digitally (touch, smell, impressions)? To be honest, I have no idea of the answer to the first question, but I do think that the answer to the second is no. But it is hard to judge what I can or can't remember!

I would love to see a study done on the use of digital media to augment memory, and its impact. I think the real question for me is how is it different from keeping a notebook, or using post-its. Does using digital media make us smarter, dumber, more forgetful? (It is of course a non-trivial task to define those, let alone measure them)

*According to my work and school performance, and asking around, I have a memory that is comparable to or better than that of my peers. Apparently I lack confidence in my memory, rather than lacking memory. This perhaps an even more telling example of the impact of using email to remember things: Memories which aren't as clear as the digital versions are discounted, lowering the expectations I have of my memory. Since I certainly lack photographic recall, very few of my memories are as objective or explicit as an email or photograph, making my expectations of recall sub par.

A Collection of Idols

2009-02-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm a sucker for stuff like this. I didn't buy any of these things (other than the tiki, which doesn't count as it is a souvenir), other people hid them in my room or were getting rid of them and bequeathed them to me. I have this awkward fear that 50 years down the road I'll die, and people will wonder what drove me to amass a diverse collection of curios from around the world. So far I've managed to limit it to the top of my speaker and the Pip-Boy on my computer, but if my habit of inadvertantly collecting books is any indication, I'll soon be adrift in a plastic sea. Good times.

Amgen Again Again

2009-02-17T12:28:00.001-08:00

This is the corner that we camped on, this is the racer perspective.

View Larger Map

A Day at the Races

2009-02-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

The Tour of California came to town today, managing to slip in during a break in the rain. The Bike Coop and I watched the race on the downhill leg into Santa Cruz. They had found a spot on a descending corner, giving a clear view of about a half mile stretch. I arrived late (that is to say, not with the rest of the crew) and quite overshot the corner. I was going about 30 mph into the corner, which was pretty hairy given the radius of the turn, that it was descending, and that it had been raining.

It rained only briefly while we were out there, and we stayed up there until all the riders had passed. At that point there was a little over a 20 minute gap between the leader and the last man. We trailed the race down into town, taking advantage of the street closures. (Being able to legally run red lights and have a heard of riders take up two lanes is very excellent.) All of downtown was shutdown, pedestrians and bikes having a field day on Pacific. Downtown would be much improved it were closed to cars.

All in all it was a pretty good day, seeing a race, punting around the course, as well as getting a good road run and a wet & messy uphill fire road climb in. I've posted the pictures I took to my Flickr, but I wouldn't consider them to be stellar.

Shipping Containers

2009-02-03T19:38:00.001-08:00

There is a fad in some circles right now to be "green." Intrinsically this is a good idea, but some people go about it all the wrong way. Shipping container houses are a great example of a failed attempt to be green.

First, shipping containers aren't really cheap. They are a huge chunk of steel, so even as sold for scrap they are pretty valuable. Second, it's a huge chunk of steel. And you're going to make a house out of it, thus removing it from any other use until the house is torn down. Steel isn't exactly a renewable resource, I'd rather see it used repeatedly, and instead use a renewable material for houses (Perhaps wood? *gasp*). Third, it's a poor excuse for being damn lazy. If you want a prefab house module, design one. Don't take something optimized for it's job, and make it something it isn't.

Also, does anyone else see a terrible irony in a consumer society packing themselves into a bunch of shipping containers? Seriously.

Bike, Interupted

2009-02-03T15:28:00.001-08:00

I now have a new left crank to replace the one I messed up. After pulling the BB, it was pretty apparent why it failed: rather than having a continuous body, it had a separate bearing on the non-drive side. If the left cup wasn't a perfect fit this would allow the bearing to move under load, causing the balls and races to wear faster.

Thanks to the coop, I have a new BB now, and it hasn't given me any problems yet.

I rode up to work through the center of campus, which is the first time I've done that. I'm not sure if its a shorter ride, or if the topography works better for me (relatively short steep hills rather than a constant gradient), but it's a more pleasant ride than Hagar. I also had an interesting encounter with a van this morning. I don't think it was particularly life-threatening, just weird. A van tried half-heartedly to cut me off and make a right, despite the fact that I was moving faster than them. Normally I'd hit the brakes and let them take it, but they were moving at less than 10 mph, and looked more like they were moving up in the lane rather than making the right. The net result was them awkwardly turning slowly into me, and me accelerating around and past them. I'm not sure what the deal was with that.

In other news, you should pour one out tonight in the honor of Sheldon Brown. He created a great, and highly accessible biking resource, http://www.sheldonbrown.com/ and generally did neat things with bikes. A year ago today he ceased to be, a loss greatly lamented by the cycling community.

Finding Things

2009-01-28T22:54:00.001-08:00

While I may or my not be one to toot my own horn, I try to do it in the privacy of my own home, and thus avoid sticky encounters. In this instance, I think that I can safely put it out there without getting my head bitten off.

I'm really good at finding things.

Last week I found a powered VGA splitter that my office, and I thought we didn't have. I also found a jackpot of audio splitters, which I also needed at the time. That could have just been random luck, but I do generally have an intimate knowledge of our equipment inventory. Perhaps I'd just forgotten we had them and subconsciously was guided back to them.

Today was an excellent day for finding things, mostly in the Bike Coop. For those not familiar with the Bike Coop, the basic signal that you are an old hand is if you can actually tell when people have moved things. This is only a slight exaggeration. So it was rather impressive that I was able to find a bottom bracket, a new crank, and cassette spacers today.

I also found Kristina's headlight today.

Overall, I think that my recent finding stuff ability has been a great boon, and am so excited about it that I just had to tell you all.

I'll post something meaningful in a few days, once I get my paper on "Twilight" polished up.

Bike 1, Robert 0

2009-01-27T22:01:00.000-08:00

Note to self: when the weather is in the 40's, it is night out, and you are wearing shorts and can't feel your hands, it may not be the best time to pull your cranks. In fact, one could say that it is a terrible, terrible time to be working on your bike, particularly on things that are very annoying to fix if you screw up. Guess I'll need a new crank at some point...

Vintage Clipart

2009-01-27T08:32:00.001-08:00

To be honest, the title of this post makes me feel slightly wrong, as it's both inaccurate and anachronistic. It also implies that art is old clip art, which it certainly isn't. It would be better described as public domain artwork from old childrens' books. I found a veritable treasure-trove of the images on Grandma's Graphics. An example accompanies this post, but it is well worth your time to wander through the site and see the variety. (The illustrations from "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" are in there as well.)

On a totally unrelated note, I'm incredibly busy this quarter. Which is both awesome and terrible. Next quarter I'll be co-teaching a class on Bikes and Bicycling, which brings me back to my 4-H roots. Good times.

The Prestige

2008-12-23T23:17:00.001-08:00

I read The Prestige by Christopher Priest last week. It is now a motion picture by the same name. I picked up the book because I enjoyed the movie greatly, and had correspondingly high expectations for the book. I was hoping to see some further character development, to delve more deeply into the personal lives of the performers, and that that other good stuff that typically doesn't make it into the movies. The Prestige didn't really deliver on those expectations.

The book is written as the memoirs of a two rival illusionists around the turn of the century, as read by one's descendant. The framing story is by far the weakest part, and is fortunately a very small portion of the book. The memoirs are well written, but lack a certain amount of depth or character. I wasn't very impressed with the pacing of the novel, nor the delivery. Rather than feeling that I was being led into their life, I was left with the feeling of being a bored poltergeist, hovering over some poor man's shoulder.

To be honest, I didn't get much out of this book. I found finding the discrepancies between the book and the movie more interesting than anything the book added to the story.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Wonders of the Modern Age

2008-12-22T22:47:00.001-08:00

This is why the internet is sweet.

Sunday, the BBC posted an article about a pakistani girl band, Zeb and Haniya. I read the article in Google Reader, was intrigued, and almost instantly found a video of them, their wikipedia entry, homepage, and of course, a bootleg copy of their debut album, "Chup!"

20 years ago, the odds of my even hearing about this band would be so remote as to make them nonexistant to me. Even 10 years ago the same would have held true. But now, the web really is quite excellent. And most people just use it to look at cute pictures of cats. Or porn. DEAR GOD people, this is so incredible. I don't know how I (let alone the rest of the population) wake up everyday without being absolutely gobsmacked at the how wickedly awesome this is.

I wonder how many years it took for fire to get old. I bet it wasn't 10-20. Hell, people still get excited about fire.

"Crash"

2008-12-22T13:03:00.001-08:00

A friend mentioned the movie "Crash" to me the other day. I mistakenly assumed it was the 2004 Oscar winning film; she was actually referencing the 1996 cerebral horror film based on the book of the same title by J.G. Ballard. Thanks to the internet, I was able to get a copy of the book before I could locate the movie.

I have yet to decide if Crash is an excellent commentary on the role to the car in our lives, or a rather niche piece of fetish literature. One one hand it draws some interesting connections between cars, sexuality and consumerism. On the other, it gets pretty raw. This isn't a particularly fun read, nor a particularly good one, and so I'd have a hard time recommending it. I certainly won't be reading it again any time soon.

As a side note, thematically it is considered a forerunner of cyberpunk. Or so the literature kids tell me. I suppose this is true, but as a history kid, I think the two are fairly distinct.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

New Stuff!

