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Fieldsheer Highland II Review May 3, 2008

The Fieldsheer Highland II is a surprisingly affordable and thoroughly armored one-piece motorcycle suit. At $230 from Motorcycle Closeouts it’s quite possibly the most inexpensive way to get a full compliment of CE rated armor including hip and back. Its nearest competitor is the $450 Olympia Phantom (scroll for more).

Sizing:
It is critical, with a one piece, that you really read the sizing chart. Don’t just go with whatever size you “normally” are. The problem is, of course, that there’s no adjusting the distance between the crotch and the shoulders of a one-piece. If you’re too tall in a two piece the coat simply overlaps the pants less. In a one piece your have heavy duty fabric being yanked into your groin. I’m 5′9 1/2″, 140lbs, and according to the size chart I was a medium, so that’s what I ordered, and it fits perfectly.

The waist is very roomy but easily, and comfortably, tightened via a strap on each side with velcro on it’s end.

Temperature & Rain:
I can’t comment on the warm weather aspect of it yet (I’ll update this when there’s some hot weather to try it in) but I just took it out on the highway in 47 degree weather with an average intensity rain storm for about forty minutes. Prior to going out I was concerned by the reports I’d read of people complaining that riding in heavy rain left them with a wet crotch. I took special care to do up the inner flap that covers the zipper and is designed to keep the weather out and had no wetness whatsoever. When I took it off at my destination I found pretty much what you’d expect. The outer shell was slightly damp, but the plastic coating on the inside of the fabric had done its job and kept any of that from getting to me. There’s a nice breathable mesh to keep the plastic from touching your skin. The marketing claims that the coating has holes large enough to let water vapor from your skin pass out, but is still small enough that drops of water won’t make it in. I can tell you from experience with a dog bed that I didn’t realize was similarly coated that putting this in the dryer will most likely destroy the waterproofing.

As for temperature, I have to preface this by saying that I’m the type of person who keeps her house at 71 degrees. If it’s cooler than that I feel chilly and will typically put on a lightweight zip-up hoodie type thing. Wearing jeans, and a t-shirt under the Highland II with its insulated liner in, everything that was covered felt quite comfortable, whilst, for comparison, my exposed chin (still need to get the insert for my helmet) was not quite cold enough to be painful (to give you an idea of how cold I’d be without the Highland’s protection). On the return trip at about 11 pm, with the suit not 100% dried out, the rain had stopped and the roads had dried enough that I raised my top speed about 10-15mph and ended up feeling slightly cool on my upper arms, like maybe I should have worn a long sleeved t-shirt. I suspect that this is related to the fact that the silver material on the upper arms seems much more porous than the black everywhere else.

Inside, with the insulated liner in, this thing is a sauna. Once I put it on I couldn’t wait to get outside in the rain I was so hot. The liner is thin but surprisingly effective.

Ventalation:
The chest vents are pretty much as wide as they could possibly be. They are horizontal zippers that go all the way from the center zipper out across the chest and down the arm a few inches. They’ve got big long fabric tabs with a thin foam insert to keep them out straight, and make them easy to pull open or closed with gloves. I would like to see a hard plastic insert in or as the tab because I just can’t feel them with gloves and have to look to find them, but they’re high enough up, as they should be, that it can be awkward to see while wearing a helmet. Also, there’s no cinch or velcro or anything to hold them open wide like the Olympia Phantom. The insulating liner, unsurprisingly, blocks the openings. And I think this is acceptable. If you’re wearing a thermal liner you probably want to stay warm. I opened them up even though I had the liner in, just too see if they’d have an effect and it did help cool things slightly. I would prefer it if there was maybe a slit in the liner to let some of the air in to make this more useful on days that straddle the line between cool and warm. But, this is a really tricky thing for anyone to get right, and I’m not entirely sure how it’s addressed by other manufacturers.

Armor:
The armor is what convinced me to buy this. I didn’t find anything else in this price range (one piece or buying top and bottom separately) that had CE rated hip and back armor. I have seen a couple comments about the hip armor being uncomfortable but I had absolutely no problems with it. It’s a bit weird feeling at first, but after a few minutes I just forgot it was there.

I had to go to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and while there I didn’t feel like taking the thing completely off because carrying it around would have been a pain, so I just slipped out of the top half so that I wouldn’t melt. That’s when I discovered that the back piece is tall enough that you actually have to fold the suit down at the waist or the armor will make the top of the suit poke out from your back. This is actually a good thing. It means there’s enough in there to make a difference (41 cm). And folding it down is a non-issue once you realize you have to. It’s not like wearing a Knox Contour back protector but it’s far better than most tops seem to offer. It does not have any chest armor but Motoport is the only company I’ve come across that has suits with built in chest armor and I could buy four of this suit for one of theirs.

