Pictures through a windshield

I'm in Pennsylvania/NY training for my new job. Even though I lived in West Virginia for a couple years as a child, the hills of this part of the country are amazingly beautiful. (Click to make bigger)




This was just after a sign announcing the highest spot east of the mississippi river on this particular interstate.









The beginning of an ear-popping descent into a valley.











...or was this the highest? I lost track











tiny little hill









A road cut visible from the plant parking lot. Not so impressive until you realize that the thing just to the left of the sign is a full sized semi:

iPod and ItUnEs

I just got an iPod touch as a replacement for my PDA--not so much to play music, but more to check mail, read blogs and keep track of phone numbers and such.

So far, I'm very impressed with the iPod--the touchscreen keyboard works better than I'd expect, the interface is fantastic, and Safari is a much, much better browser than either Windows Mobile (an old version) or the one on my Palm T/X. The Stanza Ebook reader (a free download) is very nice. The ability to watch youtube is also a plus, although it would be nice if it were generic video rather than just youtube.

iTunes, on the other hand..well, since my Mom reads here, I can't give my full opionion, but "sucks" is the edited version. I can understand complexity in dealing with DRM, but I'm not--I should be able to treat the iPod as a thumb drive, and just dump MP3's into the proper folder. Instead, itUnes has to process them in a couple of passes before they can transfer.

...and using a separate Windows user account on my wife's computer still brings up her songs and such. By holding the shift when you launch, you can choose which existing user's ituneS to connect to, or create a new user but this should be the default on a separate user account. It appears that itunEs objects to being used with two computers--When I decided to try on my wife's box after giving up on the crappy computer I've got Windows on, it gave me the option to erase the ipod and start over, or do nothing.

...and apparently they have changed how iPods work enough that Linux hasn't caught up yet.

She did it on purpose

We took the dogs to St Mary's lake, in part to get out, and in part to scope out the location of my probable new job.

In the first 5 minutes, Bella found something slimy and smelly to smear on her head. I threw a stick in the lake and got her to rinse most of it off, but the residue was still unpleasant, necessitating a bath when we got home. While we were at it, we bathed Angie.

Both dogs will shake all over the house, so we pretty much have to mop up after them. Trying to avoid that, I herded them outside. Angie decided that while still wet from her bath was a perfect time to dig a hole, and then track the resulting mud through the house.

So much for not having to mop...

Yesterday I ate dinner on the deck.

The anti-bug Tiki torches were empty, neither one would light. I refilled and lit them, then went to bring my dinner from the kitchen.

I was carrying a plate of ribs, a bowl of hot beans, and a cup of hot barbecue sauce to dip the beans in. As I stepped down on the deck, something hot sloshed on my wrist, and I dropped the bowl and cup. In hurrying to get cold water on my wrist, I tossed the plate with the ribs. (My wrist is OK)

When I came back to the deck to clean up my mess, one of the tiki torches was entirely engulfed in flames, and the plastic part of the torch that holds the fuel had melted. I tried to smother this by putting a can over it, I finally had to get a wet towel. Apparently I hadn't dried the fuel off the bottle well enough and the outside caught.

And then I slipped where the beans spilled.

Mom's Dog

We were dog-sitting Mom's dog Sammy. He's a bit small to run with the big dogs, so he rode from stop to stop.

One Toke Over the Line, Lawrence Welk Edition

(H/T to Mark Evanier)

Smoking

To smoke meat, you want a relatively constant source of smoke, a low heat, time and water. A smoker is nice, but not necessary. Smoked meat stores well and tastes good re-heated, and a full grill's worth is no harder than one rib.

The water helps moderate the temprature--especially with a charcoal fire, as well as keeping the meat from drying out.

Low heat keeps the meat from being overdone before the smoke can soak in.

My method:

Take 3 medium sized steel cans and burn off all the labels and inner coatings. I currently use charcoal, and toss a couple of cleaned cans on the coals when I'm done cooking on the grill, to save for next time.

Fill all 3 cans half full of hickory chips. Fill one with water, one half full, and one with half an inch or so of water.

Light part of the grill, leaving part without flame. Put all three cans of chips on the hot side.

When you see smoke from one of the cans of hickory, put the meat or chicken on the side without flame and close the lid. Try to maintain the grill temperature around 250 or so.

Periodically check the hickory cans. Eventually one of the cans will finish smoking--dump the coals (into the fire if charcoal, into water otherwise) and half-fill with hickory, fill with water and put back on the fire. Keep repeating this. Adjust the amount of water so that one can is starting to smoke as the other one finishes. If a can boils dry before the other cans are done, add water.

Cooking at 250, the meat will generally be fully smoked about the same time it is done. Pork chops take an hour or so, thicker ribs or chicken 3 or so. The meat will be pink, but either even pink, or darker from the outside. This isn't the same pink as underdone.

Don't put BBQ sauce on until the meat is done. I've quit putting sauce on the meat at all--instead I heat up a small bowl of sauce and dip the meat in as I eat. I like Montgomery Inn sauce--tomato based, not too sweet, the right amount of bite.

You can also use foil packs of wet hickory chips instead of cans. Make a foil envelope about 4x4, put the hickory in and seal, poke a couple of holes in the top. When the smoke slows, put another pack on. If you are using foil packs, you probably want a pan of water boiling on the grill as well.

