Timothy King – Page 27 – Mechanical Sympathy

More Traditional Bike Gear for Season 2

My first year of bike gear had a certain style to it, it also happened to be the least expensive stuff I could lay hands on. After the no-name boots and pants I did a second round of gear buying as the summer began. The Alpinestar boots and Macna pants I got were next level, but this year I want to expand my kit to include a more traditional biker look; it’s time for the leather jacket and an alternate helmet.

Since everything else is technicolour, textile and sport-bikey, I’m going for more traditional looking gear this time around. When I’ve eventually got more than one bike I’m hoping that a range of gear lets throw a leg over anything and go.

This time round I’m looking for an open faced helmet for the short commute to work and a leather jacket. My current choices were found on Canada’s Motorcycle, Motorcycle Superstore and Leatherup.ca.

I’ve been looking for a classic motorcycle jacket that does the vertical stripe thing. That look is surprisingly hard to find. Short of going to a Pakistani garment manufacturer directly (along with the perils of ordering that way), they are surprisingly unavailable.

The flat black G-Max helmet is inexpensive and simple. The Shark Soviet looking helmet is cool and expensive. I’ve got gauntlet gloves and mesh gloves, but a pair of black leather gloves would be nice.

Since I started riding I’ve been finding that jeans are handy if I suddenly want to take the bike out. A leather jacket would be a causal but convenient way to quickly get out on two wheels. The full-on textile armoured jacket and pants still do the job for intentional longer rides, but for quick jaunts the leather and denim thing would mean just throwing a leg over a bike, not to mention not looking out of place on a more classic ride. Getting on a Bonneville with the textile race wear looks a bit out of place.

L Leatherup.ca‘s prices look reasonable too. If they get back to me about the weird sizing on that jacket, I’ll be ordering shortly.

The Money Trap

I know it’s hard to imagine, but there was a time when money did not dictate your self-value. This seems a foreign concept in the twenty-first Century, but prior to the neo-liberal ideas that we now take for granted, humans valued themselves in very different ways.

Bucky’s quote popped up the other day and got me thinking about self-value. Can you imagine a world where the purpose of people was to push the boundaries of their thinking instead of being forced into servitude to an economic system that reduces them to drudgery?

Rather than battle this kind of reductionist and inhuman economic thinking, education has been struggling to get on board with it (there is nothing worse than looking like you’re out of step with society – it’s never wrong). Pathways to employment is modern education’s reason for being, and it plays nicely into 1% thinking that earning money is all that matters, all that makes you worthwhile.

The rich want you to self-identify with your earning potential, then they own your means of happiness. When your self-worth is tied to your ability to earn a trivial income you are drip-fed your reason for being by people who (according to your own core belief that money is what makes you valuable) will happily starve you for their own ends.

Asking a 21st Century person to believe that their income does not dictate their self value is impossible. This kind of viral capitalism is every bit as limiting to human potential as medieval serfdom, dogmatic church states or god-kings.

People are fond of criticizing history for ideas that seem silly in retrospect. These are the very same people who argue for and justify our current woeful state of being. Our unsuccessful students aren’t high earners. Our successful students go to work for those oil companies. It’s a difficult thing to see past the myths, misinformation and indoctrination of our own culture, but I suspect you’ll never find happiness if you don’t, especially in the early twenty-first Century.

***

It’s the day before classes start again and I’m up at 6am after too many tedious work anxiety dreams (not of being in the classroom, but of being in school. Teaching doesn’t freak me out, the systemic nature of modern education does).

I had a good break, but now I’m back to seeing how far I can encourage free thinking before I crash into The System again. I’m a 20%er at heart. I always tend toward the more difficult road, I get more out of travelling on it but it’s tiring being a minority all the time.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been away from the classroom for a few days, found some perspective and wondered if I’m in the best place to learn. The irony isn’t lost on me.

