Silver Case

Oh, how we laugh when orange-faced CoverGirl spokesmodel Drew Barrymore comes on TV praising (and presumably wearing) TRUblend™, the makeup she promises will blend in and not show. She’s got on such a thick layer of crud that she looks like she’s wearing Hannibal Lecter’s face restraint. But funnier still is Beyoncé wanting us to believe L’Oréal’s Féria conditioning hair color leaves her hair silky and vibrant, when it’s common knowledge she doesn’t leave the house without a lace-front wig on her head. Bitch is beginning to think that’s her real hair?

He asked that the unidentified material be removed. We said no, that is against our policy. He said you don’t want trouble do you. We said our purpose is to make trouble. He hung up.

I sent the local Snap-On Tools distributor a list of several products I was interested in buying.

When I got the quote back, it was with a listed price in Singapore dollars and the representative said I’d get 25% off. The numbers looked huge to me, like they were really trying to rape me.

But when I did the calculations, I see they are giving me the exact same price (in SGD equivalent) of the website, and I don’t have to worry about shipping charges. That’s actually not to bad. (I think — assuming the website is the best price a normal person could get)

Set, Drill Bit, Metric, Jobber Length, 25 Bits DBM125C – S$344.10 list

Caliper, Vernier, U.S./Metric, Fine Adjustment, 0 - 5″ CM6421 –S$167.35 EX-STK

Bender, Tubing (1/4″, 5/16″ and 3/8″ soft copper/aluminum tubing) TBS300 –S$110.40

Gauge, Feeler, Metric, General Use, 20 blades (.05 mm thru 1.00 mm) FBM320 –S$17.90

Thermometer, Infrared RTEMPB2A – S$288.60

I’d still like to find some Asian alternative to Snap-On out here. There have to be some more affordable options.

I’m sick to my stomach just thinking about what they might be suggesting

Photos by Shyan-Woei

Originally uploaded by karavshin.

Luke, Matilda, Ah-Woei (camera), and I went to a field to play with my RC car. It broke after five minutes, so for the rest of our time we entertained ourselves in a muddy field. Luke probably preferred the mud.

I lost another drive shaft from my Kyosho DST Stadium truck. It just vanished. Presumably it had been bent mildly at some point which gave it enough wiggle room when I was driving it hard and maybe other things had loosened? (three screws had vibrated out of the undercarriage on that session [I have bought some loctite blue 424 to remedy that]).

Anyway, in inspecting the damage and looking for further problems the rear drive transmission seemed very stiff and full of friction. I couldn’t see anything clearly long, so I started disassembling the system looking for the culprit. I began with the rear differential. I almost immediately found the problem. One of the bearings was >80% shot. I could feel that it was full of grit and sand.

Dead bearing BRG008 Kyosho

Good grief. Replacement bearings are just over $15/two. And clearly they’re not sealed very well, because I ruined them after several water-dunks. Although I bought replacement Kyosho-brand bearings this time, for the future I am going to find a “normal” bearing supply shop, because these things (I think they’re 10/5 mm od/id) seem to be absolutely common sorts of bearings. Like the screws, it’s far cheaper to find them in the real world.

Any advice on buying bearings that can put up with a lot of sand/dirt/water/spilledFuel conditions?

Last week I saw the eye doctor for itchy, dry eyes. I periodically have this problem. My eyes get worn out and it takes a month or two of juicing them, cleaning them up, and then they’re healed and better. I had a checkup today.

Doctor does the inspection including the slightly unsettling thing where she peels/folds my eyelid back to see underneath it, the part that actually touches my eyeball. Last week she said there were some bumps on it.

When she checked it today, she said there were some balls/plugs of oil. She tells me that eye juice is normally 90% tears and 10% oils. In this case oil that is meant to ooze out and lubricate (geri curl?) my eyelashes and things. But since I have less tears, the tears:oil ratio is too low. Thus some of these oil pours can clog up and if the oil doesn’t shed, then it hardens up, and then (like last time) starts rubbing ulcers into my eye.

So essentially she needs to give my inside eyelids a facial, getting rid of all the white-head sort of things.

How does she do that? Nurse puts some anasthetic drops in my eyes. A minute later I’m once again starting into her eye machine that allows her to inspect my eyes. She reachers over, flips my eyelids inside out and proceeds to take a hypodermic needle (I kid you not) and start picking these things out of my eyelids.