A meat thermometer left in the meat will get coated with smoke and hard to read.

Who, me?

Who me? What cake? (My niece at her brother's birthday party)

Pictures

This is where we usually take the dogs for a walk--there's a bike path along the river


View Larger Map

As you can see, not a particularly rural area, although not far from the edge of town.

Directly across from the mall:
(Click pictures to enlarge)













Just a bit farther north














Angie, at her usual speed. I've been experimenting with motion blur within the limits of my camera. This was taken while riding beside Angie on my bicycle, then cropped and rotated--It isn't all that easy to ride at her speed while controlling the camera and not crashing. For this one I used aperture priority at F:8 (the smallest my camera has) ISO 64 (the slowest speed) and no flash. Resulted in a shutter speed of 1/39 second. I think next time I'll go shutter priority around 1/100...


Later on in the day we took our tandem, and went to the new bike path that heads out of town.

The path leads past the old Nuclear plant, an experimental reactor that supplied electricity to Piqua for a few years in the 1960's.












The path is not quite finished. Can't decide which of these pictures I like better































The bike path leads to this pretty little waterfall. It is just off a side road, barely visible from a car.

Buzzards

A couple of buzzards, or turkey vultures, or whatever they are that hang around the river where we walk the dogs.

They often hang out stereotypically in a dead tree across the river. Graceful when flying, ugly close up.

I found bulk .22!

On my way home from an interview, I stopped at a local gun shop and found bulk .22 in stock!

...at more than twice the price I paid last time I bought it, for 50 fewer rounds. Ouch.

Airsoft shot timer

I've played around with the idea of practicing with airsoft and a shot timer. I've got a cheap plastic spring-air Sig 226 replica, and a handful of XD holsters that I'm not going to use for anything else. The Airsoft fits the XD holsters well.

The first problem is that airsoft is nowhere near loud enough to trigger the shot timer. However, the timer can pick up the sound of the pellet hitting cardboard if the timer is close enough. Clipped to the back of the cardboard turns out to be close enough...

This leaves a second problem--The normal time between pressing the button and when the buzzer goes off isn't long enough to get to the "firing line" and positioned.

This is solved by using "par mode". I'm not sure exactly what it is meant to be used for (the instructions said it is rarely used anymore) but it gives a second beep, and measures the time after that. By setting the par time to 3 or so seconds, I get a total of 5 seconds to get positioned.

On the Pact Club Timer, modes are set by pressing both arrow buttons at once. One of the arrows sets the mode to instant, the other to delay. The next selection is "par time" mode--press the "go" button now if you don't want a par time. If you do want a par time, the arrow keys adjust the digit you are on, the "rvw" button moves to the next digit. I had to look this up, and it was harder than it should be to find--PACT doesn't appear to have the instructions on their website.

I'm more than likely going to make a proper pellet trap, rather than just a piece of folded cardboard. I'm also going to make it so I can use a semiauto bb gun, with protection for the timer--one drawback to the springair is that there's no way to do a doubletap. I'm also going to try to figure a way to push the go button remotely, without disassembling the timer.

We used to take our dogs to the river in the back of our truck. We sold the truck last fall, after I had most of the major remodeling done.

Angie hasn't quite figured out the difference between a car and a truck. I didn't tell her to get in, I just opened the trunk to put some stuff in as we were getting ready to take them for a ride.

Related advertising

This is the ad I've been getting lately in my RSS feed for I can Has Cheezburger, a site of cat pictures with amusing captions:


(The link is clickable to the site they are advertising, if you dare...)

Effects?

I don't watch much TV, but my wife does. I often get to hear commercials without seeing them.

"Ask your doctor if Ass Effects is right for you"

That name (aciphex) HAD to be intentional.

Modern life

With modern technology, you can apply for jobs in your bathrobe without hurting your chances of an interview...

Schwinn Meridian adult trike conversion, complete

I'm pretty much done tweaking the addition of gears to my wife's adult trike. The actual mechanics are covered in this post, this just deals with a final parts list and sources.

For the parts you need, donor bikes are by far the best source--An entire used bike can be purchased for less than the cost of one part.

You will need:

A 5 speed freewheel, preferably Shimano or Falcon. If the bike has index shifting it should work, as will most Shimano Uniglide and most Falcon. Most will have 28 teeth on the biggest chainring--That is enough, but 30 or 32 would be better. Most freewheels with 6 or more cogs will be too wide, requiring excessive spreading of the aluminum frame, potentially weakening it. If you can get an old "ultra 6" freewheel, it should fit, and you can use 7 speed shifters with it. (Adapting these instructions to a steel-framed bike spreading is much less of an issue)

5 or 6 speed index shifters--Preferably Shimano, but most are Shimano-compatible. You can also use friction shifters if you prefer, or most lever shifters have a friction mode. Suntour parts were good, and will work in friction mode. Suntour used non-standard index spacing, so aren't likely to work well with other brand parts.

Dérailleur chain--the existing chain on the trike is too thick for dérailleurs.

Dérailleur--Should be index compatible if you want index shifters. Shimano is the best choice, but there are a lot of clones of the basic Shimano Tourney derailleur--almost anything "index" that isn't Suntour will be Shimano-compatible.

