Concerning items of interest

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Oh, those Swedes.

This looks like a bike Rene Magritte might have dreamed up.



And the guy's site is here.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Presidential Chord


Where was I when this was happening?!? I had no idea G. H. W. Bush was a fan of contemporary art music! I still regret voting for him. Correction - I regret he didn't live up to my expectations. I'm still glad I didn't vote for Kerry.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Jiminy



We have a cricket that lives in our basement. He's a cool cat. Every night he comes out from his hiding spot and chills on the rug in front of the dryer. He doesn't move or make any sounds. Not a chirp. Even if you shout at him or pretend to step on him he just keeps his cool. I sometimes wonder if he's really old and kind of senile now. Maybe when he was younger he would jump around a bunch making noise, being a real hot head. I bet he's got a lot of crazy stories to tell from when he was younger. All sorts of weird stuff with his friends and what not. Stuff that he almost died from maybe, but somehow the immortality of youth saved him. Sometimes if I keep real quiet and get real close I can see his mouth moving. I think he's singing something, but I can't tell what it is. Then I swear he'll wink as if to say, "It's all good, big ugly man dude." And then like a sage he might add something wise like, "Don't sweat the small stuff." He's a cool cat. He's only got one leg.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

No. You look like a juvenile delinquent!


I'm a little confused as to why music videos have continued to be produced after this one was made. After all, it's pretty much the pinnacle of what can be done with the medium. Not only is it totally rockin', but listening to it is a real kick in the pants. I think it not shocking that I would have preferred to name as my most favorite tune the band's other classic Orgasmatron (by the way, not a real person, place, or thing to my knowledge), but said song lacks the philosophical depth found in Killed by Death. Although I do appreciate the laser-green and black, dichromatic color scheme of the Orgasmatron video, I think that Michael Jackson used the green-laser light color to fuller effect in one of my all-time top 5 songs of all time and top fives, Rock With Me. It just goes to show how important a bit of fog can be.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Bent Bike

I picked up this Trek 620 back in St Louis with high hopes to build it up into my main bike. The advantage I saw over my current Trek 400 was mostly the cantilever brakes (more clearance for tires + fenders) and more braze-ons for rack mounting. The nice old lady I bought it from did mention her husband had crashed it once injuring his knee, but the bike was unscathed. OR SO I THOUGHT! Check out the picture and you can see the tubes are slightly bent just past the lugs.
bent

And here is the worst shot I took, but it shows the bottom bulge better than the others:

lower bent

I was utterly disappointed when first I found the lump on the bottom tube. I think I now understand how it feels to one day in the shower discover a strange new lump on a testicle (or breast for all you females). I have to admit the old lady seller likely didn't know about it and didn't purposefully deceive me. But this experience has made me almost resolve to swear off all elderly women entirely!


Lesson to be gleaned here: please tell me in the comments what lesson I should learn. And please make it funny, because I can't be expected to come up with all the comedy all the time. Those of you who know me will surely understand how true that statement is.

On a happier note, I finally got around to fitting a tire in the 400 with the fenders installed. I had to drop down to the 700 x 28 Panaracer Pasela TG tire. I do miss the extra cush of the 700 x 32's but the 28's aren't that bad if the psi is around 75 or 80 instead of over 100. So here's what the 400 looks like now all enfendered.



When I put the fenders on I removed the front rack, but for a while there this bike really looked like a good randoneering bicycle. Someday I hope to do a few brevets, but until then I'll have to live my long-distance dreams vicariously through my sister's marathon training. Go Diana!

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Old Bones


I had a cool conversation with Asher the yesterday. This is how it went.

Conversation with Asher, June 21, 2008

Asher: Daddy, dinosaurs are not real.

Aaron: Actually, dinosaurs are real. They lived a long time ago, but now they are extinct.

The dinosaurs died?

Yes, they died.

How come they died?

Well, they think a giant asteroid from outer space hit the earth and it hit so hard that all the animals died.

And the humans died?

Well, the humans weren't around yet.

We were still in heaven with Heavenly Father?

Yes.

Heavenly Father gave us skin?

Yes.

And bones?

Yes.

What else did Heavenly Father give us?

He gave us our bodies. All of it.

He gave us our bodies?

Yes.

T-rex got off the Earth?

Uh, yes.

And stegosaurus got off the Earth?

Yes.

And mooses got off the Earth?

Well, the mooses weren't around yet.

Oh. (Pause) What was the thing called?

Asteroid?

What color was asteroid?

