With the ongoing frustrations with trying to run a 22 year old bike as my daily rider I’m thinking of rearranging things so that I have a more functional motorbike stable. At the moment I’ve got a KLX250 that I don’t throw a leg over very much and isn’t a popular choice with my pillion. I’ve also got the big old Yamaha project bike that isn’t getting any attention because I’m spending all my garage time working on the Concours. Rejigging things to have a more functional stable is on my mind. I miss having I.T. on at least one bike – having an onboard computer means the bike will self regulate and run more consistently. Being a computer teacher means I’m not really scared of digital tech either, so I’d welcome it back. The process might look like this: sell the KLX, get the XS1100 operational and sell it too, and sell the little Yamaha my son has never ridden. In a perfect world I’d bring in about $4000 with those bikes. What I’d be looking for is a second bike that could do basic commuting duties including two-up, would run all the time, and could ride a wider range of roads than the Concours is comfortable on. As a road tool the Concours takes some beating (when it works). It’ll tour two up comfortably with lots of room for luggage, cover highway miles with ease and makes for a surprisingly agile back road weapon when riding alone. What it needs is a break from the demands of being an always on motorcycle (it’s twenty-two years old!). That always on motorcycle should be light with a fuel injected/modern engine. Of course the Ninja was those things, though it was a very road focused machine as well. Kawasaki makes the Versys, based on the same ER6 chassis as the Ninja but with an enduro riding position. With a few tweaks that bike could become the light-weight all-rounder I’m looking for. At only 180kg, the Versys 650 is a mighty light, very dependable bike. Where would I find a Versys? They’re about. There is a well cared for ’07, albeit with pretty high kilometres, for under three thousand over in Kitchener.Starting there I could build out an adventure Versys. There are a lot of people doing something similar…
We are bouncing over some astonishingly bad interstate in Northern Michigan on our way to Flint. Retread carcasses litter the side of the road, the only thing missing are clouds of flies above the rubber corpses.
The Super10, Concours and three riders ready for an adventure.
We crossed the border (my first border crossing on a bike!) in Sarnia at lunch time on a Wednesday. It amounted to less than five minutes of waiting in line and thirty seconds with the US border guard, who looked like he was working out when he got off shift so he could join us. “So, where are you guys headed?” “To Indianapolis for the MotoGP!” After running our passports he asks, “you guys excited?”
“It’s Indy!” “Have a great time guys.” … and then we were off onto the broken interstates of Michigan. I’ll never complain about Ontario roads again.
Just when we think the roads can’t get worse, the interstate drops down to one lane each way because they are beginning to pull it apart and resurface. It doesn’t matter though, we were in America, heading to Indy! My ten year old son, Max, is on the back of our loaded ’94 Kawasaki Concours which is chewing up the miles with ease. That bike is the best eight hundred bucks I’ve ever spent. We’re making the trip with my friend and colleague Jeff, who is a motorcycle-Jedi. He’s been riding for decades, has owned dozens of bikes, and has ridden all over North America. If you’re going on your first long trip, he’s the guy you want with you. We pull in for our first gas stop just outside of Flint and fill up for fourteen bucks (93¢ Canadian for 93 octane super unleaded). The Connie is getting 48 miles per gallon. Back on the road we turn south on 23 to miss Detroit and head toward Ann Arbor. Twenty-three looked like a county road on the map, but in real life it’s a multi-lane, limited access highway. We are making epic time as we ride past a mountain of garbage covered in sea gulls and military convoys of Humvees. We get to Ann Arbor, where we’d originally planned to stop for the day, at 2pm.
Concordia U’s beautiful trees
Sitting on the beautiful lawn at Concordia University we look further down the map, reconsidering where we might stop. It only takes a us a few minutes to get around Ann Arbor and onto 12, which will take as all the way across southern Michigan to Interstate 69.
Best Philly steak ever!
