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Finally, a 3oz insulated espresso shot glass

November 10, 2009 in Coffee, Mark, New York by Mark Beattie | 1 comment

Like many residents of this city an occasional stop at the “Starbucks Public Restroom Service” happens, but as I was waiting on line I found a set of Bodum 3oz Insulated Shot glasses with ounce increment markings for sale ($10.95).

As far as I can tell these do not exist on the internet and I think they are an older version of the Bodum Assam 2oz shot glass. The glass I’d been searching for was from a specialty coffee distributor called Rattleware who make a 3oz mini shot pitcher, but these insulated Bodums (with a silicone pressure regulation seal at the bottom, no less) appear perfect for pulling up to 3oz shots and are certainly nicer to drink espresso out of.

Bodum Assam 2oz, the version I have has straight walls and 1 & 2oz interval markings, allowing up to 3oz total volume

Bodum Assam 2oz: the version I bought has parallel straight glass walls and two 1oz interval markings, allowing up to 3oz total volume

Rattleware 3oz Mini Shot Pitcher

‘Gunks, Birdie Party and a short traverse

November 4, 2009 in Climbing, New York by Mark Beattie | No comments

Bill L. and I took a trip up on Monday to the Shawangunks and the Trapps. I can’t remember the first meandering “3 star” 5.8 we got on but it wasn’t particularly great. The view from the top of the cliff line was though and the sun was out, so I couldn’t complain. We hunted around the top until we found a rap anchor on a solid oak tree. We walked down to the MAC wall with eight thousand other climbers and pet dogs running wild, tried to get on “Higher Stannard” but Bill took the line up “Something Interesting” instead. It was longer than we anticipated and there was traffic at the top due to “The Route Formerly Known as Three Pines“, a solo-top roper and two other slow parties.

Thankfully all was not lost, Bill insisted we get on one last line up to the bolt anchors on “Birdie Party” just to the right about 15ft of “Higher Standard“. He climbed up to the bolts and then did a wicked 20 foot almost no footed traverse to the 1st set of bolt anchors for “Mother’s Day Party“. It was exciting to say the least. Bill runs 1/2 ropes, the Petzl 8.2 Dragonflys, and when I unclipped from the 1st anchor he still had a cam and two slings around the pointed beginning of the hand traverse (rope #2) but from that point on it was, “just keep moving, nothing to see here”; don’t think about the swing. The climbing on “Birdie Party” was the best face climbing we’d done all day and the hand traverse was icing on the cake. The sun set as we rappelled off the 2nd bolt anchor and cold valley air permeated the crag; just another beautiful day climbing in the ‘Gunks.

V1 Octalink? 105 or Dura Ace, you choose!

August 17, 2009 in Bikes, Mark, New York, Training by Mark Beattie | No comments

I found this awesome quote in rec.bicycles.tech while looking for setup tips on the old Dura-Ace 7700 Bottom Bracket:

The Octalink crank attachment, its feet of clay, has no preload
between the facets of the square spline and therefore frets (tiny
motion] elastically, even if it has no actual backlash in torque.
Aluminum parts against steel are a classic of this syndrome because
the softer aluminum frets on the steel, and instead of developing
rouge as steel-on-steel does, it makes (hard) aluminum oxide whose
repeated fracture often makes a sharp click.

I haven’t heard your BB, but I have heard such clicks. This may be
your problem and the reason why Shimano gave up on Octalink. Elastic
backlash (absence of press fit) is a phenomenon that escapes
recognition in various mechanical devices and gets passed over in
time, even when the reason is not recognized.

Jobst Brandt
So there you have it from JB himself – Octalinks may develop clicking due to their design. We’ll see. I’m not sure if the weight savings and extra $30 are worth it for the DA BB-7700 vs the BB-5500 but I’m partial to designs that allow rebuild and proper setup/adjustment, so I think I just might go for it paired with a Sugino Cospea compact crankset. In my heart of hearts I want a triple with that 12-21 cassette I’m running, something like a 28-38-48 perhaps. The current 34/44 setup is fine considering I don’t often find myself needing much bigger of a gear than 28+ mph but on downhills it is lacking. The other issue being crossover gears where I often find myself running 34 x 12-13-14 and realize I need something slightly bigger.

Sugino Cospea Cranks

Gunks’ V4 – early bike rides & Bing!

