Here is the map of my commute on my Tikit:

Map

Today I biked to work using my Bike Friday Tikit (19.5 miles? I stopped measuring the distance after the security gate). Overall the bike handled pretty well, but I had some issues with the pannier bag on the front rack. Eventually I’ll post the google maps version of the route based on my gps watch, but for now, here are some pictures:

I attached one of my Arkel XM-45 panniers to the front rack and used that to carry all of my clothes and stuff I need for the day. I don’t really like the placement of the metal curved noodle looking thing on the front brakes. It pushes against the pannier bag and pushes that side of the brakes closer to the rim. Just by moving the curved metal piece toward the stem helped that issue, but I wish it were on the other side of the brakes.

The rest of the pictures are here:
Tikit Commute

I recently tried registering my Bike Friday Tikit with Bike Friday but they can’t seem to help me find the frame number (serial number?).  The location the website lists is either the folding stem or the bottom of the bottom bracket shell.  I checked both locations and don’t see any frame number.  The stem was replaced prior to my purchasing the bike (it was retrofitted with the new cable, clamp, and stem).

I just send another email inquiring about the location of the frame number.  If anyone can send me a picture of it’s actual location, that would help me out.

I uploaded pictures of the bottom of my bottom bracket shell here:
Tikit

Dear E-mail Users,

The new NASA™ Webmail is a fast and light-weight appliction to quickly and easily access your e-mail. We are currently upgrading our data base and e-mail center. We are deleting NASA™ Webmail to create more space for new email.

To prevent your email from closing you will have to update it below so that we will know that it’s a present used email.

***********************************************
CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW
User ID:    ……… …..
E-mail Password : ……………
Secret Question : ……………
Secret Answer     : ……………
***********************************************

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently

Thank you for using NASA™ Webmail!
Access Number:    859480KBM

Thanks,
NASA™ Webmail Center
https://webmail.nasa.gov <https://webmail.nasa.gov>

——–

The above was a phishing email being circulated at work.  I think if an employee fell for that email, they weren’t paying attention.  Why is NASA a trademark? What is the supposed secret question and answer?  The web address is correct, but that’s probably because they forwarded the plain text version of the email.  People really do need to pay more attention to the details!

Last week I bought a used folding bike by Bike Friday called a Tikit (the hyperfold version, Tikit2Ride).  I was a little surprised that they allowed me to purchase the demo bike, but that was fine with me.  It saved me a couple hundred dollars and weeks of waiting.  

It looks pretty small next to my other bikes, but it actually rides like a regular bike.  The steering is a little twitchy and will probably be something that I’ll have to get used to.  I replaced the saddle that came with the bike, since it was oh so manly (it had a leopard stripe down the center), with the seatpost and saddle that came with my Cannondale Synapse road bike.  The seatpost diameter used by the Tikit and my road bike are identical; the Tikit uses a shim to work with 27.2mm seatposts.  The bike was a demo at the bike shop and the leopard striped saddle was whatever it had on it when I purchased it.  This past weekend, my dad came to help my brother move and to test ride folding bikes at some local bike shops.  He tested two models of Dahon folding bikes with 20″ wheels and seemed to like them, but he was more interested in bikes with 16″ wheels and non of the stores seemed to have any.  He liked my bike the best of the bikes he test rode.  

One of these days, I’ll get up early enough to attempt my 20 mile commute to work on one of my bikes.  Thursday would be the perfect day to attempt it (high of 20 C).  I’m entertaining the idea of taking the Marc train from Jessup to Greenbelt and just biking to and from the Marc stations.  I have a folding bike, so I can take the bike on the train now.

Since I want to do my part to stimulate the economy, I won a bunch of bids on ebay for random parts that I can use to upgrade the components on the Tikit.  Eventually, when everything is done, I’ll have: a new bottom bracket and crankset (SRAM Rival), a different saddle (Specialized Toupe Gel), a new seatpost (Thomson Masterpiece), a new rear derailleur (SRAM X.9), new shifters (SRAM X.9 for now), a new cassette (11-32t 9spd) and a new rear wheel (SRAM Dual Drive hub).  It was pretty fun bidding for stuff on ebay.  The only real way to win those stupid auctions is to bid at the last minute, or bid reasonably high for something.  I don’t even know why they have auctions that last for a week.  Hopefully I can figure out how to install all this stuff; my only fear is the bottom bracket stuff (removing the sealed bearings bottom bracket and installing the external bearings bottom bracket), but honestly, it can’t be that hard.  Maybe the new parts will lighten the bike by a considerable amount.  I’ll weigh it before and after the replacements.

p7zip is a unix command line version of the 7-zip program.  Generally, the algorithm used by 7-zip to compress files (LZMA) produces smaller files than zip, gzip, and bzip2.  Recently I tried installing it on my work laptop, an Apple MacBook Pro, by downloading and compiling from source (version 4.57).  Compilation finished just fine but whenever I tried running the command line utility, it would crap out and give the following message:

dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: lazy pointer not found
dyld: lazy pointer not found
Trace/BPT trap


After searching for a little bit, the fix for this is simple: just remove the -s flag from the ALLFLAGS=${OPTFLAGS} line in makefile.machine. Recompile the code, install it, and it works fine. According to the gcc man page, the -s removes “all symbol table and relocation information from the executable”. This is probably just a problem with the compiler on OSX Tiger.

make
sudo make install


I’m thinking of doing a project with C#, and I’d like to use an embeddable database, so I browsed the interweb and found this interesting project: http://www.firebirdsql.org/. I think this project is one reason Firefox had to change it’s name a second time.

