Tim – Page 47 – Mechanical Sympathy

CyberTitan Nationals Reflections

I just got back from the Canadian National cyber-security finals in Fredericton, NB. This was the first national championships in cybersec and it piggy backs on the the US/worldwide cyber-security contest called Cyberpatriot. Canada, and especially Ontario, is late to this party, but there is still time to catch up.

What got me thinking about cyber-security was an article WIRED did last year on the Russian attack on the Ukraine. Countries are now attacking each other using information technology infrastructure, yet we seem happily oblivious to this in Ontario. New Brunswick entered 10x more schools into this competition than Ontario did – New Brunswick has seven hundred and fifty thousand people in it. NB is also launching a number of provincial initiatives to place them at the front of a rapidly expanding and very under-served industry:
Homepage – CyberNB
Welcome – NBIF – FINB

1st time on a plane, 1st time out of the province for half
our team – they’ll never forget this trip.

I’m going to be presenting on our participation in the Canadian CyberTitan arm of the US based Cyberpatriot competition at the OTF PB4Technology conference in August, and again at ECOO in November. If you’re curious about how to get into CyberTitan, it runs as separate contests for middle schools and high schools. You do three 6 hour rounds during the school year, and depending on where you finish, you might find yourself on a fully funded trip to New Brunswick for the national finals in 2019. What you’re doing in the competition is searching for malware and exploits and removing them from the systems. It’s ICT technical work crossed with investigation.

You don’t need to be techie or have previous experience to get into the competition. It’s a small entry price ($200 last year) and you get 10x back in access to Cisco, Microsoft and other content. You also get a really nice set of team shirts, pins and challenge coins (Americans know how to do swag). Your students also get to brag about working off US government servers, because that’s where the contest takes place virtually.Cyber-sec is a field that is in high demand, it’s exciting, ever changing and the requirements and pathways to get to it are rapidly evolving and improving. The Canadian Forces are launching a cyber-command that will offer high school graduates equivalent college level training in cyber-ops.

From military to government to industry, this is a rapidly expanding and diversifying field of study that isn’t just about comp-sci degrees any more. Considering the fragility of our ICT infrastructure and the number of state and individual threats to it, I’m astonished that we haven’t worked towards integrating cyber-security into our curriculum sooner. The US Department of Homeland Security has a great resource on cyber-sec education called NICE: National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) | NIST

Hours in and hours to go – engagement was 100% through the whole thing even with technical failures and other frustrations.

Some links: Links to next year’s CyberTitan competition:
Register – CyberTitan – ICTC Canadian Youth Cyber Education Initiative

If you’re curious about who the Information and Communication Technology Council of Canada (ICTC) are, you can learn more about them here: https://www.ictc-ctic.ca/about/

From Public Safety Canada: Critical Infrastructure… Critical Infrastructure

A recent blog post on the competition and our lack of focus on vital, 21st Century infrastructure: Dusty World: Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure IgnoranceNot covering the skills and knowledge needed to maintain our critical infrastructure in Ontario Classrooms is a glaring oversight (IMO)…

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Why On Earth Would They Do That?

A conversation with one of my students at lunch today:

Lyndon demonstrating, ‘it’s hard’

“What are you watching?”
“Footage from today’s stage of the Dakar race.”
“What’s that?”
“The hardest race in the world.”
“Why is it so hard?”
“It’s thousands of kilometres of dangerous off road racing with cars, bikes & trucks with little sleep over weeks at a time. Many people who start it don’t finish. People die on it almost every year.”
This very smart grade 9 student was confused. Finally she asked, “Why would anyone do that?”
“Because it’s difficult,” I replied.
She ruminated on that a moment then asked, “why is it so dangerous?”
“Because people race it in cars, trucks, quads and bikes, all at the same time over deserts, mountains and jungles. If you’re on a smaller vehicle it becomes even more dangerous than it already is.”
“Why on earth would anyone do that on a motorcycle?!?”
“Because it’s even more difficult…”

Is attempting the dangerous and difficult with ample chance of failure a bad idea, or the point of it all? Risk nothing and you lose everything.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the race this year, it’s still all to play for. If you want the official feed you can find it on the Dakar YouTube channel.