I don't know, probably brown or black.

I think it was brown.

Okay.

Remember in The Land Before Time there were brown things that killed the dinosaurs?

I guess so.

Yeah, those dinosaurs could sing and dance!

Yes. Okay, good night.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

New Yaw-kers

Well, it's 0-fish-al. We be livin' in NYC, but there's still quite a bit of St Louis to get out of my sistema. Actually we're in NY state. Most folks up here don't have much of an accent of any sort. I've some people up here pronounce the name of our fair city as Rawch-ster instead of the honky way I say it (Raw-chest-ur). I'll work on that.

The house is great. It has central air conditioning and that's pretty much the only thing a house needs in my opinion. But to make it even better we have a garage, a nice basement where I can (theoretically) spend hours and hours tinkering on bikes or whatever else, a huge front and backyard which will commandeer my theoretical bicycle tinkering time in order to care for it.

Orientation starts on Monday, and the closer it gets the more trepidation I have. I know I'm not alone in this, but as a new intern I feel overwhelmed by suddenly being a "doctor" because like almost all interns I've forgotten the majority of what I crammed into my head in medical school. It's a good thing residency programs get a new class of dummies (maybe I should speak for just myself...) every year and I'm sure they know what to do with us. Or at least I sure hope they do. If I can do it without violating any HIPAA regulations I will be sure to post about a few of the more entertaining ways I make a fool of myself in the next year or so. Stay tuned!

Monday, May 26, 2008

Bicycle Fixation - Common Sense

Here is an article about perception, really. Also about how what we see as normal can sound pretty outrageous when placed in a certain context. One of my favorite quotes from the article:

And I thought, if some alien intelligence were to look in on this spectacle, which for us is normal daily life, they would consider us mad.

You'd be hard put to design a system more wasteful of money, natural resources, time and human mental well-being. To add insult to injury, it often even fails to deliver its basic stated purpose: convenient transportation of goods and people from one place to another.


Yes, it is about riding bikes.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

A better way to educate

Forget math and science, the world would be a much better place if this is what our kids learned in school.






Well, apparently the video above is no longer available. Try this similar, though more professional and less ridiculous version of the same Rambo move here:

Friday, May 16, 2008

You down with OSS?

From time to time I get the hair-brained idea to switch from my beloved Apple-made applications like Mail.app and Safari.app to open-source alternatives such as Thunderbird for email and Camino for web browsin'. Well, I recently did it again.

In the past Thunderbird has never worked for me. This time is different though. Leading up to switch Mail.app had really been bothering me. It unexpectedly crashes and quits probably a couple times per week. Also, there is an annoying bug (or is it a feature?) that makes quickly cruising through lots of emails a frustrating ordeal. Basically, after deleting a message the next message becomes the message being actively viewed. If I immediately scroll the newly-appeared message, then the message is automatically (and annoyingly) deselected and the viewing pane goes blank. Then I have to use the danged mouse to reselect the message I had read the first few lines of. It's an annoying bug.

Thunderbird, on the other had, doesn't do this. Also, it's not crashing as often as Mail.app. And maybe it's all in my mind, but it feels "snappier" and more stable or solid. Also, I'm using the side-by-side view and I really like it. I can't seem to find that view in Mail.app.

Mail.app wins for aesthetics though. Thunderbird's look just isn't as refined as Mail.app. I've tried a few themes, but none can match Apple's GUI finesse.

The Achilles heel of Thunderbird 2.0 is poor integration with AddressBook.app. Auto-fill for addresses just doesn't work very well without that. I'm trying to find a solution for this, but I've read that version 3.0 arriving in 2008 should fix this. This may be the only reason for me to switch back to Mail.app.


On the web browser side of things, Safari is pretty nice and I love the ability to rearrange tabs. It is fast, looks good, easily syncs bookmarks with .mac, and crashes all the time. Since Mac OS X 10.5 Safari has always felt less stable to me and I've had way too many crashes.

Camino doesn't do this. It feels rock solid and I like the subdued look. I miss the tab rearrange-ability, but I can handle that until Safari becomes more stable.

So why not Firefox, you ask? Because Camino is more under the radar and therefore if you use it you are cooler. And using a Mac is all about being cool.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Mind exercises



http://puzzles.nigelcoldwell.co.uk/index.htm

I ran across this link while googling prime numbers. Pretty fun stuff. Let me know what you think.

Saturday, May 03, 2008

ALL41&14ALL

These are for Dad and Nate.

