Lee.org

I had only gone a few times during my Boston years but places such as this are important cultural and personal institutions. I certainly hope that there is follow through to the promise on their website

ManRay will be reopening shortly, at a new location. Check the website for update.

I haven’t followed the Boston scene in a while but when I last left our galant heros, they were slowly losing the battle to Puritanical forces.

[Insert image of Mel Gibson tied down on his back in front of a throng of onlookers]
“FREETRADE!”

Friday the 22nd - Wait most of the day for and then receive the bulk of my stuff via UPS directly to my storage space.

Saturday and Sunday the 23rd and 24th - take a welding class at The Crucible (the class ended up being not as educational as I had hoped)

Tuesday the 26th - Start contracting for Wavexpress.

Thursday the 28th - Help a friend of Vixen’s build an Art Car for Burning Man.

Friday the 29th - Meet Bean’s friend Cate. Help her sign-up for the San Francisco Marathon on Sunday. have a great lunch with her overlooking the ferry (all excepting the part where she nearly choked to death… quite a memorable start to our friendship!). Argue with a housemate who firmly believes that newspaper, paper bags, and white paper goes in the compost bin. walk to the Red Poppy Art House just a few blocks away and hear a Spanish guitar duet.

Saturday the 30th - Fill out the forms to get health insurance in California: it is going to cost 70% less than in New Jersey. I could have paid a mere 50% less and gotten almost exactly the same health plan as in New Jersey. See The Incredibles with Vixen and have an all-around very good evening.

Sunday the 31st - Maybe I will go see the San Francisco Marathon, or maybe The 2nd Annual Burning Man pARTiciPARADE. Oh my, I see that the marathon and the pARTiciPARADE are separated by only 3 blocks. I certainly hope that some planning has gone into this!

I certainly am keeping busy!

Russian spammer murdered
John Leyden, The Register 2005-07-26

Notorious Russian spammer Vardan Kushnir was found bludgeoned to death in his Moscow apartment on Sunday. He was killed by repeated blows to the head, Russian news agency Interfax reports…

Cordless phones are a huge disposable industry. How many cordless phones have you owned in the past 10 years? A good phone that is made to last is hard to find.

For corded phones, you lose a lot of credibility with me if you don’t have at least one corded phone in your house… they are reliable as anything. I’ve had the same 2 corded phones for 10 years+ I’ve lost track; they don’t break.

First, more megahertz doesn’t equal better phone. That is a STUPID idea that people apparently willingly buy into. That’s like saying you’ll get better reception on a radio station at 107.9 than a similar station at 88.1. To use another analogy, it’s like saying that a Miata will get you across town faster than Cadillac during rush hour. Additionally, every 5.8 Ghz phone I’ve seen so far isn’t really a 5.8 Ghz phone; it’s 5.8 Ghz from the base to the handset and either 2.4 Ghz or 900 Mhz from the handset back to the base. This means you get the worst of both worlds; each of these technologies has certain problems with reception… maybe it’s trouble going through concrete walls or bouncing off a refrigerator. By using both technologies in one phone, you’re guaranteed to have more trouble.

Excellent phone: Uniden Digital Spread Spectrum 900Mhz phone with answering machine model exs9800. This phone was a new model in about 1999. Excellent and adjustable handset speaker sound quality, people tell me they hear me perfectly, good heft to the handset (I like very much that it feels like a “real” phone in my hands, I’ll save the ity bity phone for when I want to put it in my pocket on the road), digital spread spectrum keeps radio snoops out as well as the best encryption, excellent sounding answering machine, easy to use answering machine (big, simple buttons et all), excellent range in a concrete and steel high-rise building.

Crap phone (that masquerades as an excellent phone): Olympia / Wave Industries OL2400 2.4 Ghz phone Pluses: stylish looking, good interface to a lot of features. Minuses: hard to hold with your shoulder, hard to hold handset speaker to your ear (the speaker only pushes sound out of a tiny opening so you must place it precisely or not hear your party, only moderate speaker sound quality, only moderate microphone, the case creaks loudly directly into your ear as you hold it up to your ear and move about (this drove me INSANE), received some interference in the form of lower sound quality and occasional pops when within 10′ of my 2.4 Ghz wireless network router.

Good phone: I only used this phone for a few weeks before moving away from it but it might qualify as an “excellent phone” Radio Shack 43-3570 2.4 Ghz Expandable Cordless Telephone System. First, it was less expensive than many of the $200 double handset phones I’ve found. $200 for a phone?!?!?! Good interface, excellent sound quality, expandable to 4 phones in $40 handset increments, useful “voicemail waiting” blinky light, though when I hold the Radio Shack phone closer than 6 feet to my laptop running wifi (IE, sitting at the computer while on the phone), the wifi bandwidth suffers a bit and the phone crackles a bit for about 15 seconds (I assume the phone is switching channels or something). It’s kind of annoying. It would take getting a 900MHz phone to fix that issue since wifi is 2.4 GHz. I tried switching wifi channels to no avail. It has enough heft to hold it comfortably. And it has this nifty feature where the phones can work as walkie talkies without the base being nearby. I haven’t given it a real-world test but it sounds neat enough.

I have so far purchased (and returned) 2 CRAP double handset 5.8 Ghz phones. The most amazingly stupid problem I had with it was that you could only have 1 handset off the hook at a time. I’ve spoken about this before.

Ok, enough ranting about phones.

Students for an Orwellian Society

From BBC News

Digital Domesday book unlocked
A rich digital archive of British life in the 1980s has been brought back to life by researchers from the UK and the US.
…
The team at Leeds University and the University of Michigan in the US say they have now found a way to access this rich digital archive.

