This is a test

I'm considering resurrecting this blog. This is a test post. If my
historically keen sense of timing is at all predictive, this means that
Google will shut down Blogger tomorrow.

Fahrenheit

I would just like to go on record here and declare that I think that, for day-to-day living, the Fahrenheit temperature scale is superior to the Celsius scale.

Normal range of temperatures experienced by human beings on earth: 0 to 100 Fahrenheit. That's minus 17 to plus 37 Celsius -- not only is it completely ridiculous to have zero right in the middle of the range, but it's only half the number of degrees! So in order to get the kind of precision that Fahrenheit provides (for day-to-day living), you have to talk about fractions of degrees Celsius. Um, no thanks.

Hub motors in bicycles

Hub Motors:

Common to all direct drive hub motors is that they are always mechanically engaged. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because it makes regenerative braking possible. All direct drive hub motors can be made to do regen whether they are equiped to do so or not. Both the BionX and TidalForce both have sophisticated controllers which allow varied braking energy to be stored back in the battery, while most of the Chinese kits like Crystalyte, Golden Island, and Wilderness Energy need 3rd party controllers to do so. Always engaged is a bad because it means that you are always overcoming the rolling resistance of the motor even when you are not using it. Depending on the symmetry and quality of the motor, this additional drag torque can range from imperceptible to feeling like you are always riding with a flat.

Huh, yeah. The Bionx has regenerative braking, which means it is a motor of this type (direct-drive as opposed to geared).

My new consulting career

I have this plan to become an E-mail consultant. It's a bit late because nobody uses e-mail anymore -- it's all tweeting and texting and what-not.

But it would have been grand. I already had titles for two of the chapters of my flagship powerpoint presentation.

• Effective subject line composition (subtitled Subject: hi)
• Top-posting: why I'm right and you're very probably wrong.

Newsflash: car drivers are angry, feel impotent

Vancouver Sun: Traffic tied up getting on, off Burrard Bridge

Drivers stuck on Pacific were furious. "They should fire the mayor," said one of them, Maurice Harting. "How much pollution is this generating with all these cars idling here?"

Okay then, a suggestion: turn off your engine?

"I'm not going down this street ever again."

Thank you.

Traffic turning off the bridge onto Pacific was also backed up during the evening rush hour.

This is no different from any other day. The eastern-most lane of the bridge is often backed up to the middle of the bridge (or beyond) with cars merging onto Pacific. It's obvious to even the most casual of observers that the traffic lights at Hornby and Pacific determine how many cars are backed up onto the bridge.

In the morning, one motorist screamed profanities at cyclists congregated at the corner of Cornwall and Burrard.

Again, this is no different from any other day.

Another yelled, "this is a bad idea,"

This driver then added "instead, we should build a new twelve lane cars-only bridge over False Creek." ?

Dream Job?

Kottke:

After one year of work, each employee receives an ownership stake in the company and a free custom bicycle. After five years every employee enjoys an all-expenses-paid trip to Belgium -- the country whose centuries-old beer tradition serves as a model for the Fort Collins, Colo., brewery. Oh yeah, and employees get two free six-packs of beer a week.

Working in a brewery, a custom bicycle, ownership stake. Yes, please. And a trip to Belgium, which not only has a centuries-old beer tradition but is also home to the hardiest and most insane of professional cyclists. Belgium Knee Warmers? Yeah.

Vampires on wheels

Vampires on wheels, Vampire autoist. We need to bring this term back into common use:

The democratization of the automobile in the late Teens and Twenties was not without its social costs. Neighborhood pedestrians conditioned to horse-drawn traffic were slow to adapt to the new speed of life; drivers didn't know what the fuck they were doing. The consequent death toll gave rise to the journalistic concept of the "vampire auto," which basically meant a hit-and-run car.