bits and bikes

I spotted this clever website today (via), which plots the number of Google results for various spellings of one particular expression.

I, too, have generated statistics on various spellings of particular words, and have just yesterday posted them online. This includes about 100,000 spellings of about 3,000 English words, collected through the SpellBEE activity, as part of my dissertation work. So if you’ve been wondering about the relative frequency of various misspellings of the word “accommodation”, you can now rest easy: check out spellbee_errors1.txt. Details, descriptions, and downloads are here.

Several months ago, I wrote about the iHome iH85b (aka the “cycler”, the “Bike to Beach Bicycle Speaker for iPod”, or the “iHome2go”.) I continue to use this speaker during my commutes, and still highly recommend it. But that’s besides the point.

There are only three spots (that I can think of) to reliably mount a peripheral onto a bicycle: on the handlebar, on the rear rack, or in a water bottle cage. The front bar is a good spot for smaller trinkets that require attention, such as lights, bells, and electronics. The rear rack is a good spot for mounting assorted cargo, either in a milk crate, kitty litter buckets, or in plain old panniers. The water bottle cage, with one exception, is really only good for carrying one thing: a water bottle. The exception? When you bike sports a second cage.

A second water bottle cage opens up a slew of new possibilities. The iPod speaker is but only one option. There are all sorts of other creative uses for this space, ranging from home-brew lighting upgrades to a repair kit to the “Gadget Bottle” to other fully patented inventions. Know of others? Leave a comment.

What I like about these various designs is the creative use of the fixed space. iHome cheated a bit by shipping a larger-sized cage with their speaker, but in general, the size is a hard constraint. This reminds me of the large number of creative uses of Altoids tins in electronics projects, ranging from the MintyBoost to hundreds of Altoids tin projects posted on Instructables.

So what’s the right bottle to house your next DIY bike project? After some quick browsing on Amazon, my best find is this one from 3dRose LLC.

Related Post: My review of the iHome iH85b iPod Speaker

Chris Seibold’s new O’Reilly book, the “Big Book of Apple Hacks,” is now available (from O’Reilly Media or from Amazon.) While I haven’t seen it quite yet, I am familiar with at least one portion of the book: My blog post on User-Initiated Privacy for Web Applications is included.
This contribution describes a simple way for end users to maintain the privacy of their personal data when using web applications. Page Axe is a small program for Mac OS X that offers this, but the idea is not platform-specific.

I’m looking forward to see what else is in the book!

After successfully defended my dissertation yesterday, these new socks fit well!

I’ve been thoroughly occupied writing my dissertation, and will continue to be for the next few weeks. Until I have time to write, I’ll stick to quick-links. Here’s a few:

Bits > Check out the videos of the Yellow Drum Machine in action. (via boingboing)

Bits > Return to Dark Castle has recently been released for Mac OS X, after “10 years in the making” (and 22 years following the original.) Looking forward to trying out the demo soon.

Bits > Johnny Chung Lee has been doing some great work leveraging the sensors in the $20 Wii Remote for all sorts of interesting applications including multi-touch interactive whiteboards and head-tracking for VR displays. For more info, check out his procrastineering blog or the wiimote project forums.

Bikes >
Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery has been keeping me entertained.

Bikes > Robin Chase (of Zipcar car-sharing fame) has been discussing the Velib bike-share program in Paris on her blog. (Related links: bike map and the bike-sharing blog.)

For those that missed it last year, a very crafty idea emerged from the MBTA’s Orange Line: the CharlieCard Mitten. Colleen Meagher’s idea was to sew a pocket on a mitten, sized to hold one of Boston’s new transit smart card. Clever.

For the bicycle commuter who owns (and occasionally drives) a car: Looks like there will soon be an option for pay-as-you-go car insurance. Milemeter appears to still be a few months from opening up shop, but the description posted on O’Reilly Radar makes it sound very promising. Worth keeping an eye on.

