mark

mark, 10 days ago to random

I really want to get this plate for my wife's Model Y. If only it wasn't such a hassle to change it.

mark, 11 days ago to MTB

This past weekend was pretty memorable. Went to Bentonville, AR for Bike Fest. I only brought my e-bike as our goal was to get as much riding in as possible over 3 days. Broke my lower cage on my derailleur, rain dumped on us in the morning of day 2, and day 3 was just perfect. Officially clocked 92 miles of riding during our trip.

#mtb

Photo of my broken rear derailleur maybe an hour into our first ride. I was riding a bunch of skinnies (elevated wood beams that you can ride across like an obstacle course to test your balance) and I pretty easily cleared them all. But as my front wheel rolled off the last part, I started to pedal and I guess my back wheel was on the very left edge of the wooden blank. I think the power of the e-bike motor caused the wheel to spin and my back wheel slide off the end of the plank on the left and my derailleur landed right on the plank causing it to snap. It was a very costly mistake. I called all the bike shops and luckily found one that had a spare that I could purchase. Stayed off the skinnies for the rest of the trip. 😅 It was painful every time I passed them because I love skinnies.
My bike covered in mud. Not shown is the whole backside of me covered in mud as well.
Photo at night of a party going on at the YT Mill. YT is a (German??) bike company that is pretty popular in the US. They just opened a new shop in Bentonville.

mark, 19 days ago to random

Neighborhood snake crossing. 🐍

Video shot with my iPhone of a snake crossing a sidewalk in to the grass one afternoon while we were walking our dog.

mark, 21 days ago to random

Are movie theaters dying or is it just at my locstion? About to watch IF with the family and shocked that there’s almost no one here today. 🤯 This is a pretty nice theater too. We are the only people in this movie besides one senior watching solo.

mark, 22 days ago to random

Pro Tip: In a pinch, you can charge your Apple Pencil on the back of an iPod.

mark, 24 days ago to random

Texas has some of the strangest town names.

mark, 26 days ago to random

Been working on a redesign of our website for awhile and I keep looking at the current homepage (https://tapbots.com) and still think it looks great (okay, maybe not the mobile version). Makes it hard to keep pushing forward on a new design when the "work in progress" doesn't look nearly as good as what's already there. I'm sure something will click if I just keep pushing forward. Design is hard.

mark, 1 month ago to random

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to share a candid photo of my furry pig… (Edit) I mean dog.

mark, 1 month ago to random

Was trying to rent a truck at Home Depot to transport something and was turned down because my driver's license expired at the beginning of April. 😳 Not sure how I missed that. Went back into my car, pulled up the Texas DOT website, paid the fees ($30) and my license now expires in 2032. Walked back into Home Depot, showed the guy my temporary ID from my phone and rented the truck for $24 (had to return within 75 minutes). That was easy considering how things started!

mark, 1 month ago to random

My first NAS. I should have gotten one years ago, but better late than never. I retired my 12 year old Promise Pegasus 2 R4 which has been running flawlessly on the original drives, but getting it to connect consistently after the move to Apple silicon Macs has been annoying.

What I'm more excited about is the fact that I just cancelled my Dropbox account after what must be around 15 years of use? Their service has gotten worse over the years and I'm glad to be done with it. Notes in ALT text.

mark, 1 month ago to random

This little Kei truck is far from home. 😍

Photo of the original Japanese license plate on the front of the car.
Photo of the truck’s tailgate that says “realtime 4wd” and some Japanese plaque.
A sticker in Japanese on the front windshield.

mark, 1 month ago to random

We've finally got around to fixing the MacOS share sheet for Ivory and @todd has been killing it! Still have a few more things to fix, but can't wait to get this out to everyone and then get working on the iOS version. 🫣 These are screenshots of the actual share sheet (the backgrounds have vibrancy, but screenshots disable them for whatever reason).

Preview of Ivory’s share sheet on MacOS showing an example of sharing a website from Safari. Also showing dark mode.

mark, 1 month ago to random

If you have a Synology NAS and use Safari's "Add to Dock" feature for your DSM, I threw together a quick icon for it.

https://d.pr/f/EjNwMC

There's probably better ones out there, but I did a quick search and didn't see anything so I just created this one. Figured I'd share it.

mark, 1 month ago to MTB

My bike now has spokes made out of strings. It’s actually a material called Dyneema which is polyethylene. It’s said to have 15x the strength to weight ratio of steel spokes and floats on water. My wheels lost over 200 grams in weight. But what’s bigger is these spokes dampen chatter on the trail. It feels like I’m riding with half the air in my tires, but without being slowed down.

I’ve done 2 rides on them so far and I’m very impressed by the ride quality improvements they have.

#mtb

Photo of a closeup of my mountain bike front hub which shows the spokes.
Photo of a closeup of my mountain bike rear wheel which shows the spokes.
Photo of a closeup of my mountain bike rear wheel which shows the spokes.

mark, 1 month ago to random

Playing around with the new Redshift toon shader. The results are okay, but I'm sure it's mostly because of me. Just need to spend a lot more time playing around with different values.

#3dArt

mark, 1 month ago to random

My Rayban Meta Sunglasses seem to do 90% of what the Humane AI Pin does, but with a much better quality camera for taking photos/videos, better sounding speakers that no one else can really hear, less than half the price with no subscription, and you don't stand out as a tech bro. Oh and sunglasses are something I already wear all the time outside anyways.

mark, 1 month ago to photography

Finally received a few SmallRig goodies to my X100 (grip extension and thumb rest). Holding the camera feels so much more comfortable and stable. SmallRig always makes well-designed accessories at a great price. I love that I can still access the battery without any issues and have an arca-swiss plate right on the camera as an added bonus.

#photography

mark, 2 months ago to random

Shot with my iPhone using one of the cheap eclipse glasses over the lens. The light outside is kind of eerie.

#eclipse

mark, 2 months ago to photography

No success getting a good focus lock on a 🐝 today.

#photography

Photo of a bee flying between blue bonnet flowers. The bee in motion is always slightly out of focus.
Photo of a bee flying between blue bonnet flowers. The bee in motion is always slightly out of focus.
Photo of a bee flying between blue bonnet flowers. The bee in motion is always slightly out of focus.

mark, 2 months ago to photography

Obligatory spring Corgi and Blue Bonnets of Texas photos.

#photography

A photo of my corgi laying in a field of blue bonnet flowers.
A photo of a bunch of blue bonnets blooming in a field with the sun behind and to the right of them.
Another photo of a field of blue bonnets, but with more shaded lighting.

mark, 2 months ago to random

Was working on my car over the weekend and my phone fell out of my pocket maybe 6” or less from the ground (I was on my back bolting something under my car) and the back cracked. Must have fell right on some small rock or something based on the impact point, but surprised that it cracked like this from such a small drop.

mark, 2 months ago to random

It’s been a long week.

#3dArt

mark, 2 months ago to random

Took my kids to Six Flags on Monday (spring break for the kids) and love the first person perspective from the rayban meta sunglasses.

Video clip riding the front of one of the batman rollercoaster rides at Six Flags in Arlington.

mark, 3 months ago to random

Pretty neat! And yes, I'm known to discover things years after they have been introduced. 😅

mark, 3 months ago to random

Anyone know why SVG's exported from Sketch (@Sketch) will not import back into SF Symbols? Even without editing the template files. I exported an icon template file from SF symbols, opened in Sketch, immediately exported as an SVG and get this error when I try to import into SF Symbols. Am I doing something wrong or is Sketch losing all the necessary metadata for import?