Zebra Magnetics
As mentioned previously, two years ago I bought a ZebraLight H600c Mk IV headlamp. When I was ordering the light, The Internet also suggested that I buy magnets for it. Reader, I did.
From K&J Magnetics I bought the D82-N52. This is a 1/2” x 1/8” N52 neodymium disc magnet. It can be slid inside the spring of the tail cap. It does not interfere with the function of the cap. The flat top 18650 still fits, and the cap still screws on all the way.
I also bought the BX842. This is a 1 1/2” x 1/4” x 1/8” N42 neodymium block magnet. It can be attached to the pocket clip, and then secured with heat-shrink tubing.
I installed these magnets as soon as I got the light. I haven’t regretted it. The only minor annoyance is that when I ride to the beach and set my helmet down in the sand, the pocket clip magnet collects all the iron in the sand. I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.
While the H600c is primarily a headlamp, I do occasionally carry it in my pocket, and I’ve yet to be annoyed by the magnets. If it was a dedicated pocket light, perhaps I’d feel differently.
Restic Continuum
As I was migrating my online backups to Restic, I was concurrently building a system that would allow me to use Restic to complete full-disk backups to external USB drives, thus replacing my use of cryptshot and rsnapshot. I give you Resnap.
For me, the main appeal of rsnapshot has always been that the resulting backups are just directories full of files. When it comes time to restore, no special tooling is required for access. Just copy the files over using rsync or cp or whatever tickles your fancy. If you can read the disk, you can recover data. Most competing systems create backups in a way that you also need the backup tool for recovery. This introduces fragility into the setup. My experience has been that most people do not think or care about this, but I have spent many years thinking about how not to lose data. I have certain requirements for backup systems. “Robustness” is a big one.
Restic does fall into the second category of tool. If you have a copy of a Restic repository but the Restic project has imploded and you do not have or cannot execute the tool, you’re in for a bad time. But the reason Restic has been on my radar since the project first stated a decade ago (it takes me a while to adopt new backup software – also I recall it took them a while to implement compression) is that it is compiled to a single, statically linked Go binary. This means you can easily store the tool itself alongside (not within) your backups. You’re not going to do that with a sprawling Python project like Borg, which is why I continued to use rsnapshot for my local full-disk backups even after I adopted Borg for online backups.
But with Restic you can just cp the binary to the backup drive. And that’s what I do. Resnap also provides resnap-restore, a simple wrapper script that makes it easy to perform the restic restore ... operation during full-disk recovery. This too is stored on the backup drive alongside the binary.
What this means is that you can use Resnap to create a full-disk backup to an external drive and then bury that drive in your backyard for 25 years (properly sealed). After you dig it up, as long as you have the passphrase, can read the drive’s filesystem (ext4 for me), and can execute a binary compiled for whatever architecture you were using 25 years ago (x86-64 for me) – both highly likely given the commonality of those systems – you are going to have no problem restoring that data (subject to the physics of spinning rust). An unlikely scenario perhaps, but that’s sort of the data backup baseline we plan for here at pig-monkey.com.
I would have to relinquish my Street Samurai credentials if I didn't occasionally wear tabi booties.
Bedrock Cairns and Luna Tabu 2.0. Paired with the mirrorshades, I am led to understand that this is what The Youth refer to as a “fit”.
As a wise woman once said, “You can’t let the little pricks generation-gap you.”
Restic Adoption
After mulling it over for many cycles, I finally decided to migrate my online backups to Restic. As is my wont, I have published my solution as Restash so that members of the Pig Monkey Data Backups Fan Club can be like me.
The restash script will look pretty familiar to anyone who has been using my old Borg wrapper script. It is mostly the same basic structure, with Borg logic replaced with Restic logic, and two other significant differences.
Previously I ran the Borg wrapper hourly via a systemd timer, and used backitup to run the verification checks (and compacting) less frequently. Now the script has subcommands, and I use different systemd units to call the different functions on different schedules – backups more frequently, verification and pruning less frequently.
Previously I achieved redundancy by using Borg to backup hourly to my rsync.net account, while Tarsnap ran daily backups of a smaller subset of the same data. Now I’m using Restic to backup hourly to my rsync.net account, and also using Restic to backup the same data daily to a Backblaze B2 bucket. I’ve been an rsync.net customer since 2014 and I think highly of their service, but the B2 bucket is cheap insurance that helps me sleep better.
In the example config you will see that the SFTP_HOST is simply restic. That refers to an entry in my ~/.ssh/config, which looks something like this:
Host restic
Hostname abc123.rsync.net
User abc123
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/passphraseless-key
IdentitiesOnly yes
BatchMode yes
ServerAliveInterval 60
ServerAliveCountMax 3
The only other significant change from the old Borg wrapper script is that I broke out some of the config options, backup targets, and excludes to separate files to make it easier for you, my adoring public, to reuse the tool.