Miscellaneous cables--For this application, you'll want a length of cable housing from the shifter to the derailleur, since there are no cable stops on the trike frame. This is the only part I bought new.

A thumb shifter can be mounted to the stem--This can be useful if the cable is a bit short to reach to the handlebars, or if you want to keep the cable as short as practical for best shifting.

A set of cotterless cranks with a smallest chairing around 24-28 teeth. This will almost certainly have three chainrings, and you won't use the medium and large--trikes ae not stable enough for significant speed. A chainguard is useful, but the largest chainring can be turned into a chainguard by cleaning a chunk of chain, and installing it with no slack. (This assumes an even number of teeth. If the largest ring is odd, you will need a half link, avaliable at better bike shops) The original crank is too fat for a derailleur chain, but could be cleaned and re-used as a chainguard. Keep an eye on crank length--The parts bike I used was a 24", and had shorter cranks than the stock ones on the trike. This was an advantage in this case, since the original trike cranks were a bit long for my wife.

There aren't that many bikes with both 5 speed freewheels and cotterless cranks in an adult size. In my case I found a Mongoose 21 speed for crank, chain and inner cables, and a cheaper 15 speed bike for freewheel, derailleur and shifters. The cheap bike had one-piece cranks, so they were not useful. The Mongoose had a frame mounted derailleur--better, but would take more work to adapt to the trike. Kid's bikes with shifters are the most likely to have 5 speed index parts.

(Note when I say 5 speed or 7 speed, I'm talking of the rear gears. a 10 or 15 speed will have a 5 speed rear, a 12 or 18 speed a 6 speed rear, etc. )

In addition to basic hand tools, you will need a freewheel removal tool (or a shop that will remove it for you--no special tools needed to install) a chain tool and cone wrenches.

Yellow Springs

We took the dogs to Glen Helen, a nature preserve that used to be associated with Antioch college before it closed. Neat place, took a boatload of pictures. Click to massively enlarge, not safe for dialup.

The springs giving the name to the village of Yellow Springs, where Glen Helen is located













Wife and dogs












Most of Glen Helen is in a valley, with these rock outcroppings, caves and cliffs.










I don't know if this is the biggest chigger I've ever seen, or something else. About the size of a rice grain. Brighter red than shows here.












One of several good-sized waterfalls in the preserve.











A panorama of another small waterfall

Trader Joe's Masala Simmer Sauce

I really like a lot of the foods from Trader Joe's market

Their Masala Simmer Sauce is not one of them.

I don't know what Masala sauce should taste like, but this tastes essentially like bland, watered-down ketchup with a few chunks of tomato. I followed the package directions, simmering some diced chicken, and serving it over brown rice. It wasn't inedible, but it certainly isn't something I'd get again.

Jaunty Jackalope first impressions

I've just upgraded to from the Intrepid Ibex version of Ubuntu Linux to Jaunty Jackalope, the latest brand new version.

So far, most of the significant problems have been with sound. It initially wanted to send all sound to my USB phone rather than to the speakers. Not sure why it didn't keep my old settings, since this is an upgrade rather than a fresh install, and it was still using Alsa. I've decided to give PulseAudio another chance--Last time I used Pulse, it would frequently go bad, and require me to kill and restart it once or twice a day. Once I got it sorted where to send sounds, it seems to work OK. Audacity music editor now works with Pulseaudio.

Amarok looks promising for a music player if I understand the weighting system right, but it is more complicated than XMMS. It doesn't come with MP3 support standard, a common problem with Linux apps. That is excusable because of the legal issues involved. The gripe I have is that it also doesn't tell you about the problem, it just skips all the MP3's without playing them. A quick Google told what to install to make it work. Audacious (the successor to XMMS that doesn't work as well) doesn't work out of the box, where it did before.

Another setting that didn't carry over properly was the LCD subpixel order--it was set to vertical, and that triggered a bug in some apps (Skype and the HP printer applet) that made their fonts completely unreadable. Setting the order properly both fixed Skype and made fonts better.

I now have control of typing repeat rate that I lost in Intrepid.

It appears that the one-pixel line glitches I had with dual monitors are gone (I'd get a one pixel horizontal line on one monitor that was related to what was shown on the other) but they weren't consistently present before, so I can't be completely certain.

Panels (Toolbars) are on my laptop monitor where I want them. Intrepid kept moving them to the external monitor whenever I would disconnect then reconnect.

The install wanted to delete a bunch of stuff that it thought were no longer needed, but gave the option to cancel, which I did. Several of the things it wanted to remove weren't obsolete, but rather things I had installed without using the official repositories. The same options to remove were available in computer janitor, but with decent explanations and individual control. This let me get rid of stuff that was really obsolete, but let me keep XMMS, Skype and codecs.

Flash appears to be much more stable, where in Intrepid I was getting sound problems that required restarting Flash periodically.

So far, not much in the way of amazing features, but solid bug fixes. Much more pleased than the upgrade to Intrepid Ibex.

Gun storage

Based on a recent post by James, I decided to do a post on gun storage.

There is a balance between cost, risk and accessibility for storing self-defense guns. I believe that merely hiding guns is irresponsible if they will be unattended. Adequate storage is relatively cheap, with a little bit of creativity. I'm not a fan of individual gun locks--they are great to keep young kids from getting hurt, but they don't do nearly enough to keep the guns from being stolen where the lock can be dealt with at leisure.

