Tag: cycling

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Photo of a family wearing shopping bags as rain ponchos in a NYC subway station. The bottom of the bags are cut out as head-holes. The bags have a spooky, Halloween theme that includes a dark mansion, bats and a jack-o-lantern.
Any bag in a storm.

Another week with some really intense rain in the city. This photo of a family’s creative rain gear is from Thursday evening when it absolutely dumped for at least the better part of an hour. They may look ridiculous, but at least their shoulders are dry, mine were soaked.

Between storms, I managed to get out on the new bike four times this week! I’m still working to reclaim my urban riding skills. Some of these have less to do with riding than others. For instance, after a few shaky trips, I’m able to navigate the bike room and get on and off of the elevator with aplomb. However, my first time locking up was less than graceful. At least I provided some entertainment to the guy that was watching me while enjoying his morning coffee and smoke. I could almost hear his inner voice saying “what a jackass”.

As for the riding itself, is great—other than being sore in a few places I wasn’t before. So, there’s some truth to what they say about never forgetting how to ride a bike.

On Saturday, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Brooklyn, there was a reenactment in Prospect Park. We went to check it out. There was a respectable turnout with a lot of spectators around Long Meadow. A battle ensued before the Continental Army’s retreat. We decided that the most exciting looking part to play was whomever was on horseback. How often does anyone get the ride around Long Meadow on a galloping horse unimpeded by volleyball nets, picnickers, dogs and cricket wickets?

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Photo of a super sweet, orange bike propped up against a stone wall with green foliage in the background.
Tangerine Dream

I bought a new bike this week. I immediately took it for rip around the park followed by a quick, golden hour photo shoot. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden anything other than an acoustic Citibike around town. This bike is so much lighter and more nimble than those blue beasts—it feels like flying.

On the project front, I made good progress on V3 of the home dashboard. The visual redesign had been on my todo list for ages, but I was stuck on creating the overall aesthetic. Rather than letting that continue to block me, I worked on wiring up the data. Now there is a working dashboard that is getting all the data I want. While it won’t garner even an honorable mention at a design competition, it feels good to have built something. The hardware is next. Perhaps I’ll get some inspiration for the visual design whilst I work on that.

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I don’t often get the Sunday Blues. But, this Labor Day evening? Serious Monday Blues. Something about the cooler weather and a premonition that this week was going to be a shit show on several fronts reminded me of the dread I always felt the evening before the first day of school. Though, as with school, this week wasn’t all that bad.

The highlight of the week (it’s good to have low expectations sometimes): I finally figured out how to run two Jamulus clients on my Mac. Hundreds of others have managed to do this without much effort, but it was a challenge for me. We tested the new setup on a Thursday jam–thumbs up all around. There’s a step-by-step guide here: How To Run Multiple Jamulus Clients on a Mac. I wrote it mostly for one of my fellow jam mates; why not put it out there for others?

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The big news this week was, of course, the New Jersey earthquake that shook the region. I learned two things:

  1. I didn’t know what to do in the moment. I resorted to looking at my coworker in bewilderment. Now I know to dive under my desk–and be prepared to move with it.
  2. “I survived the insert event here of 20XX” t-shirts can be marketed before the event is over–no matter how short said event may be.

Now for some nostalgia. Remember Coin? No, not Coinbase or Bitcoin, but the all-in-one, electronic credit card. I found mine in a drawer, surprisingly it still turns on. However, all the cards in it are expired. Coin shut down in 2017. It was a cool idea, but not quite as cool or convenient as paying with a phone, which has become commonplace now.

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