If you’re into documentary film making using the latest in state of the art video and on the fly editing, Lyndon Posskitt’s Youtube Channel will take you through the race one gruelling stage at a time. If you’ve got some time, watch Lyndon’s Malle Moto – The Forgotten Dakar Story about last year’s race. It’ll set you up for this year’s harrowing adventure.

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Another Lousy Weather Long Weekend Daydream

With hail hitting the windows, here’s another load-up-the-van daydream, this time over the Easter long weekend…

It’s up in the teens Celsius in Cincinnati, and it’s close by, less than eight hours away. If I’d have gone to work on Thursday with the bike loaded up in the van, I could have been on my way by 3:30pm and feet up in a hotel on the Ohio River before midnight. The next morning I’d be exploring what looks like a plethora of interesting routes up and down the River on the Kentucky side, all in mid-teens temperatures.

Spoiled for choice:

Cincinnati is so close I could finish up with a short ride Monday morning and be on the road about noon, which would get me back up into the still frozen north by eight in the evening.

Another angle might be to aim just east of Columbus, Ohio. There are a large number of motorbike roads out that way on the edge of the Appalachians. Zanesville, Ohio would be a great launching point to dozens of rides, and it’s less than seven hours away. Due south of town is the Triple Nickel, along with a pile of other very twisty roads. Temperatures out in eastern Ohio are similar to those in Cinci.

Flirting with the West Virginia border means wandering onto the foot hills of the Appalachians. Every road in the area is twisty, even the ones leading to the riding roads. This is even closer than the Cinci plan, and twistier too.

The weather’s getting better everywhere else but here. With above zero temperatures still weeks away, I remain reduced to daydreaming about rides out of reach.

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Dirty Vocational Subjects Sullying the August Disciplines

… I can’t tell if Virginia is being faceitious or not. Probably not. Brains are paramount in academics, they may as well be in jars. I wonder what Matt Crawford would say about this article.

As one of those vocational teacher types the ‘august disciplines” have yoked themselves to, I’m once again thumped in the head with just how classist the education system is, but it was a bit of a shock to see WIRED advocating it. I wrote about how there really is no such thing as STEM, at least in Ontario classrooms, in September. Nice to see WIRED weighing in on the pedagogical smokescreen that is STEM, though I don’t think they disentangled it very effectively.

Mathematics (aka: ‘the great harmonies of the universe’) and science (“a byword for knowledge”) are pretty much all STEM are about when it comes to application in the classroom. There has been no real movement on technology and engineering in the high schools where we are. All STEM has done is paid for math manipulables and fund science. Technology and especially engineering are still an afterthought at best. If you’ve been fooled by the STEM smokescreen to think that there is any collaboration between those august disciplines and the filthy vocational teachers, you can relax, because there isn’t. If you want to be an engineer in university, take science and maths courses, because that’s all there is in most high schools.

If you’ve ever wondered why technology students (and their teachers) feel disenfranchised in their own schools, WIRED has made that clear in this month’s edition…

An op-ed piece on how the august disciplines that have defined education since antiquity have yoked themselves to vocational fields, along with a cover article about one of those vocational types who dropped out of engineering to make things. WIRED’s come here go away editorial stance is a bit hard to follow.

You’d expect academic types in The Atlantic to rip on skills based education in favour of their own university disciplines, but WIRED ripping on engineering and technology? I’m at a loss to understand the end game there.

STEM is indeed nonsense, and I don’t disagree with a lot of what Virginia says about how the STEM smokescreen has gone down, other than to say that STEM never really happened at all for those of us at the bottom end of the educational value spectrum.

… because there isn’t. It’s a just SM, as it’s always been: https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2019/09/there-is-no-stem.html

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Replacing Triumph Tiger fuel tank couplings

According to Haynes, the Tiger’s gas
lines will automatically close when you
unplug them, except when they don’t
and make a mess.

I’ve owned the Triumph Tiger for a season now and intend to do some maintenance on it while the snow if flying. Pretty much everything you need to get to is under the gas tank, which is a pain in the ass to remove. More so in my case because the lower fuel line doesn’t self seal like it’s supposed to.

Last summer I had the tank off for the first time and it poured gas everywhere. I ended up sticking a pencil in it to slow down the flow. A gas leak isn’t a big deal on a warm summer day, but it’s -20°C outside at the moment and heating the garage with a gas leak is problematic (I use a propane heater).