2008-12-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

I have a new frame, a Soma Double Cross. Somebody made me an offer I couldn't refuse, and so now I have a beautiful frame, and nothing to build it up with. Right now the plan is to run it as a light touring/commuting bike that I can haul into the forest and thrash around the trails and fire roads on the weekends. Drop bars, bar end shifters (unless I can score some brifters somewhere), front disk brake (no mounting lugs on the back), cross drivetrain (probably SRAM, as we have a lot of their components around the shop). Sadly, what with the being in school and all, not much spare change to drop on the components.

See what I can dig up at the coop, and work that discount for all it's worth.

In other news, I rediscover writing fiction. Forgot how fun and relatively easy it is. Perhaps I'll stick some more of that here when I get a chance.

Awesome History Comics

2008-12-04T01:41:00.001-08:00

My friend Sophie pointed me to Kate Beaton's site, which is chock full of awesome history comics. Look for the one on Tesla, it's a gem.

http://www.katebeaton.com/Site/Welcome.html

Over 1000

2008-11-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

Google reader is a good indication of how busy I am. If the number of items posted greatly exceeds the number I read, then odds are I didn't sleep that night. Last week was pretty intense. I did have a lot of free time yesterday though, and caught up.

I Want My Time Back (pt. 2)

2008-11-26T14:24:00.000-08:00

Part Two of a series that will continue as long as people are dumb.

The CRITERIA:

The device or person in question has to fill all these requirements to be considered a total waste of my time.

1. Posted on at least 3 blogs in my feed.
2. Adds nothing to humanity in terms of knowledge or culture.
3. Does nothing even remotely useful.
Bonus Points: Excessive or inappropriate use of technology.

I'd like to extend this award to everyone who's come up with a [insert material here]iPhone stand, and published instructions. Possibly excluding the first person, because at least when he did it, he could call it original.

These devices hold up your iPhone, using some material. So far k'nex, cardboard, the phone's packaging, and money have all been used. Apparently, this is a novel idea for just about everyone, and so 1/5 of all new iPhone owners feel the need to tell us all how they made a sweet stand. A 5 year old could do this with only the barest of instructions. But, if you absolutely, positively need detailed instructions, make, lifehacker and instructables can help you out: there are 18 different sets of instructions for stands/docks on instructables alone.

Undoubtedly someone will call me out, saying that a stand is useful, and thus doesn't fulfill requirement #3. Sure, the stand is useful. The instructions on the other hand, are roughly on par with writing, "Please, for the love of god, don't smack yourself really hard in the face with this!" on a hammer. If they can't figure it out on their own, then they likely won't be able to read the instructions.

Sadly, none of these qualify for the excessive or inappropriate use of technology bonus points.

I'm not linking to these things. If you really want to see it you can google it. But I'm warning you: you'll want your time back.

The dead parrot sketch: 1600 years young.

2008-11-14T15:49:00.001-08:00

Reuters has the whole story, but the long and the short of it is that the dead parrot sketch's lineage has been traced back to the Ancient Greeks.

Posh Nosh

2008-11-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

I'm quite taken with "Posh Nosh". It is an excellent satire of cooking shows done by the BBC. The dynamics between the hosts is also really well done.

The episodes are only about 10 minutes long, and it only ran for a year.

UCSC Library: Greener than ever.

2008-11-06T10:18:00.001-08:00

McHenry Library is putting old card catalog cards next to the computers as scratch paper. Is it ironic that I'm writing call numbers on the back of this card?

Voting Makes Me Feel Dirty

2008-11-02T22:58:00.001-08:00

I voted today, for the first time in my life. I'm 21. Prior to this, I deliberately did not vote. I'm nominally an American history major, and practically the first thing I learned was just how terrible our voting system is, particularly on a national level. The electoral college is a political hack that was slapped into place to get the constitution signed and we should really remove it. For those who haven't been paying attention in the past two elections, this is how a candidate can lose the popular vote and still get elected. Clearly, that is not how this should work.

I'll grant it to those who have beleaguered me about voting, that it is more pure on a local level. It's still flawed though, and so I felt (and still feel) that voting is largely buying into a rigged game. As a result, when I voted today, I felt dirty: I had sold out. I'm now a registered, voting chump.

I'd argue for more direct action, but I think the time for that has passed. It may be time to start a new government on an island somewhere, pending the results of this election, and the next 4 years. One where voting either matters or is outlawed, none of this wishy-washy middle of the road stuff.

I Want My Time Back (pt. 1)

2008-10-28T11:07:00.001-07:00

Part One of a series that will continue as long as people are dumb.

The CRITERIA:

The device or person in question has to fill all these requirements to be considered a total waste of my time.

1. Posted on at least 3 blogs in my feed.
2. Adds nothing to humanity in terms of knowledge or culture.
3. Does nothing even remotely useful.
Bonus Points: Excessive or inappropriate use of technology.

The first "winner" is the "Butt-Crack Detector."

This device lets you know if your crack is showing by measuring the light hitting a photo resistor. It then vibrates to let you know of your unfortunate state, so that you can then pull your pants up. First, buy clothes that fit. Second, wear a belt. Problem solved. This device is particularly egregious in that it uses a microcontroller to run the whole mess, when all you really need is a transistor. BEAM robots have been doing this for years; all they had to do was stuff one down their pants and that'd have been that. Intelligent clothing my ass. Wake me up when we have intelligent people.

Also, I'm not linking to these things. If you really want to see it you can google it. But I'm warning you: you'll want your time back.

On Riding a Bike in Santa Cruz

2008-10-27T16:28:00.001-07:00

Hi Bicyclists,

Please, PLEASE, take the lane. I know it's scary, and then you want to worry about the cars backing up behind you. But if there is no shoulder then you should be in the lane, not hugging the curb. Curbs are death. (The assumption here is: if you aren't willing to ride in traffic, you likely aren't comfortable doing a lateral hop up a curb at speed.)

I've personally seen several people eat it coming down the hill from the Health Center because they were over in the gutter: The pavement there is terrible, and unless you are adept at handling a bike, it can (and often will) throw you. Today I saw the aftermath of two accidents involving bicyclists within an hour and ten minutes of each other in the same 1/8th mile stretch. That's not good.

As much as I advocate drivers not killing bicyclists, we need to do our part. Don't camp the right on trucks. Don't ride the gutter. Use lights (I've almost hit other bikers at night when they weren't wearing lights). Ride on the correct side of the road. Use common sense. All that good stuff.

Avoid bad pavement, don't get run over: Take the damn lane.

Thanks,

Robert

Twitter, Bloging, and Reader

2008-10-25T18:12:00.000-07:00

My blogging rate has been impacted twice in the last two months: First, I started class, which is always a time sink, and I started using Twitter. Twitter is a good thing, in that it allows me to whip out the short posts, comments and status updates that I don't like putting in the blog itself. However, Twittering does relieve the desire to blog, and so I'm not blogging as often as I should.

I'm very tempted to turn my blog into an expanded version of the shared items from my feed. According to Google, "From your 90 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 6,708 items, starred 19 items, shared 135 items, and emailed 3 items." (Yeah, I do have a burning information dependency.) Even if I only add commentary to one shared item a day, Id still have a much healthier blog, and I'd feel better about it than adding notes in reader. It'd integrate well into my current reader use, which is the most critical aspect.

In other news: School, work. Yup. Looking into this whole Bike Coop thing.

New Alarm Setup

2008-10-14T11:33:00.001-07:00

The lamp-on-a-timer setup is working out pretty well. It's 2 for 2, and every morning I've working up swearing at the light, which is intensely unpleasant at 6:30am. Sweet.

Wake me up, before you go...

2008-10-13T00:03:00.001-07:00

Due to my near chronic lack of sleep, I have a near chronic inability to wake up in the morning, It takes roughly the same amount of time from when my alarm goes off to me being alive, as it takes me to lay down and fall asleep. One of these I can fix, the other less so. To that end, I've taken my old desk lamp, placed it near my bed, and put a 100W equivalent CFL in it. The lamp is tied to a timer that will activate it shortly before my alarm goes off. If all goes according to plan, I'll wake up suddenly and vigorously; so much so that I will find it quite hard to go back to sleep. If not, I'll either have to find a brighter lamp, or rig up a tazer.

A Concise Explanation of the Financial Crisis

2008-10-08T02:33:00.001-07:00

The mad cackling that many of you have been haunted by late at night was me; I'm sorry. The same group, and random passer-byes, have also been subjected to my discourses on the current state of the economy. Sadly, there wasn't a good one-stop place to give people a run-down on the situation, and I tend to be, well, terrible at explaining this. (Mostly because I've been explaining it whilst intoxicated, which has also illuminated the difficulties and perils of discussing economics in a bar.) Fortunately, the BBC has an excellent article laden with a good number of charts and a blissful dearth of text that provides a really good recap of what's happened up till now. The article, via the BBC.

Food Diary: Defunct

2008-10-07T23:56:00.001-07:00

After the not terribly startling relation that my diet was terrible, and my exercise routine a joke, I stopped posting my shame publicly. Or at least that's what it looks like. Actually, I'm no longer getting paid to sit in empty labs for three hours, and consequently my available time to post here has been greatly diminished. However, I do enjoy work quite a bit more now.

In other news, I managed to reference Jane Austin in an unrelated history discussion today. I find that terribly exciting, which you can take as a good indicator of the despondency which has wracked my days. I shall post here again, if I live. (gah.)

