Brews you can use

I (re?)discovered the MAKE Magazine blog last weekend, and stumbled across a post on my favorite science/tech show of all time. The Secret Life of Machines was the creation of British special-effects artists Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod, and contains some truly superlative “how it works” demos, just the proper amount of wit (British, dry, of course), and none of the modern Discovery channel style overproduction to get in the way/make you want to throw something heavy at the TV.

Because of its quality and brief run, the show became somewhat of an obsession for me: its theme music (”The Russians are Coming” by Val Bennet, a reggae cover of Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”) was one of the first pieces of music I sought out back in the heady “illegal file sharing is cool” early days of napster, and I convinced Jess to buy the first two seasons on VHS for my birthday one year. The videos were aimed at the educational market and thus hideously expensive; they also left out the third “Secret Life of the Office” series, which includes (among other things), Tim and Rex demonstrating a pair of makeshift fax machines made from lathes.

The first comment on the MAKE blog post pointed out that Tim Hunkin posted a link on his site to a torrent of the full three seasons. Hey, no guilt. Download ctorrent, spend a day or two downloading 3.6GB of AVIs from random overseas hosts (nobody in the US serving it until I was finished), and start watching.

Best of all, Grace seems pretty interested in them. “I want to watch a show on Papa’s computer.” “Let’s watch the Vacuum Cleaner one.” Of course, comprehension/retention may be a little longer in coming. After finishing “The Internal Combustion Engine” she said: “That was a fun show.”

“Yes I thought so, too…. So, do you know how a car engine works now?”

<thoughtful pause> “I did, but I don’t remember. Let’s watch it again tomorrow.”

“Certainly.”

After putting it off for way too long, I finally started biking to work last Tuesday. I’ve car commuted twice since then, to give my legs a break, but I think bike’s the definite preferred commute. The bike commute keeps me awake and my mind engaged, so I just feel more energetic and alert throughout the day. It’s a nice natural high, and I can feel the beginnings of an addiction — I’ve noticed myself getting uncharacteristically cranky when I’d rather be biking.

I still have a bit of learning to do until I really know how to ride a bike, though. I remember it being much simpler as a kid — “pedal this way really fast, if something gets in your way, turn “. Part of that could have been simpler equipment. My first bike was single-speed cruiser, and by the time I moved in to a ten-speed, I didn’t really see the need to shift.

The ride this time around is a decent used Raleigh mountain bike with nice fat (and heavy) tubes and more gears than I know what to do with — 24 nominally, including the way-too-useful-for-me “Granny gear”. I chose it because (a) I liked the sturdy feel of the cruiser I outgrew long, long ago, and (b) I’m nearly 300 pounds, so part of me thinks I would crush a nice sleek (and light) road bike. I could use the exercise, anyway.

No pictures yet, but think:

but only one of me, and not as well-dressed.

I still haven’t gotten the hang of pedaling smoothly, or found a good cadence. One experienced biker at work suggested 90 rpm as a good spinning speed, and I started trying to find that. 90rpm = 3 revs every 2 seconds, or 3 pushes of the pedal every 2 seconds…. Think 3 beats per measure. Accent the first beat, and you’ve got a nice brisk Walz. “Tales from the Vienna woods” would be a good target. Currently, I seem to be dialing in at more “Blue Danube” speed when I can actually maintain a cadence. The usual mode, though is more like “Hall of the Mountain King” followed by panting and coasting.

Well, at least it gets me there…

I was just getting the urge to blog about various trivialities today, and things got all weird. Everyone I know (out to two degrees, so far) is OK and accounted for, with a few close calls. So far, at least, it’s turning out to be not as bad as it could have been.

The kids were probably feeding on some of the anxiety, and acting unruly. We took a walk to calm down a bit. There were thunderstorms approaching, causing air traffic to be re-routed over our neighborhood. The news choppers were constantly commuting to and from the scene of the disaster. Quite eerie.

Grace almost gets what’s going on. She’s just learning to ride a bike, and seems to have integrated this into her fears from a close call on the bike…. While walking home, she told me she didn’t want to ride her bike across a bridge, because it would break it and it would collapse. I tried to reassure her that very smart people design bridges to stay up, and it works most of the time. That appears to have worked — she suggested going over a “bridge that they haven’t built yet and we haven’t been over before” tomorrow.

What would I do without kids? The absurdities I can come up with pale in comparison.

I work pretty close to the bridge. I’m debating swinging by the area to see it for myself. It still doesn’t seem real…