[if you're not cringing already, I've beaten you to it]

After a while of this tiny details started to really get to me:

1. The sound the needle made when it flicked away the debris. It was a high frequency scratch, like you’d get it you scratched a needle for a moment on a piece of glass.
   2. The anesthesia was 99% effective. I could at some points feel something was scraping around in there. It didn’t really hurt, in fact it was barely noticeable, but the fact that is was noticeable at all seemed to send off some alarm bells in my brain. Sort of like, “well, it’s not a matter of ‘how badly does your eyeball hurt’ but a binary ‘why is my eyeball feeling ANYTHING in that location???”. Thinking about those two things, I was certainly happy for her to be done asap.

What kicked it all over the hill was when somehow in my limited field of vision, after she did some scraping, I saw her wipe away a bunch of bloody debris onto a piece of cotton. At that point I was well and truly grossd-out. I started sweating profusely and felt quite nauseous. I did the high-G fighter-pilot take-a-shit grunt so that I would not get more sick or pass out while she was grooming my eyeball with a needle. But as soon as she was done, and I was relieved, I politely said, “I think I would dearly like to lay down on your couch for a while.” ahahahahah ugh. She said that’s not the first time — apparently she had a man vomit during something similar. ahahahah ouch.

This is a clever bike hack. The guy wanted a collapsible bike for travel, but he didn’t want to buy expensive S&S Couplings. Instead he bought an old full suspension frame from eBay. Then he removed all the suspension components and converted all the hinges and swinging bits into the connectible/disconnectible parts of the bike.

I’ve been working on the 1:1 technical drawing of my bicycle. I’ve been astounded how lovely the paper has been using and wearing. It seems durable, it’s beautiful to write on, and it takes erasure brilliantly and cleanly.

I decided to figure out what it was, because I’ve never had a paper that can stand up to that abuse. I think it’s vellum.

Drafting Paper - Drafting paper comes in a variety of materials and surfaces. Drawings may be prepared on paper, vellum, or plastic film, one trade name Mylar. Drafting paper, vellum, and film can be purchased in sheets or rolls. Vellums and drafting films (Mylar) are see through material. This is necessary if diazo or blueprints are made. Clearprint vellum is excellent for manual drafting. The vellum is made from 100% new cotton fiber. The vellum is transparentized without solvents to produce the proper translucency as well as the legendary Clearprint archival quality, strength, erasability (with no ghosting) and redraw characteristics. Vellum is good for pencil or ink. Our drafting film is superior long-lasting and chemically matted for pencil and ink drawing applications and will not tear, cut, stain or become brittle or discolored with age. Excellent erasability for both ink and film lead and recommended where dimensional stability, strength and high translucence are desired. Available in single or double matte white finishes.

So I put ‘vellum drafting paper’ in my Evernote “makers wishlist” {to buy} list.

Le Chacal, as my first bike frame construction, has had a fair degree of slop and error in its construction. There isn’t a single pivotal mistake I’ve made, just an accumulated white noise that leaves everything +/- a mm or ° here and there. I admit: I was suprised a millimeter (1) mattered (2) was attainable accuracy.

When Matt and I finalize specifications for his Urban Detective Bike, The French Connection, I want to build it with a much bigger degree of accuracy. I think I can realistically target 0.3mm and 0.25° accuracy. The question is, how do I clean up all the sloppiness in my work?

Measuring
It took the Le Chacal experience to illustrate that sub-millimeter accuracy was possible. When I first started using my ruler to measure things, I wasn’t really pulling full accuracy out of it. And I probably wasn’t using the rulers in ways to give me full accuracy. It’s easy to lazily use the plastic triangle instead of the full ruler, and not really squint and square and true the measure. I suspect having a large toolchest of different measures appropriate for different situations also helps, rather than using the 1m steel ruler on everything from the 2cm bushing to the 300mm tube. What are the best practices for accurate measurement?

Marking
I think this is the other really big issue on this project. I think the most subtle, poisonous mistake I’ve made has been that when I draw a piece on blueprint, my drawn lines really run on the edge of the line I’m trying to represent. The pencil line is 0.5mm wide. Then when I draw the next piece that connects to the first piece, I’m already off by 0.5mm. I am hypothesizing that the right way to do mechanical drawing and machine work is to use the thinnest line possible and try, as hard as possible, to get it right on top of the line you’re trying to represent, not a fence along its edge or anything else.

