December 2013 Archives

December 31, 2013 @ 22:31 EST

Peekaboo!

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It's official, the world didn't end.

....Happy New Year, folks!


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 31, 2013 @ 15:55 EST

Happy New Year

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This was taken while balanced precariously on top of the actively-cycling roof-mounted air conditioners of an 18-story apartment building in Deira, Dubai. My ambitions were thwarted by obscured viewpoints, strong winds, precarious footing, and my use of a monopod instead of my too-heavy-to-pack tripod.

This is the tail end of an attempt to set the record for the world's largest fireworks display.

Now to get into bed for a few hours' sleep. Sunrise is in five hours!


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 26, 2013 @ 23:27 EST

The root cause of the brake failures..

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This is the electro-hydraulic actuator that controls my truck's rear-wheel anti-lock (RWAL/RWABS) brakes. To make a long explanation short, the actuators went bad, probably due to nineteen years of accumulated sludge and gunk in the brake lines.

There are two solenoids; one (normally open) isolates the system from the master cylinder (ensuring no additional pressure can be appllied), and the other (normally closed) lets the fluid into a bypass accumulator to relieve pressure on the rear brakes. The two cycle in turn as long as necessary so that the rear brakes rapidly pulse, ensuring the rear end doesn't slide out.

It turns out the bypass solenoid was stuck so it wouldn't return closed properly, and even the isolation solenoid was a little sticky. This was a recipie for very scary situations.

Due to the proportioning valve in the system, the front wheels don't engage until the rear wheel pressure is above a certain threshold. Since the bypass valve wasn't seated, the accumulator acted as an expansion chamber, causing the rear brakes to require a much larger volume of fluid before they'd begin to engage, finally allowing the front brakes to begin engaging as well.

Unfortunately, this didn't happen until the brake pedal had almost reached the floor, providing very little braking power when the pedal finally bottomed out. Annoyingly (and quite dangerously!) as the ABS controller occasionally cycled the system, it would randomly trigger or clear the failure condition depending on which valve was actuated, the pressure involved, the phase of the moon, and a critical D20 roll.

So. Last night I put the new part on, but I still need to bleed out the air I just re-introduced into the brake system. This will have to wait until after the new year -- Tomorrow morning I'm hopping on a plane for a new year's lark to Dubai.

And on that note, see y'all in 2014!


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Life and other BS

December 26, 2013 @ 13:27 EST

Blocking more Chinese IP addresses

Over the past week, I've seen a dramatic upturn in the amount of bandwidth used by this server. By 'dramatic' I mean the last week alone is about four times the normal monthly traffic load. So, I've banned an entire IP range responsible for most of that -- 202.46.60.0/22 is no more.

I'm also this close to banning Baidu's crawlers as well, since they are collectively responsible for more than ten times the amount of bandwidth usage as google and result in (as far as I can tell) zero references.

Sheesh.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Life and other BS

December 25, 2013 @ 20:32 EST

Fractured

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 25, 2013 @ 20:18 EST

A Florida Christmas

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Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 22, 2013 @ 22:21 EST

The first in a while..

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This canal parallels Sims Rd, a proverbial stone's throw from my front door. It continues on after Sims dead ends, and while catching my breath (and scaring off the wildlife..) this is what I saw.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 18, 2013 @ 22:14 EST

DNP DS40 and DS80

I've spent several evenings over the past week improving Gutenprint's support for the DNP DS40 and DS80 dye-sublimation printers. Aside from their respective 6" and 8" print widths, they are otherwise identical feature-wise. Here's what's been added so far:

  • An intelligent CUPS backend that lets us pipeline print jobs in a status-aware manner, plus query printer information
  • Support 5x7 and 3.5x5" print sizes on the DS40
  • Matte lamination support
  • Better margin specifications
  • Support for the 300x600 "high-quality" print mode

Next up will be to add sane multi-cut print modes (for example, obtaining 3* 8x4" prints cut from a single 8x12 sheet). This is considerably more challenging as Gutenprint doesn't really support this sort of thing.

I should ask around at the office if anyone wants some prints made; if I'm going to generate a pile of test prints I might as well generate ones worth keeping. :)


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Free Software

December 15, 2013 @ 19:50 EST

Getting ready for the big night

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This was my favorite from the shoot, but due to the necessary cropping the writing on the mirror became a bit of a distraction. There wasn't enough room to set up the angle I'd hoped to capture.

Anyway. My recent photographic activities have consisted of portrait/etc shoots that I've not had permission to repost. I hope to change that really soon now, but life has been conspiring to wreck my plans.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Photos

December 15, 2013 @ 19:34 EST

More vehicular insanity

It never fails to come in pairs; both vehicles crap out at once. After my car's tail-light was taken out by a falling tree (seriously!) I switched to driving my truck around while waiting for the new tail lamp assembly to arrive.

Until, while running a quick after-lunch-errand at work in the truck, the brakes suddenly, completely, foot-to-the-floor failed as I was pulling up to a stop light in central Broward. ....crap.

I quickly discovered the parking bake still worked. So, weighing my options while waiting for the light to change, I decided the most expedient solution would be to head straight home instead of back to the office...via I-95. That route involved the least amount of braking, and if traffic got worse, I could just pull off the road and get a tow truck a little closer to home.

As I pulled off onto my exit (16 miles later) the brakes started sorta working again, so I didn't have to rely on the parking brake until I hit my driveway. I then switched over to my non-road-legal car and drove back to work to finish my day.

After work, it was time for some diagnostics. The brakes were completely dead again but the fluid levels were nominal, the power booster was doing its thing, and there were no apparent leaks.

All signs pointed towards an internally-leaking master cylinder, a symptom supported by the dark brown sludge sloshing around in the resivour. So, I ordered the parts indending to do the swap myself. No big deal; I've done this sort of thing before.

After some shipping delays due to the massive snow and ice storms up north, over the course of a few evenings I installed the new booster then bench-bleed and installed the master master cylinder. All that remained was to bleed the rest of the system.

That was the plan until I discovered that the bleeder screws for both rear wheels were rusted in place and completely unmovable, necessating replacing the wheel cylinders. Then I discovered that one of the brake lines going into said cylinders was also rusted into place.

...All I wanted to do was bleed the system, and I ended up having to replace most of the rear end in order to do so:

  • Master Cylinder (the original failure)
  • Power Booster
  • Pair of drum brake cylinders
  • Pair of drum spring rebuild kits
  • A 40" length of 3/16" of brake line with 3/8-24 fittings (prefabbed, thankfully) that I had to bend into shape.
  • Rear brake hose + manifold block
  • Three quarts of brake fluid (1/4th qt remaining)

Bleeding the system proved to be a significant challenge, and it resulted in a truly epic amount of sludge flushed out. That said, the truck is finally safe to drive, albeit with a still-spongy brake pedal incapable of locking the wheels up. As soon as I buy more fluid and rope in a volunteer to help, I'll re-bleed all four corners and that, as they say, should be that.

There's also evidence that the rear-wheel anti-lock (RWAL) system is flaky, but I'll hold off judgement on that until after another bleeding pass.


Posted by Solomon Peachy | Permanent link & Comments | File under: Life and other BS