What a vandalism is this? Turning a keyboard into two pieces of junk?
No, it’s just the opposite - Bringing the Order, and Getting Rid of Junk!
I never use the “numeric keypad” on the right side. And it takes valuable space from my right hand. So what’s the problem if I got the hacksaw? Read on how I did it (with pictures and instructions for followers).
The winter - meaning, snow and ice - is not yet coming to our region, but I somehow feel that the roadbike season is over. With this thought in mind, I rebuilt my road (or cross) bike with flat bars.
I’ve uploaded the pictures from the “cycling” part of my Himalaya trip.
Some thumbnails: (Continued)
It has been a month since I have returned from solo cycling trip in Indian Himalayas.
Impressions clearly overloaded my brain. This was first time I’ve been to Real Mountains - the highest pass, Kunzum, was at 4500m. And this was my first time I’ve been to a non-Western country (not counting my home Russia, which I’d put “on the border”).
The route was easy: start at Shimla, and follow the National Highway 22 (with some variations in the beginning) until Manali. Oh the highway… Never have seen anything like this before.
Numbers, mostly of interest to cyclists only:
What else:
once had to wait until it’s cleaned (I waited just half an hour, but others were there from the morning to the evening):
In fact the impressions of India as a country overweigh the “mountain-cycling” impressions. It deserves much more than one blog post - even much more than one book. All my perception of the surrounding world is now a little bit different than it was before. Probably such thing is called “cultural shock”. I’m so happy that this happened; now I see how terribly narrow view I previously had.
Of the real India, I have seen only Chandigarh, which is described in all guides as most comfortable city in the country. Still it is, of course, Indian city (just like my home Saint Petersburg is the most European of the Russian cities, but still fully Russian).
I’m feeling own deficiency of not being a good writer to describe my thoughts about these two weeks. I will certainly do what I know I can - produce a technical report, with details for cyclists such as what tires to put on your bike and how much food to carry.
All pictures (unprocessed) piled here.
Today evening I was catching last weekend of the school vacation. Starting from tomorrow, my time limits for the outdoor activities again become much more strict. And there was a great chance to use it: in a company of Antero and Matti (thanks for calling me in!), we made 100km at average speed a bit over 30 km/h.
Now I have 2000km on my roadbike’s computer during this season. Quite an achievement for me, taking into account that I was not cycling during 3 weeks when we went out for family trips, and that I do most of my everyday commuting on the other bicycle. Now intensive collection of kilometers slows down; I have a positive feeling that the time available to collect them was used at full extent.
We have fantastically good cycling weather now in southern Finland. And I’m happy to report the fact that I’m using this chance at full speed! Specifically, last Saturday I participated in a group ride in Hamina region. (Continued)
It may be fun to post to the blog from a mobile phone. Doing so via the default web interface is certainly not the most convenient way (lot of extra traffic). Wordpress has blog by email solution, which is OK from traffic viewpoint, but I was scared by instructions - involving setup of a “secret email account” and a cron job. Also, it does not support insertion of images.
Scribe is a free Python Wordpress publishing client for Symbian S60 phones. Worked fine so far on Nokia E90 - this post is written in Scribe. Insertion of images is still not supported though; seems that the only client capable of it is a commercial Wavelog.
I cycled Helsinki-Tampere route to hang out with my former colleagues already many times. This became almost a tradition; I ride about 200km, and at some place meet my friends who rode maybe 20km from their homes. Each time I naturally try to choose a new route to explore small roads in between. This is how it went today:
The first span, Espoo-Karkkila, was nothing too interesting; I rode main roads to cover the distance faster. Early Sunday morning even roads like Valtatie 2 are almost empty. Then the nice part came. 2832 was a really great road: excellent pavement, very low traffic, spectacle outlooks. On road 283, in a small village Teuro, an exhibition of old machinery could be viewed at “Teuro old technique day”:
Old machines at Teuro day
Old bicycles at Teuro exhibition
40 km along road 2846 were another pleasant experience. The headwind, which I was fighting against all the route, became stronger; but I had enough time before our meeting and did not care about riding at too low speed. In the end, the average was (disgraceful for me) 24.6 km/h; well I have an excuse of that headwind.
