August 2003 Archives

Hat tip to Satoshi's Wireless Weblog. AOL launches a blogging service. I've got to say that with Jon Miller taking over, they really are doing more software. Cranked out AOL 8.0 after a long hiatus. Then pumped out AOL 9.0 Optimized (don't understand that branding myself) about six months later. Now they are doing AOL Journals. ANd they have an Outlook Express clone called AOL Communicator. The only issue is that when I launch AOL now, I get a mess of applets. I kind of liked the unified view really. Should have been more like Outlook with a button bar.

Hat tip to Zagula on Tufte's new book on bad PowerPoint presentations. IMHO, blaming PowerPoint for bad presentations is a little like blaming Word for your essay not being Shakespearean. Or Outlook for long turgid email. Or MovableType for a boring blog. The darn thing is a tool and you can really misuse it. No doubt about it. Kind of amazing how widely used the tool is though. Mentioned in Powell's book on his career in the military, in the Nasa analysis and of course essentially every school in America now uses for everything.

"MIT Open Courseware":http://ocw.mit.edu. Hat tip to Ludwig. Hat tip again. What a cool idea. You can take any MIT class online. Sounds like Software Engineering 6.170 is a wonderful course. Also shows how global the knowledge worker business has become. The "Wired":http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/mit.html piece talks about a Vietnamese student in Ho Chi Minh City taking courses at MIT. How wonderful. Not to mention a great opportunity for precocious and bored high school students around the word.

Updates on the P2P business: * "P2P Links":http://homepage.ntlworld.com/tim.leonard1/webdir/index.htm. Tim Leonard did P2P guardian (a nice IP blocking program) and has some good links to track the P2P business. * "Zeropaid":http://www.zeropaid.com/. A whole portal just for file sharing. * "Boycott RIAA":http://www.boycott-riaa.com. Pretty humorous site that tracks the RIAA. * Zeropaid.com - Music industry uses vulnerability in Kazaa Hash Calculations. I am listing this topic here, because more and more people are beginning to download fake or corrupted files from the FastTrack network, despite using a verified hash. Some people have asked me how this is possible, the main reason being that Kazaa does not use each and every byte of a file to determine its hash.

Tyler tunes: Teamwork smooths out bumps in a tough Tour. The Tour de France is long over, but I thought this inside story on how it went for Tyler's team (CSC) was pretty amazing. Shows how much suffering there is. Some samples: * When we decided I would try to ride the next day, I really didn't think I'd make it more than 10 or 20 kilometers. But I felt like I had to prove to myself I couldn't ride. I didn't want to look back on the race and wonder "what if?" Honestly, I was the last guy who thought I would make it through the day. * Michael Blaudzen was hampered by nasty tendonitis in his wrist. This develops out of the blue sometimes, and the only thing you can do to help it is rest. But at the Tour, there's no time for that. So he had to immobilize his wrist off the bike, and ride through the pain on the bike. * Carlos Sastre managed to find success before suffering, however. He attacked and won on the finish to Plateau du Bonascre. But on the cold and foggy descent of Luz Ardiden after the finish, he managed to pick up a pretty serious case of influenza. * Nicki [Sorenson] was the motorbike that decimated the breakaway group I bridged up to after being towed back into contention in stage 16. He ripped the legs off the guys in the group and set me up for the attack that ultimately led to my stage victory.

I'm experimenting with funky new encoders that are coming out all the time. For instance. XIPH:http://xiph.org seems to have an amazing collection of encoders: * A speech encoder called SPEEX * Vorbis for music. There is a nice 5MB encoder called OggDrop that includes the encoder. * FLAC is now a XIPH project as well for lossless compression. Both are supposed to be great. So, I just decode FLAC to WAV (e.g., the original uncompressed stuff) and try the new encoder. Apparently the way it works is that OGG is the container format and in it you can put speech (hence the term OGG SPEEX) or music (hence the term OGG VORBIS) or lossless music (hence the term OGG FLAC). Feels like I'm speaking Martian.

"Modatic.net":http://www.modatic.net/audio/ape.php. Another site says that Monkey's Audio is the best performing, so I'll try it. It is Windows only though.