By the time I found that I couldn’t get the valve to seal there was a lot of gas about. I ended up washing the bike and floor clean with the water hose, but doing that in a cold snap is pretty miserable. It’s turned the driveway into a skating rink.

With the gas line back on I decided to have a look online and see what people say about early two thousand Triumph gas lines. It turns out they don’t say nice things about them. Rather than using more durable metal fittings for the gas line releases, Triumph saved some money and put on problematic plastic ones. They evidently did a recall but they only ever replaced the leaking ones so some bikes have half metal half plastic. In my case they’re all original plastic ones. I eventually came across this video which led me to a site with a detailed fix.

If you join tigertriple.com (free) you get a detailed how-to on fixing the under-engineered fuel fittings on a Triumph thanks to Evilbetty.

I bounced over to quickcouplings.net and ordered the needed bits:

They’ve got a good reputation so I should have the parts next week. Some people had issues with the smaller sized end so I got a couple of the larger ones. It was $18 extra but it means I’ll be able to do this once and be done. I’ve probably already lost ten bucks in gas on this. Next up will be draining the gas tank which I topped up for winter storage. With the tank empty I’ll be ready to go with the fitting change. I’ll post on that when it happens.

Front wheel up and ready for
some fork attention – eventually

I was removing the tank to start the fork oil change. That’s been a pain in the neck as well. I went down to Two Wheel on January 2nd only to discover that they were closed. I figured I was already half way to Guelph so went over to Royal Distributing to get the fork oil. With two bottles of the stuff in hand (not on sale) I headed over to the register to discover a forty minute line up to get out the door. It’s this kind of thing that prompts me to buy things online. I ended up walking out the door without the oil.

At my local Canadian Tire I had a nice chat with a former student now taking welding in college and he rainchecked me some quality synthetic fork oil that was on sale for much less than Royal Distributing was charging anyway. No line up, no shipping costs and the oil will be here in two days. Because of the gas tank fittings it all ended up being not time sensitive anyway, so a two day wait and some money saved is all good.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. The drained tank first and then install the upgraded fittings, then on to fork oil and a coolant flush (that also requires gas tank removal). Considering the majority of maintenance on the Tiger (even changing the air filter) requires gas tank removal, using dodgy plastic fittings (replaced in later models) wasn’t a great idea. Failing to get them all replaced in a recall was another dropped ball. I knew that running a thirteen year old European bike as my daily rider would be a challenge. If I can get these oversights sorted, hopefully I can get another good season out of it.

Washed clean and with a minus twenty windchill blowing in under the garage door. Not the best time of year to mess around with a gas leak, but I’ve found a fix.

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The 2017 MotoGP rider of the year?

With the 2017 MotoGP season behind us I’ve been thinking about who I’d vote for rider of the year. I tend to steer clear of the factory riders because when you have truckloads of people getting you around the track as quickly as humanly possible you should be at the sharp end of the championship. There are exceptions to that, like Marc Marquez in 2014, when a rider seems to be in a class of one, but this year that didn’t happen.

It was a scrappy season with many leaders in the championship. What first looked like a runaway by Yamaha’s new rider Maverick Viñales turned into a season long fight between Marquez on an ever improving Honda that only he seemed able to ride and Andrea Dovizioso on a Ducati he has stuck with and helped develop into a race winning weapon. At various points in the season Yamaha, Honda and Ducati all led the championship.

As exciting as all that was the rider of the year for me was Johann Zarco. In his first MotoGP race he leapt into the lead and although he didn’t last there very long it made a huge splash. While the top riders are making big bucks and have dozens of support people, Zarco, a rookie in a small, private team using last year’s bike and making a fraction of the money ended up being the only Yamaha rider fighting for wins by the end of the season. Marquez’ mum wasn’t begging anyone else to not do to her son what he does to everyone else.

That’s another reason why I like Zarco, he’s an odd duck. He doesn’t play the whining in the media game many of the top riders do, he just gets on with the job without the retinues, fancy sunglasses and stylists. He’s known for spending his time in the pits with his crew and sleeping in the truck. At each race he sorted out the bike and then got into the mix. While riders like Marquez (with a long history of crashing and general nonsense) whined about Zarco’s ‘aggressive riding style’, Zarco just shrugged and did the business, on a year old bike, for a fraction of the money, with a fraction of the support. That’s why he’s my rider of 2017. I look forward to him giving the big money riders some more grief in 2018. Hopefully they won’t whine about it quite so much, but I wouldn’t count on it.

