Silver Case

What is it about Tokyo’s Hotel Okura?

It’s got a worse location than the Peninsula. Rooms almost spartan compared to the Ritz-Carlton. Far more dated than the Grand Hyatt.

But I still love it. I think because it’s so spare and pure. It’s a top 1965 Tokyo Hotel preserved and maintained immaculately. When I’m sitting in the lobby it feels like Frank Sinatra’s entourage could pull up to the front door at any minute. The interior design of the hotel is totally consistent and totally classy. I spend almost no time in the hotel room, so I don’t do much beside appreciate the bed. And I certainly appreciate the hotel costing may one-half what I’d spent at any of the other three. (though maybe this will change — Ginza was a ghost-town for several of the bars and restaurants we visited there — the economy does not feel strong.)

My productivity has been shit for five days. What little activation energy I have to get anything done burns off when I turn on NetNewswire and start reading any of the hundred different newsfeeds I subscribe too. Yep, plenty of interesting stuff on there, and lots of new ideas for things to work on, but it’s like drinking from a firehose. I should shut the damn thing off and concentrate on lapping some puddles. Ugh.

I’m sitting here with my $10 Ikea lapdesk using my computer in the bedroom while Ling watches some horrible reality tv show with Bruce Jenner playing the part of Ozzy Osbourne and some other woman who looks like Sharon Osbourne. The kids look better the fat Osbourne kids at least.

I was surprised by his massive house. Lots of Wheaties residuals I guess. Then I made a remark that a Bruce Jenner reality show is scraping the barrel bottom.

Ling says, “this isn’t about Bruce Jenner, it’s about the Kardashians”   

“Huh? Then why is Bruce Jenner in their living room?”

“Because he’s the step-dad,” she explained.

Ooops, my bad!

My only comment? Bruce Jenner is Frank Black

I rode my Brompton to the machine shop today. Michel, Sulaiman, and I were doing a non-invasive teardown analysis of it. The final conclusion is something like

It is an elegant design that has clearly been refined over many years. Almost every detail and part on the bike appears to be a bespoke design from Brompton’s factory in the UK. So while it works very nicely today, if anything ever were to break on the bike during a long ride, bar one or two M3 cap bolts , there is almost no chance of finding a spare unless you find yourself outside a Brompton Service Center.

It is a nice little minimalist bike. The 5pm ride home from the workshop was a bit rude from sun and hills, but a few stand-ups on the grades had me home in reasonable time.

I stumbled on an interesting story in the Economist today, The lowdown on teardowns: Ripping apart smart-phones reveals their true cost

GADGET-LOVERS the world over are already salivating at the thought of getting their hands on Apple’s much-hyped tablet computer, which is expected to be revealed on January 27th. Most of them just like the idea of playing with a new high-tech toy. But a few have darker designs. They cannot wait to rip the device apart, analyse its design, identify its parts and calculate how much it costs to make.

These “teardowns”, as they are called, are common practice in the electronics industry, and are usually performed in-house. Now, however, more of this activity is being outsourced to specialised firms such as iSuppli and UBM TechInsights. Their findings provide a glimpse into the inner workings not just of individual devices but also the fast-growing consumer-electronics business itself.

I guess this makes perfect sense, in fact, I bought an expensive messenger bag in Tokyo from Fredrick Packer in order to see how they did their fine embroidery. So it makes sense that this is widely practiced in the manufacturing world.

These firms apparently go into excruciating detail in figuring out not only how the product was built.

My dad sent me a bunch of home videos he made.

I’m trying to figure out if my parents are trying to send me a secret message. Like maybe they’re being held hostage or something.

Why?

Because as far as I can see, unless someone went temporarily insane, I cannot explain why the basement is covered in some hideous bright purple paint, even including extension cords! So I was thinking maybe it was a secret distress signal or something. Is “purple” the international color for “Pan! Pan! Pan!” ?

Pan! Pan! Pan!