I don't yet own any long guns. I've got a pistol safe, mounted in a discrete location that makes it awkward to pry or cut. Most of our guns are stored there. (I'm being deliberately vague with specifics) Self-defense guns are stored loaded, recreational guns are stored empty. In my view, the risk of storing a loaded gun in a locked container is smaller than the risk of loading and unloading a gun frequently.

In the bedroom, I have a small digital-lock Brinks box, mounted and hidden. (Any portable lockbox should be mounted to something non-portable) It isn't as secure as the pistol safe, but it has the advantage of being quick access. The combination is more of a pattern--more digits than you might expect, but lots of repeat keystrokes, and I remember it by positions rather than number so I can do it in the dark.

With light, I can get my hand on a gun in the locked box in 4 seconds. about a second longer in the dark. If the first notice I have is when the attacker is already in the bedroom, even an unlocked container is likely too slow, but for most other circumstances, I can't think of anything faster with equal security. This box is primarily for my wife's convenience, and quick access is a secondary consideration. When I worked nights, she would often leave it open until I came home. If you are going to leave it open, I recommend putting your keys, cellphone or something you know you will take with you when you leave the house, to remind you to lock it before you go.

The guns are stored loaded, hanging from wooden dowels through their barrels, at an angle that leaves them easy to grip. The dowels are mounted to an angled hole in a piece of scrap plywood, which is in turn mounted to the box. I used fairly large dowels, and chucked them into a drill to sand them down to a caliber less than the gun barrel.
I also keep a few other things there--the hex wrench to tighten the belt clips on my holster, spare keys to things unrelated to guns, and the pocket holster for the Keltec.

File Managers

I'm planning to update to the latest just-released version of Ubuntu. Since there is a small but significant chance it will not be an improvement, a sensible thing to do is to back up my personal files to make it easier to go back. The easiest brute-force method is to hook up an external drive and just copy over. Time consuming, but my part of it is relatively short--hook up the drive, make sure there is room, and copy. Come back in a couple hours. In theory.

My home folder has more than 50,000 files, and is over 50 gig. Some of this is waste--I've got a copy of an old home folder which nearly doubles the size. With this many files, it is nearly inevitable that there will be at least one that the computer can't copy for one reason or another. I have no problem with this. My problem is that the computer will invariably use that as an excuse to stop doing anything, and ask you how to handle the error.

Linux is better than Windows here--I've never figured out exactly what "yes to all" or "no to all" means in Windows, since it would often ask the same question over and over even when selecting one of the "to all" answers. I suspect it was something to do with the directory a file was in, but I never bothered to investigate much. Linux at least has the same definition of "to all" as I do.

The absolute linear flow of all the file managers I've used bugs me. When it runs into a problem with a particular file it should of course throw up an error, but I don't understand why it can't continue on with the files it can deal with, and deal with the error later once I've given an answer.

What I should do is use proper backup software--I'm likely going to do that once I decide if the new version is acceptable. I'm already looking into which ones to use, but from the descriptions it is hard to tell if it meets my needs. I need the ability to do either incremental or differential backups (only what has changed either since the last backup, or since the last full backup) and the ability to back up to a USB drive. Backing up my wife's Windows box would be nice, but not essential, and backing up TO it automatically would also be nice but not essential. I don't need enterprise features, I would like a GUI, and I want some notification if there's a problem. (Apparently Sbackup failes this last step--if it fails to back up, it doesn't notify you)

More on the borrowed dog

We took Myra on a walk with our dogs yesterday, while riding our bike and trike. Myra isn't used to running beside bikes, so eventually we figured to put her in the rear basket of the trike until we got to the river where they can run free. Afterwards, we stopped by MIL's house.

Myra used to ride in a bicycle trailer with her last owner's daughter, so the basket wasn't anything astoundingly new. In fact she kept trying to climb back into the basket when we would let her out.

Myra was frantically overjoyed to see MIL, and MIL decided to try keeping her again. We worked on calming her when the BIL she doesn't like was around, and somewhat succeeded.

Unfortunately this morning when she was out with MIL, a bike and trailer similar to the one she used to ride in went past...and Myra followed. She is still missing.

A can of worms

If you need the warning on this package....


you've got problems.

House progress

Spent the weekend working on the downstairs apartment. The dining room had ceiling tiles, the 12"x12" type, but they were badly water damaged, and we took them down quite a while ago. Got half of them up, then moved to other things. I finally finished the other half.

Also mostly finished is the living room floor. I used cheap laminate. It looks as good as the better laminate I used in other rooms, but doesn't assemble as easily. It looks better than the worn-out carpet we had before, and tons better than the painted floor underneath.

I still have to put trim down, but that should be fairly easy. Nice and bland (but easy care) for renters.

Borrowed dog

We are watching my mother-in-law's little Spitz-like dog, Myra. Mother in law lives with 2 of her sons. Myra was somewhat mistreated by her previous owner. She is strangely aggressive to one of my brothers-in-law, but is fine with the other. She's fine with me, but that's not unusual--I'm not a dog whisperer, but I'm probably at least a dog mumbler...It is fairly common for me to be petting a dog at the dog park, only to find out that the dog doesn't usually like strangers, or strange men.

