A carnival of technology

So, bicycle. I carry a lot of crap with me when I commute: a spare shirt, a towel, a stick of deodorant, an extra inner tube, tire levers, various flashing lights, an annoyingly heavy lock, a book and whatever handful of tools I happen to have that day. I used to carry all this junk in a backpack, but I soon found that having all that weight on your back kind of sucks. My bicycle isn’t expensive enough to win any races, so, even though it has skinny tires and an overpriced fork, it retains some of the features of a touring bike, like eyelets for racks. To get the weight off of me and onto the bike, I bought a rear rack and a pair of panniers. After soaking a book in a rainstorm, I set my fancy on a pair of waterproof panniers made by Delta Cycle. In retrospect, they were probably an expensive mistake; though they do stand up to the weather, they’re very small, even for panniers. I used them anyway, stuffing my clothes into one and everything else into the other. The relief from the backpack was enough that I didn’t mind too much having to more carefully plan my trips to the grocery store.

The panniers have clips on the top and a bungee cord along the back that I wrapped along the sides of the rack to prevent bouncing and sliding. After replacing one of the bags after a shower one morning, I forgot to connect the bungee cord, and the hook found its way into my spokes and bent open. Delta was willing to send me a new one, but I felt that the $10 shipping charge was a little steep for a stupid bent hook, so I just bent it back and continued on my way. On Tuesday, while riding up the hill to my apartment, the hook bent back open and found its way into my cassette. I have a photo of the damage. Amazingly, nothing on the bike was damaged other than a chunk of plastic taken out of that plastic disc, though, even if I hadn’t cut the bungee cord out of desperation, the plastic ring that connects the cord to the top part of the bag broke open, so even if I did get a new bungee thing from Delta, it would take some fancy sewing to get this apparent weak point back onto the bag. I’m not a fancy sewer, so I’m going to see what the hardware store has to offer as far as home-grown solutions.

In the meantime, I’ve been riding with the backpack again. I’ve found that the pair of tiny, thirteen-and-a-half liter panniers are apparently larger than my backpack, so I went looking today for some extra space larger than an underseat bag but cheaper than a new pair of panniers. I do want new panniers, but the ones I have my eyes on now are the Carradice bags that Sheldon Brown’s bike shop carries, and I’m going to have to save my nickels and dimes if I want those crazy things. With the $20 balance on my Performance Bike customer loyalty card in mind, I bought a rack trunk that is described as “epic.” As far as I can tell, this adjective refers to its ability to unzip from an eleven liter bag into a fifteen liter bag. I suppose fifteen liters is pretty epic for such a thing, but I think that space includes all the side pockets. The x and y dimensions are restricted by the size of the average bike rack, so it’s difficult to stuff a lot into it unless everything you own is a 7?x12? rectangle. I’m going to try using the trunk in addition to my backpack for a while, removing the heavier things like that freaking lock from my back. Even though my capacity using only the rack trunk is reduced from the more serious space of panniers, it’s nice to have something of medium capacity for times when I don’t want to carry a whole lot of crap, much like how an underseat bag is nice when all I want is emergency equipment. I’d like to go back to panniers for commuting, either through jury-rigging a fix onto the Delta bag or getting new panniers, but for now I’ll just see how things go.

I really want to make another bicycle post since I recently broke part of something expensive, but I also want to break my streak of posts in the bicycle category. Remind me to talk about all the money I want to spend sometime later this week. For now, I’m going to talk about all the money I recently spent on a goofy keyboard.

I was born in the era of personal computers, and as such the public school systems where I was raised, about twenty years after computers had clearly become relevant, decided that teaching kids to type was something important. I was required to take a typing class in the sixth grade, a basic computer usage course (really just more typing) in the eighth grade, and there was another typing class in high school that I was supposed to take but that I finagled my way out of. It was the sixth grade typing class that really stuck with me. It was the least useful, but, instead of computers (I don’t think my middle school got their pile of free Macintoshes until I was in the seventh grade) we used IBM Selectric typewriters. Maybe my love for antiquated technology was already beginning to develop at the time, but, whatever the reason, I liked the crazy things. There was something about that marriage of the electric and the mechanical that appealed to me.

