Does This Cloud Compute ?

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

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Vista will finally start to be deployed next year (they are still running Windows 2000) just in time for it to be superseded by Windows 7.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 !

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The Swap Meet

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

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 !

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Mini Rollout – GT750 Project !

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

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.

GS750 GT750

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 !

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Its Election Time in Canada Too !

Posted on October 6, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

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 !

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Caswell Tank Coating

Posted on October 4, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

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 fibreglass a sail boat 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:tank

  • 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 !

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Stats

Posted on October 1, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

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 !

🙁

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GT750 Project – Steering Lock

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

Continuing on with the GT750 project I’m working on, the steering lock on these old bikes quite often is seized up solid, and as I had a matched set of keyed alike locks and switches for this project, I wanted to get the steering lock working. I tried soaking it in penetrating oil, heating it, chilling it, shocking it (gently) with a hammer etc., but it just was not in a mood to cooperate so I resorted to drastic measures. The Suzuki lock sets are numbered and these numbers are stamped on the face of the lock barrel and the matching key. As I had several steering locks with no keys, and nothing else matching (ignition, seat latch etc.) I decided to make one of these a donor for the project bike.

The steering locks are not designed to be easily re-keyed, and the body is a die cast metal which is easy to damage. The lock cylinder is held in the barrel by a metal tab just in front of the bolt, and the soft metal of the barrel is pinched closed to hold the tab in place.

  • On my seized one, I had to hacksaw the barrel down on either side of the lock pin to ensure I didn’t risk damaging the lock cylinder, and then I cut through the retaining tab to free up the cylinder completely as shown in the photo to the lower left
  • I dremelled the top off the key way of my donor latch, and then drew out the retaining tab, after which the lock cylinder just slides out of the barrel, and the lock pin can be pulled straight up. After cleaning up the barrel, lock cylinder and locking pin, I was ready to reassemble the lock as shown in the centre photo below (the retaining tab can be seen just above the lock cylinder, and the slot it goes into is seen in the barrel above it, just to the left of the lock pin bore). I’ll save the donor lock cylinder as I can use the bits for re-keying other locks in the future.
  • the assembled unit, with the retaining tab re-inserted and pinched shut again, is shown in the lower right.
  • if you need a key – these can sometimes be bought pre-cut on eBay – I have bought from here in the past.
old lock new lock steering lock assembled

I’ll either replace, or shine up the screws before re-installing it, but at the moment I now have a matched set of keyed alike functional locks and switches again for the project, which has saved me a few bucks on eBay !

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GT750 Restoration – continued – Tank

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

Continuing on with the GT750 restoration, the design has been finalised, and the frame has been in and then out of the The Welding Shop here in Calgary – the tank had to be steamed out before welding, but that wasn’t too hard to arrange as there was a radiator repair shop next door to the welding shop and they were able to do this easily. I either created new mounting tabs based on the GS750E measurements, or adapted/modified GS750E mounts to be fitted to the GT750 frame. Cactus Machine  has finished the work on the new brake lever and everything actually looks pretty good !

The frame with the tank extension and the mounting tabs was sandblasted (you can read about that here) and I have finished off the shaping, filling and priming of the tank so it is now ready for the next couple of steps – these being sealing, and then finish coat painting. As well, I have double checked the location of the mounting tabs for the seat hinges and rear deck and needed to make a couple of minor ‘fitting’ changes. I wasn’t happy with how the GS750 seat sat on the GT750 frame – it was a bit too high – so I modified the rubber bushes that fit into the underside of the seat and which rest on the frame members. This has let me drop the seat about 3/8th of an inch, and overall I think it looks better as a result. I also decided to raise the rear deck slightly at the rear which meant I needed to relocate the mounting tabs from where I had originally planned, by welding new ones in place.

The final result is as below – In the left photo, you can see how I’ve stretched out the GT750 tank, as compared to the stock shape (the black tank) along side it. In the middle photo you can see how things line up when mounted – the rear deck is off a 1978 GS750E, the seat likewise and the tank is from a 1976 GT750 which has been modified as described. To the right is a photo of the tank lining kit I plan to use this week to seal the inside of the tank and ensure everything is leak proof and (hopefully) will stay rust free.

two tanks Line Caswell

There are many products on the market for sealing gas tanks – and these days it is complicated somewhat by the introduction of methanol into gasolines making fuel more corrosive. Some tank lining products, used for example in aircraft tanks and which have been used in some cases for motorcycles will work fine on pure gasoline/petrol fuels, but these linings will actually dissolve if exposed for a prolonged period to newer bio-fuel mixes. There is some very good information here , and as well more information  here and here. After reading what I could find, I went with the Caswell product (the American link is here for those folks from outside of Canada) and we’ll see how it goes.

Once the tank is sealed, I will be able to proceed with the finish paint work on the tank, side covers, and rear deck – but before that I need to refurbish the controls, gauges, headlight etc., etc. – so there is no lack of things to do !

The ‘home’ site for the GT750 rebuild project is here.

