Tralfaz

Author: geoffand

  • Google’s “All Access” vs. Spotify Round 1

    I have written in the past about the music “locker” services. I have been a user of Amazon, Google’s Play, and Apple’s iTunes Match.

    But I have actually gone to using Spotify pretty much across the board. They have a great library, very deep, and lots of great genre’s to experiment with and explore. Since my work laptop has limited free space, I have pretty much resigned myself to streaming.

    I joined spotify when they came to the US, and I liked it.  I didn’t like the ads and the really bad recommendations they made (I am pretty sure I only listen to a top 40 song by accident), but the streaming was solid, and they had a lot of music on tap.  THe recently got “Metallica” in their inventory. Of course, I pay the $9.95 a month to get the premium service. Syncing files to my iPhone, and their application on my PC and Mac work quite well, with very few glitches.

    Apple’s iTunes Match was a distant second. Not on my mac, but on my PC, the iTunes application pretty much sucks donkey balls. Slow, resource heavy, and when I was streaming music, there was lots of stuttering and dead spaces. Groan.  Of course, I have all my music in the Google Play service. But their streaming, while better than Apple was still third rate compared to Spotify.

    Now Google has launched their “All Access” streaming service for about the same price as Spotify premium. I signed up today, and will exercise it for the full 30 days before deciding whether to drop it or Spotify.

    So far, it has been pretty good, and it does mix in items from my collection that are not licensed for streaming (Led Zeppelin, and Paul Gilbert are two I note.) But a downside is that it runs in the browser.  I may be a luddite, but I prefer it to be a sticky application (like spotify), and not something that will cut off if I have to quit Chrome (which happens with too much regularity).

    I will report back a few times to share how the test goes.

  • My ride – 2002 Lemond Buenos Aires

    Since I regaled people with the drama about failing wheels, and buying a new wheelset, I thought I would spend a little time talking about my current road bike.

    The Lemond Buenos Aires, a reynolds 853 steel frame that remains a joy to ride
    The Lemond Buenos Aires, a reynolds 853 steel frame that remains a joy to ride

    It is a 2002 vintage Lemond Buenos Aires. Made by Trek, is is a steel tube framed bike with a carbon fork. I bought it in 2002 for ~ $1200 new (I don’t recall the actual price). It was the most expensive road bike I have ever owned, but I have greatly enjoyed it. The frame has a comfortable geometry well suited for a hobbyist rider. It is neither a twitchy race bike, nor a special purpose bike (read up on what makes a good “triathalon” bike), it has served me well.  It came with a mixed component set (more on that later) that was mostly Shimano Ultegra, and the Trek made Bontrager wheels.

    I always figured that the wheels would be the weakest link in the bike, and I was not much wrong. However, while they lasted they stayed remarkably true, and needed very little maintenance. Of course, over 11 years I probably put 6,000 + miles on it (as logged on my cycle computer) including many miles climbing hills and racing down the other side. Add into that fact that I have been north of 200#’s for most of the time I have ridden it, it is not surprising that there were hairline stress fractures on the wheels.

    As I mentioned, I am not surprised that I had to change the wheels, but more amazed at how long they lasted. I put a lot of good, hard miles on them, and they were the lowest maintenance road wheels I have ever owned.  But the mixed components of the Shimano group was the first failure.  The outward facing components were all proper Ultegra, shifters, brakes, crankset (the hubs were the Ritchey hubs built into the Bontrager wheels). But the one “hidden” component, the bottom bracket, was the economizing point. It came with the bottom end Tiara bottom bracket that after 3 years or so developed a really annoying “click”, particularly when you were pressing hard on the pedals.  I ended up replacing it with an ultegra bottom bracket, and it has been glass smooth ever since.

