@nickzoic@aus.social
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

nickzoic

@nickzoic@aus.social

Nanoinfluencer & flâneur.

"These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness." -- William Gibson, /Johnny Mnemonic/

So much for the Fermi Paradox.

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ascentale, to random
@ascentale@sfba.social avatar

This is a question from @RossA that I had missed from a while ago:

Q3. I'm currently struggling to find the ‘mojo’ to get out cycling regularly. What do others do to keep the cycling fresh and fun?

(If I've missed your question before, don't feel bad if you need to remind me as I have missed a few. Using the BikeNitePQ hashtag helps)

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@meganL @ascentale @RossA A3: hey that's a good one, next time I can't get enthused about I'll try and convince myself I'm going on a :-)

ai6yr, (edited ) to cycling

Achievement unlocked. Went to the farmer's market on a combo of bus and bike. Learned many lessons...

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@ai6yr yeah google maps cycling directions / estimates are arse. There's several alternatives, (around here at least) ridewithgps works well even on the free level. If you want to shop, get some panniers too, panniers rock, sooo much more pleasant that trying to ride with a backpack.

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@ai6yr join us on ... the dork side 😃

Kels_316, to random
@Kels_316@aus.social avatar

plotting out a power steering system for Harvey the 1957 land rover and you can buy an electric power steering pump for less than it costs for a belt driven pump and the fabrication of a bracket for it. I do like the future sometimes.

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@jpm @Kels_316 so long as you go straight for a bit between corners the battery should have time to recover. Maybe avoid Canberra.

jpm, to random
@jpm@aus.social avatar

USB’s cursed grabs shotgun

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@jpm turns shotgun upside down nope still cursed turns shotgun upside down again nope still cursed turns shotgun upside down again nope still cursed ...

moira, to cycling
@moira@mastodon.murkworks.net avatar

nice and clean ^_^

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@moira That is one mountain climber of a sprocket!

Unixbigot, to random
@Unixbigot@aus.social avatar

These hiking socks have a brand name knitted into the fabric in large block letters over the instep. It’s upside down from the POV of the wearer. Who is it for? Are there sock fans out there with X-ray machines taking upboot photos? Sockspotters at the side of the trail? Is it product placement in sockporn¹ videos?

¹ Not aware if sockporn is a thing, but Rule 43 applies

nickzoic,
@nickzoic@aus.social avatar

@jpm @Unixbigot "I should buy more of these socks but I forgot where I got them from"

decryption, to random
@decryption@aus.social avatar

deleted_by_author

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    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @decryption are talkback radio callers sane? Is this a legit question?

    whitequark, to random
    @whitequark@mastodon.social avatar

    if html5 was so good why isnt there html6

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @jpm @whitequark 2AS2N

    MLE_online, to random
    @MLE_online@social.afront.org avatar

    When the inevitable happens on a bike-bus commute and your bus arrives with a full bike rack, you can either roll over and accept your fate of waiting a half hour for the next bus or you can take destiny into your own hands and ride your bike 11 miles home

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @MLE_online woo hoo! Yeah, one of the things which got me from bike/train/bike to commuting the whole way was that when our trains break down they get replaced by buses which don't take bikes. Of course, the trains mostly break down in really terrible weather. Oh well.

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @MLE_online there's a couple of bus routes around here which allegedly have bike racks[1] but I've never seen one with a bike on it! Outside of peak hours the trains are pretty good though.

    [1] https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/more/travelling-on-the-network/bikes-on-public-transport/#buses

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @MLE_online and anyway, once I'd done the commute home in a downpour so fierce it flooded the railway tracks and creek trails and blocked a bunch of major roads with fallen trees, commuting home on a nice sunny afternoon didn't seem like such an impossible challenge :-)

    jpm, to random
    @jpm@aus.social avatar

    Just in case you ever need a USB to twin-XLR adapter… https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006472477356.html

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @decryption @jpm sadly no phantom power, but still potentially useful 🙂

    ai6yr, to Plumbing

    Drat. Kitchen sink has a leak now. I wonder if it's because they loosed everything up but did not remove it. Think I'll fix this one myself, because:
    A. doesn't leak unless you fill the non-disposal side of the sink
    B. It's just one seal (tightened the P-trap and no issues there now)
    C. The plumber charges more per hour than my own hourly rate writing software (!).
    D. I will learn plumbing just to avoid the annoyance of dealing with caustic/flakey/expensive plumbers, in this case (easy to avoid this leak - not use that sink until it's fixed). Non-pressurized side of the plumbing system.

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @ai6yr sometimes if you alter one thing all the other things are now under a bit of tension and don't seal right, so what sometimes helps is to undo all the connectors, give the whole thing a wiggle about and then tighten each connector a bit at a time so that they're all kind of even as they tighten up.

