Just installed some Michelin Mountain A/T 26 x 2.2 tires on the XC bike. They’re essentially the same tread pattern as the XCR A/T 26 x 2.0 tires that were on there before, but are wider. According to specs, these are supposedly 640g each, up from the 560g each for the XCR A/T‘s. Both models are folding, have the grey silica dual-compound treads, and 127 tpi casings. The XCR A/T‘s are great tires, but they are narrow. They are labeled as “2.0”, but set up more like “1.8”. Likewise, these Mountain A/T‘s are narrow for their labeled 2.2 size, measuring out at 50mm on Mavic XC 717 disc rims (should have measured the actual size of the XCR A/T‘s before I took them off). It’s an excellent tread pattern – it would be great to have them in “2.4”…
Monthly Archive for July, 2007
Page 2 of 3
Went to IHOP at Windward Mall for dinner on Friday. Ordered the Supreme Ham and 3 Cheese Omlette. It was enormous – 20cm x 10cm x 7cm, maybe a kilogram. Just how many eggs went into it I do not know. It was very good, but massive. By the time I got to the 3 pancakes it came with, I was starting to do the Kobayashi Takeru thing with my water. It took effort to finish everything.
After having killed 2 secondary drives in my Sony Vaio PCV-RX6##, I decided to add a fan to cool the hard drives. Sony thoughtfully made the HDD carriage small enough that the drives sit about 6mm apart, thereby preventing any convective airflow between them. The boot drive sits close enough to the intakes on the front of the cabinet that the airflow from the power supply drawing air in keeps it relatively cool, but the inner secondary drive gets cooking hot, as 2 failed WD Caviars will attest.
I built a fan plenum from some HDPE sheet and heat formed it to shape. A Taiwan 60mm fan with an inline power adaptor sucks air through it. The shape of the plenum draws air from the space between the drives. I had to offset the plenum toward the left (door side) of the cabinet to clear the IDE ribbon sockets on the MB, but other than that, there were few space restrictions other than the power trunk from the PS to the MB. Everything runs significantly cooler now. We’ll see how cool it stays when I put in an SATA drive later…
Now I can finish up the Showcase 2007 stuff without worry.
Maybe summer season sees the better shows. So far it hasn’t been too bad. This one here although not breaking any grounds in originality, I find quite entertaining. You’ve got the guy who’d had a childhood trauma thinking a mermaid tried to drown him in charge of the school swim team. So is it a sport anime? There’s a bunch of hot girls on the team, so is it a harem anime? Hard to really say. I can say I like the art, and the character designs kind of remind me of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, which is a good thing. And of course there’s fanservice. Fanservice can be a tricky thing, and in this case I think they got it right! So this show is a good example of a show doesn’t have to be very original to be pretty entertaining.
Moetan
And now we have an example of a show that is really cliched that is NOT very entertaining to me. I was interested in this as some of the Engrish examples from the print media I’ve seen from this was pretty classic. Having finally seen the 1st ep I have to say I’m dissapointed. It’s full of cliches and I can’t really take it. Sure there’s fanservice, of heavy lolita type. But they’re in high school. So if they look, sound, and act like gradeschoolers but say they’re highschoolers it’s alright? Are they trying to pull a USA translation edit? Yes, we all wear seifuku and carry school bookbags, but we’re in college, really! And to top it all off, the Engrish is NOT very “good”, or actually not horribly bad in the wonderful way I hoped.
Ah, my faith in anime is renewed. For a while I was getting mired in mass of ho hum anime, but lately there’s been enough good stuff that it has lifted me out of that funk. 
The latest discovery is “Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei”, I’d translate it as Farewell Doctor Despair, although more literaly it would be Goodbye Despair Teacher. Teacher would be more proper. This is another show that defies description into a genre. It is a school life thing I suppose. We have the ultimate pessimist teacher, and the ultimate optomist student. Of course they first meet outside of school, as he’s trying to commit suicide, or become taller. Nice art, very stylie, the skinny bowlegs will prob bother Dave, funny stuff.
Thursday dinner with the boys, decided to finally try out this ramen place in McCully Shopping center. The Asian skank and hooligan wannabe shopping center. The shopping center of profanity sounding eateries, what with “phuket”, “fook yuen”, “dong”. The shopping center of horrible parking. The shopping center of strange clientel going into the 7-11 (actually, I think that describes every 7-11). Set on the second floor at the very ewa end is Yotteko-ya. Continue reading ‘Yotteko-ya Kyoto Ramen’
Another weekend of back breaking stuff. Hunched over repairing caulk in the bathtub, swinging a pickaxe around for Stump Removal. The the final Insult/Injury was trying to roll a engine crane (with the engine hooked up and suspended) while said engine was still attached to the car.
I’ve been missing out on most of the bike rides for the past few weeks in an attempt to finish the artwork for HAA’s Showcase 2007. Over the weekend, I pulled two days of before-noon-to-after-midnight marathon sessions, so now the digital “cel color” finishing is done. Just have to do the backgrounds and some effects stuff. My sciatic already was hurting from changing the shocks on the FJ80, but sitting in front of the PC for days probably made it worse. I should really see Mitch, but his new office is geographically undesirable.
Hopefully I can finish up by this coming weekend and get the printing and framing done. Whistler MTB is coming up, so I have to turn in the artwork before then. I’m pretty happy with how the two pieces are coming out. I’ll have to do a little content editing on one so I don’t get my ass banned from the Academy. Don’t worry – there will be the “Showcase ’07 version” and the “uncensored version”.
What the f?!?! My brain is melting!
Okay, so the next cycle of anime is starting up and one of the first I decided to inflict upon myself was this, Potemayo. Uh, how can I describe it? I like the watercolor like BG art. As you can see the chara designs are cute. But how can I describe it? It’s… like Binchoutan on acid. The chibi things are cute yet evil but cute. The OP theme ranks with the finest of brain melting cuteness songs. There’s a pooping yellow piyoko orb. Can’t resist… brain mush… need more….
Oh, and then there’s the promo video for Moetan. Good to see that Engrish education is going strong, reenforced with grossly underage fanservice!
I’m going to catch up on past work I’ve done to the FX so I have documentation of what was done when. Between the time I started working on this post and now, the point has almost become moot, but it’s interesting to remember the history.
October 2006
Took delivery of the new FX and picked it up from Pasha Hawaii. Minor adventure. Needed a jump start, clutch was tricky, steering felt wierd, mother is loud. Drive carefully home, feel very self conscious as there are no plates. I stop at the satelite city hall in Hawaii Kai to take care of reg, then take it straight home. Continue reading ‘Past FX Work’