Standard Mischief

I was doing battle with my accumulitis and I came across my trashpile bike. A friend gave it to me, he had constructed it completely of bicycle road salvage and dumpster finds. I had only purchased new tubes, water bottle holder, and one of those blinky LED thingys. Unfortunately, while truing the rear wheel, I broke a spoke. I had a few spare spokes from a tacoed wheel I found but taking apart the rear wheel was a pain, so the project sat.

I was going to toss it, but decided to at least attempt the repair. I plunked down a whole $5 on a tool to take apart the rear cassette (we use to call them sprockets, but I guess this is a cassette of sprockets or somesuch). Those Bastards at Huffy (yea, I said Huffy, and BTW having ?Huffy? painted on the frame of your bike counts as an anti-theft device), seem to have designed their cassettes a bit differently such that they look exactly like, but are just a hair smaller (tighter) than the Shimano brand standard, probably to obtain themselves one-way interchangeability. I’m sure they’re not afraid of any negative consumer backlash, because Huffy has no brand loyalty whatsoever.

I could destroy the cassette, and put a new one on there, but at that point, I ought to get all new shifters and front chainrings and chain, and that looked too much like spending real money on a trashpile or something.

Fortunately, I stumbled upon this tool.

(click on the image to go to a webpage dedicated to the tool on jimlangley.net, a great bicycle resource site.)

I didn’t actually get the tool, but I got the idea from the tool for the replacement spoke. I just took one of those salvaged spokes from the taco wheel (which ended up being too long anyway) and made it into the ?s? shaped replacement spoke with some pliers. That let me replace the spoke and sorta-true the wheel without taking the damn thing apart.

So far, I’m sticking to at least a 20 minute daily workout (if not an hour), and the workout is a bit more intense than my usual urban walking jaunt, so the trashpile seems to be working out okay. While backpacking, I always get stuck in granny gear going up those damn hills, so this is probably a good exercise, seeing as their isn’t any tall hills around here, and I never haul the backpack out for exercise anyway. I just hope I don’t turn into one of those critical massholes.

Such a handy little tool, and it looks like it was rare to begin with, and now has become pure unobtanium. Looks like an opportunity for some blacksmith or other custom tool maker to clean up.

Just a few days ago I told you about how AOL accidentally released a bunch of user’s Internet search term records, which was exactly why I had suggested way back in January that everyone zero out their Google Cookie.

So there is a new plugin for Firefox called TrackMeNot, and it sounds like a good idea:

TrackMeNot runs in Firefox as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It hides users’ actual search trails in a cloud of ‘ghost’ queries, significantly increasing the difficulty of aggregating such data into accurate or identifying user profiles. TrackMeNot integrates into the Firefox ‘Tools’ menu and includes a variety of user-configurable options.

Of course I’ve been trying it out for a few days. Here’s a selection of my true search terms co-mingled with the TrackMeNot ones.

(More below the fold) (more…)

OK, so here you go:

(Click on the picture for higher-rez picture (167 KB), as a pop-up if you allow javascript)

So here’s what I did. I took a standard dollar bill that I legally possessed and did some stuff to it. I took a Sharpie? marker and XX-ed out “federal reserve”, and wrote in “NOT FEDERAL NO RESERVES”. Then I added “WORTH ABOUT 18?” and “IN 1968 MONEY” (that year being the year we went off the gold standard.)

Although I don’t intend to confuse anyone in to thinking this is a virgin dollar bill, I failed to remove or obfuscate ?The United States of America?, I hope that’s not a problem. I think I’ve really added something here, and I’m thinking of selling this piece on Ebay for say $1.50 or so.

I also want to let everyone know that I find Sharpie? markers useful for all kinds of stuff, including enhancing the playback quality of purchased prerecorded music.

I also want to make it clear that I, in no way, shape or form, want to cause any harm to the MD-34 bridge over the Potomac (that being the last piece of infrastructure I think I took a photo of.)

So what do you think? Is this art, or is this terrorism? Or do only the Attorney Jackasses get to decide that?

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you should probably read this over at SayUncle’s and this here in my own blog.

