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Met up with Kyle and Steve (coworkers), plus Rick, Tom, and Mike at Robinson Restaurant in Apopka at 0800. The plan was for us to ride our traditional “west loop” starting at the north end of Binion Rd. It was a good plan.

Little did I know that Steve was going to test the off-road capabilities of his Suzuki C50 only a few minutes into the ride.  At least he picked the perfect spot to do it (right here, going south around this left-hand curve) where there was plenty of tall, wet, soft grass for him and his bike to slide in. Thankfully, Steve ended up with only very minor abrasions - though I am certain he will not come out of the bed like a spring in the morning.

I was riding behind him when this happened which meant I could evaluate the off-road characteristics as an observer. The BIG surprise for me was how well the big Suzuki handled the TWO end-overs - with nowhere near the amount of damage I expected to see! It only took me 30 seconds to have the bike back in “rideable” condition - well enough that he was able to ride it more than an hour back to his dealership for repairs.

Oh yeah - almost forgot - my on-board VIDEO camera was running at the time:

Seriously though, I believe this was a classic case of “Target Fixation“. Once his front tire got into the wet grass, it was done. It could have ended up a million different ways today - most of them much worse than what happened. MORE IMPORTANTLY, this can AND DOES happen all the time - even with very experienced riders - and it’s easy to avoid. NEVER EVER lose track of exactly where the ROAD AHEAD of you is at - as in following the curve with your eyes. Like all the articles ever written about this say, your bike goes where you are looking.

Here’s another way of thinking about it: If you find yourself on a bad trajectory in the middle of a curve (either because you went in too hot or because your attention drifted for a brief moment or because you had to avoid something in the road or any other reason), THERE IS NO TIME to think about whether or not the bike is capable of making the turn. At that point, one of two things WILL happen:

1. You will look at the thing you don’t want to crash into (such as the road shoulder or a guard rail or an oncoming vehicle) and you WILL crash into it.
2. You will FOCUS on the road ahead all the way through the curve and NOT THINK ABOUT how far leaned over the bike already is and provide enough steering input to force the bike to go where you are LOOKING - at which point, 99.9% of the time, the bike will do what you asked and the tire’s grip on the pavement will not fail you.

I have been riding for more than 30 years and target fixation STILL tries to sneak up on me - and I suspect NO rider is immune to it.

I am 100% certain today’s incident will make Steve (along with the rest of us) a better rider!

After Steve and Kyle headed back toward Kissimmee, the remaining four of us continued the ride and arrived at the peak of Sugarloaf Mountain (the second-highest point of elevation in Florida) for a short break. This is a really nice area of Florida that, like so many others, is being overrun with housing construction. Perhaps the housing market woes will at least slow it down a little bit. Our group rides all over central Florida and beyond nearly every weekend and I am completely at a loss to understand how the magnitude of construction projects we see is being supported.

From the top of the “mountain” it is sometimes possible to see the Orlando skyline out over Lake Apopka (full size image is here) if the atmospheric haze isn’t too thick - as was the case today:

The new video camera mount worked better today, however, I still had one of the dreaded camera freeze-up issues as I was accelerating hard while hitting bumps. Overall, it is working much better than before.

On the way home, I stopped at a little store to put away the camera and came to the conclusion that bad luck is plentiful today. This poor guy’s boating trip evidently didn’t go as planned either.

A few more sessions of this and I’ll have the situation corrected:

The pile is slowly growing. I finished up the day with around 2000 shiny new cast boolits. I would normally do a run of 5000+ but didn’t have time for that today.

These were made from recycled wheel-weights using this Lee 6-cavity mold poured from my Lee 20 pound bottom-pour pot.

Today’s ride was all about making sure Camera Mount - Version 2.0 would work properly. In a nutshell, it didn’t dampen the vibration enough. It worked much better than my original version, but still transmitted enough vibration to the camera to cause the same temporary malfunctions I observed during the initial test run - just less frequently than before.

It did, however, work well enough to capture this video of me following Rick as we carefully navigated a stretch of pavement we thought would have a lot of sand in the corners left by the recent rain - but today there was no sand:

Note: the photos and videos in this blog post were all taken with the little Casio EX-Z80 which is proving to be a fantastic $150 camera.

Time for enhancements to the camera mount - more vibration isolators:

Now it’s a “double stack” with two separate layers of isolation:

Crude? Yes. Of course! This setup provides a considerable amount of vibration reduction while at the same time holding the camera steady enough to capture good video. The road test that followed this modification has me convinced that the problem may be permanently fixed.

This little bit of spirited acceleration would consistently cause the camera to malfunction previously, however, now it seems to be working fine:

Oh yeah - the ride report. We (Tom, Rick, Nancy, Mike, and I) met at the Osteen Diner at 0800. We did the “east loop” which includes the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge and some other good (top-secret) areas out there. It was a nice relaxing ride with moderate temperatures and good weather.

This really reveals some of the dynamic range of this most excellent Yamaha S700 Grand Piano sample I’ve loaded into my XS8. It really is reason enough, by itself, to get one of these Yamaha keyboards! I’ve embedded it here for the sake of the higher quality audio and video as opposed to what you see and hear on my Youtube.com page.