We stop for a late lunch and stumble across Smoke BBQ and the best Philly steak sandwich I’ve ever had. Topped up and ready to roll, we head out on 12 and are treated to a crop duster doing hammerhead turns and giving us a wave as he flies past us next to the road. We’re in the mid-west now! Out of population we find ourselves on winding roads through the Irish Hills. We thought the ride to Indy would be flat and straight but these are some nice riding roads. We emerge from the woods to an astonishing sight, the Michigan International Speedway is right on the side of the road! A security guard tells us you can sign in at the main office and they’ll let you have a look around. This place is enormous, a real cathedral of speed deep in the Irish Hills. We spend half an hour wandering around a tiny corner of the massive complex. That we stumbled across it and were happily invited in to have a look around has us all grinning like fools. It’s a good sign of things to come.
It’s like that dream you have of being at
work and suddenly realizing you’re naked
Back on the road time is ticking past 6pm and Max is getting tired on the back. We’ve been on the road since 8am, but we’ve pushed way further down the map than we intended to. We finally reach Coldwater on I69 and stop at a Comfort Inn with a warm pool and soft beds. Every biker we see is riding around in shorts, flip flops and no helmet, and it’s giving us culture shock. We go to the end of the street to get take out and try naked biking, but it gives us both the willies. Riding around without a helmet just seems crazy.
DAY 2
After a good breakfast at the hotel we’re bombing south on Interstate 69 and quickly find the Indiana border. Before Fort Wayne we strike off west into the country on Six and quickly discover that unless a town is on a truck route it has dried up and blown away. The scale of the fields of corn beggar belief and stretch to the horizon, but there are no people. Roads are closed and we find ourselves on gravel stretches looking for ways south. The Concours has no trouble with this, but Jeff’s Super Ténéré looks the part as he takes off down narrow dirt roads. We try stopping in several towns but they are all derelict; beautiful nineteenth century buildings with boards on the windows and no-one in sight. Corporate farms run remotely from headquarters thousands of miles away don’t need local people.
We finally stagger into North Manchester mid-afternoon. This is a university town and it’s still vibrant. A local directs us to Main View restaurant and we sit down for another excellent, non-conglomerate lunch. Zigzagging south and west we soon find ourselves on bigger roads feeding in to Indianapolis. We get into town at the beginning of rush hour, but this isn’t Toronto. Everything is moving even though the road is still patchy from recent rain (it missed us), and there is construction everywhere. Other than having to cut into a line to get on the ring road (made easy by Jeff dicing traffic like a pro), we have an easy time navigating and we’re feet up at the Hampton Inn by 4:30pm. A short walk away is Chef Mike’s Charcoal Grill which has the best grilled fish and steak imaginable, and a healthy list of craft beers; America isn’t all Bud Light and hamburgers. It was so good we went back again the next night.
DAY 3
It’s been pretty good so far, but it’s about to get spectacular. We’re off to the Indy Speedway (15 minutes away) early the next morning. We pull into line and are told to ride around to the back and park in lot 10. After working our way around the city-sized Indy complex we start looking for parking and keep getting waved through gates by security. We go down a ramp under ground and surface only to be directed onto the back straight of the Indy oval.
Ever ridden on the Indy oval on your bike? I have!
Jeff and I are both thinking we’ve been accidentally put in with the VIPs and are expecting to be caught at any second and kicked out, but I make the most of it and give it the beans. Nothing sounds better than the sound of your own engine howling off the retaining wall of a straight at Indianapolis! We’re directed to park and stand there in awe. A guy gives us a kick stand puck saying he doesn’t want us punching holes in his race track. Damn skippy. We walk over to another guy scanning tickets, expecting to get kicked out. He scans our general admission tickets (twenty bucks each – kids under 12 are free) and tells us to have a great time. Did that just happen? Yes, yes it did! We walk through the infield, which is a golf course, and discover a circus of motorcycle going on inside. The Moto3 bikes haven’t even started practice yet but all the manufacturers have set up pavilions and there is an Indy kids play area that has Max hopping up and down. Our general admission, twenty buck tickets give us access to the entire complex, from the front straight stands to hundreds of viewing areas around the infield. The only place we couldn’t go was the paddock area. We wander around in a daze. One moment we’re watching Moto3s buzz down the straight, amazed that their little 250cc single cylinders can take them over 160 mph before they hit the big corner at the end. The big, 1000cc MotoGP bikes come out next. Where the Moto3 bikes sound like (big) angry bees, the MotoGP bikes sound like 140 decibel tearing silk (the Hondas) or the most frantic, staccato v-twin imaginable (the Ducatis). Lastly the Moto2 bikes come out, their 650cc twins sound fantastic to my ringing ears with a turbine like howl. Lunch is an Indy dog and some fries, sitting in the near-empty stands in the shade. The place isn’t empty, there are people everywhere, but Indy is so huge that it swallows the crowds with ease. We spend the afternoon watching the bikes bend through the esses, standing on the grassy knoll on the edge of the golf course.