Vehicle Branding

I sold the Yamaha XS1100 yesterday. With the Concours on life support I haven’t had the wrenching time to work on the Yam, so I put it up for sale to make room in an otherwise overcrowded garage full of old Japanese bikes that aren’t running.

The Mid-Night Edition Yamaha came to me in rough shape both physically and legally. With only a hand written note I had to figure out how to get continuity of ownership restored. It was a relatively simple process, but you need to be lucky (I was) and figure out how to get an affidavit worked out (I did).

Where I got lucky was that the Yamaha didn’t have a brand on it. Had it been a write off at any point previously (and it had a long and storied eleven page history – so it was entirely possible), I’d have been up a creek. That legal ownership near miss got me thinking about more complex ownership issues, especially when I saw this Versys pop up on Kijiji with a sad history:

A lost Versys

A bit of research has shown that this bike’s ‘irreparable Ontario title’ means it’ll never ride on the road again, it can only be used for parts. For a bike that appears to have relatively minor damage, this seems a shame. Others have had frustrating experiences with insurance companies writing off bikes rather than letting them buy them back and repair them (people get emotionally attached to bikes). It’s a matter of mathematics for the insurance company though. A bike may be repairable, but the cost of those repairs outweigh the value of the bike, so it’s deemed irreparable.

So what would you do with this otherwise lovely Versys? You would need to pick up another Versys frame with a working title (no damage, no history of crashes) and then graft the better parts from this Versys (not the front wheel) to that valid frame. You’d have a low mileage bike with relatively new parts, but it would cost you two bikes and a lot of time and talent to make it happen. I’ve never seen even an older Versys for sale for any less than twenty-five hundred bucks, so you’re looking at $5000 plus a lot of work to have a modern, road-worthy Versys 650.

If you had a high mileage, older Versys sitting in the garage, it might make sense, but things change over time (especially mounting brackets and other niggly bits), so you might find that your expensive donor parts don’t actually fit. No matter how you frame it (!), it’s more trouble than it’s worth.

If this were a limited edition or classic bike, it might make a good parts bike, but a relatively anonymous, recent Japanese bike? You can buy an immaculate, year older bike with half the kilometres and no crashes for less than five grand.

The moral of all this? I’ve found two. Firstly, you’re taking a big risk buying a bike without the ownership on hand. I got lucky with the Yamaha, but I could have as easily gone in and found that it was scraped and what I’d bought could never legally ride on the road again. Secondly, if you see a bike with anything other than a working title in Ontario, stay away unless you’re looking for a parts bike, in which case price it accordingly.

Links & Information on Motorcycle Branding in Ontario
(and generally in North America)

https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/020376/v1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_title_branding
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/vehicles/vehicle-branding-program.shtml
http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/vehicles/vehicle-branding-program-faq.shtml
http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforum/archive/index.php/t-141734.html?s=73a91a4860714e30a183b20b315ff3d5
“In Ontario there is no “rebuilt” for motorcycles. They are either clear title, or scrap. If it’s ever been ‘branded’, then it can never be licensed for the road. You need to have a clean, unbranded frame in order to license a motorcycle for on-road use.”

http://ontariorodders.activeboard.com/t52382265/salvage-title/
http://www.kijiji.ca/b-motorcycle-parts-accessories/gta-greater-toronto-area/frames-with-titles/k0c309l1700272
http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforum/archive/index.php/t-177188.html
http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/archives/archive/index.php/t-54857.html
http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/archives/archive/index.php/t-131215.html

Q9: Can I legally drive an “Irreparable” or “Salvage” vehicle on Ontario roads?

No. Vehicles branded as “Irreparable” can never be driven on Ontario roads. They can only be used for parts or scrap.

Vehicles branded as “Salvage” can’t be driven on the road, but they can be towed for the purposes of repair or receiving a Safety Standards Certificate. If you want to drive a “Salvage” vehicle, it must be upgraded to “Rebuilt.” This can only be done if it has passed a structural inspection and safety inspection to be registered for on-road use.

