Toshi's ride pics thread

[Toshi]

go to annualcreditreport.com <--- free yearly credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies. too bad you east coast people have to wait an extra year :D

also, this is the 2000th post in this thread. yay.

more bonus material for post 2000: http://www.redbullcopilot.com/ . i recommend going straight to the race section, then director's cut. also, this ad is worth watching, if only for its straight up weirdness (it's of a model riding a mechanical bull while eating a carls jr hamburger): http://www.carlsjr.com/tv/Bull_200k_qt.htm

[Toshi]

purple bear:

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/2353112/detail.html

http://www.cs-ed.org/blogs/mjadud/images/purple-bear.jpg

[Barbaton]

entertaining vids:

http://www.sublimedirectory.com/stimes/09-20-2004/intersection.wmv

http://www.sublimedirectory.com/stimes/07-12-2004/mustang.wmv

http://www.sublimedirectory.com/stimes/08-02-2004/musicballs.wmv

http://www.sublimedirectory.com/stimes/06-14-2004/ref.wmv

and at least one bike related one. :)

http://www.sublimedirectory.com/stimes/04-19-2004/minnow.wmv

[Barbaton]

hmmm. i was just looking at the funny videos. there seems to be a lot of sketchy stuff on that site... hmmm...

[Toshi]

that musicballs one is blatantly, er "ball-synced". he's not hitting the proper keys :D

[Toshi]

this is quite cool:

http://www.cyphic.net/zoomquilt/zoom.htm

[Toshi]

here is what i've been working on for the last month or two: Autumn 2004 gross anatomy vivas ( http://students.washington.edu/tjclark/Autumn_2004_gross_anatomy_vivas.doc) (4.3 MB word file). being done is good, but now i need to be able to recite all the stuff in it :dead:

[Toshi]

also, a xpost of a small tire review i wrote for another board that is down at the moment:

i run 31x10.5 bfg MT tires on my pathfinder. here's a glamour shot:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/pathfinder.jpg

they aren't overly loud but are definitely louder than stock. the switch to them + the 29"->31" jump hurt mileage by about 2 mpg, or roughly 10%. driving more conservatively to prevent the transmission from downshifting has gotten much of that loss back. traction seems fine altho i have little to compare it to.

i picked the bfg mt because it did well in some mud bog test in one of the trashy 4x4 magazines. it almost got the same distance in the mud bog as the swamper trx or whatever its name is, and was the quietest mt model they tested.

[Toshi]

hmm, it may be several months before i receive a replacement for my bic-able kryptonite:
the above was posted on nov 14. now it's dec 6, and i just received a shipping label (via email, picked up/printed out electronically from ups.com, nifty) from kryptonite. so i should have a new lock soon. :thumb:

[Barbaton]

the above was posted on nov 14. now it's dec 6, and i just received a shipping label (via email, picked up/printed out electronically from ups.com, nifty) from kryptonite. so i should have a new lock soon. :thumb:

damn. i keep meaning to call them about that. did you have to have the original receipt?

[Toshi]

damn. i keep meaning to call them about that. did you have to have the original receipt?
i have no idea where the receipt is. i just have to ship them the lock and a working key. sign up online, don't call them. www.kryptonitelock.com i think

[Toshi]

ugh. shipping the lock was a huge pain. pouring rain, nasty traffic on the roads, huge puddles to hydroplane through, and the ups store was on the opposite side of the mall from where i parked. :dead: but i should have a new, free, non-tubular-key krypto u-lock by new years... and now's the perfect time to do the swap since classes ended last friday.

[Toshi]

check it out, side car motorcross: http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104609

http://www.team-sidecarcross.com/mc/castelnau/images/WILLEMSEN-STUPELIS%20(20)_jpg.jpg

[Toshi]

some science humor: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/crerar/exhibits/humor7.html

make sure to read about F. D. C. Willard :D

[Toshi]

one final exam down, three to go. this one took all of 25 minutes of its allotted 3 hours. it was really short, 26 multiple choice questions -- there were about half a dozen people who finished in about that time, and that was after checking answers. if only the anatomy final would be that easy.

it's weird having finals before winter break btw :D

here's a study on the use of "dude", i kid you not: http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/12/08/dude.study.ap/ . soft sciences are up to no good, i tell ya :mad: :oink:

a quote from it:
Kiesling says in the fall edition of American Speech that the word ["dude"] derives its power from something he calls cool solidarity -- an effortless kinship that's not too intimate.

Cool solidarity is especially important to young men who are under social pressure to be close with other young men, but not enough to be suspected as gay.

[Toshi]

here's a new pic from tonight (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/out%20to%20see%20the%20canadian%20brass%20-%20december%208,%202004/ ):

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/out%20to%20see%20the%20canadian%20brass%20-%20december%208,%202004/Images/0.jpg

[narlus]

that purple bear is cool.

how about puce wombats?

[Toshi]

that purple bear is cool.

how about puce wombats?
yeah, he looks so sad in that pic, too. is puce wombats a reference to this?

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7117/chant/poetry2.html

i am proud to have contributed to the locking of the "pig on a spit" thread along with you, heh :thumb:

[Toshi]

here's a cool tool, google suggest

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en <-- it autocompletes entries based on popular queries, not what you've searched on before. try starting with "my cat" :D

[Toshi]

this is what i posted on another board, just in case you guys are in the market for cell phones:

Originally posted by SafariX [on MacNN forums, not here]:
The SE T637 has been perfect. Great reception, bluetooth, great battery life and a super bright screen.
i've owned a nokia 3650 and currently have a SE T637. the T637 is not all roses:

T637 high points:
- small size
- good looking
- free themes available
- reception is fine with Cingular in metro Seattle, WA

T637 low points:
- the phone is locked down: i can't put my own ringtones, programs, or games on, can't modify the menu or the stupid joystick shortcuts from the main menu
- the interface is awkward. there's no quick way to exit from the browser, for instance, and having a dedicated "back" button that's not at the top edge of the buttons is also annoying
- the camera is useless
- the built in WAP browser is also useless
- unlocking the phone (both in the sense of carriers and in letting the user change programs) requires a PC and a dedicated cable

Nokia 3650 high points:
- Series 60 rocks. Opera for Series 60 worked great
- my T-Mobile 3650 let me transfer files freely via bluetooth, including wav and midi ringtones, apps/games
- unlocking the phone from T-Mobile was a matter of going to a website, generating a code, and typing it in
- reception was good
- battery life was good
- camera took very decent images, sort of painterly
- syncing of calendars, etc. via isync worked fine. additionally, address card pictures (that you see in iChat and in address book) synced to the phone, so when you'd call or receive a call from a contact their picture would show up next to their name. very slick.

3650 low points:
- HUGE in comparison to modern phones
- very lightweight feeling, not confidence inspiring
- circular keyboard not for some. my thumb got used to it
- Opera is not supported any more, and isn't perfect

overall i'd pick the T637 again at this point in my life, since i'm using the phone exclusively as a phone and its size is important. however, in terms of usability and interface the nokia series 60 product wins hands down without a question. once i unlock my T637 perhaps i'll have a better impression of it.

[Toshi]

just when you thought that you had seen it all comes along an off-road segway:

http://www.hardocp.com/images/news/1091057629x4GdutY5Cn_1_1_l.jpg

[Quadari]

just when you thought that you had seen it all comes along an off-road segway:


How about segway polo?
http://www.bayareaseg.com/Polo.htm

(As linked from /.)

How is everyone out there anyway? I've been sort of lurking for a while.

[Toshi]

hi ari, how's life? i just got in/done with pics from a holiday party at kristel's apartment building, which is filled with yuppies. good food and open bar tho :D

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/holiday%20party%20-%20december%2011,%202004/Images/3.jpg
http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/holiday%20party%20-%20december%2011,%202004/Images/1.jpg

rest o' pics here (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/holiday%20party%20-%20december%2011,%202004/)

time to go to sleep and then wake up early for some anatomy review action

[Quadari]

hi ari, how's life?

Life is okay. Almost done with my current project. Then a few weeks off, then, who knows what? :eek:

I just posted long overdue pictures from the red sox victory parade (http://s91486101.onlinehome.us/).

What's everyone doing for the end-o-year festivities?

[Toshi]

oh, i did something bike related yesterday: bought new, big grips (a month after the big grips thread :D ) and dropped off my toasted rear wheel from the evil to be rebuilt. it's getting a Sun MTX rim, 14/15 double butted spokes, and brass nipples, and i'm sticking with the current XT disc hub + gusset 1'er semi-ghetto singlespeed setup.

[Toshi]

mmm, done with gross anatomy! :thumb:

here's a random pic of the funky keys of a friend's piano snapped on saturday:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/holiday%20party%20-%20december%2011,%202004/Images/0.jpg

[Quadari]

mmm, done with gross anatomy! :thumb:



Gross! :dead: (Yes...I'm funny.)

Congrats though!

[Toshi]

i'm mirroring my comments from this thread in the lounge (http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105227), because i think that the original poster is going to delete it soon since no one is siding with the ridiculous claims made by his friend, the assistant referenced below. the quoted text is from this article (http://www.statesman.com/sports/content/auto/epaper/editions/tuesday/sports_14ebe956e0bf80110075.html). finally, use this login information (http://bugmenot.com/view.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statesman.com) if you want to see the article without registering.

Anderson claims the alleged e-mail served as a contract, but he was always an at-will employee, the lawsuit states.