Replacement headset for Trek 5900. Great set of posts about the headsets in the 5900 vs the 5500s. A good discussion about the custom headset used in the 5900 frame that saves a few ounces and allows an a strong aluminum steerer rather than a carbon fiber one that will get destroyed if you over torque the stem bolt. Yikes, those things are delicate. I've notice my own headset if pretty tight compared to say my buddies Cannondale CAAD7 with Campagnolo headset. Maybe the reason is this adjustment problem with their headsets which are apparently custom. Mike Jacoubowski over at Chain Reaction Bicycles (the very first place I ever bought a bike 20 years ago!) says that you have to reinstall the lower bearings to get it smoother. Yikes, who knows how to do that. Maybe I need to call him. He says:

All you need to do is remove the fork, remove the lower bearing from the fork, reinstall the bearing and then reinstall the fork (with bearing attached). In 90% of the cases, that takes care of it. It doesn't seem to be a misaligned cup, but rather an issue with how the lower bearing seats in it.

Went to Disneyland for five solid days. Yikes, I can't believe it. Good thing I'm a kid at heart. Also learned a ton about how to make it a great trip. Here are the top ten hints: * Read "Undiscovered Guide to Disneyland":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0764566059/qid=1061792942/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-7370691-7420060?v=glance&s=books&n=507846. A great book that overviews getting around Disneyland. This is the 2003 edition, but he updates it regularly. * Sign up for "RideMax":http://ridemax.com. The absolutely amazing program that makes it about 10 times easier to get around. Both Ludwig and I have tried it. It really works and they have really the latest information about how Fastpass works. It is not as obvious as it sounds and you have to understand in depth how the whole system really works. * Get there at the crack of dawn. I'm not kidding. If it says Disneyland opens at 8AM, if you are driving, you have to get there at 7AM because of the 20 minute ride from the parking lot and also to buy your ticket (see below to get a ticket ahead of time). That's why staying at a Disneyland property is so good, gets you more shut-eye! * Get a Multi-day Fastpass. This is a special thing that you can get only from a Disney travel package or some AAA packages. It allows you to get multiple Fastpass'es for multiple rides. Wow, it is kind of a wonderlful deal. We hardly waited in line at all with a combination of RideMax and Fastpass. * Do the early morning, take an afternoon break and go for a swim. Then hit it in the evening during the weekdays. It is very crowded there, so being early makes a huge difference. * Think about where you want to eat. Disneyland is not the place with a hot dog stand on every corner. For us anyway, there were only a couple of OK places to eat and making sure you were right there when hunger struck was key. * ESPNZone. A totally cool place in Disney Downtown. If you get the right package from Disney Resorts, they'll give you $10 each in vouchers for the arcade. Wonderful way to end the day and it is cool. Now for a review from the eyes of a 4, 7 and 9 year old: * The best attractions were Indiana Jones, Small World and Grizzly (over at California Adventure). Just like our kids to love such a variety of rides. Splash Mountain was awesome but the drop is really scary. * Dumbo and the Astro Orbiter as well as the Tea cups and Toontown Car Spin are wonderful. Also the last two are great places to get dad sick which is more than half the fun. * If you have younger kids, they have this switchoff feature. Go the start of the line, say you want to switch off and then one grown up can go while the other waits with the kids. Pretty nice of them!

One of the things I've been doing is to work on having an archive of CDs. The kids just destroy CDs at an amazing rate (only cassettes are less durable :-). So, here's my strategy for archiving things. I archive into two formats:

• A lossless format so that I can recover the exact audio content. Right now I'm using FLAC (free lossless audio codec) for this. It is about a 50% compression compared with raw CD format (called PCM for pulse code modulation).
• I also encode them into MP3 as this is a pretty much universal lossy encoding that let's the kids listen to say the entire Harry Potter Sorceror's Stone 7 CD collection jammed onto one CD. So, there is less to recover when they use it as a hockey puck.

Here are the exact steps...

We've been looking at local search over at work. Here's one example of the current (!!!) state of the art. If you for instance wanted to play miniature golf in Seattle. Here is what Google tells you:

Moblogs By TextAmerica. An amazing site. Has a complete connection to folks with camera phones. Also see the incredible "Blackout":http://blackout.textamerica.com/default.asp?r=34245&prev=1 Moblogs. Amazing how real time this is.

Hat tip to "Ludwig":http://www.theludwigs.com, I just added recent comments to the side panel. It is something I respond to every day and it is much more convenient to see it on the blog than to read it in email as I've been doing. Not clear how new trackback pings work. I don't these are counted as comments. The numbers next to entrys are number of comments and number of trackbacks respectively in the new Recent Comments section.