Pockets:
The thigh pockets are nice and deep and are done so that there’s actually two pockets in the same location. One is accessed from the top via velcro and one from the side via a zipper. The pocket was deep enough, and the velcro strong enough, that I think I’d have trouble getting anything out of it while moving (toll money maybe). There’s a tiny pocket just above the left wrist that makes no sense to me. Maybe it’s for change, but it would be really difficult to access at a toll booth. I think it might be useful to keep quarters in for meters. There’s an inside chest pocket that is big enough to hold the fattest of cell phones with ease. The external pocket on the right breast has a vertical zipper and could hold a cell phone or camera or something like that. The left breast has another dual pocket setup about six inches square. There’s also a zipper at pants-pocket level that would allow access to your pants pockets from the outside but the hip armor gets in the way.

Overall I like the pockets but wish there was one I felt I could access more easily, with gloves, for toll booths.

As an aside, I realize it’s nit-picky but I’d like to see a zipper in front of the hip armor so that I could at least access the front pockets in my jeans and maybe squirm my hand back to the back pocket. I tend to throw my keys in a back pocket when I’m getting things together, and if I forget to take them out before I put on the suit I have to undo velcro and zipper and squirm an arm out of the top then reach back in to get them, then reverse the process. Also, I’d love it if it had a back pocket like the Olympia Phantom to shove a Camelbak into.

Velcro & Zippers:
One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen about the Olympia Phantom is that there’s so much velcro on it that it constantly gets stuck to itself when you take it off and you have to un-stick it all when you want to use the suit again. I just don’t see this happening at all on this suit. They’ve made judicious use of velcro everywhere. There are two horizontal veclro closures that go around the top of each boot and undoing them makes it really easy to get your boots on and off, or lace them up, or whatever.

The zippers all feel well made and are nice and fat. the main zipper goes down the chest and down the inseam of the left leg. There’s a matching zipper from the bottom of the right leg up the inseam to about the crotch. Pocket zippers are easy to use.

I’ve got no complaints about its closure system at all.

Visibility:
The thing that left me going back and forth between this suit and the Olypmia Phantom was that while this suit had more armor in case of a crash, the Olypmia had an incredible neon green that would help prevent the need for armor in the first place. The Highland II has a thin retroreflective strip across the back and the top of the chest vents, a wide vertical retroreflective strip that comes up about six inches from the leg bottom, and retroreflective piping around the edge of the elbow and shoulder armor. The silver accents on the arms and left breast pocket looks quite reflective in person, but isn’t notably more reflective at night than your average gray shirt.

I understand that the market demands cool looking things not visible things, and that the Olympia Phantom in neon green is not particularly stylish looking. But, the point of buying safety gear is to stay safe not win a fashion pageant and I would much rather look dorky on my bike and be seen, and avoided, by everyone than be “cool” and unnoticed by cagers.

I think Fieldsheer has done a really poor job of making the Highland II visible at night. Yes, it could be worse, but only barely. Rev’It has show that you can make stylish looking technical garments from lighter, more visible colors (check out the Cayenne Pro jacket). If we are to assume, that for economic reasons, they’re only going to put it out in one color, and feel that black would sell best there still a number of things I would improve: The retroreflective strip on the back needs to be at least twice as wide. I’d add retroreflective strips down the outside of each leg and arm to make it visible from the side. While I’m thankful that there’s anything on the leg at all, you want the reflective stuff to be up high, directly in a drivers line of sight. Down by my feet misses the point somewhat. The retroreflective piping around the shoulder and elbow armor looks neat, and I’m glad it’s there, but I am totally unconvinced that it would help add to my safety in any measurable way.

Comfort / fit:
No complaints at all. The sizing chart worked for me. There’s no pulling at the crotch or neck, the armor seems to fall in just about the right place. The neck closure is adjustable and fits comfortably. The hip armor wasn’t uncomfortable at all, and quickly forgotten about (as it should be).

Maintenance:
The top half of the liner is held in with one long zipper, like most coats. The lower half is velcroed in. The top is, unsurprisingly easy to remove. The bottom is surprisingly easy. The zippers running all the way down each leg make it very easy to open up and get to.

The booklet that comes with it only says how to clean the armor inserts (wet cloth) but not the suit itself, which is just stupid. My guess is that this is a hand wash only, or maybe Nikwax in the gentle cycle. Avoid the dryer at all costs. I believe that sticking it in a dryer will ruin your waterproofing.

