The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Tag: Rants

And kvetching, too

Sharing The Road on Raymond Avenue: Part 2

A few days after I didn’t get sideswiped at the Vassar Main Entrance Rotary, we were returning from errands. Traffic is light, but Raymond Avenue doesn’t provide much clearance. This orange car is about as far away as one can expect:

Raymond Ave 2015-06-30 – door opening – 0

Two seconds later, however, there’s a door opening ahead of Mary (clicky for more dots):

Raymond Ave 2015-06-30 – door opening – 1

I’m shouting “DOOR! DOOR! DOOR!” in the hopes that the driver won’t step directly in front of Mary, but most likely the orange car whooshing by three feet away made more difference:

Raymond Ave 2015-06-30 – door opening – 2

Fortunately, there wasn’t any overtaking traffic and, during the four seconds after the orange car passed us, we could move to the left:

Raymond Ave 2015-06-30 – door opening – 3

The driver’s body language suggested that, until we passed her, she remained oblivious to the outside world and, in fact, she was probably annoyed that two cyclists came that close to her.

“Sharing the road” requires two parties. Raymond Avenue’s design doesn’t encourage motorists to share the road and certainly doesn’t provide a fair playing field for the most unprotected party in the transaction.

Broken by design, I’d call Raymond Avenue, and that’s pretty much what NYSDOT’s original planning documents admit.

2015-07-07
Making the Asterisk Visible

Spotted a new sign at the Van Wyck Road entrance to the Dutchess Rail Trail:

DCRT at Van Wyck Rd – ATV Patrol sign

The tiny print on the top sign still reads No Motorized Vehicles, but the bottom sign makes it explicit that that particular prohibition applies only to ordinary citizens.

Which matches up with the Sheriff’s ATVs I spotted a weeks earlier:

DCRT – Sheriff ATV Patrol – Page Park

As of late May, the No All Terrain Vehicles signs were still up. Maybe they still are.

According to the New York Times style guide and other reasonably erudite sources, the plural of ATV should be ATVS (or, if you have the luxury of mixed case, ATVs), not ATV’S.

2015-07-04
Right Turn On Red: After Stop, After Yield

With the green left-turn arrow indicating red for opposing traffic, everybody’s in the proper position. I’m crossing the stop line and leaning into the turn at about 15 mph:

Right On Red – Tucker at Friendly – 0 sec

New York State allows a right turn on red, but you’re supposed to stop and yield to other traffic. In that picture, the oncoming car is definitely stopped.

Three seconds later:

Right On Red – Tucker at Friendly – 3 sec

She hugged the curb to turn into the gas station entrance just to her right, which was the only thing that saved me. Braking hard in a turn slides you under the oncoming vehicle, ramming a school bus head-on is bad form, and sideswiping a car at speed never ends well.

I suppose I just don’t look nearly as fast as I am. Which, given the fairing and spinning feet, is hard to imagine.

2015-05-24
Monthly Image: Left Cross

It’s the start of a new riding season and we’re returning from a concert at Vassar. I’m cranking 20+ mph, pushed by a gusty tailwind.

T minus 7 seconds:

Cedar Valley Rd – Left Cross – T-7

The white car approaches the intersection a bit faster than usual, which leads me to expect a New York State Rolling Stop-and-Go right turn directly in front of me.

T minus 5 seconds:

Cedar Valley Rd – Left Cross – T-5

The white car slows enough that I now expect a stop with the front end well onto the shoulder. A quick check in the mirror shows no traffic behind me: I can take the lane if needed. This intersection always has a large gravel patch spanning the shoulder, so I must move closer to the fog line anyway.

T minus 2 seconds:

Cedar Valley Rd – Left Cross – T-2

The white car comes to a full stop, not too far onto the shoulder, and my fingers come off the brakes. I gotta work on that fingers-up position, though.

… Whoops, a classic left cross from the black SUV!

T minus 1 second:

Cedar Valley Rd – Left Cross – T-1

I’m now braking hard, barely to the left of the gravel patch.

T zero:

Cedar Valley Rd – Left Cross – T-0

Well, that was close.

Somewhat to my surprise, the white car hasn’t crept any further onto the shoulder.

The SUV driver gives me a cheery wave, as if to thank me for not scratching the doors. I never make hand gestures, but I did tell him he does nice work.

It’s hard to not see a faired long-wheelbase recumbent, head-on in bright sunlight, not to mention that I’m wearing my new Sugoi Zap Bike Jacket in Super Nova retroreflective lime green with retroreflective lime green utility gloves.

I. Am. Visible. In. Any. Light. Dammit.

It is, apparently, easy to mis-judge a bike’s speed, although driver-ed courses used to recommend that you err on the side of not trying to beat an oncoming vehicle. Perhaps that recommendation has become inoperative?

The corresponding maneuver by a car passing you is known as a right hook.

Memo to Self: Always look at the license plate to give the camera a straight-on picture.

2015-04-15
Where Web Content Comes From

Make sure you’re running an ad blocker and perhaps a script killer, feed “Larval Engineer received a Pilot InstaBoost” into your favorite search engine, along these lines:

Google

DuckDuckGo

Bing

The first (few) hits should be the various ways my original post from late last year appears on wordpress.com, but the rest (particularly from Google) will be spam blogs and scraper sites that ripped my text, ran it past a thesaurus (euphemistically known as article spinning), larded the result with keywords, and reposted the shattered remains. If you click on the links, you’ll have the experience of reading text where short sequences of words make sense, but the overall corpus leaves you shaking your head in disbelief.

Even though Google allegedly doesn’t reward such sites, they make up the bulk of its list. DuckDuckGo does a slightly better job of suppressing them and Bing kills nearly all of the junk, which suggests that Google operates with a powerful incentive to not notice problems in sites serving (its?) advertisements.

There’s obviously no point in getting annoyed with any of the participants…

FWIW, that particular post seems to have drawn the attention of scammers due to the presence of a trademarked brand name with good search-ability. Other posts have been more fortunate in escaping their attention, despite my glowing prose…

2015-04-11
It Wasn’t Quite Touching, So Ship It

Picked up a Prime Switched Outlet to help tame the U2711 monitor’s DisplayPort incompatibility and, being that type of guy, had to open it up to see what’s inside.

Good thing I did:

Prime Switched Outlet – stray wire strand

Admittedly, white is neutral, so that stray wire ~~would~~ should just pop the GFI, but, still …

You can wind up with events like this:

Burnt outlet expander

2015-04-05
Backyard Deer Herd

One deer might be cute:

Deer Herd – outlier

But the rest of the herd makes up for it:

Deer Herd – main

You’ll note the complete lack of understory vegetation; the only remaining plants can withstand continuous deer browsing. Deer have clipped all of the evergreens five feet off the ground, even through they don’t normally eat evergreens…

In fact, there’s no new tree growth in the Hudson Valley, because tree seedlings don’t stand a chance.

2015-03-28