Flexistentialism Welcome Guest | Login or Register

After playing with many different wiki engines until far too late at night, I’ve decided to try out WikkiTikkiTavi. TWiki is far too complicated, and PHPWiki does not seem to be under good development at the moment, and has been fairly buggy for me (which is in fact, why I’m switching), and MoinMoinWiki, which seems to require a really silly amount of installation and confusion for a python script.

WikkiTikkiTavi is in early stages of development, but has a simple templating system, and seems to be fairly powerful, without being overly complex. In fact, it is quite simple.

If you don’t know much about Wiki, let me just tell you that it is a website that anyone can edit. Yes, even you. Each page has a link at the bottom that says “Edit this page”. You can click there, and edit the page, using simple markup instead of full HTML. New pages are produced anytime you put two words together and capitalize them, LikeSo. As soon as you do that, the page is produced, and you can begin editing the new page. Wiki’s live on soft security, and evolve as a function of their user base.

One thing a wiki does as part of ‘soft security’ is remember all changes made to itself. Say someone comes along and trashes something (which is actually very rare in the wiki world), some other kind soul can just come along and restore from the change log. Its a very unique thing.

Anyway, please give what may become the new CowboyWiki a try, and let me know how you like it. If you aren’t used to wiki, I suggest reading a bit more about it, and them come play around. If you ARE used to wiki (Andrew, Will, Dustin I’m looking in your direction), please let me know how you think of things. There are some nice features, for instance, just click Preferences to identify yourself, and your name now becomes a WikiWord. The sidebar is actually its own wiki page as well, so is editable. You can double click on the page to instantly open the Edit window, if you don’t want to click the link at the bottom. Many interesting features, but still deliciously simple. I want to hear your feedback!

Two days ago our sun released the 3rd largest recorded solar flare ever. The flare was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) consisting of about 10 billion tons of ionized gas. The gas is streaming towards us now at about 1250 miles per second.

This image was taken by the SOHO Satellite (The SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory). Each frame is spaced by about 30 minutes, and shows a ‘halo’ type effect as the flare spreads out and heads directly toward SOHO, and the Earth. The specks seen on the image are interference caused by protons striking the surface of the detector. The large dot in the center is called an occulting disk, and it allows us to get a view of the behavior around the sun, without being blinded by the light and energy from the sun itself. Shortly after taking these images, SOHO had to be placed in a safe-mode to prevent damage from the radiation. For more images and videos of the flare, check out the hot shots page for this flare at SOHO.

What I really want you to take away from all this is the fact that solar flares of this magnitude are some of the largest and most awesome eruptions of energy that we will ever experience. Space is full of things like this, but rarely do those things actually affect our lives. Solar flares, and the associated ejection of mass, can disrupt communication and power grids, damage satellites, and create powerful and beautiful Aurora Borealis’s, like this one caught in the Colorado sky, one of the first signs of the flare’s effects here on Earth.

The sun is a violent and terrific thing, bursting with energy. If it weren’t for our powerful magnetic field, we would have never had the chance to evolve, let alone stand outside and enjoy its magnificence. Next time you are outside, think briefly about how much energy it would take to get 10 billion tons of gas moving 1250 miles per second. Then realize that its only another day in the life of a medium sized star.

Links to information about the recent solar activity:

• NASA – Tuesday/Wednesday Solar Punch
• Giant Sunspot Groups 10484 and 10486 – Two huge sunspot groups currently visible on the surface of the sun (don’t stare at the sun though! If you want to see, use some techniques found here for protecting your eyes while viewing the sun.). These sunspots are the source of the current flare and CME activity, and are each about the size of Jupiter.

• SOHO Hot Shot: X17.2 Flare – This is NOT to be missed! Check out more images and MPEG videos of the flare in action, including close-ups of the Sun’s surface.

I will be posting a slew of scooter maintenance articles over the next several days, and this post will serve as a directory for those posts, and something to link to.