As hinted at in the README, I still use nmtrust to only execute backups on trusted networks. Don’t be a data litterer.
Rudy Mirrorshades
I find it useful to periodically review certain practices, in order to determine when I am doing something out of rote habit rather than intention. In that vein, a couple weeks ago I took the photochromic laser red lenses out of my Rudy Rydon spectacles that I’ve been rocking since 2011. In their place I inserted the Stealth ImpactX Photochromic 2 Black lenses that came with the Z87 Rydons.
The difference was immediate. Black (or grey) tinted lenses pretty much suck. They dim the day-star, but make everything look flat. Contrast disappears. Terrain becomes muted. This has significant practical disadvantages when you are out and about in the world. I had forgotten how much the red lenses were levelling up my capabilities by enhancing my visual acuity. Most of the time I’ve spent out-of-doors for the past 8 eight years has been spent wearing said red lenses, so to me this was not an augmented enhancement but instead was just the way the world looked.
The alternative lenses I always carry in my bag are the Polar 3FX Brown Laser (for environments where I want lenses that are polarized and/or darker – water and snow being the primary applications) but, like red, the brown tint also increases contrast. I do sometimes still wear the Micropores, but guess what tint those lenses have. Brown.
Still, I forced myself to wear the black (or grey) lenses for a week. I wanted to see if my opinion would change after I got used to them. Reader, it did not. But I did find myself wondering how much the “laser” treatment contributes to contrast. I had a coupon with Rudy, so I ordered the ImpactX Photochromic 2 Laser Black lenses. These have the same black (or grey) tint as the ones I was using, but with the laser treatment.
I’ve been wearing those lenses the past few days now, and they actually do seem better. I’m not constantly thinking about how flat everything looks, and I can see potholes and such. They certainly remain inferior to the contrast provided by red (or brown) lenses. Basically they make everyday look kind of gloomy and overcast, even when it isn’t. On the other hand, the silver mirrorshade effect does look bitchin’ – and that counts for something – but that’s likely the only reason to wear them. I think the bottom line is that if you’re wearing black (or grey) tinted lenses, you are leaving capability on the table.
If my karma is to be reincarnated as a razorgirl, the photochromic laser red lenses are probably what I’ll get surgically implanted.
Rohloff Gearing
When I had my Rohloff bike built, I was not initially sure what gearing to go with. In the rear I chose the 16-tooth sprocket, as that seemed pretty standard. On the front I decided to start with a 42-tooth chainring. With my 170mm cranks and 26x1.9” wheels, that gave me a range of 18.9 to 99.2 gear inches, or a gain ratio of 1.4 to 7.4.
On my derailleur bike, the setup that I’ve been running since 2018 gives me a range of 21.9 to 117.8 gear inches, or a gain ratio of 1.6 to 8.8. I had done plenty of touring on that and felt pretty good about it. So something similar, but a hair lower, seemed like a good place to start with the Rohloff build.
Since then I’ve done a couple big tours with the Rohloff, and plenty of smaller escapades. I sometimes found myself getting down to the low gears more than I thought I ought to, which made me think that I probably should slap on a smaller chainring. Last month I finally got around to doing so.
36 and 38 tooth chainrings both seem to be common for Rohloff touring builds with 16-tooth sprockets. I had one of Rivendell’s Silver 38-tooth chainrings in my spare parts bin, so that’s what I went with. (If I was buying a new chainring I would probably try out the Surly Stainless Chainring.) This gives me a range of 17.1 to 89.7 gear inches, or a gain ratio of 1.3 to 6.7 – dropping my low-end about 1” lower. While I have yet to do any loaded touring with it, I’ve been enjoying the new gearing while tooling around town and ripping up the local dirt on weekends. There is some significant mountain touring in my near-future that will let me give this a proper trial, but so far I think this was the right call.
Swapping chainrings was super easy thanks to the Bushnell Eccentric Bottom Bracket. I’m still using the same Wippermann Connex 808 chain.
Over in Jolly Old England, the Thorn people advocate for 19-tooth sprockets. They argue that the larger diameter means that the chain doesn’t have to make such a tight bend, which makes for less opportunity for dirt to get inside the plates, thus leading to longer chain life, which in turn leads to longer sprocket life. That makes sense to me, and someday when my 16-tooth sprocket needs replacing I may try a 19-tooth. In that case I’d probably put the 42-tooth chainring back on, which would keep me in the same gearing neighborhood as what I currently have with the 38x16.
