2024-09-19

Securing Dropouts

When packing a bike for air travel or shipping, at least one wheel usually must be removed. This leaves the fork or rear dropout susceptible to damage if inward force is applied to the void where the hub of the removed wheel would usually be. Some sort of rigid spacer must be inserted into the axle space to prevent this. Rolled-up cardboard is a common disposable solution.

When searching to see if there was a better solution to this, I came across a post on Bicycles Stack Exchange:

The best and cheapest way to protect your fork and rear drop out is to use a fully threaded bolt, four large washers and four butterfly nuts. A washer and butterfly nut goes inside on both sides and the same is attached on the outside of both sides. Tighten the two interior butterflies against the washers where they are snug and not pushing the frame/fork out past its limits. Then tighten the butterflies on the outside firmly inward, to immobilize the fork or rear dropout.

For the past 20 years, I have been shipping approximately 100-200 bikes to the east coast and back for a yearly event, and this has kept all bikes shipped without damage. It costs approximately $3-5. Soft sided cases are terrible unless there’s a frame involved, and that’s usually marginal.

If I could post a photo of the item I would, but I’m not sure how. In the diagram below, F is the fork or frame, - is bolt or threaded rod, { is a butterfly nut or wing nut, and | is a washer.

- } | F | { - - - } | F | { -

I thought this was a great idea, made even better by the fact that I use Pitlock security skewers on my bikes.

Pitlock skewers usually are just threaded on the business end, with the rest of the rod being smooth. But I recalled seeing that Pitlock also offered fully threaded 240mm joker skewers. Switching to these allows me to implement the above solution with my normal skewer and Pitlock bits, with only the addition of two M5 fender washers and wing nuts (per wheel). That’s only an additional 9 grams (per wheel) to add to my touring kit.

I used this solution on my recent Redoubt tour around Idaho and Montana. It worked great on both flights, despite TSA’s comical attempt to repack the box after inspection on my return flight. The box I rescued from my local bike shop was long enough that I only had to remove the front wheel (and front fender and front rack), so I didn’t have to use this trick on the rear dropouts. I still packed the two washers and wing nuts for the rear in case I found myself with a smaller box for the flight home. They’re small enough and light enough that I don’t mind packing them just-in-case.

I’m glad to have a permanent solution to this problem. So far I have only purchased a single pair of the fully threaded skewers for my new touring bike, but I’ll probably buy a second pair to replace the normal Pitlock skewers on my road bike in case I ever decide to fly with that one.

2024-08-19

links

Link Log 2024-08-19

Syd Mead album

Guide to Computing

Good Luck Kingfisher Three

Evaluating People-Search Site Removal Services

All hiker/biker campsites in America in one place

Complete Visual Guide to Sony MiniDisc Blank Media (1992-2004)

M’s Mark (小沢咲希トリオ, 2023)

2024-08-14

books, shell

Archiving The Witches Cycle

I recently learned about The Witches Cycle, a French manga by Tony Concrete, thanks to a post by the author on /r/xbiking. It has similar vibes to Kiki’s Delivery Service – one of my favorite Studio Ghibli films – with the addition of sweet bikes. I’m not completely hooked on the story yet, but the art is great.

Thus far the English translations have only been published on The Radavist. Their Javascript gallery viewer leaves something to be desired in this application. If the English translations are ever published as a book, I’ll buy it. In the meantime, the manga is easy to liberate.

A quick inspection of The Radavist’s pages for chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, and chapter 4 shows that the chapters consist of sequentially numbered JPGs (though they are not consistent in their naming scheme, for shame). I’m a big fan of downloading JPGs.

$ mkdir witches-chapter-0{1..4}
$ wget https://media.theradavist.com/uploads/2023/11/Witches-Cycle-{1..76}.jpg --directory-prefix witches-chapter-01/
$ wget https://media.theradavist.com/uploads/2024/02/2024_Witches_Cycle_Chapter_2-{1..30}.jpg --directory-prefix witches-chapter-02/
$ wget https://media.theradavist.com/uploads/2024/03/2024_Witches_Cycle_Chp3-{1..38}.jpg --directory-prefix witches-chapter-03/
$ wget https://media.theradavist.com/uploads/2024/06/chap4{05..49}.jpg --directory-prefix witches-chapter-04/

The previously mentioned Kindle Comic Converter is happy to operate on a directory of images.

$ for i in {01..04}; do kcc-c2e --profile KoL --upscale --cropping 2 --splitter 2 --author "Tony Concrete" --title "The Witches Cycle, Chapter $i" witches-chapter-$i/; done

This results in 3 well-formatted EPUB files I can archive in my Calibre library and read on my e-reader.

2024-08-12

media

Recent Cinema

On Friday night I went to a screening of Chungking Express. On Sunday I went to a different theatre to see the new restoration of Seven Samurai. That’s a pretty good weekend for film. It made me curious to see a list of the films I had watched in theatres over the past 12 months. I queried the Expenses:Entertainment:Film register of my ledger to put one together.