I went looking for some TechTrois / Zarco kit, but it’s sadly lacking. There is a photo of Johann at full lean on the Tech3 bike – I’ve pulled the colours out of it so it could go on any coloured shirt as an outline. Between that and his logo, you’d have a nice bit of custom shirtery that celebrates the warrior monk of MotoGP.

Here’s the link to it on Zazzle. Below is the image and the graphic I pulled out of it if you want to DIY up something.

The photo simplified into a coloured graphic…

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Box Hill On a Sunny Sunday Morning

If you’re ever in the southern end of the London suburbs, Box Hill is a local meeting place for motorcyclists. On the sunny, August, Sunday morning I was there it was already busy at 9am and had thousands pass by over the day. If you get a chance to go see it you’ll get a good sense of just how diverse and how different UK motorcycling culture is from North American cruiser biased riding culture. It’s little wonder that there are multiple British riders in MotoGP, but North Americans are thin on the ground.

From 50cc classics to 2300cc modern monster bikes, Box Hill had it all on a Sunday morning. It’s a strange thing seeing British imagery substituted for the Stars and Stripes when you’re used to seeing Americana everywhere.

Inside Ryka’s, the restaurant/coffee shop in the parking lot at Box Hill, there is a lot of British motorcycling memorabilia.

My cousin Jeff (who has done hundreds of thousands of miles on two wheels) looking over his dream machine.

On the back of one old timer’s jacket – what you’d expect to find in the UK.

Lots of customization on hand. UK riders seem particularly drawn to farkling their bikes.

A local dealer on hand to show of the latest Hondas.

A hand stitched webby seat on a very customized machine.

Just in case you felt your Triumph wasn’t British enough.

There were more Indians than Harleys in the lot.

Well marked territory.

The lot was already over half full when we got there and just got busier and busier by the time we left just past 10am.

Lots of Triumph on display.

After weeks only glimpsing motorcycles on the road, this was a good fill up. I only wish I’d had the Tiger there – it would have been the only 955i Tiger in the lot.

Tim’s happy bike face.

They ride everything, but if there is a single type of bike that typifies the British biker, it’s still the sports bike, at least on Box Hill.

A small contingent of what would be the dominant form of riding in North America proudly showing of patches with such wisdom as ‘loud pipes save lives’.

An hour of wandering around was nice, but when you show up in shorts and get out of a car you’re only half there. I never missed the Tiger more than that morning at Box Hill.

What do you do after you’ve gone up to Box Hill, had breakfast at Ryka’s and chatted with other riders? You open it up going down the hill like this guy did.

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’98 Fireblade Winter Project: Wiring & Petcocks

With the carbs sorted I’m chasing down anything else that could have caused the fuel leak into the engine on the Fireblade. Yesterday I had the petcock out of the gas tank again and tested it over a catch basin. Fuel flows fine when it’s on, but it continues to drip when it’s supposed to be closed, so a new petcock is in order. Fortunately they seem to be a regularly replaced maintenance item because you can buy them on Amazon for not much money.

The neutral light wasn’t working, so I got some LED replacements – they’re super bright. The wiring to the neutral sensor was stripped down by the drive sprocket, so I cleaned it up, reattached it and taped it up. Voila, working neutral light again.

There were also a set of wires coming out of the drive sprocket housing that look like they go to a speed sensor which were resting on the exhaust pipe and had melted. These too got sorted and re-wrapped. I’m also going to fasten that loom so that it can’t touch the exhaust again.

There are still lots of little details to sort, but the Honda is coming together nicely. I’ll aim to have it safetied in the spring and then run it for a few months and see if having a second bike in the garage is worth hanging on to, or it might just be sold on to fund the next project. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to running my first true sport bike.

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2020 Moto Wishlist

Next season is a long, cold winter away, but I’m already daydreaming about what might be…

TomTom Rider 550 Moto-GPS: I’ve always made do with my phone, but Google Maps is kinda crap when it comes to navigating on a bike. Whenever you reach a way point it wants input, which isn’t easy when you’re flying through the air at 60mph with gloves on. The TomTom not only is glove friendly, but the software is moto-specific, so no pointless inputs. It even has a twisty-roads function! $370CAN

A New Roof: I’m partial to Roof Helmets. To date I’ve owned a first generation Desmo and a Boxxer. The Boxxer is a simple thing and I miss the plush, quieter and more substantial Desmo I had before. Roof has actually come out with a new Desmo, the RO32, and I’m partial to the new flat dark blue lid they’ve just done. Roofs are hard to find in North America, but Chromeburner has the new lid on for about $500CAN.