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UPS Canada Issues

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

While working on my GT750 project bike, I’ve had to source a few bits and pieces from overseas as parts to fit older vehicles like this just can’t easily be found here in Canada, if at all. Generally this has worked well, but I (and apparently many others) have had a couple of ‘interesting’ trans border shipping experiences along the way.

If you check Epinions or Google “UPS Canada rip offs” you will find a long list of rants from many people about a little known, or at least not obvious scam that UPS Canada operates on shipments from the USA, and which US based shippers using UPS in the US either are not generally aware of, or just don’t care about. I recently was taken to the cleaners by UPS Canada, and evidently this fleecing is completely legal – the scam works like this: if you order a US item for delivery, and prepay the shipping charges to UPS in the USA, when it crosses the border UPS here in Canada then tacks on their own additional brokerage, preparation, disbursement charges, plus a COD charge to collect these new fees, plus tax on these additional fees  etc., etc., etc.. Note that I have no objection to having to pay either import duty when required, or the GST (a Canadian version of VAT) charge the feds in Canada usually tack on, as right, wrong or otherwise that’s just what you have to put up with if you want to live here.  In my specific case, a duty free part valued at $25 for which I paid $23 in packaging, handling and UPS USA shipping, then had $19.23 in additional charges tacked on by UPS Canada, making my $25 duty free part a $67 item. This is of course, the equivalent of being mugged in broad daylight, but I do have to admire their gall as well as their utter smugness in being allowed to get away with it. When I spoke to the UPS Canada customer service folks, I could practically hear them smiling contentedly as they assured me it was all totally legal and that there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.  Heck – if I had access to this sort of cash cow, I wouldn’t want to do anything about it either !! 

Bottom line – the experience has made me wonder whether I should consider getting into the small package courier business myself, as I’m thinking that being a legal modern day highwayman could be fun, not to mention lucrative ! I wonder if you get to wear a cutlass and an eye patch ? While I mull over a career change,  I’ll try to specify the use of US and Canadian postal services for anything that I buy from the USA in the future, as they appear to be more interested in getting the mail through than in hitting you over the head and cleaning out your wallet !

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I've Been Chrome'd !

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Ian R. Sandy

Like many techno folks, I have been test driving Google’s Chrome browser for much of this past week, and I have to say that I really like it. There has been more than enough press about it as well as much speculation about Google’s motives, what this does to Mozilla, what does it mean for Microsoft, etc. , so I won’t duplicate that here. At the end of the day what interests me personally is:

  • Chrome is fast, offering a better Web user experience than Microsoft’s Explorer when accessing modern, open standards and standards based web sites – if you hit a site using proprietary extensions then the results are mixed
  • I like that it is Open Source, so I expect Mozilla (which is still receiving funding from Google), Opera and others to adopt some of the features in upcoming releases – Microsoft on the other hand is unlikely to use Google contributed code as they prefer to create or buy their own intellectual property, as that is after all how they make money
  • a key point is that Chrome is focused on secure support of web based applications, and of social web applications – the Web 2.0 and 3.0 environment – and as such is positioned for the future rather than committed to supporting the past. This is important as while the internet infrastructure globally is at best marginal to support this model currently, eventually it will be.
  • for for a beta solution ( and like pretty much everything else Google offers, it is beta) it is a good technical demonstration of off-line web services capability using Google Gears. Offline capability as demonstrated in Google Reader , Google Docs and Zoho is critical for the web based applications environment generally, but is especially so for the mobility environment – more on this later.
  • Chrome will not be installed on most new PC’s and laptops sold globally as they generally come pre-loaded with Microsoft products, so the likelyhood of Chrome and other competing solutions becoming mainstream on the PC platform in the short term is slim at best. The ‘average user’ is generally just going to use what is provided and never know or really care about other options, and although corporate customers may be attracted to lower cost applications delivery options, their freedom of movement is limited by their investment in their legacy applications portfolio.

Considering the last two points, ‘user’ and corporate inertia may not matter in the longer term as the growth area for user compute devices globally is the ultra mobility (the ASUS eee PC for example) and the hand held platform space. The growth of wireless handsets in places like China and India has been amazing (according to India’s TRAI, 8.5 million wireless subscribers were added just in February and the Chinese Ministry of Information recently said there were already 250 million cellular phones in China compared with 140 million in the USA, and China is adding about 6 to 7 million users per month). Although shareholders and corporate managers generally reward short term gain rather than longer term thinking, I suspect that by positioning itself to support the rapidly evolving mobility applications platform, Google may be demonstrating that ‘vision’ thing many people in business like to talk about, but generally don’t actually have. 

For the moment at least, I’m a happy Google Chrome user on my Windows XP box, and I will be installing it on my Linux machines as soon as a native version (and yes I realise that you can run it under wine) becomes readily available. And of course, I’m also looking forward to getting Chrome on a mobile phone whenever one becomes available in Canada – I see T-Mobile plans an Android release later this month, and that Android may eventually include Chrome functionality, so perhaps there will be an offering on this side of the border some time in late 2009 – possibly a good Christmas gift !

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