If you are rocking a Swift Folder through the city, one day you are going to find yourself in the rain.  If you got a custom Swift (as opposed to the stock Xootr one) you might have gone the fixed gear route, as I did, in which case FOD to the chain (such as your unrolled pant leg) can be exceedingly dangerous.  There is a solution to these problems – a chain guard.  Neither Xootr or Peter Reich offer a chain guard option for the Swift.  However, one time when I was at bfold (my local folding bike dealer, whom I strongly recommend) , I recalled that David Lam had an unused guard laying around.  Once I jogged his memory, he found it in short order and I no longer suffered from torn pant legs and unexpected drifting.  You can find the part here. 

Now the biggest problem with the guard is not its fit over the chain, but securing it to the seat tube.  If you are riding a Swift Folder, you probably know that the seatpost alone is a solid 34mm (as this is the means for locking the rear triangle into place) and the seat tube is even larger.  I still have not found a a clamp that will properly secure it to such a diameter.  The current method is to use a smaller clamp with the right tab, place it over a rubber shim (this is very important, especially on the powder coated frame, as the clamp will rotate and cause the guard to hit the chain) and zip tie the balance of the space.  If you do find a proper clamp, let me know…

I should mention that Velo Orange sells a guard with which I have no experience, but may experiment with in the future.  If anyone’s tried that on a Swift – or a SS BMX bike for that matter – I’d love to hear about it as well.

For now though, the jury rigged clamp and guard serves my purposes well, and the translucent guard allows me to eyeball the clearances around the chain.

A month ago, in a review of the n810 on Maemo Apps, Jonathan Greene suggested that microb, the Gecko 1.9 “browser” for the Maemo platform, needs a branded name.  I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether to type microb or Microb or MicroB in the first sentence (the package name won out) as I have seen them all used.  I have a suggestion.

Fennec.

The littlest (red) fox around.  Actually, they are the smallest Canid around.  Hardy too, they survive throughout the Sahara and Arabian Peninsula, though are a popular target of hunting.  Drawing its water from vegetation, the fennec can survive without drinking for extended periods. They can be domesticated with some work, but that is not a task for those seeking the path of least resistance.

Sounds just like the mobile Linux experience.

Oh, and they are cute, too.

Haven’t posted in ages, mostly cause I’ve been having too much fun biking around the city on my new bike.  I’ll post pics when I’m done adding/swapping parts to my liking.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I reflashed my Nokia n800 because something had gone terribly wrong: it seemed that the power saving features no longer worked. I would have the machine plugged in to the outlet, screen locked and the machine set to offline mode – neither of which, to Nokia’s credit, should grant significant power savings – and then, after unplugging it and leaving it in such a state would hear the dreaded low power notice play but a few hours later. Since I have made significant changes to my n800, I assumed that this was the result of some obscure switch I flipped in a conf file in an all-too-small vim session. Accepting the fact that tracking down the cause of the problem would take longer than the total system wipe – and that I had been intending to rebuild my system at some point anyway – I took the coward’s approach and reflashed. And all was good.Until a few days ago.

The power drain returned.

This time, I had a newly rebuilt system with nigh complete Hebrew support and all the applications i wanted. Reflashing, though an option, was no longer acceptable. This time the behavior was limited to an effect of the software installed over a few prior days and thus, more easily debugged. To make a long enough story somewhat shorter, the cause of my problems turned out to be the Autoscan package.

Let me be clear – these are my problems – the package is clearly marked as arm, not armel, marked as for the 770, not the n800. The developers did no wrong.

Still, the package manager installed just fine, and it provided functionality I wanted. However, it was also creating a server which constantly ran network traffic, irrespective of the status of the client software or network connection. From this, I have learned two lessons which I hope will be of use to someone else facing four hour battery lifespans on the n800:

1. The differences in 770 and n800 software can be significant. Just because a package installs and runs does not mean happiness will ensue. The power management differences are more important than I considered.
2. The value of a good, ps-like, Hildonized task list/manager cannot be underestimated. Load Applet is my choice these days. My choice prior to reflashing displayed Hildon apps only; had I known about the Autoscan daemon I could have saved myself hours of reinstalls and reconfiguring.

