Rule 1: never tempt fate

You know how I mentioned FOSTFLG’s back tyre having never shown any sign of stress? Well today it took one ~~bullet~~thorn too many and now has a slow leak.

Oh, well. Since I bought a replacement, all it means is that now I have to replace it tomorrow. Still, ’tis spooky to have it start crapping out basically the instant I mention how flawlessly it’s been performing.

The new front tyre is as hard at 40PSI as the old one was at 50. I guess that this century has better tyre technology than last.

Some years ago when I was postie for Mount Barker, I discovered that not only did made-in-China Cheng Shin brand tyres cost half as much as “brand name” tyres, they gripped better, lasted roughly three times as long and were less susceptible to punctures. I have no idea how well they perform at 160k since I only ever got the postie bike up to 100k (downhill, downwind, on smooth bitumen and lying flat along the tank, although others have done better, some of them remarkably so). I haven’t seen any Cheng Shin cycle tyres yet but I’ll be keeping an eye out.

Comments

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.

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...

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

Search This Blog