Materials:
The majority of the Highland II is 600 denier Carbolex which is a polyester material with an abrasion resistance roughly double that of 500 denier Cordura (also polyester based). If you want great abrasion resistance / tear strength that won’t melt, you get Kevlar, and that costs the manufacturer something like $50 a yard, so it’s going to cost you a very pretty penny. Fortunately the shoulders, elbows, knees, and shins are also protected with a “ballistic overlay”. Ballistic Nylon is 1050 denier nylon and was originally designed to stop flying shrapnel from nearby bullet or artillery hits, but not the bullet itself. These days it seems to mostly mean that it’s really heavy duty. What Fieldsheer doesn’t mention in the marketing is that the ass is also covered. Seeing as they took the time to put a special butt covering, I think it would be great if they’d have added a piece of 1/8″ dense foam underneath it for extra cushioning.

As tear resistance and abrasion resistance seem to go hand in hand I would guess that the tear strength of 500 denier Carbolex is roughly 45 lbs. Jeans are 4.5, 620 denier Cordura is 35, competition grade leather is 80-110, and Kevlar is about 1260. My personal belief, based on what I’ve read, is that the abrasion resistance of Carbolex and Cordura is high enough to withstand the vast majority of crashes and that most of your high impact places are also covered by armor and the “ballistic overlay” so, until I can afford a thousand dollars or more for kevlar one piece, I’m ok with these materials.

Conclusion:
Overall I feel this is an excellent value for the money, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of using this without a nice high visibility vest over it, and I’m reserving judgment on its performance in warm weather (wearing a vest for visibility is going to make it even worse). I am thrilled with the fact that someone is offering a suit that also has CE rated hip and back armor at such an affordable price. Fieldsheer deserves massive kudos for this, because it removes any excuse for people not wearing proper armor. If money is tight but you’re concerned about getting some real protection then I would highly recommend the Fieldsheer Highland II. If you can spend $450 you might want to go with the Olypmia Phantom because the Phantom has excellent reviews when it comes to waterproofing and good reviews for warm weather, although the phantom appears to be more of a pain to get in to.

Since I live in new england, and ride year round (as long as the roads are clear) the majority of the time I’m on my bike is not “warm weather”, I’m not too worried if it is a little toasty. Also, I’ll probably end up removing the back armor and wearing a Knox Gilet Air underneath it because I want chest protection too and I believe the back protection goes down farther in the Gilete Air.

Side note: I’d really like to see is someone copy the basic idea of Motoport’s “Tri-Armor” but in a CE rated version. I’m having a lot of trouble trusting a company (Motoport) that simply refuses to get its armor rated after all these years, but I love the coverage their Tri-Armor provides.

Not as absent as it seems April 28, 2008

I haven’t posted here much, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t been posting. ;)

You see, I try and keep this blog fairly focused on useful articles, and leave my personal life out of it. As you may have noticed, some of the personal had been creeping back in here, and then I dabbled with a couple comics… but I really did want to keep this more… useful.

Well, for those of you who’ve been reading via syndicated feeds, or not paying attention to the sidebar on the site, I’ve been actually drawing something every week day, and accompanying it with a personal entry about the day over at comic.masukomi.org You’d think from the name of the site that they’d be in comic format, and that was the original intent, but a comic requires a short story to tell and it turns out that my day-to-day life involves a lot of staring at screens… Instead of a comic, I ended up with little snapshots of things that captured my attention, random events, introspective moments, and thoughts that percolated through my brain…

Looking back through them to grab some example links for you, I find that, together, they make an interesting little look at my life. Well, interesting to me at least… but maybe to some of you too. I always find it interesting to get little glimpses into some peoples lives. It’s why I follow some of the people I do on Twitter.

So, if you think a daily drawing (sometimes detailed, sometimes not) with no punch line, and some optional related thoughts might be interesting, please check out comic.masukomi.org, and don’t worry, I’ll keep posting here, but now that the comic side exists I can keep this more focused, and I just haven’t had anything particularly applicable to add here as of late.

Dessert Response OR F* Tibet April 16, 2008

Warning: The following will probably be offensive to the humor impaired.

To those who aren’t geeks, and don’t live with them, I must first explain a bit about geek humor. We love word plays. We love intentionally seeing the humor in taking people at what they say instead of what they mean. In this case Silly Man didn’t say what he meant so we could only assume he was referring to what came before.  Also, in general, we have no regard for geopolitical borders. We generally consider all nationalities equal and believe that everyone should be free regardless of where they happen to be on the planet. I have, obviously, edited this, to protect the innocent. However, if you work at the company where this happened please leave anonymous comments with some of the other desert responses.

a_geek: Meanwhile my company has gone to total hell. All because of dessert.
masukomi: I can’t tell if you’re joking or not
a_geek: Let me see how many emails have been sent on the matter of dessert.
a_geek: approximately 1250 since last Friday.
masukomi: arguing for having or not having some? Or, is it an issue of what the dessert is?
a_geek: It’s more of an issue about a particular dessert.
a_geek: Let me see…
masukomi: oh? this sounds interesting
masukomi: has hr become involved? has anyone been sent to “sensitivity training”?
a_geek: Here’s the original email, sent to [a C-level]

Hi [C-level],

This is from the menu of the [ place to eat ] on April 10:
Free Tibet Goji-Chocolate Crème Pie with a
Chocolate Macadamia Coconut Date Crust
Macadamia Crème, Raw Cacao Powder, Vanilla Bean, Agave, Coconut
Flakes, Goji Berries, Coconut Butter, Strawberry Infused Blue Agave
Syrup, Medjool Dates, Sea Salt

If there is no good answer and action from the Company, I will leave
[company name]. I know I am not important for [company name], but it’s the only thing
I can do to protest, and I don’t want to work at such a company.

