Pirate Free ?

I’ve been taking a look around the anti-piracy site Microsoft set up to honour their Global Anti-Piracy Day, which they chose to observe October 21. It includes quite in interesting map outlining what they are currently doing about their perceived problem, as well as thankful feedback from customers who have switched over to legal copies. Microsoft have always officially at least been quite indignant, not to mention litigious on the piracy topic and I understand why that needs to be their public stance, however methinks possibly they protest too much ! Putting aside the legalities for a moment, together with Romanian President Traian Basescu, I personally wonder whether consumer software piracy of at least the operating system is not actually a very good thing for them as it does a few things:

• builds mind share – the vast number of people right wrong or otherwise associate ‘personal computing’ with Microsoft as evidenced for example by the return rate of non-Windows based netbooks (four times higher than for XP based ones for one manufacturer)
• in the longer term it educates and influences the next generation of developers – cheap (free pirated copies) access to the OS actually sustains the pace of innovation of the Microsoft ecosystem
• dependencies – these encompass device architecture, peripherals and applications which work to extend the reach and continued lock-in of the consumer and business to the Microsoft ecosystem 

As others have suggested – perhaps what they should do is just give a version of the OS away for free to consumers and focus on services and applications.

Getting back to the Microsoft web site and the detailed list of actions being taken – one thing that I found amusing is the apparent lack of Russian Microsoft pirates, although China and 47 other countries are specifically mentioned – does that mean they think Russia is pirate free ?

Hmmmmmmm.

A Compost’d Tale

Like many folks, we gladly spend the $4 in gasoline to get our $3.50 in deposit refunds as we recycle cans and bottles, and we also brave -40 C weather, howling winds and snow to drag paper and cardboard to the outside recycle centres. I won’t say that we ‘hug trees’ as such, but we do like to at least look at them. It will come as no surprise at all then that when our friends Greg and Cate offered, for what I considered to be an excellent price (free) a deluxe, black plastic ‘Earth Machine’ compost bin, we leapt at the chance to try and make environmentally friendly dirt for our gardens.

I have to say that we doted on that bin – feeding it only the best hand picked vegetable scraps that money can buy. And when I say ‘best’ – I mean imported from far away places like Mexico and California. Of course one could argue that we really didn’t have a lot of choice. Lets face it, for 10 months out of the year there aren’t really any locally grown vegetables in Calgary, as we are locked in sub-zero weather ! At any rate, I suspect our ‘Earth Machine’ was better cared for than most people’s pets – due to the very dry climate here, I had to water the contents of the compost bin to keep it from drying out and therefore not digesting, and we fed it nutrients specially designed for composters to both speed up the process and also to ensure a well balanced, plant friendly resultant product. The contents were stirred weekly using a special tool to ensure an even mixture, and when its digestion was upset and the neighbours complained about the odour, we lovingly shredded newspaper in my cross-cut shredder, and thoroughly mixed it in to stabilise its delicate processes. In short, I have no doubt at all that it was a very happy, and contented composter. After many weeks of work, tender care and much, much eating of vegetables, we were verging on having what I would have to very modestly call ‘primo’ compost, and we were starting to discuss what part of the garden would be blessed with our cubic foot of natural goodness, and also possibly of organising tours so that friends and neighbours could come and stare at it and share our joy – but then a very unfortunate thing happened.

Our chimney needed repair, and when a crew of contractors dutifully showed up to get it started, we left them to it and went about our business elsewhere. At the end of the second day of renovations, I noticed that the beloved compost bin had had to be moved so they could do some of the work. No problem I thought to myself, and then I started to look around for where they had saved the contents of the ‘Earth Machine’ which we had so lovingly created. Alas, there was no little pile of deep, dark organic happiness to be seen anywhere ! It was with a sense of impending doom that I asked the owner of the stone mason company what he had done with the compost – ‘taken to the dump’ he replied quite cheerfully, together with all the other rubble from the work they were doing. You can well imagine my slack jawed look of utter dismay ! The only consolation I can draw, is that buried somewhere in the City of Calgary dump, is a small pocket of rich organic goodness which hopefully will have a positive impact amidst all of the other nasty stuff that goes into there !