They have developed software that emulates the obsolete Acorn Microcomputer system and the video disc player.
…
By contrast, the original Domesday Book, an inventory of England compiled in 1086 by Norman monks, is in fine condition in the Public Record Office in Kew, London

It’s easy to understand but still remarkable that it can be harder to get at 25 year old data than 1,000 year old data.

I recently had a Modigliani painting appraised by an agent at WhatsItWorthToYou.com. I’m very happy with how well the item was appraised. It was a very knowledgeable response and on the parts that the appraiser wasn’t (and couldn’t) be sure about, she referred me to other excellent sources.

$20 didn’t get me a perfect appraisal but it got me a LONG way along the road. Sotheby’s and Christy’s wouldn’t discuss it for less than 4 figures.

I sat around ALL DAY waiting for UPS and my stuff never arrived. Of course, I should be happy that I’m going to save $350 because the delivery was “guaranteed by end of day”. But I just ended up loitering in the house all day getting frustrated.

I was supposed to go buy a bike today. I set up all these meetings with folks on Craigslist today but I’m sure that most of those bikes are already sold by now. GRRR.

So, I’m outa here. I’m going to go do…. something. Anything not in the house!

In 2003, Gary Fisher Bikes offered about 40 different bicycle models. Most available in 4 different frame sizes. In 2004, the line was about 20% different with 43 bikes offered. In 2005, they are offering 58 different basic models; 1/3 of their line has completely changed since last year.

It should be noted that they ONLY sell mountain bikes

Gimme a break with all this marketing crapola. I know that it’s all about going into a store and having the salesman put you in the bike that is “for you”. It gives you that warm fuzzy feeling that allows you to plunk down three grand on a bike.

Of course, it’s all big business… If they sell one of every bike they make per year, there’s (58*4*$2000) $5 million dollars in retail sales.

I’m poking around craigslist for a bicycle to ride in SF and take to the playa. After being out here 2 weeks and seeing the traffic and parking situation, I’m considering buying a motorcycle. The city heartily encourages motorcycles. In areas with parking meters, you can always find a spot designated for bikes. Where a car pays $0.25 for 10 minutes with a 1 hr limit, the bike meters are $0.10 an hour with a 10 hour limit. In areas with no meters, you can always find motorcycles parked on the sidewalk or tucked into tiny parking spaces… sans parking tickets. In addition, most of the major local streets have a bike lane. Of course those are supposed to be for human powered bicycles but they lend greatly toward getting a motorbike to the front of a lineup of cars at a red light.

So I’m definitely getting a bicycle… I need it for the playa. I wouldn’t dream of using an internal combustion engine in it’s stead on the playa.

Now there’s the question of a motorbike. I did a little browsing on craigslist for prices and such. I don’t know much (read: nuffum) about motorbikes. I found a couple used bikes and googled about them. Here was a 1994 Ninja for $1,800. Hey, I’ve heard of the Ninja. Google .

Oh . . . my . . . . god.

You expect certain things from the Ninja. Power. Quickness. Agility. Focus. Bravado. Attitude. Heavy on the attitude. Still, unless you catapult-launch F-18 Hornets or 6500-horsepower Top Fuel dragsters for a living, this Ninja is a revelation. Prepare yourself for the strongest literbike in the world. Understand that it’s lighter than most 600s. And while that’s sinking in, make a mental note to pack an extra Depends.

One hundred mph arrives before the 13,000-rpm redline—in first gear. Shift into second at triple digits and a practiced throttle hand can lift the front Dunlop for obscene distances. The 10R covers a quarter-mile in less time than it takes to read this sentence, and it punishes incompetence, impudence and stupidity even more quickly. Too much throttle, almost anywhere, and it’ll stick you in the ground like a golf tee.

This Ninja doth not suffer fools. It eats them. Whole. Any sportbike commands respect and first-rate skills. Kawasaki’s all-new ZX-10R demands more of both than any motorcycle currently for sale, along with simply heroic willpower. Nothing in any showroom punts you forward with such pure, concentrated, brute force. Its predatory silhouette alone makes small children, domestic pets and impressionable girls hyperventilate. If it lived next door, the ZX-10R would bet heavily on the Oakland Raiders. It would own an overwrought Rottweiler named Cujo and play all 11 Metallica albums every weekend—with the dial cranked up to 11. Your mother wouldn’t approve. Your black-sheep uncle doing time for armed robbery would advise against it. Twenty years after the first 900, Kawasaki’s latest literbike is entirely stunning—and unmistakably a Ninja.

Wuw.

And this blows what’s left of my mind…

And here’s the kicker. Add that 433-pound wet weight to the 170-pound rider we use for spec-chart calculations, divide by 161.9 horsepower, and you have a weight/power ratio of 3.72 pounds per. It just doesn’t get any better than that, sports fans.

My model airplane brain goes off on this, thinking (this line of thinking isn’t technically accurate but phoey on you, it’s my blog!)…

1 hp=750 watts… so each pound get’s it’s own 200 watts to drag it along. My 1.5 lb model plane peaks at about 180 watts.. or about 120 watts per pound. So this bike offers almost twice the power per pound as my looping, rolling, 0-90mph in 5 seconds, nearly vertical performance model aircraft! If you put a propeller on this bike, it would perform dramatically more powerf^H^H^H^H^H^H dramati^H^H^H^H^H^H^H intens^H^H^H^H^H^H betterer than my plane.