It made altogether 230 km door-to-door - I did not cycle back but took a train. Great ride!
I have a number of favorite ride routes. Most of them are to the west from Helsinki area, as I live almost on the western border of Espoo. Recently I’ve refreshed two especially beautiful, probably “classic” treks: Hanko and Lohjanjärvi.
First was Hanko. Espoo-Hanko distance is 110 km by an arrow-straight, relatively flat, moderately loaded road. Last 35 kilometers are especially flat and especially nice; the path is cut through very clear and dry pine forest. The area was a battlefield two times in the history. About 20 km to Hanko you can turn for a cup of coffee into a military museum. (Continued)
I’m writing this from Helsinki cyclist’s viewpoint.
Do you know the Finnish traffic regulations applicable to bicycles? When you are obliged to yield to a car by the rules, and when to do this only if you see that you’d be ridden over otherwise?
The best thing is to read the source, but to get the feeling, you may answer 9 test questions for car drivers. Only a beginning knowledge of Finnish is required.
4 May, the first Sunday of the month, Helsinki bicycle clubs traditionally go out for a joint ride.
This time the ride was more than just enjoyable. It was fantastic! At the starting point, Vantaankosken grillikioski, there were about 25 bright-color roadbikers. (Continued)
Use case: I want to draw a bike route on a map, for own joy or for sharing with my cycling friends. Google maps are cool, and free. As they are, they are not perfect for this task… but you can make them perfect with a tweak. (Continued)
This time I was “leading” the club ride. I did not expect too many people to join, as the weather forecast was not the best one, ride was announced less than 1 week in advance, and there was another club ride the same day. 4 persons rode in the announced 22-25 km/h tempo to Veikkola and then back via another road. Nothing too much, but not bad for the first time in the spring - in case you did not have chance to “open the road season” earlier!
Cycling from work yesterday, I noticed something… well, uneven, on my rear wheel. At the cellar door, the exploration has revealed three places where the sidewall cord of the tyre was torn, two of them longer than 3 cm! Inner tube was buldging out. What a luck that it still got me home and did not explode, say, on half way to work - clear failure of the Murphy’s law!
Road cycling season has started in Helsinki! I did my first roadbike ride after snow-ice-mountain biking winter, and discovered clicking sounds in the bottom bracket area.
The crankset is Truvativ Elita Cross with GXP axle. Manuals at ParkTool say that only 8mm Allen key is required to remove the left side crankarm. The fixing bolt unscrews counter-clockwise:
After the bolt is removed, the crank is still press-fit, so it is not possible to just pull it off:
I was kind of stuck at that point, not knowing what to do next. The solution which did the work was to insert the bottom bracket cup removal tool under the crank. Fortunately I had a half-circle wrench, the “full circle” would not have fit over the crank! The unscrewing cup worked as a crank puller, effectively removing the left arm from the splined axle.
When the left arm is removed, the work is done.
I’d say that the claim about “no special tools required for GXP crank removal” is overstated, because the cups still need a wrench with a long lever. But it is still better then other designs such as Shimano Hollowtech and later Sram/Truvativ models, which, in addition to the cup tool, need a specific left arm extractor or tightener.
The camera of Nokia E90 communicator is “3.2 megapixel”. Here is a cut of an image, made with this camera at best light conditions possible (even sunshine, not too bright). Close your eyes, photographers: you may get sick.
Such quality is not just ashaming; I’m now happy that I’m not working at Nokia any more 
Manufacturers increase the number of megapixels, which sales well, but that does not make image any better. Sure, the file size grows, carrying these junk pixels. I always resize these “phone pictures” down at least 2 times (= 4 times file size decrease), often more, before I dare to show them. And the phone does not offer neither option to use lower resolution1, nor any software to resize the captured image. As I feel plain stupid uploading 1MB picture worth of at most 200KB to any web site, I have always to scale it on some other computer. This is called “Mobile life”, “My world with me”, “Always connected” or something like that.