You can get within fifty feet of the bikes pretty much anywhere on the track and unobstructed views are easy to come by; photography is easy at Indy. We head back out to the bikes at about 3:30pm as the practice sessions are winding down. We’ve been here since 8:30am and we’re sun-baked, overwhelmed and ready for a rest. On the back straight are hundreds and hundreds of bikes, as far as the eye can see. We slowly motor past row after row of every imaginable motorcycle before ducking out through the underpass. We’re back at the hotel in minutes. Jeff and I end up passing out for an hour before having another great meal at Chef Mike’s. We’re not done yet with Indy motorcycle culture though.
Motorcycles on Meridian shows the breadth of motorcycle
culture in America – it isn’t all Harleys and leather.
Motorcycles on Meridian is a satellite event to MotoGP that brings in thousands of riders. We saddled up and rode into town about 8pm and were stunned to see so many bikes. From guys who look like pilots riding on Goldwings to lost souls who look like they are just back from rehab, to lean sportsbike riders and everything in between, I was once again reminded that American motorcycling isn’t mono-cultural. Sure, the Motor Company pirate was well represented, but so was every other kind of motorcyclist. We did a slow pass through the middle of the chaos and then went for a walk. It was hot, humid and all the hotter for all the revving and showboating. I’ve never cottoned on to the look-at-me loud pipes and chrome thing that many bikers get excited about, and some of the stretched drag-strip like bikes looked virtually unrideable, but it takes all kinds. After a brief tour through the circus of LED lit v-twins and custom madness we had a cold drink and slipped out south to the highway. Tomorrow was the beginning of the long ride home.
DAY 4
The ride down had highlighted the agony that is the Concours’ stock seat. We stopped at Cycle Gear on the way out of town the next morning for a solution. They had gel seat pads on sale for forty bucks so I gave one a whirl. Max got himself a nice helmet with a tinted screen for sunny, highway riding. The service was great (as it generally was throughout our trip) and we practically tripped over the location on our way out of Indianapolis. The prices were also astonishing, especially when you aren’t paying 13% tax on everything, basically half what we would have paid for the same thing in Canada with less tax. Helmets seem to be especially cheap in a place where they aren’t a requirement. We made quick work of I69 north to Fort Wayne and were on the 24 heading toward Ohio before mid-day. Jeff wanted to try and make it home that day so we parted ways in Toledo. He took the I75 north to Detroit and was home by 7pm. Max and I headed north on 23 to Ann Arbor thinking to spend the night there before finishing on Sunday, but Ann Arbor was booked solid with a pipe-fitters convention (?) and the rooms left were over three hundred bucks a night. We pushed on and then got lost in the suburbs of Detroit (which are still surprisingly well kept) before finally stumbling into the Wyndham Garden hotel by the airport.
Like so much else in Detroit, the Wyndam Garden has the look of something that must have been super chic in sixties (it has an indoor forest!). It’s the kind of place James Bond might have stayed when he was Sean Connery, but now it’s run down and tired. People who went to Rome after the Empire fell must have seen something similar. I left Max in the room and ducked out for take out. Every store I went to had bullet proof glass and turnstiles between the customer and the clerk.