My rear brakes rub against the 700x30c tire I have. It is just 2mm of clearance that I need. Sheldon has a great suggestion for building a "drop bolt" that will let me move the brake caliper up and out of the way. Requires that you get 3/4" x 1/8" aluminum stock from a hardware store. Then drill two holes. Put a 6 mm bolt into the rear stay and then mount the brake on the second bolt.

I haven't bought a DVD in a while thanks to Netflix, but the re-release of the Terminator 2, got me curious, here's the latest state of the art in DVDs: * Superbit Deluxe DVD series from Columbia TriStar. Superbit releases from Columbia TriStar have a higher video rate of 6-7Mbps and have higher data rate DTS and a 448 Kbps Dolby Digital Soundtrack. They have a second DVD with all the extras. The original Superbit DVDs were only a single disk and didn't have any extras, but at least they looked marvellous. * "DVD Scan":http://dvdscan.com/. My favorite review site. I know the movies I like, this one measures the actual quality of the DVD technically, so you know that the transfer is good. * "DVD Review":http://www.dvdreview.com/I used to read "Widescreen Review":http://widescreenreview.com, but this site went all pay. DVD Review is the top ranked by google site for DVD reviews, but most of the reviews are pretty old and subjective. * "Upcoming Discs":http://upcomingdiscs.com. At least has scores for the various criteria. As an example, "Terminator 2: Ultimate Edition":http://dvdscan.com/t2.gif is the latest release and it scores an amazing 9.96 while they love "Total Recall: Special Edition":http://dvdscan.com/totalrec.htm

a little ludwig goes a long way: Dan Bricklin on QOS. Great post on QOS and whether it is really needed if there is enough capacity.

The Blogging Process. _Hat tip to the "Bigpinkcookie":http://bigpinkcookie.com_ Here's a good note on how bloggers use the technology. Roughly the loop is read/comment, then write new content, and then figure out what folks are reading you and why. A good analysis. I tend to atually write new content because I need to "bookmark" something that I've learned and then read when I have time. Dave appears to do the reverse.

Connie and I just got the new color Blackberry. An unremarkable thing for me. I'm always getting a new gadget, but I have to confess, these are pretty good. The email software hasn't change essentially at all (thank goodness). Still super intuitive. I love the way that various keys get overloaded for different functions. Rather than the rote, if the key normally does nothing useful. Some examples: * When you are in a email field and you hit the space bar, it puts in an @ sign on the first space and a . on the second. Think about it, space is not meaningful in most email names and you don't have to hunt for the @ or the . * If you are in a field that can't take a text edit, then the key does something. This is much like the way "vi" works in Unix (maybe why I like it). As an example, if you are reading mail, then pressing "r" does a reply. Get it? * What is not so good is that the phone stuff is pretty clearly written by someone witha style guide in hand (yuck). Good example, if you hit the phone button (which is BTW, at the top of the thing, I'm not sure why?), then you get to a list of previous calls and the most recent call is highlighted. THat's great. But, if you type say a "1", then it doesn't just jump into the phone call mode. Isn't that logical. If there isn't an entry with a "1" in it on the most recently called list, I'm probably trying to enter a phone number. Should just jump into one time dial mode. Rather than requiring going up to the one time dial field, pressing enter. I'm sure the style police hate the idea that a number will do something different, but it is natural at least to me. * Other bizarre thing is that if you are looking at the recently used list and see say "Steve Hooper," you'd think that hitting "s" would get you to his name. Instead, it jumps to the contact list and you are looking at all the S's in the address book and you are wondering what happened to Steve. You can only scroll to get the list. Net, net, if you are on a screen and you hit a key, it should get you to the first entry IMHO. * Use of color and fonts. It has a zillion fonts, but the default font (SYSTEM 9) is super small to my eyes. Don't know why they did this. _Note that because of blog spamming, this entry is now closed to comments. Sorry, if you want to comment, use the trackback mechanism if you have MovableType_