The "Chin Strap":
chin strap


And the "Musketeer":

musketeer

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Our presumed home

Here's a fancy "hyperlink" to Jaime's blog with pictures of the house we bought (closing is pending on June 6). You'll have to scroll down a bit. The pics of the huge house at the top of the post are not the house we bought, but just where we stayed while house hunting.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Rochester, NY


We've been in Rochester since Monday looking for a house to buy. We bought one on Thursday and it is sure nice to have found a little place to call home. It is small, affordable, humble, on a quiet street, and has a nice yard. Hard to ask for more than that. I may get around to posting pictures later.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Total Immersion Swim video

This is a pretty good summary of the Total Immersion swim philosophy.  I'm reading the book and watching the DVDs right now trying to learn to swim efficiently.  I still have trouble with breathing and wasting energy, but I'm really enjoying all the pool time.  My speedo is pretty sweet, too.


Monday, April 07, 2008

Friday, April 04, 2008

"But where did the lighter fluid come from?"



The Final Countdown - please say that will literally be the last time.  These guys go through cello bows like Slash goes through guitar picks! The Final Countdown will totally be the next piece I start working on. Yeah, right after I learn a couple other classics like My Prerogative (Bobby Brown version) and Oops I Did it Again.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Great old photo bloggy blog


This site, Shorpy, has great photos that are old. Pretty simple, but really interesting pictures from back in the day when "colored" people had their own drinking fountains and hollywood wannabe actresses were ugly. Here's an interesting one for all you FUVKs (freaky utah valley kids). Yeah, I'm so above being from Utah Valley now.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

We're moving.


View Larger Map

We'll be packing our bags and heading out to Rochester, NY this summer for residency. Big news for us. We're excited. Yay.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Crazy Robotic Canine

This is really cool and simply freaks Jaime out. It's a robotic dog. I think its absolutely amazing.

Monday, March 17, 2008

CONGRATULATIONS! I have matched.

I got an email today telling me I've matched for a residency spot somewhere. On Thursday they'll tell me exactly where. Probably Rochester, NY or Milwaukee, WI. The email read:

Congratulations! You have matched.

Check the Match Site at https://services.nrmp.org/R3/ on Thursday, March 20, 2008, at 1:00 PM eastern time to find out where you matched. Because you are matched, you will not have access to any information about unfilled programs.


And now you know.

Torpedo?


I'm taking up swimming down to the local YMCA. This photo proves it.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Let's give this octopus some boots

Now, I'm admittedly a classical music nerd, but I thought this was very funny (the first time through). I found this link on one of my favorite blogs The Rest is Noise .

Monday, March 10, 2008

The Firebird

I took Asher to the Powell Symphony Hall yesterday for his first symphony concert. It was a family concert for kids four and up. The pieces were all based on stories that somehow involved fire. The concert included Beethoven's overture to Prometheus, Manuel De Falla's Love, the Magician, and Stravinsky's The Firebird. Again, live orchestra performance are so far superior to recordings, that it's not worth talking about. Just go to the symphony and enjoy being enveloped in sound, rhythm, and energy.
Photobucket

Asher liked it, but it was during nap time so he was a bit restless. I warned him before we went into the hall that some of the music is very loud and that he shouldn't be scared, but that he could hold my hand if he wanted. Well, that really freaked him out and as we climbed the stairs to the balcony to find our seats (outside of the actual hall now) he covered his ears and told me how scared he was that it was loud. He's a cute little man.
Via the Velo Orange blog via Velorution:

On Cars: A letter to the Financial Times from a car designer:


“Absurdity is when a 70kg adult commutes alone in a 1,400kg car, meaning that for every litre of fuel he or she buys to transport him- or herself, another 20 litres is purchased to propel the vehicle. When the vehicle in question is a 3,000kg sports utility vehicle, absurdity becomes an obscenity.

“Even if we can make cars totally emission-free, running on sustainable energy, if their profusion causes constant gridlock they are no longer a means of transport, merely destructive, wasteful and expensive items of vanity.

“Sadly, particularly considering the pathetic return on investment associated with carmaking, the majority show depressingly little inclination to change themselves from being merely manufacturers of cars to being complete providers of mobility."