The articles deal with maintenance and performance upgrades for the Aprilia SR50 DiTech and the Aprilia Mojito (Habana in Europe). They are both 50cc scooters, but the Mojito is air-cooled and has a carburetor, and the DiTech is liquid-cooled and has fuel injection. Both scooters are built on the Morini platform. However, even if you have a different scooter, it is likely that you will get some benefit from these articles. Many scooters are built on the Morini platform, and even scooters built on other platforms will have similar parts and arrangements. Modern scooter makes such as Vespa, Malaguti, Piaggio, Honda, Yamaha, Italjet, MBK and Benelli all have similar innards, and you can learn much from these articles.

These articles were all written by Scott (AKA Scootnfast on the ApriliaForum boards) as forum posts. I have (with Scott’s permission) taken the information and photos he posted, edited them for clarity and formatting, and posted them here, in order to preserve them and make them more accessible to non-forum goers.

Here are the articles currently posted. If the article isn’t linked yet, it means I haven’t finished putting it all together, check back for updates and additions:

• CVT Basics – Describes the basic operation of the CVT (Constant Variable Transmission) that is the automatic transmission for most modern scooters. It is a simple device, but it can be difficult to understand how the different parts, roller weights, variator pulleys, and contra springs all work together to provide you with twist-n-go ease. Any scooter driver should understand at least a bit about what is going on down there.
• De-restricting an Aprilia Scooter, or Most Any Modern Scooter – Most modern scooters come to you in a restricted state. They aren’t producing all the power they can be. This is usually done for legal reasons dealing with importing and registering of scooters, but the restrictions are easily undone, to give your scooter back its performance. The directions described are for an Aprilia Mojito and SR50 Ditech, but the techniques are applicable to nearly all modern scooters.
• Installing a Big Bore Kit on an Air-Cooled Mojito – This article describes the installation of a 70cc kit on an Aprilia Mojito, which is an air-cooled scooter based on the Morini engine. Techniques here will be applicable to nearly all air-cooled two-stroke engines.
• Installing a Big Bore Kit on a Liquid-Cooled SR50 DiTech – This article describes the installation of a 70cc kit on an Aprilia SR50 DiTech, a fuel injected, liquid-cooled version of the Morini engine. Techniques here can be used for other DiTech scooters (such as the Scarabeo DiTech), and other liquid-cooled engines.

• Installing New Final Drive Gears on an SR50 DiTech – This article describes the installation of new final drive gears on a DiTech. These instructions should help with the installation of gears on any Morini based scooter, and will give you an idea of what is involved in any final drive installation.

If you drive a modern automatic (twist-n-go) scooter, then it is likely that your scooter has been restricted to prevent it from reaching its full power. This is typically done to keep the power and speed down so that the vehicle can be registered under scooter or moped classifications that many states have. This classification means many scooter drivers do not need license plates, special licenses, or expensive registrations.

However, how much fun is it to have a restricted vehicle? Not much. So if you’d like to get the full power out of your ride, you can remove the restrictions yourself, and enjoy a vehicle operating at its full potential.

This article deals with derestricting a 2004 Aprilia Mojito 50 (known as the Habana in Europe) and mentions specific differences with the technique for the Aprilia SR50 DiTech, since these two scooters share the same drivetrain. However, the derestriction techniques described here work on most modern automatic scooters, with some variation between brands and models. This document was originally written as a thread on the ApriliaForum by Scott (AKA Scootnfast) and all credit should go to him. He wrote the bulk of the document, and took the pictures. I am simply removing the info from the forum context, doing some editing for clarity and formatting, and putting it up for all to see (specifically Googlers).

For other articles available check out the list or read on to continue this article. Continue Reading »

One thing people regularly wonder about is how a CVT (Constant Variable Transmission) works. CVTs are used mostly in scooters, like the 50cc Aprilia SR50 DiTech this document describes, but some larger scooters also use CVTs, and they are even being used on some Audis now! If you’ve ever been confused about that strange little transmission in your scooter, this should help clear things up a bit.

CVTs are quite simple in design, but since every part must work in concert with all the others, it can be difficult to visualize their operation, and understand how each part fits into the whole. The drawings are not to scale, but are meant to just give you a better idea about what is going on.

This document was originally written by Scott (AKA Scootnfast) on the ApriliaForum website. I have done a bit of editing so that things make sense in a non-forum context, but all the photos and info are his, and have been reproduced with his permission.