Finally finished this project after six months. Have got a "brand new" cross-bike after cannabalizing parts and adding about $250 worth of other stuff. Here are the specs and note on the problems still with it. This bike was originally 23.4 lbs. Wonder how much it is now. * Trek 560 Frame. 1985 Purple and Yellow, but still in good shape. It is steel, but not rusted. _Could use a coat of paint though (oh well)._ * Tange Mangalloy CCL Crown Fork and Trek Pro Black Headset * Sterling Icon Stem. 110mm. Came off of my Trek 5900. Has a Cinelli Threadless to Threaded quill adapter to mate it with the 1 inch steerer. * 3T Prima 199 Bars. Again from my 5900. Nice set of light bars. * Selle San Marco Era. A very nice saddle. * Sugino SP-KC Forged Alloy seat post. Original seat post is you can believe that. Good * Campagnolo Record Ergo Levers. Scratched, but from my old 5900 pre-accident. * Suntour Front and Rear Brakeset. Has Tek brake holders and pads though. * Suntour Front Derailleur. The original front derailleur, seems to work OK. * Campagnolo Chorus Long Cage Rear Derailleur. New part, it is sized for 13-29 cassettes. * Campagnolo Chorus 13-26 Cassette. I only got 13-26 in the rear * Campagnolo Record Bottom Bracket and Crankset. Again, badly scratched and dinged, but still functional. 53-39 rings. * Campagnolo Cableset. Hard to thread, but they are on there now. * Campagnolo Record Chain. Brand new since the 13-29 needs a long chain. * Campagnolo Record Hubs on Mavic CXP-33 rims with double-butted spokes in a 3-cross pattern. This is my toughest wheelset. * Michelin Cyclocross Jet 700x30 tires. These are fine for the front, but rub just a little in the rear. _I need to replace with a 700x30 Ritchey Speedmax tire in the rear as the 30 is just a little too big pumped at 50 psi for the brake, but not the frame. This is a big tire that is really a 35c which is the problem._ * Cinelli Bar tape. Completes the ensemble.

Welcome to Chip Architect. My buddy Ty Carlson says that this is a great site for the true word on chip architectures. An interesting read. Hasn't been updated in a while, but interesting.

BIG MOVIE ZONE. Use this quite a lot for figuring out what IMAX films to take the kids to. Their reviews seem to track pretty well with what we've thought. Here's a quick review of recent IMAX movies we've watched. Both at the theaters on DVDs via Netflix: * Mount Everest. Awesome. This is an A+ movie. Has the drama of an actual ascent up Everest and you have to see the view from Everest in IMAX to believe it. Also the human drama of observing people dying up there as documented in _Into Thin Air_ (an incredible book). * Space Station 3-D. For us technology lovers, what could be better than actual footage shot from the International Space Station in 3-D no less. Another A+ * Pulse by Stomp. The music was incredible in this music documentary of sounds around the world. The African scenes were great. It was too bad the Japanese drummers were so short. Stomp itself is an incredible group. Grade A. * The Human Body. Kind of cool to see your insides at six stories high. The pimple scene was incredibly gross, but it was interesting. Grade B+. * Thrilling Rides. This was a fantastic view of riding roller coasters, but then becomes a review of CGI motion rides which were frankly not very inspiring. Didn't feel real at that size of film. Grade B. * Jane Goodall. Was kind of interesting, but really didn't take advantage of the format. Grade C.

When Tyler Hamilton crashed and fractured his collarbone in the final kilometer of the Tour's first stage, many people felt that his race was over; there was no way a rider with a broken collarbone could tackle the big climbs that were to come. But we'd reckoned without Hamilton's sheer determination, and a little help from component maker FSA. FSA supplied Hamilton with a special version of its new 515gram Carbon Pro Elite crank, with a 110mm bolt circle, allowing him to run a 36 tooth inner chainring with a 52 tooth outer. The lower gears helped Hamilton stay seated on the climbs, and recover enough eventually to break away from the peloton on the first slopes of the Col de Soudet and take out a stage win. And, this is really a good compromise between three rings in the front. It makes the range better for weak guys like to have 52-36 in the front vs. 53-39. Couple that with a 12-25 in back and you have a really wide range. Or if you have a 13-26 in the back, you can pretty much go anywhere.