Q10: How can I change the brand on my vehicle from “Salvage” to “Rebuilt”?

To make sure your vehicle meets minimum safety standards, it must pass an inspection and be issued a Structural Inspection Certificate (SIC). You must submit the SIC and registration permit to a Ministry of Transportation licensing office. Once accepted and approved, the “Salvage” brand will be changed to “Rebuilt.”

Once the “Rebuilt” brand is placed on the vehicle registration file, you must obtain a Safety Standards Certificate from any Motor Vehicle Inspection Station so the vehicle can be declared “fit.” The vehicle may then be plated and legally operated (once it has been provided with a Drive Clean certificate, if required).

on the Verge of the Future

Sunday morning with a 3d
printer – I get a kick out of
making things work.

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to lay my hands on leading edge technology in order to figure it out so I can teach it. I’ve always been an early adopter, if no no else has it I’m interested – more so if everyone else is afraid of it. When most people didn’t know that TVs had alternate inputs I had a home computer with a printer. When everyone was crying about how fuel injection meant no one could customize their vehicles any more I was hacking the on-board computer and using it for diagnostics and more horsepower.

Nowadays it’s all about how digital tools are making micro/bespoke manufacturing more possible. Where once you needed an engineer, some machinists and a couple of hundred thousand dollars to build complex components, now you need twenty grand and a willingness to pick up some very easy to manage software. The entry into machining your own, custom components has become much easier.

Not only are digital tools handing back basic production to individuals, they are also allowing companies to explore levels of precision in manufacturing that seem almost science fictional:

We’ve had 3d printers in the classroom now for a couple of years, and we find them invaluable for prototyping and even developing 3d thinking (not something students take to naturally).

I suspect the wedding-cake style melting-plastic-through-an-extruder 3d printer is an evolutionary dead end (there is only so much you can do to speed up a printing process that works around cooling plastic). Fortunately, the next step has already happened:

… I’d love to get my hands on one of those.

Another building tool I’d like to try is a digital laser cutter. Like other manufacturing tools, digital laser cutters have been tumbling in price. Coming out this year is a desktop laser cutter called the Glowforge that’ll introduce laser cutting, etching and fabrication to many more people. At only about $4000, this undercuts previous industrial units by tens of thousands of dollars.

With this kind of technology available to many more people, I get the sense that the garage of the future will allow us to build things that only get churned out by factories at the moment. When I’m at the point that I can custom manufacture and laser etch bespoke motorcycle hard parts and print my own fairings, I’ll feel like my garage can keep up with my imagination.

A good guess might be the garage scene from Big Hero 6:

We’re on the verge of escaping from the mass-production Twentieth Century. One day you’ll be telling your grand kids that we had to buy shoes that weren’t custom printed specifically for your feet, and they won’t believe you.

Recent advances in processing power and
optics mean VR is finally (after decades of
promise) arriving at a consumer level.

Last week I discovered that I’m going to be able to set up an HTC Vive in the lab. We’re doing it so we can better craft the 3d models we’re building in Unity and Blender, but immersive simulation could offer a lot of opportunities in the classroom beyond 3d modelling. The emotional impact on a student walking across Vimy Ridge the day after, or walking through Cambodia’s killing fields, or standing on the Moon and looking back at the Earth, get me revved up about making VR work in the classroom.

From a motorcycling perspective, an immersive simulation of the MotoGP circuit on Valentino’s bike would offer fans a new level of appreciation for the sport. Preparing for an overseas ride by tasting the trip virtually first offer opportunities for safety preparation that simply don’t exist right now, especially if you’re trying to wrap you head around new signs and riding on the wrong side of the road.

We’re on the verge of the future, and I get another taste next week, I can’t wait!