(Whew, three posts for this day! I’m gonna take the rest of the week off)

The other day I lamented about not daring to clean my sooper leet OmniKey/ULTRA keyboard, because I was afraid to mess with it while it’s working perfectly well.

Today I stumbled upon a cache of keyboards, and after spending an hour searching through at least 300 of ‘em I pulled out a stash of the beloved IBM Model M Keyboard, (and no, I’m not about to spill the beans on my souper seekret source, sorry).

(Click on the picture for higher-rez picture (144 KB), as a pop-up if you allow javascript)

I got 8 of them. Two are in dirty but perfect shape, and one just looks like it’s missing a few keycaps. The others are missing a few keys, but I assume that I can make a few complete ones out of the remaining parts. They are so dirty, that i was thinking of just hosing them off there in the yard, but I suppose I’ll disassemble them first and clean them up by hand, using some Simpleton Green or something. They were $3 each, cleaned up and refurbished they seem to ebay for about $15-45 each, but with all the labor the cleaning will take, I’m not likely to really strike it rich. More than likely I’ll just have myself a lifetime supply of clicky.

Since I’ve got them both right here, comparing the OmniKey/ULTRA and the Model M side by side, I detect a bit more “sprong” sound coming from the Model M, but that’s really not a problem. The clicky is the same or nearly so, the only likely problem will be that I am used to the pipe key over the backslash key that’s located under the enter key on my OmniKey.

Here are the backs of the keyboards. On each of ‘em you have the actual birthday date printed on the back. How cool is that? I have a range from 29APR87 to 24MAR95 (that last one being made by Lexmark under contract for IBM)

(Click on the picture for higher-rez picture (54 KB), as a pop-up if you allow javascript)

I left a $3 IBM PC (original IBM PC) keyboard back there. I think you need an expensive PIC based keyboard converter to use it on a AT type modern system. I must say, however, that that IBM PC keyboard, other than the nonstandard replacement black keyboard cord, was about in the best shape of the lot of them.

Below are some other links I ought to tie together while I have a chance.

Marco points out a link to Das Keyboard, and says:

This is the keyboard for serious touch-typists…or for arrogant supergeeks who enjoy looking down their noses at the office drones who still need a label on the key in order to know which one to peck. The main market for Das Keyboard are snobby turtleneck-and-goatee-wearing latte slurpers who feel the need for a physical representation of their status on the top of the geek food chain.

The crew at hak5.org in episode #3 teardown and paint a Model M keyboard to have it look like the above Das Keyboard. Some of the campy stuff the crew does is borderline annoying but I have to say that this (and other bits in each episode) is top drawer stuff. Good job Wess! (..and as long as there’s a few model M’s for the museums, pulling off a well planned mod of the Model M certainly isn’t a crime)

There’s always the obligatory Wikipedia link. The Model M keyboard.

http://www.clickykeyboards.com/ seems to have a few for sale, some parts and accessories, and a picture of the key mechanism patent.

Now all I need is a frigging 5.5 millimeter socket for disassembly.

Update: It looks like two of the keyboards that I have picked up seem to be for the IBM 3196 Terminal. It’s a bit deceiving because it has the old style fat AT connector. It’s the ones on the upper -left corner of the grass picture above. Although it looks like you just need to add a AT to PS/2 adapter to get it to work, research on the web tells me it’s not that easy. Ebay seems to have a number of them sitting ready for sale at $20 to (WTF?) $130 each, plus shipping. There hasn’t been any recent sales, however. I’ve added this addendum merely for Google’s sake. The part number for these so called “IBM 122-keyboards” is 1390572. Leave me a comment if you are at all interested. The clicky is great on theses too, and it looks like I could at least salvage the keycaps for the others, so I suppose it’s still money well spent.

Another Update 24-Sep-06:

This looks pretty neat. The EudoraPro Keyboard, “available in black and classic white in both USB and PS/2 for $70.” I don’t know about the reviewer, but I think $70 isn’t too unreasonable. I’d like to try that red dot pointer mouse thingy first before shelling out the cash though.