–[Silly Man]

masukomi: …. the complaint is that he’s Chinese and it’s offensive that [company name] should be suggesting that Tibet be freed?
masukomi: I think [Silly Man] should leave anyway for his inability to write a coherent e-mail stating his issues.
masukomi: He didn’t ever actually say what he wanted an answer to
a_geek: That was one of the original points.
masukomi: You could read that and think an appropriate answer was to create a response desert.
Maybe an “oppress Tibet meringue pie”
a_geek: There’s been suggestions for “war of northern aggression chitlins” on MLK day.
masukomi: Hahahah! Excellent!
a_geek: As well as “Free Northern Ireland Dessert” which someone in London quickly corrected and said it should be called “Bloody Sundae”.
masukomi: hehe
masukomi: damn, I want in on this thread. It must be leaked!
a_geek: There’s been apologies, petitions to recant apologies, a suspension, a petition to retract the suspension, and a donation fund for the suspended.
masukomi: hahaha…. can I just tell you how much I love geeks?
a_geek: And now there’s suggestions for [company name] tshirts which say “F* Tibet” on the back so those pro/anti-tibet can both wear it.
masukomi: Hah
masukomi: that’s awesome. I wan’t that shirt.
a_geek: I would totally get one and wear it.
masukomi: just so that when they get all offended at whichever side they think I’m supporting I can respond by getting all offended that they could think such a thing.
a_geek: But email has basically imploded at this point. Clearly a number of people aren’t getting any work done.

And yes, I made the shirt. And yes, you can have one too.

How to create a Test Suite in Perl’s Test::Unit v0.25 April 9, 2008

If your Test Case is a package whose goal is to test all aspects of a particular class then a Test Suite is something which kicks off a collection of related Test Cases. As with most things in Test::Unit it’s really easy to do and also terribly documented. So, without further ado…

You need something to kick off all your tests:

-----------------------

use Test::Unit::HarnessUnit;
use My::Test::Suite::Package;

my $testrunner = Test::Unit::HarnessUnit->new();
$testrunner->start("My::Test::Suite::Package");

-----------------------

Next you need the test suite it’s going to kick off:

-----------------------

package My::Test::Suite::Package;
use base qw/Test::Unit::TestSuite/;

# returns an array of the fully qualified names of the TestCase
# based classes you wish to run.
sub include_tests() {
    return ('Some::Test::Case',
        'Some::Test::Case2',
        'Some::Test::Case3);
}

1;

-----------------------

That’s it. Happy testing.

So you want to ride a motorcycle… and not die April 5, 2008

Lets be totally clear here. The statistics say that your are roughly as likely to get in an accident while driving a motorcycle as you are while driving a car. The obvious difference being that a car has a safety cage, and a motorcyle has, well… nothing. So, if you have a brain, you’re going to want to take steps to compensate for that missing safety cage. There’s no guarantee any of this will keep you from dying but it’ll seriously increase your chances of survival.

DISCLAIMER: I’m just a chick who likes to ride. I’m not a racer. I’m not a manufacturer or a scientist. Everything here is purely my opinion based on the research I’ve done. I’m compiling it here in hopes that it’ll save you from having to do quite as much digging as I’ve had to do.

Before we get started I’d like to point you to WebBikeWorld.com It’s filled with tons of useful information and reviews and something you should definitely bookmark.
Armor

Armor is, of course, critical. If the armor is worth buying it’s CE rated. There’s CE level 1, 2, and 3. Most things are Level one rated which is a hell of a lot better than nothing but you really want to shoot for two because it transmits one half as much energy to you upon impact. Level three is for racing and I have yet to encounter any consumer level stuff that’s rated level 3. As with most things Wikepedia has a nice article that covers the basics. Ratings refer to kilonewtons, and in case you don’t know, “A kiloNewton (kN) is a measure of force, rather than a measure of static weight or mass. Force is calculated by multiplying mass by acceleration. One kiloNewton equals approximately 100kg when the accelerating force of gravity is acting on it.”

Padding is not armor. There are a lot of motorcycle jackets out there with a little foam padding down over your spine. This is totally useless. It doesn’t hurt to have but it doesn’t help either.

The next question is “what to armor?” The answer is, absolutely everything you can.

