How to get a ball

broderic on October 2, 2010


How to get a ball
Originally uploaded by browsermetrics.
Came early to OPACY for batting to snag a ball. Stood in centerfield bleachers as Tigers’ right handed batters hit it into the left field stands. Waited until Damon and the left handed hitters came up but the Tigers don’t have any jackets so balls weren’t falling into the stands. The fans were pleading with the players who were shagging flies for balls. Justin Verlander was generous tossing balls into he stands. I acted nonchalant so he wouldn’t throw directly to me. His final toss into the crowd went slightly to my left. I reached up and snagged it from the guy behind me. I’ve got another ball to add to he collection.

Replace broken spoke on Campagnolo Proton wheels

broderic on July 25, 2008

As you know, I’ve been riding my Kona PaddyWagon as my Gios is on the bike stand. I broke a spoke on my rear wheel. It was a Campagnolo Proton wheel so changing the spoke out is somewhat difficult because Campy uses some proprietary spokes when they build their own wheels. You can’t just go down to your bike store to get new spokes. You have to get a set of replacements. I got my from Brandford Bikes out in Seattle. Somewhat pricey, but the shop was charging me $20.00 for the service, before they had to go an order a the set.

You’ll also need a 5.5mm hex nut driver as it makes it easier to reach the nipple top. So to replace the spoke, remove the tire and the rim tape to expose the top of the nipple. The Protons have been discontinued but you can find the steps in the Neutron manual which are very similar wheels.

I broke the spoke on the cassette side. The spokes are straight pull at the hub that’s why you need specialized spokes. I also broke the spoke that use to reside closer to the center of the hub. The spokes cross over each other so I had to loosen the spoke that the broken spoke shared the slot in the hub. You then replace the spoke as normal. Put the other spoke back. And start tightening things up. True the wheel before you start putting the rim tape and tire back on.

That’s all you need to do. (I’m not done as I’m still trying to figure out how to true the wheel.

Good luck.

Compiling GNU smalltalk on a OS X

broderic on February 1, 2005

This is just for references, if anyone ever searches for compiling smalltalk on OS X in google. I was compiling the latest stable release, 2.1.9.

When compiling GNU smalltalk on Mac OS X, and you run into errors with poll.h, my suggestion is to comment the block of code which #includes sys/poll.h. You’ll find that the compilation will go more smoothly with the definitions in poll.h (the fake out section) rather than the definitions in sys/poll.h. In fact if you read, sys/poll.h it recommends you not #including it. Perhaps this is a bug and should be submitted to the maintainer of GNU smalltalk.