"Defendant alleges that such an e-mail exists, but does not have a copy of the e-mail, although he purportedly 'remembers it clearly,' " the lawsuit states.

As Armstrong's assistant, Anderson performed various tasks, including helping Armstrong with day-to-day training and landscaping. After he was fired, Anderson demanded that Armstrong and his company pay him and his wife, Allison Anderson, half-a-million dollars, the lawsuit states. Anderson asked that Armstrong purchase cashier's checks worth $300,000 payable to Mike Anderson and two $100,000 cashier's checks made out to two law firms that made the demands and wrote two letters on Anderson's behalf.

Anderson also requested a signed yellow Tour de France jersey and three autographed posters made out to "My Friend Mike — Thanks for all your help and support," the lawsuit states.

Anderson also demanded a "highly favorable" reference letter with precise wording and a future provision requiring Armstrong to make endorsements and public appearances at a bike shop which Anderson might buy or open in the future.
the trainer sounds like a lowlife. read the above passage if you haven't already...

[Barbaton]

ouch

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105253

[Toshi]

here's a pretty cool jumping vid: http://www.blurredout.com/Movies/Dirty04.wmv

[narlus]

yeah, he looks so sad in that pic, too. is puce wombats a reference to this?

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7117/chant/poetry2.html

i try to stay from poetry, esp bad poetry.


i am proud to have contributed to the locking of the "pig on a spit" thread along with you, heh :thumb:

yeah, the long arm of the law got us. oh well.

[Toshi]

woohoo. went night riding today with evilbob from RM. :thumb: took the evil with some changes:

- the abovementioned nifty oury grips. they feel nicer than ruffians to my paws
- i slapped the Z1 on the DBR, part of the benefit of running chris king headsets on all of the off-road bikes. it just needed about, say, 3" of headset spacers to work :D
- new battery for the stadium light, of course
- swapped saddles with the road bike: the uncomfortable terry firefly goes to the commuter, the dbr gets my tried and true wtb sst.k

[Barbaton]

for you lego loving computer monkeys:

http://goldfish.ikaruga.co.uk/logic.html

[Toshi]

for you lego loving computer monkeys:

http://goldfish.ikaruga.co.uk/logic.html
wow, that's too much for my finals-addled brain to handle first thing in the morning, but very cool nonetheless

[Toshi]

oh, i [...] dropped off my toasted rear wheel from the evil to be rebuilt. it's getting a Sun MTX rim, 14/15 double butted spokes, and brass nipples, and i'm sticking with the current XT disc hub + gusset 1'er semi-ghetto singlespeed setup.
the new wheel is done. will post low depth of field pics of it and the dbr + Z1 setup on the first sunny day that comes my way. which may well be a long time off

[narlus]

what's the dbr? you have a diamondback?

[Toshi]

what's the dbr? you have a diamondback?
that i do. vintage 1996 diamondback racing axis. tange prestige, breezer dropouts, not even a thought of disc brakes in the mind of the designer. its small tubes match the 30mm stanchions of the z1 well :thumb:

here's an ugly old pic (http://tjclark.ath.cx/images/biking/bikes%20and%20parts/DBR%20-%20old%20pics/Images/1.jpg). no, i don't actually run toeclips. or red tires. or that z2 superfly (cracked both stanchions :D). or that stem.

actually, this pic is more recent (http://tjclark.ath.cx/images/biking/bikes%20and%20parts/current%20bike%20stable%20-%20november%2027,%202003/Images/1.jpg). the pictured firefly saddle is quite painful, just for the record. wtb sst.k is a much more agreeable piece of leather and metal.

[Toshi]

i went on a night ride with skookum and two other lurking monkeys tonight. did about 10 miles, starting well after sunset. :thumb: feet got cold but my light did its job. my suspicions about needing a helmet light as well were confirmed. i'll attend one more night ride to make sure this recent streak isn't too much of a fluke and then order one (a non-hid this time!) up

i also mounted the sportworks bob ratchet rooftop mount that i bought back in october. it was surprisingly difficult to install, requiring lots of crescent wrench action in tight quarters. hopefully my (and others') bikes will not fly off of it on the freeway...

[Toshi]

iso 3200 + pushed 0.5 stop (! which makes it ISO 4480 equivalent), 50/1.4 wide open at f/1.4, 1/60. shot in almost no (and very red) light, noise reduction applied of course:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/out%20with%20ruben%20-%20december%2018,%202004/Images/0.jpg

i also went on a group ride today (http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105201&page=1&pp=20), and bonked. hard. :dead: here's the group:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/green%20mountain%20-%20december%2018,%202004/Images/4.jpg

see the gallery (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/green%20mountain%20-%20december%2018,%202004/) for more, and this thread in the lounge (http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1376016#post1376016) for commentary on the images, particularly this one of Vno:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/green%20mountain%20-%20december%2018,%202004/Images/8.jpg

[Toshi]

here's the newly rebuilt wheel:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/MTX-resized.jpg

a 100% crop, not bad at all imo for the 12-24 :thumb:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/MTX-rotor-crop.jpg

[Toshi]

and yet more pics from tonight:

red square perspectives (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/daily/red%20square%20perspectives%20-%20december%2019,%202004/)

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/daily/red%20square%20perspectives%20-%20december%2019,%202004/Images/0.jpg

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/daily/red%20square%20perspectives%20-%20december%2019,%202004/Images/6.jpg

(12mm, 10 sec shutter via remote release, f/13, iso 100, perspective screwed-around-with in photoshop except on the last image in the gallery)

[narlus]

i like that wheel photo. what do you mean by "the 12-24"?

[Toshi]

i like that wheel photo. what do you mean by "the 12-24"?
the 12-24 is the Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX lens. it's comes in canon, nikon, and sigma mount flavors. i replaced a Sigma 15mm f/2.8 EX fisheye with it since it's rectilinear (maps straight lines to straight lines).

[narlus]

uh, ok.

nods quietly and shuffles out of the room.

[Toshi]

just finished reading the merchant's war, by frederek pohl. was not very well written or deep, but had many intriguing concepts. it's worth a read, especially at only 200-and-change fast moving pages.

[Toshi]

what do you all think of me slapping this fork on the front of the evil? note the disc mount. $70 new from kona.

http://www.konaworld.com/Prod/000000180/P2_Jump_fork_large.jpg

[prophet6]

toshi:

I've got a planet x knifen on the front of my evil right now... and all I can say is that my wrists get sore every time I look at the thing. Dunno... maybe I'm just getting old?



p6

[Toshi]

yeah, i also rocked the knifen/kniffen (i've seen it both ways equal amounts :D) for a while on my evil. but now that it's single speed and outfitted with arrow launches it's not going to see anything that you wouldn't ride with a bmx bike...

[prophet6]

like i said, i'm getting older and thus a fair bit more wussy.

I'm also not very good at reading the limitations of the bikes I'm on. Example: riding dirt jumps on a fix gear, single track on a road racing bike, and 9ft hucks on a xc racing bike. It gets ugly. Knowing me, I'd launch an ill-fated stair gap on a rigid bike.



p6

[Toshi]

i read bukowski's "notes of a dirty old man" over the past two days after reading about it in this thread (http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102932&highlight=bukowski). was colorful, funny, and gave another look on the beat crowd of kerouac (whose writing i devoured a few years ago), burroughs, etc. quality of the entire volume is inconsistent, but that's to be expected given that it's a collection of his weekly columns.

[Barbaton]

Greetings from the snowy southwest. It's 15 degrees and snowing here in Santa Fe. I think my biking season is officially over.

I went to Wolf Creek, Colorado Monday and Tues and the skiing was fabulous. Lots of clueless Texan/Oklahaman/Arkansans, though. It was amusing listening to everyone bitch about the little (very little) bit of "ice" on the mountain, know to NE skiers as good snow. I told them it isn't ice unless it's green and you can see through it. :eviltongu Local shop here in SF has a lot of AT/Randonnee stuff and I'm thinking about demoeing some K2 Shuksans if the local resort gets enough snow this week. Anyone have any opinions?

Dialuply yours,

Barbaton

[Toshi]

hello all

two new pics from today (gallery here (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/lunch%20with%20deer%20-%20december%2023,%202004/))

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/lunch%20with%20deer%20-%20december%2023,%202004/Images/2.jpg

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/lunch%20with%20deer%20-%20december%2023,%202004/Images/4.jpg

[Toshi]

check it! new special edition iPods! :D heh

http://www.liebography.com/ipod.htm

[Toshi]

i'm thinking of replacing/trying to replace (http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=239476) the headphone jack on my well worn ipod. i hope someone has done this before, and that the part (or a suitable part at least) itself is readily available.

