Tralfaz

Author: geoffand

  • Bad Luck – Guitar

    Bad Luck – Guitar

    Sometimes you just can’t catch a break. This one involves music.

    Over the weekend, I fired up the guitar and did some warm ups. Then I tried what I had tried 1000 times before. Alternate picking. The 999 times before it sucked. I couldn’t get my right hand and left hand synchronized, and I was over-thinking the right hand motions, screwing it all up.

    Last weekend? It clicked. It flowed, the licks rolled off fluid, and smoothly. Not Paul Gilbert smooth, but definitely a breakthrough.

    Of course, now my arthritis has acted up, and I can’t play at all.

    Why the hell couldn’t I have had this breakthrough 20 years ago?

    What’s next, a breakthrough in sweep picking?

  • Product Review – Wahoo Fitness Cycling sensors

    I grew up bicycling, and returned to it semi seriously many times. Gear is important, and the changes in gear have been stunning. I remember my first good road bike, splurging for clipless shoes and pedals. My first cycling computer. A tiny Cateye thing. Worked great, put several thousand miles on it.

    Fast forward to today. Cycling computers are so 1990's. There are still dedicated cycling computers, with Garmin making some strong contenders.

    However, the competition from a good smartphone is fierce. Built in GPS, accelerometers, mapping, and an always on internet connection combine to make it formidable. However, the smartphone's achilles heel is not having sensors for wheel speed, cadence, and heart rate.

    No more is that an issue. Wahoo Fitness makes a line of cadence, speed sensors, heart rate sensors, and even a really cool device that mounts on the handlebars and mirrors what their app is displaying, so you don't have to keep the phone on your handlebars.

    I currently have the Heart Rate sensor and the Speed and Cadence sensor. They both connect via Bluetooth, and are compatible with several tracker applications on your phone.

    Connecting the sensors is easy, they pair painlessly, and are recognized in both the Wahoo Fitness tracker application, as well as in the Strava application. Several others are listed, but these are the two I use.

    It is a huge advantage to track these signals. As a heart attack survivor, it is doubly helpful to track my heart rate. It is good to monitor ramp rates, peak effort, and other statistics that are important to track.

    There is a downside though. The heart rate monitor sensor is a battery hog. I have yet to get more than 2 months out of a fresh CR2032 battery. My old Polar heart rate monitor went at least 9 months of nearly daily jogging.

    Still, it is a good time to be a cyclist.

  • The Long Slog of Getting back into Shape

    Every so often I get tired of be a fat slob, and need to get back into shape. This time, months of moving, living in a crappy apartment, and high stress at work has lead to me, uh, putting on a few pounds. When the 40″ waist jeans stopped fitting, and the 42″ pants were getting snug, it was time to do something.

    So, I fired up the diet tracker, started counting calories, and exercising regularly.

    It is amazing how difficult it can be to get in the groove. About 3 weeks ago, I started cycling again, I got the mountain bike out and started humping it. First getting out on the drainage canals in the Santa Teresa foothills, it was a good mellow, and very flat ride. After 3 or 4 of these, I was getting bored.

    I tossed in a few longer rides, mostly road. Better, but still not satisfying. I mean, why ride a mountain bike if you are just doing flat stuff, right?

    So I have started grinding it out in Santa Teresa Park. A kick ass climb to get there (up Bernal road) a real grueling ride. Then some trails including some climbs and downhills. Good single-track, enough to challenge, but not killer.

    Today was my 3rd trip up, and I made it to the stop sign before I needed to pause. I am looking forward to finally being able to clear it to the top without stopping. Maybe another week.

    If you are interested, you can follow me on Strava.

    And now I am down almost 6 pounds in a week. Sadly, I am sure that is mostly water weight.

    A long way to go, but it feels good to start

  • Nextdoor – NIMBY to the max

    When we moved to the new neighborhood, one of our new neighbors invited us to this neighborhood social media thing called “NextDoor“. Like Facebook, but instead of friends, it is your neighbors, and broken into logical groupings like small neighborhoods.

    We are in Santa Teresa-Oak Grove, and it has a hundred or so houses in it. It is surrounded by 8 near neighbors. Seems good so far.

    You can post classifieds, reviews of trades people, and discuss crimes or security issues. Still all good.

    However, it seems to lead to a bunch of “us vs. them” parochialism, and some downright NIMBY bullshit.