You know, I was tempted  to entitle this post “Supergood,” but that would have been too much the cliche – whether or not it has been used to describe Superbad, which I just saw.  Somehow it smacks of the trite wordplay I expect from the Post or the Daily News, neither of which I care to emulate.  Moreover, it’s just not true -  the movie was good, better than expected of its genre, but still, it dragged at times.  It did have me laughing out loud at moments, but not nearly as much as I expected from the trailers.

Incidentally, I have to get mp4s working under Debian more reliably.   More on that later, in another post.

Back to the flick.  Worth seeing.  Serious kudos are owed for a film which makes all three of its objets d’lust brunettes.  In doing so, it avoided an idiotic cliche; not all men prefer blondes, yet still prefer women.

While letting a friend use my computer to log in to NYU home, I saw this (publically accesible) document, asserting NYU’s stance in assisting RIAA with going after NYU students and network users. You can find it here. In it, NYU pretty much stipulates its complete compliance with RIAA and not the law (judging by the actions asserted, not the apologia presented). Worse yet, this Provost bandies about the fallacious “you wouldn’t steal a CD” argument, all the while wrapping herself and her argument in the American flag, invoking Abraham Lincoln, and academic responsibility, misrepresenting intellectual history.

There is an apparent divide here – better schools (Harvard in particular) have voiced opposition to these abuses and lesser schools toe the DMCA line. It’s sad to see my alma mater fall in the latter class, especially in such a poorly argued fashion.

I’ve been religiously googleling “N800 skype” for two weeks now. I shouldn’t have bothered – I fired up tableteer on my N800 looking for the free Earthlink setup (not available in NYC, sadly) and it suggested an update to 2007.26-8 – with Skype, Flash 9 support, and (mainstream) SDHC support. Go and get it!

Still in Florida.

I’m trying my first serious post on my N800. I did bring my notebook along with me, and frankly, while the N800 can function in its stead -it is not quite to be recommended. See, like everything else, on the internet, there are producers and consumers. To wit, there are devices to match. Despite the fact that as Linux based “Internet tablet” the N800 has definite geek appeal, the Nokia is more browser than creator. For example – and an annoying one at that – the ability to cut and paste is slow at best and finicky (or even impossible) at worst.

So, at least for blogging, simple text posts like this are fairly easy, as long as you have an external keyboard. In fact, I’m finishing this post on the thing at the airport terminal in Fort Lauderdale. As for the rest, well, the N800 has come in dammned handy many times on this trip – particularly with maemo mapper – just make sure you have downloaded the maps you’ll need in advance. I have a (solar assisted) bluetooth GPS coming next week. If that works, and I can find a useable protective case, I may have found the ultimate* urban exploration tool.

*ultimate until the next model with WiMAX and municipal WiMAX deployment, of course. A better camera would be nice too.

New Notebook From ASUS Called “Eee” PC Uses Solid-State Drive. Nice that they announced it on my birthday (yes, I’m blogging this late). This is just what I have been looking for.

In addition to the N800, of course.  God I need Wimax – or the ability to inject packets on the N800.

Back the Eee 701. The one thing thats bugs me is the 3 hour battery life. WTF? It’s a what, 7″ screen? Flash hard drive? Where he hell is all that power going? Or did they just skimp on the battery? When =>3lb. notebooks can have 8+ hour real performance – with larger screens and real, mechanical, magnetic hard drives, something is very wrong with a very short 3 hour battery life. Maybe there will be an over priced battery option with more cells?

I can hope. Still, I treat notebooks as portable desktops and only use them around outlets – cause you never know when you’ll *really* need that battery – so the battery life isn’t a deal breaker. And prices of $200 to $300 are quite the opposite.

From our field correspondent, via his Nokia N800. I got my WordPress client working; Rob’s got Gizmo and is working on binding his Wiimote. More to come as soon as I learn to type quicker on this thing.