For other articles available check out the list or read on to continue this article. Continue Reading »

When considering conspiracy theories, it is easy to get wrapped up in concerns about motive and past history, and forget to actually analyze what is going on. Other times, over analysis can be a problem, and conspiracy theorists miss the forest for the trees.

The idea of “Chemtrails” is a theory I’ve been alerted to by Dustin. The basic premise is that the government is spraying us with some sort of odd chemical(s) which can be seen in the form of contrails that persist far longer than they should. These chemicals are a part of everything from population control experiments to causing asthma and allergies.

Now, based on what I’ve read, I’m inclined to believe that Chemtrails are a myth. Like many conspiracy theories, they rely on highly improbable conditions to create effects that are easily explained by existing information.

For instance, its a well known fact that allergies and asthma is an increasing problem in America. But instead of looking straight for a conspiracy, why not look to the ever-increasing quantities of fossil fuel consumed and industrial pollutants released into the air. There is no unexplained problem that warrants looking for an explanation in a conspiracy.

For some good information, check out the following two links:

• Atmospheric Disturbances, Chemtrails, Chembusters – This link, particularly the “Open Letter Critical of ‘Chemtrails’ claims” at the top of the page, is very enlightening.

• Chemtrail Controversy – This website contains an explanation of why the idea of chemtrails has no basis, written by NOAA meteorologist Thomas Schlatter.

  To see the other side, here are a few links from groups that are concerned that Chemtrails are a reality:

• Chemtrails 911 – This site has information and many photos of supposed chemtrails. One thing to remember when viewing trails that appear to be very close, is that they may be at drastically different altitudes, only appearing close because of your perspective. The atmospheric conditions at 45,000 feet and 15,000 feet may be drastically different, causing trails to spread and dissipate at vastly different rates.

• Aerosol Operation Crimes and Cover-Up – This rather hectic site contains much of the same info as above. Photographs of trails, as well as various conspiracy theories. It also contains a message board. One user noted that they took their home air filter outside on a ‘chemtrail day’ and saw that the air outside was much cleaner than the air inside! Another user used this as further proof that chemtrails exist, though I don’t understand how it proves anything, seeing as how household pollution is caused by everything from candles and incense to carpets, ovens, and your air conditioner. If there is more pollution inside than outside, wouldn’t that suggest that it isn’t coming from the sky?

  One key point is to note that in many cases, problems caused by contrails are brought up, which are sometimes problems that are blamed on ‘chemtrails’. However, the problems supposedly caused by ‘chemtrail’ conspiracies are easily explained by existing knowledge of pollution and atmospheric disturbances. To ignore the existing explanation and hunt for a ‘secret’ explanation is not a logical course of action.

  Sometimes I think that there is a belief many people hold that they are the only ones who cares about the world, and that everyone else is either ignorant, or has sinister intentions toward the world. In order for a secret chemical spraying program to exist, there would have to be thousands of people who are both willing and able to hide a program’s existance, and be willing to spray chemicals on their own families and countrymen. Conspirators would be needed in the government, the military, the airplane maintainence industry, the petroleum industry, flight controllers, ground crews, etc. Thats a lot of places, and a lot of people. It is highly improbable that all of these people could maintain perfect secrecy about a project. Of course, the complete lack of evidence is always one of the hallmarks for a conspiracy theory.

  I’ll leave you to make your own decisions about chemtrails, but something I think you all should read is this essay on the Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic. In 1954 people in Washington began noticing odd pits in their windshield. Within days, reports from all over Washington, concentrated in Seattle, began pouring into police stations and government agencies about mysterious pits forming in people’s windshields. Vandals were blamed, until the reports began numbering in the thousands. Everything from cosmic rays to secret government nuclear tests to sand flea eggs were blamed. Eventually, researchers from around the country looked into the situation, and found that the pits had always been there, and were on all cars across the country. The cause? Gravel from the road due to normal driving wear and tear. People had just started to actually look AT the windshield, instead of THROUGH it. The power of suggestion from a few news articles was enough to convince them that they were part of this big problem. Its described today as a typical case of mass hysteria, people’s fears cascading and feeding off of each other, resulting in a vast misunderstanding.