Also, with metal work, it’s easy to use a dull awl and lazily scratch a few poor lines onto the metal. Instead, I should keep the awl sharp and really try to draw a good, true, single, thin line. Not a chicken-scratch scraping. Those scrapings, often done at slight angles, not straight, can themselves be 2mm of gray area.

Cutting and the rest
I actually don’t even think these are very much an issue if I can get Measuring and Marking done right and well. Are there other things to do ?

Can anyone point me to “best practices” for measuring/marking/transferring between metal and 1:1 blueprints?

I remember as a kid Dad explaining a Vernier Scale to me. I also recall not really listening at all and not really being interested at all. Vernier Scales were filed in the “never pay attention to” drawer of my brain.

Today I was inking in some finalized parts of my blueprint (the brazing is done — there is no more slop). I traced out the top edge of a tube, and then measured the diameter of the tube with calipers. I used a ruler to draw in the bottom edge according to that measurement. The result was terrible — I was way off. Then I inspected what I’d done and realized I’d misread the weird calipers I’d used (used an edge, rather than the -zero- mark). That pissed me off. (I have a 370mm of whiteout on my blueprint now)

Then later on I needed to precisely measure the length of some tube segments. The digital calipers’ jaws wouldn’t open wide enough, only the old school Verniers that had bit me earlier in the day. But now I was facing a vernier scale. But this time it made much more sense and I was fascinated with how horrifyingly precise such a simple thing could be (0.02mm or 0.000787 inches). Then I challenged myself to measure all sorts of things with it. It was great fun. Now I want a vernier caliper set, it’s so elegant and powerful. Even the math of why it works is terribly clever.

Of course then Sulaiman startled me by mentioning the Japanese calipers I was using cost around $300SGD. oops.

Now I want to learn to use a Micrometer

crowned fork replaces the original plans for a unicrown

The front fork was planned as a custom unicrown affair. Very tough to miter and get right. As we studied the diagram for it, we realized fitting in room for a fender would be very, very tight indeed. As we thought about alternatives, it occured to simply use a crown fork lug. It would give us plenty more space, be far far simpler to construct, and probably come out much closer to spec.

When I considered that there were no meaningful advantages to the unicrown design, I tossed it out, and replaced it with the simpler crowned affair.

The only weird part will be actually bending the fork rake into it. That’s just done with physical brutality. Sulaiman assures me it’s not too terrible a job, and next to impossible to overbend the rake. Last time they had to recruit a 200lb man to lean into ti. Anyway, the fork goes in the bottom drawer until after I finish the rear triangle.

Now the rear triangle is the tricky part. I’m building monostay unicrown stays. Essentially they’re also unicron bicycle forks in service as chain- and seat-stays. The monostays will be split into two using S&S Couplers. This is what makes the bike massively deconstructible. The better part of the day was measuring, squaring, and rechecking the design to ensure everything fits.

unicrown monostay system with S&S couplers

I included two special considerations, this being a touring bike: 1) enough wheel clearance that I can install a fender onto the monostay 2) worst case scenario, I destroy my tires entirely and need to replace them with the crudest, chunkiest shitty BMX tired I can buy off someone. This bike is meant to be a survivor, a JACKAL, not a highly-strung, finicky athlete that needs a precise diet and care. This lengthens the wheelbase of the bike beyond original plans, but that only makes for a more comfortable ride. My headtube angle came in too sharp (69° instead of 70°, so I would like to prevent this to becoming an itchy, irritable criterium racer bike anyway)

It took me the better part of an entire afternoon to clean up the drawing and then map out the stay system. Tomorrow I will commence building the chain-stay. Should be fun: unique bespoke engineering.

Although they’re the dominant travel guide series, we’ve never been huge fans of Lonely Planet. They’re geared too much to the ‘thrify backpacker’ vector — cheap hotels, lots of tedious exhibits and museums, and surprisingly shabby maps. Granted, LP guides differ. For instance the Lonely Planet Outback Australia guide was fairly good, especially in its maps and sights. Others are not so good. But one common trait they all share: absolutely horrendous food guides. You cannot do worse for yourself than to follow their “where to eat” sections. Appalling.