    I was a bit concerned about whether I spent too much to get it back on the road.  After all, a 11 year old bike that was originally only $1,200 new, adding $500 of wheels to the bike seemed a bit risky. However, a little searching and reading on the web, and apparently that era Lemonds are well regarded, and the Buenos AIres in particular which has the Reynolds 853 stainless tube set are prized for the comfortable, ride, and how well it handles.  Apparently “good to nice” condition versions still fetch up to $500 on the secondary market. Clearly, I have a good frame, and now with the new wheels, I am good to go for another decade.

    While I can’t help but drool at the higher end bikes at the shop, all the carbon, and exotics, for my needs and purposes (to ride and stay in shape), I think my Lemond Buenos Aires will keep me riding in style.

  • My first encounter with a Retina MacBook Pro

    The other night, after quaffing a couple fine Czech style pilsners at Gordon Birsch (highly recommended, I might add), I wandered the 100 or so feet to the Gilbert Apple Store.  I am usually cautious at an apple store, because sometimes reason evades me and I find myself whipping out my plastic to upgrade to a new computer.

    I have studiously avoided getting up close and personal with a retina display MBP, simply because I figured I would “have to have one” and then I would be $2700 poorer (I would want the bigger SSD, and the 16G ram.) Having seen one, and played with it for a little while, I can say that they are really nice. Well put together, and very very snappy.  They had one on display wit the 16G ram and the 512G SSD, loaded out the way I would like.  Applications loaded almost instantly, and it was super responsive.  The Retina display was gorgeous, but not “must have”.  I loved the thin-ness and the lightness of it.  The fact that it has no optical drive is not a detriment (my current MBP has a SSD in the disk bay, and a 750G 7200RPM spinning rust disk where the DVD drive would be).

    It was nice, and a fully loaded system would do me well, but alas, I don’t feel the burning need to replace my current MBP.  With the SSD + spinning disk, it has plenty of oomph, and it has been upgraded to 16G ram, so it works pretty nice.

    So call it a strong case of the “likes” on the Retina MBP, but not a “gotta have it”. Of course I am talking about the 15″ version.  I just find the 13″ MBP’s to have too little screen real estate.

  • An expensive day – Bicycling Woes

    Lately, I have been pretty jazzed that my feet have allowed me to begin bicycling again. For the longest time, my plantar fasciitis pretty much put the kabosh on cycling. But about a month ago I gave it another whirl, and it was not painful. Woo hoo, I love to cycle, and it would be great to get back on the saddle regularly again.

    Tucson had better riding, lots of hills, and good routes to ride. Moving to Chandler has been a little different. While there aren’t easy access to mountain roads, we do have well groomed and paved trails on the irrigation canals. From my house, it is about 2 miles to where the canal trail crosses Chandler boulevard, and from there you could go 8+ miles to the end of the trail. Good riding, slight uphill all way. 21 to 22 miles out and back.  Good ride, easy, and pretty safe.

    This AM, I got my bike down from the hooks, and pumped up the tires. I noticed that the rear wheel was a little out of true. Not a big deal, so I grabbed my spoke wrench and put it to the nipple. “Ting” the nipple broke.  Shoot. No ride today, so I geared up and went walking. After the walk, I pulled the wheel off, removed the tire and headed to the local bike shop.

    We moved here last July, so we are still hunting around for all the usual haunts (good chinese, mexican, and american food, bike shops, the Apple store, where to get the best breakfast. Yada yada) so we stumbled into a shop in Gilbert called “Global Bikes”. I took my wheel there to see if they could fix it. Since it was the nipple that disintegrated, it would be an easy fix (they would have had to remove the cassette to replace the spoke). So I rummaged around for 15 minutes.

    The tech found me in the mountain bike area, and told me that he had fixed it. But he noticed that the rim had stress fractures near all the spoke holes. Yikes. It was pretty easy to see them, and I was naturally concerned. Global Bikes isn’t a Trek dealer (the bike is a 2001 Lemond Buenos Aires, and it had the trek made Bontrager wheels), but a couple of the guys there thought that Trek might warranty the wheel. I was skeptical that they would consider replacing a wheel from a bike that was 12 years old, but they said that they might.