[Toshi]

just finished "temperament" by stuart isacoff (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375403558/103-1437690-7077444?v=glance). was actually a very interesting read, and compelled me to stay up as late (edit: as this post) to finish it. i highly recommend it to those with a musical bent and/or musical training.

of course, i may be a biased audience to it, because i've found temperment (the extra 'a' bugs me) to be a natural obsession of mine... ask anyone who has played under me in a section about this, and you'll probably get some grimaces. :oink:

also:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/iCard.jpg

[Toshi]

a peek into the secret life of christmas ornaments:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/miscellaneous/secret%20life%20of%20christmas%20ornaments%20-%20christmas%202004/Images/1.jpg

ISO 3200 btw. f/4, 1/125 with a sigma 180 macro :eek: <-- frame 2/4 of a burst since shooting at that low of a shutter speed/focal length ratio is not generally a good idea

[Toshi]

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/dismantling%20a%20battery%20-%20december%2026,%202004/Thumbs/9.jpg

can anyone (keith) tell me what the lettering means on the black, er, resistor? or whatever it is. also, what is the significance of the green resistor, is that a standard resistance? thx :D

pic is of my dismantled, old cateye stadium 3 battery. will link to gallery once i get back as with the other ugly temp galleries. my ultimate goal is to replace all the cells and wire it back up. pic was 1/40, f/11, iso 400, 28/1.8. the 28/1.8 is sharp after all, once you stop it down past f/8... :think:

"KL1XON 4-S 4MM75A-06 M9J 1"

in other news, my 50/1.4 bit the dust today. it won't focus closer than 1m, either via its motor or by hand. :(

[WTGPhoben]

[QUOTE=Toshi]
can anyone (keith) tell me what the lettering means on the black, er, resistor? or whatever it is. also, what is the significance of the green resistor, is that a standard resistance? thx :D

pic is of my dismantled, old cateye stadium 3 battery. will link to gallery once i get back as with the other ugly temp galleries. my ultimate goal is to replace all the cells and wire it back up. pic was 1/40, f/11, iso 400, 28/1.8. the 28/1.8 is sharp after all, once you stop it down past f/8... :think:

"KL1XON 4-S 4MM75A-06 M9J 1"
QUOTE]

Looks like a thermal switch
http://www.master-instruments.com.au/browse/Model/ER475A_06.html
Klixon is the company name, (looks like a subsidiary of Texas Instruments)
the '75' in the number seems to indicate the temperature at which it switches

[Toshi]

Looks like a thermal switch
http://www.master-instruments.com.au/browse/Model/ER475A_06.html
Klixon is the company name, (looks like a subsidiary of Texas Instruments)
the '75' in the number seems to indicate the temperature at which it switches
awesome. www.componentconcepts.com is the u.s. distributor, just in case anyone else cares :D or comes across this thread in some bizarre search. here's t.i.'s own product page http://www.ti.com/snc/products/controls/battery-mm.htm .

google friendly keywords: cateye stadium 3 battery pack replacement, T.I. Klixon Thermostat 75 degree, 4MM75A-06, part number ER475A-06, to make up for component concept's totally unindex{able|ed} flash site :mad:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/4MM75A-06.jpg

[Toshi]

more google fodder/me typing out loud:

the cateye stadium 3 battery pack is made up of 10 NiMH cells. these cells are an unusual size, called 4/3A, measuring 67mm x 17mm. googling for "4/3A NiMH" turns up a host of places where one can purchase such cells, for ~$7 per cell. with this in mind it's a little more excusable for cateye to charge $175 + shipping for a replacement pack, since it also includes the fancy looking electronics (presumably for recharging?) seen below.

update: one can purchase 4000 mAh 4/3A NiMH cells for $5.50 each (http://www.onlybatterypacks.com/showitem.asp?ItemID=10218.21), or 3600 mAh ones for $3.60 each (http://www.amondotech.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=300).

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/dismantling%20a%20battery%20-%20december%2026,%202004/Thumbs/0.jpg

[Toshi]

:dead: my 50/1.4 is broken (and i'm sending it off to Canon Irvine for service -- this is the letter to be included with the package):

Toshi Clark
[my contact info here, not that it's some big secret but still...]

December 27, 2004

Canon U.S.A., Inc.
California Factory Service Center
15955 Alton Parkway
Irvine, CA 92618-3731


To whom it may concern:

Enclosed please find a Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. The problem it is exhibiting is that it will not focus at a distance closer than approximately 1 m (whereas it should be able to focus as close as 0.45 m). It will not focus closer than this distance either by hand, via the focus ring, or when mounted up to the camera, via the lens’ own USM motor. The Canon technician that I spoke with on the telephone speculated that this problem is due to a loose focus ring.

The lens is more than a year old, so is not under warranty coverage. I am not including any accessories other than its two caps, as this problem can be demonstrated off of the camera as well as on it.

Please respond with an estimate via email. Thank you in advance for your consideration.


Sincerely,

Toshi Clark

[Toshi]

Sorry to hear bro...I'm sure (hope) they will take care of you.
yeah, just when my big sis (+ her boyfriend) roll into town, too. oh well. canon did a good job of fixing my 28/1.8 a year or so ago, so i trust they'll send it back working like a charm.

[WTGPhoben]

yeah, just when my big sis (+ her boyfriend) roll into town, too. oh well. canon did a good job of fixing my 28/1.8 a year or so ago, so i trust they'll send it back working like a charm.

how much did the 28 cost to fix? (looking for comparison, as I had mine fixed recently)

[Toshi]

how much did the 28 cost to fix? (looking for comparison, as I had mine fixed recently)
mine was actually expensive: $180ish? i think. but that was because they had to replace the "frame" or some such. it was quite broken... i could wiggle the front half of the lens independently of the back

[Toshi]

new pics from today. grey light, but cool bird posing (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/daily/just%20a%20grey%20day%20-%20december%2028,%202004/ ):

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/daily/just%20a%20grey%20day%20-%20december%2028,%202004/Images/3.jpg

[Toshi]

http://www.layeredchaos.com/CSi/FQ400-Topgear.wmv

405 hp from a stock Evo. the US never gets the cool models... :(

[MTB_Rob_NC]

http://www.layeredchaos.com/CSi/FQ400-Topgear.wmv

405 hp from a stock Evo. the US never gets the cool models... :(

Take your US version to my buddy, he can help. Probably for a lot less

www.Pruvenperformance.com

[Toshi]

i only wish that i had an evo! i doubt he can do much with my 3.3L pathfinder... :D

[Acadian]

http://www.layeredchaos.com/CSi/FQ400-Topgear.wmv

405 hp from a stock Evo. the US never gets the cool models... :(

still an EVO tho ;)

[Toshi]

i unleashed my inner redneck today and went 4 wheelin' in the dunes ( http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/trips/into%20the%20dunes%20-%20december%2029,%202004/ ):

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/trips/into%20the%20dunes%20-%20december%2029,%202004/Images/1.jpg

[WheelieMan]

http://www.layeredchaos.com/CSi/FQ400-Topgear.wmv

405 hp from a stock Evo. the US never gets the cool models... :(

Wow, that was really cool, thanks for the link! I'm glad they addressed the turbo lag though, nothing beats a naturally aspirated engine!

[Toshi]

new years resolutions:


play through all of the well tempered clavier, even if this means recording one voice at a time
flesh out at least the openings of the 24 fugue subject/counter-subjects that i sketched out last year in japan and subsequently ignored
don't be so cynical: about school, about people, about myself
shoot photos more regularly
do something every free afternoon or weekend, whether going out or shortening the giant reading list
exercise regularly. this means not shirking physical therapy! and go swimming in the mornings before class

[Toshi]

ahhhhhh i hate doing bike maintenance when it doesn't go right:

1) i pounded the star nut a bit too far down in the new/old fork (kona project 2 jump, for the evil), so when properly spaced out i can't get the bolt to catch... it's an easy fix with a longer bolt but that's an extra trip to some place that's not open right now :dead:

2) i pinched a tube remounting the tire on the new rim (that mtx). it's not an easy rim to mount tires to, very tall, but it was just careless :dead: x 2

3) having half of the tools sitting around the car in the garage, half in the room is also frustrating. :dead: x 3 . lots of useless walking around

oh well, it'll just have to wait until next year. time to go have fun

[Toshi]

how was new years (year's?) for you guys?

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/events%20and%20concerts/new%20years%20eve%20-%20december%2031,%202004/Images/10.jpg

more here (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/events%20and%20concerts/new%20years%20eve%20-%20december%2031,%202004/)

[Barbaton]

how was new years (year's?) for you guys?



Not bad. Stayed in at the GF's dad's place in TX. Little sister had friends over. Pretty chill night. Did miss the ball drop cuz i went to open the bottle too late, though. :angry:

Now on my way back to NM for more snowy ski goodness. I think I'm gonna rent some Randonnee gear and skin up the top of our 12k peak with a friend of mine from HS and ski the back side. Should be fun.

[Toshi]

Now on my way back to NM for more snowy ski goodness. I think I'm gonna rent some Randonnee gear and skin up the top of our 12k peak with a friend of mine from HS and ski the back side. Should be fun.
you're going to climb to 12k? you're nuts :D . i'm headed out skiing tomorrow, too. i think i'll bring the 20D and the 12-24 in my transalp, since i rarely fall when skiing. of course, i haven't been up in a year so this "rule" may be entirely off...

other news: through a bit of shameless self-promotion (http://bb.nsmb.com/newforum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51886) i racked up a bunch of hits to my site. today's visitor counter is currently at 33, and it has a bit of lag to it. :thumb:

i also did a bunch of wrenching on my bikes even tho i felt pretty good, albeit tired, after last night's festivities:

the evil now has the rigid, kona disc fork, that snazzy mtx-clad rear wheel, and the 31.8 control setup that the canfield sported this season. the oversize bar and stem are better suited for the evil, since the bulge in the bar doesn't let the controls be slid very far inwards. the slim clamps of the avid levers and lack of shifters on the evil lend themselves to the bulge well.

the canfield now has that horribly uncomfortable but pleasant looking terry firefly saddle. there's something funny about a monster t, michelin 2.8 front tire... and a slim xc racing saddle. :D . it was on the other end of the control swap, so now is sporting the woodman 50mm stem and non-oversize protaper setup formerly of the evil.

both it, my xc bike, and the evil were outfitted with large grips (ourys on 2, with the rogues on the canfield being the odd ones of the bunch) and with any luck the grip change plus this switch from 31.8 to 25.4 should alleviate my finger pain.