Being a previous owner of the S90es qualifed me to participate in a “Loyalty Program” which entitled me to receive the same awesome S700 samples I had in the S90es (although I think there’s other ways to get it).

I can’t seem to find any good information on the history of the Yamaha S700 Grand Piano, but I did find one reference suggesting it was a 7′ 6″ model they sold in 1991.

In my last Sunday Ride Report I mentioned vibration induced camera malfunctions while out on the initial test ride with the new camera mounting bracket.

This evening I fabricated an additional vibration isolating bracket. Here’s the finished parts pile:

Top-down view of the lower section of the new bracket. Those upright pieces of angle steel will serve as a slot into which I will be sliding a tight-fitting piece of clear 0.220 inch thick clear Lexan plastic.

I purchased these little vibration isolators at Skycraft Parts and Surplus:

Here’s how the base of the bracket attaches to the upper vibration-isolated piece:

Top-down view with the camera attached:

Rear view:

Front view. With the clear Lexan plastic in place, the camera will be well protected from wind, bugs, and rocks. The whole thing is held in my original bracket with the wing nut.

In my last post about Youtube, I was exploring various ways to create and upload the best quality files to the Youtube service, however, I was still embedding the lousy low-quality video with monophonic sound into my web pages.

Now that I’ve discovered an easier way to embed the better quality versions of Youtube content using the Smart Youtube plug-in for WordPress, check these out:

This one is me goofing around with my Yamaha XS8 on a slow-n-easy jazz/funk beat (complete with mistakes!). Compare the video and stereo audio on this page to what you see and hear on the Youtube page.

Here’s another comparison with just a classic 12-string guitar sound you can compare to the one on the Youtube page.

Yes, it can sound like a piano too (this is the S700 Piano Sample) - compare to the Youtube page version:

Ok - enough of my feeble attempts at making a keyboard sound like a guitar - watch this (high quality with stereo whereas the Youtube page itself is nowhere near as good) to see how a true master does it - Steve Vai playing Tender Surrender:

UPDATE: Camera Mount - Version 2.0 

Tom arrived at my place at 0700 as planned.  We arrived at Robinson Restaurant in Apopka at 0756 where we met up with Rick, Nancy, Dave, and Don.

Today’s breakfast was good and inexpensive as usual. Nothing unusual to report about the ride itself - we did what we normally refer to as the “north loop” which takes us as far north as hwy 40 east of Ocala (including my most favorite road in all of Florida).

For me, today’s ride was a test of my new pocket sized Casio EX-Z80 camera and the mount I fabricated for it yesterday. After some minor bending of the top tab on the bracket, I had the camera pretty well aligned with the motorcycle and captured a bunch of short videos during today’s ride.

Here’s a video of me following Rick on Emeralda Island Rd:

This was a 55MB .mov file (straight from the camera at 640x480x30fps) which I uploaded to Youtube. The original actually looks MUCH better than you’re seeing served up here from Youtube (they reprocess whatever you upload to a limited bit rate such that it almost never looks as good as the original). If you’re a WordPress user like me, you may be interested in knowing about the “Smart Youtube” plug-in for WordPress. I used it here to embed this high-quality video which is displayed at 480x355 instead of the Youtube default of 425x344.

However, there were some technical problems along the way which I no doubt caused.

On one occasion, the camera spontaneously froze with a bunch of vertical lines on the screen. On two other occasions, it simply turned itself off. When this happened, I had to remove the battery to get the camera to reboot itself. There was one thing in common during all these failures - they happened when I was riding the GSXR-1000 in a VERY spirited manner. This left me suspecting one of three possible reasons for the camera problems - a very significant increase in:

1. the wind pressure on the front of the camera, and/or
2. the bumps in the road being amplified by my somewhat elevated speed, and/or
3. the more intense high-frequency vibration from the engine.

Therefore, I am planning a bit of re-engineering for the camera mount. In a nutshell, the revised mount will have the following new features:

• Instead of the camera being directly attached to the upright of the mounting bracket, I will add vibration isolators between the camera and mounting bracket such that the engine vibration and shock loads from bumps in the road will be mostly absorbed by the isolators.
• An easily replaceable Lexan shield will be mounted in front of the camera and will be rigidly attached to the upright of the bracket such that only the camera is using the vibration isolators. This should provide four benfits:
  • Wind pressure to the front of the camera will be eliminated.
  • The annoying wind noise will be mostly eliminated such that it can pick up more of the engine noise.
  • I won’t need to worry about bugs and debris hitting the camera.
  • I will carry plenty of spare pieces of Lexan which can slide into place in the event they get damaged to the point where video quality is being negatively affected.

I am certain these camera issues are totally my fault as it was never intended to perform in this role. At this point I am 100% satisfied with the Casio EX-Z80 because it takes great still photos and videos AND most importantly I can very easily transfer the videos to my computers without suffering through the hassle of capturing digital video from an “old-school” camera which uses digital tapes.