3D printing

motorcycle 3d printing: http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/08/03/motorcycle-3d-printing-picking-speed/

https://3dprint.com/65937/3d-printed-motorcycle/

http://www.stratasys.com/resources/case-studies/automotive/klock-werks

https://all3dp.com/3d-printed-motorcycles-know/

https://grabcad.com/library/128705

Virtual Reality

https://youtu.be/-Sd3wXNjLtk

http://motorbikewriter.com/victory-motorcycle-virtual-reality/

http://www.lifebuzz.com/virtual-motorcycle/

http://mashable.com/2015/03/13/oculus-victory-motorcycles-sturgis/

http://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/skully-opens-pre-orders-for-high-tech-helmet/

Head Space

For the first time in my ten years of teaching I didn’t teach summer school or take an additional qualification this summer. I did build a deck that you can land a helicopter on, restore a motorbike I found in a field and travelled across most of Ontario, but I’ve been far away from thinking about teaching.

What have I learned from my summer of George? I’d be a very good retired person. I’m seldom idle, I love learning new things and resolving engineering challenges. I get a great deal of satisfaction in taking something broken and making it work. Mechanical sympathy has always led me into technology, I tend toward an empathetic connection with machines. I also enjoy working with my head and hands in concert (not just one or the other). I spent the summer practising the engineering process, perhaps I can take a more active modelling role in the lab in order to keep that experience alive (for myself as well as for my students).

The writing didn’t slow down, it just changed focus. Putting experience into words allows me to meditate on that experience and clarify my thinking about it. It’s nice to know that whatever I’m doing, writing is a natural response to it.

I’m now in the process of re-engaging with teaching. Empathy tends to lead me in this as well, though I find the irrationality and randomness of dealing with people exhausting and frustrating in comparison to the simple honesty of machines. The education system is all about people, from the social complexities of dealing with fellow teachers and administration to the hugely varied psychology of students, it’s a complex system that is more about fecundity than resolution.

After a summer of making things work I’m most anxious about returning to a process that is often irrational, opaque and unsolvable.

Once more into the breach dear friends…

The Digital Narcissist

How We Build Digital Narcissists

Narcissus fell in love with his own image while staring into the water. That kind of self-infatuation is difficult to come by in our world with its relentless competition and big problems; you can’t help but feel humble before what faces us.

Fortunately, many first world children don’t have to face that reality. In the past decade they have found a new cocoon to wrap themselves in that isolates them from the harsh truths that surround them.

In that digital cocoon they are free to see only what they want to see. The machines that serve them slavishly see to their every whim no matter how asinine, base or self-serving it may be.

At the best of times it’s tricky to develop a sense of humility and perspective in children, they tend toward an egotistic world view. The technology cocoon amplifies this and insulates them from adults (both parents and teachers) in a way unseen before. In a whirl of habituated media consumption, children today are always able to find a ‘fact’ on the internet that backs up their myopic world view. They are immediately and constantly able to communicate with peers who are more than happy to reinforce their prejudices. In spite of its promise, social media is very socially insular. Rather than moving us into an era of interaction and awareness on a global scale, for far too many people the internet is offering something more akin to mental masturbation.

The other week we went to the backwoods of Ontario. With limited internet and basic cable, we weren’t in the self-directed, media rich world we usually are. I stumbled upon a fascinating documentary that compared militant Hindu girls’ camps and the Miss India pageant. We ended up watching (and learning) something that we wouldn’t have in our self-directed media paradise.

Remember when TV was only a few channels and you ended up watching what was on? It was in this way that I discovered The Twilight Zone, Woody Allen, early Japanese Anime and a variety of media that I would never have picked up in our insular modern media world where we define ourselves by our niches. I’m not saying things were better that way, but limited media did tend to push us out of our comfort zones and try things we otherwise wouldn’t. We also tended to watch something only once or twice. Limited media forces you beyond your areas of interest and you tend to focus better on it because access to it is special.

I used to beg for rides or ride
the bike for miles to get this!