Newly released blockbusters:

Newly released arthouse films:

Classiques du cinéma:

All About Eve
Apocalypse Now (Final Cut)
Blade Runner (Final Cut)
Chungking Express (with pineapple cake by Fear the Feast)
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
Le Samouraï
Night of the Living Dead (with live score by Sleepbomb)
RoboCop (Director’s Cut)
Seven Samurai
Sunset Boulevard
The Abyss

This is a pretty decent collection, and these past 12 months have not been unusual in that regard. I had the sense that I saw fewer new films in theatres, but that appears not to be the case. I think going to a revival screening of a film I already know is just more memorable as a theatrical experience. I enjoy living in a place with a robust culture of cinema, where I can go see some IMAX spectacle one weekend and a 35MM noir the next.

2024-08-10

books, toolchain

In Which Graphic Novels Are Optimized for Portability

Kindle Comic Converter is a program that optimizes comic book files for e-readers. I have not read many graphic novels in the past, but I think that is likely to change now that I have found a good workflow for consuming them digitally. The portability of my Kobo Libra 2 makes it more convenient than reading on my laptop. Its 7” screen is large enough for me to enjoy comics when properly formatted, unlike the 6” screen of my old Kindle Paperwhite. (8” would probably be the best screen size for this type of content, but I am not sure that I would be pleased with the decrease in the packability of the device.)

I am using the command line version of KCC (surprising no one), typically as such:

$ kcc-c2e --profile KoL --upscale --cropping 2 --splitter 2 input-file.cbr

--profile KoL specifies that the target device is my Kobo Libra 2. The program will optimize the output file for the resolution and color profile of this device.
--upscale instructs the program to enhance images smaller than the device’s resolution.
--cropping 2 will attempt to crop out margins and page numbers.
--splitter 2 instructs the program to duplicate double page spreads. The spread will first be displayed as a single rotated page (so that I can see the whole image at once, as the illustrator intended), and then split into two pages (so that I can see details and read text without zooming). This sometimes makes poor decisions on filler pages – pages of credits, praise blurbs, etc – but it seems to always do the right thing when you’re in the pages of the comic itself.

I import the original source file into my Calibre library, and then add the KCC-generated EPUB as an additional file to the same book record. When loading the book onto my reader, I explicitly tell Calibre to send the EPUB. I do not allow Calibre to do any further conversion to this file.

The resulting files do not look great when viewed on my computer. The lack of margins from the --cropping 2 flag is annoying, and the images look dark and jagged. But on the E Ink screen they look great.

I used this process to read Craig Thompson’s Blankets, which I learned about thanks to Utah’s attempt to ban it. This book was fantastic. For maximum teenage angst, I recommend reading it while listening to The Cure. (I don’t even especially like The Cure, but when I finished Blankets I was struck with the strange desire to spend the next day repeatedly listening to the few albums of The Cure that I do own – so I did.) The minimalist, black-and-white art style of Blankets lends itself perfectly to a grayscale E Ink screen. I was impressed at how much emotion he can communicate with so few lines.

I have recently begun to read Monstress by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. This one is weird. (Utahns are going to lose their shit when they learn about it.) Unlike Blankets, Monstress is drawn with lush, full-color artwork. It also has a lot more text, whereas Blankets was much more about emotion than exposition. I read the first issue on the Libra 2, and then borrowed the dead-tree version from the library and reread it to compare. I think it still looks great on the grayscale E Ink screen – it gives the impression of being extremely detailed graphite pencil work – but the color does add a little something extra (gore, mostly). The text is legible without zooming, but on the small side. I am jumping back and forth between reading further issues on the Libra 2 and on color paper. The portability of the Libra 2 counts for a lot – I carry it with me every day – but I think Monstress is probably better consumed on paper – or digitally on a larger color screen.

2024-08-02

quote, books

Beauvoir on Social Media

To be no one, all things considered, is something of a privilege… How can anyone be so arrogant or so rash as to serve himself up as prey to a pack of strangers? Their names are dirtied in thousands of mouths; the curious rob them of their thoughts, their hearts, their lives. If I too were subjected to the cupidity of that ferocious mob of ragpickers, I would certainly end up by considering myself nothing but a pile of garbage. I congratulated myself for not being someone.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins

2024-07-30

ablution

The Forever Mop

I like to spend time on my floor. This requires cleaning the floor. A good vacuum is part of the solution, but the floor must also be washed. This necessitates a mop.

I was not good about mopping for a long time. I could never find a mop that was both effective and pleasant to use. That changed 2 years ago when I bought the Quick Loop. I think it’s great. It has turned me into a regular mopper.

The Quick Loop is based on the same idea as a Cuban mop, but with the addition of a coiled steel spring that has two loops. The loops allow a towel to be quickly secured to the head, rather than just having the towel folded over a dowel, as in the Cuban option.

My floors are all either ceramic tile or Redwood. I primarily load the Quick Loop with automotive microfiber towels that measure 16” x 24”. Any towel of roughly those dimensions works fine. I use the microfiber towel dry, but spray the floor with diluted Bronner’s Sal Suds and then mop that up.