Day 5
The next morning we hit the road early. Max wanted to try the tunnel but we got there only to be told motorcycles weren’t allowed in. A sign would have been nice, but at least we got to see downtown Detroit on a quiet Sunday morning. My magic power kicked in at the Canadian border. Everyone else crossed in about ten minutes, but we waited twice that because we got the guard who wanted to chat with everyone. Soon enough we were bombing down the 401 toward home making excellent time. A couple of stops at ONroutes (which felt like time travel after a night in Detroit) later we were in Kitchener and winding our way down familiar country roads. We were home by 2pm. The Concours was faultless, returning mid-fifties miles per gallon on the highway and high forties everywhere else. It started at the touch of a button every time and showed me it could do the ton with two people in gear and all their luggage. The gel seat eased the pain but got incredibly hot, leaving me with heat rash and a scowl. A seat solution will happen before the next long ride, but there is little else I could do to make this wonderful machine any better.
The Concours has ridden on hallowed
ground. She wears it with pride.
If you don’t like crowds, the Indy GP is the one to go to. Indianapolis is enormous and easily swallows crowds of even one hundred and thirty two thousand. There is talk of cancelling the Indy round next year, but if it’s on I’m going to attend all three days. I think we can get within striking distance in one day, ride straight to the track on Friday, hotel in Indy Friday and Saturday and begin heading back after the race on Sunday, finishing the trip on Monday. After doing it once I know I can do it even better next time. After bombing down the Indy back straight once, I want to do it again! It only costs forty bucks to do a lap of the MotoGP circuit! That’ll be on the short list for next year along with a paddock pass so I can get Sam Lowes autograph. If you love bikes and live anywhere north-east in North America, you should give the IndyGP weekend in August a go, I promise you won’t be disappointed. The long ride through the mid-west is anything but boring and the hospitality is second to none. And when you get there you get to ride on the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway and experience the MotoGP circus in full swing, it really is unforgettable. NOTE: The Indy MotoGP is no more – glad we went when we did! I’m going to have to get more committed to riding to a MotoGP race if I want to do it again!
The Weather Network suggested that we might get a break in the never ending snow and ice, and on the weekend of all times!
After a couple of days of near zero sun, Sunday hit the target with a 6°C high and lots of blue sky. The last time on two wheels was November 26, 2019, so that’s 89 days of misery. That should be the longest break as I’m likely to steal some more rides in the coming weeks.
Back home again I washed the salt and sand off and hibernated the Tiger again. The new LED indicators work a treat. The old Triumph fired up at the first touch of the button after a nearly three month hiatus. The new front brakes were a little vague until they bedded in, then they felt as sharp as ever. The chance to ride has me dreaming about making miles again soon.
@banana29 got me thinking about the computer refresh going on at her school last week. We’re in the same process at my school.
In my case I’m the head of computers and trying to focus on keeping as many computers as possible in student hands. We waste a lot of machines at teacher desks to do online attendance and check email, work that could easily happen on an alternate, much cheaper and efficient device than a full desktop system, but even those changes would resolve into a desperate attempt to keep things the same.
I had a couple of my seniors do an inventory of the school. We have over 300 desktops. Each costs about $1500 when you factor in purchasing and insurance on them. We have close to half a million dollars of desktop computers in our building, and every year we squirm to keep as many as we can as we are refreshed down. If we were to drop the cost of those desktops, radically reduce the number of printers in the building (and the subsequent tens of thousands of dollars we spend each year on printing), and remove local server storage, we could easily produce over $500 for every staff member and student in the building; more than enough for a device per person, even if those devices aren’t attached to specific people. Some classes with Chromebooks, some with Windows, some with Macs, some on Linux, some tablets, some laptops, some BYOD. A startlingly wide ecosystem of technology that encourages broad familiarity with many digital tools.
We status quo our edtech because change is hard, and we’ve borrowed an educationally uncomplimentary business model of I.T.. We fight to keep antiquated desktops because many teachers barely know how to use a ready made lab, let alone what to do with a variety of hardware with various operating systems and software on them. With digital fluency removed from them by board I.T., many teachers have learned helplessness. Those that struggle against this forced ignorance often disappear into the cloud in order to avoid the stifling local computer environment… a choking environment that should be founded on learning, not on ease of management or paranoia.