Eureka. The rear derailleur cable is threaded. OK, thanks to great folks like Peter Westerholm and Skip Echert, I've think at least I have some strategies for getting the darn rear deraileur cable through a chain stay: * Here is my technique. I noticed this rear derailleur cable is at the exact center of the stay. And that a stiff brake cable goes right through. I lifted the bike up so the stay was perfectly vertical. Dropped the cable in and voila it popped out. (See below for other methods suggested). * Park Tools Info. It is best to use a wire that has been soldered, as it prevents fraying at the end. New cables are welded, and these will work as well. It is often a case a both luck and patience. Give a slight bend the the wire, and then feed in into the hole under the stay near the bb. Work the cable back and then begin tapping. Twist the wire as you tap and it should find the hole. Good luck. Calvin Jones. Park Tool * "Peter Westerholm":http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/westerholm.htm. Try very heavy Fishing Line or a light wire. First thread that trough front to back,You may need to use a needle hook to catch the Fishing line in the small exit hole. then run the Cable casing threaded through the starter line and then pull the Line out and run your gear cable. Or try to ask "Sheldon Brown":http://www.sheldonbrown.com for his feedback. If he can not help then your screwed. Good luck Peter * "Skip Eckart":http://vintage-trek.com. Perhaps you can use a vacuum cleaner hose to suck a thin string or thread through the stay, while holding the bike vertically. Then tie the end of the string to the cable and pull it through. Sorry that I don't have the definitive answer. If you do get something to work, please let me know. You could post the question on the vintage light weight discussion list at "Vintage Lightweight Bikes Forum":http://oldroads.com/d_ltw_def.asp?rec_count=1. * Vintage Lightweight Bikes Forum":http://oldroads.com/d_ltw_ra.asp?OQID=13500&QuestionNum=13500&RID=0. I have a 1987 Trek 560 and ran into the same problem. A friend of mine told me to try to run the cable housing through first and see if that does it. If not, run a scrap piece of cabling with a string attached to it. The idea is to run the scrap cable though the chain stay and pull it through to get to the string. Then attach the string to your new derailleur cable and pull it through that way. As long as the string and scrap cable is long enough, you shouldn't have a problem. Good Luck Bryant. You also might try some mechanics wire or bailing wire. "Smitty":http://oldroads.com/d_ltw_ra.asp?OQID=13500&QuestionNum=13530&RID=13501.

Bike.com - Power Meter Reviews. Basically this says that the Polar is the cheapest and least accurate. The PowerTap is probably the best value given its accuracy. It does sound like his installation wasn't quite right given the issues discussed about how wattage varied by gear.

I finally sprung for a bike computer with wattage in addition to cadence and heart rate. It's a Polar S-720i and I've finally gotten it to work. Here are some tips and what I've learned so far about training with wattage: h4. Tips on using the Polar S-720i After you follow the directions carefully, but it is a little flaky otherwise: # "Sandiway Fong on S-710i installation":http://external.nj.nec.com/homepages/sandiway/bike/feather/tt/s710/index.html. This applies to the S-720i too. Wish I had read this before I installed it. # "Checking Polar installation":http://mywebpage.netscape.com/rechung/wattage/testing/testprotocol.html. Here's how to test the Polar to make sure installation is accurate. The main issue is that the chain speed sensor at the derailleur picks up interference. Main idea is move the chain speed sensor as close as possible to the chain. You also want the chain tension sensor as high as possible. It should actually hit the chain on the small-small gear combination. # Ever so often the thing will go to zero across speed, cadence and wattage and beep twice. What has happened is that the watch is loose, there are two contacts on the back that have to be hard up against the bike mount. Jiggle the watch and it will slip in, beep twice and you are back in. I've found this happens no matter how tight the band is. # When you start, you _must_ follow the watch to record correctly: a) wet the heart rate monitor belt thingy, b) push the red start button on the watch and you must _wait_ until you see a heart rate reading at the lower left (otherwise, heart rate won't get recorded), c) push on the upper right button until you see the Trip odometer, d) hold the upper left button for 5 seconds to reset the trip meter otherwise, the distance won't be right. h4. Chris Carmichael on Power used in training Why use Power Meters. Watching your wattage during the course of a ride is not very useful. Wattage fluctuates quickly and often; heartrate is a much better gauge of workload during a workout. Power becomes useful when you are sitting in your living room after the workout. I recommend purchasing a power meter that can be downloaded to your home computer. Downloadable power meters help you see how your power output changes with your heartrate, speed, and cadence during the course of a single ride, a few weeks, or several months. Increasing your sustainable power output at lactate threshold is very important for improving time trial performance. The intensity level for these workouts is critical. They must be done very close to an athlete's lactate threshold heartrate, but not above that heartrate. You want to ride at the highest sustainable workload possible without accumulating lactic acid, which will force you to slow down. One way to keep the intensity high enough without overloading the muscles is to keep the cadence for lactate threshold workouts above 90 rpm. The higher cadence shifts some of the stress of the effort from the legs to the cardiovascular system. h4. Power Meter Options "Meinnovations on Power Meters for your Bike":http://www.meinnovations.com/Power.htm. A good review of power meters here: * "PowerTap":http://www.graberproducts.com/category/category_control.asp?nextForm=fDetailCategory&originForm=fPrimaryCategory&id=94&action=delbc&killCache=true&navSection=cycle. Says that the PowerTap was the original and is accurate and a bit heavy at $600 street and one pound and you have to build up a special wheel since it is a hub, so you can't just slap it on your bike. It is super accurate though * "http://polarusa.com":Polar S-720i. This is the newest device you can use on your bike enjoying your favorite scenery. It operates on chain tension and Polar's very successful and popular wireless technology. Just as an electric guitar string generates a sound frequency, so does a bike chain. This is read by a sensor mounted to the chainstay and transmitted to the computer along with chain speed measured at the derailleur pulley and road speed measured at a wheel. * "Comparing the Polar, Powertap and SRM":http://mywebpage.netscape.com/rechung/wattage/rosetta/rosetta.html. A comparison of accuracy. Shows that they are about the same in accuracy. Whew, I'm glad I bought the cheapest smallest one. Amazing that this chainstay vibration thing works. Main issue is that the Polar doesn't record wattages below 50-55 watts. Shouldn't be a big issue. These are recorded as zeros, but the averages are correct. h4. Training programs using power and wattage _Hat tip to the meendurance.com site for these references_ * "Analytic Cycling's Guide to Power":http://www.pdqcleveland.org/power.htm. Has a PDF for a road cyclist guide to training with power. This is a great guide and well written that basically says, if affordable power meters came before heart rate monitors, they'd be the standard today because power is less subjective and variable. * "Analytic Cycling":http://www.pdqcleveland.org. Probably the nerdiest site in the world, so I love it. Really gets into the physics of cycling and how to improve. I could spend hours on it. * "Robert Chang on Power":http://mywebpage.netscape.com/rechung/wattage/. A great site with reviews of various meters and other things.