Related Tags: IBM, IBM Model M Keyboard, Model M, Keyboard, Omnikey, OmniKey/ULTRA, Hak5, Hak5.org, Das Keyboard

Since I gave such a ringing endorsement of TracFone yesterday;

It?s the ideal service for identity thieves, paranoid people, undocumented workers, teenagers without credit, people who have a little action going on the side, and people like me who hate talking on the phone but need to be accessible.

(sorry, sometimes I like to hear myself blog), I though I’d go over a few advantages and pitfalls.

Bad crap:

All of the tech support is by people on the third shift in India. Their English varies from pretty good to hard to understand. You’ll need tech support if you need your voicemail reset because you forgot your password, or if you want to move your minutes from your old TMDA phone to your new GMS phone. You can pretty much redeem airtime and handle your voicemail and other day by day stuff by yourself if you are at all technically inclined.

If you lose the phone, you are pretty much SOL. The tech support doesn’t really know how many minutes you have left, that’s handled by the firmware. I would suggest signing up via the web with fake info rather than no info. I imagine then you could get access to your phone number and have it transferred to your new phone, but you likely will lose a large stockpile of minutes.

TracFone will spam you. I highly suggest setting up an email just for the phone. Go get a yahoo account or something. Keep note of who’s name is on the phone’s account. I think Karl Marx of 308 Maple Way set up my account.

TracFone will instant message you. They either stopped because I called and wasted operator time bitching at them, or they figured out that any more than 3 instant messages is really annoying, and bad for business.

Good crap:

TracFone buys service from major cellphone networks. My old TMDA phone got the service from AT&T or Verizon, I forget. My GMS phone gets service from Cingular. I get the same coverage as anyone else with Cingular, and my voicemail works just like Cingular’s too.

The Email to SMS gateway is also Cingular. The email address for my phone is something like myphonenumber@mobile.mycingular.com. I’m pretty sure that TracFone never told me that, it was fairly easy to figure out.

Incoming SMS are free. Script kiddies and shell script authors can have fun with this. You can get the weather texted to you every day at 8 am, or have a message sent to you whenever your garage door opener opens, just as long as you are geeky enough to wire things up and write the shell scripts. Everything everyone figured out already back in 1986 when you got your first pager.

Outgoing text messages cost three tenths of a credit. That’s about 12 cents each, worst case. Best case is about three cents or so. If there’s ever an emergency like 9/11 and all the cellphones can’t make outgoing calls, frequently a text message can get through. Because your loved ones might be on another network, you need to get their email gateways now to use in an emergency.

Other stuff to keep in mind:

Upon activation, you get a number of units, and a date. Either run out of time or run out of credits and the phone is only good for 911 calls, Each card you redeem will add two months to the end date unless it’s a year card. They’ll also only let you get a few months ahead on the date department, unless you buy a year card, then it’s something like two years.

Update 18Aug06: From the website:

Add airtime before your due date and your remaining minutes and service days will carryover and be added to your phone, to a maximun of 120 days with any combination of regular airtime cards or 730 days with any combination of annual plan cards

If you run out the date clock, you lose your phone number. Fail to reactivate your phone again with in a few days and you lose all your credits too.

Redeeming a card consists of keying in a crapload of numbers 2 or three times, one after another. That once a year hassle card looks better and better.

You will want to check you email before redeeming a card. Sometimes you can get a bonus minutes that way. Redeem a year card, and use promotional code 54220 for an extra 200 credits/minutes. Code 54604 should work with any type card until the end of August, 2006.

Update 18Aug06: There’s always a code you can use to get bonus minutes when you redeem a card. If you don’t get the codes via email just google for them. The search terms tracfone 10000..99999 expires seem to work well for me.

Very occasionally you will get into a roam area. When this happens, local and long distance calls cost 2 credits a minute. This only happens to me up near Harper’s Ferry, WV up near the woods, but it might be an issue if you move to Wyoming.

You can buy a lot of minutes for the $30+tax/month that even the most basic cellphone plans cost. I’ve personally never talked for longer than about 200 minutes a month, but there’s plenty of people with the damn phone stuck to their ear out there, if that’’s the case, prepaid is probably not for you.