I’d love to spring us free from the nineties corporate I.T. model we’ve been slavishly following and begin pushing widespread familiarity and fluency on digital tools of all shapes and sizes. I dream of an experimental, curiosity driven access to technology that encourages timely, relevant learning for our students.
I fear we’ll end up finishing another year still running Windows XP on five year old desktops with an increasingly irrelevant OSAPAC software image. I suspect I’m going to escape into the cloud again to escape that choking simplicity, all while playing the keep-the-desktop-game on the management side.
Changing fork oil turned out to be pretty straightforward. The most time consuming part is removing any niggly body panels so you can get at the forks themselves. Make sure you loosen the top fork plug before you remove the forks as you need the forks firmly held while you do that and the clamps on the bike are designed to do just that. Once you’re there, undoing the clamps that hold the forks means they’ll slide right out, so be ready for that.
The spring on the Tiger is a progressive rate unit – it is
sprung tighter the lower it
goes.
Once on the work bench it was a matter of taking off the rubber fork protectors and cleaning up the unit. I then slowly removed the top of the fork using a 22mm ratchet while keeping pressure on. The book said the cap is under ‘considerable’ pressure from the spring, but with the fork fully extended it released quite gently. With the cap off I removed a spacer, a washer and the spring slowly as the fork is full of oil. Pulling the spring out quickly means you’re pulling oil out and making a mess. With the parts out I inverted the shock assembly and poured the old oil out into a measured container to see how much was in there and what condition is was in.
The oil came out looking pretty dark – the new stuff was completely transparent. Since the previous owner didn’t appear to change the oil in the engine, I doubt fork oil ever got looked at; this stuff has probably been in there a while. There was no corrosion in or on the forks themselves or on the internal components, so after a cleanup I poured 710ml of new fork oil into the fully compressed fork. I had to raise the fork to install the spring, washer and spacer and then put the cap back on snug. I later tightened it to torque specs when it was reinstalled on the bike.
Spring number two gave me about 660ml of oil after a good emptying. The first one was at about 650ml. It got refilled to 710mm of heavier 15 weight fork oil to reduce the floatiness of the front fork and deal with my weight better. I’m looking forward to feeling the difference when the snows clear.
If you’ve got a bike with fairings I’d guess a fork oil change would take you an easy afternoon of work. If you’ve got a naked bike then this is a matter of removing the front wheel and brake calipers, loosening the top cap, loosening two clamp bolts on the triple tree and handlebar clamps and sliding the fork out. Removing the cap and internal components and emptying the old oil would only take about ten minutes per fork. Refilling a compressed, empty fork with the required amount of fork oil and putting it all back together another ten minutes. Once you were familiar with the process on your naked bike it wouldn’t take more than an hour to do a fork oil change – longer if you have a lot of finicky fairings to remove.
The left photo is of the fork assembly off the bike prior to removing the rubber fork gaiter (which cleaned up nicely with warm soap water and then some Armourall). On the right: all back together again. The front wheel got regreased and cleaned up. The speedo housing was especially mucky.
LINKto the specs research I did on fork oil changes on this particular Triumph Tiger.
The other fork had about 650ml in it – pretty black considering it was clear when it went in.
To set up San Francisco bike storage I’d need to get an Ontario bike down there and parked up in the storage facility. The idea is to have a ready to go bike that I can fly to with minimal luggage. I’d eventually be able to fly in to San Francisco with only a carry on bag, take a cab to the storage unit and be on two wheels in one of the best motorcycling locations in the world within a few hours of flying out of the snowbelt. For the setup I’d take known, works-for-me gear for the ride and then hang it up in the storage unit along with the bike. Flights back at the moment are one stop, seven hours and about $700 Canadian.
The weather is already closing in here. We’ve had dustings of snow multiple times. This would be one of my last chances to make the ride out west before the white wall of winter descends on us. In trying to make good time to SanFran, I’d also aim to get a motorcycling bucket list item done: an Iron Butt thousand miles in twenty-four hours:
Day 1: Elora to Hampton Inn Portage IL. Just under 500 miles over the border and to the edge of Chicago. Make sure everything is ready for the big push on Day 2 (the Iron Butt 1000 miles in 24 hours). Make sure everything is good to go on the bike, get in early, eat and rest up for an early departure.