In other news, I am thinking about getting some funding from Crown, or the Arts department at UCSC to build a large sound installation on the cliffs by Bonny Dune or Davenport. I'll post the outline of it once I get the details worked out a bit more.

Food Diary: Day 10

2008-09-10T17:52:00.001-07:00

For 09/10/08: Woke up around 7:30 am, first meal at 1:20 pm. Two slices of ham and pine pizza from Upper Crust. Second meal at 8:00 pm, one doughnut with nuts and sugar frosting on top. 2x Heinekens, some crackers. Off to bed at 1 am.

Biked up to work all in one go with no breathers. Wore the heart rate monitor, which once again generated some awesome data. It took me 33 minutes, door to door, to cover the 5.4 miles. -5 min improvement over yesterday, hit the lights better.

Average heart rate: 156 bpm
Max heart Rate: 181 bpm

Found that tightening the chest band on the sensor generated much more accurate results, even without moistening the sensor.

On the ride home I made it in 15 minutes, covering 4.8 miles in 14:56 minutes.

Average heart rate: 157 bpm
Max heart rate: sensor borked, registered 236, likely a doubling error.

Did a set of 6 push-up, immediately recalled why I don't do them. I have elbows and shoulders that sound like an arthritic 80 year-old's.

Sleep was ok-ish, kinda restless.

Food Diary: Day 9

2008-09-10T17:52:00.000-07:00

For 09/09/08: Woke up around 8 am, first meal at 11:30 pm. Pack of Nutter Butters, red-filling danish, and a Hansen's Rasberry soda. Second meal at 5:20 pm, 7 slices of Upper Crust Pizza, of various sorts. Off to bed at 12 am.

Biked up to work all in one go with no breathers. Wore the heart rate monitor, which generated some awesome data. It took me 38 minutes, door to door, to cover the 5.4 miles.

Average heart rate: 155 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 184 bpm

According to this site, that means that I was at about 80% of my maximum heart rate for most of the trip. Interesting.

Still no pushups.

Sleep was ok-ish, kinda restless.

Food Diary: Day 8

2008-09-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

For 09/08/08: Woke up around 7 am, first meal at 12:30 pm. Breakfast burrito with sausage, Jones Crushed Mellon soda. Second meal at 8:25 pm, slice of ham and pineapple pizza, Heineken. Off to bed at 12 am.

Biked to the Westside bike shuttle as I was under the impression that I had to come in early. I was incorrect. Biked to downtown for pizza after work. Working on figuring out a time where I'll actually do push-ups.

Sleep was short, but ok-ish.

Food Diary: Day 7

2008-09-08T21:32:00.000-07:00

For 09/07/08: Woke up around 9:30 am, first meal at 11 am. One plain and one everything bagel, both with chive whipped cream cheese. Lunch around 2:30 pm, quesadilla with fajita fixings and cheddar cheese. Dinner around 9pm, 2x Heinekens, lots of club crackers, some cream of broccoli soup (unpleasant, had less than a cup or so). Off to bed at 1:30 am.

Walked to the beach from Kristina's place, no biking or push ups today, which is what I'd planned anyways.

Sleep was super meh, would like to sleep in my own bed at some point soon. Was not expecting to be out so much this weekend.

Food Diary: Day 6

2008-09-07T21:21:00.000-07:00

For 09/06/08: Woke up around 7am, first meal at 11 am. 6" Italian sausage sub from Subway, everything on it, and some potato chips. Dinner around 6pm, 2x beef fajitas with onions and red/green bell peppers, helped prepare them, they were excellent. Also had a few handfuls of tortilla chips with southwestern style salsa. 1.5 margaritas, and a slice of cake were also consumed during the course of the evening. Went to bed around 1 am.

No biking or push ups, helped Kristina move instead. Also walked around a bit, and swam. Very out of shape swimming-wise, will have to work on that as well. Slight sunburn. As usual, not unpleasant, I just look pinkish.

Sleep was extraordinarily meh.

Food Diary: Day 5

2008-09-06T19:09:00.000-07:00

For 09/05/08: Woke up around 8 am, first meal at 9 am. Cinnamon raisin bagel, Gatorade. Second meal around noon, zero calorie Hansen's ginger ale and a tube of honey roasted cashews. Roughly at 6 pm I found I could not resist a $1 64oz Icee. It was tasty, but frustrating, as Icees are wont to be. For dinner, Kristina's parents made combo pizza, I had two slices. For desert we went to DIY Yogurt for dessert, had a cup of yogurt with literally all the fixings. Gummy Bears featured prominently. Later that night had some nuts, as well as 2 fun-sized Hershey's bars at random points in the day. Went to bed around 1 am.

Rode to work, rode home again. Neglected push-ups again. Observed that I eat more with others than when left to my own devices. Nervous habit?

Sleep was pretty meh, even if I did get more hours than usual in. End of the week fatigue level is somewhere between "agonizing" and "crippling." Awkward level for today was roughly the same, will be interesting to see how the rest of this year/weekend pans out.

Food Diary: Day 4

2008-09-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

For 09/04/08: Woke up around 8 am, first meal at 10am. Ate half a leftover vegetarian club sandwich, very tasty. Second meal was at Vallarta around 6 pm, one super burrito. Went to bed around 12 am.

Rode up to the bookstore in the morning, and then to downtown after work, stopping by Aaron's house to get him. Continue to neglect push ups, looking at my schedule for the next few days I suspect that will continue to be the case at least until Monday (the 8th).

Food Diary: Day 3

2008-09-04T10:18:00.000-07:00

For 09/03/08: Woke up around 6:45 am, first meal at 11am. Jamba Juice, Peach Passion original size, with a fiber boost (the boost wasn't my idea). Second meal was at Saturn around 9:30 pm, a tuna melt with a side of cream of tomato soup. Scavenged most of Kimberly's fries as well. Went to bed around 1 am.

Bussed it up to Sunnyvale, rode from Diridon to Kristina's house and back, which is roughly a total of 16 miles. Took about 40 minutes out and 30 back. Rode from work to Kimberly's house, another 6 miles, not sure how long that took, but I did it at a good clip. Neglected push-ups again.

Food Diary: Day 2

2008-09-03T10:08:00.000-07:00

For 09/02/08: Woke up around 8am, first meal at 6pm. All you can eat pizza at Upper Crust: 7 slices, 3-4 glasses of coke. Went to bed around 4 am.

Biked to work, only made it 1/3 up Hagar due to getting a massive staple in my back tyre. Wheel was dead flat in under 5 min. Bussed down to Spokesman, bought a new tube and installed it there, then rode to the old house. Neglected push-ups again, primarily because my morning routine isn't all worked out yet. The microfiber towel works really well, it was an excellent investment.

Food Diary: Day 1

2008-09-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

For 09/01/08: Woke up around 3pm, first meal at 6pm. One super burrito from Vallarta, small coke, tortilla chips. Around 3am of 09/02/08 consumed a large shake from Jack-in-the-Box over the course of several hours, in addition to a large seasoned fries. Went to bed around 5-6am.

Completed moving and unpacked the majority of my stuff in lieu of biking to work and doing push-ups. (No work) Regardless, I could not have done push-ups even if I wanted to: soreness was compounded by post-drunk joint pain to make my arms pretty torn up.

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

2008-08-21T14:03:00.001-07:00

Well, the stepsisters are ugly, as is this downer of a novel. The plot seems very contrived, almost forced, as it works it's way to the ball, and abruptly deflates after it. Much of the problem is that where the fantastic is acceptable in fantasy novel, for example "Wicked", it feels out of place in the more realistic setting of Confessions. I did not particularly enjoy the characters either, so this book held very little charm for me. If you want a good book about Dutch painters, girls coming of age and poverty, read "Girl with a Pearl Earing."

There and Back Again

2008-08-19T02:03:00.001-07:00

I became quite tired of the bacchanalia that descended on the house this weekend, and so I took my leave and went for a jaunt on my bike. It's the first ride of any duration I'd undertaken since coming to college, and it clocked in at a mild 20 miles, riding from my house up the Pacific Coast Highway to Davenport and back.

The Google maps topo feature renders this as deceptively flat, due to it's 200' increments. I last drove on the PCH two summers ago, and that was at night, and only to Bonny Dune Road, which is quite a bit closer to Santa Cruz then Davenport. Thus, I wrongly assumed that the ride would be much flatter then it was.

I started out around 11:16 pm, and it was extrodinarily foggy. The kind of fog that clings and beads up on your eyelashes, and drips off your helmet. Visibility was very poor, as my bike light is not particularly impressive, and the fog was dense enough to cut out most of the moonlight. I tried to keep a reasonable pace up the hills, but not knowing where they ended made it iffy on judging how fast to take them.

A two or three mile out of Santa cruz the fog thinned out, and the light of the moon was more than enough to see by. The valleys were still shadowed in some places, and my light stared to die, the combination of which resulted in me bouncing over a large branch of of some kind, and taking a stick in the drive chain. Amazingly, nothing was damaged.

The coast and ocean were impressive in the moonlight, and I'll have to make another expedition out with a camera next full moon. Other than the occasional car honking at me, I made it to Davenport without further incident. I did at one point pass a van that had stalled on the opposite shoulder; the occupants were rather intoxicated and found it amusing that I was riding about at night in the fog. On my return they were still there, and far less amused. The best comment made was, "You sumg-ass Mf'er, you went there and now you're coming back again." Indeed I was returning, but I was not particularly sumg at the time, as my headlight had totaly failed.