IBM, either from an understanding of people’s love for familiarity or simply out of the habit of making typewriters, fashioned their earlier keyboards after their electric typewriters. Some of these beasts can still be found in service today. While many companies, like Sun and SGI, created keyboards that, though still made with metal springs, had a somewhat softer touch, IBM kept doing the thing they do and made keyboards with keys that click loudly both when depressed and released and that could survive in a war zone. I don’t know if anyone has actually stopped a bullet with an IBM keyboard, but they look and feel like they could at least give bullets a good fight. Though the rugged aspect of these keyboards appeals to me, I’ve never before joined the Model-M cult mostly out of an aversion to the noise. I try to avoid the modern “quiet” keyboards and their rubber domes due to their inability to survive any of my annual spill incidents or even five or so unmolested years, I usually use the softer style of old keyboards with a 101-key Gateway—pulled from my family’s 286 years ago—at home and an old granite-colored SGI keyboard at work. They aren’t loud, but they’re still comfortable, they occasionally make interesting conversation pieces and they lack those windows keys that confused me so much on their debut and interrupted so many games of Commander Keen.

Though IBM has ceased to make them, new Model-M keyboards are still available from Unicomp. Unicomp also sells some of the more obscure IBM parts, like point-of-sale input devices and that one keyboard that had a telephone attached, but, more interesting to me, they’ve recently started listing a keyboard with APL keycaps, making it available to people who don’t have an IBM part number catalog handy. I don’t know APL, but I find a language that uses its own character set oddly attractive for some reason. I had a need for a new keyboard, and noise is less of a factor now that I live alone, so I handed over a sack with a dollar sign on it and bought a 101-key buckling spring keyboard with a 6-pin mini-din cable, removable keycaps and all sorts of weird symbols printed on the keys in orange. Even if I never end up learning APL, it’s a nice thing to have just for being really weird.

The keycaps don’t change they keyboard’s behavior, of course, and I couldn’t find an APL keymap file, so I starting diving into the world of xkb myself to see what I could do. As you may know, I have a bit of a Unicode obsession: the ability to mix and match characters without having to choose your favorite 256 seems quite sensible to me, and I’ve dived into the world of X11 keymaps before, through xmodmap to make the most of the four accessible shift states and through the Multi_key definitions to open up a new world of accented characters based on the old DEC compose key mappings. Though I’ve been able to find very little on the original IBM 3270 terminal behavior, the best I can deduce from the keyboard itself is that it defines a second mode: when the APL button, Alt+F8, is pressed, an alternate keymap is activated, one composed of uppercase letters and peculiar symbols. Most of the goofy symbols could be accessed through my current four-level setup, but the lack of a lock would be hard on my shifting fingers, and some keys have symbols on the front, making an alternate keymap necessary for characters such as ? and ?. That’s how I discovered groups.

While I had previously thought of keys only in terms of four levels (none, Shift, Level3, Shift+Level3), xkb also provides groups that effectively add alternate columns to my four rows. The ISO-9995 key symbols, though not mapped by default to any keyboard position, provide a means of navigating these groups, and new keymaps can provide a means of access to these modifiers in addition to entire new key layouts. While I’ve so far used a second group to define the APL symbols on my goofy new keyboard, this new facility opens up a path to my personal grail, the universal keyboard. What new typing possibilities await?

Hey, guess what? Flat tire!

While galavanting down Mt. Vernon Highway yesterday, I noticed that I had a flat. I wasn’t in any hurry, so, rather than simply replacing the tube, I took the time to find the problem and patch it. I had to take everything apart to find the cause anyhow (I had just had the wheel trued, so I was afraid that a spoke may have pierced the rim strip), and patching only takes a few minutes, so what the hell. The leak was a little snakebite pinch, but, in retrospect, this was most likely a side-effect of the true problem. After patching the tube, getting everything back onto the rim and wearing out my arm pumping up the tire with my tiny little hand pump, the tire’s pressure went suddenly from about 80psi to no psi. It turns out that the real issue was the valve tearing away from the tube. I didn’t notice it since it only opened up when the tube had pressure inside, and pumping it back up most of the way did it in. At least I had a spare handy.

This is the second time I’ve holes open up on the valve while riding the new bike, so I began looking at the common factor in my woes besides myself: those Performance store brand inner tubes. Maybe they really aren’t so great. For my current spare I paid twice as much as normal to get one at REI, and I’m hoping that it won’t suck so freaking much.

When not changing tires, I participated in my community and spent some time at the Sandy Springs festival, which was really quite ridiculous. This year’s festival was the 21st, so it’s not a celebration of being a city as much as an attempt to establish a character for a region between regions that actually matter. Local businesses set up booths to promote wares ranging from fancy dog collars to overpriced fruit juice, starving artists peddled metal sculptures of fish and carvings in the shape of bulldogs, churches and political candidates all promoted their viewpoint, and nearly everyone, including the city of Sandy Springs itself, undermined those suckers trying to sell water in the food court area by giving away bottles of it for free. I ended up buying a copy of a history of Sandy Springs’ creation, and the local unlicensed radio station gave me a pencil. Should I need to write something while near an AM radio, I’ll remember which frequency I should tune to.