Meanwhile – we have started to eat more Mexican vegetables ………

Does This Cloud Compute ?

Well – I see Microsoft this morning re-branded their cloud compute effort as ‘Azure’ which was previously described as being “Windows in a cloud” – hopefully one won’t accidentally open and allow someone to fall through, as the landing could be a bit rough !

Looking at the what is being presented, I would have said it looks like the typical combination of aspiration (vapour ware) and concept software (beta version) that is often presented by software companies. Microsoft has a history of of presenting ‘me too’ products to their corporate accounts and to the press, which often as much are really just an attempt to inject enough of what Gartner calls ‘FUD’ (fear, uncertainty and doubt) into the marketplace to keep clients from moving to a different non-Microsoft solution.  

The leader in the cloud compute space currently would seem to be Amazon with their EC2/EC3 and S3 Web Services offerings, and while many companies are using these, I have yet to see to any really large companies do so – the length of time it takes to make a decision in a large company typically means that whatever is being looked at is already obsolete long before a deployment is possible. A case in point would be my former employer where, with a bit of luck, Microsoft Vista will finally start to be deployed next year (they are still running Windows 2000) just in time for it to be superseded by Windows 7.

At any rate – there will be lots about this in the press over the next hours, days and weeks so it will be worth keeping an eye on. I personally tend to view cloud computing as a total package – as exemplified by the emergence of net devices (think of the eee PC, and the Android mobile phone) accessing web based document creation, email and media services (like Google Apps which Microsoft is also promising to offer in its next iteration of Office), as well as backend services such as storage, backups, financial applications etc. (as can be sourced on Amazon servers – or XCalibre, or Flexiscale, or Q-Layer, etc. servers) over the air via the internet. After a number of false starts and tentative small steps over the past several years, there does now finally seem to be some industry momentum building.

Putting aside the observation that Microsoft’s key objective is to maintain user lock-in to their product slate by building tight dependancies to other Microsoft technologies, having Microsoft come to the table with their ‘me too’ presentation today is a good thing in the long run for two reasons:

• the competition keeps the industry sharp – this is a rapidly evolving area with winners and losers yet to be decided
• their entry at this juncture adds validity to cloud compute technology putting it squarely on the radar of the larger corporate clients who are already Microsoft shops.

This could start to get quite interesting !

The Swap Meet

Yesterday was one of those typical Alberta autumn days – on the crisp side of cool at just below zero celsius, and not a cloud to be seen in a sky that was blue as far as the eye could see . It was a perfect day to go for a drive, and so I went north about 90 minutes up the highway to Red Deer to check out the motorcycle swap meet sponsored by the Central Alberta Canadian Vintage Motorcycle (CAVMG) club. This is an annual event – they actually have one each spring also – which is held at the Westerner Fair Grounds located at the south end of Red Deer, and which attracts folks from both the Edmonton and Calgary area and so tends to have a good turnout. Included in the $3 admission was a vintage motorcycle display, and they had quite a few bikes in various stages of restoration (project bike to concours level). Although the majority of what was there was H-D related, there was also a good mix of Japanese and European bikes on display, as well as vendors offering services and parts for a wide range of marques.  

It was a very pleasant way to spend a few hours on a Sunday, and as is usually the case, I learned a few things also. I was specifically looking for some leads on gauge repair options (tachometer, speedometer etc.) for my GT750 project, and I had a couple of good conversations with folks who had booths at the show, and who knew much more about gauge repair than I did. All in all, time well spent.

The next CAVMG Swap Meet event is April 5th. 2009 – its already on my calendar !

Mini Rollout – GT750 Project !

Today marked a small milestone in the GT750 Project I’m working on, as I fitted up the freshly painted side covers, tank and tail piece to the frame to check the fit and clearances one last time. Of course I’m biased, but I like how it looks. To the far left is what a late 1978/early 1979 GS750 looked like, and to the right you see how the GT750 is shaping up.

Extending the GT750 frame has preserved the correct arc for the rear wheel, and stretching out the tank and changing the seat level actually results in quite a comfortable riding position. As well, the line through the front reflector to the rear tail light is a close match for that of the factory GS750 which is the look I was aiming for. An obvious big difference is the wheels – the 1977 GS750B and 1978 GS750C both had spoked wheels, but the 1978 GS750EC had the ’snowflake’ pattern mag wheels – I may still decide to add a set to the project bike, as I do like the look of them.

I have a set of decals for the striping on the tank and rear tail piece coming from Reproduction Decals in eastern Canada which should be here sometime next week. I admit I find them a bit annoying to deal with as they are a Canadian company but price everything in US dollars so when the Canadian dollar is down, as it is this week, they are effectively making a bit of a windfall on both Canadian as well as US buyers. I will order the new tank badges and side cover badges from Badge Replica in Australia as the price is more reasonable, and the parts appear to be identical to what is offered by Reproduction Decals in Canada.

At the moment, I’m just waiting for a few more bits and pieces to arrive before I can get serious with the engine !

Its Election Time in Canada Too !

Yep – with all the focus on what’s happening to the south in what Allan Fotheringham once called ‘the excited States of America’, it is easy to overlook the fact we are having an election up here also ! And we actually have more than two parties to choose from, so it makes for all sorts of entertainment as they each try their best to buy the electorate with our own hard earned cash – in the past, that would not have been a problem as the Canadian dollar wasn’t really worth much anyway, but over the past year it has been flirting with credibility as it was actually above par with the American dollar for a brief, but giddy period before settling down slightly.

Keeping up with what the public was actually thinking during election time in the past has been the role of polls, but I’m sure at least a few Canadian folks will recall what Diefenbaker (the former Prime Minister, not the dog on the show ‘Due South’)  had to say about political polls. Thankfully, this is where technology can actually help ! Most folks by now may have heard of Twitter – its a service designed for short, snappy comments/statements as could be easily sent via text messaging on a mobile phone. These entries – called Tweets – are then relayed within your community of friends and family, or whomever. It has lots of uses, and possibly has business uses also – think of situations where you want to update a large number of people for a company event perhaps. In the past your choices were snail mail, email, fax, phone calls, voice based distribution lists, web site, etc.. Now you have the option of sending a Tweet to your Twitter community which they can access on their phone, email or whatever.

If you are running for office, you can use this tool as a means to get your message out – see this example from Obama as well as this one for McCain.  In Canada you have our Prime Minister (or at least one of his lackeys) tweeting away merrily here and his main competition from the Liberals and NDP are also active. For those subscribers who have made their tweets public, you have the possibility of scanning this collection of Twitter comment and then doing something with it. Twitter has opened up its interface and provided an API so you can do things like integrate Tweet searches into your blog, of which this is an example  as is the one (full disclosure here) that my son Sean and his friends Gavin and Zoe have done at the site Canadian Election News.  While the search tool isn’t as selective as would be ideal (one of the leaders names is Dion, and no, he is not a singer although he does do a good impression of cardboard), watching the messages scroll down the page in real time has an almost hypnotic quality. You can stop the scrolling by hovering over a specific message that interests you, as well as sort by party. Its hours of entertainment, or possibly I just need to get a better hobby, but whatever the case I do like the idea and its possible uses.

Thankfully the election will be over soon, but some of the applications that have been developed and the use cases put together using tools like Twitter will live on - Twitter – check it out – its got possibilities !

Caswell Tank Coating

I won’t duplicate what you can find elsewhere on the web about the use of epoxy fuel tank liners  - please see my previous post (here) or the GT750 project site for some links to several good sources of information, but I must say that I smiled to myself when I was mixing in the catalyst as all I could think about was my previous experience with two part resin/catalyst experiments in the Sandy household. When I was a teenager, my brother and I helped my Dad fiberglass a sailboat we were building in the basement of our house in Ontario – as we laid down the mixed resin and glass mats, invariably we would run out of time and the mixture would start to set, the container it was in would get too hot to hold, the smell was incredible (as I think back on it, I’m sure we were all higher than kites on the fumes) and my Dad would be rushing around at the last moment trying to apply rapidly solidifying gel that was turning into solid plastic so fast you had to be careful your hands didn’t become permanent deck fixtures ! I have to report that my Caswell experience was not nearly as exciting, so just a very few comments:

• The GT750 tank has several ridges on its underside that are difficult to get well coated inside the tank. You can see them in the photo to the right running left to right in the area of the tank  that would sit immediately above the frame. I used a small brush, and tried to coat what I could reach as best I could through the filler opening, but I suspect this was not entirely successful
• My tank had been steam cleaned, but I still followed the instructions that came with the Caswell kit, and rinsed out the inside of the tank with water, ensured it was well, dried (I used an old vacuum cleaner that has a blower option, so I had a good stream of warm air blowing inside the tank),  then rinsed it again with lacquer thinners and a handful of screws (to knock loose any rust flakes etc.) and again made sure it was well dried
• I made a small plate from scrap metal to fit the fuel petcock opening and used some old inner tube as a gasket – it worked fine. For the fuel filler opening, I just used an old filler cap and some Saran wrap (called cling wrap or Glad wrap in other countries) – the instructions say to use Saran wrap held in place with elastics, but the filler neck design doesn’t lend itself to doing this as you can’t easily make the elastics stay on
• You can’t easily drain either cleaning solvent or excess epoxy from the tank – and getting all the screws out took a while. The fuel filler opening has a sleeve on the inside of the tank making drainage via the filler opening impossible, and as the bottom of the tank is pretty well flat on both sides of the centre of the tank where is it raised to clear the frame (you can see this clearly in the previously mentioned photo to the right), getting good drainage via the small  fuel petcock opening is not really easy either. 
• The Caswell tank  sealer seems to be quite temperature sensitive, and you do need to have a relatively warm work area, other wise the mixture is too viscous and doesn’t  flow well on the inside of the tank. I ended up doing two applications, as I was not happy with the first attempt – each kit provides enough material to do one application to two tanks, or two applications to the same tank. After the first application, when I checked what little I could see of the inside of the tank with a mirror and a strong light, there were clearly several areas that had not been covered at all. My first application was at about 20C and so for my second attempt, I made sure everything was a toasty 24C, and the mixture was noticeably thinner and spread much more readily inside the tank – without a scope, it is impossible to tell if the inside of the tank really is fully coated, but at least the little bit that I can see does now look pretty good.
• There was no odour at all – doing this process inside the house would not be a problem
• You have lots of time – the mixture does not start to set for about 40 to 60 minutes, so there was no frantic rushing around required ! And once it does start to set, there is a long ‘rubbery’ period that gives you time to clean out any openings or threads if you want to – and I also noted that lacquer thinners will remove any spillage or smears from the outside of the tank if that should be required, and if you are careful and perhaps a bit lucky, it will not damage the paint.
• it would be nice if the mixture was tinted, as it would make it easier to see whether you have got good coverage, plus as the mixture is transparent what I can see now inside the tank is epoxied rusty metal. If I were to do this again, I would try to find a suitable colour tint to make the finished tank look a bit more professional.

Bottom line – from what I can see, I do now have a good coating of epoxy on the areas of the inside of the tank, so I’m finally ready to start painting !

Stats

One of the benefits (I think ?) with much of the new technology available is the amount of data that becomes available for analysis. Now this obviously is both good and bad, as you can have too much of a good thing, and much of the data is probably meaningless from a practicalities perspective anyway. As an example, my hosting services provider (Telus) , Google and WordPress all provide copious quantities of information on how my sites are being accessed, how long people stay, what they look at, if they indeed look at anything, where they come from, what sort of internet connection they are using, how they found the site, etc., etc., etc.. Much of this I ignore, although if I were running a business it could be useful data as it may allow me to better target my specific customers.  

As I’m retired, its really just more of a curiosity factor to poke around and see what is being tracked, but I did happen across an interesting snippet of information today about which browsers people have been using to access my GT750 project site, which is located here. According to Google, and also Telus, I am getting quite a few folks visiting using the Chrome browser which I find surprising as it hasn’t been out all that long – a chart showing the various browsers people are using as they access my site is below.

I do not pretend to be running a high traffic site – I get about 270 visits per day – but of those visits I’m intrigued at how many are not Microsoft Internet Explorer. If the numbers can be believed, roughly 11% are using Chrome which has only been out a short while, and roughly 34% are Firefox users. 

Clearly, it seems I will have to do some additional digging to try and confirm this, which is a pity as that sounds like work !