    Two examples:

    • 4th of July – This last 4th of July it was like a war zone. Since all the county is a “no fireworks” zone, all are illegal. So, if you are going to break the law, do it with the really good shit. Mortars, Roman Candles, M80’s and a lot more.

      It was a fucking war zone. The jackasses down the street had firecrackers that were so powerful that it set off all the car alarms on the block. The people behind us had almost professional grade mortars and sky bursters. Insane.

      At a local park, it was apparent that two groups of revelers were firing these serious fireworks at each other.

      On NextDoor? Two factions, the dudes who thought it was awesome how people were celebrating their freedom buy blowing off thousands of dollars of fireworks, and the people who thought that the poor child who was severely burned in an accident, and the house that burned down while the neighbors kept lighting the night sky up.

      I expect this sort of callousness in Arizona, but not in the Bay Area.

       

    • Homeless in the underpass – the unfortunate situation in the bay area is that in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the number of displaced families who are reduced to urban camping is pretty high. One poster on the NextDoor commented that it was disgraceful, and that we should all call our supervisor to have them rousted.

      This encampment you really had to know where to look, and to crane your neck to see them. Yes, an eyesore, but alas, there isn’t a lot you can do.

      The postings were about 5-1 in favor of having the police roust them, and remove their makeshift camp. I was stunned that it took almost 20 replies before someone said that the last time the rousted them, it just moved them to the sidewalks in the neighborhood, and made them more visible.

      I am more sanguine. These are people who by and large are victims of their circumstances. The posters who were certain that there were plenty of beds in shelters for these people are living in a fantasy world. That the county and city had plenty of funds to help all these people.

      I wonder what fucking world they are living in. When there are never more than three police officers patrolling our 8 square mile district due to funding limitations, clearly there isn’t excess funds for the homeless.

      I suspect many of these negative commenters are good church going Christians who are not living the word. (judging by the number of NOTW decals I see on cars). Where is the compassion for the fellow man?

       

    In short, while I like the idea of NextDoor, I am not sure I want to see that much of the ugliness of my neighbors.

    Don’t even get me started on the venting about the apartment complexes being built off of Cottle road. The hyperventilating there is off the fucking hook.

    Like everywhere, NIMBY rules, and they are happy to have change as long as it is invisible and doesn’t affect them.

  • Mail Theft

    A few months ago, we moved into a new (for us at least) house in South San Jose. After a bit (ok, a LOT) of work it was very home-y. One of the charms was that instead of a central mailbox shared by a block of residents, the mail delivery is personalized here. The carrier walks it up to your door.

    How quaint.

    Last Friday, late afternoon, I hear the doorbell ring. I opened the door to see a Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Deputy on my stoop.

    After madly thinking what the hell I did to draw his attention, he proceeded to tell me that they apprehended an individual who had stolen our mail, in particular, those “convenience” checks sent by your credit card company.

    One of the checks had been torn off. This dirtbag had either passed it off, or tried to pass it off.

    Motherfucker. So now I have to cancel that card, and have a fraud alert on my account (fortunately, it hadn’t cleared).

    Apparently this guy had some other lady’s checkbook, and had written a check to himself for cash, as well as meth and heroin in his possession.

  • 9 months of the Specialized Crave

    specialized-crave-comp-29I have been living with a 2015 Specialized Crave Expert since last fall. As the move is complete, and other zaniness of life is gone, I am spending more time in the saddle.

    My prior reviews have covered the hardware and the first few months of riding. With a couple hundred more miles in the saddle I can offer some more comments.

    Brakes

    While I love the juice disc brakes, they are definitely not top shelf. They work, but after a long descent, they heat up and make a lot of dragging noise. Annoying, but not tragic. I have not had to bleed them. The pads are still in good shape.

    One day I will upgrade the brakes. Magura or Deore XT will get the nod, but not today.

    Wheels

    The Specialized Stout wheels have held up well. Since I am in that 235# – 250# class (chubby buddy) they take plenty of abuse. Still true, no issues at all.

    Tires

    Still on the stock tires, and I can say with authority that they suck for this hardpack clay/scree covered trails. They just don’t work here.

    I will be replacing them shortly.

    Chain

    An unsung component, the chain, can make a huge difference. Specialized uses a KMC chain stock, and it leads to a smooth shifting, smooth riding drivetrain. I have cleaned and re-lubed it a few times now, and it is still crisp, and clean shifting.

    For lube, I use Purple Extreme, frankly a departure for me. So far it is long lived, and not too dirty, so I will keep using it. I used to be a White Lightning aficionado, but that can be a bit messy, and it needs very frequent application.

