My new website and blog
I love my iPhone, but it can really suck down battery juice with heavy use. Most of the time I’m close enough to a computer during the day for me to use a USB cable to keep the battery topped off. But I decided to get a few external batteries for those other times.
The first battery was this one that cost under $10 shipped from a US seller on Ebay. This looks very similar to a Kensington battery that retails for about $30 from a brick and mortar store. Continue reading →
Well, not exactly. Remember my older post about installing a new webcam for the cabin backyard because the old webcam overheated, resulting in blurry optics? Today I found a use for the old webcam – placing it above the garage door to check for snow in the driveway and street. It’s pretty helpful to know in advance how much work I have to do just to pull into the driveway!
Installation was similar to the original install, using an electrical junction box and plexiglass for the enclosure, except this time I used a 4″x4″x4″ box instead of a 6″x6″x4″ box. I had to take apart the webcam casing in order to get the antenna to fit in the smaller box. Since the webcam overheated last time, this time I didn’t bother with any insulation to keep it warm. Continue reading →
Bike Brain – for Palm handheld PDAs – product review (no longer available – review archived from 2001)
I just received BikeBrain as a gift last week, and I thought I’d give some first impressions.
BikeBrain is program that is run on a Palm-series handheld organizer that provides basic cyclocomputer functions and ride routing. It comes with a plastic case to mount the Palm organizer on the stem or handlebars, and a Vetta cyclocomputer-like pickup mounts to the front fork and plugs into the port on the bottom of the Palm. (The Palm organizer is not included.) Overall, the mounting system is definitely secure enough for road use, though I don’t think it could survive an endo off-road. In spite of that, I got a used Palm Pilot 5000 to use with BikeBrain instead of using my “good” Palm. Continue reading →
(This page was originally written in 2001 to describe the setup I used on my cross-USA bicycle tour. The content on this page is now hopelessly out of date, but archived for historical interest. My modern day version of this setup is described in an another blog post.)
When I travel, or go on multi-day bicycle tours, I like to type a log of my travels as I go. I like to travel light, and if I’m bicycle touring, I’m usually camping, so I don’t have electricity to run a laptop. So I use my Palm Professional (upgraded to a Palm III with the 2 MB IR card), with a GoType keyboard, and the Palm modem. On bicycle tours I have a second Palm mounted on the bike running BikeBrain. Continue reading →
Here’s another old chess game for your enjoyment! Following the “post-game recap”, a friend had given a copy of the scoresheet to Jack Peters (yes, that Jack Peters), and he annotated it for the weekly LA Times chess column! Unfortunately (for me), some major international tournament had just finished at the same time, and my game was “bumped” from the column to make room for a couple of grandmaster games. I wish I got a copy of the column that almost went to print! Continue reading →
I found the Embed Chessboard plugin for WordPress and figured that would be a good excuse to move a couple of my old chess games from my old HTML pages over to here on the blog. (For some reason I was originally having problems with version 1.0.6 which was released today, so I reverted to version 1.0.4 which works OK. Then I chatted with Paolo and found out there was a general WordPress configuration problem on my end. So now I’m running 1.0.6 again.)
The first game is from the last round of the Expert Section of the 1990 Massachusetts Open. It was a must-win game to get first place – a draw or loss would instead have given my opponent the honors. Continue reading →
I recently had occasion to invite coworkers and other friends to an event, enough for me to want to use a site like Evite. But I’ve always been annoyed when receiving Evite invitations at work. That is not because the link in the message from Evite is blocked by my employer – I can’t blame Evite for that. Rather, it is because none of the relevant information for the event is in the email message, so there’s no choice but to forward it to a personal email address (also blocked at work) and read it from home. Besides, a quick web search showed that Evite was old and that there were newer and better alternatives out there. So I narrowed down the alternatives to two contenders: Facebook and Socializr. Continue reading →
In a previous post back in October, I speculated on the Stage 6 routing of the upcoming Tour of California. The route details were released today. So how did I do?
From Pasadena to Wrightwood, I guessed that the route would go east along the foothills, then take Highway 39 to Highway 2. Instead, it will go west from Pasadena and then take Highway 2 all the way to Wrightwood. Well, you can’t blame me for being wrong there, because I based that on a quote that “from the start in Pasadena, riders will climb up to Crystal Lake” – which sounded like a Highway 39 routing to me. Continue reading →
In a previous blog entry from December 2008, I described how I made an outdoor enclosure for an indoor Panasonic webcam at my mountain cabin. Since the camera was rated for operation down to 40F and exposure down to 32F, I added insulation inside the enclosure to keep the camera warm. This worked well in the winter, but during the summer the webcam overheated and messed up the optics, as can be seen from the blurring in this image. Continue reading →
Over the past few days I sent some emails that I thought would stimulate some discussion, but I heard no replies. OK, well people are busy, no problem. But then when I sent something from my iPhone today, I got some pretty quick responses. After checking with a couple of folks, it became clear that they were receiving emails sent from my iPhone but not from my home computer. Continue reading →