  Try to keep this in mind when viewing information about Chemtrails. Are we looking so closely at them that we are seeing something we think is new? Is the power of a little suggestion enough to make us look at contrails with fear? I pride myself on an open mind, but I’m also keenly aware of the human tendency to behave quite irrationally, especially when it stems from a belief that we are ‘helping’ people by alerting them of a hidden danger.

Here are some photos of the baby fish that were born the other day. They are quite cute, though their eyes are far too large for their little bodies. They are also quite difficult to photograph. As soon as I lock the focus in, they swim around and leave the focal point. If you thought making little human children sit still was hard, try making 50 baby fish sit still. Not possible, as far as I can tell.

Click for larger image

Click for larger image

I just got back from spending 20 hours at the Science Center. Yes. 20 straight hours. A few of those in the middle were actually sleep, but it was on a couch, and I was poised to get up if something went wrong. I had been charged with 72 girl scouts, and the responsibility of keeping them fed, safe, entertained, and educated for an over-night slumber party in the science center event. They had some adult chaperones too, but I was the main man, actually, after about 11pm when the other camp staff went home, I was the only man in the building, even the security for the night was all female. We gave demos, had activities, explored the galleries, ate pizza, and generally had a good time. All the while I put up with a constant swarm of girls all over shouting, “Show us another experiment, Sam!! Sam, we want to build a geodesic dome!! You aren’t gross like other boys, you are funny!!” You can imagine it now. We taught them about geodesic domes, boiling liquids, different gasses, chromatography, and I taught a few girls how to cross only one eye at a time. Cool, huh?

Things began very poorly, because the event was planned by someone who quit a month ago, and no one had taken responsibility for it. So at the last minute my boss and I realized no one had taken any responsibility for things, and that if no one did anything, the event would be utter chaos. So he stepped up to the plate and took over, and I offered assistance, and took over once he left in the afternoon. Everything was done last minute, and I was quite frazzled by about 9pm, since I had already been there for 8 hours setting stuff up non-stop, with hours to go before lights-out. However, with the help of the good camp staff, understanding security guards (who had to bring in overnight staff last minute), the food service staff who were sent orders last minute and other generally under-appreciated people who actually do the grunt work and keep things running when management drops the ball, we pulled everything off, and the kids had a great time. By about 10:30pm, I was feeling like things were finally under control, and I was able to calm my nerves a bit. After getting everyone to bed and settled in the galleries around midnight, I caught a couple hours of sleep on a couch, then woke up, got stuff ready for the next morning, and led the troupes to breakfast, the Planetarium, and through the sign-out stuff. Then all the day staff came in and I wished them good luck, and bid them adieu. Now I’m totally strung out, and about to catch a little more sleep.

However, before I go, I leave you with these two links, the first being via Billy and the second via Johnny Fantastic.

• What do today’s kids think of yesterday’s games? One of my early crowning achievements was beating Donkey Kong Jr. on the 8-bit Nintendo (brand new at the time), using only my right hand (because I had broken my left). Yes, I operated the entire controller by sitting it on the ground and using my hand like a spider over it, and I was so proud. But now, today’s kids look upon our 80’s games with derision. A very funny article.

• A very sad comic...

Made a few more small changes to the site. Firstly, the search page is now wrapped comfortably within a PHP script. Handy, because it lets me control more of its appearance and behavior with PHP, which I couldn’t do before, when it was just a lowly perl CGI script. Namely, use includes to put in standard header and footer elements. It also gave me the ability to finally generate truly compliant code on the search system. Not too shabby.

The other change utilizes the nice MT plugin MTRelativeDate. Its a very simple plugin that works exactly like the normal date template tags, but gives the option of using “Today” and “Yesterday” to describe the date on entries where it is appropriate. Look for its use! Clever huh? It also affects the comment date/time information. Very nice. At least, I think so.

More little tweaks coming soon. Why? Because I enjoy it! Huzzah!

Oh, and some real entries containing stuff you actually give a crap about are coming soon too!

