Gadgets – Page 2 – CanooterValve

Dear Diary

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Nov 072012

Dear diary,

A very good friend of many years suggested I should begin a blog entry with “Dear diary,” so there it is. It’s kind of nice, you know, writing notes to yourself. Except I find me so boring that I hardly ever read anything I’ve written, as anyone who reads this blog has already realized.

Looks like we elected a president again last night. I did my part. Other than hoping he also carries the popular vote to minimize the chance of a shooting spree or two over the coming months, I keep politics well out of my Canootervalve. Let’s all agree to dislike one another while hoping for the best.

Also on the subject of writing notes to oneself, I ended up having to read my own patent tonight. Hard to believe I didn’t drink back then.

The good news is that I learned something that will make creating bikes a hell of a lot easier. It’s like the me of 2007 knew the me of 2012 would be a distracted dumbass and would need clear instructions–written in legalese or not–regarding the removal of one’s head from one’s ass. Go me!

What I discovered should go a long way toward solving the pivot size and front derailleur issues, and sort of gives me a whole new parameter of adjustment I didn’t realize was available. It’s like being a painter for twenty years and then discovering the color blue.

Lots of drawing to do.

The Look In Your Eye

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Nov 022012

Forget Google Glass, Oakley has started off the post-Lance era with a bang.

Heads up display is comingg to ski goggles, though I suppose you could ride in them if you wanted to, or sit around the house in them, pretending to be rad.

The feature list includes just about everything except laser beam incineration, and I’m damn glad I’m not an actual journalist so I don’t have to list all that bullshit out here, but suffice to say, you can do some freaky shit. Sync to your iPhone, is one example. Track friends and get GPS display to help you find your way home are some others.

Being officially Old and Cranky, I’m bound to be a little snarky about this sort of thing, but less so than some. Surely (or “surly”) anyone who believes something as quaint as riding while wearing headphones to be a sin will have to feel wearing these googles is tantamount to full-scale Satanism.

Just how much is packed into these goggles? According to CNET, they’re pretty “boss.”

Featuring a passel of sensors including GPS, Bluetooth, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and more, the Airwave is meant to give skiers an entirely new level of information about where they are and what they’re doing than has been possible before.

Like it or not, you have to admit this looks a lot like the future. The semi-intrusive, blinky and beepy future, wherein one gathers a great deal of information about what one is currently doing, as opposed to doing it.

Finally for this long, long week, a truly bizarre opportunity presented itself for Project Danzig today. I can’t talk about it, which is good, because probably nothing will come of it. If it did, though, two of my planets would align. I’ve heard good things about that happening.

Either way, more Danzig next week, assuming I make it there to join you.

Instant Gratification of the Future

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Oct 292012

Long before he took up debating chairs, back when men were men and cops held pistols like teacups, Clint Easton was Dirty Harry, and Dirty Harry said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

I’ve been reminded of that a lot lately, based mostly on how few hours I tend to sleep a night, but plenty of other things as well. While I can’t speak for Clint, I think Harry Callahan would’ve recommended corporations don’t go getting too far ahead of themselves either.

Case in point, the newest use for my favorite pet world-changing technology: Google’s self-driving cars.

Apparently, being ferried to work while unconscious isn’t the only visionary implementation on the to-do list. The real beauty of self-driving cars is their ability to deliver products to your house.

No, seriously.

According to the article on AndroidAuthority.com, your deliveries will eventually be brought to you by driverless cars. And it will be awesome.

Delivery without human contact has so many advantages. For one thing, unless the vehicle doing the delivery is a cross between an armored car and one of those 24-hour theft-proof convenience store windows, you’ll presumably be able to also pick up those Frankline Mint collectors’ coins your neighbors had ordered and anything else that looks good, too, including the delivery car itself.

They’ll get that all sorted out, of course, with lasers and self-driving police cars and stuff. Much hazier is how self-driving cars are any real advantage to consumers. Aside from UPS’s obsessive compulsive routing system that eliminates costly left turns, it’s difficult to imagine benefiting much from the actual “vehicle drives to your house” phase of the shopping experience. Compared to the logistics stuff that’s already going on with hubs and airplanes, the part where the shit gets driven to your house doesn’t seem to be any area for much improvement.