    So, off to A1 Bikes, the nearest Trek Authorized dealer. Fortunately it was only 5 minutes away. So I headed over and walked back to the service desk, and explained that there were lots of stress cracks in the rim, and would it be possible to warranty it. He said that no, as it was 12 years old, and clearly I had ridden it (a lot, I will attest to), and I am not a svelte guy, so I am sure I put a lot of stress on the wheel, so I wasn’t too surprised.

    I asked what he recommended, and he said: “Well, you can ride on it, keeping an eye on how true the wheel was. That it would become difficult to keep it trued, and then it would be time to replace it”. I was flabbergasted. He was recommending I continue to use a wheel that is showing extensive stress fatigue, and early failure signs. Sigh.

    So, back to Global Bikes (for the record, these guys are awesome), and I picked up a set of wheels, Fulcrum Racing wheels, and lightened my wallet by $500+.

    The bike is back together, cleaned up, and ready to ride in the morning.

  • Making things too difficult – RasPi WiFi setup

    Well, sometimes I am an idiot.  I jumped through major league hoops that were totally unnecessary in getting my WiFi dongle to connect with my Wireless router. I looked for help on the web, Found a lot of guidelines that were a bit involved, but not atrocious.

    So I started doing what they asked. Got my system plugged into the router via ethernet cable.  Update the Raspbian install, check for chipsets, add drivers.

    But it was confusing, because it said all this stuff had been done.

    Finally, I looked at the desktop in the X-Window window manager, and “fuck me, there is an icon for WiFi Config” right there on the desktop.

    Shit, 2 minutes later, I am connected, got an IP address, and am all set.

    That was hard. But I am posting this from the minimal browser in the system, and all is well.

    Having fun doing some hobbyist hacking around in linux.

  • Next up on the Raspberry Pi

    Last week, I wrote about how I on a lark bought one of the raspberry pi single board computers. The first round of goodies for it was a SD card (to write the OS to and boot from), and a HDMI cable to connect it to my Samsung monitor.  Got it fired up and all was cool.  Of course, it sitting naked on my CSS reference book was a bit clunky, so back to Amazon I go.

    Now it is in a clear plastic case, and I have a dedicated power supply for it.  I also have a WiFI dongle to get it on the internet, and ready to do more heavy lifting. I began to work my way through a Python tutorial, and will continue that this weekend.

    Next up, I am going to have to move my kit to the living room for a couple hours.  Alas, to get the Linux install updated, and to add the correct kernel modules for the WiFi dongle, I need to be on the internet, and that is where the router is. Oh well, but after that, I should be good to go.

    I am still impressed with what comes on this little board for a mere $35.00. I bought it to bring back memories of my early computer experiences, an 8-bit Atari system, but this has so much more, including internet, and HD video output.  I remember endlessly fiddling to get a decent serial port (the 850 module) and a modem to connect to the outside world (there was no private internet at that time), living with composite video out on a mediocre CRT display. Living with 48K of memory (actually, that was a luxury), writing small assembly language adjuncts to speed up Basic or Basic XL (OSS System software ROCKED), and running a full featured BBS system.

    I still have an old Atari (some of its games are still very playable), but I don’t break it out often, because it is so painful to setup, so this will be my “toy” for now.

    But what will I do with it in the long term?  Media center? MAME cabinet? Do some robotics?  Maybe build a weather monitoring system?  Hoo boy, it will be fun.

    Next post will have pictures, I promise.

  • Weight loss update – My quest to not be a person of Walmart

    Another boring post, but hey, it helps me keep track. In 3 & 1/2 weeks, I have lost 13+ pounds.  The ‘+’ means that I am oh so close to breaking through a plateau that I can hardly wait.

    Plateaus are something that just happen, and anyone who has done serious dieting knows that they really suck. But today, I was flirting with 218#’s.  Woot!

    The added bonus is that clothes that were comfortable 2 years ago are wearable again. It’s like getting a new wardrobe. Sadly, I have plenty in the closet to follow me back below 200#’s.