The retun ride was even more fun than the outgoing, despite the fatigue. I had a good endorphin rush going, knew where the hills were, and had warmed up a bit. I made poor time up the hills, but made up for it on the reverse sides and the flats: My incoming time was only a minute longer than my outgoing. I averaged ~15 mph across 20 miles, which I think is reasonable for having not ridden extensivly in years.

I have a few new squeaks on the bike now, I'm fairly certain that some crud got into the chain and is making a racket. Perhaps I'll clean and lube the chain this weekend, perhaps after I go for another ride.

HaHA! Blog.

2008-08-14T17:52:00.001-07:00

So, Yup. Really need to get some stuff finished up and posted here, although I've been super busy. Work, looking for housing, all that good stuff. Oh, got rid of my email sig, that's new and exciting. Decided that I didn't want to explain to every house I emailed that I wasn't in a frat, and that it's an equation describing thin slit diffraction. That also leads to the "So, are you a science major?" question, which I dislike. Mostly because laughing in their face, and saying, "God, I wish I was, then I'd have a job after college," isn't considered an acceptable response.

There Will Be Blood

2008-08-07T14:20:00.001-07:00

I watched "There Will Be Blood" last night, and quite enjoyed it. Daniel Day-Lewis was excellent, and I'm a sucker for well done period pieces. Well worth the viewing.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Worst Alcoholic Beverage Ever

2008-07-28T01:04:00.001-07:00

So, I admit that I'm no expert on this subject; my drink experiences so far have been largely limited to things that didn't taste terrible by design. However, I'm here to tell you that "Tilt", an energy drink and malt beverage is the worst thing I've ever consumed. The lingering taste of vomit and cheap booze that this drink leaves is it's sole claim to fame. It is a lurid green color, the dyes persistent enough to turn your tounge green. Worse still, a can isn't enough to get you properly drunk: after practically chugging all 16 oz. in desperation, I'm still sober enough to write this blog post, and I'm a lightweight. I'm going to go back to my White Russians, Tokyo Iced Teas and Liquid Cocaine: at least they get me drunk, and I don't want to kill myself after drinking them.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

The Dark Knight

2008-07-24T10:54:00.001-07:00

I enjoyed "Batman Begins" a great deal when it came out, and was impressed by what it brought to a franchise littered with horribly campy takes. As such, I had high expectations for the sequel, but as the hype built up I became worried that the movie would fail to deliver on the expectations. Clearly I was in error, as The Dark Knight does not disappoint.

Like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is in fact, dark. It is a poignant tragedy, brilliantly acted, and downright awesome. As many have said, Heath Ledger's performance is incredibly disturbing, and in many ways the Joker outperforms Batman in this film. The pacing is fast, and I think it could have been taken down a notch to allow for some lulls in intensity. The action sequences are actiony, the drama is dramatic, and between the two there isn't much time to catch your breath. Overall it was an excellent and enjoyable film, and I highly recommend it.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Abandoned Buildings

2008-07-22T18:16:00.001-07:00

I have a bit of a thing for abandoned buildings. I feel that its a good practical knowledge interest, because A. There are a fair number of them about, and B. it's useful to know how fast buildings deteriorate. (They also play into my "what-went-wrong?" hobby.)

I got this article on "16 Abandoned & Decaying Hotels" in my feed and was particularly struck by the Aptera Beach Resort. There is little information available online about its demise, but this blog post suggests that the damage is due to being partially demolished at some point. It's rather interesting, as generally you don't have partially demolished buildings, as it costs money to demolish a building. By the time that a person or company is ready to abandon a property, it is generally because they don't have the money to develop or maintain it.

I think it's pretty neat that the rebar is still tying the chunks of concrete together; a rough demonstration of how composite materials work at a macroscopic level.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

New Bike! (for real this time)

2008-07-14T09:50:00.001-07:00

So, I have a new bike, it works super well and I love it. Road tyres are awesome. There is a UC strike all this week, so the normal shuttles and whatnot will not be running. That means I'll be riding up a 800 foot elevation gain each morning.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Delicious Data

2008-07-08T17:06:00.001-07:00

"From your 75 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 6,806 items, starred 4 items, shared 131 items, and emailed 0 items."

On average, I process 226 discrete items per day in my feed. That's pretty cool. The most items read in one day was 556. About half of my daily intake is skimming the BBC and NYT international feeds, about a quarter is distributed among various small blogs, and the rest is taken by a few major blogs, such as Make and Lifehacker.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Wanted

2008-07-07T19:03:00.001-07:00

I saw "Wanted" over the weekend. I thought it was pretty good for what it was (B action movie), but it was way more over the top than I had expected. As Aaron noted, there were brains all over a wall within the first 5 minutes, and that remained a staple of the rest of the movie. I think that it delivers pretty well on the premise of this xkcd: action movies need more action. This one has plenty of action, blood everywhere, Angelina Jolie being somewhat attractive, and guns. Now, all that comes at a pretty steep price: this thing is cliched like none other. Not in the "haHA, external references" way either, but in the agonizing, sadly funny, "did they seriously just say that line?" way. It's pretty terrible, and renders some otherwise climatic moments very silly.

If you enjoy action films, its worth seeing. I wouldn't pay money for it though.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Bikes

2008-07-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

I've been trawling Craigslist for the past few weeks looking for a new bike. My current one is rapidly approaching a state where riding it becomes a liability on par with playing handball in the street. Currently the most functional parts of it are the wheels and the pedals, those being the parts that I've replaced from stock. (Although, the front tire is a 26x2.5, which is wide as all creation, and doesn't fit in the bus bike racks very well. The back is 26x1.5-2, so my bike looks a little dumb.) The cassette worries me, as it seems to be off-center, the front derailer blows something fierce, and almost everything attached to the handlebars is lose, as are the handlebars themselves (makes the handling a little sloppy). Scary, eh?

The damnedest thing about it is that I still love riding my bike, at least on the infrequent occasions that I can muster up the courage to do so. I can still bounce over to the bus stop in a matter of minutes, still bomb hills, and have a pretty ok cruising speed. So I've decided that I really do want a new bike, preferably not a terrible generic mtn bike, and preferably something suited to the riding I actually do, which is generally road riding.

Right now, building up my own new bike seems to be a reasonable option. I'll be able to keep my existing pedals, wheels, and seat. The rest of the bike is pretty trashed, and I dislike the frame as it's a little short for my gangly frame. I essentially need a new group and frame.

Baring that, the quick way to go is ordering a new bike. After doing some extensive comparison shopping in bike in my price range, I have a list of possibilities.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2008/bike_path/7000_series/7000/
I like this one the most overall, might replace stem and seatpost with solid components.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2008/mountain_hardtail/820/820/
Toss some 1.5-2 slicks on it and it would be pretty fun. Shock for when I do dumb things.
http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/motobecane/motobecane_elite.htm
Cheap as can be, and not a totally terrible bike.

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2008/urban/sport_urban/su10/
No reviews? Nice lines, seems reasonable. The SU 2.0 is also an option, good reviews.

SS

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2008/urban/soho/sohos/
This thing just looks sick. Way out of the price range, but, lordy.

http://www.bikesdirect.com/products/motobecane/messenger.htm
This one is in the price range. Sadly, I feel that SC is a little too hilly for a SS.

Also need a new helmet. But thats the comparatively easy part.

Old Bike

2008-07-01T10:20:00.000-07:00

As some of you will recall, I picked up a free bike to fix up a few weeks ago. Since then, I've realized that this bike is incredibly French. It is so incredibly French that parts aren't commonly available, and haven't been since the late 70's. This means availability will only get worse as the bike ages, and since I want this to be a pretty straightforward ride, that's an issue. I'm not willing to pay for an expensive wheelset, given the rate of wheel thefts around here. More importantly, new parts machined for old bikes are pretty expensive. So, I'm looking at selling the vintage bike, and buying a new bike, hopefully for less than ~$400. (broke college student, etc.) I figure if i could keep a ~$100 bike (+$100 in components over the years, not including tubes.) running for some 10 years or so, I'll be able to get quite a bit of use out of something w/o plastic components.

***Update***

The old bike is now on CL. http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/bik/739994390.html

Another Book

2008-06-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

Today I read Charles Stross's Glasshouse. I had previously read Accelerando, which is available online, and felt that it was an excellent work. Glasshouse is certainly on par, and the pair (they are both stand alone stories) really make me want to snag the rest of his work.

Glasshouse is a post-Singularity novel, set in a future radically different from our current conception. The mastery of space, captive wormhole technology (essentially teleporation), and nano-assembly have allowed humans to expand wildly, assume new shapes, and produce backups of themselves.

Robin is fresh out of a memory wipe on a planet he can't remember being on before, and someone is trying to kill him. After foiling a series of increasingly dramatic assassination attempts, he signs up for an extended experiment to avoid his pursuers. He will be living in the dark ages of humanity (1950-2040) with a group of similarly mind wiped volunteers attempting to recreate the social structure of the time. As the experiment progresses she realizes there is more at stake than just keeping up appearances.

Three More Books

2008-06-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

I've been working 4 hour shifts at the Science Library lab, and since it is summer and classes are out, I've had very little to do. I've taken to plowing through my pile of e-books, with the net result being that I've read three books in the past three days: Idoru and Burning Chrome by William Gibson, as well as The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect by Roger Williams. Of the three, Metamorphosis was by far the best.