    Saddle

    Some people love the standard Specialized saddle. I am not one of them. That thing tore up my crotch something wicked.

    I replaced it with a Terry Fly Ti, and have been very satisfied. Terry is best known for their women’s saddles, but they also make saddles for men, and I now have the Fly Titanium on both my mountain and road bike.

    Totally worth the $119 upgrade.

    Summary

    The Crave is a solid performer, living up to its reputation as a solid hardtail mountain bike. It is not perfect, but the components Specialized pulled out of their parts bins make for a solid performing, reliable, and well performing bike.

    I am looking to future upgrades for it, probably things like replacing the bars with carbon fiber, upgrading the brakes (at least the front brake), and ditching the sad tires that it came with. Until then, I will continue to ride the wheels off of it.

  • End of an Era – Passing the Torch

    For the last three and a half years, I have had the pleasure of running the Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption web page. I was there at the beginning when Diana Hansen, then acting as the Communications Director, hosted us volunteers in her house, to discuss the public facing image of the brand spanking new organization.

    There were 6 or 7 of us in the room, and we were discussing the establishment of our social media presence. I volunteered to begin the creation of the website, and to assist with the other bits and pieces.

    I could have not known that it would last almost three and a half years.

    On that fateful night, we decided to use an open source CMS, Joomla! as the desire was to have a largely static web page, and to have a system that could be used by the other volunteers to create and edit content (oh, how naive I was), and the other two CMS options, WordPress and Drupal, were either too “blog” like or much much overkill.

    So a quick site was created, while in the background, I created the Joomla! site for the long haul solution.

    After a lot of hammering and shaping, the site came together, the best that a design by commitee could accomplish, and it went live in early June 2012.

    Not too surprising, the Joomla backend interface was a bit daunting for the casual volunteers to work with (I think one volunteer worked on it and did like three whole pages) so I setup front end form tools to allow the entry and maintenance of things like available hounds, membership lists, and the like.

    Over the years I got adept at handling the requests for changes in the supposedly static front page (turns out that wasn’t as important as we originally thought).

    Life changes

    In the interim, I took a new job, moved first to Phoenix, then to San Jose, so I became a lot busier. I still kept up the website, maintaining it, fixing it, and adding/adjusting what was requested by the Communications and board.

    However, in late 2014, the version of Joomla! we were using went end of life. The daunting task of migrating to a new version (version 3) and with it, re-doing all the plugins and controls was beyond my ability to achieve.

    So, when the email came in late June that the board, working with a new volunteer (who is now the Communications Director,) had been working on a replacement, it was a major relief. I was unsure how much time I could put into a new website, and knowing what I put into the original one, I expected it to be measured in the hundreds of hours, it was a welcome notice.

    Sidebar: I think the President was worried that I would be offended, or put off by their side project. The email was a bit cautious, trying not to offend me. Ha! I am in Marketing, I can take a lot of offending.

    The last week or so, I have helped with the final touches to the website. The new site is WordPress, which has matured greatly in the last 3 years, and it looks incredible. I see many touches of my original designs, so I know that my trailblazing set a standard.

    Friday night, July 3rd, I pulled down the old Joomla! site, archived it for posterity, and moved the new WordPress site to the hosting.

    It is up, it is live, and it looks like the new owner is well capable of carrying the torch.

    Best of luck!

  • Cursing Apple – trying to lose data

    My old MacBook Pro has seen better days. For far too long it has been my “main” home computer. All my photos, music and videos were stored there. However, with iTunes Match (and now the new streaming service), and the moving of all my photos out from under Aperture to Photos (grrrr) and more importantly, to Adobe Lightroom, there isn’t much need for a massive system anymore.

    Starting in OS-X 10.8, Apple made available the possibility of making a fusion drive, a blend of SSD and spinning disk storage. As this laptop has both a traditional disk, and an SSD, I have long wanted to do it. However, it would be majorly disruptive, so I held off.

    Now that much of the content serving has moved off local storage and armed with a fresh, complete time machine backup, I decided to take the plunge.

    What I was unprepared for was how difficult it would be to accomplish.

    Step 1 – create the Core Storage filesystem

    This was not trivial. Partly my fault, I had the second drive set for all the user data, and it automounted on boot. Back in early 2012, this was the best way to setup a SSD/Spinning disk combo. It required some CLI hoo-doo, but once done, it rocked.

    However, it made this step difficult.

