Tango, cycling, & technology...from a Portlander.

The summit sits at 4055 feet, its parking lot is where the Portland Astronomy club meets to study the night sky. The viewpoint is worth the ride, or drive; on a clear day, you can see four major mountians, with a ~270 degree field of view. As for climbing this hill on a bike...we'll, you'd better be reasonably fit, or the screaming legs of exhaustion will turn you around.

From my house, Google says that this ~36 mile trip:
By car, would take 1.25 hours.
By bike, 4.5 hours.

I did it, by bike, in under 2 hours and 15 minutes. Of-course, I have no ordinary bike; I had help. Google assumes your average speed would be around 8MPH, mine averaged 16MPH.

The assent was fun and brisk, the good company and screaming fast descent were worth the trip. The cougars...well...I could have done without them.

Our local recumbent parts and accessories manufacturer sells some awesome TailSoks & frames. Although I'm not ready to purchase one of their admittedly well-made aluminum-tube based TailSok frames.

TerraCycle recently started making making their TailSoks with retro-reflective fabric, and so that means they're currently clearing out their old inventory of non-reflective soks, for bargain at $39/each.

So, after picking one of their clearance soks...

How disturbing...

Earlier yesterday I posted to a CAD/CAM machinist forum, seeking help with their software. Hours later I find that my posting has been doctored to not only remove information valuable to anyone visiting, but they fraudulently re-characterized my original message into a semblance of praise for their software.

What's even more disturbing is their recent Award, and how they cited forum comments as "...Vectric wish to Thank all of our customers for posting such glowing feedback and positive information on the Forum, because the Queen's Awards committee considered this to be very important when making their decision..."

How disgusting...here's the facts.

An update to my previous rant about Apple's attempts at forced obsolescence.

Rumor is, Apple is going to release a software update to Fix iPhone 3G performance issues...soon...

I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, some of us have Real Work to do on these things and simply cannot wait for Steve Jobs/Apple to throw us long-time loyal customers a tiny little bone.

Steps to fix slowness on iPhone3G w/ iOS4.0.2...

I'm happy to see the wrongs being corrected in California now.

I wish it could be this simple:
You may organize and do as you and your group pleases. For as long as your group's charter, expressions & actions always respect and protect:
1) Equal access to liberty, security, dignity, privacy & individual sovereignty.
2) Equal opportunity of association, education & occupation.
3) Freedom of thought, conscience, art & expression.
4) Exclusivity to lawfully acquired & created possessions.
5) No discrimination for age, ethnicity, disability, gender or sexuality.
6) Fair compensation for products & possessions.

The guiding principals would be:
1) No hateful actions or expressions.
2) Embrace and encourage diversity.
3) Enabling success for those less fortunate.

The core corrective principal would be restitution, before repression.

A guy can dream...

My Apple iPhone experience has taught me a few things:
1) Apple has an awesome return/warranty policy. If it's broken, they replace it, period.
2) My 3G iPhone works seamlessly with my beautiful and highly-reliable 8GB/500GB MacBook Pro.
3) A $500 technology investment is intentionally engineered into a paperweight just two years later.

Allow me to elaborate on the third point ...

In the past few years I've met some amazing engineers, many are local folks...there must be something in the water.

The list grows daily, and I can no longer track them all manually. So...now comes a wiki page:
http://gregg.berkholtz.net/wiki/diyprojects


Examples:
Three-wheeled leaning vehicle:


Electric Motorcycle:



My list is absurdly-long...keep an eye on the new wiki page

An update to my Feburary posting; the airless Kenda inserts are working great.

Yes, I do feel just a little bit slower off-the-line...but...over the past couple of weeks I've realized that I'm no longer scanning the roads for glass, nails & other crap anymore. Only the largish potholes and other uneven surfaces.

Combined with the fact I no longer haul around pumps, tire wedges and patch-kits. Is it worth feeling slightly-slower off-the-line, yet never worrying about flatting again?

Hell yes!

After being stuck in outer-SE Portland, fixing a flat, during a dark freezing midnight downpour...and then solicited from a tweaked-out overweight older man (musta been the bike shorts) :o ...I turned to airless tire solutions; I've always hated flatting, and found it silly that a good chunk of my randonneuring kit was in pumps, tubes, tires and patches. My first venture was ordering one-piece tires from AirFreeTires.com, my first order arrived with no issue, and while the tires were a bit quirky, they were alright. My second order took months, and a series of public/online complaints before arrival. The third order never arrived...and that order was placed in October of 2008.

