Day: January 4, 2012

Retroshift

Retroshift:

These are pretty cool…though I don’t know about $140 without the actual shifters, $220 with.

http://www.bikerumor.com/2011/11/28/first-look-retroshift-brake-shift-levers-for-cyclocross/

http://retroshift.com/

[I saw these the other day and thought “nifty”. I already use these shifters on my Jones with a Paul’s “Thumbies” adapters and really like them. I could easily see where these work cleanly and make a great alternative when they don’t want integrated shifters. It will no doubt depend on why they don’t want integrated shifters, but I like choices, and this makes me think about putting flared drop bars on my Jones, and lacing these guys up. Shimano makes a 10 speed version too.]

Source: Plus One Lap

d: Fun birthday preparations

This time of year it behooves me to make plans that allow me to enjoy my birthday. To that end I’ve lined up two things so far.

The first is a long standing tradition, which I try and share with my wonderfully crazy friends. A lot of folk have birthday traditions, and bike people often go on a long ride. Since my birthday is in winter, and often, the start of some of the worst winter weather this concept has it challenges. But I manage every year to at least get on a bike, outside, and uphold the tradition. We have a theoretical goal of riding one mile for each year of my age, however it often works out closer to kilometers. Other, um, enhancements to the ride have varied with temperature and terrain. Anyway, in theory the ride is on or around the 15th depending on weather and availability. Let me know if you care to join…

Small birthday ride 2012

The second way I’ve prepared this year is with the following form (I wish I knew where I got it from. If anyone knows please let me know.) In jest, of course… but I have included a printed version of this with gifts I give, although there is a disclaimer about response time in the small print which you can’t see in this image. Screen Shot 2012 01 04 at 9 02 10 AM

#screwcable

#screwcable:

I’ve long believed that piracy is largely a business model problem not a human behavior problem. If you give people a legal way to consume the content they want, they will pay for it. But when you make it impossible to legally consume the content they want, they will pirate it. That’s what happened last night and that is what will happen every night there is a Knicks game on TV for as long as MSG and Time Warner Cable continue to figure out how to screw their customers.

[Round and round. And while I understand the annoyance, one can still choose not to pirate, despite the obnoxious state of the cable business.]

Source: A VC

HTTP Signature authentication scheme

A Bit More About the New Joyent Cloud API:

To solve this problem with SmartDataCenter, we’re introducing the HTTP Signature authentication scheme, which is already released as open source. The HTTP Signature scheme allows for digital signatures to be leveraged as your credentials, and does not imply any particular key management scheme. It should be suitable for just about any REST API out there, so we’re certainly hoping if you’re an API vendor you take a look at it, but rather than jump into the technical details of the spec itself, I thought it would be interesting to show you some CLI candy, so lets walk through some examples.

Source: Joyeur

Spotify v. Radio – A Study in Dubious Conclusions

Spotify v. Radio – A Study in Dubious Conclusions:

…radio trumps Spotify both in terms of revenue and in terms of promotion. A single radio spin will not only bring in more money than thousands of Spotify streams, but will also put your music in front of thousands (millions?) of people who would’ve otherwise had to actually seek it out in order to hear it.

[Without any certainty to the numbers the whole thing is kind of a farce. But I believe that the aggregation of listeners or fans must belong to the artist.]

Source: The Cynical Musician

What the Public Commons Is Missing

What the Public Commons Is Missing:

It is in the interest of culture to have a large and dynamic public domain. The greatest classics of Disney were all based on stories in the public domain, and Walt Disney showed how public domain ideas and characters could be leveraged by others to bring enjoyment and money. But ironically, after Walt died, the Disney corporation became the major backer of the extended copyright laws, in order to keep the very few original ideas they had — like Mickey Mouse — from going into the public domain. Also ironically, just as Disney was smothering the public domain, their own great fortunes waned because they were strangling the main source of their own creativity, which was public domain material. They were unable to generate their own new material, so they had to buy Pixar.

[You reap what you sow.]

Source: The Technium

Peter Frampton Reunited With ‘Best Guitar’ After 31 Years – NYTimes.com

Peter Frampton Reunited With ‘Best Guitar’ After 31 Years – NYTimes.com:

It turns out the guitar did not burn up in November 1980 when a cargo plane crashed on takeoff in Caracas, Venezuela, on its way to Panama, where Mr. Frampton was to perform. Instead someone plucked it from the burning wreckage and later sold it to a musician on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao.

The guitar was returned to Mr. Frampton in Nashville last month after a two-year negotiation involving the local musician who had the guitar, a customs agent who repairs guitars in his spare time, a diehard Frampton fan in the Netherlands and the head of the island’s tourist board.

[Crazy. And interesting that it still feels like “home” to him.]

d: a few things I’ve noticed again

Most days the weather really doesn’t mean that much to me anymore. Whenever I’m going out to ride, hike, and maybe soon run, the assessment of the kit I would wear, which direction I would be going in, and how long I would be out are paramount. But as I spend more time indoors (usually working for a living) the weather makes not one iota of difference to my life. I have realized that without going out on my bike, my exposure to the elements is sadly limited.

It was cold in the morning back when I took the train into the City. At the station each morning it was about a ten to fifteen minutes wait. The station was packed at 7am every morning, but no one got there on foot or by bike. Many people are dropped off like little kids going to school, everyone else drove their car. Many of those folks would sit in there car with the engine running burning expensive gas, creating pollution, and going nowhere but staying warm until the last second. They then would bolt out of the cars completely under-dressed for the conditions knowing that they cacooned in moments, and then for the rest of the day. Sad. Get outside every day.

Other things I’ve noticed:

  • I’m usually the problem. Simply by being flexible about an outcome I toss away stress, worry and concern. Sometimes the outcome is worth the effort or even the argument, but that’s rare. Which leads to…
  • Having expectations is problematic. Because it leads to fighting for the outcome I “expected”. When I examine the outcome though it probably does not diminish my happiness at all, until I started trying to change it.
  • It’s ok to mess up once in a while. This is somewhat obvious, but I rarely leave myself any room for this. Wrong.
  • It’s ok to feel pain, mentally or physically. It will pass.
  • Go big or go home.
  • Everything always happens for a reason.
  • Everything works out the way it’s supposed to.
  • Being of service to others makes me happy.

“My disappointment came from expectations, from proposing a shape for the experience I was seeking and then feeling let down when the experience arrived in a shape other than the one I’d proposed.” Bill Barich’s “Laughing in the Hills.”