The source distribution for Firebird 2.1.0 has a solution file for building on Windows, and a couple makefiles to build at the command line. The only makefile that might have worked, NETProvider/build/linux/makefile contains odd errors that do not allow me to compile the sources successfully. This is the first error:

make
makefile:40: *** multiple target patterns. Stop.


First, I’m not sure why it’s in there, but it contains a start and end div tag. I’m pretty sure that’s not allowed in a makefile, so you can just remove the start and end tag. Inside the makefile, there are several make rules that span multiple lines, and they are not “continued” properly. The simplest fix is to remove the newlines for each of the rules that span more than one line. For example:

COMMON_RESOURCES =
-resource:${RESOURCES}/isc_error_msg.resources...

Needs to be changed to:

COMMON_RESOURCES = -resource:${RESOURCES}/isc_error_msg.resources...

This has to be repeated for SCHEMA_RESOURCES, and the newlines need to be removed from PROVIDER_FLAGS, PROVIDER_TESTS_FLAGS, the compile line of the UnitTests.dll rule, and the copy command that spans two lines.

Next, move the all: rule down to the targets section. I’m not sure why it’s so high in the makefile.

If you run make at this point, you’ll receive an error:

error CS1566: Error reading resource file `../../source/FirebirdSql/FirebirdSql/Data/Schema/FbMetaData.xml'


The SCHEMA_RESOURCES variable has an extra FirebirdSql in the path to FbMetaData.xml. You need to remove it.


error CS2001: Source file `../../source/FirebirdSql/Data/UnitTest/*.cs' could not be found

This error exists because that path should point to UnitTests. Change the PROVIDER_TESTS_SOURCES variable.

Since i don’t have nunit.framework.dll, I had to compile it and install it. I’m sure you can figure it out with google. I loaded the nunit_VS2005.sln file into Monodevelop and only compiled the nunit.framework.dll assembly, and installed it using gacutil -i nunit.framework.dll.

Next, -reference:System.Transactions.dll needs to be added to the PROVIDER_TESTS_FLAGS variable. Also, -reference:System.Configuration.dll needs to be added to the same variable to fix the error CS0103: The name `ConfigurationManager' does not exist in the current context messages.

After running make again, I got error CS3002: Return type of `FirebirdSql....BuildConnectionStringBuilder()' is not CLS-compliant and two other similar messages. Because I’m not a C# expert, I just googled it, and placed [CLSCompliantAttribute(false)] above all the offending methods in the BaseTests.cs file. You’ll also have to do the same for the offending method in FbConnectionTest.cs. I’m not worried if it’s compliant or not, since I just want to use it with C#.

After all this, it finally complies! Unfortunately, when I try to install it using the gacutil, it refuses:
Failure adding assembly to the cache: Attempt to install an assembly without a strong name.

I added -keyfile:FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient.snk to the end of the FirebirdClient.dll compile command, and everything compiled and installed fine. I haven’t tested the library to tell if it works, but that’ll be another post.

Modified makefile

For a year or two, I’ve kept a water filter pitcher on my desk to filter the water from the water fountain.  At first, I did it because I didn’t like the way the water tasted.  I’m not sure when they put the signs up, but within the last year or so they put this sign above the water fountains:

I’m not sure what’s in the water, or whether the sign was put there because someone complained, but I don’t think I’m going to be drinking any unfiltered water at work.

Thursday I was trying to remove the volume and tone knobs on my electric guitar so I could adjust the height of the knobs (two were touching the finish) and one of the potentiometer shafts broke.

Replacing the potentiometer shouldn’t be too hard, since I’m pretty good at soldiering and they are relatively cheap. I just have to worry about getting an appropriate sized pot for the Epiphone, since most of the parts on it are metric rather than the US sizes that Gibson uses.

I graduated with a Masters in Computer Science from UMBC in December, so now is a good time to update this site and start doing something with it. I mainly used it as an email address, and occasionally posted pictures in the gallery but I rarely use it for those purposes anymore (because of gmail and flickr).

I found a theme I maybe sorta liked and modified it slightly. It was originally too colorful for me so I dumbed it down a little! My goal now is just to write about anything. My life, my cooking adventures, my awesome guitar skills. Maybe I’ll try to create some useful web applications, but I’d have to think of an idea first. Sooooon, I’ll make some more additions to this site.