Another option for part-time drivers is to have a membership in a car-sharing program like Zipcar. I found this to be a great first step after getting rid of my own car a few years ago. I’d love to seem them provide a few more steps for recovering car owners. Perhaps by adding some utility bicycles, folding bicycles, and electric bicycles to their neighborhood-wide sprinkling of vehicles?

REI.com is now selling a Dahon folding bicycle, branded as the Novara Buzz Fly-By. While it’s missing several commuter-friendly features that some other Dahon models offer (e.g. chain guard, rear rack, hub dynamo-powered lights), REI does provide an unbeatable guarantee on everything they sell. It worth a trip to one of their quarterly Garage Sales to fully appreciate this.

Finally, for those of you wondering if you should keep waiting for the bus or give up and start walking, a recent paper might provide some direction. Longer answer: Read the full paper. Shorter answer: Stay put.

I’ve seen several web-based tools for cyclists to keep track of their rides, but rarely see one designed specifically for commuting. A recent post by Noah at Commute by Bike described the spreadsheet that he uses to keep track of his bicycle commuting. If you take a look at the spreadsheet, you’ll find the following columns summarizing each month of riding:

* Car commute days: I want this number to be as low as possible for 2008!
* Bus-assisted multi-mode commutes, which are a blessing in the winter
* Separate mileage counters for commuting, errands, and recreation
* Separate mileage counters for each bike for maintenance purposes
* Temperature extremes
* Cold weather clothing logs to help me fine-tune my attire for those really chilly days

Particularly in the month-by-month sheets, I like the focus on mode of transportation for the commute rather than on speed or purely on mileage. I’d actually drop mileage entirely, and focus more on weather conditions (rainy? headwinds? icy? sunny?) and cargo weight (none? a box of books?). I do like that the AM and PM commute are tracked separately. Add a bit of code, and your spreadsheet can email you when it’s time to recharge the batteries in your lights and sound system.

The Innovate or Die pedal-powered machine contest was

designed to inspire innovation and environmental change by highlighting the benefits of cycling in an unprecedented way. The challenge is to invent and build machines that transform zero-emission human energy into new and useful purposes, one pedal stroke at a time…

All entrants uploaded videos to the contest’s YouTube group, so anyone can take a look. Looks like 102 entries were submitted. Kudos to all of the entrants!

Earlier this week, I posted about the group of MIT students who pedal-powered an energy-efficient supercomputer. They “spun” this as a new record in human-powered computation. My thought is that the performance of humans powering computers should be measured in FLOPEBs: Floating Point Operations Per Energy Bar. Here’s their entry.

Pedal-powered supercomputing aside, I was most excited about the projects that involved bicycles that move. Stationary pedaling is just not my style. Of the entrants focused on bicycles for transportation, my favorites were the human-electric hybrid and the solar gondola. Both look like fun to drive.

The bicycle ambulance entry is also transportation-oriented, and is very purpose-driven.

I’m a big fan of safely listening to music while pedaling (see my iHome bicycle speaker review,) and so was very impressed by the video of the Choprical Fish (Human-powered party bike). If you haven’t seen it before, be sure to see the demo.

I liked the City Cycles entry, which described a young business focused on offering software (bits!) and consulting services to organizations interested in establishing bicycle lending programs.

Finally, I’m a big fan of the entry prototyping a low-tech approach to pedal-assist. Check out the video of their rubber band powered bike.

In a new twist on Human Computation, a team of 10 MIT cyclists pedal-powered an energy-efficient SiCortex SC648 supercomputer for 20 minutes, as a stunt related to their entry to the poorly-named Innovate or Die contest.

From the article at xconomy:

Their bikes were hooked up to generators, and as the team members pedaled, they produced direct current energy. The generators, in turn, were connected to a converter that transformed that energy to alternating current, which was used to power a couple of small SiCortex supercomputers, which were running an application that simulated a fusion reaction.

The dual topics of interest here on Bits and Bikes — bicycle commuting and daily computing — seem to be on the rise in India, according to a BBC News article published today: India’s techies take to cycling.

via C.I.C.L.E.