Day 2: Portage IL to Denver, CO. Be on the road by 5am for the big push west. Cross Chicago before rush hour picks up and then thump across the plains. 1027 miles in 24 hours. Get in to Denver overnight and then 2 days at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Stapleton.
Day 3: Rest day in Denver.
Day 4: Denver to Grand Junction. Into the Rockies, 333 miles to the Hampton Inn Grand Junction. A lower mileage day means this should be as much about enjoying the mountains as it is about making time.
Day 6: Ely NV to San Francisco. 554 mile day to wrap up the trip. Get into San Francisco late, park up the bike and put everything into hibernation mode. Load up a carry-on bag with the essentials and take a cab to the airport. Retrace the four thousand plus miles back in five hours.
I should be able to take the bike out, park it up and be back home within a week, then I’ll have a bike on-call on the West Coast.
For this trip I need something that can cover big miles effectively but is still a useful tool on twisty roads. The big Triumph Tiger 1200XRx is a long distance capable bike that fits a big guy like me. It’s also easy to maintain (shaft drive, fuel injection) and comes with many long distance handy abilities like long suspension to soak up bad roads and luggage for the long trip.
A big Tiger in this format costs just over $24k Canadian. It’s a pretty thing, I saw the new ones in the flesh at the Triumph Tiger ATLAK meet up last summer. Many magazines describe the bike as very large, but I didn’t find it overwhelmingly so. In fact, I was surprised at how svelte it was for a 1200cc adventure bike.
But there are some things about the big Tiger that I’m not a fan of. I’ve never gotten excited about the big aluminum panniers thing on adventure bikes, or any bike for that matter. I like the colour matched lucifer orange ones on my old Tiger. I think the aluminum ones look half assed and unfinished, and I get to pay hundreds more for the privilege of having them because others think they’re a fashion item.
The other issue is a recent BIKE Magazine review in which their Tiger developed a number of electrical issues. Whatever is waiting for me on the West Coast would need to work when I opened that storage unit roller door. The Tiger is also a reasonably sensible choice, but it’d be nice to have something a bit more come-hither waiting for me in San-Fran.
For surprisingly similar money there is something that I’d describe as more of a dream bike: the Kawasaki H2 supercharged demon bike in sport touring form. The H2 SX is an efficient, powerful, supercharger-chirping-as-it-breaks-the-sound-barrier thing of beauty. It weighs about as much as the big Tiger but produces prodigiously more power and looks like a Japanese super model.
On top of that it has beautifully designed and colour matched panniers that practically disappear into the stunning looks of the bike, rather than looking like tacked on, low-rent metal boxes.
Having the SX sitting in a storage unit in San Francisco would be a constant West Coast siren call. If I wanted to go far, it could handle it, if I wanted to canyon carve in and around San-Fran, it’d do that to.
As much as I love adventure bikes for how well they fit me, I think I’d have the Kawasaki super model waiting for me on the west coast. It’d be a blast to ride on the trip out there and would fit in with Californian bike culture much better.
The majority of people in the room had never looked behind the webpages they view every day, so the presentation started off with explanations of what Hypertext Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets are (you’re using them now to read this). From there we all installed ATOM, an HTML/CSS editor, onto our laptops and got stuck in.
Coding can seem like an all or nothing proposition to people new to it. Unlike written language, if you have a single error in code the whole thing can become unrunnable with no clear reason why. Imagine writing an English essay and if you have a single grammar or spelling error the whole thing is nonsensical. That’s the challenge of coding, but there are some supports you can put in place that help you deal with this absolutism, and CLC introduces you to all of them.
The ATOM IDE (integrated development environment– like a word-processor for coding) colour codes your text as you’re typing and offers suggestions. It quickly lets you add and change what you’re working on. When you save your code in ATOM you pivot over to your browser and refresh your page to see what’s changed.
