(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 The content on this page is now hopelessly out of date, but archived for historical interest.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 →
Posted in: Bicycling, Tech.
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 →
Posted in: Chess.
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 →
Posted in: Chess.
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 →
Posted in: Tech.
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 →
Posted in: Bicycling.
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 →
Posted in: Cabin, Tech.
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 →
Posted in: Tech.
Yesterday was my first available window to get on the bike for the first time in over a week. Yesterday’s forecast was dry and low 40s in the morning, and showers and in the 50s in the afternoon. So it was a perfect day for a bike commute, as I could test my rain gear in both wet and dry conditions, as well as not having to deal with wet gear when I arrived at work. After all, if people in “bike friendly” Seattle and Portland can do it, why not me? Continue reading →
Posted in: Bicycling.
A couple of days ago my phone locked up on the Apple screen after rebooting, and the only way out was to put it into DFU mode and do a full restore. But all is working now, here’s what happened.
It all started when I used the HomeBudget app for the first time. When entering the dollar amount for expenses, pressing a digit on the keypad (see photo below) resulted in the digit being entered twice. Continue reading →
Posted in: Tech.
Back during my cross-USA bicycle tour in 2001, I composed daily email updates (this was pre-blog days) of my trip using a Palm Pilot docked into a Landware GoType external keyboard. To send my updates, I docked the Palm Pilot into the PocketMail BackFlip and then held the combo up to a pay phone (those were still relatively easy to find in rural areas) – listening to the screeching as my email was transmitted. (I finally got around to updating the blog to show the old setup from 2001.)
While remarkably low-tech by today’s standards, this setup was small and light, which was perfect when traveling by human power for over two months. In more recent years, this setup had evolved into a Palm smartphone with an external Bluetooth keyboard. Continue reading →
Posted in: Tech.