[WTGPhoben]

how was new years (year's?) for you guys?


not bad. kegstand->wandering about->pizza->sleep. Pretty typical New Year fare.

I haven't posted in a while so here's the rundown:

2wk 3days ago: crashed road bike on black ice. trashed rear rim. separated shoulder.

2wk 2days ago: went skiing anyway. 3 ace bandages holding shoulder together. No harm done.

1wk 4days ago: tried to ski. it rained.

1wk 1day ago: Performed controlled experiment with tires... drove around in a snowstorm with BFG traction TA 215s -> mounted snow tires (semperit ice-grip 195s) -> drove around in snow storm. Conclusion: snow tires are NOT a scam.

Ongoing project: rebuilding website.
New Years Resolution: finish the F***ing website and start taking pictures again.

[Toshi]

the above was posted on nov 14. now it's dec 6, and i just received a shipping label (via email, picked up/printed out electronically from ups.com, nifty) from kryptonite. so i should have a new lock soon. :thumb:
i don't know if it made it by christmas (as i was 400 miles away, at home) but i just received my replacement kryptonite evolution (http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1391587&posted=1#post1391587) lock. (they dropped 2000 from the name.)

[Barbaton]

So we had a snow storm here in NM last night so some HS friends and I hit the slopes. Georgeous day. I'm pooped. According to ye altimeter watch, we did 19 runs for a total of 24000 vertical feet. It's snowing again now so we might do again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll remember the camera so I can post some pics of what the southwest looks like from the top of the last 12000 ft peak in the rockies...

[Toshi]

whoa, 19 runs. that's intense.

[WTGPhoben]

i don't know if it made it by christmas (as i was 400 miles away, at home) but i just received my replacement kryptonite evolution (http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1391587&posted=1#post1391587) lock. (they dropped 2000 from the name.)

can you hit me with the link on how to do the replacement thing? I havent' gotten around to doing it yet.

[Toshi]

http://www.kryptonitelock.com/inetisscripts/abtinetis.exe/templateform@public?tn=product_exchange_english

you fill out the form at the bottom of the linked page, and a week or three later they email you a ups label to print out. stick that on a box, put your lock and keys inside, and then a few more weeks after that you have a fresh lock in your paws.

[Toshi]

recycling old pics here since the lego people site was rediscovered by the lounge (my group discovered it way back on january 29, 2003 since our nerdness is strong)

lego people (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/miscellaneous/lego%20people%20-%20january%2029,%202003/)

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/miscellaneous/lego%20people%20-%20january%2029,%202003/Images/0.jpg
supposed to be christine lin, heh. that's my pic of jordan hall used as a background

ari, i like your new years pics btw. especially the first glass one :thumb:

[Quadari]

ari, i like your new years pics btw. especially the first glass one :thumb:

Thanks. ;)

I was a bit dissapointed that the fireworks pictures didn't come out that great but that's probably because I was inside shooting through thick glass at a very touch angle.

[Toshi]

heh, i just did a phone mini-interview for a new york times stringer writing an article on foofpods (the little corduroy bags for ipods about which i posted in this thread back in november). the company also makes foofbags for powerbooks...

[Quadari]

heh, i just did a phone mini-interview for a new york times stringer writing an article on foofpods (the little corduroy bags for ipods about which i posted in this thread back in november). the company also makes foofbags for powerbooks...

Cool. :thumb:

So are you going to be famously quoted in that august publication?

[Toshi]

perhaps i will, if the writer doesn't get her story rejected :D .

at keith's (friend's) request i've posted a few full size 20D shots: http://students.washington.edu/tjclark/20Dsamples.zip , with the file weighing in at about 20 MB. some of the files have been resized downwards, especially the one that was shot at iso 3200 and then pushed another stop :eek:

[Barbaton]

So with 8 inches overnight we couldn't resist going up again yesterday. This time it was 18 runs for about 23200 vert and the best powder day any of us have seen here in years. We got another 5" or so throughout the day so fresh snow on every run. It was sweet, I'm tired. My friends schooled me all day since I'm used to eastern hardpack nowadays. One of my buddies got some pictures before his camera froze and I'll post them if he sends me some copies.

Back to c-bridge today, but stuck in the Albuquerque airport for now. Flight was supposed to be in at 8 through chicago, but ohare's a disaster now so it'll be through dallas at midnight. :dead: i love air travel these days...


So we had a snow storm here in NM last night so some HS friends and I hit the slopes. Georgeous day. I'm pooped. According to ye altimeter watch, we did 19 runs for a total of 24000 vertical feet. It's snowing again now so we might do again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll remember the camera so I can post some pics of what the southwest looks like from the top of the last 12000 ft peak in the rockies...

[Barbaton]

just got buzzed by a pair of F-15s. That was interesting.

[Toshi]

wow. i am envious. not of the f-15 flyby, but of the snow. washington (and bc) snow sucks this year :(

[Toshi]

here's a cool old (2000? earlier?) vid: http://images.lottadot.com/mirror/sbell/videos/YeAV2.mpg . some of the stuff they were doing then is still too big for me now! but other parts look amazingly dated. funny how things change.

[Barbaton]

So four cancelled flights and 1 night in dallas = http://www.fh-trier.de/~gielj/smilies/homesweet.gif

glad to see that we've got freezing rain falling on all of the snow we got. gotta love boston weather. http://www.fh-trier.de/~gielj/smilies/puking.gif

[Quadari]

Guess who is going up snowmobiling and skiing this weekend at Stowe?

<points to self> :dancing:

It should be fun. I'll post full report when I get back Sunday night/Monday.

[Toshi]

Guess who is going up snowmobiling and skiing this weekend at Stowe?
i dunno, keith? :think: heh. have fun. congrats on new domain name btw

i got sharp pics in 4/5 shots at f/2 with the 28/1.8 tonight. go figure. i can't figure out that lens for the life of me, sometimes it's soft and full of chromatic aberration, and sometimes it works like a charm (except for exaggerating or at least not flattening out perspective).

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/after%20s.a.m.%20-%20january%206,%202005/Images/0.jpg

[Toshi]

check it, from a thread that pnj posted in the lounge:

http://www.bangpictures.com/joekid/bmxhistory.mov

[Toshi]

here's a pic from today (http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/events%20and%20concerts/listening%20party%20-%20january%207,%202005/) that i quite like:

http://s91590527.onlinehome.us/images/events%20and%20concerts/listening%20party%20-%20january%207,%202005/Images/4.jpg

iso 3200 + 0.17 stop, 28/1.8 wide open, 1/15 sec.

[Quadari]

So I'm back from the weekend a bit sore and tired, but nonetheless in one piece.

Went snowmobiling on Saturday morning which was fun. The snowmobiles we had were pretty darn luxurious as they had thing like heated handlebars and a heated throttle. Didn't do anything crazy, but it was still fun to zoom around.

Got back from snowmobiling at about 12:30 so I quickly grabbed my ski stuff and headed over to the mountain so that I could ski half a day saturday. For some reason everyone seems to leave the mountain really early so that by mid afternoon it was fairly empty and it was snowing! :-D That meant lots of fresh snow for me during the last runs of the day.

I realized that I haven't been skiing out west in quite a while and I sort of miss it since while eastern skiing is quite fun, none of the mountains are really all that big. After a day of skiing at Stowe you've basically done the whole thing.

Skied all day Sunday also. It was nice and sunny. Then dropped off some people at the Burlington airport, drove the 3 hours back to Boston and crashed.

Now it's back to work...

[narlus]

heh, i just did a phone mini-interview for a new york times stringer writing an article on foofpods (the little corduroy bags for ipods about which i posted in this thread back in november). the company also makes foofbags for powerbooks...

did you make up a lot of fake names like the infamous NYT / sub pop interview? :D

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/grungegate.html

[Toshi]

did you make up a lot of fake names like the infamous NYT / sub pop interview? :D

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/grungegate.html
heh, nice. i vaguely remember reading about that back then. :D

The Baffler gloated that, "when the Newspaper of Record goes searching for the Next Big Thing and the Next Big Thing piddles on its leg, we think that's funny."

[Quadari]

Mac mini.
iPod Shuffle.
iWorks.
iLife '05.

Anyone have thoughts?

I like the Mac mini. It really is tiny. :thumb:
Excited for the next iPhoto because it incorporates some stuff I've been wanting anyway.
A bit confused about the iPod shuffle. I mean, it's really cool and all, but no UI? The point is, of course, that you just shuffle all your songs, but I feel like it's good as sort of a secondary player. Then again, Apple has proved me wrong in the past (e.g. iPod mini I thought was too expensive to make it worth it.)

[Toshi]

i, too, like the mac mini. quite a different beast than the imposing quicksilver i have :D

i'll probably pick up iLife and iWork '05 when a combo deal for the two appears on the edu store. i'm not so keen on letting iphoto handle raw conversion, but maybe that will be great. we shall see.

all in all a good crop from apple, i think, even tho the screenless shuffle concept boggles the mind at first take...

[prophet6]

The mini mac is likely to take the place of my g4 tower... I'll stuff the G4 in my music studio on record duty, and use the mini as my "desktop." It's so inexpensive, I'm having a hard time thinking why I wouldn't.