When Bits & Bytes on TVO wasn’t enough to satisfy my new computer fixation in the early ’80s I had to search far and wide for media that would cover this new medium. When I found COMPUTE! magazine in a small shop in a strip mall five miles from home I used to beg for a ride over there or jump on the bicycle and ride forever to go get the latest copy. That media was hard to get and greatly valued. Every page of that magazine was a glass of water in the Sahara. My urge to find it had to be great or I wouldn’t have bothered. Limited media makes us value the information we find and lends a sense of accomplishment to our learning. All that is lost today.

In 2013 media practically scratches at the door of your mind to be let in. You have to make an effort to stop it rather than find it. Ironically, this inflection in media delivery does a lot to take away our ability to self direct our interests. It’s hard to enjoy a glass of water in a flood. What’s worse is that instead of amplifying our ability to learn, modern media delivery has cordoned people off into their own habitual interests.

Instead of focusing on research and access we need to consider how to manage distraction and information overflow. Only once this is in hand can we start to direct ourselves in this storm. The digital narcissist is the logical result of our sudden access to any information that we want, and it fits hand in glove with the consumerist drive that dictates digital development. It behooves the companies that are reducing users to consumers to create a false sense of how powerful we are; it sells.

Generation Xbox

In a media vacuum you have time with your thoughts. In that silence you have a chance to examine yourself critically, figure out a direction you want to go. We expect meta-cognition in students but I’m finding that they are increasingly out of touch with a balanced view of their self worth because they are buried under a media avalanche that is not simply a result of technology advancement, there is intent in the deluge.

The navel gazing digital narcissist can’t examine themselves because they exist entirely as a figment of their own imaginations. Meta-cognition and the sense of perspective it demands is impossible for them in this media storm; a quiet mind is an unknown experience.

The digital native is trapped in an ego feedback loop with a steady stream of media that caters to their every urge, and because the longer they are engaged with media the more they are worth, the media itself is more interested in keeping them plugged in that it is in advancing their thinking.

Wrapped in this digital cocoon, is it any wonder that the poor digital native can’t help but gaze at the screen like Narcissus and his pond?

Mechanical Sympathy

I’ve always had an over abundance of mechanical sympathy. That sympathy often spills over into full on empathy for machines. While I derive a great deal of joy from interacting with machines, the satisfaction I get out of fixing them is amplified by this natural inclination.

My first bike was a mechanically bullet proof 2007 Kawasaki Ninja 650r. It had been dropped and scuffed, but it didn’t need open heart surgery. I was happy to clean it up and send it on its way, and while I got attached to it, it never felt like a two way relationship.

The Concours I have now is a whole new level of commitment. Not only did I find it sitting in a field, buried in grass, but it took me a winter of rebuilding to get it on the road again. In my first season riding it I’ve put on more miles than I ever did on the Ninja (it’s a much more comfortable long distance tool).

Call me nostalgic (or perverse), but getting the four carburetors on the Concours running smoothly was very satisfying. Even though I teach computer tech, I still find the clockwork nature of mechanical parts to have a grace that digital technology is lacking. Listening to the Connie fire up at the touch of the starter on a cold morning and clear its throat is much more satisfying than listening to the clinical hum of a fuel injector making everything perfect.

I was out on the Concours again today – if the weather’s dry I’m out on it. I’m always astonished at how responsive such a heavy machine can feel. It fits me well, needed me to save it, and then responded to that saving with thousands of miles of riding. There may come a time when the Connie is more trouble than it’s worth, but at the moment it’s what I was looking for all along.

It’s getting kind of crowded in there…

The Yamaha XS1100 sitting in the back of the garage will be my first go at a restoration, but as an owned bike it isn’t really what I’m looking for. It’ll be my first go at a bike purchased for restoration rather than riding. I’m curious to see how that process goes.