Tom's Hardware Guide Networking: Review: Buffalo Tech WLA2-G54 AirStation 54-Mbps Wireless Compact Repeater Bridge-g - Closing Thoughts. This is close to the perfect wireless access point. The main issue is that it has a pretty bad user interface.

Also note that the WLA2 uses Broadcom's BCM4702 Wireless Network Processor which is the same as used in Buffalo Tech's WBRG54 router and Linksys WAP54G and WRT54G AP and routers. So it is really firmware that is different.

Also, the tester found all kinds of throughput problems with the Belkin F5D7010 card he used and the Buffalo Tech WLICBG54 card. Basically, both cards dropped in throughput randomly in performance testing, so you didn't get a real 20Mbps.

But, it does have the key features like 802.11b/g as well as the wireless repeater function.

_Been looking for a new PC Brain for Aunt Jennie and Adrianne. With the shipment of the AMD 64-bit in a few weeks, it's probably not at good idea to buy a new processor and we'll see the new Prescott chip from Intel at the end of the year. So upgrading should happen post the AMD hammer launch when prices should drop again_ Here however is the thinking on the optical drives for the new computer. I have the Sony DRU-510A is about $230 OEM, so pretty expensive compared with a $40 CD-RW now available. Moreover, it is a rebadged Ricoh, so I thought I'd try to find a really low cost drive. here are some results from a really great review site "CDRLabs":http://cdrlabs.com. * CDRLabs.com - Sony DRU-510A Reviews. Good review of the 510A. Large software bundle of shovelware and it performs OK writing media. But, the DRU-510A didn't perform quite as well when reading DVD's. While it had no problems reading single layer, data DVD-ROM's at 12x, it was much slower when reading other types of DVD's. The drive's read speed dropped to only 4x when reading DVD-R/RW or DVD R/RW media and a measly 2x when reading DVD videos. For whatever reason, the DRU-510A also had some very high seek times when reading recordable DVD media. Hopefully this is something Sony can improve upon in a future firmware update. This was using firmware 1.0c. * "Samsung SM-348B":http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=164&page=Conclusion. This is a combination CD-RW and DVD-ROM drive. It reads DVDs at 16x, so great for backing up your DVDs. And rips CDs easily at 46x. Interestingly, its successor the SM-352B is supposed to be faster at 52x read times, but is much slower at DVD-ROMs. Probably should wiat to see is the SM-352B firmware fixes this problem. * "Lite-On LTR-52327":http://www.cdrlabs.com/reviews/index.php?reviewid=194&page=Conclusion. We have an older Lite-On and it is great. This must the state of the art of CD-RW players with 52x read speeds and 32x rewriting. All for $40 and Karr Wong has done some cool "utilities":http://karr.myweb.hinet.net/ for it.