Jackets will typically have shoulder, elbow, and fore-arm armor. Which leaves your spine and chest unprotected… pfft, who needs a spine or internal organs! So, you’re going to need to compensate. There are some companies that make form fitting, comfortable spine and chest protectors that won’t leave you looking like a football player. Knox is the brand you’ll see pretty much everywhere. Here’s a video showing some Knox back and chest armor.

Pants will typically have knee and shin protection but no hip. The only separate hip armor I’ve seen has been, essentially, armor shoved into pockets on bicycle shorts (Knox makes this too), and while I can envision putting on such a garment when suiting up for a motorcycle race, it’s unrealistic to expect anyone to don such a thing for their daily commute to work, or regular weekend rides. And while I always say it’s better to be safe than look good, even I think these things look idiotic.

Garment Materials

Here it’s pretty simple. You have two choices worth considering Cordura/Dynatech, and best of all, Kevlar. Cordura comes in various Deniers which has a variety of related definitions which essentially mean how dense the fabric is. The higher the number the better. I’ve seen garments with denier’s of 2000. There’s probably higher Cotton Jeans and 70 denier nylon require 4.5 pounds of force to tear. That’s it. That’s nothing. 620 denier takes 35 pounds which still doesn’t sound like a lot to me when you crash at highway speed. 1000 denier is 110 pounds which is getting better and is about the same as really good, new leather, but it’s still not much when you compare it to good kevlar which requires over 1,200 pounds to tear.

What’s important about this is that the harder it is for your suit to tear the less likely the road (or whatever else you’re rolling over) will have a chance to scrape away flesh.

But, there’s a subtle issue that doesn’t get nearly enough talk-time. Melting. The friction of your weight being shoved across asphalt at 60+ mph is severe and quickly converts into a lot of heat. What’s worse than road rash? Road rash with plastic melted into it. So, do your research and avoid suits that are made from polyester. On a related note I’ve read anecdotal evidence that if you’ve got something like good Kevlar that won’t melt the heat will still be there and possibly melt any polyester clothing you’re wearing under it.

Helmets

When it comes to helmets there are three certifications: DOT (required to use in the US), Snell (independent standards body), and the ECE 22-05. There’s a great deal of controversy over the validity of Snell certification for motorcycle. Motorcyclist Online does a good job of explaining the problem with a series of recent tests they did.

The end result is that if you’re concerned about the number of Gs that will be passed on to your brain during a crash you anything DOT approved is decent, anything ECE 22-05 is better. Making helmets that meet the unrealistic Snell tests results in harder helmets that tend to pass on more Gs to you, BUT they still pass DOT so they’re still decent. In the end, when all the helmets are whacked with hard things, the cost of a helmet has no bearing on how safe it’ll keep you.

The price difference between helmets pretty much determines which bells and whistles you get. Like lighter materials, fancy paint jobs, LED lights on the back, easy to remove washable clean liners, or visors designed to not fog in the dead of winter.

It should be obvious, but if safety is your concern your only choice is a full face helmet with chin guard. The two non-obvious things that I may have conceptually grasped when I was a new rider but never truly appreciated then was just how much of a pain in the ass the sun and fogged visors can be.

Sun:
You can’t flip down a shade to keep the direct sun out of your eyes like you can in a car. With most helmets you’re stuck with whatever vizor you happen to have on at the moment the sun appears. If your helmet is form fitting (as it should be) you may find that (sun)glasses don’t work as well as you’d wish because they get moved up or down a little by the padding. My recommendation is to invest in a tinted visor. But, if you ride at night too you’re going to want a helmet that lets you switch it for a clear one really easily. This is where something like Scorpion’s SpeedShift comes in handy. It makes it very easy to pop off the current visor and replace it. Scorpion and HJC (and others?) make helmets with retractable inner sun-visors, which is extremely cool. I’d love to get my hands on one of those for this summer. If you know of another manufacturer with a similar feature, please let me know.

Fogged visors:
It’s not as much of an issue in the summer but if you find yourself riding in cool weather this is a massive pain in the ass. With my old helmet I’d have to lift the visor at every stop-light or it would totally fog over and then put it down again when I started moving lest I freeze. Scorpion is also well known for helmets that don’t fog easily. It’s partly the coating on their visors, and partly the way they direct air over, or away from, them. They also make a snow helmet with a two paned visor with built in electric heating element.

WebBikeWorld has a good motorcycle FAQ that you should definitely read.

Boots

Motorcycle boots are a lot like ski boots. You want to keep your ankle from twisting, prevent the heel or ankle bones from damage upon impact, and have a material that will survive being dragged across the road. The things you want that a ski-boot doesn’t offer are the ability to more-easily bend your ankle vertically (for shifting), nice grippy bottoms, the ability to walk like a human. Some boots will also provide you with good shin protection, because the armor in your pants probably doesn’t extend down terribly far below the knees. Everything else is style, and there are a lot of styles to choose from. Many have armor in the right places but most of the time it isn’t CE rated so you’ll just have to use your best judgement. When choosing a boot don’t forget about waterproofing.

