Shallow Thoughts

Akkana's Musings on Open Source Computing and Technology, Science, and Nature.

Mon, 18 Mar 2024

How to Assemble a Stem on a Threadless Headset

(This is a followup to Upgrading an Old 1-1/4" Cannondale to a Modern 1-1/8" Fork.)

After installing a new headset and fork on my mountain bike, I slid the stem onto the new steerer tube, cinched it up, tightened the top bolt and went for a test ride.

It tested out fine, but the way I'd installed it was exactly wrong, and I didn't realize it until I did some more reading. It turns out cinching down a threadless headset requires a step that's not at all obvious if you don't know any better. Or at least it wasn't obvious to me.

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[ 10:52 Mar 18, 2024    More bike | permalink to this entry | ]

Fri, 15 Mar 2024

Upgrading an Old 1-1/4" Cannondale to a Modern 1-1/8" Fork

My (beloved) mountain bike is an old 1993 Cannondale M700, which I've customized fairly heavily over the years. I know people say the new (enormous, heavy) mountain bikes are more capable, but I'm not convinced. I've ridden Dave's new Specialized and while it's a nice bike (and I love the modern trend of an 11-speed cassette with a single-speed front), it's heavy and slow-steering and honestly, it didn't tempt me to replace the Cannondale.

But one thing about the 'dale that could definitely use replacing: the fork.

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[ 16:48 Mar 15, 2024    More bike | permalink to this entry | ]

Sun, 10 Mar 2024

How Common is Easter in March?

"Easter is March 31 this year," my husband said. "I think that's rare, having Easter in March."

"I guess so," I said.

"There's a Cray somewhere that they use to calculate the date each year," he joked.

And of course that made me want to find out if Easters in March really are rare.

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[ 12:49 Mar 10, 2024    More programming | permalink to this entry | ]

Tue, 27 Feb 2024

Transposing a Song in Audacity

I've been learning guitar. I've tried several times in the past without much success, concluding that although I love music, making it is just not where my talents lie. But this time I'm following a course (Justin Guitar), doing things more or less in the recommended order rather than jumping around randomly. It's fun, and I'm practicing regularly and feel like I'm making progress.

So far I know about five chords, and surprisingly, there are a lot of good songs you can play with only three to five chords. But if you want to play along with a record, some songs need a capo (one of those little dinguses you can clamp around the guitar's neck) to map the chords to ones that are easy for beginners to play.

I don't have a capo. Justin Guitar has a phone app that supposedly can transpose songs, but I wouldn't know about that, because it doesn't work on my phone, just spins forever any time I try to load a song. But I do have a computer; can't I just take a recording and transpose it?

Yes! It's easy in Audacity.

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[ 14:06 Feb 27, 2024    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]

Thu, 22 Feb 2024

towebhost: a Handy Script for Mirroring Multiple Websites

I maintain quite a few small websites. I have several of my own under different domains (shallowsky.com, nmbilltracker.com and so forth), plus a few smaller projects like flask apps running on a different port. In addition, I maintain websites for several organizations on a volunteer basis (because if you join any volunteer organization and they find out you're at all technical, that's the first job they want you to do).

I typically maintain a local copy of each website, so I can try out any change locally first.

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[ 16:18 Feb 22, 2024    More linux | permalink to this entry | ]

Fri, 02 Feb 2024

Identifying Trees and Shrubs in Winter: a PEEC Plant Walk

[Craig shows a more common one-seed juniper] Last week Craig Martin led a tree and shrub identification walk for PEEC around Kinnikinnick (yes, I had to look up the spelling) Park in Los Alamos.

It was a very welcome addition to the summer flower walks that Craig and Chick Keller have led in the past. Nothing wrong with flowers, but I get curious about the non-flowering plants I see around me. I guess I'm not the only one who feels that way, because the walk was very well attended despite the mud and snow.

And it was fabulous. I scribbled notes as I could, but I'm sure they won't make any sense to me a week from now, let alone a year. Hence this writeup.

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[ 12:34 Feb 02, 2024    More nature | permalink to this entry | ]

Sat, 20 Jan 2024

First Time Biking the White Ridge Bike Trails

[Map of White Ridge Bike Trails] Dave and I finally got around to riding the White Ridge Bike Trails. It's an area north of Albuquerque, adjacent to the Ojito Wilderness (which is also on our to-explore list). Somehow we'd never quite gotten there, but this week was perfect. Here in White Rock our local trails are covered with melting snow, which means they'll be muddy for at least a month even if it doesn't snow any more. But down near Albuquerque they didn't get much snow, and the temperature was forecast as mid-40s, so we hoped conditions would be good.

The map paints trails as Beginner (green), Moderate (blue), Difficult (red), and Severe (black). We're intermediate bikers: pretty comfortable riding over rocks and other modest obstacles, but not good enough to do the super technical stuff like we see at Pajarito. But there's no consistency to bike trail ratings: a lot of trails rated difficult in the bay area were well within our abilities,, while some trails that Los Alamos County puts on their "family friendly" list are so difficult that I can't ride them (we've argued with the county's trail guy, who I don't think is a mountain biker; he insists that they should rated as easy based on some IMBA criterion or other.)

Anyway, the point is that you can't tell what you'll be able to ride without going there and trying it.

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[ 19:41 Jan 20, 2024    More bike | permalink to this entry | ]

Mon, 01 Jan 2024

Best Books I Read in 2023

2023 was a good year for books, especially nonfiction.

I only finished twenty books this year. I think that's mostly because I read a lot more nonfiction than usual (tending toward long books and slower reading), and I had no re-reads. Still, quite a bit lower than past years. I guess I've been pretty busy with other things, and tired and zonking out early instead of reading well into the night.

Here are some of the books I enjoyed most this year.

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[ 12:34 Jan 01, 2024    More misc | permalink to this entry | ]