It addresses the development of a greater than human artificial intelligence and the digitization of human consciousness in a rational, yet very macabre way. Rather than focusing on the human ideal it goes muckraking, exploring the empowerment of sociopaths, rapists and murderers in an environment where you can't permanently kill anyone. Definitely a good read, however it does get graphic at times, with a fair number of people getting seriously maimed/"killed" in a virtual environment.

Burning Chrome is a collection of short stories, and many of the themes in it are expounded on further in Gibson's books. It is a good book if you enjoy short stories and are not bothered that they generally don't resolve in any meaningful way. Those who have read other works by Gibson stand a better chance of enjoying it, as in and of themselves the stories leave you wanting just a little more than they offer.

Idoru was very disappointing. It lacks the richness and development of other books by Gibson, and does not contribute much to the storyline in the Bridge trilogy. The first and third books (Virtual Light, All Tomorrow's Parties) present a much more cohesive story, with Idoru (the second) hanging around in a corner talking to itself. It should be the place where two characters, Laney and Yamazaki, could be fleshed out and placed in context. However, they read like shallow copies of the same characters in the third book, where they play a comparatively minor role. Likewise, the plot is so self-contained as to almost exclude it from the rest of the series. The connections to the preceding book are flimsy at best, and the third draws much more strongly from the first then the second. I wouldn't recommend this book to a casual reader. I only finished it because: A. If I don't I die a little on the inside, and B. I'd read the other two books already.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Reading OCR'd Scans

2008-06-14T14:56:00.001-07:00

I've been doing a lot of reading recently, a fair amount of it on the
computer because of the move. All my hard copy books, and anything
else I want, are buried under piles of my cruft and other people's
junk. It's a mildly amusing situation. Anyway, most of the scans of
current books I get are not revised. Someone scans in the books,
OCR's the whole thing, and dumps the text output online.
Unfortunately, OCR isn't all it's cracked up to be, and sometimes the
recognition is a little off. In the particular book I'm reading now,
"~" swapped for an "s" is a fairly common occurrence, and bad
recognition like "W~Uiam Gib~3on" instead of 'William Gibson' happens
occasionally. The neat part is that unless I'm reading word by word
the typos are irrelevant and I fill in the banks from context. It
makes me wonder why there hasn't been an adaptation to the OCR
software to try to catch these things: if you know it's a book, and
that it's in English, you can do all sorts of word checking. It would
certainly be a boon to organizations like Project Gutenberg, as well
as Google Book search.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Xbox Media Center

2008-06-09T12:04:00.000-07:00

My poor Xbox has been having issues with audio for a long time. I stripped it apart last night, and repaired a cold joint on the motherboard and modchip. Sadly, although my soldering skills have improved greatly since I first assembled the Xbox, the problem was apparently not the shoddy soldering job. My new theory is that the flashed BIOS my be iffy, and if thats not the case then there is likely a pretty deep hardware problem. Bummer. Then it's simply a question of spending money to make a new XBMC Xbox, or put money into a VGA-NTSC converter or video card for one of my existing computers.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Comapatability

2008-05-30T18:52:00.001-07:00

So, old French bikes have terrible compatibility with anything, including themselves. Single speed it is. May not even bother painting this, but we'll see. Really not worth trying to fix the shifters, may get a single speed hub, etc.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

New Bike!

2008-05-28T20:32:00.001-07:00

I have a new project bike. Which is mildly depressing, considering that means I now have two fixer-upper bikes. The new bike is a old French Motobecane Mirage, pre-80's. Picked it up from a pile of free used bikes behind the bikeshop, needless to say it's a bit tore up. However, the frame is nice, and its longer than my MTB frame, so I'm going to try to fix it up. (The MTB is from when I was 13, it's on the small size, and I've done a lot of dumb things on it, so it's pretty trashed.)

The front derailer was nearly worn through where the chain rubs when shifting, and the lower cog on the rear derailer has had all its teeth worn off. It seems that the prior owner either rode an exorbitant number of miles and kept the bike really well greased, or they didn't ride it very much and thrashed the daylights out of the shifters. Beats me. Either way the drivetrain, in terms of shifting, is pretty trashed. At this point, I'm really tempted to make it a single-speed, but really would rather have gears for making up the hill to school. So, I need a new pair of derailers, or some way to fix the existing ones.

The rest of the tear-down went really well, nothing was corroded together or stuck, and even cotters on the cranks came out clean. That really surprised me, everything I'd read/figured suggested that this would be the biggest problem.

So right now I'm looking at replacing the tubes/tires, all the cables (some were fraying), the derailers (unless they cam be repaired in a reasonable time frame) and repainting it. I just need to tear down the bottom bracket, and then the frame will be ready to paint.

I've caught a lot of flack for wanting to repaint the bike. I've had several people tell me that the color is nice, and the original lettering is nice, and similar sentiments. The thing is, I agree. The bike is really well done, and I enjoy it. However, the existing paint is chipped and flaking in areas, and there are some large patches of rust on the chain stays. Being the bastard that I am, I hate rust, and would rather maintain the structural integrity of the bike than the integrity of the paint scheme. But I do like the lettering.

I'm working on hacking the font together, so that I can stencil the current markings back on to the frame at some point. If it works, it will be epic. If not, oh well, it was a free bike.

If anyone has some hardware they want to throw my way, I'd be happy to have it.

*5/29/08: I spent some time in Photoshop messing with extracting and vectorizing the font. Long story short, I'm just going to get some acetate and copy the lettering by hand.*

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

More Frivolous Purchases.

2008-05-28T13:47:00.001-07:00

I went to Logos again over the weekend: I swear that place will be my
ruin. While browsing the small-but-eclectic maritime section of the
bookstore, I came upon a book that is right up my alley.

"Extra: Titanic" by Eric Caren is a compilation of pieces that ran on
the Titanic in 1912. I really like that it includes the entire
printed page rather than just extracting the stories explicitly about
the Titanic. This makes it a neat little slice of from the era, and
provides a more general background. Sadly, it is an oversize book at
15" tall, and as such dosn't quite fit in any of my bookcases. But it
is a fun and informative read, and well worth the $5 I paid for it.

This adds to my collection of books on the Titanic, which was already
reaching an unfortunate size (or a fortunate size, depending on how
you look at it). The "Books on the Titanic" section is now edging out
Ayn rand and Arthur C. Clark and making tracks for Neal Stephenson.
It is also interesting to note that what these books lack in page
length, the more than make up for in being huge. Like the ship
itself, books on the Titanic tend to have unwieldy dimensions.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Early Adopters

2008-05-18T04:05:00.001-07:00

Tonight, I'm glad I'm behind the tech curve, at least far enough for it not to suck. I'm a hardcore Google Calendar guy. The interface is good, it does what I need it to, and it's web-based. I found out recently that work needs me to use the Oracle Calender system. It's web-based, has a crap-tastic user interface and too many options. I was handed 141 pages of documentation on this program. That's not even how to use it in the context of the job, just how to have a working knowledge of it, which is intimidating to say the least. I'd much rather use Google Calendar, and just have Oracle Calendar import all my tasks. Sadly, that just isn't possible without some major code-fu, which I don't have. Knowing that it should be possible, I decided to find a workaround.

It turns out that Google wrote a little app that will sync between MS Outlook and Google Apps. Oracle wrote an app that will sync between MS Outlook and Oracle Calendar. Long story short, I set up Outlook for the first time in 4 years on my lappy. In theory this should work like a charm, however, that is never the case, and the Oracle server at work is down, so I can't test it regardless. They say I can bill them for the time spent learning Oracle: I don't know if they want me to bill them for 5 hours of trying various ways to get a calendar from Google to Oracle.

I'm glad I'm behind the curve on this one: Google made Sync earlier this year, prior to that I'd have had to pay a third-party vendor for the same functionality. Also, this is the one time I'm glad that MS has market dominance. (Don't tell anyone I said that.) The argument of course being if everyone used FOSS standards...

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

That Magical Time of the Quarter

2008-05-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

Ah, the post-midterms madness. All of the sudden there are papers due, classes to go to, meetings to attend. Plowing through it all with a healthy dose of caffeine, loud music and a stress level that's likely mildly unhealthy. I live for this. Forget skydiving or windsurfing, try writing back-to-back papers on stuff you hadn't even heard of 24 hours ago. And ace them. Scrambling down the dark alleyways of online academic journal databases, flipping between books, thats good times. Seriously. Delicious, delicious, doing research.

One of these days I'll find someone who will pay me to do this stuff. And that will be awesome.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Washing Machine

2008-05-14T14:07:00.001-07:00

Kimberly found a washing machine on craigslist over the weekend. It was free, but according to the listing needed a new belt. Ever on the lookout for free stuff we snagged it and brought it home, pretty confidant that it wouldn't be very hard to find a new belt, and if not, hey, it was free.

We got it home, and I almost immediately came to the conclusion that there were no belts needed in this thing at all. There was a large amount of rubber shavings present but these were from the rubber bushing in the coupling between the motor and the gearbox. The washer is assembled as two stacks off the gearbox: the coupling, motor, and pump extend horizontally, and the drive shaft, clutch and drum extend vertically. My initial thought was that I'd have to detach the gearbox to have a good shot at the coupling, but further inspection proved this unwise. As it turns out, the gearbox is held in place and held closed by the same set of bolts, and more importantly uses a thick gel as the seal around the edge, which would have been difficult to replace. It made a lot more sense to disassemble the motor stack (as it was designed to be).