As the owner of a G1 ipod, i think the screenless shuffle pod is pretty cool... it's inexpensive enough that I wouldn't be afraid to take it riding or what not. I'm a little fearful of landing on my pod, and the shuffle is SO SMALL...


my $0.02.


p6

[Barbaton]

This amused me:

EXTERMINUTE

Jan 12 2005

Dr Who return hit by shortage of dwarf actors
Exclusive By Cameron Robertson


FILMING of the new Doctor Who series has been hit by a shortage of midget actors.


Bosses wanted them to play tiny blue aliens - but most have been snapped up for the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie and to play Gringotts Bank staff in the new Harry Potter film.


Dr Who executive producer Russell T Davies said: "It's very difficult to employ persons of restricted growth when, as our producer Phil Collinson says, `Bloody Gringotts and the Chocolate Factory are filming at the same time'."


Insiders on the BBC1 sci-fi drama admit it has proved a headache during shooting of the 13-part series, due to be wrapped up next month.


One said: "The two big movies have snapped up the talent. It's been hard to find who we want."


Peter Burroughs - whose Peterborough-based Willow Personal Management is one of just two UK agencies for dwarf actors - admitted he had been unable to supply Dr Who with a 3ft 8in star.


He said: "That was very difficult to find, especially with the other productions going on."


The new series, with Christopher Eccleston as Dr Who and Billie Piper as sidekick Rose Tyler, is due to start in March.




*

[Toshi]

for thad, mainly, since ari is on toshi-open and keith isn't one of the enlightened (mac users)

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=241301 <-- marathon 1, 2, and 3/infinity released for free! and they work with os x, too, if you use aleph one.

[Barbaton]

for thad, mainly, since ari is on toshi-open and keith isn't one of the enlightened (mac users)

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=241301 <-- marathon 1, 2, and 3/infinity released for free! and they work with os x, too, if you use aleph one.


That's cool, though I wasn't a mac user when Marathon was big. Did play a lot of doom and quake in those years, though.

You have a personal open list? :think:

[Quadari]

You have a personal open list? :think:

Oh yes...Toshi not only has, but is the master of his own open list...
:monkey:

[narlus]

here's what i thought about the iPod shuffle, from anothe board:

the new flash-based iPod looks to me like a bust. sure it's a bit cheaper, but no screen? that's weak. and i wasn't sure if there was a memory card expansion slot either; the WSJ review didn't mention one. maybe apple also got sick of people warrantying HD-based iPods after they killed them during running/skiiing/car jacking/sport of their choice.

just ordered some Shure E2s for my karma...woot woot!

[Toshi]

Oh yes...Toshi not only has, but is the master of his own open list...
:monkey:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toshi-open/

[Toshi]

what is that?
rio karma == non-ipod :dead: mp3 player :D
shure e2 == headphones. earbuds, no? congrats on making the plunge. did you spring for the senns as well, after all?

[narlus]

no i haven't gotten the senns yet, but after my ears were pummeled (by discomfort and non-musicality) of my existing sony headphones last night, i am certainly getting closer. i won $125 from my fantasy football league, so when i get the $ i might get them then.

[Barbaton]

here's what i thought about the iPod shuffle, from anothe board:

the new flash-based iPod looks to me like a bust. sure it's a bit cheaper, but no screen? that's weak. and i wasn't sure if there was a memory card expansion slot either; the WSJ review didn't mention one. maybe apple also got sick of people warrantying HD-based iPods after they killed them during running/skiiing/car jacking/sport of their choice.


Here's my take. Does anyone know if you can use the iPod shuffle as a disk the way you can use regular ipods. I agree that an iPod with no screen is kind of a drag, but a memory keychain that can play music is kind of compelling. Maybe apple's approaching their marketing from the wrong direction if so.

Anyone else notice that item 2 of their disclaimers at the bottom of the iPod Shuffle page is "Do not eat iPod shuffle." Is that a joke or did some lawyer make them put that since they pictured it next to gum? :think:


EDIT: upon further review the device can store files. I kind of want a USB keychain drive that I can put a few tunes on and listen to on my way to work now...

[Toshi]

an embarrassing moment of mine posted for all eternity (and google? ack) to see:

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1405386#post1405386

heh

[Toshi]

Here's my take. Does anyone know if you can use the iPod shuffle as a disk the way you can use regular ipods. I agree that an iPod with no screen is kind of a drag, but a memory keychain that can play music is kind of compelling. Maybe apple's approaching their marketing from the wrong direction if so.

Anyone else notice that item 2 of their disclaimers at the bottom of the iPod Shuffle page is "Do not eat iPod shuffle." Is that a joke or did some lawyer make them put that since they pictured it next to gum? :think:
it's a joke :D and yes, you can use it as a thumb drive or whatever term you prefer for that kind of gizmo

[Barbaton]

it's a joke :D and yes, you can use it as a thumb drive or whatever term you prefer for that kind of gizmo

and again you reply while I was in the middle of the edit. sheesh

[Toshi]

and again you reply while I was in the middle of the edit. sheesh
type faster bucko! :p

[narlus]

i saw that "do not eat iPod" and gave a half-hearted chuckle.

hey toshi, my wife's got an uncle w/ a house in anacortes. so maybe we'll be out there sometime.

[Toshi]

cool. anacortes seems like a good location to allow for a sprint up to whistler...

[Toshi]

i finished jihad vs. mcworld today btw. was well written and provocative. the author's blatant overuse of "dialectical" was annoying. i think i'm going to plow through a few novels before diving back into political works, with paul farmer's pathologies of power the next such book on the docket.

[Quadari]

Finally posted some (a very few) pictures from last weekend...

Weekend in Stowe (http://shwayder.org/photos/05-01-08%20to%2005-01-09%20weekend%20in%20stowe/)

[Toshi]

Finally posted some (a very few) pictures from last weekend...

Weekend in Stowe (http://shwayder.org/photos/05-01-08%20to%2005-01-09%20weekend%20in%20stowe/)
mmmm snow. mmmm shwayder.org :thumb: .

i went up to stevens pass today. good snow, good group, good times. was on the mountain from 1:30 to 9 pm with dinner sometime in there. i'm going to give snowboarding a shot next time since i've been having it all too easy on the twin planks this season (rental parabolics >> my old straight skis), and because i think taking a lesson with kristel would help both me and her. she is scared of the fall line...

[Toshi]

ooh, and btw www.toshiclark.com now resolves properly. :thumb: x 2 . i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do with it yet. probably make a new template for betterhtmlexport and rehash some of the better content from tjclark.ath.cx

[Barbaton]

Hey Toshi, do you think I should get one of these:

http://www.twoevils.org/images/photos/funny/baka-shirt.jpg

;)

[Toshi]

Hey Toshi, do you think I should get one of these:

http://www.twoevils.org/images/photos/funny/baka-shirt.jpg

;)
heh. please uninline large pic tho, thad. it's screwing with the text wrapping. that shirt's japanese is totally pidgin btw. "baka" shouldn't be in katakana, but should be 破家, 馬鹿, or 莫迦. on the other hand, i don't see those kanji enough to immediately recognize them, so the impact would be lost at least on japanese semi-literates like me i suppose. :D

[WTGPhoben]

ooh, and btw www.toshiclark.com now resolves properly. :thumb: x 2 . i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do with it yet. probably make a new template for betterhtmlexport and rehash some of the better content from tjclark.ath.cx

if you're cheap (like me), you just forward it for free to your ath.cx (phoben.com >> phoben.ath.cx) :D

[Toshi]

boo. down with mere forwarding :D

other thoughts from today:

i saw the national acrobats of taiwan today. they played at benaroya hall, typically the venue for the seattle symphony. $10 rush tix for students...

anyway, they were AMAZINGLY good. a few of the acts just blew my mind.

the most spectacular: a guy did a series of handstands on a chair. the thing was that this chair was on a stack of about 10 (no joke) other chairs, of which the bottom chair rested its four legs on four wine bottles which rested itself on a platform. the guy was easily 2/3 of the way to the ceiling at the pinnacle of the stunt (he kept on building the stack one by one from the top, with the chairs being handed to him by assistants with a long pole and hook deal. wow. his act alone had the audience both mesmerized and fearing for his life, and garnered a standing ovation.

i didn't find any pictures in a quick googling that capture the act, but this video is decent. you need quicktime 6+ to view it. the video is here (http://www.onartsblock.org/media/118.mp4)

[Toshi]

random pic from today, snapped along with the first few images in the gallery (http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/buildings%20and%20a%20margarita%20-%20january%2016,%202005/) walking from my parking spot to benaroya hall:

http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/buildings%20and%20a%20margarita%20-%20january%2016,%202005/Images/1.jpg

[narlus]

that building looks kinda like the one used on Wilco's cover of _yankee hotel foxtrot_

http://gauntlet.ucalgary.ca/~gauntlet/eg/eg2/20030116/spunwilco.gif

[Barbaton]

toshi, you might be interested in this if you haven't seen it yet:

new PGP key server at pgp.com (https://keyserver-beta.pgp.com)

[Toshi]

toshi, you might be interested in this if you haven't seen it yet:

new PGP key server at pgp.com (https://keyserver-beta.pgp.com)
sweet. somehow they already had my old key in there, as i got a verification email a few weeks ago at my long-neglected hotmail address which isn't on my current key. i just put my current, valid key up there even tho it has been on my website forever.

[Toshi]

hey guys,

what would cause my site to not show up in google when searching on my name? it used to be #1 in the results (duh) but now is nowhere to be found...

