East Coast Park to Changi Point

Cycled an old route with an old friend :-). About 35km. I am definitely in need of exercise. My old Trek 570 felt lifeless, as did my legs. Some faint "eek, eek" noise from the drive train. I need to take a look. Must have been sapping horsepower from the wheels. My excuse.


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The Middlebrook Method

Here's a link to a nice little technique used to simulate open loop transfer functions without having to "break the loop." See this article.

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Opera 11 bookmark panel favicons

For some reason, the bookmark panel favicons were not displaying. In their place were these boring "star in book" icons. It turns out that someone much smarter than me had already figured it out here. To save you from having to navigate further, here's the solution rehashed in my own words specifically for Ubuntu 10.10:

• In your favourite terminal, type: rm -rf ~/.opera/icons<enter>
• Restart Opera.
• Click on your bookmark in the bookmark pane. The favicon should update as the page is loaded (unless you opened the page in a Private Tab). 

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Miking a choir

Was helping out at the sound board trying to get the best set up for a 40-strong choir with ~8 men. We had a problem trying to tone down the edginess and harshness in the sound.

In the end we moved the mics back another 2 feet and up 3 feet, and had them aimed at the top row. We rang it out for feedback with some pulsed pink noise and decided not to adulterate the EQ too much--hoping to keep things smooth as possible. Only problem was that the choir had left by then and we'll have to wait for the actual performance to find out if it works, or not...

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Beverage can stove

Dude and I attempted a beverage can stove yesterday evening. We fashioned one out of two emptied cans of Jolly Shandy. It sort of worked. We can see Mark II down the road. It's too cool to leave it as is. We are aiming for a better version next weekend. I need to post some pictures.

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Touring with the Principia: Part Two

The Principia is an old (circa 2001/2002) 18.5" Mac SL aluminium hardtail frame. It was built with Shimano XT components, Avid Single Digit Ultimate rim brakes, Easton stem, handlebar and seatposts, X brand saddle, Panaracer TrailBlaster tires, Mavic rims with DT Swiss butted spokes and a RockShox SID Race (2000 model). The frame is a little too large for me, but it rides fine.

For some reason, I've never ridden it as much as my old Trek 470 (1997 model). The two bicycles feel very different.

Problem No. 1

How to mount racks? The Principia has no eyelets on the dropouts and there's a suspension fork up front!

Possible Solution

Tubus Logo for the rear and Tubus Swing for the front. Tubus makes a bunch of attachment accessories, including a quick release skewer adaptor for the rear rack. But who sells this in Singapore? I've sent Fall Factor an email requesting more information.

Update (21 Apr 2011)

It turns out I was mistaken and that Fall Factor does not carry Tubus racks locally... this is going to be difficult -- as I expected.

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Opera 11.10 and Speed Dial thumbnails...

Opera 11.10 is out! Still my favourite browser, but still with niggling problems like Google Docs compatibility issues. Google Spreadsheets still suffers from cell alignment problems when you click on a cell.

Speed Dial now auto-zooms into a web-page when presenting thumbnails:

It works for some pages, but is really ugly for others. If you want the old style full page thumbnails, right click on the thumbnail. Set refresh Reload Every > 30mins. Then right click again and select Reload. Viola. I read this here. THe article specifies another method that involves editing opera:config. But I have not tried it.

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Touring with the Principia: Part One

Back when I decided to purchase the Principia, bicycle touring was the furthest thing on my mind. Today, the allure of a leisurely bicycle tour through a European country seems almost impossible to refuse.

Since the Principia is the finest bicycle in my inventory, it makes sense to perform a thought experiment (a.k.a. daydream) about the possibility of converting a lightweight, single-track hardtail mountain bike into a fully loaded tourer? Is that even possible?

Stay tuned...

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Dude does math

Dude appears to have broken the 2nd decade barrier for addition. He wrote himself a sum on the chalkboard:

10+11=?
Whipped out his fingers and managed to add to 21. All by himself. This is progress. So as dude's dad, I said, "Great job! I'm impressed." Dude was over-the-moon. But there's a possibility, as with all real-life experiences, that it may be 3 steps forward and 1 step back.

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Lens test: sharpness

Stay tuned for a shootout between a Canon EOS550D and two Canon point and shoots. We will be using the technique described in Norman Koren's tutorial.

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Psalm 46:10 (kiddy version)

"God says, "Be quiet and know that I am God.""

Not wanting to be left out of the hip and cool memory verse craze, baby pie has requested to memorise this one.

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Galatians 2:20 (ESV)

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Dude has been assigned to memorise this verse. This means daddy has to memorise it too. Good for dude and good for daddy.

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Afternoon tea

Tea break on a budget.

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Why no inventors?

An epiphany struck me today. I have been reminded an uncountable number of times about the dearth of great inventors on this tiny little red dot of an island. Then it struck me: inventions come from garages. How many homes in Singapore have one?

See the problem? There is no infrastructure.

:-).

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Displaying Garmin tracklogs on Google Maps

This is how I did it with my Garmin GPSMAP 62S:

• Connect the GPS to Dell Latitude E4310 with supplied USB cable.
• GPS powers up automatically and enters USB mass storage mode. The USB icon shows up on the GPS screen and a Garmin icon shows up on my Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit desktop. If you have a micro-SD card installed in the GPS, that will show up too. 
• Double click on the Garmin icon. You'll see a Garmin folder. Keep going into Garmin -> GPX -> Current. In this directory, you'll see a file named Current.gpx. This is what you need. Unless the track you're after has been archived. If so, back out one level and look for your .gpx file there.
• Copy Current.gpx to your Desktop or some convenient location.
• Fire up Prune. You can install this from Synatic Package Manager where it is listed as "gpsprune".
• In Prune, go to File>Open file and load your Current.gpx track file.
• To delete extraneous track points, use the Range menu tools. It's quite intuitive.
• When you're done,  go to File > Export KML. Choose your track colour, type in your file name and you're done!
• Go to maps.google.com on your favourite browser. Sign into your Google account. Click on My Maps. Click on the "Create new map" link that appears just below "Get Directions" and "My Maps". Type in your Title and Description and then click on "Import". Upload your KML file and viola!

This is the result! And yes, I should have chosen another colour for the tracks. Next time.


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Little Maps gets a makeover

Got a little bored with the old template and switched to Simple. This variant of Simple even comes with a map image in the banner! It's now customized with Kranky and Coming Soon fonts, and some minor tweaks to the column widths.

Finally, something I rather like. Hope you like it too.

Now to concentrate on content.

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Farewell Corgi...

Corgi was euthanized today. The vet said he would have had about a week to live otherwise. He was 13 years and 4 months old.

He had been ill since Saturday, not eating and walking with difficulty. This was a relapse of his first bout of illness 3 week ago.

We'll miss him.

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Circumnavigation of Marina Bay

We took a leisurely cycle ride around Marina Bay on Saturday. Here's a photograph of MBS taken from the Lower Boardwalk.


Here's the route we took.


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