I know that I should pay extra for better camera quality and I’m not objecting to this; what I do not like is the unnecessary pixels which I can’t disable. Next time I may be purposedly looking for a camera with fewer pixels!
Update: 1 I was wrong on this. Camera offers 5 resolutions, smallest 640×480 with file size about 40kB. Finding this menu was not intuitive for me, but one can blame my lack of intuition here.
I rebooted my home computer after a long uptime and suddenly the screen is terribly flickering. Reason? “I did not do anything” I installed software updates, added and removed users, but never mangled with the screen, as it was already tuned once and forever.
My Xorg.conf file has only one mode line, the one which works fine at 85Hz. Gnome graphical menu item for “screen resolution” gives only one resolution option… at 60Hz. What the heck?
The GDM screen was at fine refresh rate, but after I log in, it drops to that unbearable 60Hz. This at least gave me a hint that this may have something to do with Gnome. Search in .gconf directory of my home reveals two files:
.gconf/desktop/gnome/screen/default/0/%gconf.xml
.gconf/desktop/gnome/screen/[my host name]/0/%gconf.xml
which differ in one line:
<entry name=”rate” mtime=”1152558455″ type=”int” value=”85“>
Value 85 was different in the [my host name]-version, showing 60!
As a first attempt, I just change that value from 60 to 85; I did not actually hope that it will work… but it does. Now my refresh rate is as it was.
My questions to the audience:
We managed to get out for an almost real snowbiking on a weekend. Suomusjärvi - Karjaa, about 60 km on gravel roads.
One forest road was not cleaned of the snow, and we had to drag bikes for several kilometers. What a joy! That was the first - and I’m afraid the only - day in this winter when I enjoyed the snow.
All other roads were either clean asphalt, or covered with smooth ice. Good for the one who had both studded tires! I’m so much missing the real winter; well now I’ll have at least one memory of it.
Today I got a very nice short off-road ride with Helsinki MTB club MTBCF. The starting place was almost near my home, so I had no excuse of long commute from/to home for not participating. I already rode with MTBCF two times, two or three years back. Once it was their weekly cruise “for beginners”, where I was dropping out all the time and finally broke my rear derailer with a branch; that was too hardcore MTB for me. Another time it was a “flat ride” of 300km, to Bromarv (link on Google maps) and back. That time I did not drop, although was at a limit of my stamina by the end of the distance.
This time we were just three persons, Timo and Sami (on the picture) plus me, but for a forest trail ride this makes a perfect size company.
I rode last, the two other riders had to wait me sometimes. I hardly can come up with a better way of spending two hours in a nice weather! The only thing which I was concerned with is the damage to trails; still, cycling with knobby tires over small brooks or large puddles does not make them better. It is certainly bigger impact than from walking. On the other hand, it is certainly smaller impact than from driving a car, so I’m not arguing against off-road cycling; and I’m not doing it frequently.
On MTBCF forum, there is already a post by Timo about the ride. I’m not a hardcore MTB rider, and that’s the reason why I’m still not a member, but it seems that this is the only really active cycling club in the Helsinki area (not counting CCH and IK-32, which are too professional, with everydays trainings and regular competitions). I’m pondering joining!
Last years, I was not much exposed to bullshit at work. In fact, almost not at all. Now I received an email with a brilliant example of the subject. A person has an email signature, which ends like this:
[MyCompany] is one of the global leading suppliers of Information Logistics Solutions and Product Information. Our customers are global leaders, at the cutting edge of the telecom, software, automotive and industry sectors. High expectations and demands from our customers drive [MyCompany] to strive for operational excellence. [MyCompany] currently employs some 500 highly talented and dedicated staff globally, with offices in Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ukraine, and China.
They should use some of the on-line bullshit generators to add, for example, “incubate innovative e-markets” or “syndicate customer-centric initiatives”. I think I’ll eventually point the author of the email to this post