Brooklyn’s Finest Don Cheadle is acting, so that sounds pretty good. Verdict: watch it on the airplane

Terribly Happy Really popular in Denmark they say. Verdict: pass

Chaser Probably popular in Korea. Verdict: pass

The Book of Eli American Gangster moves from Harlem to the Bible. Verdict: watch it on the airplane

The House of Numbers Seems to be some sort of HIV or Aids-denial movie. Verdict: junk

Red Riding Three movies in one? Authentic 1970s 1980s British period-wear? Verdict: watch it on the airplane

From Paris With Love John Travolta is apparently balding or wants to be a WWF wrestler. Verdict: pass

Just uploaded the power telemetry from my afternoon bike ride. It was the exact same ride I did last sunday. I felt more tired today. That I had a hangover and was riding in 4pm sun didn’t help. Anyway, 68kilometers in 2:30. My device says I did 1396 kilohoules (kJ) of work today and 1365 kJ last week. That number doesn’t mean much too me — what is the significance of having burnt and extra 31kJ today.

It’s either 0.83 x metabolic energy of one gram of fat or 1.8 x the metabolic energy of one gram of sugar or protein.

That is, today’s ride burnt an extra half-packet of sugar. Fantastic.

On my long bike rides, I need to eat, otherwise I deteriorate after about three hours’ riding. I can carry stuff in my back pockets, but it tends to be out-of-sight and kept out-of-mind (I don’t enjoy eating in the saddle). So last night I designed a prototype mussett bag that hangs across my top tube. Its dimensions keep it out of the way of my cables, my knees, and water bottles. It’s big enough to hold some food and sundries.   

I made it out of my favorite canvas duck fabric that I used to make my first messenger bag (which turns out to be a really nice bag that i still sometimes use). I love this durable, low-tech fabric. It’s just tough cotton, so you can make it foul, it politely dries itself out, and you can always wash it later. I embroidered a pig on the side, for color, but I was not thinking clearly and ended up putting it on upside down. I haven’t sewn on eyes or nose. I did add two large snaps to lock down the bag so that it doesn’t slide anywhere.

I didn’t finish it by this morning’s ride because last night I went into a fugue. I convinced myself something was seriously mal-adjusted with my sewing machine. I believed the bobbin spinning part was out of adjustment, thus colliding with the needle. As I was fading to sleep last night it dawned on me I probably had the needle installed 180d incorrectly. This side has a notch that lets the bobbin finger spin by very closely and snag the top thread.

Sure enough, that was the answer.

Then I went into another brain-cramp where I spent twenty minutes fussing with the presser foot and feed dog to make them pull the fabric better before I realized that the problem was simply a dial adjustment had been left at 0 forward advance after I’d working on the embroidery. duh.

Anyway, the bag is ready for my next ride.

Bag installed; simple.

7.039 mhz F F F F F F F F F in cw

I have been staying on a numbers broadcast IRC chat group and asked what this was. Fast, easy answer, a Russian “one letter beacon,” in my case originating in Vladivostok.

Just had a 14 mhz QSO with v73rs Rob in the Kwajalein Atoll of the Marsall Islands. Had to check Google Maps to figure out where that was. Sort of halfway between here and Hawaii. Lucky I heard him before everyone else, because my signal was quite weak (44) and now everyone else is piling in 59.

v73rs from Kwajalein Atoll

Rob said he was an engineer. Curious, I googled the atoll, and found it’s part of the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site, so whatever he’s working on must be interesting.

My propagation software (DX Toolbox OSX) indicates this contact probably took four hops.

I’m not quite sure what was going on here.  yb3vk/n, an Indonesian callsign, was saying

CQ CQ IN A CW NET DE YB3VK/N CS PSE K

I presume /n indicated “net”, but what does “CS Please” mean in this context? I am presuming it’s not an LOLcat joke.

Think it’s finished, after more than a few hours of tinkering. Lateral deflection is around 0.2mm. Axial deflection, 0.3-0.4mm. The dishing is correct to a mm or two. I got all the spokes tensioned to within +/-10% of the mean. At 107kgf, I’ve got the tension on the drive side rear wheel towards the high side of the Mavic specs (according the Barnett Bicycle Guide), but I think my first wheel failure was from under-tension, so I’d rather err on this side.

Now I have no excuse not to ride a lot this weekend.

Earlier this week I posted about the danger of hypothermia.

Now I’ve found something else: surviving on fetid water.

Sea Shepherd Boat ADY GIL Rammed and Sunk by Japanese Whalers

Cornholio joined us in sending Mom and Dad to the airport at 4:30am

Well Mom and Dad are back in Pittsburgh. We certainly enjoyed their visit. I think they enjoyed it to (everything except mom’s late night curry-refund at Mt. Alvernia). Hopefully we can make a visit back to Pennsylvania during 2010 Summer. I was really dreading so many flights to the USA this year, but already my business trip scheduled for next year was cancelled today, so that’s one less punishment-journey I have to make.

I changed color schemes for Auntie Mary. Let’s see if that is any easier for her to read.

The indentation into the aluminum flange is normal. The broken spoke is not.

Spent the evening lacing and tensioning a new rear wheel for my bicycle. I think I did a poor job the first time I built it, then never checked the wheel. Subsequently it went slack, fatiguing the spokes. They started popping furiously on my last big ride. Somehow we (Michel) managed to true the wheel salvageably so I could finish.

When I got home, the spokes were clearly junked, so I threw them all out and am rebuilding the wheel again. I laced it in about 25 minutes tonight without too much drama.

Mistakes made? Looks like I must have twisted the hub in the wrong direction because my pulling spokes are inbound spokes instead of being outbound spokes. A small(ish) detail but it annoys me. I know Sulaiman will notice.

Other mistake? When I bought my spokes (288mm and 290mm) my brain wasn’t working and I ordered 32 of each, rather than 16 of each. So I have exactly twice the spokes I needed for this project. I guess if I break the wheel again(!), I’ll have a third set of spokes to build. Ugh. Hoping that doesn’t become necessary.

The wheel is reasonably ok already. I’ll finish it tomorrow when I’m fresher. I spent about two hours on it tonight which (I know, I know) is about double as long as it should take a skilled wheelbuilder. But I’m not skilled; I’m barely even a wheelbuilder at this point…It’s just me and my Jobst Brandt.

An hour passes. at one point, a stray thought says you should start being scared, but fear is a concept that floats somewhere beyond your immediate reach, like that numb hand lying naked in the snow. You’ve slid into the temperature range at which cold renders the enzymes in your brain less efficient. With every one-degree drop in body temperature below 95, your cerebral metabolic rate falls off by 3 to 5 percent. When your core temperature reaches 93, amnesia nibbles at your consciousness.

Spotted on K6HX’s blog.

Would they be gripped?

Read the rest of this entry »

From Boing Boing

One day, towards the end of summer, I walked into my living room and found my cats playing “Secret CIA Prison” with a bat. He was alive, but just barely. He lay on my floor twitching, his wings torn to Swiss cheese. The cats looked up at me as if to say, “We do good work, yes?” I locked them in the bedroom and called the vet.

The Flip Mino HD videocamera Lee gave me for Christmas didn’t fully charge overnight. When I checked the battery level, it was only two-thirds full, and the red recharging light was still blinking. Something is wrong.

Online people were claiming that the MacBookPro doesn’t have a “high power” USB port, thus the Mino wouldn’t charge. This sounded gross and irritating, but everyone was agreeing. Other solutions involved hard-resetting the Flip.

As a first check I took it downstairs to my iMac. The Flip has a tiny little USB nub allowing you to plug the Mino directly into the pc. Instead, I plugged it using a USB extender cable. Since it was on a cable, not plugged by its nub, I could see the video screen. It had posted a warning, “I’m really hot! Charging paused.”

Doh.

There is no problem with “low power” USB ports on my macbook pro. The MacBookPro is just a really hot machine in general. So all that was going on was that the Mino overheated because the macbook is also so hot. Moreover, when I came upstairs this morning, one of the CPUs was burning at 100% because FireFox had gone insane and was eating itself. But since the screen faces down, no one ever sees the warning message, and they assume other problems. Any solution which involves unplugging the Mino and letting it cool-off “work”.

Anyway, that’s the solution — use an extender cable if you are going to recharge on a MacBookPro or anything else that gets too hot.