Saturday, March 08, 2008

Short ride / Shostakovich 10

I was able to ride 18 miles today. It was pretty cold (less than 30 F) the entire ride and there was a bit of wind, but at least the sun was out. I found a fire hydrant that matched my bike and also a neat sign for a photo.
sign
This evening I went to the St Louis Symphony concert. On the program was Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto, and Shostakovich's 10th symphony. The Nielsen was good. The Shostakovich was amazing! Seeing a symphony like that live is an almost overwhelming experience. After the concert I listened to part of the symphony on my iPod on the way to my car. Classical music is meant to be heard live. Recordings do not adequately convey the scope, depth, and warmth of a live orchestra in a good hall. There are some pretty neat youtube videos of this symphony, but the sound quality is even worse than listening on an ipod.

One funny thing about the concert: the score calls for two piccolos. The first piccolo player was the fattest man in the whole orchestra and the second piccolo player sitting next to him was the smallest woman in the orchestra. The man was probably four times the size of the woman next to him and the juxtaposition was comical. Ha!

Photobucket

It was nice of the city to match the paint on the fire hydrants to the paint of my bike.

Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Brevet

As promised here are some quick details about the ride. I rode along the Mississippi river and then rode back home. I took some photos of the bald eagles that were resting in the trees along the banks of the Mississippi. I saw about eight eagles during the ride. The trail is paved the entire way and is a well-maintained route. The first few miles don't have a very great view because the trail runs along the outer side of the levee (I guess) wall. Instead of a view of the mighty Mississippi you see a fifteen-foot high concrete wall to your right and to your left beautiful salvage yards. It's better than nothing though and gets you out of the city fairly quickly.

In longer news, I've decided to ride a brevet in April. A brevet is an organized bicycle ride that is different a regular race. The idea is to finish a determined distance within a set amount of time rather than to finish before everyone else. For example, the brevet I plan to ride is 200 km and you have 13.5 hours to ride it. This is the shortest brevet. Other distances are 300, 400, 600, and 1000 km. There are some famous brevets such as the Paris-Brest-Paris which is 1200 km and the time limit is 90 hours.

This type of bicycle racing is called randonneuring after the French Randonneurs who started this type of riding back in the late 1800s. It's about camaraderie, testing yourself, and riding self-sustained. I think it is a sport I will really enjoy.

For now, I need to get out on my bike more. 200 km is about 124 miles, four times farther than my last ride.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

34 miles

I went on a bike ride today - a 34 mile bike ride!  This is the farthest I've ever ridden on my bike.  And this is the first ride I've made in months.  My legs, back, arms, neck, and constitution are telling me I should have started out with a shorter route.  But I guess this is what I deserve for being so awesome.
I rode five miles from my home to the Riverfront Trail which parallels the Mississippi and goes north out of the city for about 11 miles (12 miles if you cross the bridge to Illiniose at the end of the trail.  Counting the ride across and back over the bridge round trip is about 34 miles.  I'm good at math.
This is also the first ride I've done on my new bike after putting a lot of work into it.  The bike is a 1986 Trek 400T Elance that I bought (for too much money) on Craigslist late last fall.  It had a stuck seat post that took me probably two hours to remove.  I will always check to see if the seat post is fused before buying any other bike.  It's a great black and silver Reynolds 531 lugged steel frame with the usual scratches and paint blemishes.
Trek 400 Elance
The work/parts I put into it include: Brooks B-17 Honey saddle, MKS Touring/Cyclocross pedals, stainless steel toe clips with leather straps, Panaracer Pasela Tourguard 32 mm tires, Nitto Technomic deluxe stem, Nitto Noodle bar (42 cm I think), Tektro brake levers, Novarra black brake cables, Shimano brake pads, Cinelli cork bar tape coated with six or seven layers of one of the coolest words in the English language - shellac, repacked the grease in the hubs and head set, and cleaned and lubed the chain.  I also tried to true the wheels, but they didn't get much better.  Jaime gave me one of her best Christmas gifts ever this last season: an Ostritch handlebar bag with rain cover.  I had to buy a decaleur for it, but won't be able to fully use it until I also get a front rack.  The final touch is a Japanese made brass bell that has a ring so lovely that it would make even Merry Poppins envious.  
Handlebars
I also bought some Velo Orange fenders, but they don't fit very well (at all) with the 32mm Panaracers on there so they are not on the bike yet.  Because of this and the fact that I need to update the wheels anyway I've been considering converting the bike to 650b which would allow more clearance for big tires and fenders.  But I'm really happy with it the way it is now though so I think I'll hold off on that for a while.
The next post will discuss the actual ride.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

No more rhyming (anybody want a peanut?).

Jst qck pst t tll y 'm bck n tp!  Ths pst s s qck tht th vwls r lft t.  f y cn rd ths y r smrtypnts!  Pc t.

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