Gloves

The main thing to consider about gloves is the temperature you’re going to use them in. You’ll probably want a summer and winter pair because, speaking from experience, riding in the cold, with the wrong gloves, is a painful experience, and it probably slows down your hand’s reaction times. I’ve never seen gloves with CE rated armor, as it’s probably nigh-impossible to create ones that anyone would wear. Some have hard carbon fiber and / or  Kevlar protection on the knuckles and back of the hand, but I’ve never seen any winter gloves like this. You’re going to want to keep your eyes open for gloves that protect your wrist and offer some protection for the end of your ulna (the outside bone in your forearm).

As a programmer I would be screwed without the use of my hands, so I always wear full leather gloves with some sort of extra padding or armor across the back and fingers to keep them as safe as I can. Waterproofing is even more important in gloves than it is in boots because they’re right out there in the front getting pounded with water, but it’s pretty hard to get right, and if a glove is waterproof it means it’s not going to breathe well, so you’re damned if you do damned if you don’t. My advice is to invest in some waterproofing spray, and maybe consider different gloves for rain vs dry if your hands tend to get sweaty. Boots at least get a little rain protection from the angle you hold them at (or from the front of a scooter).

Tires

I just don’t have the knowledge to provide you with much advice in this department. Tires do make a difference. Just like a car there are different tires for different conditions. What’s more notable is how little tire a motorcycle has touching the road. Less tire means less grip, and warmer tires adhere to the road better. I’ll let you contemplate the implications for yourself.

Conclusion

Looking cool is not a good enough reason to not wear armor, especially not when there’s some excellent protection out there that looks good too, but as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. Stay safe, and either spend what it takes to do so or don’t ride. Your life and livelyhood are not worth one more ride.

—-

If you spot any errors in this post, or things you think could be improved, please let me know so that I can correct them.

Kate’s incredibly simple Catfish recipe March 30, 2008

I’m a big fan of dishes that are easy and fast. One night I was at the store, saw some catfish and decided to buy mysef a fillet. When I got it home I had to find some way to make it interesting with my limited spices. The result has a flavor that very much resembles the physical texture you want to shoot for: lightly seared on the outside that, once breached, reveals a nice soft middle. This will take less than 10 minutes to prepare and cook.

Near East makes a sun-dried tomato and rice box that, like everything of theirs, is trivial to make and goes well with this*. We had it with a nice red wine this time but, in retrospect, the flavor is a bit too powerful for wine. Knudsen’s spritzers worked well but I think that the perfect drink for this would be mango juice, although you might want to swap the sun-dried tomato rice with a simpler rice-pilaf if you went that way. If you live near an Indian restaurant you may want to snag some Mango Lassis because this’ll be a little hot. But, neither Miller, nor I, are fans of hot foods and we both like this dish.

Ingredients:

• catfish filet
• crushed red pepper (preferably freshly ground)
• black pepper (also freshly ground)
• oregano
• olive oil

You’ll want 1/2 - 3/4 of a fillet per person. Your pan should be medium high: hot enough to sear the outside  of the fish but but not so hot that it won’t have time to cook all the way through.

Coat the bottom of the pan in a thin layer of olive oil, and when it’s hot throw it the whole fillets. Quickly grind on a healthy amount of black pepper (imagine you’re having sunny side up eggs and you reallllly like black pepper). Grind on the red pepper. Grind on more red pepper. Hmm, no I don’t think you understand. You see how much black pepper you put on? Yeah, you want about 125-150% of that amount. Throw on the oregano and quickly flip the filet. Don’t try and do it slow and gentle. Catfish gets really flaky as it cooks and once it starts to break apart it’ll just disintegrate. So, get your spatula under there, and lift and flip in one quick motion (but don’t slap it down, and watch out for hot oil spatter).

Coat the seconds side just like you did the first.  Cover and let sit for a few minutes. Once the bottom has started to sear flip it, leave the cover off for a minute to let the moisture escape that had built up before, make sure it’s still got enough olive oil left, then cover for a few more minutes. Take the cover off and after a minute or so, turn off the heat. You want to be careful at this point because the fish will flake really easily.

What to expect: This will have a strong initial hit that will clear out your sinuses followed up with the gentle flavor of the fish. I think the peppers actually make the catfish flavor a seem lot milder than i remember from my childhood. The searing is really critical to pulling this dish off. If after that first spice side is flipped back it doesn’t have a nice red-gold sear going on turn it right back over. It’s a lot harder to redo it after the other side is done because it’ll fall apart easily.

