Smoke on the Water
by garry.c.stewart on May.19, 2012, under The Lake
Portable gas water pump being fired up.
Some big excitement at the lake this afternoon, the neighbour’s boat house across the road from us caught fire!
Chopping a hole in the deck.
I walked down to the end of our driveway and noticed a girl standing at the end of our neighbour’s driveway, and didn’t think anything of it until a fire truck roared up the road, and she waved them into the driveway. With in minutes there was also a helicopter overhead checking out the situation and an OPP cruiser pulled in right after the fire trucks.
It turns out that she was canoeing in the bay and noticed some “unusual” smoke by the boat house and paddled over for a closer look. The place was on fire and they went next door to another neighbour and called the fire department. The volunteer fire department arrived in 15 minutes, by then the boat house owner had their own fire hoses in play battling the fire. For most of the afternoon the firemen poured water on the structure and investigated all the walls and between the floors. The top floor was filled with thick smoke. Thankfully, nobody was injured and the fire didn’t spread to the forest or other buildings.
Squirrel Piss
by Garry on May.05, 2012, under Life
When I was younger I had a summer job at Furby Motors. The owner, Ken Main, was also a cottage owner on Bretton Lake where I spent may great summers growing up. Between working the summer job and hanging out with his family at the lake we became pretty good friends. One day at work I needed to get some rusty bolts of off some automotive part and they just were not budging. Ken walks by and sees my situation and casually says “Put some squirrel piss on them”. I guess from my stunned look he realized I’d never heard that phrase before. “Penetrating oil” he says.
To this day every time I reach for the Liquid Wrench to help with a rusty bolt I think of Ken and the good times we had at work and sailing on Lake Brerton.
With a little help from my friends
by Garry on Apr.05, 2012, under Cycling, FOG
I thought I knew how to change a flat, and I do, but last Saturday I learned a lot more. I learned how to do it with the help of friends.
It was the first official FOG ride of the year and we were about 45 minutes in and just about to turn off Main St back onto River Road and the bike was feeling a little funny. Just after the turn it was for sure the dreaded flat on a group ride. Protocol has everyone stop and wait for the flat to get fixed, so there is a little pressure to get it done quickly.
Flying through the change the tube is out, wheel and tire checked quickly and new tube installed an re-inflated. Just as I’m putting the wheel back on the bike I notice it’s flat again!
Lesson #1: Be quick and careful.
One of my friends has a very close look at the tire by turning it inside out and flexing it back. This process discovers a small piece of glass which is pried out. Now we’re ready for another tube.
Lesson #2: Have lots of the right tubes.
I have a 2nd tube with a short stem and the new rear wheel with the Powertap has a deep rim. Friends to the rescue as I’m given a tube. A quick but careful tube and tire assembly followed by a CO2 inflation and we’re good to go.
Another 30-40 minutes go by and it happens again! Another flat! Frustrated I call for a pickup but the friends insist that they will help get me on the road again. A close look at the wheel shows that the rim tap has moved leaving 3 exposed spoke holes that most likely caused the tube to puncture. Another friend supplies the solution with self adhesive tube patches to cover over the spoke holes. Another friend supplies another tube and while inflating with a borrowed frame pump because i left mine at home, I hear the dreaded psssssss sound. The metal valve stem has snapped! Unbelievable!
I’m given another tube and this time all goes well and were back on the road.
Lesson #3: Know your equipment.
The rest of the ride was uneventful. I’m the only one who flatted, the only one to delay the ride, twice, both for an extraordinarily long time.
Lesson #4: Always ride with friends.
Thanks to everyone who helped me get through the ride, gave me tubes, patches, pumps and offered encouragement. Thanks to all who waited patiently.
Commuting
by Garry on Mar.17, 2012, under commuting, Cycling
This is the first week without the truck and a full 5 days of bicycle commuting. So far I’m not missing the truck too much and with the unusually warm weather it’s not been much of a hardship. In fact, last night I biked home in shorts! Not all the days were easy. On Tuesday, the melt from Monday coated the streets with ice and it was quite tense trying to stay upright while listening to car spin their tires and sliding all around me.
The Sasquatch got another commuter upgrade last night as well with a set of new Specialized tires. They are much quieter and probably a fair bit faster with less rolling resistance.
The new cycle commuting routine is getting down to a science and snow, ice and cold are no problem. We’ll see how it goes in the rain, that will be the next challenge.
Unusual EKG Results
by garry.c.stewart on Mar.11, 2012, under Grab Bag
Something strange happened while I was being monitored this afternoon. Apparently, I flat lined! That red line across the bottom is my heart beats per minute, and I’m pretty sure a flat line in not a good thing.
Actually, it’s not an EKG, but a recording of my Spin Class workout with my new Powertap power meter. Apparently, the heart rate signal just dropped off half way through the session. Trust me, it was beating plenty fast.
The whole power meter thing has me taking my cycling sessions a lot more seriously and I’m reading more about how to train with power and the importance of structured interval training. Hopefully, when the group rides start up again this year, I’ll be a lot stronger rider right of the top of the season.
