New boots all around

Since I’d just bought a new set of black shoes and a new set of sneakers, I guess the FOSTFLG Beastie decided that it wanted some too. I stopped at the bottom of our street on my way home from a ride to have a quick glance at a garage sale. I toddled around the sale, then came back out to the front again and had a yarn with the proprietor, and towards the end of this, the front tube popped and released a lot of air around the valve, psssshooo, sending the tyre dead flat in about three seconds.

Since the tyres on FOSTFLG are old and perished, I bought a new set and new tubes, then pulled the old one off, but I can’t see the hole. The air was definitely coming out from around the valve, not through it, and very quickly, but there’s not the obvious hole I expected, even after pumping it up a bit. I checked my recent patch very carefully, and that’s still nicely sealed all around.

The new tyre is a Dunlop MTB design rather than an MTB-ish road tyre, and wants to be inflated to 40PSI instead of 50. We’ll see how it goes later today, and maybe then swap the back one as well, which has shown no signs of stress but is now quite worn.

That will make $10 for bike, $30 for lights, $50 for tyres and tubes so far. Perhaps I should spend a little more on an odometer so I can calculate the $/km compared with a car.

I also grabbed a purple and black femme-styled $10 MTB which needed a new stand, a little air and some oil, and a $5 child-sized bike which I haven’t looked at too closely yet but seems to be about the same (except that it came with a fairly recently replaced stand). It will need trainer wheels if Xan is to ride it.

Comments

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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