The theory is that we will keep her for a week or two, bring her to visit MIL and BIL fairly often, and see if we can stop her from snapping at the BIL she doesn't like. It isn't my theory, but she isn't much of a hardship, except that her bark is piercing.

Rainbow

I was sitting at my desk this afternoon looking out a west window, and thought "this looks like rainbow weather".

Turns out I was right--A rainbow almost due east.

(Click the pic to enlarge)

Feiko

I bought a batch of ebay watches to fix and re-sell. One of them said it was a Seiko, although not even as convincing as the one that gave me my nickname.

Fake Seikos have been a problem for decades. The older ones like this were typically Swiss or Hong Kong manual wind pinlever movements. They would be produced with a name like ASEIKOR, shipped to an unscrupulous retailer who would then remove the first and last letters on the dial. (I've removed letters on these with a q-tip and alcohol) Sometimes this was done well, on this particular watch there are fairly large smudges. I think these brands were produced by the same company that did Woldman--I've seen similar watches in both versions, and both have used the '360' and Electra' designations.

Genuine Seikos are mostly automatic wind, especially in the "mod" styles like this watch. The printed 'Date' is another sign of a cheap watch, designed to look like a day/date watch from a distance. "23" is meant to be mistaken for the "23 jewel" designation on some real Seikos.

The back is another clue, both in cheapness and in the wording. Real Seikos will say Seiko on the back, will have an 8-digit model number and a serial number.

The final clue is the movement itself. Even the least expensive mechanical Seikos use decent quality jeweled movements, not one-jewel Roskopf style pinlevers.

Modern fakes are a lot harder to spot. They are typically made in Communist China. They have stainless steel cases and automatic movements that are quite similar in overall construction to genuine Seikos, while not matching any Seiko model. Some of the differences are in quality control, and far rougher finish of important parts like the escapement. Others are wrong details, like a single watch with several different movement numberss, or claiming to be a movement, but also claiming the wrong number of jewels.

Around the same time were semi-fakes, with soundalike names designed to mislead--A "Bolivia electronic "25" Datomatic". Crown is at 4:00, like a Bulova Accutron, a watch that was legitimately electronic. Datomatic is in script, easy to confuse with "Automatic" , and amusingly, spelled "daytomatic" on the back.
None of this is new. In the late 1800's, America was the leader in pocket watches. There were imported Swiss watches with American sounding names, or sometimes with names of actual American companies.

90% of Mexican crime guns from US debunked

We've seen quotes implying that the ATF has confirmed 90% of recovered Mexican crime guns come from US sources. This is a perfect example of the "whisper-down-the-line" numbers used by anti-gun groups.

What was really said was that 90% of guns submitted for tracing were traced to a US source. What is ignored is that there are a lot of guns that obviously do not come from the US--These guns were not submitted. Guns made in or imported to the US have to have manufacturers or importers marks, making it fairly easy to determine that many guns do NOT have a US source.

If you include the total number of Mexican recovered firearms, about 17% were traced to the US. Honestly, that number surprises me, I would not have thought it would be that high.

Plastic Crystal Polishing

Plastic crystals scratch easily. Luckily, they also polish easily--if you have the supplies handy, it takes about 5 minutes to restore most scratched plastic crystals to nearly new condition. This is a crystal that I deliberatly scuffed up to illustrate.





With a few minues work, you can turn it into this. Yes, this is the same crystal, and taken after the first picture.

You will need wet sandpaper in 600 grit, plus 400 and 320 or so for severely scuffed watches. Metal polish of some sort, (I use Wrights silver polish or Brasso) and an applicator of some sort. I use an old fuzzy mouse pad, both to cushion the sandpaper and to apply the metal polish. I've also used the back of a chunk of vinyl cloth--you want something just slightly absorbent, not too coarse, but stiff enough so it doesn't bunch up when you polish with it.



Put the sandpaper on the table, ideally on a slightly padded surface. Sand by moving the watch across the sandpaper. First sand across the direction of the worst scratches. with the coarsest sandpaper you will use. For most crystals, you will need to tip the watch case to get to the outside of the crystal. Pay close attention that you don't sand the case itself. A few drops of water will make the sandpaper last longer without getting clogged with plastic, but don't go overboard, especially if the watch isn't water resistant. Periodically stop and dry the crystal off to inspect. When you almost have the worst scratches sanded out, or sanded as much as you think appropriate (if you have one extremely deep scratch you may consider leaving it partially visible rather than thinning the entire crystal that much), switch to the next finer grade, and sand in a different direction. Once the scratches from the original sandpaper are sanded out, switch to the next finer grade and again sand across the direction of the previous sandpaper. Repeat until you get to the finest paper you will use--I recommend at least 600 grit. 400 will work as the final, but often leaves wavy areas.

You will wind up with an evenly frosted crystal.












The final step is polish. Put a little polish on your polishing pad if it hasn't been used before, and possibly a drop or two of water. Run the watch in circles across the polish, again rocking to get the edges, and periodically drying and checking the condition. Avoid polishing the case, especially if goldtone.

You will probably wind up with a nice looking crystal, and a bunch of polish stuck in the cracks. A damp toothbrush works well to remove the excess polish. It works better if the bristles are cut to about half length.