July 14, 2009 in Bikes, Climbing, Computer, Mark, New York, Shimergo by Mark Beattie | No comments

Ryan and I went to the East Trapps yesterday to Boxcar and Andrew’s Boulder problem. I mananged to send the normal Andrew’s V4 problem by late in the afternoon. No luck on the Black Rock V5, and the V3 Baby Hole almost went, but we wanted to save a little skin and tendon strength for Andrew. The heel hook to toe catch seems to be crucial, there are some more challenging variations on it, including the roof, so I look forward to going back to it.

Went for a bike ride in Central Park at 06:30 with some co-workers. Seems crazy, but I feel good. Zoe informed me that Bing! is not finding my page yet, and I know there are quite a few optimizations I can make to get more hits of out of this thing. Wordpress has gone to 2.8.1 so I probably should upgrade which might help. That’s about all I got. Lots of Gimme! fresh roasted Platinum Blonde blend these days, should’ve brought a samovar with me to the Gunks yesterday, I think it would’ve helped assist more sends.

Awesome awesomeness

May 14, 2009 in Computer, MythTV, New York, Technology by Mark Beattie | No comments

So things have been busy but going pretty well, in comparison to the Winter at least. I’m having another go at MythBuntu 8.04 LTS on the old PIII as the Myth Back-End. I built our Front-End this afternon. It’s a E5200 Core Duo chip, the motherboard is based on Intel’s 4100 chipset and is made by Gigabyte. I ended up with an MSI made Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT PCI-Express x16 v2.0 video card which should be able to offload my the processing needed for HDTV and h.264 1080p video playback, from what I’ve read anyhow VDPAU and Linux have come along nicely especially in the 9.04 release which is what I’ll run on the Front-End. The MSI supports two digital heads simultaneously over HDMI and DVI. Unfortunately the one Antec 120mm fan is quite noisy while the other Enermax 120mm is dead quiet. Lesson learned. I was going to buy two of those but I cheapened out.

The case itself is pretty solid, it’s an Antec Sonata III and it came with a nice EarthWatts 500w power supply and originally I was considering trying to find a different case and keep the PSU, but I think it’ll work out. I would say that you shouldn’t stuff like four 3.5″ SATA HDDs in this case, it’d be too hot and noisy. I may need to buy some sound deadening padding for the walls of the case and do a little dremmel cutting to open up some grating that seems to be blocking airflow. I was considering doing this at the Pratt metal shop but the prospect of dragging this case all the way down there was too daunting and besides, who doesn’t need a rotary cutting tool?

So yeah. A bit of the ‘ole bike commuting across the Williamsburg bridge. The weather has stayed pretty friendly and I’ve been taking sailing classes which have been a lot of fun. That’s all. Lets hope the new builds workout here so Zoe can start recording more model TV shows.

MythTV

My goodness, that’s good coffee!

April 7, 2009 in Computer, Mark, MythTV, New York, Sci Fi by Mark Beattie | No comments

I’ve been drinking the Stumptown Hairbender blend, usually as a “tall black” AKA an Americano (with nearly equal amounts espresso to water) at Sweet Leaf down the street. It’s really good. Basically, it trumps most all the other coffee I’ve had in this city, which until lately has been chock full of not very good coffee. In the past I’ve enjoyed both Grumpy and Gimme’. Don’t get me wrong, they were good. And maybe I’ll do some sort of coffee round up and see how the shots these shops pull compare, but for right now, it’s insane. The level has been elevated that much higher now that Stumptown is in town. I’m glad for it.

I had a MySQL database failure (thanks Dreamhost) but fortunately I backup daily. Unfortunately my backup was Latin1 and not UTF-8, because I started using Wordpress like 4 years ago. Anyhow, it’s all converted now to UTF-8 and looks like things are OK. Aris pointed out that perhaps my CAPCHA plugin is doing something funky, I’ll look into it.

The new SiliconDust HD HomeRun Tuner came in the mail. Zoe is excited about MythTV recording her shows for her. I am very sad that Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles is ending this week, it’s like I’ve lost a child who’s going to war. Only it’s a war in the future with evil robots. And my son’s name is John. John Connor. Also I’m pretty stoked about JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek. From the previews it appears ILM might’ve increased the SFX production values, though there probably won’t be any tribbles. I love tribbles. And Stumptown.

Metal Shop and Pop: Sheet Steel and You

March 23, 2009 in DIY, Mark, Metalwork, New York, Travel by Mark Beattie | 4 comments

So I went down to NC for a couple of days to build a welding table with my Dad. It turned out pretty nicely all things considered. We needed more practice on our MIG welds, but constructing a 4×4 foot table proved to be good exercise. We added a small 26 inch long extension off one side that will be my Dad’s cutting area where he’ll slot in steel strap for cutting with his plasma cutter and or Oxy-Acetylene torch if he ever goes that route. So that was a pretty solid few days of work. At the metal shop in Brooklyn I’ll have a slightly different tack for building a base for our kitchen counter. My plan there is to build metal brackets to go around the 3×3″ wooden legs and then finish the skirt with wood and hanging drawers. Zoe’s aunt has a bed that will replace ours as I’ll be cutting up the bed frame I build to use for the legs.