While coding is harsh when dealing with errors, a good IDE and that iterative approach of being able to quickly try something helps you work around those error landmines, but getting people into that mindset is tricky, especially after school where we tend to drive students toward one-try grading (quizzes, tests, exams, interviews, performances, pretty much everything we do in education). As a result students have learned not to iterate. If it doesn’t work at first you’ve failed, which is a disastrous approach to coding. Recognizing the value of the engineering process and iteration was the biggest single takeaway for me at this event.
At one point Michelle Mabuyo, the lead of the KW Chapter of Canada Learning Code, ran into a problem with the animations we were running on our websites. Without hesitation she immediately attacked the problem using the same engineering process I continually drill into my students. As she iterated attempts at fixing the problem she kept escalating her scale, eventually reverse engineering the error out of the code from a known good, working program.
Watching someone who is good at something turn it on and do their thing is something I really enjoy. Michelle wasn’t aiming to put on an engineering show, this was supposed to be a gentle introduction to web development, but an error made her kick it up a gear and engineer a solution in real time. My best seniors get to this point by the end of high school, and when they do I know they’re ready to tackle whatever post secondary is going to throw at them.
At one point Muhammad, a software engineer from Google who was volunteering at this event, came by to see how I was doing. He doesn’t spend any time in HTML at Google, but once you understand how code works, you can move laterally into other languages quite quickly. I was trying to do something with the falling hearts animations that was a bit beyond the instructions, so he said what I always say, “look it up!” I told him about the Futurama Fry meme and he laughed because he has a copy pinned up by his desk… and he’s a software engineer!
That self deprecating piece is something that people who are good at something tend towards. The cocky types tend to be way back in the Dunning-Kruger effect. People who are good at something tend to be aware of how difficult it is and are more likely to take a more humble approach.
I really enjoyed our nerdy Friday night Valentine’s Day at Canada Learning Code. I always doubt myself coming in to something like this (my comp-sci teacher did a number on me in high school), but coding (at least when you’re doing it as something other than an academic exercise) isn’t about mathematical perfection, though that was how it was portrayed in my high school comp-sci classes before I dropped them. Coding is an applied process; it’s about an experimental, agile, iterative mindset and never taking your eye off the goal of a functioning solution. From that point of view, coding is little different than tuning the carburetor on my motorcycle.
I have no doubt that I could get more fluent in coding, but it’s a small part of the many subjects I juggle when teaching Ontario’s vague and encompassing computer engineering curriculum. In the meantime, I’ve got the agility and experience to quickly find solutions and modify them to work, and I need to acknowledge those skills. From that I could quickly develop the familiarity with coding needed to do it with less lookup. As a goal for my students, that’s an achievable, applied target, and not something to be ashamed of.
As we were wrapping things up another of the volunteers came by and commented on how much he liked the flip-card 3d effect in HTML. I asked him how it worked and you can guess what he said… look it up! So I did, and was able to get it working in about 5 minutes at the end of the session.
Coding is an opportunity to take risks and not worry about failing because iterating your way out of a problem is the solution. I only wish more computer science teachers would take that approach in Ontario classrooms.
If you get a chance, go to a Canada Learning Code workshop. They have specific meetings for girls, kids, women, teachers and teens, so you can always find a comfortable fit.
The trick to zoo photography is to catch your subject without the enclosure, which becomes an exercise in framing. The Toronto Zoo is a particular nice place to do zoo photography because of the quality of the enclosures. It also happens to have one of the finest plant collections in the world, so if you like taking photos of plants it’s brilliant.
These were taken in the summer of 2012 using the Olympus EPL-3 PEN micro four thirds camera.
from Blogger http://kingfisherimaging.blogspot.com/2018/01/toronto-zoo-photography.html
via IFTTT
£70k? Yikes, that’s $121,026 Canadian! If I can opt out of the dick swinging options above, here’s how I’d spend my hundred-and-twenty-K on things with four wheels, and two:
Mazda 2019 MX-5 RF GT $44,870 CAD That’s a GT model with bells and whistles. Put me on a twisty mountain road in this and your typical knuckle dragger in one of Top Gear’s choices and I bet I’m the first one to the end… and I won’t be sending it in for service and repairs every five minutes – and it looks spectacular!