[Toshi]

also, contribute to this thread: http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=108022 (on where you live)

[Barbaton]

hey guys,

what would cause my site to not show up in google when searching on my name? it used to be #1 in the results (duh) but now is nowhere to be found...

have you changed hostname, etc so that external links to it don't work anymore? are fewer people linking to your site than before? doesn't google rank by how much the page is linked to by others, the whole "humans confer authority bit?"

[Toshi]

google does rank on that. it must be a side effect of their new anti-blog-spam algorithm, since my site dropped from being #1 to being way down on page 15 (or so i hear, i haven't bothered to dig that much) :( . this sucks since i got quite a few hits from people googling on my name.

[Barbaton]

I thought this was kind of funny:


http://www.cubeowner.com/forums//index.php?showtopic=9096&st=0

[Toshi]

mmmm i am using a very lovely 1.8 GHz DP G5 here. 20" cinema display, 1680 x 1050 px. :drool:

[Toshi]

my ipod's headphone jack took another turn for the worse today, and now the sound fades in and out with every step. i had to carry it in my hand to alleviate this after fiddling around with pulling the headphone plug just a tiny bit out but not too much etc. etc. :dead: . so in maybe two months i'll probably either be sporting a shuffle or a rio flash player-that-works-with-itunes...

[WTGPhoben]

my ipod's headphone jack took another turn for the worse today, and now the sound fades in and out with every step. i had to carry it in my hand to alleviate this after fiddling around with pulling the headphone plug just a tiny bit out but not too much etc. etc. :dead: . so in maybe two months i'll probably either be sporting a shuffle or a rio flash player-that-works-with-itunes...


why wouldn't you buy another iPod?

[Barbaton]

why wouldn't you buy another iPod?

he won't write you back until he's done taking apart dead people. :dead:

[narlus]

sounds like he

1) doesn't need the capacity

and/or

2) wants a flash-based player for those rough sex episodes when the iPods's hard drive might be damaged.

;)

[Toshi]

ahha #2 is the key. i'm going for the trifecta :dead: , sandwich on the bedside table...

[narlus]

if you were canadian, doggy style would let you watch hockey too. :sneaky:

[Toshi]

original: http://toshiclark.com/images/events%20and%20concerts/finch's%2020th%20-%20may%206,%202003/Pages/6.html

manga: http://toshiclark.com/images/miscellaneous/transformation%20-%20january%2021,%202005/Images/11.jpg

black: http://toshiclark.com/images/miscellaneous/transformation%20-%20january%2021,%202005/Images/4.jpg

more here: http://toshiclark.com/images/miscellaneous/transformation%20-%20january%2021,%202005/

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1416406#post1416406 <--- has link to transform site

[Toshi]

and an ipod shuffle review: http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,2533,a=143007,00.asp

It's also highly competent as a music player. It has dead-flat frequency response, less harmonic distortion, and most notably, better bass response than its bigger siblings. The older iPods, especially the Mini, have been rightfully criticized for being somewhat deficient in bass, and although the bigger players have flat frequency response, they have trouble sustaining big bass notes. Not so the shuffle; it drives its earbuds well and hard without resorting to artificial bass boost. Though most digital audio players have moved past the Apple players' audio quality (by virtue of learning from Apple's mistakes and being fresher designs), the shuffle does them one better.

We did our usual critical listening through the supplied earbuds, our Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones, and studio monitors. The shuffle had no sonic flaws that we could detect.

(i'm killing time, waiting for traffic to die down before going out for a bit)

[narlus]

wow, you can't skip to the next song??? that's a drag! i guess you either need to be sure you like what you load on the thing, or choose really short songs.

edit - after reading further, you can skip to the next song. you just can't "navigate" to the next song, ie i guess since there is no screen, you can't see what's coming next.

[Toshi]

google does rank on that. it must be a side effect of their new anti-blog-spam algorithm, since my site dropped from being #1 to being way down on page 15 (or so i hear, i haven't bothered to dig that much) :( . this sucks since i got quite a few hits from people googling on my name.
no google hits to my site since wednesday :( . i usually get a few per day. nooooo

anyway i've changed robots.txt to allow the googlecrawler to index /images/ on both http://toshiclark.com and http://tjclark.ath.cx . this way i'll have more "legit" links, thousands more in fact, which should outweigh the ones that currently show up, which are all from message boards basically, and all of which are deprecated under the new antispam algorithm as a result. <-- this in response to wiki and blog spammers, who would put their site's link everywhere indiscriminately -- sorta like me eh ;) -- to increase its pagerank artificially.

hmm. looking at the links from ridemonkey maybe this is not the case: the anti-blog-spam feature requires the software houses (like vBulletin) to change their software to have a rel="nofollow" attribute in user-created links, and ridemonkey's vB isn't doing that yet. go figure.

[Toshi]

mmm sushi (="http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/blue%20c%20sushi%20-%20january%2022,%202005/)

http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/blue%20c%20sushi%20-%20january%2022,%202005/Thumbs/0.jpghttp://toshiclark.com/images/daily/blue%20c%20sushi%20-%20january%2022,%202005/Thumbs/2.jpghttp://toshiclark.com/images/daily/blue%20c%20sushi%20-%20january%2022,%202005/Thumbs/3.jpg

in a bike related corollary of today's sushi outing i managed to REALLY tweak my shoulder putting on my rain coat. usually when my shoulder has come out it has been due to hitting something, whether the water, a tree, a pick when playing basketball, but this time it was due to the coat + my muscles straining against it. it hurt. :dead: . pics were at 1/60, f/1.4, iso 200 except for the sushi shot, which was in brighter light and thus iso 100 at the same settings iirc.

[Toshi]

http://students.washington.edu/tjclark/toshiforsale.jpg

http://www.xanga.com/Images/wtf.gif

[Quadari]

http://students.washington.edu/tjclark/toshiforsale.jpg

http://www.xanga.com/Images/wtf.gif

Sweet. How much are you going for?

[Toshi]

Sweet. How much are you going for?
well, www.humanforsale.com says i should ask about $2.4 million... :D

[Toshi]

http://cm.math.uiuc.edu/~staffin/1984macintro.mov

watch it! features a young steve jobs and the first macintosh unveiling... makes me get all misty eyed. almost.

[Toshi]

narlus, you recommended this book, no? anyway, i put aside thomas pynchon's "gravity's rainbow" today after 50something pages. just too weird for me. reading david foster wallace's "infinite jest" was quite enough of the genre for me.

[Toshi]

wow. i found my old rants page (first through archive.org and then by looking at my own backups), which i had thought to be lost. it was like my blog (xanga in this case) (http://www.xanga.com/toshiclark), only before blogs were cool. not that they are now.

but anyways:


May 3, 2001

Why must AM107 midterms be so hard? Although I don't feel as violated after the one this morning as after the first one earlier this semester, I'm definitely not feeling enthused about it either.

April 20, 2001

Happy 4/20 Day, everyone!

What do I have to rant about lately? Life has been assailing me from all fronts: musically, conductors all assume that their rehearsal (for an unpaid gig, invariably) is more important than anything else I may have going on; professors try to make sure that I have as much going on as possible (and when they fail, we have TFs like Adriana, who issue "clarifications" of problem sets in the middle of the night that make your once-perfect solution completely and utterly wrong); and a summer internship with a company that has announced a hiring freeze after its stock crashed. I think next semester/year I'm going to take easier classes, but deep down inside of me I know I won't, since I seem to enjoy the pain, or at least the thought that through the pain I'm learning something important. At least I'll stop playing for musicals and anything unpaid (besides HRO, but possibly including HRO as well).

Now that I reread these last few sentences, I realize how I really am not certain that I'm learning anything important here. Although I'm sure that all that I absorb will be of at least marginal applicability no matter which field I end up in, I wonder how much of this really matters. Perhaps this is just my fatigue speaking, or maybe these are just annually recurring springtime pseudo-deep thoughts, but I'm just not sure.

March 7, 2001

Broken ribs are no fun. I have found this out the hard way, after pulling an especially stupid bike stunt (upping to bashguard on a rail, a very slippery and wet rail) which ended up with me holding my side, gasping for air. Why can't I just swap out my hindsight and foresight? Oh well, no lifting for a while, in any case.

As for another, more mundane rant, I've been sleeping very little, as usual. Now it's 3:21 am, in fact, and the CS124 Programming Assignment 1 writeup is still not done. <shudder> Time to sleep.

February 25, 2001

Lately I have surprisingly little over which to rant; problem sets are daunting but manageable, cycling is cold yet invigorating, and trumpet playing is intimidating yet rewarding. And the use of yet brings pleasure on its own, as it frees one from being more creative in the use of English. But this is hardly a rant.

On second thought, I do have a rant: why are Magura crossover lines so easy to break? Just one swift kick and suddenly you have hydraulic fluid everywhere. Then again, Hayes does not have the most durable brakes either, as my scarred full-face will attest to.

February 16, 2001

12 hours of sleep over 3 nights does not make for a coherent me. I'd like to thank Adriana for writing such a hard problem set for 107, and Prof. Mitzenmacher for contributing his share of agony as well.

January 24, 2001

There are few things more pleasant in life than being woken up at 7am by the sound of snow plows scraping along the ground. Just to name some offhand: playing a New Year's gig a week after having my wisdom teeth pulled; landing on my head and giving myself a concussion in Kamikaze practice at Mammoth; getting slapped upside the head... the list goes on. Do I make myself clear?