Notes: Miller suggests dill instead of the oregano. I say experiment with almost any dried green leafy bits you have laying around. I’m going to try dried parsley next time. The oregano isn’t quite flavorful enough. I recommend starting to grind after it’s already in the pan so that the spices that miss the fish fall into the oil and thus get cooked into it as you go. I don’t cook this with lemon juice, or personally think that it adds much to the flavor when added afterwards but it doesn’t taste bad at all and pouring some on after does tend to calm down the heat if it’s a bit much for you.

*I have no idea how long the rice takes to cook. I just stuck it in my kick-ass rice-cooker and told it when I wanted it to finish. I can’t tell you how how awesome this rice-cooker is. Yes, I realize it’s “just a rice cooker” but it is really well made, wonderfully designed, and does a kick-ass job of making sure different rices, and rice and veggie combinations come out right, and compensating for when I put in too much water (easy to do when you’ve got moist veggies in there too).

LazyWeb Idea: Gravatar + Network of sites = Gravanetric March 20, 2008

Pretty much everyone agrees that Gravatar rocks. A global avatar that shows up wherever you make a comment on a blog (sometimes even in your desktop apps). And I don’t think anyone other than naive VC guys wants another “social networking” site, so I’m not going there. But, imagine what would happen if everytime you made a comment on a blog that used Gravatars a ping was sent off to the “Gravanetric” servers with two bits of information the hash of your e-mail and the root url of the site you posted too.

Then you could start to graph shared interests. Imagine a simple force-directed graph with the Gravatars of people who posted to them arrayed around a central site node, or vice-versa, or a graph of the sites with lines of different thickness between them to denote how much of their community is shared. Then you could look up a site you liked and see what other sites people thought were interesting enough to comment on, which would mean it more likely that you’d want to read, and maybe comment on, what’s at that site too. Or, you could enter in your e-mail address and it could show you other people like you, or maybe graph the network of sites you’ve visited. If you added in the ability for a person to associate an URL with their Gravatar then you could go find out more about the people similar to you.

Visualizing this would be trivial with something like JsViz. The only trick would be deciding how much to visualize. There’s really not a lot to the app itself either, although you’d have to plan for some pretty huge database tables.

Throw in an API for people to query x degrees of separation of sites, or people or anything else interesting and you’ve got a giant ball of coolness. The API could allow them to overlay it with links to the people who were signed up to their TrueLoveForever.com type site and you’ve got some interesting possibilities. Maybe make use of the API free for < 100 requests a day like Google, and other sites do, but charge if anyone wants to make some significant number of queries…. Plus you can always throw banner ads on the site. Heck, you might even make some money off of this.

Obviously this would be easiest for the Guys over at Automattic since they’ve already got the Gravatar infrastructure in place and know exactly what kind of load they’d need to handle before going into it.

Finding a decent Vector graphics app for OS X March 17, 2008

Preface: I killed my previous post about why I wouldn’t buy LineForms or VectorDesigner. It was poorly written and after some serious re-evaluation I ended up buying LineForms.

—-

A weekend without net, and a desire to draw left me desperately trying to find a vector based drawing package that worked they way I wanted. I re-evaluated VectorDesigner, LineForm, and InkScape, and tried out Zeus Draw and Drawit Lite.

There was one criteria for serious reconsideration. Any app that could do it would be given a real chance: draw a line, with the tablet that gets fatter when I press harder and thinner when I let up. Freehand and Illustrator have both done this for years and years but I’m not considering them because I’m not willing to shell out $600+ dollars for a drawing app or put pirated software on my computer.

InkScape wold probably do everything I need and more, but on my Ubuntu Box it won’t recognize that there’s a tablet attached so you can’t enable the pressure sensitive support which is off by default. The X11 server on OS X doesn’t seem to pass it the info that there’s a tablet attached, so again, no pressure sensitive support. It’ll get a second chance once they have a truly native version for OS X.

VectorDesigner probably lost points in this re-eval. I find it more useless every time I try it.

Drawit Lite (almost the same thing as the pay version) only got a couple seconds of my time because it didn’t meet the single criteria and really didn’t look like it could handle the type of things I wanted to do with it.

ZeusDraw was a dark horse that did meet the criteria but it feels like a one trick pony. It draws great variable width lines, but editing the points is clunky at best and there’s no way to edit the width of the line. If you don’t get it right the first time you have to undo and try again. The palettes feel like quick first drafts and the $90 price tag hardly seems worth it. I think it’s a good first iteration of an app but it’s got a long way to go.

