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. 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I often flow with traffic keeping a low key, and cluck-cluck people who do dumb a-hole driving stunts around me. Phoenix (and SE Phoenix) drivers rarely fail to amuse me. But once in a while, I get an itch, and to scratch it, I need to drive like an a-hole. Honestly, it can be fun, as long as you do it in limited doses, and take care to not be near Johnny Law when you break free. Last night was...