Anyway, on our recent vacations to Vietnam, we entirely dropped the Lonely Planet guides in favor of modest reference card published by “Luxe” city guides. Their by-line is “Best of the Best.” Although stricken with way-too-cool-for-you prose, they do manage to list out a good collection of restaurants, bars, cafes, good hotels, shopping, and a few sites all the in the span of front/back of nine folded 7.5×15cm pages. Easy to carry in a back pocket (as opposed to a 400page lump of LP) It’s really a city guide, not a country guide anyway, but it definitely serves our needs far better than LP.

Anyway, that was an aside. What I really wanted to say was the 7.5×15cm 8-fold form factor (on a waxed, heavy stock) is a terrific way to keep data. It’s easy to carry, easy to scan, and can pack a lot of data onto its sheets. Their font selection is a bit weird, and fairly small, but still somehow readable. Chosen more for style it seems, I think I could do better with a different font if I was writing one of these cards out for myself. The only problem now is how to find a way to print on such heavy stock which is resistant to dog-earing and paper fatigue.

[posted with ecto]

Chance to see if Slaters inherited Pa’s straight-line-drawing gene: play the (well done) Eyeballing Game.

I certainly did not inherit any kind of parallelogram drawing gene.

the triangle center test is a bit weird. What you are trying to do is find the center of a circle that will touch all three legs of the triangle. I sort of lost my mind the second time I tried it.

Spent a lot of time swimming this morning. This afternoon did mattress jumping for a change.

I had no idea what Super Larry Boy was until Ling explained to me.

Ling and I were in a bind. We’re in HCMC w/ Luke, but with no other babysitters. I love to eat at L’en Tete. But where to leave Luke? The solution was to have lunch there, rather than dinner. Unfortunately, when we appeared at the lunch hour we learned they ceased serving lunch. So the only option was dinner.

Ok, then why not try it out — see how he would do. So all afternoon we regaled him with anticipation of eating a proper French restaurant (which he continually misheard as a “friend’s restaurant” (’which friend?’ ‘who’s friend?!’).

We arrived promptly at six pm, hopefully earlier than any other customers, and early enough that he wouldn’t get too tired or cranky. Uncharacteristically he took his nap (1) late in the day (2) 90 minutes instead of 30.

We kept inculcating that he needed to have good manners (a term that he knows, thanks to a story book someone gave him) and the threat of consequences if he failed to demonstrate said good manners. (Ling’s been really laying the ‘consequences’ idea into him the last two weeks and it seems to work).

So when we arrived at the restaurant and the owner greeted me, shaking my hand, I almost burst out laughing when Luke, standing ramrod straight, also stuck his arm straight out for a shake. Bless his heart!

We had a full (although brisk) meal. Onion Soup and a salad for starters. I had lamb for a main, pasta for Ling. Luke had Quiche Lorraine. Then promised desserts, Luke’s a chocolate mousse.

He really did quite well I must admit — far above minimum expectations, and certainly nothing like worst-case fears. I was filming him with his mousse when he finished his raspberries and decided he needed some more.

I haven’t read much in the last twelve months. While on the plane, and hanging out here in HCMC, I devoured (was devoured by?) Anthony Swofford’s fiction novel “Exit A.” Ouch. Haven’t read such an affecting book in a very long time. Sounds (very) goofy, but it felt like I was reading a combination of Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility series and a Haruki Murakami novel without the psychedelic element.

It was not at all what I expected, given the book cover blurb, but I am beyond pleased with the result.

Luke wanted a French Cuff’d shirt. So while I was at Tailor Dzung getting some shirts and more Hannibal suits, Luke chose some tasteful purple egyptian cotton fabric and was fitted for his own french cuff’d shirt.

Getting measured

Hungarian Embassy

US Embassy, HCMC, Vietnam

Where the hell is the antenna farm!?!?

Luke and I went swimming today. The pool puts us close to the roof of the embassy. What an anemic collection of antennae.

There was one loop antenna. Probably 20″ in diameter. I couldn’t even see that it had any sort of capacitor tuning coil in its base like a good loop would.

US Embassy’s Loop Antenna

Loop antenna of the Algerian embassy in London

The rest of the antenna “farm”

I don’t know what it means. Either the embassy is toothless and nothing goes on there or communications technology is so advanced and miniaturized now that this replaces the marvelous old embassy farms of the Cold War.