I save the pad, and I don't need to put more polish on it most times.

Automatic Winding

The first effective automatic wind system was the one used in the Rolex Oyster Perpetual. The Oyster Perpetual was revolutionary--One of the first, if not the first practical water resistant case, combined with the first practical automatic winding system. The original intent of the automatic wind wasn't primarily convenience but rather to maintain water-tightness--By eliminating the need for daily winding the screw-down crown would last longer, and there would be less chance of forgetting to tighten it. This also has the advantage of keeping the watch at a constant state of wind, reducing the potential for isochronal error. (Sorry, I don't own a Rolex to take pictures of, but there is an interesting and not very complimentary illustrated review here)

The Rolex patent covered a 360 degree rotating rotor. Watch companies that wanted automatic winding had to bypass this patent, and so they came up with the bumper wind automatic. The rotor (at the bottom of the movement, marked "seventeen jewels ERNEST BOREL) was set to be free to move in the most common positions, with a simple ratchet turning the center gear which runs through reduction gears to wind the mainspring. Bumpers (shown here in the upper left) restrained it from making a full revolution. Not tremendously different in basic concept, but less efficient than a rotor that can rotate 360 degrees. It does have the advantage of being a bit flatter than a 360 degree rotor. (Click pictures to enlarge) This particular movement was made between 1935 and 1945. Bumper winds continued for some time after the Rolex patents expired, with some models still produced in the 1950's.

Like the bumper wind automatic, the Rolex only wound the watch when the rotor was turning in one direction. In the opposite direction, the system allows the rotor to spin freely. In 1942, the Bidynator was introduced, the first automatic that wound the watch with either direction of the rotor. The bidirectional design means it can stay wound with less arm movement. Note that this watch clearly uses a jewel for the rotor bearing, but remains marked "17 jewels". This means at least one of the standard jewels in the timekeeping section is missing.


Both the Rolex and the Bidynator used a simple post arrangement for the rotor. Rolex still uses a somewhat fragile jeweled post, one of the weaknesses of their design. Eterna was responsible for the next major innovation, a ball bearing rotor in 1948, on the Eternamatic. The Eterna version used 5 ball bearings, and Eterna took this as their trademark. This was another increase in efficiency and durability, and eventually became the standard on most automatics. Shown is an AS 1996, made long after the Eterna patents expired.




In the early 50's, Timex designed a low-cost automatic based on their existing pinlever movement. It used an eccentric cam on the rotor that moved a lever arm back and forth. (Right hand picture is of the same movement, with the rotor removed) The lever had fingers on the other end that engaged a ratchet on each direction, turning an axle which turns a planetary reduction gear, in turn winding the mainspring. Note that this particular movement is the jeweled version, with the unusal D-shaped jewel pins visible in the hole about 1/3 from the top, and 2/3 to the right.

In the late 50's, Seiko introduced their magic lever automatic system--Similar in concept to the Timex system, but greatly simplified. The 4 piece finger system is reduced to a single flexible arm. The diameter of the ratchet wheel is increased, with a simple pinion rather than the planetary reduction of the Timex. The original versions used an eccentric cam on the rotor similar to the Timex. On the 7000 series movements (a 1970 7005 shown), the eccentric is moved off the rotor to a separate gear. Although this appears to increase complexity, it allowed Seiko to eliminate a separate bridge for the automatic wind system, making the movement thinner without affecting durability. Another simplification on most Seiko automatics is the lack of a hand-wind capability, with these parts often modified to adjust the calendar instead.

A teardown of a 7005 movement, with better pictures describing the magic fingers is here.

A teardown of a Swatch automatic, using the same system as most modern Swiss automatics is here.

Cord Control

We rearranged Wife's desk today. Our desks are homemade, with a fixed monitor shelf and an adjustable main shelf for the keyboard and such. Hers has standard outlet boxes wired in. The desks were built to fit a different area with a little more space, so we shortened her main shelf by 3 inches to fit the new room a bit better. While we had everything out, we decided to rearrange cords.

Velcro cable ties are wonderful. These are strips of velcro with hook on one side, loop on the other. I've seen them in the garden department, at Harbor Freight, and at geek supply places. We stuck a bunch of big cup hooks under the desk for cable management, and occasionally a velcro tie to bundle the wires together. Wrap and unwrap as needed.

When we were done, she said we still need to do something about the power brick for her speakers--It is large, and falls out of the plug fairly often, especially when the dogs lie under her desk.

Velcro ties to the rescue! Poke a hole in the tie, run the screw for the cover plate through, and reattach the cover plate. Wrap the ends of the velcro around the heavy brick, and the dogs can't knock it loose anymore.










I did mine, too.

Watch Photography

The key to good photography is lighting. Most often you want diffused, even light rather than point sources.

My wife bought a "portable studio" that included a light tent, a background cloth, a tabletop tripod and 2 small daylight filtered halogen lights. This was an improvement, but it was also a pain to set up--In our house it is hard to find a big flat area other than the floor that isn't already occupied. I'm too old to lie on the floor. I made my own version of the studio suited for my work area.

