First ride

It's a bit crisp outside, but I *had* to take the new bike for a quick spin around the block. Using throttle-only, it hits just over 20mph, which I guess is the limit for a class 2 e-bike. That's quite zippy for someone who hasn't ridden regularly in quite some time. It's a little too cold out there for me to really push the pedal-assist mode. There are five levels, and I hit 10mph on the lowest level without any effort at all. It felt quite strange to be sitting upright the entire time, because I have ridden drop-bars since I started riding multi-gear bike. More thoughts later.

My first e-bike

I used to be an avid cyclist, but I stopped several years ago and have gotten myself quite out of shape in the interim, so every attempt I've made to take it back up has been utter failure. I'm so out of shape that just getting on the bike is difficult for me. So, I went on Amazon and found one of the cheapest e-bikes I could find, a 26" mountain bike (I normally ride a 27" or 700c road or racing bike with drop bars) in the hope that the pedal assist can at least get me moving again, and I'll graduate back to my racing bike eventually. It should be delivered Friday, so hopefully I have a chance to post a review of it by next Monday :)

FWIW, here's a non-affiliate Amazon link to the 26" Totem Victor 2.0 that I purchased. I've read that many of the under $1000 bikes of any given style are pretty much the exact same bike with different branding on it, so, in this price range, it's best to go with the cheapest. With shipping factored in, this was, indeed, the cheapest I could find on Amazon. There were ones (basically, the exact same one) available for maybe $20 less which came out to more with the shipping, so, this is what I wound up with. I hope to assemble it Friday night and take my first spin around the block over the weekend. Lots about this bike will be different from the last bike I rode, so I am sure I'll have thoughts ;)

1932: The Great Emu War

From now on, anyone asking what my favorite movie is gets this - 1932: The Great Emu War. It's historical fiction, based on the actual war. This short film is absolutely fucking brilliant, and is as absurd as a movie based on this part of human history should be. The production value is top-notch, and the acting is over-the-top in just the right places - just as the acting in a movie with this premise should be. My favorite line of dialogue is a throw-away line which breaks the fourth wall, but I believe is the only line in the 30 minutes where it goes meta. Anyhow... On with the film:

20 years!

Here's a capture of my Greenapple page, which is what I first moved over to my own domain, from about 20 years ago. Man, I love archive.org!

Acer Aspire

I have a slightly older Acer Aspire laptop which has both HDMI and VGA outputs on the side. I assumed that those two outputs would mirror each other, or only one could be active at a time, so imagine my surprise when I plugged a monitor into each and had a triple-monitor setup on it under Linux. I am going to get a VGA-HDMI converter so that I can use both of my 32" monitors (which do not have VGA inputs) for work, and dedicate my more powerful Acer Predator laptop as a strictly gamming machine.

You can't re-write a blank page

I follow a number of musicians on YouTube, many of whom I've discovered via their collaboration with Frog Leap Studios. One of them is Mary Spender, but she does a lot more videos than just music, which I typically ignore. For some reason, I decided to click on one this AM before work, and she was talking the typical "Just start" type of pep-talk to those who might want to make a change or start a project but can't seem to, and, because I've had an idea for a novel stuck in my head for decades now, the line in the title of this post really resonates with me. Most writing is re-writing, and "you can't re-write a blank page."

Hack the Planet!

"Norman! This is Eddie Vedder in accounting." lmao

#hacktheplanet #hackersday