But apparently I’m missing the point. According to AndroidAuthority’s article, instant gratification is about to get even more instanter.

Other companies, such as Walmart, Amazon, eBay, and others have been developing the idea of same day shipping. In essence, you order an item and it’s delivered to your door step in just a few hours. This would be fantastic for the online shopping community. Google has been making plans to do this as well.

The service has been live in San Francisco for a little while now. However, it is currently only for Google employees, their families, and their friends. Instead of getting into commerce and keeping warehouses, Google’s plan is to partner up with companies that have these things and simply deliver the items. According to the New York Times, a well known apparel company is already involved in this concept with Google.

Never mind the fact that Google’s entrance into a massive warehouse logistics endeavor would make even less sense than their purchase of Motorola. What’s weirdly adorable about this article is its unbounded optimism about a future in which basic cognitive skills no longer guarantee humans a job. The article continues,

Okay, so Google’s plan for same day deliveries is awesome. What’s even more awesome is that they plan on using their self-driving cars to do it. Just imagine, a legion of cars without drivers delivering your new gadget or clothing items directly to your curb. Then you can retrieve it and the car goes off to its next delivery.

This is an amazing concept. With no drivers to pay and, thus, no scheduling conflicts, Google’s self-driving cars can deliver things day and night. So when that wine you’re drinking makes you impulse buy that Star Wars themed Android charger in the middle of the night, Google’s self-driving cars will have it there before morning.

Online shopping is already pretty popular. People buy things online all the time. So would the addition of same day shipping be the next big thing and make it even more popular? More importantly, would you use a service like this? Let us know.

Yes, because when I order my Star Wars-themed Android charger in the middle of the night, it’ll be so much more convenient to have the package arrive at three or four in the morning.

And what the fuck is, “Online shopping is already pretty popular”? Yes, I believe I’ve heard of this “online shopping” of which you speak. Of all the moving parts required to make delivery within hours happen, I believe self-driving cars would be the least impressive. Near the top, however, would be having warehouses within hours of everyone’s homes and replicating your inventory in every one of them.

Once that miracle is solved, then yes, I’ll be the first to “online shop” myself a pair of “road closed” signs and see if I can roadblock a Google car into an existential crisis.

Pre-Halloween Danzig Update

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Oct 192012

But enough of my yakkin’ about other stuff. I may have found a way to make Danzig even simpler. I can’t quit you, Solidworks.

After a brief (like seven minute) and tempestuous relationship with a linkage arrangement that’d put the rear shock directly in line with the seat tube (sort of tucked inside an oversized seat tube-esque channel or something), I started experimenting with lower shock positions. The whole story is right up there, in all those blue lines (along with some other interesting blue line stuff I can’t go into right now).

Why do I do this to myself? Tough to say. But if the shock could be mounted low enough, I’d be able to take a lot of metal and machining out of the upper rocker. Now I’m sort of obsessed with trying to make it happen.

Somebody really needs to take my laptop away.

The New Abnormal

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Oct 162012

Rain has finally settled in to Portland. I celebrated by overcooking a turn riding in to work this morning and sliding up to, but not quite into, a homeless guy’s tent. Only a little road rash on my left side. The bike seems to be OK, too, with the exception of one of my precious few remaining ancient Selle Italia SLK non-gel saddles. Down to only three of those, and now one’s a little frayed around the edges. Drat.

Anyway, yesterday I apologized to bike designer Helio Ascari after he sent over some photos of the actual bikes he’s designed (I’d originally questioned their existence.) They’re very pretty bikes. Still, I tend to think of bike designers as people who invent things–from tuning geometry for certain ride characteristics to creating completely original two-wheeled things.

Josh Bechtel is that kind of guy. Like his wild Bicymple or not, you have to recognize he’s made something. Difficult as it is to bring some new creation kicking and screaming into the world, people like Josh deserve a hell of a lot of credit for trying to make that happen.

Apology Monday

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Oct 152012

I took a break from Canootervalve last Friday. Sorry about that. My parents are in town from across the country and we had no fewer than three birthdays to celebrate. Part animal that I am, I spent most of their time here with the laptop on the lap, tapping away at any number of jobs that just never seem to sleep.