My watch workbench has track lighting, giving me 6 movable halogen spotlights. This wasn't meant for photography--it was a cheap way of getting lots of light to the small area where I fix watches. By themselves, the lights are lousy for watch photography--lots of reflections, hard to see detail. However, they did make a good base for lighting a light tent.

I took a square wire grid from shelving, draped sheer white fabric over it, and attached a magnet. The magnet sticks the grid to a shelf bracket mounted in my work area, and the sheer fabric diffuses the lights. Sometimes the windows will add undesired reflections. When that happens I clothes pin a dark cloth with a hole for the lens. The hole is cut off center, so I can get various heights depending on how I clip it. The camera's white balance is set for incandescent--otherwise chrome cases are likely to look gold. The kit my wife got included a background cloth, I use it.

This setup isn't perfect, but I'm looking for decent results with little effort--it succeeds at that. It is far easier to get good pictures with this setup than with others I have tried, and it sets up and stores quickly. The next addition is probably going to be an adjustable light that I can set up in different positions

For a point and shoot without good native macro ability, I velcro a jeweler's loupe to the front of the lens. Focus is essentially done by moving the camera--you have to use the LCD screen. I'm using jeweler's loupes, available from Harbor Freight. a 2 or 3x is about right for a wristwatch, the 10x for individual parts. . In this case, I cut the front half of the loupe off, to avoid shadows on the pictures.



My current Kodak has a bigger, better lens than most point and shoot cameras, but that gives its own problems--The lens is too big to attach a loupe, and when holding one in place, the depth of field is about 1mm--If I'm focused on the top of a part, the bottom is out of focus. You can see here that one arm of the balance is almost in focus, the spring below blurry, as is the pivot above. This can be controlled by manually selecting a higher F-stop number, giving a greater depth of field. Cameras with smaller lenses typically have a wider depth of field, so this isn't as much of a problem.

A tripod makes all of this much easier, and is essential when the shutter speed gets low, as often happens when I change the f-stop. You don't need a fancy tripod, a tabletop model will work OK, although a floor model gives more flexibility. My floor tripod has a rack to carefully adjust the height, which makes focusing by distance easier.

A quick and dirty alternative to the light tent is a flash diffuser. I used to use watch paper held in front of the flash. (watch paper is similar to wrapping tissue) Anything sufficiently translucent will help, even just plain white paper. This eliminates white balance problems, cuts the flash power down so it doesn't overexpose, and softens up the shadows compared to raw flash. The tripod is less necessary to prevent blur from camera shake, but may be useful to assist in holding the position for proper focus.

Ubuntu vs Windows install

I just finished working on a temporary project helping a relatively new company split their computers off their former owner's network.

Although this effort was poorly organized and used brute force rather than the available Windows technology, that's not what this post is about.

The manual Windows install process is horrible. The install process for most Windows software is horrible, and the horror is magnified when you are doing this over and over. The problem isn't the technology, it is the implementation. The Ubuntu Linux process is far more user-friendly.

When installing XP, there are too many places where it halts progress and demands your attention. Worse, these halts aren't grouped together, so you have to keep paying attention to the screen. It might be 30 seconds to the next pause, it might be 15 minutes.

The progress meter is nearly useless--It has a very inaccurate guess at the total remaining time, but gives you no clue how long before it needs your attention next.

Installing software is just as bad. The typical install would involve clicking on the setup program to launch it. Then there's a sort of welcome page, to tell you that it is about to do what you just asked it to do. Next is a license page that you have to agree to, then a "start installing" button. At the end, there's a "finished" button to click. before moving to the next software.

Some stuff needs to be installed as the user. Some needs to be installed as admin. Some stuff needs admin privileges to install, but has to be installed as the user. There is no sudo command, and "run as" isn't a good substitute.

User files are scattered all over.

I realize the license page is unavoidable with some commercial software, but it should be combined--Running the install program should give a single page with as many options as will comfortably fit--one of them should be "do you agree to the license", another should be "quit when successfully installed". The only way you should have more than one page is if there are too many options to fit, or if certain options depend on others.

Adobe was a particularly bad setup--In addition to installing the software, we had the same "welcome, license, install, quit" process for each of 5 additional font packages for different languages.

Ubuntu has several versions of their install disks. The standard is a live CD that launches a fairly complete desktop as soon as you boot up with it, with one of the options "install". While installing with this CD, you can actually use the computer for other things. A few older computers that can run the installed version of Linux can't run the live CD--for them is the alternate, which is similar to a Windows install. Tonight I just installed Ubuntu on an older PC, using the "alternate", because it was handy. It asked a handful of questions in the first 5 or 10 minutes, then it started installing. When I came back, the install was done, and it was asking to install updates. Even better, the system is fairly complete at this point--It has the basic set of software that most people need.

Adding software is also simple--Find the software in Synaptic, click the box next to it. You might get another box to click to resolve dependencies. After you have chosen every program you want to install, click the "apply" button. Synaptic will install all the programs you selected without any more bother.

If you are reinstalling Linux, the user's home folder has the software configuration files for that user--When you restore the home folder, you are restoring all their settings.

I've been spoiled by the way EDS and GM had their systems set up--Almost all their computers are less than 3 years old, with carefully managed software and competent admins. I was thinking that Linux was close, but not quite up to Windows in ease of maintenance. I was wrong--In a less carefully controlled environment, Ubuntu is not only equal to Windows, it is considerably superior. I'm pretty sure that if Ubuntu were in a similarly controlled environment, it would be similarly successful.