In the meantime, and completely off topic, here is some nice motorbike art I saw at Blue Mountain last weekend:

Mostly Ironhead 3d Harley Davidson Models

I was back at Mostly Ironheads this afternoon to drop off some paperwork and took a few 3d models. I didn’t have a chance to set pieces up in the middle of some open space, so these are a bit spotty, but they give an idea of what kind of detail you could get with a more careful modelling.

Newer Twin Model by tking on Sketchfab

Bike Model by tking on Sketchfab

1934 Flat Head twin Model by tking on Sketchfab

Shop Room Model by tking on Sketchfab

Mostly Ironheads Website

Mostly Ironheads on Facebook

Master/Journeyman/Apprentice

I’m once again in the additional qualification classroom in order to gain another teachable. This one was a bit tricky. I’d been working in information technology since I graduated with an honours BA in English in the mid ’90s. When I went into teaching, I looked into getting my technical qualifications (I’d spent a fair amount of money on getting IT qualified and wanted to keep a finger in the pie, so to speak). It didn’t happen. The Byzantine rules around what I needed and how I qualified were taking so long to get through, it was easier to just plug in my degree (to a very degree friendly teacher qualification system) and start there.

I did computer clubs and delved into #edtech relentlessly, but didn’t get my computer engineering qualification until now because I needed it for a headship, and they’d recently made changes that cleared up some of the labyrinthine rules around getting the qualification.

So here I am, a qualified IT technician in a computer engineering class. If we’re doing networking, or computer repair, I’m aces, but soldering? Circuit boards? Not so much. The funny thing is we have electrical engineers that don’t know what a registry is or how to reset an IP address, but they are brilliant on a circuit board. I’m starting to realize that computer engineering is another one of those subjects that collects expertise from various disciplines and files it all under the same heading. I’m also beginning to see why some comp-eng teachers’ courses look so different from other comp-eng teachers’ courses.

Other than cutting networking cables, running them and installing hardware, I’m not really a nuts and bolts of electronics kind of guy, but after taking this AQ, I will be. When I was a kid I got into cars and stereos and did some wiring then, it’s nice to get hands on with components again. My experience has all be around making it (IT) work for business, after taking this AQ, I get the sense that I’m going to end up delving more deeply into maker culture, something I’ve wanted to do for too long.

Getting my head back into wiring diagrams felt impossible in the first few days. I’m finding the tools available, especially Arduino and Fritzing to be invaluable in bridging gaps in knowledge. I know I won’t be a Jedi knight at circuitry by the end of the course, but the 1-2-3 system our instructor has been using has recognized the varieties of skills in the room and allowed people to focus on what they want to improve in, and improve I have.

I’m looking forward to hitting my tech-class in the fall and getting my hands dirty. In the meantime, I just started Shop Class As Soulcraft, suggested by our instructor on the last day of class. Some mechanic’s philosophy will help fill in the gap I’m feeling between my academic background, and my urge to work with my hands again.

The Magic of Motorcycles

My son is a pretty shy guy, but he’s an instant celebrity on the bike. When we ride home kids who might not otherwise acknowledge him want a wave. The bike seems to produce fame on demand!

On my way in this morning on the Concours a little girl went running down the sidewalk next to me waving and giggling insanely. That kind of thing doesn’t happen when I’m driving the mini-van. Kids’ eyes are drawn to motorbikes like they are to anything awesome.

Two hundred metres further down the road another kid riding his BMX bike gave me a serious nod and his gaze lingered. Perhaps that’s the magic of motorcycles, they are the adult evolution of what we loved to do as children. Kids can see themselves on a motorcycle because it’s the technological enhancement of a device they are already familiar and in love with. Adults in cages have no analog for children, but motorcycles are immediately familiar.

Unlike the desperately-seeking-cool types on cruisers, I’m always happy to grin back and wave.

You have to wonder how hard we work on kids to scare them out of getting around on two wheels as adults when it’s such an intrinsic love for us when we’re children. For the lucky few who find themselves back on two wheels as adults the magic can keep happening for the rest of your life.