  • Latest toy: Raspberry Pi

    On Tuesday, I was reading a story on The Economist about the Raspberry Pi.  It certainly spawned the nostalgic sense in the Babbage editor, and it drove me to make an impulse purchase.

    For $35, you get a pretty complete single board, miniature computer. about 2.5 by 4 inches, it packs in a pretty powerful package. Based on a Broadcom SoC with both an ARM core and a GPU, it comes with 512M ram, an SD card for main storage (not included), 2 USB 2.0 ports, audio, HDMI and an ethernet port. I ordered up a SD card from Amazon, downloaded a linux image, and waited for the unit to arrive.

    Surprisingly quickly, it was in my mailbox. Simple to setup, and straightforward to use, it was a snap to get it going, and it detected and drives my 24″ LCD monitor just fine.

    It does scratch the itch of a very basic computer, harkening back to a simpler time when computers were slow, and rather primitive. I recall my first computer was a 48K Atari 800 (I still keep an Atari 130XE around for grins and giggles), and this is reminiscent of that. So far, I have just started working my way through a Python tutorial, and have ordered another batch of goodies for it (its own power supply, now I share it with my iPad, a clear plastic case, and a “back to the basics” book to learn from, and a WiFI dongle to hook it up to the internet). While I will probably not break out an assembler and learn machine code (like I did back in the day for the 6502 processor systems), I will putter about with Python. Maybe put Octave on it. Who knows.

    I can clearly see myself adding one of the interface cards, and doing some weather monitoring, or water usage monitoring. Perhaps I will build it into a media center for the TV to stream movies to our TV. Or build a MAME cabinet with a Raspberry Pi to run it.

    It is a hoot to play with.

  • Biggest Change

    Last month, we visited my dad to celebrate his 80th birthday. A great accomplishment, and we had a great time with the whole clan together. (It doesn’t hurt that San Diego is a great place to visit ) One question that was asked of my dad was: “What is the biggest change in your lifetime(so far)?”

    I believe it was asked to try to determine what technology (was it the coming of personal computers? Or the increase in access to information that the Internet brought? Or ???), or some societal change (the fall of communism). But the answer was surprising.

    My dad said that the thing that changed the most from his childhood to now was that everything has gotten louder. That it was hard to get to a place of solitude.

    Being that he grew up on a farm in Michigan, starting in the Depression, to where he is today is a pretty remarkable path. From having no indoor plumbing (i.e. the toilet was the outhouse), to modern society there are many new sources of environmental noise. He mentioned one of his pet peeves, the gasoline powered leaf blower. A relatively recent invention, I believe EVERYONE can relate to how it has affected them, from landscapers starting their day at 7:00 AM, to the perpetual drone in a suburban neighborhood.

    I can certainly see his point.

    While I am sure my dad would think that the march of technology advances have been worthy, it is not surprising how he would identify the crush of modern life as the big loss from his past.

  • Why Physics is Awesome

    One common application of the atomic force microscopes that we make is to measure properties of bio-molecules. AFM’s have long been used to image DNA strands, but the more interesting work is when you functionalize the probe, and then try to “pick up” a bio-molecule (like a protein).

    I am working on definition of improvements to our analysis software, and since I know squat about biology, I found a series of lecture notes from UIUC’s Bio Physics course. I am flying through the early lectures, getting the correct mindset, and it dawns on me. Physics is everywhere, and it is always useful.

    In the second lecture, the discussion goes to molecular reactions, and to define the probability of a reaction happening you need to measure the probability of finding a set of constituent molecules in the right state.

    How do you do that? Oh yeah, the Partition Function from statistical mechanics. Bang, suddenly I “get it”.  Of course I took Stat Mech close to 20 years ago, so it is a bit rusty, but the application of the formula is simple enough.

    One more comment. I do not know the lecturer, but from his lecture presentations/notes, I am sure I would like him.

    I don’t know enough to understand the WLC model of protein unfolding, but I will soon.