PInlever or jeweled lever

The escapement is the part of a mechanical timepiece that sets the rate. It is the most crucial part to accuracy. The escapement on a watch is made up of the balance, hairspring, fork and escape wheel. (Click the picture to enlarge enough to read the labels. Picture is a 17 jewel Chinese skeleton watch. The part marked "fork" is the lever)

The balance wheel and hairspring combine run at a particular rate, generally between 3 to 8 ticks per second. This is based on the elasticity of the hairspring and the mass and weight distribution of the balance. Adding weight or increasing the effective diameter of the balance will slow the rate down. Increasing the length or decreasing the springiness of the hairspring will also slow the rate down.

Older watches were "tuned" roughly by adding or removing tiny screws and washers to change the weight of the rim. Ideally these would be added in pairs, so as not to change the poise (see below). Watchmakers would have packages of washers, each adding a certain number of seconds. Fine adjustment would be made with the regulator, a movable slot that slides along the hairspring, changing the effective length.

The mainspring attempts to turn the gears in the watch. The gears transmit this power to the escape wheel. When it rotates, it pushes on one arm of the lever, which in turn "kicks" the balance and causes it to rotate. The other arm of the lever blocks the escape wheel from turning more than 1/2 tooth. When the balance turns, it winds the hairspring until the hairspring is tight enough to make the balance go the opposite direction. The balance will then begin to move the lever--When the lever is released the arm blocking movement of the escape wheel releases it, gets another kick, and the first arm moves to block the escape wheel. This process repeats 3-8 times per second, depending on the watch.

Consistency is the key to a well-running watch. Temperature, position, how far the watch is wound, magnetism and friction all have an affect on the rate. Much of the cost of a fine movement is in counteracting these errors.

If the balance wheel is not perfectly poised (balanced), it will change how it rotates depending on the orientation of the watch-it may run differently when stem up than when stem down. This is known as positional error. On screwed balances this is adjusted by moving individual washers or screws from one screw position to another--This would keep the overall mass (and therefore the overall rate) the same, but change the poise. On smooth balances this is done by removing material from the proper spot on the balance rim.

Traditional steel hairsprings change their elasticity or "springiness" at different temperatures. Old high-grade watches would counter this by having split bimetalic balances with screws. The rim of the balance was made of a sandwich of different metals, with different expansion properties, similar to a metal thermometer. Each half of the rim is attached at one end only, the other is free to move based on the temperature. Adding weight to the free end will increase the amount of temperature compensation. Adding weight to the rim near the spokes has little to no effect on temperature compensation. By moving pairs of washers to matching positions on their respective halves of the balance, temperature compensation could be adjusted without affecting poise or average rate.

In the 20's, a new class of spring materials were invented that have little temperature sensitivity at normal temperatures. This allowed a smooth solid balance to equal the temperature performance of a bimetalic balance.

While the rest of the movement can cause timekeeping errors, the escapement is key. Rough parts will not be as consistent as smooth, and will wear faster.

Jewels in a mechanical watch are used to reduce wear and friction in critical areas. In modern watches these are synthetic sapphire or ruby. In watches before about 1902, these were actual mined gemstones--Sapphire or ruby for good watches, garnet for less expensive ones, and occasionally diamond for super grade watches. The typical jeweled wristwatch uses an anchor escapement, named after the shape of the lever. It will be at the same level as the escape wheel, and uses angled jewels glued in place where it contacts the escape wheel teeth. This gives the most consistent operation, and the best resistance to wear, but requires extreme precision in both manufacture and assembly.

Jeweled lever watches would typically come in either 7 jewel models, or odd numbers between 15 and 23. 7 is enough to properly jewel the entire escapement. 17 adds jewels to all the train pivots. Jewels above 17 are of marginal value, and jewels above 23 are essentially useless. (This is only counting the jewels in the basic timekeeping section, not in additions like automatic wind modules) Watches with a single jewel are not considered jeweled. The picture to the left is of 3 watch levers--The one above the date is a jeweled lever, the clear red blocks are jewels.

A pinlever is more forgiving. giving up precision in operation and long-term durability for ease of manufacture and in some cases impact resistance. The pinlever is simpler, usually stamped sheetmetal rather than the more complicated assembly of a jeweled lever. It sits below the level of the escape wheel, with round pins extending up to engage the escape wheel teeth. The shape of the pins requires a different shape of escape wheel teeth, and the interaction of these parts is compromised. Friction is higher, and is generally compensated by using a stronger mainspring, which also adds wear. These may use a layout similar to the anchor, or have a different angle between the pins and the tail. Both levers behind Lincoln's head are pinlevers.

Pinlever watches are most often either unjeweled (the traditional mechanical Timex) or have a single jewel (most Swiss and Hong Kong pinlevers). There were some pinlever watches with jeweled pivots--many of these would get extra useless jewels so they could claim "17 jewels" or more. These were a bit better than their unjeweled cousins, but not as good as a seven jewel with a fully jeweled escapement. Timex had a wierd hybrid--a 21 jewel version of their basic unjeweled pinlever, with shaped, jeweled pins.