While I’m handing out apologies, I also owe one to Helio Ascari, model, nephew of Formula One Champion, and–it turns out–bicycle designer. A while back, I’d kicked Helio in the nards a little over a Wall Street Journal article about his bicycle designs. In fairness to me, in the article, Helio is riding a Pashley Gov’nur, lending an air of confusion to the proceedings.

Turns out, Mr. Ascari really does design bicycles. And they’re actually pretty bitchin’ for high-fashion bespokey bikes–especially the fixed gear.

Better still, Helio’s working with bike builder Gary Mathis out of Ashland, Oregon. I don’t know Gary, but his fashion sense seems decidedly more “I’m the guy who welds.”

So I apologize to Helio. Pretty cool looking bikes.

Design-wise, though, I’m thinking I need to celebrate some hard-core bike nerds this week. Engineering types. That’s on my mind a lot right now, and there’s a new character on the scene that’s done some pretty cool stuff.

Open Sores

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Sep 142012

I’ll be at Interbike all next week, reducing Canootervalve to maybe the occasionally photo and half-formed musing–which I guess is pretty much what it is anyway.

But I’ll be neck-deep in bikes–literally and figuratively–so before all that starts I wanted to ponder the news today that Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, wasn’t happy with the crushing pro-Apple verdict recently delivered in a patent lawsuit between Apple and Samsung. In case you hadn’t noticed, Apple literally own the ability to hinder sales of some Samsung phones because the Google Android OS on those phones encroached on Apple intellectual property. Heavy stuff, but bullshit, as far as Wozniak seems to be concerned.

Quoth Woz:

I hate it. I don’t think the decision of California will hold. And I don’t agree with it — very small things I don’t really call that innovative. I wish everybody would just agree to exchange all the patents and everybody can build the best forms they want to use everybody’s technologies.

In light of the recent Trek versus Weagle squabble the shareware, free love that Woz seems to be advocating here might sound pretty bizarre. Would we really just reduce things to their form factor, where the company with the best-looking bike always gets the sale.

Seems bold.

Apply it to the bike world and that means anyone could design a Santa Cruz VPP system or a DW-link. The invisible hand of the market would, presumably, mop up whatever confusion this nonsense would create and build, instead, better bikes–ones with more elegant solutions to the same set of problems.

Or people would just knock shit off poorly.

While I wish I could share in Woz’s Grand Open Source vision of a world in which intellectual property doesn’t have to matter so much, the reality is that we live in a world where companies rip off squiggly look of a Pinarello just to make a buck. And it works.

No, I think there’s still some value in intellectual property, but I’ll agree with Woz that a lot of it’s completely stupid, too. I’ve seen patents get slapped on “Brand A’s” single-pivot bikes because Brand B noticed a chance to patent something as stupid as a piece of tubing connecting the pivot and the shock mount. That’s so amazingly wrong on all levels.

So I’m off to the godforsaken desert. Any questions about new products, feel free to ask. Between all the meetings I definitely won’t get to everything, but that won’t stop me from trying.

Should come home just a little closer to creating some bicycles, too.

Hard Software

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Sep 052012

I have software on my mind today, and not just because Cyclocross.com has launched. As in you can probably go there and buy something. You should really go there and buy something.

Fortunately, that project has entirely custom software behind it, but most projects involve working with business management software. I’m doing a bunch of research on two such systems now, and I’ve had a minor revelation.

The main reason why all Financial Analysis, Accounting, ERP and CRM business software sucks ass? Go to their developer resources (usually after going through a bunch of useless bullshit to access them) and type “data export.”

The first ten results are all “data import.” Hey big money software company douchenozzles, if you love something, set it free. Us poor IT bastards are hostage to your wretched shit anyway. It’s not like we can pull all the data and set up with another smarmy ERP solution overnight without our companies still having to pay your ridiculous contract fees for the duration of time. The least you could do is make it less than impossible for us to actually use your heinous shite to power additional company needs (you know, fancy, exotic shit like a web site).

Seriously, searching for “data export” should never, ever, summon up results with only the word “import” in them. Some developer somewhere wrote that search query with management’s gun to his head and then had to get really drunk and probably punch a wall, because people whose brains are trained to think logically tend to have strong, adverse reactions to delivering the complete motherfucking opposite of what a user is clearly asking for.