    I first copied the boot disk to an external (thanks to the wonderful Carbon Copy Cloner, software that is easy to use, and creates a bootable copy.

    Alas, this wasn’t so easy. Yes, I created a bootable copy, and was able to boot from it, but it still automounted the spinning disk, so I was unable to setup the new Core Storage spanned disk.

    I tried to re-install OS-X from the recovery partition. This failed too.

    Turns out that Apple does a really good job of preventing you from losing data from a dumb mistake. If there is a valid file system, with files on it, the installer goes to heroic efforts to not lose that data.

    Admirable, and helpful for most unsophisticated users, but maddening to me, who actually DID want to blow that data away.

    grrrr

    I ended up “installing” OS-X on an external, booting from that external, and then using diskutil to wipe both drives.

    Even that wasn’t easy. I had to delete partitions, recreate them, and delete them again to get it setup.

    nothing is easy

    Creating the spanned core storage “disk” (aka Fusion drive) was trivial, and done from the terminal.

    Making and partitioning it was about a 5 minute process. After dinking around, making two carbon copies, reinstalling the OS twice, and finally getting to a point to install on my new fusion drive. Total time: 1.5 days (ok, I did bike, and do some other things while I was waiting for cloning and installs to complete)

    I now have a MacBook Pro, running 10.10.4 with a 256G SSD/750G spinning disk Fusion drive, and not much else on it. I will out it through its paces, but it is just a backup computer now.

    Summary

    I have been a hard-core Apple fan for a long time now, but this was a rather frustrating process. In the Windows world, it is truly trivial and easy to wipe out your drive and start from fresh. I have done it at least 100 times. since the early 1990’s (yeah, I am an old fart)

    Apple makes that difficult to accomplish. Probably with good reason, as most people would be screaming at the Genius Bar if they had made it too easy to lose all your data. So they take a “preserve the status quo at all costs” approach. Commendable. Maddening too.

    I stumbled around, and because I was more familiar with how to accomplish this task in Windows (wipe and reinstall) I had more difficulty than I should have. C’est la Vie.

  • Medium Format Camera

    I have long been a bit of a photography bug for almost all my life. I started early in High School with a photography class, and have been a bit of a shutterbug since.

    Mostly 35mm film and now digital, I always was envious of the medium format cameras.

    About 10 years ago, when DSLR’s were booming, you could pick up a quality medium format camera for a song on E-Bay. A nice Hasselblad with a solid lens for less than $400. Yeah, that sweet of a deal.

    Then it got stupid, with them running for nearly the same as when they were new. So I dropped the idea.

    Recently though, the bug has bitten. Fortunately the renaissance of the prices has ebbed, and you can once again get a good solid camera for $400.

    You can get a variety of film in 120 format, from good B&W to color and slide film, so that wouldn’t be an issue, and processing is still widely available from specialty shops.

    Will I? I don’t know. But it is tempting. What I can be certain of is that I will not be buying a digital back. They seem to start at about $27K.

    (My preference would be a Mamiya 645 with a waist lever viewfinder)

  • I’m back from a 3 week break from Facebook

    A little over three weeks ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. No particular reason, but not the first time.

    However, since my last “vacation” in 2009, a lot has changed, and not being part of the Facebook community was difficult.

    There is a frightening number of applications and websites that don’t work well if you are not associated with a Facebook account. Everything seems to want to either connect or authenticate via Facebook. Strava, Spotify, and others seem somewhat “lost” if you are not connected.

    My blog, Tralfaz (here, dummy) dropped by at least a third in daily viewings. The irony is that when I look in google analytics for traffic sources, Facebook is almost non-existent in sources, but the trends are clear for traffic. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook does some anonymization to deny Google any leverage from their traffic.)

    I have several pages that I admin, and some of them I have a “secondary” account to log in with. It is amazing how lousy the Facebook experience is with < 10 friends.

    It took a full week for the first friend to hunt me down. I was a bit surprised it took so long, but since I didn’t do a “rage quit” and announce my deactivation, I guess it is cool that some people missed me enough to try to hunt me down.

    The last time I took a break, I lasted 9 months. However, this time, 3 weeks was a struggle. I am disappointed that I folded so fast, but it is a testament to how essential Facebook has become in the last 6 years. It is the principal vehicle that more than casual acquaintances use to keep in touch. It is how I talk to my siblings, and some of my friends there are far closer than any of my IRL friends I have had forever. Powerful and frightening all at the same time.