Well, I've been experimenting. I've been getting perfect burns with the Memorex 2.4x DVD+RW and the Memorex 4x DVD+R blanks, but having lots of trouble with Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R blanks. So, the folks on the various forums are right. The media does seem to matter at this stage. With the Verbatim, I get hangs and write fails, but the Memorex works perfectly with my older Sony DRU-120A (with Ricoh MP-5125 firmware). Caveat emptor.

Well, its almost the school season and we need a car that can carry 4-5 kids in addition to grownups. We looked at a ton of cars, but Connie really liked: * "Volvo XC-90":http://volvocars.com. They did a great job designing a car for someone who doesn't want a minivan (I'm not really a mom!) or an SUV (I don't want a huge truck) but something cute. Unfortunately, in order to be cure, the rear seat has to be small * "Acura MDX":http://acura.com. The non emotional choice. Not a sexy car and definitely a huge one. But, it has a big rear seat. For Rich, it is the fact that it is actually realiable. What about me? Well, I get Connie's car as a hand-me-down but in the mean time, my next car is going to be technologically cool and very practical (vs. fast like my current 540i), so these are: * Ford Escape Hybrid. Well, I"m sure the thing will fall apart, but it is pretty amazing that by summer 2004, there will be an SUV that gets 40 mpg. Sign me up. * "Toyota Estima":http://www.toyota.com/about/environment/technology/minivan.html. Only in Japan for now, but this is a hybrid minivan. Gets 40 mpg! * "Toyota Prius 2004":http://www.toyota.com/html/shop/vehicles/prius/index.html. An all new design. Looks like a car of the future. Only 5 seats, so can't really use with our three kids plus a carpool type.

Well, the conversion of my Sony DRU-120A to use the Ricoh MP2125 firmware has been an incredible success. Been great to burn DVDs without creating coasters and artifacts. Not sure whether it was the firmware burn or the use of SiS IDE drivers. But now MyDVD bundled with the Sony has given up the ghost with an obscure could not complete, error due to end of file (DVDErr, -16072) so I need a good authoring tool. The search is on again for good DVD software. It is a little maddening how hard it is to find a good review site for this. Certainly, C|Net and PC Magazine are not. I'm surprised that there isn't a personal web site that ranks higher with google. The workflow for these applications is actually pretty terrible. Here is how I do it now: # Novasoft Video Explosion (nee SonicFoundry). this is a very nice video capture and editing tool. Let's you suck via Firewire and is very good at doing transitions, fixing sound and music. Pretty intuitive. Where it falls down is that it doesn't do DVD authoring and its actually output scheme just pushes out a constant bit rate DVD, so it is not that efficient on disk. So, I normally just have it produce an uncompressed AVI file for further processing. # Tmplenc. This is a AVI to MPEG2 encoder. It has super detailed control over the compression actually used. Haven't gotten it to work quite yet, but you use it to take the AVI that Video Explosion generates and turn it into a good tight MPEG2 audio and video # DVD-Labs. Use this to actually create the menus, transitions, etc. Use it to generate the actual DVD layout on your hard disk. # Ahead Nero. This generates the actual DVD with the right compatibility bits set. If you don't need that, then DVD Labs does a good job. Wow...that's complicated. Nice to have one package that bundles all of this. So, I have the most hope for Nero Ultra. Downloading that now. In the mean time, here are some reviews to look at: * 267 results for Video editors - CNET Reviews. Sorting this list by most recent reviews seems to be the right way to look at this list. * "Nero 6.0 Ultra Edition":http://reviews.cnet.com/Nero_6_0_Ultra_Edition/4505-3514_7-30422553.html?tag=pdtl-list. Prerelease review, but they seemed to really like it. Will need to givel this a try. * "Ulead MediaStudio Pro 7.0":http://reviews.cnet.com/Ulead_MediaStudio_Pro_7_0/4505-3514_7-21002895.html?tag=pdtl-list. This ones also is just released. No user reviews yet though. I tried the previous Ulead VideoStudio and it is much harder than the SonicFoundry (aka NovaLogic Video Explosion) that I use now. It uses DVD MovieFactory which I've used and found way too simple. There is no way to really format the DVD menu. * "DVDLab":http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/ which they are raving about as the best burning solution by some of the techies. Interesting to try rather than the various shovelware that seems to exist. Wow, this is a nice program for creating menus (at last). Also a nice interface overall. It is super picky about audio formats though. It won't automatically suck in a MPEG3 file at least that I've found. Also, it doesn't know how to set the DVD-ROM compatibility bit, so you need to use Nero to actually burn Here are some forums that seem to come up that might be helpful: * "DVDRHelp":http://www.dvdrhelp.com/. Seems like quite a few folks who understand how to burn live here. * "MMBForums.com":http://mmbforums.com. Seems like the geeks live here.