Steel Beast Rides Again
by Garry on Feb.19, 2012, under commuting, Cycling
Well, pretty soon the truck is going back, and I’ll be making the daily work commute using different forms of transportation. It will either be the bus, or by bike. I’ve made a few test runs on the bus and it seems like it will be quite acceptable. The only thing is I’m not all that crazy about keeping to a strict schedule that is required by the bus, I like to be a little more free flowing. Fortunately, the bus schedule at both ends of my route has buses arriving quite frequently so last minute departure changes should not be too bad to deal with.
My other option is to up by cycle commuting game to more of a year round endeavour. Several folks at work are hard core, right through the winter, every day cycle commuters, that put my casual “if it’s not raining” three season cycling to shame. So, here is the new strategy, as yet unproven, but I’m now ready to go.
I’ve brought back the “Steel Beast” now tricked out with a new seat, fenders and panniers. Who know that the 30+ year old Norco Sasquach would get this kind of use? Cromoly steel at it’s finest, nearly indestructible, a little on the heavy side, but that just makes for a better workout.
The Sasquach was my 1st mountain bike from way back in the day and it’s hard to believe that I traded in a Honda 550F for a bicycle. Ah, the sacrifices you make for children, but that’s another story.
My new work location is not quite as convenient as my prior location as I don’t yet have access to a full time locker. With the panniers I think I’ll be able to transport and store the extra gear during the day until a locker becomes available.
So that’s it. The old bike has been given a new life was as hard core year round commuter ride. Now lets see if I can become the hard core year round rider!
Bus Rider
by Garry on Jan.24, 2012, under Travel
I know a lot of people ride the bus, but not me, not until yesterday that is.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the cost of operating a vehicle lately and when you add up the payments, insurance, parking, and repairs it’s an amazing amount per month. So, yesterday was the start of my bus adventures for commuting to work.
I needed to take the truck in to have the windshield replaced, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to start riding. Armed with bus tickets and an app to find my rides I set out on the #57 Express from Southdale to downtown. Nice ride, not crowded, as fast or faster than driving and strangely relaxing. Perhaps it’s just the 1st time novelty.
Going home was equally good. The stop is a block from my office and the bus was exactly on time.
Today I’m on the #19, not an express but moving well. Oops, spoke too soon! We’re jammed up on Archibald with all those darn cars!
Giving up the truck and going to a one vehicle family will be a big change for me. Bussing in the winter seems like it will be OK, and way less expensive. From early spring to late fall I can be on the bike so that will be excellent. I think I’ll turn the mountain bike into more of a commuter bike with fenders and skinny tires and perhaps the reward for my new transportation style will be a new full suspension 29er.
IBM to Launch IBM Docs with a Collaborative Service Similar to Google Apps
by garry.c.stewart on Jan.16, 2012, under Grab Bag
IBM to Launch IBM Docs with a Collaborative Service Similar to Google Apps | ServicesANGLE
IBM is set to launch IBM Docs as part a collaborative service similar to Google Apps that it is calling the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business. As part of the effort, IBM is placing its LotusLive services under the SmartCloud name, which now encompasses IBM’s “smarter commerce,” brand, analytics and industry specific solutions such as its Smarter Cities efforts.
Melt Down
by Garry on Jan.04, 2012, under Grab Bag, Nature
What’s going on? It’s January and there is virtually no snow in Winnipeg and tomorrow the forecast is for +7. Thought these ice candles would be fine until late March, but at this rate they will just be a puddle of water by tomorrow night.
Geotagging photographs with gps4cam
by garry.c.stewart on Jan.02, 2012, under Grab Bag
I’ve spent a good part of the last day of Christmas holidays playing around with the computer. Well, not so much playing as learning some new stuff in Lightroom 3, which triggered exploring a whole bunch of other stuff, mainly around GPS, geotagging and the iPhone. You see, Lightroom exposes the GPS metadata of a picture and there is a small little arrow next to the GPS coordinates that launches a Google Map of where that photograph was taken. Similarly, geotagged photos sent to photo sharing sites like Flickr use this GPS info to put your photo on the map.
While iPhone photographs are self-geotagging (GPS coordinates can be automatically associated with the picture when it’s taken) my other cameras, like the Canon 7D, can’t do this on their own. It is possible to geotag photos from DLSRs like the Canon 7D and store that information as part of the image but there are quite a few different approaches and hardware/software options to get the job done.
After a little googling around and reviewing a number of approaches, I settled on gps4cam, an iPhone app, to help me get the job done. Primary criteria were low cost, after all this is the post-Christams period, it had to be easy to use, preferably self contained, not requiring yet another online service and be easy to use in my Lightroom workflow.
The 2D bar code in the picture is my 1st test of gps4cam and it contains GPS locations sampled on a 5 minute interval of my afternoon photo shoot expedition to Whittier Park. At the end of your “photo trip” you export the GPS information from the iPhone and it produces one or more 2D bar codes, which you simple photograph and add to the photos that you’re planning to geotag. The photos are then processed with the gps4cam desktop software. It looks at your photos and finds the 2D barcode info and extracts the GPS data and then inserts the appropriate GPS data into the appropriate photo, it’s simple “magic”!. The nice part is that you don’t need to synchronize the clock on the iPhone with the clock on the camera, which is what a lot of other solutions require when using a GPX file to attach the GPS info to a photo.
So far, I’m quite pleased with the gps4cam software and I’m looking forward to testing it out on a longer photo shooting expedition.