Racing Kit! A one piece racing suit for the other thing below. Now that I’m with sports bike, perhaps I could take it out to track days. To do that I’d need the proper racing kit. To get the right spec helmet, boots, gloves and racing suit, I’m at about $2200. Fortnine has the bits I’d need.

A long time ago I did a car performance driving school at Shannonville Race Track and really enjoyed it. Taking the Fireblade out on track would be a brilliant way to get to know this athletic machine. Riderschoice.ca has track days. I just need to get the bike sorted and have the kit necessary to do the business.

Starting at about $170.

Of course, if you’re doing track days and need to prep a bike for the track, you need to drain coolant and all sorts of other stuff. What you really need is a way to get it there. The new Transit Connect is super fuel efficient for a van and would carry my stuff and people when needed. About $37k.

Van’s got a tow hitch, so trailer, obviously… $1600 at Canadian tire for this one. Maybe trailers don’t matter, but I’d like to colour match this one to the van. With that and a fitted cover, it could take one or two bikes to wherever the snow ends in the winter and trackdays in the summer.

BIKE WISHLIST:

A next level off-roader. I’ve done a few rounds of off-road training and dig the experience. I’d like to race enduro and need something dependable and big enough to carry me. There was a Suzuki DR650 I looked at in the summer for a very reasonable $4000. It was five years old but basically brand new due to some back luck by its owner. I wish I could go back in time, get that bike, sort it out for enduro racing and then do it!

Track-day bike: I’ve already got this one underway with the Fireblade project. Sorting out the CBR900rr in the garage and then making it track-day ready would be brilliant. The real block to entry is the cost of racing kit and the ability to transport the bike to the track. I think I’m some finishing up and detail work away from putting the Honda back on the road in the spring.

Top Speed Machine: I’ve always been partial to the Suzuki Hayabusa, and it would let me do a bucket list thing (200mph on a motorcycle) with only a few modifications. To stretch the bucket list wish, I’d take it out to speed week in Bonneville and do 200mph on the salt. If I wanted a leg up on this, someone has a modified turbo Hayabusa in Windsor.

A 2-up Touring specialist: The Tiger will do 2-up work, but it isn’t ideal for it. A bike that’s a 2-up specialist would be the ideal tool for the job. Out of all the big cruiser/touring bikes out there, I think the Goldwing is the best. I’ve ridden a friend’s. It’s surprisingly athletic, even with 2 people on it. Touring bikes don’t come cheap – the ‘Wing is a $30k thing.

Anime Dream Machine: The Kawasaki Z1000 has long been a favourite and its Sugomi designed look is pure anime awesomeness. I’ve got to admit that the Fireblade project sitting in my garage scratches many of the same itches though. There’s an orange Z1000 in Quebec going for about $10k. I think the Fireblade might have scratched this itch…

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Last Light of the Sun

Tuesday, November 26: I got outside after work and noted that the weather didn’t hurt. Could this be a chance for a final ride before the icy grip of old man winter chokes the life out of my riding season?

On our way home I saw a determined rider on a Harley with scarves tied around his face and that tipped it. It took me about 10 minutes to thermal up (this opportunity was still only a 5°C one) and wheel the Tiger out from under its blanket.

The 16 year old Triumph started at the touch of the button, though the battery didn’t sound happy after sitting in freezing temperatures for a month. As the bike warmed up I made sure no skin was showing and off I went.

I just did a 30km run down to the Westmontrose Covered Bridge and then back to Elora, but the chance to fly again before the winter closes in was priceless. There is nothing better than an unexpected ride when you think you’re months away from being out in the wind again.

A brief stop at the church in Westmontrose for some thematically relevent early November sunset shots in the graveyard before riding back upstream. I pulled into the gas station in Elora and was surprised to see four other bikers filling up before the long cold resumes.

The Tiger is now parked up with a full tank of gas, ready to slumber once again under its blanket until the distant spring approaches…

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