Disgust with enterprise software is nothing new, and has been written about for years by much smarter and more qualified people than your lowly author, but I’d like to think my example cuts to the heart of why enterprise software sucks so particularly bad: its hamstrung by continually integrated sales of itself into every aspect of its design. Want to create a purchase order? There are tools that explain how easy it is to learn about creating a purchase order using Douchbaggery’s AZ-X-plozion Purchase Order Creation Wizard and examples of how Squirrel Window Cleaning uses that DAZXPOC Wizard to streamline their sourcing of tiny squeegees, but good luck sitting down and just making a PO.

I’ve wrestled with four or five pieces of advanced business management software in my life, and every time I go in I’m always just happy to get back out alive.

Unplugged

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Aug 282012

The mad buzz of activity surrounding electronic suspension systems, including this Jet 9 RDO over at Bikerumor.com, shows no signs of stopping any time soon. This means two things:

First, it means electronic suspension will be unavoidable at Interbike. I doubt it’ll reach the level of carbon fiber Taiwan catalog hardtail 29ers or this year’s me-too, disc brake ‘cross bikes, but it will most certainly be present.

And why not. Electronics make everything better. Take Legos.

You could spend a few hours building something interesting with Legos, or you could spend just a few months longer and what appears to be slightly more money than the cost of an actual car to create this awesome Lego Mindstorm go-kart. But to get the full effect, you really have to see this thing in action!

Pure awesome. If you’ve ever wondered how large a Lego device would need to be in order to roll up onto a rug without visibly straining almost to the point of stopping, now we all know the answer is “apparently bigger than that.”

Sadly, the only thing we seem to be using electronics to do right now is power our bikes–like if we need to go a considerable distance but don’t want to have to burn $5 worth of dinosaur bones. Practical and beneficial for everyone? Sure. Just not nearly as exciting as figuring out ways to add electronics to do shit your bicycle already did without batteries.

In addition to shifting and suspension regulation, then, I have a few suggestions for other ways to incorporate electronics into the crude and overly mechanical world of riding a bicycle.

The Brakes – Duh. We’re done everything else, but now it’s time for those wireless elecronic brakes that work almost all the time. Bonus points if they could make it so a call to my cell phone from my wife would slam on my brakes so I could take the call. That’s the type of integration we’ll be able to look forward to in the future.
Hydration – Tell me this: how ridiculous is it that here, in the 21st Century, we have to suck on Camelbak tubes or squeeze water bottles? Electronically regulated hydration could make drinking as easy as pressing a button or two, and/or maybe regulating flow through some type of pressure control switch that mimics what the mouth does when it drinks.
Tire Pressure – If only there was a way to fit a battery inside your tire, a small circuit board might be able to announce your current tire pressure every 30 seconds. Using apps and The Cloud, your friends could even monitor the air pressure in your bike tires from their desktop and mobile devices. And how fun would it be if they were also able to change that setting from their living room?
Two Words: Remote Control – London’s Olympic XC course aside, the problem with traditional XC mountain bike races is that they’re endurance events. Not the most spectator-friendly of events, right? So let the racers do what they do so well: train and pedal. All that other stuff–from suspension settings and tire pressure to hydration and putting on the brakes–is really a hell of a lot to have to deal with while churning out 400 watts on the threshold of oxygen debt meltdown. So give all that crap to somebody else–somebody standing by the side of the racetrack. Radio-controlled mountain bike racing with real people on the bikes: you can’t deny the entertainment value in that.

Yep. We’re only in the early stages of this whole electronic thing. Look what it did for Dylan.

Alcohol-related Injuries of Tomorrow

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Aug 242012

While our promised jet packs still haven’t arrived, we have some happy news today in the world of personal hovercraft. An article at InnovationNewsDaily.com details a pretty kickass little personal flying hover thing created by a company called Aerofex. The article likens it to a “science fiction flying bike”–“bike” here being a pretty loose description, based on the fact that it has two enclosed rotors.

I like it.

Best of all, it responds to the rider’s balance simply and mechanically, making it apparently really easy to fly. How easy?

‘Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),’ said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

ATVs, as we all know, are particularly easy to operate.

Something to look forward to, anyway.

Another something to look forward to? With a little luck and some free time, this hunk of metal might be a new swingarm for Danzig.

I recall the last 3D swingarm I built caused me to spend many hours with my head in my hands, weeping, so I’m hoping this one gets built a little easier.

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