Michael Papet

Knobbies.  Knobbies everywhere!

Do you want every last watt of power you put out to translate into speed on the cyclocross bike?  Then in most cases, stay away from full knobby tires.

Full knobbies aren’t particularly beneficial in most riding conditions.  The human body doesn’t put out so much power that a smoother tire could possibly break traction.  Is it possible to break traction?  Sure, but that’s the result of a very inefficient riding style.  What about the front wheel slipping out?  Tire engineers would argue, and I agree, that there isn’t enough contact area for most tall side knob designs.  They may give you mental reassurance, but the physics just don’t work.

The best example of what should be your next set of budget tires is the Michelin Jet.  A little cheaper tire is the Kenda Kwik.  Either tire in a 30c will give you excellent handling too.

Now that I’ve driven away the fashionable cyclocross crowd with heretical views on knobbies, the one of you that’s gotten this far should consider why 34c’s aren’t, on average, a good choice.

My problem with 34c’s is they are very wiggly when cornering where it counts the most, high speeds.   What you gain in more shock absorption in slower sections is a big net-loss if you are gapped in high-speed corners.   Accelerating from 20 km/h to 24 km/h is *much* harder than from 16 km/h to 20 km/h.  Running 30c’s keeps your speeds higher because you can corner faster.

Are there single-race conditions where 34c tires will make a meaningful difference?  Yes. If a 34c gives you the luxury of mot0r-boating through sandy sections while others run, then that’s a big-win.  Another course where 34c’s work is long, flat*very* choppy sections.   In both these examples, running a knobby in mostly dry conditions will only slow you down.

In muddy conditions, running a skinnier tire with an open tread, (not a knobby) works better.  The uncommon wisdom in this case is the bike sinks to the firmest ground.  An open tread discourages mud from collecting.  Knobbies will encourage some mud collecting because of all of the clever ridges on which the mud sticks.

Knobs are out for cyclocross.  Right?  Skinnier tires good.  Fat tires bad.

Capitalism is supposed to drive down costs and increase the variety of goods and services offered.  Have costs for retail banking gone down?  Are there more/different Retail banking operations?  No to both.

Welcome to the actual consequences of unfettered capitalism.  In the best economic situations, an Oligopoly serves the market, in the typical situation Duopoly/Monopoly firms control markets.  This is empirically evident regardless of the scale of observation. (local/regional/national)

People are making check cashing work for them now, so why change what isn’t broken?  Because it will inject more money into the economy.  Look at this presentation about banking in Central California.  The statistics clearly show there are banks, but few use them.

There’s an opportunity in between the commercial banks and the check cashing operations to lower banking costs for people who are employed and cannot afford retail banking.  They get a paper check and head to the check cashing store.   Then these people are getting reamed by check cashing operations.  In this day and age it is the peak of inefficiency.  It’s good Capitalism, at great expense to marginal consumers.

The USPS could offer consumer savings accounts and plain-vanilla debit card/checking services at monthly fees that decrease the more you save.  No credit operations.  They must offer limited services (especially limited access to paper currency) and be eternally forbidden from attempting to add more services beyond the gap between retail banking and check cashing operations.

Why the USPS?  Because they’ve got the bricks and mortar locations all over the country.  They’ve got very complex retail operation experience.  The post offices in my area have friendly, helpful people working in them.  The service is certainly better than the CSR’s Retail giants like Worst Buy and Target employ.

Would the JPMC’s and BofA’s in the U.S. decry this as ‘big government?’  Of course they would.  But they hate competition.  Check cashing operations would see a nominal decrease in customers because a check cashing store’s best customers would not/do not use banks anyway.

The scheme provides more efficiencies and opportunity for low-income people/families.  Low-income earners using the service would have more money to use as they see fit.  No question about it.

The idea will be legitimized when some Ivy League muckity-muck endorses it.

Awesome bike skills tutorial 101.

1. Ride like hell ‘on the rivet.’
2. Bunny hop two barriers.
3. Maintain your coordination/balance while ‘on the rivet.’

Youtube

And guess what? No electronic shifters or carbon frame required.

Velonews (the oldest bicycle racing periodical in the U.S.) suggests the team directors are trying to mount a justification campaign for radios. Quit now. Please. Just accept that they won’t be in use any more and plan 2010 accordingly.