Update: MTRelativeDate, while an elegant solution, isn’t working properly for me. It only updates the date when I post a new entry, so things get out of date (pun unintentional) pretty fast. So, I reverted to a more verbose, but ultimately more effective solution, which is a snippet of PHP code. The code gets today’s date, yesterday’s date, and the date the post was made. Then it compares them and decides whether it should print “Today”, “Yesterday” or the day of the week, such as “Wednesday”.

";
	
if ($entrydate==$today) {

echo "Today,";

}

elseif ($entrydate==$yesterday) {

echo "Yesterday,"; 

}

else {

echo(",");

}

?>

Many blogs have been hit with a new type of spam. Comment spam. This site has gotten a few, but you probably haven’t noticed because I’ve removed them in short order. However, some automated bots are in action, and some sites have been hit with hundreds of spam comments in short order. A few tools are being looked into to supplement the basic IP banning concept. Some are rather unique, such as attempting to steal pagerank from spammers (which I don’t feel will be effective (Andrew agrees), but at least it is thinking ‘outside the box’), to more traditional solutions like blacklisting, whitelisting, distributed blacklisting, bayesian filtration (which he set up in response to concerns about accessibilty stemming from his previous solution, discussed below), and more.

One interesting method, and something I’ve been thinking about recently, and has was implemented by James Seng (who also wrote the Bayesian plugin noted above) is a ‘captcha’ that provides a very basic turing test. In order to make a comment, you have to look at an image, and then type the numbers seen in the image into a form field. You may have seen these in some places where you are making online orders and they wish to verify that a human is reading, not a machine.

One problem with this, that is noted heavily in his comments for the entry, is accessibility. If you can’t see, you can’t complete the test. Now, I admit that there aren’t many blind people reading the web, but they are out there, and they use browsers that are basically a text-only browser with the addition of special navigation tools, and a text-to-speech engine. Accessibility is a big deal now, and tools like this that hamper accessibility should be avoided in my opinion. Some may argue that sometimes you have to make a sacrifice in order to block the scourge of automated comment spam, but I’m inclined to believe that there is a better way. Until other solutions have been exhausted, I’m going to avoid this route.

Some people have suggested text based turing tests. For instance, you might have to answer a question like, “What is the third letter of the word ‘Banana’?” However, the basic problem is that even if this question is randomly generated, pulling from a set of predefined questions and answers, or even pulling random words and random numbers (third, fifth, seventh, etc.), it will ineveitably be parsable by a computer. If a script can create it, a script can parse it and get the answer. The benefit of images is that it is largely one-way. You can create an image with a script, but it is very hard to get text back out of that image. If only there was a way to do it without an image, but still retaining a level of unparsability.

If you have any great ideas, let me know! Until then, I’ll be using some basic tools, bayesian filtration primarily, to control comment spam. If it gets out of hand, I’ll put more thought into these other interesting possibilities. It may turn out that basic methods are sufficient, but the concept of developing a proper turing test is very interesting to me, and is worth considering, if only as a mental exercise. Its obvious the human brain is different from our computers, but it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how, and to produce tests that a computer can use, but that can only be answered correctly by a human.

Also, as a side note, this post sends more trackback pings than any other post I’ve made. Link-tastic!

Cynthia, Dennis’s dear mother, has been very generous. She is very skilled at pickle making, and I’ve always enjoyed her creations. This summer however, she had a poor cucumber harvest, and there were to be no pickles. I was crushed. She heard of my disappointment, and endeavored to locate a source of cucumbers. She found a local grower who had produced a bumper crop, so she purchased a quantity, and secretly made a batch of dill pickles. Cynthia then presented me with six mason jars of them, since she knew I enjoyed them so much. They have been pickling in their jars, waiting to be opened for weeks now. Finally I’m beginning to open them up, and savor their goodness.

So a big thanks to Cynthia, Bringer of Pickles!

Click for larger image

As every good schoolboy and schoolgirl learned, Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, and today Oct. 13th (the second monday in October), is the day that we celebrate his journey. On that fateful day of his first landing on the island we now call Cuba, he stepped off the boat to be met by savages who gave him crudely tanned animal hides and misshapen beads in exchange for the great gift of civilization. Where would we be today if it weren’t for Columbus’s brave decision to stagger blindly across the ocean driven by stories of riches in India?