Actually, the experience of the snow plows, and later that morning, the sound of a man fruitlessly attempting to keep his stoop clear of snow for what seemed like hours on end, wasn't that bad. The ensuing depression that hit later that day, thanks to exhaustion and finals, was the kicker. Oh well, both the storm and finals are long gone.

January 17, 2001

I have always loathed practicing in Quincy House's F Entryway practice room, but I could never quite figure out why. The piano always seemed flat, and the room had some odd quality about it that would make me play sharp no matter how relaxed I tried to stay while playing. So tonight, January 17, I ventured down to the room, with key and Powerbook in hand, and did some testing. The results: the piano is 26 cents flat, and that's just around tuning A (A4); it is progressively flatter as you ascend, and slightly less flat as you descend, thanks to the wonders of equal temperment. The real kicker is that the flourescent lights, which I had identified with my not-quite-perfect pitch as a sharp Bb, turned out to be a really flat B natural instead - 40 cents flat, to be precise. With these two pitch influences tugging at my ear, it is no wonder that I have trouble staying on pitch in that room.

Winter Break 2000-2001

For winter break, I decided to fly home. There's nothing odd about flying home, I thought. What I didn't count on was a series of miscues and cancelled flights that would turn what should have been a painless jaunt from Boston to Seattle into a frustrating 24 hour journey. After snowfall caused Boston's air traffic controllers to cancel my original flight, the ticketing agent had the idea to shuttle me out to L.A. on a standby flight. On its own, this idea seemed as if it would work, so I gamely accepted. The gods of travel evidently were not appeased by one cancelled flight in a day, however, leading to an hour's delay before the plane lurched out of the gate at Logan.

This hour turned out to be exactly the interval between the projected arrival in LA, and the departure of the last flight to Seattle that night. So, in an experience somewhat reminscent of sleeping in a parked car, only with Christmas music blaring throughout the night, I got to sleep at gate 75 of Los Angeles International. Sleeping in the terminal would not be overly disagreeable, were it not for two things: the unending stream of music, and a very hardnosed female security guard that felt it was her duty to kick me out from the gate, at 4 am.

Some things are just too fun for words.

[Quadari]

wow. i found my old rants page

Ah yes...AM107. 'Twas an interesting class....

I did like the fact that it didn't have a real final, though. :rolleyes:

But as you complained about, some of those problem sets were a little crazy.

[Barbaton]

Ah yes...AM107. 'Twas an interesting class....

I did like the fact that it didn't have a real final, though. :rolleyes:

But as you complained about, some of those problem sets were a little crazy.

who taught it when you guys took it?

[Quadari]

who taught it when you guys took it?

Prof. Leslie Valient.

[Barbaton]

Prof. Leslie Valient.

Aah. Nice guy, not always the most intelligible. Not sure what a class would be like but i have an idea.

[Quadari]

Aah. Nice guy, not always the most intelligible. Not sure what a class would be like but i have an idea.

Yeah...I had the same impression. He seemed like a nice guy, but he mumbled a lot and even when I could understand the words he was saying I didn't really understand what he was saying. It basically seemed that he had very very minimal control over the class. It was basically run by the three TFs. They rotated writing and grading the problem sets and it was very predictable that one TF hade very hard problem sets, one medium, and one easy.

There were no exams in the class, just two midterms, which was nice.

[Toshi]

this skiing season sucks unbelievably:

crystal mt: closed
mt baker: closed
stevens pass: closed
white pass: closed
snoqualmie: closed
mt hood: closed

whistler is the only place remotely nearby that's open, and i'm certainly not going to drive 4.5+ hours for 47" of old snow. :dead:

[Quadari]

this skiing season sucks unbelievably:

crystal mt: closed
mt baker: closed
stevens pass: closed
white pass: closed
snoqualmie: closed
mt hood: closed

whistler is the only place remotely nearby that's open, and i'm certainly not going to drive 4.5+ hours for 47" of old snow. :dead:

We've got great skiing out east! :cool:

[Toshi]

hmph. this may be the one year where the weak-sauce eastern mountains actually have better snow. <sniffs haughtily>

[Barbaton]

I've so far had 4 8"+ powder days this season. :thumb:

[Toshi]

but those weren't out east so that's ok :D

[Barbaton]

but those weren't out east so that's ok :D

yeah but the best was the blizzard out here last weekend... too bad keith and i got stuck at a ski area in NH. :sneaky:

[Toshi]

Cool. :thumb:

So are you going to be famously quoted in that august publication?
"It's a lot more attractive than iPod cases I see many of my classmates running around with," Toshi Clark, 23, a University of Washington medical student, said of his foofpod.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/27/technology/circuits/27site.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

'tis an online-only article, but it's a start :D

[Barbaton]

here's what you need, Toshi:

http://homepage.mac.com/sideriver/cubesite/ipodcase/ipodcase.html

[prophet6]

damn, that iPod case is HOT!

useless, but hot...





p6

[Toshi]

wow.

i could use it as armor for my ipod when riding this thing: http://tlb.org/eunicycle.html

oh yeah, finished gibson's 2003 work, "pattern recognition." weak start but ended ok. didn't seem very "gibson-y".

[prophet6]

I dunno, Toshi... it felt like it had the sort of trademark punk-esq feel that Gibson is known for.
Consider:
•Fanatical obsession to details about phisical things (think about the Rickson, and pretty much anything that the main character owns...)
•Decaying/Autonomous social setting (not strickly true, but I'd argue that the circles in which Cayce operates belong to this catagory
•Development of specific slang

That's just my feeling. I guess I'd call it a present day cyberpunk novel without the cyber. Sort of.
I've read damn near all of his stuff, and outside of Neuromancer, I feel this may be is strongest effort yet.


p6

[Toshi]

i didn't get that feeling from it. it sounded like he was pretty much describing my life if only i had fashion consciousness. and i certainly haven't heard anyone on the street muttering "he took a duck to the face at 250 knots". what slang other than that are you talking about? cordas?

it just had a very glossy yet bland feel that could have been accomplished by any number of writers imo. i'll admit that the buzz rickson bit was good but it was not matched by the rest of the novel.

[Toshi]

my sony mdr-v6's headphone jack broke a while back. indeed this mishap is what led me to get the senns now sitting on my desk. dissatisfied with the consumer electronics mantra that broken things should be replaced rather than repaired, i decided to take matters into my own hands and try to fix the headphones.

simply soldering on a new jack would have been the easiest solution. unfortunately, sony uses a weird kind of wire, extremely thin and covered with a lacquer that must be tediously scraped off or removed chemically before soldering is possible. not wanting to go through that trouble, or soldering 0.3 mm wire or whatever it is, i bought some giant canare wire and went to work with the ol' soldering iron. (actually the new soldering iron. i have no idea where my old one from middle school days is.)

the net result is that i now have a working set of v6s again, with a lovely short cord suitable for use with the ipod. 3 meter cords are great for home or studio use but not when you have your ipod in your jacket pocket...

http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/simply%20electric%20-%20january%2029,%202005/Images/3.jpg

http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/simply%20electric%20-%20january%2029,%202005/Images/4.jpg

gallery here (http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/simply%20electric%20-%20january%2029,%202005/)

on the downside i sure breathed a lot of fumes. modern solder is lead-free, no? :dead:

[prophet6]

yeah, I dunno. I enjoyed the book.

I'm reading "Life of Pi" right now, and it feels slow to start... we'll see, I suppose.

I like the headphone modification... I've got an old set of Koss AApro's that need a similar treatment, but I've been really lazy. My new set of AT's have a better sound and weigh, oh, four pounds less, but the Koss have sonic isolation like you read about. Nice when it's noisey around.


p6

[Toshi]

life of pi was kind of a slow read. it was worth it in the end. again, one of those "people" books. i can only read so many in a row :D

yeah, the fact that the v6s are closed (vs. the notoriously open senns i have, hd 600) are a huge reason in why i spent this much time reviving them. when on the bus other people probably aren't annoyed by the sound leaking out of my headphones but i'd rather not have them hear what i'm listening to at all. that way they can imagine i'm listening to ashlee simpson when i really have mahler on. or vice versa. :eek:

[Barbaton]

Here's an interesting list of Apple failures:

http://tinyurl.com/4mss3


looks like i'm just bookmarking it here for the time being, as it seems the /. whores have discovered it.

[Barbaton]

wow.

i could use it as armor for my ipod when riding this thing: http://tlb.org/eunicycle.html


Personally I'd rather have one of these: http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2003/11/04/cx_dl_1104vow.html

I might have posted that before...

[Toshi]

a) lincoln center jazz orchestra is good. go see 'em

b) i want this car: http://autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=101652 . fast. probably will fall apart in 3 years. fast. and grippy. and fast.

[WTGPhoben]

a) lincoln center jazz orchestra is good. go see 'em

b) i want this car: http://autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=101652 . fast. probably will fall apart in 3 years. fast. and grippy. and fast.

It's like a Bentley continental-T without the class.

[Barbaton]

i want this car: http://autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=101652 . fast. probably will fall apart in 3 years. fast. and grippy. and fast.

Fast, bigass engine, but soooooo ugly :oink:

[Toshi]

It's like a Bentley continental-T without the class.
:D good characterization. heh. i'll save the "class" for when i get a ferrari :oink:

[Barbaton]

It's like a Bentley continental-T without the class.