Most Velonews readers agree with me, ban the radios!

At least one pro racer agrees with me. Given the fact he’s not some IT guy that likes competitive cycling probably helps my crackpot opinion look better.

VeloNews reports the governing body for professional cycling has banned two-way radios.

Good riddance.

For those who may not ‘get it’ right away.  Look at coverage from the  stage races  available over at Universal Sports. In most stages, breakaway finishes are orchestrated to the last 200 meters.  (far less than 1% of the entire race day) Two-way radios are critical to planning and executing those finishes.

More broadly speaking, it is very easy to claim that with two-way radios, the bicycle racer is equivalent to a race horse.   The jockey in this metaphor is the Director Sportif.  (DS) I would much rather have the race play out on the road with very limited interaction with the DS and the team thinking on the road.

As a very big fan of bicycle racing, I think it will make the racing *far* more interesting and I applaud the UCI’s decision.  No matter how much the DS’s whine, the UCI needs to stand firm and maintain a complete ban.

Now, if they can get a better handle on the drugs the sport would be perfect.  Oh, and I’d like a pony, $1 million,  and a new remote controlled toy car for Christmas too.

I am in the unpleasant position of having to do a couple of things related to my MythTV server.

1. The server is off most of the time.  We just don’t use it very often and it doesn’t make sense to keep a dual-core PC running for no reason.
2. Manually update the tv schedule on my MythTV box. The attached script checks the date on a file and compares it to the current day.

mythtv manual schedule update

Attached script needs zap2xml to write the xml file(s).  Be sure to check your tuner id’s in the database and a couple of other adjustments will probably be required to have the script work for you.  But the fiddly bits about dates and MythTV commands are there.

It should be set up to run on login for your mythtv-backend session, and then perhaps as a cron job.

Questions? Leave them in the comments.

mythtv manual schedule update

I am having a heck of a time with Popfile these days.  My accuracy is way, way down lately.

Good news! I found the problem. It had nothing to do with Popfile per se, but my setup. Imagine that!

Looking through the word lists, there were tons of misspelled words in my Ham bucket.  Seeing another nail that needed a hammer, I wrote a script that moves misspelled words into the spam bucket.

If it helps anyone else, I’ve attached the script. here

This script requires an ODBC DSN to the SQLite database.  (That’s a mouthful!)  It will definitely work in Linux.  Other platforms?  Dunno.

Feedback is welcome in the comments.

On a side note, popfile in Debian’s repos is ancient.  Get it from popfile’s site. (version 1.1.1 or later!) Also worth noting is popfile’s xmlrpc interface.  Nice!

I was in a bit of a bind last week trying to rehabilitate an old Mac iBook into something useful-ish.

I discovered that Disk Utility has what appear to be multiple restrictions on creating bootable disk images.  What you can do is burn an .iso image that is already configured to boot.  What you cannot do:

• Create/modify an iso/.cdr image that can boot on a PC.
• Make a disk image that will boot on a Mac.

As a system administrator, this is more Rights management shenanigans on the part of entertainment media distribution’s best customers Apple and Microsoft that prevent me from doing my job.

The competition for worst consumer computer operating system is now a two-horse race.  Let’s dispense with the drama and call it a tie.

It blows my mind that when the last Goods and Services statistics released was reported as “No inflation in site.”

The way they get to this conclusion is by blending export-deflation with domestic inflation to disguise what is really going on.

In the real world, most of my monthly income goes to goods and services produced in the United States.  In spite of a contracting global economy AND deflation, prices are rising dramatically.

1. Food see graph on bottom
2. Gasoline  see graph on bottom
3. Utilities  No data.  Sorry.

Despite diminishing demand and diminishing valuations for capital goods, prices are still rising.  Fiscal and budgetary policies have unleashed massive amounts of money and there’s nowhere for it to go.  So, prices go up for domestic goods.

Best case scenario is 24+ months of punishing domestic inflation.  The common statistics used to measure inflation will still call this a ‘no inflation’ scenario going forward.  Best case scenario is the ‘rampant domestic inflation’ opinion  will be marginalized while the economy sinks into another malaise.

A wonkier version of this opinion and very worth the time and effort to understand is here.