The stack, extending from the gearbox, was as follows: coupling, motor attachment plate and bushings, motor, and the pump. Several hoses also enter and exit the pump, and they complicated things greatly. It is unpleasant to work in a confined space on spring based fittings, particularly ones that you need a fair amount of mechanical advantage to lever open. After getting the hoses off the pump was an easy one to remove, being held to the motor by just two metal clips. The motor was held onto its baseplate by a similar setup, with the addition of a retaining screw in the top of each clip. After ganking to motor out it was pretty clear the coupling had been totaled: teeth were missing, the rubber was in pieces, etc. Devin and Kimberly googled us up a replacement however, and two days later the new coupling came.

After getting the new coupling in and everything re-assembled came the moment of truth. We kept the washer our on the lawn, just in case, and hooked up the hose and an extension cord. It powered on and worked like a champ, albeit an angry, vibrating loud champ. But thats a problem for another day. I was worried that I'd get it back together, only to find out the coupling had failed because the clutch locked up, or the gearbox had failed. Thankfully that appears to not be the case, although I'm mildly concerned that the excessive gyrations it currently exhibits may be enough to cause more wear on the coupling by shifting the motor about. Even if it does, a new coupling is still under $20, so we could go through a few more before it became prohibitively expensive.

All-in-all it's a good catch, and gave me a few hours of entertainment, so I'm marking this one as a win.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

The Bride of Science

2008-05-13T14:46:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across a copy of "The Bride of Science" by Benjamin Woolley at Logos recently and, in a fit of excess, bought it. The book is a biography of Ada Lovelace, who is credited with being the first programmer for her work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine. (As a side note, she is one of my more favorite historical personages, and she lived in one of my favorite historical periods, so I'm a little biased.)

The book is well written in general, with a bent for dry humor and ironic juxtapositions, and reads more like a novel than a historical treatise. Which is fortunate, given the subject matter: it doesn't shy away from the more torrid aspects of her life (of which there are quite a few), and in fact becomes downright sensationalist at points. Those looking for an Ada-centric read may want to find another book, as this one strongly frames its discussion of Ada in terms of her parents, particularly her mother, and doesn't dwell on her work with the Analytical Engine for very long. However, it does give a great deal of insight into her life and thoughts, as well as giving a good look at the intellectual/upper class in the period.

I rather enjoyed the book, but I find anything even mildly relevant to the 19th century interesting. As far as biographies go, this one is pretty good, and not a hard read at all. My recommendation: good for those who are interested in Ada and the period in general, bad for those who want to learn more about her relation to the Analytical Engine.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Dissociative Fugue

2008-04-30T17:45:00.001-07:00

Part three of deceptively named posts. I've made a proto-melodic generator in Pure Data, which is kinda neat.

Right now the melodies it generates are random walks between between 90 and 600 Hz with ocassional excursions between 45 and 1200 Hz. The occasional excursions are a function of doing the limiting based on what the note currently is, rather than what it could be. Since one of the steps is a full octave up or down, it can bounce out pretty far before it starts getting called back in. Ultimately that might get revised, however I don't think its terribly important. The other component is a tempo generator that messes with the master clock for the system, speeding up when the notes are high and slowing down when they are low. This favors the low end of the spectrum, and adds a bit more interest. Eventually a full note length and timing module will be implemented, so that there is more freedom in determining individual note length.

I made a nice little repetition prevention system, but sadly, I don't actually need it now, since I've placed everything relative to the preceding note. I was using a system that played specific notes and since that system could (and frequently did) play the same note repeatedly in series the repetition limiter was far more important for it. On the upside, making the detections system has given me some better ideas on using recursion to make the whole thing work. Recursion and Markov chains...fun times.

I really like the infinite scale idea, but it has some downsides. First, it is unlikely that anyone could (or would want to) manually play any pieces generated by this method: it just doesn't correlate well to existing musical notation. Second, since it does break with the traditional notation, making music theory "work" in this context is much more difficult. I've been having to use journal articles to supplement the theory textbook, which is good but not helpful in a lot of areas right now.

JSTOR, an online database of academic journals has been invaluable in working on this project (and just about any project in the humanities or arts). Frankly, I'm really glad someone else sat and did a study of the mathematical basis for consonance and dissonance. Right now my note determinations are from consonant ratios, which makes a pleasing, but very mellow melody. I found an article on the basis for dissonance, so when I get some free time that help me will add some spice to the mix.

Next, I'm going to clean up the note selection process a bit, and try to add in some way of storing melodies for playback. I don't really know how I'm going to work that one, as PD doesn't seem cut out to handle generating and reading complex tables. I've decided that I'm likely wrong, and that I can, I just don't know how to do it yet. Soon I will. The melody needs to be stored so that it can be played back in different voices at other points, which is one of the defining characteristics of the fugue.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

The Sound of Music

2008-04-24T10:43:00.000-07:00

Yet another in a series of deceptively named posts (see "VM Wear" for another example).

I've started trying to write a fugue generator, which is only slightly more complicated than actually writing a fugue. I picked fugues because they are a fairly well defined composition, and they are marked by repetition, both of which I thought would make writing this a snap. Oh, how wrong was I.

First, fugues aren't well defined at all. About the only characteristic that people can agree on is the use of repetition, and even then there is still some confusion. Second, having to make a generator that tries to actually sound like an actual existing form of music is a pain, particularly if you try to use existing musical conventions.

Musical conventions are pretty complicated. So far I've dedicated several days to translating music theory into Markov chains and other structures, and still really don't have any product to show for it. However, I have simultaneously leaned a lot about Markov chains and music theory, which is good. Markov chains are pretty straightforward; music theory is a tougher nut.

Music theory is built on centuries of previous generations methods and notation. The notation is interesting, because the existing notations doesn't fit what it is supposed to represent cleanly, or rather it doesn't scale nicely from playing to theory. Chords and interval notation and the rest seem kinda hacked together. When playing with intervals, all sorts of weird things can happen. When you are building chords you end up with a fair number of exceptions and changes. I feel that much of this has to do with using a just intonation rather than a tempered scale. The primary difference between the two is that tempered scales use equal divisions between the notes, and just intonation tries to use the smallest whole number ratio between notes. That being said, I've decided to throw caution to the wind and use a tempered 19 division scale for my generator. (Most music is played in a 12 division scale using just intonation.)

I like this better, because the ratios are relative to any two notes' frequencies, and the consonance/dissonance between the notes can be expressed mathematically. This simplifies writing the progression algorithm, as I could simply base it off of numerical consonance, rather than having to translate music theory into probabilities and conditionals. With basic bounding and checks for repetition, even a random walk should be less dissonant in 19 as compared 12.

The reason that I can chose a 19 tone scale is purely digital, or rather a lack thereof. I don't have to play an instrument in this scale, the computer does. traditionally, instruments have been limited by the number of fingers its operator has. 12 divisions is a good compromise between playability and consonance, whereas 19 would be a bit harder to play.

Stay tuned for further developments, hopefully I'll have a working system shortly.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Comcast, and the Great Internet Shortage of '08

2008-04-09T13:08:00.001-07:00

I suppose it's more of a lean season than a traditional internet shortage, as we still have a connection. It's at the very least a bit faster than when the campus network bought it in the Internet Shortage of 06. That was twelve hours of no internet, which left us confused and frustrated, forced to leave our rooms in search of entertainment. On the upside, it lasted only twelve hours. For a month now, we've been experiencing terrible packet loss in the house, generally over 25%. This makes the connection painfully slow. Comcast was routing us through New York for a time which added a few hundred milliseconds to the time required to access any server on the West Coast.

I called Comcast to see what the deal was. They say that its a problem with the backbone, and that they just don't know when it will be fixed. We will get a credit for any downtime when they finally fix the problem, but it don't think we will actually ever see any money. I think they will say that the network was never down entirely, and that the EULA I signed doesn't guarantee that I will actually get all of the bandwidth I paid for.

I'd switch, but there aren't any comparable services in Santa Cruz. Although, a guaranteed 3mbit connection would likely be faster than the hypothetical "8mbit" connection that I have now. I'm just waiting for fiber to get here...I had it back in Sac, and it was the most wonderful connection I've ever used.

So, if anyone has a rockin' connection in Santa Cruz, let me know. I'm sick of Comcast.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

"Design for Impact"

2008-03-22T23:49:00.000-07:00

Today I picked up an awesome book from Logos. Entitled "Design for Impact", it is a visual history of the airline safety card. It tracks the progression of safety cards, from the incredibly verbose to the purely visual over the past 50 years. The vast majority of the book is simply pictures of the cards, however the included commentary is well done.

I get a kick out of the earlier cards, which depict people having a good time in life rafts and while exiting over the wing. It's a good contrast to the very sterile images used today. The blurbs on the aircraft and airlines are enlightening, and help add some context to the cards. While it is not a must have book for every collection, fans of aviation may get a kick out of it.