RAM ProMaster Van $44,625 + $15,375 upfit = $60,000 If you’ve read this blog before you know I’ve got a Guy Martin/van obsession that often coincides with a mid-Canadian-winter psychotic episode (I’m getting close now) involving escaping south with a bike in the back for a chance to get on two wheels again. The Ram’s a funky van. I’d keep back another $15,000 to upfit it into a long distance camper/bike hauler/multi-use vehicle.
That puts me at about $105,000 Canadian with two new, very different vehicles. What to do with the other sixteen thousand?
Suzuki DR650SE $6000 (!) They’re on sale at the moment and a rock solid piece of off the tarmac ready kit. It’ll keep up with traffic on the road (unlike the KLX250 didn’t) and take me anywhere – including expanding the short Canadian riding season by tackling the odd bit of snow. I might look into some enduro competition with it too. It’s be a rough and ready option in situations where I’d be worried about a more road ready bike.
I’ve still got ten grand to play with and I’ve already had more fun than any of the try-hard Top Gear choices. Time for something really frivolous that’ll be as fast or faster than any of Porsche/Renault/Lamborghini nonsense that kicked this off.
’08 Suzuki Hayabusa $7000 The first thing I stumble across on Kijiji is a $7000 ’08 Suzuki Hayabusa. Odd that Suzuki is the only Japanese manufacturer I’ve never owned and I’ve got two on the list this afternoon.
I’ve got a thing for orange bikes, and this one looks a peach – older rider, low mileage for the year and well looked after.
I’d hold back the other three grand just to make sure this is faster than anything on Top Gear’s list because I like to be Tom… Petty.
If I had £70k to spend on a car? I’d buy a nice car, a useful van and two awesome and very different motorcycles! Why be dull?
I just finished Elspeth Beard’sLone Rider on Kindle. In the early 1980s Elspeth rode around the world on her already well used BMW. I’m a big fan of neuro-atypical voices in writing being one myself. As a dyslexic (who I also suspect is on the ASD spectrum) who struggled in school, Elspeth isn’t your typical writer’s voice, and the book is all the better for it.
From her struggles with family and friends when preparing for her around the world ride decades before it became a television opportunity, to her honest observations of what it was (is?) like to travel solo as a woman, you get a sometimes painfully transparent look at the emotion and effort stirred up by such a massive undertaking. The repeated machismo she runs into in the motorcycling community in 1980s London is frustrating. What’s more frustrating is that it hasn’t changed as much as it should have in the past thirty years.
The way that Elspeth describes the eccentricities of her dad and herself, I suspect they both live somewhere on the ASD spectrum (something I empathize with). This atypical way of thinking, in addition to her dyslexia, gives her descriptions of the cultures she is riding through a degree of perspective and originality missing in other travel books. Travellers tend to throw on the rose coloured glasses when describing India, ignoring the difficulties of trying to move across a continent with well over a billion people on it. Elspeth’s experiences, exacerbated by her gender, along with her brutal honesty, give you what is probably the most accurate description of riding in India you’ll ever read; no rose tinted glasses on here. From the fumbling sexual advances of men stuck in the middle ages to breath taking child cruelty, Elspeth’s wide open eyes see it all and she doesn’t shy away from telling you about it.
I would highly recommend this book if you enjoy motorcycling, travel writing and/or feminism and aren’t frightened off by people who think differently. It doesn’t read like your typical motorcycle travel book, but Elspeth wasn’t just riding, she was also elbow deep in keeping an already old, high mileage 1970s BMW running through sandstorms, biblical rain and everything in between. If you have any mechanical sympathy at all, Elspeth scratches that itch too.
As much as I enjoyed the travel writing, what I missed most at the end of the book was Elspeth’s unique way of seeing the world. Her struggles understanding people and dealing with bureaucracies, especially with her wit and dry humour, are often hilarious, disheartening and hopeful all at the same time.
I’d urge you to give this book a read, it’s available on Amazon as an ebook for less than ten bucks Canadian. When the movie comes out in a couple of years, I hope they give it the nuance and depth it deserves. Elspeth provides a voice and insight into a lot more than just her gender.
