We Saw a Chicken …

Month: October 2010

  • Test-riding the Bixi

    BIXI Toronto had a demo station outside MEC today. They had a few slightly beat-up (I suspect, ex Montreal) bikes on display at a station and for test riding.

    I checked out one the bikes for a ten minute test ride. For such a solid bike, I was impressed with its swiftness. You won’t find yourself hopping curbs, but the big smooth tyres roll fast.

    The bike’s pretty sensible, with a fully guarded chain, guards, dynamo lights and a front carrier.

    A clever bash guard protects the hub gear settings

    The pointy nose at the front locks into the Bixi station:

    All the controls are where you’d expect them:

    And a graduated seatpost for us tall forgetful types:

    The one thing I was disappointed with was the brakes. My bike has similar Shimano units. They’re a bit gentle, but they do stop you. The ones on the loaner bike brought back memories of trying to stop in the rain on my steel-rimmed paperboy bike.

    Still, I’m really looking forward to Bixi arriving in the city next year.

  • Aye. Halloween. SCOTTISH

    BBC News – ‘Neepi lantern’ tradition under threat.

  • the name of my band will be the radiological accident in tammiku

  • now that’s a loaf

    Been discovering the joys of Poondy Bread, the nearby Sri Lankan bakery. Their bread is awesome, with a great egg crust and a challah-like sweetness.

    But this loaf takes the cake. Two colossal slices. As big as your head.

  • And this is why I hate the music industry

    Copyright Info: The Star Spangled Banner

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  • autumnal

  • … that our fries were still there

    Following on from this, here’s another anthem performed by the Five Guys and the Arduino Micro Cup Orchestra:

    Converted from a midi file found at American and Patriotic Midi Music (unsurprising caution: autoplay midi music therein) to RTTL using MIDI to RTTL.

    If you just want the source, here it is:

    star-spang:d=4,o=5,b=80:2p,8f.,16d,a#4,d,f,2a#,8d.6,16c6,a#,d,e,2f,8f,8f,d.6,8c6,a#,2a,8g,8a,a#,a#,f,d,a#4,8f.,16d,a#4,d,f,2a#,8d.6,16c6,a#,d,e,2f,8f,8f,d.6,8c6,a#,2a,8g,8a,a#,a#,f,d,a#4,8d6,8d6,d6,d#6,f6,2f6,8d#6,8d6,c6,d6,d#6,2d#6,d#6,d.6,8c6,a#,2a,8g,8a,a#,d,e,2f,f,a#,a#,8a#,8a,g,g,g,c6,8d#6,8d6,8c6,8a#,a#,a,8f,8f,a#.,8c6,8d6,8d#6,2f6,8a#,8c6,d.6,8d#6,c6,1a#

  • abstract lot fabric

    Well, I liked it …

  • Hester the Moonlight Deer

    Catherine and I made a shadowbox using my Springfield deer photo: Hester the Moonlight Deer.

  • emusic canada changes its pricing

    What with the sad loss of Wild East Compact Sounds this summer, my sources of music are now limited. eMusic, bless ’em, have been my source of indie stuff since about 2003. They were cheap, had a fixed price per download, and carried a raft of indie stuff and no major label tat.

    Not much longer; got this in my inbox:

    So, yeah, the full announcement: major label content, minimum 49¢/track, and variable pricing. Exactly all the reasons I wouldn’t want to use them. Good call, eMusic, for a battered-about subscriber since 2003.

    I was initially confused by the pricing. I pay 36¢/track, so I couldn’t see how their promise that “your monthly payments will not change and you will still be able to download the same number of tracks available today, if not more, depending upon your current plan“. Then I see their new menu:

    So basically they’re crediting me with a fake $4.48 a month (oh wait; “30 days”, not a month; they so want you to forget to download stuff by making the cycle date change) so I can still get my 35 downloads. Since they hint that there will now be variable pricing, I’ll bet the new stuff will be >49¢, so I really won’t be able to download as many per month after all.

    They’re saying that the new pricing will allow them to do a bunch of fun stuff:

    We’re also committed to making eMusic a better member experience. We recently rolled out improvements to Browse and Search pages. And we’re hard at work on a host of new features and enhancements including a music locker, which should allow you to stream your music collection from any desktop or mobile device. In addition, improvements to eMusic’s social features, to better connect you with our editors, other members, artists, labels and your friends, are also in the works. We’ve sketched out an ambitious slate, and it will take a little while to get there. We hope you’ll continue on the journey with us.

    I don’t want all that social fluff. The MP3s work just fine on any mobile device, so streaming them just adds more crud. I want fixed price downloads, not some half-assed music locker. Where, oh where is Frank Hecker and swindleeeee when you need them?

  • … we stand in line for thee

    A little bit of silliness for Thanksgiving:

    This took almost no time to put together. The “speaker” is a Tim Hortons cup with a cheap piezo glued to the base. What makes the Arduino sing is the Tone Library running its RTTTL demo sketch, with the anthem itself pasted in from a rather old Nokia Ringtones library.

    Update: Here’s the code, such as it is. It’s just the Tone/examples/RTTTL code with the tune data pasted in. I’d been programming Arduino for about a year, so that was a semi-major achievement for me:

    OCanada-RTTTL-200701a.zipDownload

    It’s nice to revisit old code and find it was written by a friend, Brett Hagman of Rogue Robotics.

  • late bloomer

    I guess I must’ve dropped a sunflower seed earlier in the summer. So now we have a sunflower blooming in the back garden in October. Not many bees around.

  • Arduino Uno USB invisible to OS X

    as posted on the forum:

    Just got my Uno after finding semi-permanent projects for two previous Duemilanoves. Upgraded to Arduino 0020. After rebooting, and power cycling the Uno, there’s still no serial port for the Uno.

    The board is noted under Linux, which reports an unknown device with ID 2341:0001. On my MacBook (10.6.4), System Profiler lists:
    Code:

    Communication Device:

  Product ID:	0x0001
  Vendor ID:	0x2341
  Version:	 0.00
  Speed:	Up to 12 Mb/sec
  Location ID:	0x24110000
  Current Available (mA):	500
  Current Required (mA):	Unknown (Device has not been configured)

    There are no /dev/tty* or /dev/cu* devices that correspond to the device.

  • if you can measure it …

    I’ve had the PowerCost Monitorâ„¢ up and running for over a week now. It was pretty easy to fit. The fiddliest bit was working out and entering the time-of-use rates – which I’ll have to change again in November.

    Over the last six days that I’ve been logging it, it exactly matches our meter. That’s one of the reasons I bought it; I didn’t want to be fiddling with CT clamps which introduce their own inaccuracies. Now for the small matter of decoding its transmissions …

  • Dutch Bike Bits

    David will happily sell you Dutch Bike Bits, for all your fiets needs.