Revised annotation

Ooops, I made a mistake. I didn’t realize that the big building on the right was also part of the embassy. (duh) It DOES have more antennae, but nothing at all exciting. There is a lot of airconditioning tonnage on the roof…it’s more fun to imagine that suggest acres of subeterranean crypto gear underneath.

VIP Travel

Originally uploaded by karavshin.

We’re in Ho Chi Minh city doing nothing in particular. It’s only a two-hour flight, and things are cheap, so we’re just bumming around. Got here in the afternoon, went for lunch at Quan An Ngon and then walked back to the hotel for a swim (Luke continues to become bolder) and then a late tea time before milk, stories, and bed.

Nothing major planned. Will order some fresh shirts to replenish my stock of stained dress shirts, and perhaps a jacket or something. Luke wants to wear cufflinks like me, so we will get him a shirt with french cuffs for fun. His arms are so short, the dimensions of the cuff:sleeve should be quite funny.

General weather here is scarcely different from Singapore. More overcast today, and perhaps a bit cooler, but pretty much shorts and shirt country.

Luke was hyper and having a fantastic time today. His brain is going about 100mph lately. He’s been playing and swimming so much, he’s developed a slight tan. Hasn’t been sunburned. Hopefully that means he has the asian resistance to equatorial sun, unlike his pasty father.

Really very little else to report. I’m just screwing off and taking it easy. Something different from my last week, which was actually quite packed between Luke, many errands, RC stuff, and building Le Chacal. If I go to bed at 11pm today, I’ll feel it’s mission accomplished.

I heard a rumor that Shannon had declared ‘Crafty Christmas‘ for 2008.

Then I realized that she’s been talking an awful lot about combing her dog, Nico.

I for one am glad I live on the Equator, where it is 80°F year-round and I have no need for cold weather clothing.

Aunt Mary, on the other hand, is trapped in a drafty old country-farmhouse. I am sure she could use that sweater Shannon must be working on.

Yubari melon and a random (?) apple

I love the classic Japanese understatement:

The Coal Mining Museum was established with considerable contributions from public funds and is a conversion of an old coal complex. At first the Museum seemed to be successful in attracting tourists including family groups. It now seems that this was at some cost and the budget deficits of Yubari city has meant that the city is officially in financial reconstruction.

But it’s not all a joke. Outside a desert highway in Nevada, when is the last time you could travel a 100km and see no stores or gas stations?

And of course it’s all documented in thorough, accurate Japanese style. I’m ready for my bike to be done!!

Today was a potentially dicey day. I had to miter the top tube, which connects the headtube and the seattube. It has to be done with good precision, otherwise the steering geometry of the bike becomes goofy. To put 1° in perspective… the range of almost all bikes’ head tube angle (from country cruisers to velodrome bikes) is 70° to 74°. So a one degree screw up is meaningful.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

We did a lot of double-check measuring, scoring lines, and calibrating the jig. Then I spent an hour mitering the joint. I had mark lines I was working against, plus I was fitting for a good miter. Thankfully I had the presence of mind to slow down for a moment and think, “is there any way to doublecheck what I’m doing, rather than blindly filing for the perfectly flush miter?”

Of course there was, to measure the actual distance on the tube. Whew. 569mm on the top side of the tube, just like it should be. Any more mitering, and it would have been too short. Glad I did that cross check. Sulaiman and I went through some more checks and confirmed it should come in OK. When I am back from Vietnam on Tuesday, I’ll finish up some fine touch on the miter, and everything should fold together flushly and accurately.

When I started the mitering job today, I had a good bit of surplus meat to chew off the end of the pipe. Grinding it would be slow and wasteful. My thought was to cut off some bits with a hacksaw. Sulaiman’s ideas was to use his set of tin snips. Yes, set of tin snips. There is a left handed set and a right handed set. The difference? Depending which set you use determines which side of the cut stays unmolested and which side gets the fury of a pair of metal-cutting scissors cutting the steel. I was (1) amazed by the force these things could lever (2) amazed how clean it leaves the blessed side. I remember Dad’s set of tin snips as being ambidextrous, taking frustratingly tiny bites, and (to me) being mostly useless.