Author Archives: Pat

1200 Conversion Pt. 2

Posted on by

It’s been raining all weekend here but that wasn’t going to stop me from getting started on the conversion so I put on the rain gear and headed over to a friend’s house since he’s got the tools and a lot more know-how than I do.

Crude was graceful enough to let me do all of the work, which is what I wanted because I need to learn how to do this stuff. Disassembly wasn’t all that bad, just tedious, and went without too many major hitches. A couple bolts didn’t want to come out so Crude had to cold chisel them, including the nut holding the front pulley on.

Speaking of the front pulley, we took it off to get at the neutral switch, which had failed a few months ago. It was definitely a good thing that we took a look at it because the pulley’s splines were almost totally stripped out. There was less than a millimeter left, which means that I would have been left stranded on the road some time soon.

So now I’ve got the heads and cylinders in the garage. The cylinders will be shipped out tomorrow, the heads will be dropped off at Evolution Bike Works on Tuesday for a valve job, and I’ve got a list of parts to order from the dealership. Reassembly starts when all of the parts are back, which should be about three weeks from now.

Our First Video Conference

Posted on by

We got MSN Messenger working with the webcams tonight and the results were actually pretty good. The video, at least on my side, was a few frames short of full motion, and the audio quality was top notch. I don’t think I’m going to need to buy the video conferencing package that Logitech sells. It was good to see and hear Reese and I think he enjoyed it too.

I’m looking forward to being able to do this a little more frequently now that we know it’s working.

Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy DVD

Posted on by

I had a little money left over from my bonuses so I picked up a few movies, including Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Enough has already been said about the movie to do another review, but the DVD has a pretty cute menuing system, modeled after the Guide. For kicks you should try out the Improbability Drive option. The extras are pretty good, a few deleted scenes, a few really deleted scenes, and a really amusing hangman game.

1200 Conversion Pt. 1

Posted on by

After paying off some bills I had enough bonus money left over to pay for the 1200 conversion for my Sportster. After doing a bunch of research I settled on the kit offered by Nallin Racing Head Service. Basically I’ve got to pull the motor apart and send the cylinders out to them. Once they get them they’ll bore and hone them, match a set of pistons to them, and ship everything back along with rings and gaskets. I wish I could go for something a little more wild, but this conversion will give me some added power and won’t decrease reliability like the bigher power conversions have the potential to do.

Digital Fortress

Posted on by

For various reasons I haven’t read Dan Brown’s other works but a friend loaned me a copy of Digital Fortress after the Superbowl party and I finally got around to reading it. It’s a pretty good read, with short chapters that move quickly and good, believable character and plot development throughout.

The story starts with the discovery of an unbreakable code and the NSA’s hunt to find it before all of their code cracking abilities are rendered useless. From there it goes on a whirlwind trip through the NSA’s headquarters, Japan, and Spain. The book kept me engaged throughout and left me guessing until the end.

A Captcha For b2evolution

Posted on by

I’ve been getting slammed by more and more comment spam over the last few days and have finally had enough. I’m implementing the captcha solution from village-idiot.org. I know it’s not perfect and that there is software out there to defeat them but it’ll stop me from having to delete literally hundreds of porn spam comments from my posts while still leaving them open for people to post .

The directions are pretty good but I did make a couple changes to authimage.php and comment_post.php to clean up a few warnings generated when the spammers try to hit the page directly.

Basically, you need to change two blocks of code in authimage.php, both up near the top of the file. First, wrap the if/elseif block that checks to see if you’re requesting a text or image with a test to see if $_GET[‘type’] is set. Then in checkAICode you’ll need to change the if/then block at the beginning to make sure that $_SESSION[‘AI-code’] is set. Here’s what the two blocks look like after being changed:

if (isset($_GET['type'])) {
  if ($_GET['type'] == "text") {
    createAICode("text");
    exit;
  }elseif ($_GET['type'] == "image") {
    createAICode("image");
    exit;
  }
}

and

if(!isset($_SESSION['AI-code'])) {
  $return = 0;
} else {
  if ($code == $_SESSION['AI-code']) {
    $return = 1;
  } else {
    $return = 0;
  }
}

And then in comment_post.php you’ll need to wrap the captcha checking routine with this code:

if (isset($_POST['code'])){
...
} else {
  errors_add( T_('Error: Please don\'t try to bypass the access code.') );
}

Furies of Calderon

Posted on by

Furies of Calderon is Jim Butcher‘s first book in a new fantasy series. It’s a good, quick read with great character building and a believable universe. The book and series are certainly a departure from the Dresden Files books, but he’s doing a really good job with this genre as well.

It’s set in a world where the people have bonded with spirits of the elements, called furies, that help them throughout their lives. All except Tavi, a young boy who is thrust into the center of a budding civil war and an invasion by one of the non-human races.

Video Chat With Webcams

Posted on by

I picked up a pair of Logitech QuickCam Communicate STX webcams today to set up on the computer here in Peoria and on my Windows box at home so that Reese and I will be able to do some video chats instead of just phone calls. The installation went well and the image quality, especially in poor lighting seems to be pretty good. They claim that the cameras work with MS Messenger so we should be OK. If not, Logitech’s got a pay service that does video conferencing, and while I’d rather not pay if I don’t have to, the rate’s reasonable and getting the video chat going is more important than spending a little money.

H.M.S. Surprise

Posted on by

I got to finish off H.M.S. Surprise on the flight out to Peoria today. It’s a little shorter than the previous volumes, but still a fantastic read. I’m still learning 19th century naval terms and was a little stumped on a few, but it didn’t detract from the book at all.

The book opens with Jack Aubrey’s prize money being taken away by political games which also expose Dr. Maturin’s spying. It then moves on to India and the main acion of the book. There’s not as much combat in this one as there were in the previous versions, but it does a good job of showing Capt. Aubrey growing in to his command and sets the stage for where the series is going to go.