The Blue Angels are in town. Calvin is having a party, here are some great photos we used for it: * "Blue Angel images on Google":http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=blue+angels&sa=N&tab=wi. A good list of images from google * blueangels fat albert. Cool pictures of the Angels * "Planes in general":http://www.photohome.com/photos/aircraft-pictures/aircraft-pictures.html. * "Official Blue Angels Web Site":http://www.navy.com/jsp/explore/comunity/blueangels/index.jsp?cid=28&pid=2. Low resolution pictures unfortunately. * "Fighter Planes and Military Aircraft":http://www.fighter-planes.com/. A good chronological history. Easy to navigate. * "Commercial Aircraft":http://www.airliners.net/. Analogous site for commercial planes mainly, but some incredible high resolution military ones too, although not as nicely ordered as fighter-planes.com * "Airplane Wallpaper":http://www.wapers.com/vehicles01.htm. Nice high resolution photos for wall papers.

More Madone reviews and also a CAD article about how it was designed: Mountain Bike - News - News. This is Trek's first all new OCLV product in ten years and it's a bike that Trek and Lance have been working on for the last year. The idea was to build a single bike that Lance could race throughout the Tour instead of having one bike for road stages and one for the climbs. Besides, the "A-stay" seat stays, the new frame shaping is most distinctive on the lower part of the down tube and seat tube. The Madone I rode was outfitted with a slew of bitchen new Bontrager Triple X Lite road components that will be showing up in the fall. Besides the fork (Trek claims even with the alloy steerer the 110 OCLV fork is up to 50 grams lighter than a full carbon fork), there was also the new single-bolt clamp, infinite angle adjust seatpost and some of the new Bontrager wheels which have probably been the biggest labor for Bontrager over the last year. The carbon tubular wheels also use Trek's own OCLV technology to come in at a claimed weight of 495g front and 695g rear. "Studiotools allows 5 months design time for Madone":http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/mcad/select/alias_wavefront_lance.htm. The bike Armstrong rides in the time trial stages took Trek seven months to move from concept to reality in the year 2000. That was a remarkable accomplishment at the time, given that earlier bikes required 12 to 14 months to develop. This year the design team was able to break its own record, creating an all new peloton model, the Madone 5.9, in just five months. The bike frame saved Armstrong 10 watts of energy, equating to a savings of an entire minute in a 200 kilometer stage race.

Arrggh. I'm so aggrevated by the choices we are making in Seattle for transportation, but the bicycle one hits really close to home. Here are some great sites to learn more: * Transportation Choices Coalition: Home. A nice summary of what is going on. An advocacy group. * "I-90 Petitioning":http://www.cascade.org/Advocacy/I-90.cfm. The recent decision supporting R8A is really horrible for bicyclist. The bridge closes for use. The transit lanes move to the outside. Help! * "Seattle Petition":http://actionstudio.org/?go=314. Kind of a cool idea, click here is you live in Seattle and you automatically generate petitions. * "Bellevue Petition":http://actionstudio.org/?go=316. Here's the similar one for Bellevue * "Rest of King County":http://actionstudio.org/?go=315. Petition goes to Ron Sims In the mean time, I'm going to see about political campaign contributions and forming a PAC.

Been trying some new services based on various articles I've read. Here are two: * Blubster - Welcome to the largest online music network.. This one uses a protocol call MP2P and also claims to have privacy features such as anonymous access since it uses UDP. Only does music. It does require that you understand how to open your firewall up though to a magic UDP port. I would use in concert with a IP blocking program like PeerGuardian * "Freenet":http://freenet.sourceforge.net/. I haven't completely figured out this program yet, but it also have an privacy component. You do have to give up some of your hard drive to it so that it can cache things though. Pretty hard to figure out how to use, but lots of interesting content. Also requires "firewall":http://freenetproject.org/index.php?page=faq#firewall hacking.