It's not the end of the Dollar

2008-03-13T11:16:00.001-07:00

The BBC has two excellent articles on the US economy, 2008 - the return of the dollar? and US economy at a glance. To summarize their main point: it's not time to break out the lifeboats just yet. The U.S. economy is undoubtedly weak, however it doesn't seem massively unstable like it was prior to the dot com recession, or the Great Depression. "The return of the dollar?" suggests that the current devaluation of the dollar relative to the euro is partially a result of an over valuation of the euro, and forecasts that a rebound could be in the works. I still harbor doubts about our economies long term future; however I'm not an economist.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Firsthand Experiences of the Effects of Sleep Deprivation

2008-03-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

A friend told me that I should document the effects of my all-nighters and generally terrible sleep regimen. Interestingly, one of the first effects is the loss of one's desire to spend time documenting the hell they are living. However, for the edification of my peers, here are the effects that I have personally experienced due to a lack of sleep. I should note that these effects came after long periods of insufficient sleep, not periods of no sleep (which tend to be shorter and force me to sleep afterward). My all-nighters, even the ones that span over 48 hours just make me tired, and hungry. The really interesting stuff starts when I've had less than 5 hours of sleep a night for a good week or so.

My first experience with the ill effects was at the end of high school, when I was a staffer for 4-H Camp over the summer. We went to the bed an hour or so after the campers, and I generally woke up around sunrise. At most I was getting 6 hours of sleep a night for six nights. The tiredness became noticeable towards the end of the week; however, with so much going on, and being active all day, I was still alert. Fatigue really hit me as I was driving home. I was still lucid, but dog tired, and eventually started hallucinating. Since the hallucinations were consistent, and I realized I was hallucinating, it wasn't a huge deal. During this I thought that I was being followed by a large dark cloud the flickered around the edges of my vision, and once a woman was walking on the highway. She was moving at walking speed away from me, and cars were driving through her, giving her a very surreal, ghostly aspect. She didn't persist as long as the cloud (no more than 30 seconds to a minute) and I only hallucinated her once. In contrast, the cloud lasted several minutes at a time, and reoccurred several times. Stopping and walking around for a few minutes cleared my head for the remainder of the drive.

My freshman year of college I ended up suffering physical more than mental consequences. My earliest classes were at 12pm and 2pm on alternating days; I would generally stay up to about 8am and then sleep till class. This actually suited me really well, and was a fairly good quarter academically. If I had a few more hours of sleep a night, I could have continued that indefinitely as I really enjoy working late at night. As it was, I came up a few hours short a night for ten weeks or so, and when I went back home for the break I came down with a roaring case of mono. While this can't be blamed entirely on lack of sleep, I feel that combined with my poor nutrition it weakened my immune system significantly. Since then I haven't been physically ill, or at least not long enough to notice, but mono wiped me out for several weeks.

More recently, my class and work schedule have been such that I have to wake up between 6 and 7am Tuesday through Friday, 8am Monday, and 10am on Sunday. I have determined empirically that this, plus the length of my days, is the worst schedule ever for my sleep. On average I'm on campus till 6pm and do all my school work after dinner, which has resulted in a consistent bedtime of about 3am. Being at school precludes my normal nap times, which does not help the situation. As a result I was accumulating sleep dept that I was unable to recoup on the weekends. This has led to an ongoing state of misery that is both interesting to study and terrible to live. I have noticed that in classes maintaining and an active focus on the class is paramount even beyond that required to take notes. Once my attention slips, or even a secondary train of thought develops I am far more prone to falling asleep. This was not too huge of a problem, as I could catch this, and prod myself into wakeful attentiveness again. Sadly, I have been tired enough to go directly from being slightly distracted into full sleep, without feeling my eyes close or having a noticeable change in train of thought. I only know that I'm asleep when my train of thought dies out in the dream, and I come to looking at my desk or with my eyes closed. During a particularly bad series of these over the past week or so, I also lost color vision briefly several times.

The first time this happened, I didn't realize that I was losing my red vision. I woke up, tried to focus, and my professor was a striking shade of green-yellow. I fell asleep again shortly after that, and then realized that I couldn't see red, which accounted for the green tinge. Further study, as these symptoms occurred repeatedly, has shown that this occurs mainly just after waking up, or when trying to remain awake. The former is far more common then the latter, as it is increasingly hard for me to determine when I am falling asleep.

In addition to the more drastic effects listed above, I also need to eat more often, write more evocatively and tend to have fewer inhibitions when I am very tired. Thankfully, these effects are temporary, and are relived by getting more sleep. However, getting more sleep is often easier said than done.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

"I am Legend" Alternate Ending

2008-03-05T17:35:00.001-08:00

The alternate ending for last December's sci-fi thriller, "I am Legend" was leaked online today. Based off the 1954 novel of the same title by Richard Matheson, the movie initially drew criticism for its departure from the book's message. Rather than addressing the conflict between the protagonist Robert Neville and the infected as a cultural divide, the movie handled it as a predator/prey relationship. There were hints of the infected developing their own society, and of having intelligence equivalent to humans in the movie, however this theme was very underdeveloped compared to the book. This omission changed the entire meaning of the story. Neville's realization in the book is that he had be become a legend in the culture of the infected, their equivalent of the bogyman; in the movie he is a legend among humans for finding the cure for the infection. Personally, I found this to be the largest disappointment in the movie. However, the leaked ending ties the hints at intelligence and society given earlier in the movie into the ending, bringing the story closer to the original. Now, for your viewing enjoyment, the alternate ending.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

The 30-minute Challenge

2008-03-04T11:04:00.000-08:00

Every day, write a complete blog post in 30 minutes or less.

My goal with this is to again get myself writing and to do it faster. I've found that many of the ideas I have for my blog end up becoming massive projects: as a result I'm killing myself with quite delightful research projects but not writing anything. Hopefully this will make my blog more current, and keep my projects more limited in scope.

In other news, I need data on ships lost or damaged, and by what cause, between 1880-1910. My understanding is that Lloyd's List would have the information I want, however, it is not in common circulation. My only recourse seems to be traveling to England to use the sources myself, or finding some librarian who will duplicate several reams of microfilm for me. I'll start working on that later this week; today I have a Lasar paper to work on.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Eye Makeup

2008-02-03T16:40:00.001-08:00

First, a disclaimer. This is my personal opinion, and it likely contradicts the fashion industry's latest fashion. At least, I hope so, otherwise people are simply doing terrible things to their faces for no reason. If you don't like my advice, or you are in fashion and feel I'm wrong: I frankly don't care. Do what you will, just don't expect me to like it. Now on to the substance.

I have noticed a trend recently: women are wearing far too much crap around their eyes. When it was just high schoolers "rebelling" and wearing weird eye shadow and gobbing on mascara I really didn't care. Most high school trends die an early death of natural causes. For example, jellies. The exceptions tend to be terrible and irritating. Emos, Uggs and really lame outfits of all descriptions somehow managed to escape into the real world. Now I get to add another to that list: the overuse of eye makeup.

It seems that its a growing problem, as more and more public figures plaster their faces with enough eye liner, shadow and mascara to transform their eyes into black pits of despair. The New York Fashion Week Blog noted that, "one of fall's biggest breaking trends: gray eye shadow." As you can see, it makes what are likely fairly attractive women look like the living dead. This is unfortunate for two reasons. It highlights how god-awful makeup is in the wrong hands, and it makes people think that this looks good. In my opinion, it does not. For a simple case study, look at Eva Green. Most recently co-starring in the Bond film Casino Royale, she provides a good demonstration of how poor lighting and bad eye makeup can turn even a very pretty person ghoulish.

The worst it gets is in the casino scene. Ms. Green's character is tasked with standing around and looking good, something that she normally could pull off easily. Sadly, between the moody lighting and the heavy eyeshadow, she looks her worst in this portion of the film. On the other hand, when the film jumps to Venice, she is wearing far less makeup and looks excellent. See for yourself, watch the film.

*Authors Note; I wrote this awhile ago, so its getting posted a bit behind the curve. I feel that it is still relevant however, and hopefully will lead a few unfortunate fashion victims into the light, so to speak.

**Update**
Wired recently ran an article on an interesting fad in japan: excessive fake lashes. While I find the technical aspect very interesting, I can't really appreciate the aesthetics.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

PCG-C1VR

2007-12-30T04:51:00.000-08:00

I broke the power connector on the subnotebook, so I replaced it with a Lego connector. This preempts my tutorial on how to get it functioning in terms of software, but provides a good basis for disassembling the notebook for repairs. Hopefully it will help out other PCG-C1VR owners out there; documentation on these seems to be slowly becoming unmaintained. PCG-C1VR disassembly.

New Stuff!

2007-12-21T23:33:00.000-08:00

Given my currently less than outstanding habit of writing papers in one draft, I'm considering proofing some of my school papers and posting them here. My main concerns about that are that someone will plagiarize my papers for a class, and that the papers themselves are of a very limited scope, and thus not particularly interesting.

However, even if I decide not to start posting papers, I do plan on writing more here again, and retuning to the prior format of poor fiction and news, rather than the current use of just talking about myself.

My Pretentious Bookcase

2007-12-12T01:15:00.000-08:00

My bookcase has become extraordinary pretentious of late. I blame it mostly on taking European Intellectual History, which required most of the classic authors from the Victorian era on. It used to be mostly fiction, and good ole scifi/fantasy fiction at that. Now I have a significant number of history books, and even some intellectuals and notable playwrights. Such are the trials of the history student. I keep selling these things, but they keep appearing. But now I have a mostly full bookcase, which makes me happy. Any book that I have I have read, unless it was for a class (most of those have used stickers on them). Any author I have more than one book of I enjoy and would recommend, more than 3 I think they are super cool, 7 is an addiction and 12 or more indicates they are A. a series author, and B. I really like them. Here is the breakdown, by number of books per author. (for those of you keeping track at home, I've read all of these, and at least one is lent out right now.)