Stay tuned for a follow-up posting about version 2.0 of the camera mount.

UPDATE: Camera Mount - Version 2.0

Continuing the preparations for our September mountain trip, I fabricated the bracket for my front mounted camera. I chose to use a Casio EX-Z80 camera because:

• it’s relatively low priced ($140 to $170 depending on where you buy it). Here’s a great article about a $150 Camera vs. a$5000 Camera.
• it’s very compact and lightweight - which means it has a good chance of replacing my current walk-around-in-my-pocket camera.
• it’s getting generally good reviews everywhere I looked during the research phase. Two of those reviews are at steves-digicams.com and dpreview.com.
  
• 8.1 megapixels - which will give plenty of resolution for point-and-shoot still shots.
• it uses the H.264 video standard - which allows for a LOT of video packed into a data file. I expect to fit somewhere around 70 minutes of video onto a 2 gigabyte SD card.
• it will do 848×480 and 640×480 at 30 frames per second. I will likely shoot 640×480 since it’s a convenient 4:3 aspect ratio and doesn’t eat up as much storage card space as 848×480 would.
• it has a very convenient separate movie record button (the red button at top right) which eliminates the need to dig through menus or play with switches to start recording video. Just push the button to start recording and push it again to stop. Simple!
• the optical zoom can be changed WHILE recording video - this is something many other point-and-shoot cameras cannot do.

Tomorrow’s Sunday ride will be the initial test run for this camera. If it performs as well as I am hoping with videos, I will purchase another one and fabricate a rear-facing mounting bracket for it which I will clamp to one of the passenger footpeg assemblies.

It’s mounted on top of my preexisting GPS bracket using a section of all-thread through the steering stem. The base is a leftover piece of garage door opener bracket. The upright is a scrap piece of square tubing which is very strong and has no detectable flex whatsoever in this application. The top is a little section of flat stock. Those pieces + some cutting and grinding + the little MIG Welder + 30 minutes + paint =

Complete with me nicking the fresh paint with my wrench! (I’ll repaint it later)

A simple thumbscrew with 2 jam nuts allows me to adjust and lock the jam nuts to get maximum depth into the 1/4-20 threads in the base of the camera. I will bend that top bracket tab very slightly as needed to obtain perfect alignment with the motorcycle such that the horizon shown in the video matches whatever the motorcycle is doing.

I could literally start writing (whining) now about all the things I absolutely hate about Windows and never ever stop. I’ll spare you by listing only one of my most favorite complaints - I just adore this little dialog box that pops up almost EVERY f#^*!ng time you install “Windows Updates”:

Woohoo - yet another reboot to interrupt whatever else it is I’m trying to do. And HERE is where the one of the differences is - I almost never need to reboot my Linux workstations unless I’m upgrading the Linux Kernel itself.

Several friends have asked me: “What’s the difference between Linux and Windows and why would I want to try it?”

My typical answer goes something like this: If you’re a desktop user needing the “basics” such as web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, and email - without the need for specialized Windows applications like AutoCAD or QuickBooks - then you’re probably a perfect candidate for trying out one of the modern Linux distributions such as Fedora or Ubuntu. Beyond that, you should enjoy more stability and nearly 100% freedom from worry about viruses. It is also worth noting that many current Linux distributions will probably work flawlessly with all your computer’s hardware (network, audio, video, printer, etc). Wireless network adapters have historically been difficult to configure in Linux - but that is becoming less of a problem. With Windows, you will very likely need to obtain and install additional drivers for those components.

Having been a long-time Red Hat Linux user (since around 1996), I personally use Fedora Linux because it is basically Red Hat and I’m very familiar with every part of it. Since then I have used many of the other Linux distributions and even worked professionally with them, but I always come back to Fedora.

However, for me, as a software developer and systems administrator, the differences go much deeper - right down to the kernel of each operating system.

To learn more, there’s PLENTY of additional information available on this subject.

Here’s a helpful tip for anyone new to the awesomeness of the VSS integration with VS:

This screen shot snippet from my Visual Studio Solution Explorer indicates which files have changed with the little red check mark…

The “View Pending Checkins” feature displays a nice handy listing of all those files having the red check marks indicating which files no longer match what is in the VSS repository - somewhat analogous to the ‘svn status‘ command for Subversion users - or the ‘git-status‘ command for Git users.

However, in my case, there’s a little problem: At least FOUR files I have changed are not indicated with red check marks. This makes it super-easy to lose many hours of work because you thought it all got checked back into VSS. I have witnessed this happening on a co-worker’s machine for the past several months and now I have it too. Lucky me!

With a little luck we won’t need to suffer with VSS around here for too much longer. TFS is rumored to be coming. Not sure if TFS will be a blessing or another curse - though it conjures up visions of an 800 pound gorilla tearing up the place - but what do I know? Or maybe I’ll just put up a renegade Subversion server and start using TortoiseSVN.

I could probably even sell the idea of using Git if there was a good Windows GUI and/or VS integration for it - but that hasn’t happened yet. I know it’s being worked on and I look forward to one day using Git with Visual Studio.