I LOVE TaskPaper, and look forward to the day when the iPhone version is ready. Though I've been struggling with utilizing a new and very valuable feature; online sync.

Why?

Alright...so a friend was giving me well-deserved grief last night about usage of some words & phrases, so to help out those of you whom simply dont live in the techie/geek world:
-phishing: In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information.
-haz: slang for has, have, haz ...honestly, I just like cats, and that's an adorable website.

Yea, there's other stuff, but I'm too snarky this morning to dig them up for you. Maybe you should look around yourself <3

Hmm, that's funny; between German and Dutch, geek means crazy freak. Hmph!

For the past few months, I've been seeking a new place in inner-SE Portland. My reasons have been simple; despite the novelty of having a workshop in my condo, I miss having a real garage. I look forward to soon having the ability to use my lathe and CNC, without spending equal time cleaning up afterwards, and to complete fiberglass layups without ~1.5hr drives across town.

Though, what does this all have to do with sex?

I've been promising a status report on my current hearing aids for months, and now that a full year has elapsed since my initial review...I've run out of excuses The next few blog postings will detail three primary points:

The current status of my hearing, and attempts to mitigate a fairly recent profound loss.

Recent experiences using technology to help mitigate the loss.

An "outsiders" view of the hearing aid industry.

To immediately address one major point; there are two major types of hearing losses. A conductive loss is what you experience while fighting head colds, and while there is often a comparatively-mild impact on the quality of sounds you'd hear, a conductive loss largely impacts the quantity of a sound, not the quality. A sensorineural hearing loss is a totally different experience; it involves a reduction in the ability to hear certain frequency ranges, which significantly impacts communications by affecting speech comprehension accuracy, and the loss of an ability to process certain frequencies extinguishes the ability to perceive the related sounds. In-effect, a sensorineural hearing loss hinders the quality, not quantity, of a sound. To better understand, see this illustration.

One major point I intend to make over the course of the next few postings: Phonak's claim that their Phonak Naida V UltraPower hearing aids are water-resistant is, without any doubt, wholly-false. Once you get beyond, and accept this indisputable fact (which I'll clearly document in the next posting), they're not bad little gadgets. Though their false advertising has significantly hindered my ability to enjoy liberties that many otherwise take for granted...and has done so at a great financial and emotional cost.

The smug little phrase, "Business is business," is often used to raise a false issue and fabricate an escape from duty.

Milton Friedman is known for the phrase, “the business of business is business”. Though, in the 1700's, George Colman the Younger published a play titled "Heir at Law", which coined "...Business is business. Nothing is more important than business and the profit it brings. There's no justification for not putting it first..."

In the twenty-first century, is this still an acceptable business behavior?

What is the business of business? Is it truly still the case that all which really matters is shareholder value? Or, in a world where businesses can yield substantial financial, social and even political power, should it rather be business's business to take responsibility for social issues in their local and national communities?

There remain a few shrinking social classes that subscribe to the philosophy that only money matters; businesses who wish to continue dishonorable practices, or who do not believe that they can make a success with better methods. The other, are certain exponents of culture who aspire to conform to Mathew Arnold's definition of persons who "...know the best that has been thought and said in the world," but possess no desire to expend the energies towards an attempt to beautify industry, and therefore find it convenient to hide behind a duty, by keeping in circulation a fallacy; branding a difficult task as hopeless.

The need for organizations in both public and private sectors to behave in a socially responsible way is becoming a generalized requirement of society. It is shared by the stakeholder groups that are participating in the ISO working group for social responsibility, as they work to develop ISO 26000; an International Standard providing guidelines for social responsibility for consumers, and throughout industry, government, labor groups, nongovernmental organizations and other forms of business world-wide.

The perception of an organization’s social responsibility performance can influence;

Its reputation

Its ability to attract and retain male and female workers and/or members, customers, clients or users;

The maintenance of employees' morale, commitment and productivity;

The view of investors, donors, sponsors and the financial community; and

Its relationship with companies, governments, the media, suppliers, peers, customers and the community in which it operates.

Are you running a socially responsible business? The draft ISO document is already online, grab it while its still free!

Yes, in today's world it is still possible to travel over 200 miles on a single gallon of gasoline.

My trip took me from downtown Portland Oregon, into Astoria Oregon, then Seaside, down to Tillamook, and then back into Portland. To get an idea of my average speed, the Portland to Astoria leg took roughly 4 hours...and I pedaled the entire way

My Bike & the route:

View Larger Map