I didn’t end up staying very long. Short of buying more crap, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. There were some bands playing, and I did show up in time to hear Meadow in the Glen play some Irish folk tunes, but they weren’t really very good. The event gave me a good opportunity to take some pictures of a Sandy Springs cop car without trying not to look suspicious while skulking around the station, but in all it seemed like a waste of time. This new city really needs to learn how to throw a party.

I stopped by Performance Bike today, and they gladly exhanged my broken light for a new one. I did have the opportunity to use it as credit for an upgrade, but I kept the same one since the other lights, without getting into the stupid expensive range, are really pretty similar. This one’s waterproof and has five lights and four batteries, so if it can just stay on the bike I should be doing pretty well. The bike shop guy said that I was the first person to return such a light, so I’m hoping that I just happened to get a bad one with a gimp switch, causing me to push it off the mount when I last tried to turn it on. Either way I think I’ll be a little more careful with it, maybe taking advantage of the quick release and removing the light during the day.

Since the post office seems unwilling to delivery my usual liberal rag newspaper this week—or my last subscription check got lost—I’ve been turning to the Northside Neighbor for my bathroom reading. As you probably know, I think it’s a piece of crap newspaper, and I only read it to make me angry. In fact, while reading a front page article on something probably relevant to my life, traffic, I noticed a mention of the intersection of Peachtree Dunwoody and Roswell Road, two roads that, as someone who’s driven the entire length of both on more than one occasion, I can say with confidence never cross. I’m not even sure what they were trying to talk about. Dunwoody Place, maybe? That intersection is pretty messed up right now.

Having finished fuming at the front page article, I turned to the editorial section to see what Dick Yarbrough had to say this week. He had sent out an offer a few weeks ago to contact some area Muslims for interviews on reader’s questions, an idea I met with dread. In fact, at the beginning of this week’s column, the first of a series of answers, he admits that he was expecting, or hoping, that the answers would be crying out against the Great Satan. The answers did not provide this, of course, but, other than a quick aside to register doubt that Wahhabis are as much a fringe group as claimed, the column he created painted his panel of five as normal people whose religious viewpoints are not at all whack. I’m actually eager to see what he has for next week. I just hope that he can keep it up.

I received Performance’s reply at 9:15 this morning.

We are sorry for your problem. Performance strives to make a good product and if you are dissatisfied please return it. We are happy to make an exchange or credit your account. Again we apologize for the inconvenience.

Tonight I’m going to REI for a class on bike maintenance (the last time I tried to adjust a derailleur I couldn’t quite find that spot between chain falling off the small chainring and chain not making it down that far at all), so I’m going to try to remember to bring the smashed pieces with me tomorrow and see what the store has to say tomorrow night.

Here’s a copy of the email I sent to Performance Bike after breaking their store brand headlight:

Dear Performance Bike,

I enjoy shopping at your Dunwoody location. The staff there has always been helpful and courteous and the service prompt. Also, although I dislike the idea of your customer loyalty cards, it seems to work well for purchasers of new bicycles, since the 10% store credit effectively adds a handful of accessories to the initial purchase, aiding the purchaser in outfitting the bike while helping you to retain a customer. I’ve been spending the credit from my own bike bit by bit, and one of my recent purchases was a headlight.

I don’t ride frequently at night, so I ended up buying one of your store brand items, the Viewpoint Flare 5. There was a significant jump in price between it and other similar lights, but I assumed that this was mostly due to a markdown on the item; I believe bicycle equipment generally uses September as the beginning of the fiscal year, so perhaps the price cut was simply to clear out old stock for next year’s model. Maybe the new one is blue or something. I didn’t really care or think much of the disparity, assuming only that the cheaper light was perhaps not as bright, or perhaps cheaper due to the lack of a helmet mount. The advertised brightness and battery light were attractive, so I took it.

I followed the directions for installing the light, mounting it so that the screw is at the front of the bike and the release tab on the side of the rider. The hand-tightenable screw was a nice touch, making the light easy to adjust on the road without requiring a screwdriver. I got the light pointed where I wanted it to go after a couple of tries, and for the past couple of weeks I was happy with it. However, tonight I began to have some trouble. While attempting to turn the light off at my destination, the switch began to malfunction. Sliding it forward did nothing, and it took me a minute or two of careful flicking before I finally turned it off. Unfortunately I had little time to ponder this dilemma, since, while turning the light back on as I pointed myself back home, the light came free of its mount and shattered the clear plastic housing on the pavement.