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @ai6yr oh good, yet another stupid tool you won't be able to find in 10 years time when you next need it 😠

    ai6yr, to random

    LOL The other "wrong key" story for me was in 2018 or 2019, when I ended up driving to a motel along old Route 66 and got room "6", took a shower, and collapsed in bed exhausted. A couple of hours later I was woken up by someone who ALSO had the key to room "6" and it ended up I had actually checked into "Room 9" but the key also worked for "Room 6". We just traded keys (not that we needed to, LOL).

    #keys #locks #Route66

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @n1vux @ai6yr yeah a friend had hand made stickers for the soft sides of his Suzuki Sierra which read "please don't cut, the doors aren't locked, the stereo is garbage".

    Wen, to digitalnomad
    @Wen@mastodon.scot avatar

    Does anyone know

    What happened to Steve Roberts beyond this article? I met hime in the early 90s when he had begun to play with boats (well you don't have hills and have to pedal). A fascinating guy.

    Behemoth (Big Electronic Human-Energized Machine… Only Too Heavy)

    https://bikepacking.com/plog/steve-roberts-computing-across-america/

    His helmet with an early eyeliner display attached
    The beginning of the construction of one of his water creations, snapped in his workshop about 1992

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @Wen 105 speed! 5 speed Sturmey-Archer gear hub plus 3x7 derailleurs, I guess.

    daihard, to cycling
    @daihard@infosec.town avatar

    NBD... well, not exactly, but I picked up a 2015 Trek 1.1 for $200 USD. According to the seller, the bike was used once for a ride event (Seattle To Portland) but not much since. It's got the Shimano Claris with 11-28T, which isn't ideal for steep hills, but it's okay. I mainly intend to use it for errands and commuting.

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @nothingfuture @daihard Nice bike! If you look closely at the rear derailleur for a part number you should be able to find its maximum cassette size online (probably 32 or 34?), and/or you can replace the 34/50 crankset with something smaller if it's too long-legged for your purposes.

    (PS: If you make the cassette bigger but don't reduce the big crank ring to match you might need a slightly longer chain, and if you go to smaller crank rings you might need to shorten the chain a little)

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @daihard @nothingfuture No worries! The part number you're looking for will start with "RD-" and will be stamped into the most annoying possible location to read :-)

    Most of the numbers are self-explanatory, but "maximum capacity" is biggest ring + biggest cog - smallest ring - smallest cog, so currently it'd be 50 + 28 - 34 - 11 = 33.

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @sam @daihard @nothingfuture I think it's very road gearing: a 50/34 on the front and an 11-28 on the back.

    decryption, to random
    @decryption@aus.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @decryption @NanoRaptor We used to use this for uni club newsletters, so out of curiosity I went and looked at how it works these days: for small letters it's actually more expensive than unsorted postage, so go figure!

    gregeganSF, (edited ) to random
    @gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz avatar

    I guess “without deforming or cutting any of the spheres” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.

    (Many other aspects of all these earnest-seeming calculations are wrong, but compared to not grasping that you can’t just divide volumes when packing rigid shapes, these hardly matter.)

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @gregeganSF reminds me of this classic

    decryption, to random
    @decryption@aus.social avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @Kels_316 @decryption @jpm screaming at staff and/or other punters and/or invisible ants is always popular.

    geekmomprojects, to random
    @geekmomprojects@mastodon.social avatar

    It just barely fit

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @geekmomprojects oh, wow, okay, so you print a bunch of layers then pause it, add the fabric and continue? Looking forward to reading more about this when it's ready 🙂

    gsuberland, to Electronics
    @gsuberland@chaos.social avatar

    today's fun tip: you can detect the state of two switches or buttons using a single input pin on a microcontroller that supports internal pullups (which is most of them) as long as you don't need to detect both being pressed at once.

    to read the button state, turn the internal pullup off, read the pin, turn the pullup on, and read the pin again. if the value changed, no button is pressed. high both times = top button, low both times = bottom button.

    try it: https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html?ctz=CQAgjCAMB0l3BWcMBMcUHYMGZIA4UA2ATmIxAUgpABZsKBTAWjDACgAncMFEYw7rzAYBVSvDYBnQeBEyUNKlQgAzAIYAbSQzYAlGfxmEaUU4upKo0BGwDu88ywEKlnEE5Av3YAdkJ5TFDQJAHNvX39wkGw8E1d7Dy8mPCovSCl3FM9HLNw48BB1LR0uZKo8zPLI1OC2MLLoyIaY-PTpBqSs4VECou03Bu7Kvh6guD1hwwbjUypzJEsYG3tWXi8fVPN0gFlwQk3U-GzLFGs2AA9wFAhhcjHwLJMfEABLADsAFwYON80AHUkAAcAK4aDTAwFsABGIFyaxInjIUAu4BoARQ9DQ8No2RA2wAwgBVNhAA

    nickzoic,
    @nickzoic@aus.social avatar

    @jannem @gsuberland and with an R / 2R / 4R etc you can mux quite a few buttons onto an analog pin and still detect multiple presses! (your resolution may vary)

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