Anne McCaffrey: 18
Simon R. Green: 12
Neal Stephenson: 7
Arthur C. Clark: 3
Robert Ballard: 3
Ayn Rand: 3

Miscellany:

Books about the Titanic: 4
Pure Reference: 9
Number of authors that I have only one book of but would like to have more: 5
Total Books: 132

Total Books (digital):75
That I've Read Entirely (digital):18

The adoption of digital media has really cut my costs in the book department, and makes trying random new authors easier. If you can hack sitting and reading off an LCD I recommend it; your eyes will bleed, but you will save a good deal of money. But paper books are much easier to use and read: used bookstores and bargain bins are your friends. My book for this week is*: Bookleggers amd Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-1940 by Jay A. Gertzman. 1900's to the 1950's is my favorite period in U.S. history, so this book fits comfortably within that range, and is actually pretty interesting. Also was found in the campus bookstore bargain bin for cheap. If you enjoy history, you might like this book. If not, it will not be high on your list.

*Like Oprah's "Book of the Month" nonsense, except with a better time frame, no following, entourage, or literary analysis. Also, I don't read things I think you'll like/will change your life.

Thats the last of them

2007-12-06T10:47:00.001-08:00

Finished a 14 page paper in under twelve hours, including doing all the research. Why would I do such a thing? Monday a 6 page paper was due, Tuesday two 2-3 page papers were due, which left Wednesday to do the 12 pager due Thursday. So, I'm now both tired, frustrated, and happy. The paper ordeal is finally over, but i still have one more 7 page paper and two finals. The week before was no cake walk either, but most of that was my own fault; I was doing research for my own papers.

The 12 page paper...it really disappoints me. Even though I went a page or two over, I still didn't address everything I wanted to. In addition being dog tired made it slightly less cohesive than I'd prefer. It just gets to me, that I could write a much more thorough paper if I had more time and pages. Last year this bothered me when I did the same assignment on a different book, and it gets to me more this year because I should have learned from last year. Oh well. Assuming I don't fail hardcore, I'll be in a different class with the same teacher next quarter, odds are the term paper will be the same assignment. Perhaps I will finally do it right, and get a good tight paper that just drills into the subject without being too broad or too specific.

In other news, I plan on being a terrible person over the holiday, and avoid taking a break. I have so many prospective papers that I need to get written, I want to research the current craft movement, traditional building techniques, re-write my economics paper from 150B and post it here, revisit the Egyptian economy with sources this time, write on steampunk. I also want to get back into shape, and whack my technology into some semblance of functionality. If only I could make a career out of investigating random things in the current era and history I'd be set, and I could leave this school thing. If anyone has an opening for a freelance smart guy, let me know.

The picture is of my desk while I was writing the term paper last year. It wasn't so bad this year.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Keynes' Pyramids

2007-12-03T11:13:00.001-08:00

Did the ancient Egyptians have a problem with overproduction? The Great Depression was a dramatic example of the havoc overproduction can cause in an economy. In that case the increased production from industry plus the collapse of export markets, created a situation where supply out-stripped demand. Many of my colleagues argue that we have to maintain money sinks to remove excess production as needed, so that the economy has a release valve. The military is a key example of this, as the products it needs are both expensive and useless for further production. An investment in the military removes capital from circulation, and itself does not produce anything. Another good resource sink is education. Thought it will result in a higher level of production over time, there is ample opportunity to invest heavily without directly increasing production. The building of gargantuan monuments may have server a similar purpose in ancient Egypt. The reasoning behind this is fairly straightforward. The Egyptians were an advanced civilization, and were clearly producing more than they required for their domestic needs. Much of this was exported. However, would a decrease in the availability of the export markets result in a depression as levels of surplus increased? If it would have then it would make sense for the Egyptians to pursue large projects to keep demand above production. The one flaw here is this was not a free economy. It was an economy dominated by the ruling class. They were in fact perfectly capable of simply hording wealth, and since they could control production either by law or force it is somewhat fanciful to think they would use economic manipulation. As cool as it would be to find Keynesian economics at work in the ancient world, I don't think the pyramids are examples of either deficit spending or production management.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

*Edited on 12/5/2007 to correct formating errors

Almost Worth It

2007-12-03T06:42:00.000-08:00

Given that I will have crippling sleep problems later in life, the thing that makes staying up until dawn worth it is the sunrise. That, and the fact that my fingers start feeling weird and my perception of time distorts radically. We had some really cool clouds the other morning; I snapped this one from my skylight. There are more at my Flickr, but I really liked this one. I really need to go and title my Flickr photos, but given that so many of them are similar, I really can't get enthused about it. Using a date based system would be good, but that data is already there. If anyone has a good naming scheme I'd be glad to hear about it. Until then, the master counter numbers are good enough. Its pretty neat that in the 11 months I've had this camera, I've taken over 1265 photos. Thats more than 100 pictures a month. Digital cameras are an excellent investment, thats roughly 1300 photos for less than $250. Good Times.

The Trick

2007-12-03T06:21:00.001-08:00

"The trick is to act like you don't care. The more you care, the more likely you are to over think it."

"But I enjoy caring."

"Heh, thats what you think."

"It is what I think! Its not the end result, its the passion of the chase, the thrill of the unatain..."

"And to do that you have to care, to have a script and a plan?"

"No...But they help. Why can't I care?"

"Why should you?"

"That doesn't answer my question. Don't dance around it, why can't I care?"

"Because, once you decide, once you have your plan, you close down everything else. You forget that there are no straight lines, and that what is normal to you is cold, distant and inhuman to most other people. Thats why."

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Facebook, Le Sigh

2007-11-30T09:16:00.001-08:00

Once again, Facebook oversteps the bounds of information sharing, causing a backlash from the community. I am becoming more and more disappointed with Facebook. The last time they added a feature that published information without consent there was a massive outcry, and the ability to opt out was added. It amazes me that they crossed the same line again, in an even more impressive way. Seriously, the idea has terrible mistake written all over it. Publishing user information without consent, and having that data be from parties outside of Facebook? Neither of those are good ideas to start with, and the combination makes it worse. More information can be found in this Business Week article.

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

I Enjoy Russia...

2007-11-30T09:04:00.001-08:00

...Because they have awesomely draconian laws about protests. According to the police, an unsanctioned protest is the gathering of two or more protesters without permission. Individual protesters may protest without permission. This is the best quote from the article, "The provocateur told the police, joyfully, when asked what he was doing out there, 'Provoking. It's what we have to do'." Reuters Oddly Enough

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

Awesome, or not Awesome: That is the Question.

2007-11-30T04:44:00.001-08:00

I noticed that it was one in the morning with the slow astonishment of a drunk spilling his drink. A puzzled look, a double take at the clock on the microwave, and the bewildering thought of "What have I been doing for the past two hours?" I'd reckon most of it was spent in the astoundingly interesting, but as of yet not-directly-profitable contemplation of the craft phenomenon. That, and making food. But this of course begs the question of what have I been doing since one in the morning. Sadly, I spent it engaged in that most fruitless of exercises, trying to fall asleep. Keep in mind the amount of caffeine it takes to get me going is in the range of 300 mg, roughly 3 coups of coffee. I have had zero caffeine today. Thus, I am led to one of two conclusions: either one of the symptoms of caffeine withdrawal is insomnia, or I'm still going slowly out of my mind.

I'm now drinking some sort of energy drink, but the reasoning behind that is two-fold. First, if I'm going to be awake, might as well make it productive, and second, its the only thing I have to drink up here. On the upside, I tend to write good papers while sleep deprived. Even better, the hallucinations from not sleeping for over 72 hours can help me do my finals! Some days, I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll just go mad some finals week; finally disposing of sleep altogether I'll wander the campus, chanting mnemonics of dates and people in a confused litany chronicling my education. Or perhaps it will just be madcap papers, dictated to the sky and any passer-by who strays too near. "...and as we can clearly see in the works of Kafka and Beckett, particularly in the latter's play "Waiting for Godot", the theme of waiting began to play a major role in cultural discourse after the first World War*..."

In this regard blogging has similar characteristics to the rantings of a madman: if they are not a particularly well-known madman people pay him no heed. On the other hand, if they are a well-known public figure then you have the start of a new social, political or religious movement. The trick, clearly, is to be eccentric rather than crazy. I tire of this line of thought however, and will now turn my mind to European Intellectual History; I should be able to get some reading done and pound out a page or two before the sun rises.

*Actual sentence from the paper that I'm about to write.
--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)

The End of the Quarter

2007-11-29T11:11:00.000-08:00

I came to the realization today that one fifth of my quarter is spent in a state of metal panic, followed by a almost subliminal sense of anxiety until grades come out 2-3 weeks later. Thus roughly 5 weeks per quarter I hate life, and this happens three times a school year. Thus school alone makes my life stressful or otherwise uncomfortable 15 weeks a year, or roughly 29% of the year. Thats not even counting individual assignments, midterms or quizzes. Yay, stress...

--
Robert Alverson

m*lambda=d*sine(theta)