I didn’t expect the world of my $15 light, but I also didn’t expect to fail nor break so easily. What’s left of the housing still clicks into place on the mount, so it would seem that rattlings of rough roads and repeated pressure of hitting the switch were enough to unseat the light from the latch. Also, in retrospect, it seems like having the light detach towards the front of the bike, the direction a slightly down-pointed light will tend to travel, augmented by the forward pushing of the switch, is a bad design. I enjoy shopping in your stores, but if this light is any indication, your products are a disappointment.

dshea

For those of you keeping track, I got a flat (on the bike) on Tuesday. I decided to go to Performance Bikes after work to spend some of the store credit on my customer loyalty card. After a day or two on the toe clips, I had realized that they’re a little too small, and, though I carry around a patch kit, it isn’t going to do me a lot of good without a tire pump. I got some “large” clips—the largest shoe size range claimed was 10+, and they’re just barely large enough,—a pump that clips along the tube next to the bottle cage and which makes a claim of easily inflating tires to 100psi and beyond, and, while I was spending fake money, a spare tube in order to cover a wider range of roadside disasters. Then I ran over a nail in the parking lot.

I made another addition to my bicycle today: toe clips. When I broke a pedal on the Trek, the new pedals I bought came with clips. Not wanting at the time to relearn how to ride, I removed them, turning them into normal double-sided pedals, and I later installed them on the Schwinn, since the pedals it came with were clipless on one side and platform on the other, and getting the pedal flipped over to avoid having a big piece of metal poking the middle of my foot was more than I wanted to deal with. The clips fit pretty well into bicycle habits of adding as much junk to the thing without dressing up like a Marvel character (The Lycra Blur, fighting for truth, justice, and stronger emissions laws), so on they go.

Having the clips is definitely going to change my behavior for a little while. I still have a way to go before getting used to clipping back in when I start, especially when starting uphill, so it makes me even more reluctant to stop than before. Maybe I should practice doing a track stand instead of putting my foot down, which would have the added benefit of freaking out the drivers. Cycling is nothing without passive-aggressively thumbing your nose at people in cars, otherwise there’d be no market for those ridiculous shorts.

In other news, I think I may have found a way to keep my pits from stinking. I’ve never been a huge fan of antiperspirants, not because the aluminum compounds might cause Alzheimer’s or ‘nad cancer or whatever it is that they’re supposed to do, but simply because they don’t feel right. I sweat a lot while biking, and turning that off for two points on the body seems like it might not be healthy. However, regular deodorants don’t do the job very well, since I still come out pretty rank even after a ride of just a mile or so. Today I tried something different, Tom of Maine’s deodorant, and so far I don’t stink. Maybe those crazy hippies are on to something.

Dreams have been a source of fascination for as long as humankind has known this bridge into the depths of the sleeping mind. These nocturnal plays, at times bizarre and frightening, have led thinkers across history to look to them as a bridge into another world, as a fantastic playground, or as a symbolic message to be interpreted as anything from a prediction of future events to an unfulfilled desire for a cheeseburger. The mind is at once a terrible and wonderful thing, and dreams may offer a glimpse into the workings of this unknowable facet of ourselves.

Modern medicine tells us that everyone dreams, and those who believe otherwise simply don’t remember the events in their mental theater. While I’ve kept a notebook at my bedside for some time, ready to jot down any of the strange happenings of the night, I had always believed that I was simply unable to remember dreams. This past week, however, I’ve been writing something nearly every morning. I don’t know if I’m having more vivid and memorable dreams, if WREK has been playing music more conducive to a gentle awakening, or if something just clicked, but it now seems that remembering dreams is simply a matter of effort, similar to the struggle not to hit snooze another time before getting out of bed. I don’t know whether I’ll attempt to use my dad’s copy of Interpretation of Dreams to psychoanalyze myself, and I certainly have no plans to start a dream log like Moshe’s unsettling example, but I find the wealth of raw material fascinating. Perhaps I’ll be able to return to the unfiltered output of my subconscious should I need fabric to weave into some kind of story.

In other news, my camera was returned safely from deepest, darkest Maryland last weekend, and I finally got around to taking some pictures of the bikes. I suppose I ought to start disassembling the Trek now and seeing if I can anything for the parts on eBay. If you know anyone who needs a piece of a bike, let me know.