Still Not Ice Climbing – but lets build a MythTV!

January 26, 2009 in Apple, Audio Server, Backups, Climbing, Computer, Mac, Mark, New York by Mark Beattie | No comments

Sadly my Saturdays and Sundays have not been filled with ice climbing trips to hidden frozen waterfalls of the Northeast. My hand feels better despite having a small gash where it hit the edge of the BMW car door. I imagine I’ll be able to go back to the MPHC climbing gym soon.

I miss the outdoor rock. Ryan, Josh and I went on a few climbing trips before it got cold and before weddings and Texas. Ryan has photos of us climbing in the Gunks and Brewster, NY available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ryanwesleywebb these are just a sampling.

Peterskill - Mark, Josh

Ryan in Peterskill

Ryan, Ice Pond

Mark's hand, Ice Pond

I spent most of yesterday reading about MythTV. If you feel like setting up an open source home DVR (TiVo like) then Mythbuntu or KnoppMyth seem to be a couple good stable options for creating a home Linux TV recording solution. Obviously this will only work if your signal is “free and clear”. Dish, DirecTV, ComCast, Time Warner and basically any cable or satellite provider, encrypts all premium content. So on the one hand, local network channels and basic cable should be “free and clear” (over digital cable local channels are usually free using QAM) but with satellite it’s more likely you’ll need to rent the DVR from them. The only reason I’ve been considering it is because I’ve needed some sort of iTunes server back-end (see my Firefly MT-DAAPD post) and it might as well DVR network HD shows we want to watch. Also, our ATSC tuner is old (2nd or 3rd generation) and I think the latest 5th or 6th gen tuner chipset should allow us to get all the local HD broadcast channels without fussing with the antenna.

There are three parts to most MythTV setups, which could all be integrated into one system or distributed into three smaller systems:

The back-end is your dedicated server which should have low power and processing requirements. I’ve been looking at the MSI Wind ‘Nettop barebones PC (MSI’s product page) which sells on Newegg for like $139.99. It uses an intel Atom 1.6GHz processor with minimal power draw, I think around 35 Watts max, but you could probably optimize it to use somewhat less than this. Obviously, HDTV content takes up a fair amount of disk space, so for starters lets say a 1.0 Terrabyte hard disk drive.
The actual TV tuner (which now ‘a days will need to be digital ATSC HDTV compatible, unless you still have analog cable) could be as simple as a PCI card in the back-end but something even cooler is the SiliconDust HDHomeRun. This product is two ATSC tuners in one. It transfers HD broadcasts from over-the-air (or QAM) to your server via ethernet. It requires DHCP to obtain an IP address, but otherwise it’s just a little box with one 10/100 ethernet jack and two antenna inputs; ATSC to IP as it were. Your back-end will recognize it as two tuners in the setup. You could watch one while the other records or both could record simultaneously.
The front-end will be how you actually watch the content you have archived. Say you ripped all your DVD’s and you’ve been time-shifting several seasons of Top Chef, the “front-end” is what will do the heavy lifting of playback depending on the bit rate and resolution of the video. It should look just like any other media playback menu. From my reading, MPEG-2 is the optimal format to save content to (thankfully DVD and ATSC signals are already MPEG-2 so no transcoding is required) and MPEG-4/h.264 require more horsepower on your machine to playback smoothly. My MacBook Pro Core Duo 2.0 GHz would be a fine front-end however I’d need to plug it in to watch shows. I’d be able to watch live TV wirelessly on the laptop anywhere in the house though. Note: the Elgato EyeTV is another option for Mac OS X HDTV time shifting however it doesn’t have the front-end/back-end model, your laptop has to be on and plugged into the tuner to record.

Yup. So that’s where I’m at. I’ve already wired the 1GigE cable to the bedroom. I still need to do a cable run to the kitchen, but that’s not really a priority. I think having a small machine like the Wind PC in a closet would be a nice way to have both an iTunes server and a DVR. Apparently MythWeb allows you to easily setup recording from your web browser, so you just login and set the shows you want to watch for the week and let the back-end do its job. There are ways to “Sling” content to yourself if you’re out of town or something, but personally I think I could wait until I’m home, and besides most of the content by the big networks is instantly available online now for free viewing.

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