Lineform: I came back to this app at least three times, hoping I could find a way to make it meet my criteria. Finally I figured it out. The “Artistic” strokes you can apply to drawn lines typically just look like fancy special effects; the kind you use maybe once a month. But it turns out that if you use some of the simpler “Artistic” strokes you actually get something that looks very close to a stroke whose shape is purely based on the pressure applied on the tablet. In Lineform it’s changing the width of the “Artistic” shape based on pressure. There’s a way to alter the width of the stroke at various places along the line, and if you really want precise control you can convert it to an outline and edit the handles and points directly. Like I said though, it’s only 90%. If you want a line that starts thin and ends with a fat blob you’ll like a paint brush and tapers off to a point you’ll probably need to make a custom “Artistic” stroke. There are slots for these, but you have to read the forums to figure out how to use them. I think they decided to release it with that functionality a little rough around the edges instead of not including it, which was probably the right call.
“Artistic” strokes give you some very nice possibilities once you learn how to use them as something other than a random effect. The “Watercolor” stroke, for example, does a really nice job of simulating how watercolor gets darker where strokes overlap. This isn’t a big deal in a pixel based app like Photoshop or Painter (nothing beats painter’s natural media emulation) but it’s quite impressive in a vector based app.

I’m still not totally thrilled with Lineform, but it gets me most of the way there, and is over $500 cheaper than Illustrator. I’ve still got some complaints. It’s still got some minor bugs, and it ate one of my drawings (frustrating to say the least). But, it’s easy to use, the interface is intuitive it allows for some really expressive illustrations. And it’s only $79 So that’s what I went with.

Squeak By Example (first impressions) March 13, 2008

I’m reading through Squeak By Example because I’ve got some ideas rumbling around in my head that might be nice to do in Smalltalk. Having an integrated visual environment where everything is an object opens a lot of data visualization possibilities. Anyway, it has been probably two years since I’ve touched Smalltalk, and even then it was pretty brief. So I needed a refresher course.

I’ve been flipping through it looking for random bits of information I was interested in and found them all. Then, I went back and started from the beginning, following all the instructions, doing all the examples…. They’ve done a great job explaining things, it’s really easy to follow, and gives you an excellent step-by-step introduction to Squeak’s IDE, and that’s a very good thing if you’re not familiar with Smalltalk.

And then I hit section 1.10 and my jaw dropped. Test Driven Development…right there, at the start of things too. Many of my friends know how annoyed I am by the fact that books don’t teach about writing unit tests as part of the language. Most language books teach you how to program in some new language and then, if you’re lucky, at the end go “oh yeah, and you should write unit tests.” Which, I feel, results in a very similar attitude amongst the developers who use the language. Code code code, “oh yeah, unit tests are ‘good’ but, whatever…” code code code.

But, here I am (in a book from the land where unit tests were invented (sUnit)) and for the first time in my life I’m seeing unit tests being treated as first class citizens in a language. And they’ve already mentioned version control in passing.

Holy, fucking, shit.

So, 22 pages in (plus however many random pages I read while skipping around over the past couple days) and I have to say I am really impressed. Well written, easy to follow, good example graphics. It’s still pretty preliminary of course but… If you’re interested in learning Smalltalk I recommend checking out Squeak By Example. I’ll be grabbing the soft-cover version shortly but you can download the PDF version for free and check it out.

And, please, don’t be turned off by the cutesey iconography Squeak uses. A lot of the development that’s gone into Squeak has been to make it approachable and easy to use by children, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a powerful development platform. If you’re not convinced just check out DabbleDB. It’s written in Smalltalk with the very cool Seaside web framework.

P.S. Many have heard me say there’s no joy in Java, but there’s much joy to be found in Perl, Ruby, and Python. Well, there is in Smalltalk too. In all my Smalltalk excursions so far I’d say that Smalltalk is “nice”. I don’t know if I’ll personally come to find it joyous (I certainly don’t find Python joyous but I understand how others can), but it is, at the very least, nice. :)

Getting just the tip of a Git repo

Sometimes you just want to distribute the source code without its history, and that’s where git-archive comes in. git-archive will create an archive of the files at any point in the history and wrap them all up for you in a tar or zip (defaults to tar). You can even make an archive from a remote repo by using the `—remote=<repo>` option in the administrator has enabled it.  You’ll typically use git-archive like this:

`git archive <tree-ish> > my_new_archive.tar`

And that will create an archive of everything in your repo. If you just want an archive of some specific files you can simply pass in the path(s) to the file(s) you want in the archive after your tree-ish. If you wanted to create a zip file instead of a tar you’d simply pass it the `—format=zip` option.

Many people wonder if there is a way to check out just the tip of the repo so that they don’t have to download the entire revision history. This is called a “shallow” clone and is possible by passing the `–depth <some_number>` but it hase a number of limitations: you can’t clone, or fetch from it and you can’t push from or into it, but it’s useful if you only want to look at, or near, the tip of a large project with a long revision history and would want to send in your fixes or features as patches.

[update] Corrected the bit about making “shallow” clones thanks to Jakub’s comment.