The myth of Columbus the Discoverer starts school children off with bad beginnings. You are taught very quickly who to respect (the white man), and who to disregard (the pitiful natives). Why, their presence on the continent was so inconsequential to society that we still use the word ‘discovery’ to describe what Columbus did. How do you discover something that is already inhabited by vast civilizations thousands of years old and supporting millions of people? From the beginning, the natives are stripped of civilization and humanity.

What was spoken of as discovery really amounted to an invasion, and the beginning of the end for the native peoples of the continent. It is not a thing to be celebrated. Fortunately, less and less emphasis has been placed on this holiday as the years go by. The holiday reached a peak in 1992, when the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in Central America. However, a large group of people came forward at the same time to protest the celebrations, pointing to the blatantly racist connotations. Since then, many have realized the error of the holiday, and have backed off celebrations.

In case you are interested, there is a new format for the archive URLs. Instead of looking like http://www.flexistentialist.org/archives/000325.shtml, which gives you no information whatsoever, they now look something like this: http://www.flexistentialist.org/archives/2003/10/12/new_archive_urls.shtml (which is the link to this entry). This includes the date, and the first 16 characters of the entry title, which makes much more sense.

If you’ve linked to entries before, using the old style, please change the links to the new style. However, if you don’t change it, its not the end of the world, because there is a redirect set up to move you to the correct entry.

For information on how to do this sort of thing, check out the following links:

• Mamamusings.net’s solutions.

• Future-proof URLs in Movable Type

If I were a pirate, and you wanted to join my crew, you’d need to prove your mettle by snorting a line of the stuff on the left. Then, if you wanted to be an officer, you’d need to snort a line of the stuff on the right.

Click for larger image

The stuff on the left is dried Serrano chili powder. The Serrano is a very colorful pepper, short and smooth skinned, it comes in green, orange and red varieties, all of which are represented in this scorching powder.

The stuff on the right is dried Habenero chili powder. The Habenero is one of the hottest peppers in the world, and is about 10 times hotter than the Serrano powder.

Both peppers are very hot, and very flavorful, but enjoy with caution. Don’t accidentally breath any in. Trust me.

I’ve begun the process of painting a few parts of my scooter. There were some bad dings on one of the rear panels from when I set it down not as gently as I had hoped one day that needed fixing, and I’m planning some embellishments that I’ve managed to begin. I purchased some Super Red II touch up paint from Auto Zone that was a pretty good match for my scooter’s paint. I wet sanded with 400 grit to sand down the scratches and prepare the surface. Then I hit it with a few coats of the touch up paint, feathered it a bit, sanded with 800 grit and then 1500 grit, then hit it with three coats of clear coat. The paint is obviously not a perfect match, but its hard to tell unless you are me. Pictures will be coming once I do a final polish with rubbing compound to blend the paint further.

The embellishment is a little more fun. I’ve taken the side panels off, and am painting them a combination of gloss black and metallic blue. The gloss black is easy. The metallic blue requires many coats, but looks very nice. I sanded and cleaned the surface, then put down 3 coats of clear adhesion promoter (a type of primer). Then I shot a reflective silver metal flake paint. This provides a reflective metallic surface. After three coats of the reflective coat, I put down three coats of a partially transparent blue. On top of the reflective metal, it comes out looking like anodized aluminum, and is very nice looking. The gloss is VERY high, and it looks great. Once I finish masking and painting the black parts, I’ll clear coat the whole thing, and post some pictures. You can do some good work with rattlecans if you use good paint, take care, prep well, and follow the instructions! Just so you know, I’m using a Krylon gloss black (its what I had around), and Dupli-Color Adhesion Promoter, Dupli-Color Metal Cast Ground Coat, and Dupli-Color Metal Cast Blue.

Next on the list to be painted are the wheels, brake calipers and shock spring. Those will be done as maintenance is needed on those parts. The next 500 miles will see the need for new brake pads as well as new tires, so that will make an ideal time to do the calipers and the wheels, since those parts will be off anyway. The shock spring won’t be hard, I just need to find the time to do it, and figure out how to make it look nice. Sanding won’t be easy with all the crevices. I might just get some mega paint stripper, strip all the paint off, and then use this transparent blue anodizing coat on it. That would look nice.