Silver Case

Shrek

Originally uploaded by karavshin.

My beautiful iMac did it without any use of annoying cables or bad nokia software… I just introduced the phone to the iMac via Bluetooth and the iMac sucked all the pictures off no problem at 50KB/sec.

Curiosity got the best of me this weekend and I downloaded the much-lauded ‘Fifty Cent’s’ albums.  I’ll be ’storing’ them in my Mac Trash Bin shortly.

Why?  They’re dull.

His songs are almost indistinguishable from each other.  His albums really sound much more like ad jingles for unsavory products than music.  Each song is primarily a horribly heavy hook with repetitive refrains and choruses overlaid.   If I cared to prove it, I think I could compress his entire albums to a 20 second long set of fragment of that captures all the unique information of the full album.

The lyrics are tedious ghetto chants,  uninspired and lacking any cleverness like Tupac or Notorious B.I.G.

Apparently his provenance as a major Jamaica Queens crack dealer is a major marketing point.  However that doesn’t seem to hold up when talking to all the other participants of the 1980s-1990s Jamaica Queens crack scene.   They say he was, at best, tangential, and probably almost entirely uninvolved.  And what’s he doing this decade?  Besides lying about how many times he was shot,  being paid $500,000 to play at a rich Long Island defense contractor’s Bat Mitzvah.

As Hannibal Lechter would say:  Tedious.  Very Tedious.

When I was back in Pittsburgh for vacation, we had a lot of fun evenings spent playing board games at the table. I think the favorites were Modern Art and Settlers of Catan.

With the wonders of modern technology, it’s now possible for all of us to play Settlers of Catan together again. There is an online site that allows you to play versus other players and robots. I’ve played dozens of games in the last few weeks and find the system to be pretty good. Matt, Adam, and I have also played against each other and others and it’s been quite a gas. We get Skype up on a conference call, and we might as well be sitting in the same room as we play. The only guy that doesn’t know what’s going on is the other, random player.

The only problem is that it only allows 3 and 4-player games. Not the expansion pack we used to play 6 players last time.

So, if you are interested:

• Register (for free) at http://games.asobrain.com/
• Then goto “play” menu
• They call the game ‘Xplorers’ (for copyright reasons), but it’s Settlers of Catan
• Click the “Xplorers. Non-ranking” button to launch the game lobby where you can create and join games
• You can simply create a game (use “default island”) and play against some robots. It’s very self-explanatory. You can’t harm anything. Once you try it a few times, you’ll be ready for online family feud.

It will be fun to pick on Momma again.

•  Not many pictures of Luke lately, but trust me, he is growing quickly.  He came back from his US vacation and basically started talking.  His sentences aren’t too complex yet, and he doesn’t use pronouns, but his vocabulary is bizarre. Lots of multi-syllable words.  “reverse”  “exchange” “not nice [referring to food]” etc.  Ling remarked today that he is also spontaneously speaking in Mandarin that she’s never taught him directly.  He was hiding some trucks under a quilt and started saying “Chu lai chu lai” (come out, come out (in my terrible pinyin)).  Which also leads to my other observation that his play is much more  purposeful now.  He plays with trucks as you’d imagine playing with trucks, making them drive around, interacting with other things, etc.  Little stinker.
• Haven’t cooked much.  Made some adobo sauce from Guajillos and Anchos peppers. Marinated some flank steak with that and had, kind of, fajitas a few times as leftovers.
• An engineer is working on the heavy duty parts of the house renovation (checking foundations and things like that).  He will be able to confirm if we can add an attic room to the house. (I sure fucking hope so)
• Last week I went to Gleneagles for a  (insanely) thorough physical. Endless scannings and probings and measurements.  Monday I get all the results.
• My Dahon commuter bike continues to work great. I love it.  It is a really refreshing way to go to work. Today was thrilling in a morning rain while buses simultaneously pass me on either side. Must have been 3′ clearance. Felt momentarily like a NYC bike messenger.
• Messenger bag is keeping up ok.  Some thoughts are that the heavy duty bar tab stitches need re-done. I still don’t like the angles that I connect the strap to the bag.  The velcro is nice in that it allows me to mindlessly close the bag, but sometimes it is annoying when the velcro sticks to other shit I don’t want it to, like towels, etc. I don’t like the elastic cord keychain.  The key tends to sit at the bottom of the bag, under other stuff, and then I pull on the cord until the key finally pulls free. It’s sort of like shooting yourself in the face with a slingshot.  It reminds me that I thought of an external way to mount the keys.  Maybe I’ll hack an example this weekend.  Also still haven’t sewn on the reflective bars.
• Not sure the exact plan this weekend, other than take Luke on a morning bicycle ride to breakfast because Baby Gym is cancelled this weekend.  I think a haircut is in order for him.  Sunday morning I have some running training at the reservoir.  I have some tax paperwork today and probably some other things on my “New Generation  of Annoyances” to-do list hanging on my wall.   I finally got the seat for my Specialized Stumpjumper mountain bike, maybe I”ll take that to the Jungle for some riding.

I got all the development software installed tonight.  And I got an Aten usb2serial cable working. (had to use some openSource driver to achieve that).  Then I wrote some sample programs to the ATtiny2313v microcontroller, which happily ate and processed them.

Stage Three?   Figure out how to write a proper program to process arbitrary text into morse code blinking.

Favorite fact? A pound of “lightly breaded breast meat” for $0.59/pound.

MiniPov 3 Assembled

Originally uploaded by karavshin.

I assembled my adafruit MiniPov 3 tonight.

It went together trivially and started on the first try. What helped is that I bought a proper temperature-controlled soldering gun and a third-hand vice.

Now tomorrow I need to get a serial cable and for the mac a usb->serial converter. Then I can start programming the microcontroller and figure out to make it blink SKYKING SKYKING DO NOT ANSWER followed by groupings of 5 random digits, in morse code.

After I get that working, step three will be to replace the weak, lame led’s here with high brightness blue, reds, and whites. This will require adjusting the power supply up to the max of 5.5 volts and upgrading the resistors. (I think)

Then of course, the final step will be embedding this into my second Messenger bag.

I just found this extra insert to my soldering gun manual:

GORDAK

Digital Defend the False Label Manual

I think it is talking about a serial number I can check to see if I bought myself a fake Gordak soldering system..

I bought a temperature controlled soldering iron today.  Just reading the “english” instructions. They’re inscrutable.  Literally every paragraph reads similarly:

•  Choose a Soldering iron which with the solder have the biggest area. Why?  Because the biggest can bring the effectivest heat transfers, let the missionary be able to swift jointing good quality solder point.
•  Adopt less active colophony welding fluid, high content active welding fluid will accelerate embed face putridness.

This little guy…

Originally uploaded by karavshin.

…this little man now weighs 30lbs and stands nearly three feet tall.

…and that momma is sixty years young!

Happy Birthday, Momma!

Over the weekend I finished up my second messenger bag.

New features?

• Inside I sewed a waterproofed, sealable pocket that is large enough to hold an A3-size document.
• I added an internal, elastic keychain for my bike lock.
• Did some experimental logo work with my Print Gocco. Didn’t turn out great.

Materials?

• Used this hard canvas-like stuff called ‘Ticking’. It’s the same material I made my bespoke railroad engineer hat from.

• For the strap I used the belt from a construction worker’s safety harness. It’s really strong and supple, and I love the crude metal buckle and “PROLOCK” label sewn on.

The only thing left to do is to assemble My Adafruit Industries MiniPOV3 LED micro-controller kit so that I can illuminate my bag with a series of LEDs. The kit just arrived today.

I’ve been wanting to make a railroad engineer’s hat for a while now. When I was in the US, I tried to find the right striped denim cloth. I didn’t manage to, but I found this swell blue-and-white striped heavy cloth. Later Dad pointed out that it was called ‘ticking’ and it was for making mattresses. Oh well.

Anyway, I’ve been searching for hat patterns for a while and never found anything. I found a really lousy tutorial somewhere on making a “train driver” hat. The tutorial was awful, but I decided to say fuck it, and make one from scratch. The only cheat I did was to steal the brim-lining from a crappy hat I bought for $3 at walmart.

Making the folded top part of the hat is definitely the hardest thing to do. I could really use a decent pattern for that part. The rest I handled fine. My first top made the hat look something like a cross between General Erwin Rommel and the admiral on Star Wars who’s choked to death by Darth Vader. But instead of it being desert camoflauge or Deathstar black, the hat’s made out of mattress covering.

I’m quite pleased with the fit. It’s rare that I have a hat that fits, and this one is fitted perfectly to me. If I make another one, I think I’ll raise the top part a bit longer so that it can fall over to the side a bit. Also the center band should have its stripes running horizontally, not vertically. If I can get a decent pattern design (make my own?) for the top part, I’ll be able to put the thing together so efficiently that I’ll be able to include a tidy liner to hide all the sew-hacking underneath.

Second switch

Originally uploaded by karavshin.

I bought this from Ebay in Australia. Wind it up, and it appears to trigger a bunch of various switches that would power various distress indicators, including a mechanical morse code sender of “SOS”.

There are no identifying marks on it except for the switches and I haven’t worked out the schematic for all the various switch inputs/outputs. I think this could use, at least, and oiling too.

Ling and Luke returned from Sydney today, accompanied by her sister Tien-Lee. So in anticipation of their arrival, I prepared dinner.

Dinner was:

1. Seafood crepes: large scallops and hunks of snapper in a homemade bechamel sauce wrapped in homemade crepes, baked.
2. Crab Cakes
3. Creamed Spinach. (which gets to use the same bechamel sauce I made for the crepes.

Seafood crepes were excellent. Really brilliant Hokkaido scallops (these are so fine they can be eaten raw as sashimi) and the fish wasn’t overcooked. The bechamel had enough seasoning to add taste, not just be a flavorless white gravy.

Creamed spinach was nearly as nice, or as nice, as Morton’s. I could have used richer cream (the recipe called for half-and-half) or perhaps added more onion or garlic spices, but the heavy dose of nutmeg I gave it told me it was 95% of perfection already.

The crab cakes? :-& Fuck me.

Recipe called for a pound of crab lump. Grocery store had nothing in the fish department (it’s small) so I went to the frozen section. There they have large packages of frozen lump crab from China. Looked a bit brown, gray, but basically ok, and sufficient-sized lumps.

Took that home (3x $9 packages) and let them thaw. Halfway through the thawing process, I realize I’ve been scammed. The 6″ x 6″ x 2.5″ ingot of frozen crab, is actually a 5.8″ x 5.8″ x 2.2″ ingot of ice coated in a veneer of enormously poor quality crab dust. I mean it was just a total scam. And the crab I did get, I didn’t even want. It was dry, rude, flavorless, and when cooked, smelled like a bitter metal. Atrocious. Truly awful. Staggeringly bad, in fact. Such a pity, because everything else, include the wine was really good tonight.

Anyway, I don’t think any of them cared, they’re on a 3hr jetlag anyway, and would normally be asleep four hours ago. Means I’m free to stay up late tonight playing Settlers of Catan online with Matt and Adam.

Went to a Singapore Boardgames meetup tonight. Quite a turnout. Must have been 30+ people there playing various boardgames. I got involved in a game called PowerGrid. It’s a fairly complicated game that has a lot of fun angles, auctions, resource management, anti-other-player strategy, etc. There are no dice rolls or intra-player trading.

I played respectably, considering it was a new game to me (came in third/middle) but I think there were a lot of subtleties I still haven’t picked up on for a while. It is enjoyable to play, however.

Complexity level pretty high — not going to be a family-evening fun-blast.

BTW: Some of the better players were familiar with Modern Art, and liked it too.

Was growing like a weeds just days after I planted it.  I’ll have to ’sucker’ some of the leaves soon I think.

SUNDAY.  Tweaking my Dahon bicycle.

 Actions:  

1) Lubricate seat post

2) Replace platform pedals with Shimano SPD clips

3) Rotate brake levers 20-degrees around the handlebars

4) Rotate shifter-grip 20-degrees around handlebars to permit #3.

5) Tighten bolt that links handlebars/headset/fork.

6) Test ride bike with my powerful new pedals

Observations

1) Clicking/popping noises coming out of the transmission when I pedal hard in low gears

2) Rear brake mal-adjusted and rubbing the wheel

3) One rear drop-out has severe scraping marks from the bolt of the axle.

Attempted Solution

1) Turn the adjusment knob on the shifter to make sure the two yellow lines are aligned on the hub, which should mean the hub is in correct tuning, alignment.

 Results

1) Continue failure, problem.

My next ideas?

1) Hub is broken internally?

2)  Twist shifter is somehow internally broken so the indexer doesn’t operate

3) Cable path is screwed up and somehow shifting or unshifting the bike

Narrative…

So I fixated on #1 being the issue after I confirmed #3 was ok, and that the only adjustment on #2 was my loosening/retightening the handlebar clamp.  I even posted notes on some forums about the problem.   Nothing answered me exactly. And I got some things like, “is the chain clean?”  “is the chain loose?” etc.

Anyway, I was disgusted so threw the bike in my trunk so that I could take it to the store after work.  While at work I was thinking, “even if the chain is loose (it was a bit floppy), there is no way there is enough slack for the chain to slip puling around the cogs.”

After work, set off to the store (in the west part of singapore, where I always get lost).  Halfway there I start wondering if maybe the chain driveline is not straight.  That’s the first thing I said to the guy when I arrived at the store.

Then as he’s looking at it, the whole answer falls on top of me like that scene at the end of The Usual Suspects when suddenly (and too late) everything is apparent:

I put on SPD pedal clips, which allows me to pedal with substantially more power.  This pulled the axle so hard that it slipped in the dropouts, scraping them and also pulling the wheel tight against one brake pad.  The noise was the chain coming off the final tooth of the cog, not from internal to the hub. (which I should have known — it was a chain-noise similar to what I’d hear from a derailler).  

If I had thought about this properly, for two minutes, I should have realized this, and could have fixed it in ten minutes, instead of embarassing myself by having to take it to a bike shop.  Ugh. Cursed myself all night for this.  All the clues were there, noticed, and totally ignored.

…as it did yesterday.  Every once in a while, equipment breaks and the co-location facility has to scramble to fix it.  That’s why you might have seen errors/non-connects yesterday. And why “Michael Slater” posted so many horrendous “bee puns” in the comments.

Anyway, generally the server is back to life in a few hours.

Child asks, “can I be stung by a dead bee?”

His answer.

You can place the stinger into the skin.  However, the muscles that are

used to inject the venom will not work.  No pain should be felt.   One

note:  the muscles that inject the venom can operate after the bee is dead,

maybe for a half an hour or so.

I can tell you with painfully-won authority, that this answer is a pile of shit. I was standing at the bathroom sink this morning, washing my hands, when I felt a terrific pain in the base of my big toe. It was an amazing, glowing. almost choral pain. What the hell?

Looked at the bottom of my foot and saw a house fly sticking to it. On further inspection, I realized it was a desiccated bee. I flicked it off and scraped out what seemed to be a stinger. It made my foot painful to walk on for ten minutes, and even now I can still feel that I got zapped.

So the answer is OH YES YOU CAN be stung by a dead bee. I don’t know whether the zombie bee did a post-mortem poison-keggel, or I just squished the poison out of it, but definitely I got a zap of pain in my toe from that stupid bee.

——

update:  (Tuesday)  Now I’m on antibiotics for this stupid thing!  I woke up monday morning and my foot was swollen and hurt more than ever. Doctor said it got infected. Gross.  So gross.