Like this one?

http://www.roadandtrack.com/article.asp?section_id=9&article_id=1855


http://www.roadandtrack.com/assets/image/1192005204922.jpg

fast, fast, and purdy :drool:

bit more espensive :(

[Barbaton]

heh. toshi, i just had this total mental image of your 300C with bigass mud tires and a roof rack with your Canfield on it.

[Toshi]

heh. toshi, i just had this total mental image of your 300C with bigass mud tires and a roof rack with your Canfield on it.
ew, i'm not that tasteless! haha. anyway, i'm idly going to try to get my parents to buy that 300C SRT for themselves - no new cars for me for at least 5 years! :D - but i think they want/think they need a suv. boohoo.

[narlus]

i saw a robin's egg blue continental GT in town the other day. someone's flush.

[prophet6]

That car (the 300C) is a pig. 4100 lbs? That's 1000 too much. Weight might be ok for going fast in a straight line, but if you want to toss it from corner to corner, you'll need something a bit less.... heavy.

for the same cash, grab a 2001/2 audi s4, and grab some O.CT kit for it. Then you've got 350-400 bhp, and 400-420 ft/lb of tugg... plus it weighs closer to 3600 pounds, and you've got all wheel drive.

My measure of a car is the following:
-pounds per horsepower
-horsepower per liter

lower for the first, higher for the second.



p6

[Toshi]

ah, but 400 bhp/400 ft-lb of torque from a turbo v6 is not the same as the same figures from a normally aspirated v8. i do agree about the weight being unnecessarily high, although that will hopefully pay off in more solidity/less plastic junk falling off.

[Barbaton]

ah, but 400 bhp/400 ft-lb of torque from a turbo v6 is not the same as the same figures from a normally aspirated v8. i do agree about the weight being unnecessarily high, although that will hopefully pay off in more solidity/less plastic junk falling off.

it's an american car, of course all the plastic junk's gonna fall off. :)

[prophet6]

I'm not sure how you figure that turbo figures don't compare to a v8... I think that if you looked at a torque curve for each car you'd be suprised.

besides, honda routinely pulls 100-110 bhp per liter out of normally asperated engines... that means the hemi *should* be putting out 610+ bhb.

p6

[Toshi]

yeah, but those honda engines (like in the s2000) are very peaky. while i'd find that fun, my parents, especially with a slushbox, wouldn't necessarily appreciate it.

[prophet6]

It's funny, but there happens to be a O.CT S4 sitting in my driveway right now... not mine, but my dad's.

Torque is a nearly dead flat line, and hits 400ft/lb at 2200 rpm. Very drivable.



p6.

[Toshi]

well, it doesn't SOUND like a v8. take that. :D

book review of the day: i forgot to bring "shogun" to class today so had to read "demon in the freezer" instead. (it was in my bag so as to prompt me to return it.)

"demon ..." must be the worst written book i ever have read. the subject matter is interesting but the author, richard preston, writes like a third grader. non sequiturs abounded, and it was a rare sentence that had a comma, or more than one clause. in this regard it was the literary opposite of "gravity's rainbow".

[prophet6]

my vote for worst written book ever is "the imortal class" by Travis Hugh Culley. Pompus, bratty, and overall lame, it has to be one of the most tiresome books to plod through. ugh.


p6


and no, it doesn't sound like a v8... but I like the whine of turbos.

[Toshi]

i took some photos today. went to a friend's soccer game.

http://toshiclark.com/images/events%20and%20concerts/soccer%20game%20-%20february%205,%202005/Thumbs/13.jpghttp://toshiclark.com/images/events%20and%20concerts/soccer%20game%20-%20february%205,%202005/Thumbs/5.jpghttp://toshiclark.com/images/events%20and%20concerts/soccer%20game%20-%20february%205,%202005/Thumbs/1.jpg

the rest here: http://tinyurl.com/6exwy

[Toshi]

inspired in part by ridemonkey's addition of it, and part by my new (to me) log analysis software that lets me see what urls are coming up with 404 errors among other things, i've added a favorites icon to my site:

http://tjclark.ath.cx/images/miscellaneous/random/favicon.ico

it's a resized (duh) version of something i made for the "friends" section of my sophomore year website (http://web.archive.org/web/20010420062714/www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~tjclark/friends.html). it was cribbed/photoshopped based on the aol logo and a hat from ballericons.com, which seems to have degenerated over the years.

[Toshi]

http://erasing.org/i_ate_ipod_shuffle/ :D

[Gleeke]

my vote for worst written book ever is "the imortal class" by Travis Hugh Culley. Pompus, bratty, and overall lame, it has to be one of the most tiresome books to plod through. ugh.


p6


and no, it doesn't sound like a v8... but I like the whine of turbos.

For such a small book it took forever to get through.

300C is a beast. My mother drives one and I must say it's got sooo much power. Step on the gas at 80 and you're at 100mph in a heart beat. I'd like to try the Magnum Wagon. Blk on Blk on Blk on Blk on Blk (Black paint, interior, rims, tires and windows.)

My wifes Saab has a turbo, my mother's got a V8 and me I'd like a twinturboV8!

[Toshi]

so my site is down at the moment. network reconfiguration by a 3rd party while i am 400 miles away (ok, 388, fine) is to blame, and there's nothing i can do about it. :dead:

in the meantime i offer this photo (and this gallery (http://toshiclark.com/images/events%20and%20concerts/bowling%20for%20people%20-%20february%207,%202005/)) as penance:

http://toshiclark.com/images/events%20and%20concerts/bowling%20for%20people%20-%20february%207,%202005/Images/1.jpg

[Toshi]

in honor of the wagging nose pig avatars in vogue in the lounge i bust out imageready and made clarus' tail wag. :D

[Barbaton]

in honor of the wagging nose pig avatars in vogue in the lounge i bust out imageready and made clarus' tail wag. :D

don't you have something medischooly you need to do. ;-)


in other news, as promised i got the pics from the ski trip in NM. I'll put them up as soon as I'm back from this conference...

[Toshi]

i have tests every two weeks. just had one on monday. thus i'm in extreeeeem coasting mode now

[Toshi]

finished "the golden ratio" by mario livio today. was ok, especially if you like art and recreational mathematics. decently well written, not greatly coherent as a book.

[Toshi]

http://www.milkandcookies.com/links/7518/

discuss. "what's your special power?" is good :D

[Toshi]

http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/night%20out%20-%20february%2011,%202005/Thumbs/0.jpg

a small gallery, too (http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/night%20out%20-%20february%2011,%202005/)

what do y'all think of the new black and white layout at the www.toshiclark.com frontpage? i'm making a different template of matching austerity, and will (in theory) pull together a few themed galleries (rather than by event) of the better pics in my collection. somehow i thought that monochrome would be more "pro" eh :monkey:

[Toshi]

i skied at mt. baker today. was on the slopes from 9:30 until 4:30 (lifts close at 4 and our last run was long). wait, that's not right: i snowboarded. :dead:

in any case the snow was awesome given 6" of fresh in the last 24 hours, snowboarding wasn't overly painful, and the skies were blue and fine indeed.

[Toshi]

i posted a new thread about summers' comments now that the transcript has been released:

http://www.ridemonkey.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110770

[Toshi]

i finished shadow divers (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375508589/ref%3Dnosim/xangacom/102-2525673-6956125) at about 3 am last night. it's due on tuesday (test day) and i wanted to get it out of the way before starting studying. it was worth reading if you're interested in u-boat history at all.

doing a little math shows that i've been reading somewhere on the order of 50-60 pages per day since jan 1. compare this with gwb's claim that he reads "on a good night, maybe 20 to 30 pages" (http://hnn.us/articles/9934.html) and you see that i, uh, have lots more spare time than the president. :cool:

[Toshi]

http://www.sunbelt-software.com/stu/video/dodge_durango.wmv

"you should come by later, i'll be waxing it"

:D

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v46/rickey939/wr.jpg

:think:

[Toshi]

not riding pics, as i haven't been on the bike except to commute in months now, but pics nonetheless:

bonfire (http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/bonfire%20-%20february%2022,%202005/)

http://toshiclark.com/images/daily/bonfire%20-%20february%2022,%202005/Thumbs/IMG_9888.jpghttp://toshiclark.com/images/daily/bonfire%20-%20february%2022,%202005/Thumbs/IMG_9889.jpghttp://toshiclark.com/images/daily/bonfire%20-%20february%2022,%202005/Thumbs/IMG_9890.jpg

[Toshi]

a) finished up "an anthropologist on mars" today, oliver sacks. was very well done and interesting subject matter (7 case studies by a literate neurologist basically, including savant-like, tourettic and autistic people among them).

b) going to baker for the weekend

c) going to whistler next weekend

if only we had more snow...

[Toshi]

ugh. the snow at mt. baker was AWFUL. positively east coast, only topped in its slurpee-like disgusting nature by the mountain where i learned to ski, mohawk mtn (http://www.mohawkmtn.com/) in ct. we had a cabin for fri and sat nights but most of the group just took off for home this morning rather than cough up $39 for another day on the hill.

[Toshi]

"List of the top 110 banned books (of all time). Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Underline the ones you specifically want to read (at least some of). Read more. Convince others to read some."

my comment: i've actually read about 20 (exactly 20 by this inaccurate count) of the 110 below, and see the movies of quite a few others ;-) . this list is good in making one realize how much literature there is out there, and how superficial our education really is.


#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (or Richard Dawkins' "The Ancestor's Tale" in its stead in my case)
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence (didn't like it at all)
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann W