Raleigh Marathon – 1985


What a fun bike to ride.

This was a customization of a pretty boring Raleigh into something MUCH more fun. The old-fashioned downward facing riding position is absolutely hilarious feeling, you might think that it just rides like you are in the drops but you’d be wrong.

The big huge cream tires make the whole thing feel incredibly smooth, the color scheme being taken from Pashley’s Guvnor line.

I am going to really try not to slap cream tires on everything… but this bike looks so damn good that I don’t know how well I will be able to resist.

Schwinn Le Tour – 1983


The Philosophy of the Force

Star Wars is ubiquitous.

“May the force be with you.” Is a phrase known across the globe. Culturally relevant to a slightly lesser extent, but on a similar scale, is the concept of the dichotomy between the Light and Dark sides of the Force. As the central magical conflict in the Star Wars franchise, it is the quintessential good vs. evil struggle that casts the setting solidly in a fantasy mold.

However, there is depth there that is generally unexplored in regard to the Jedi vs. Sith: I like to think that the Star Wars force conflict has been subject to overt and egregious Jedi propaganda manipulation. 

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Used Bikes

Nice BikeTODAY – We will get you on a bike. I dunno how that will be possible through the internet, but it sounds like the right thing to say.

More realistically, what we will do is to give you a checklist if you are ever looking at a used bike, say, off Craigslist.

Long story short: Rust is really bad, wrecked wheels and tires are really bad, a clean bike is really good, and things generally shouldn’t wobble, squeak, or rattle at all. More in-depth suggestions below!

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Column-Count

As always, CSS is weird.

I was under the mistaken impression that using column-count would easily replace a number of silly UL based approaches for siloed content, navigation, etc. Turns out not so much. It is really good at doing what it was built for, which is to flow text content through columns like a newspaper. Trying to use it or specific layout is… problematic.

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Stolen From the Internet.

“It doesn’t take talent to practice.”

AND

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

HOWEVER

“When talent works hard, hard work alone is fucked”

AND

“Sometimes talent can half-ass it and still beat hard work.”

Sounds like life is too complicated to fit in a soundbyte.

The Force Stumbles Out of Bed

SleepyForce

Sigh.

This is not going to be a happy review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I did not like the movie, hopefully that helps set the tenor of what is to follow. There will indeed be spoilers, but I will put them down in the second section of the review, where I start talking specifics. That section looks to have gotten siginificantly more… colorful… in terms of language as well, but I’ll provide plenty of warning before we get there, don’t worry :-j

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