Well, I succumbed.

After so many road rides on my commuter/road bike with its 1×12 gearing, I realised that having a proper drop bar road bike would be nice because switching the wheel set on Battle Cat, my gravel bike, becomes annoying quickly with my riding being 60/40 gravel/road, and I really don’t want to put aero bars on my gravel bike.

When I saw a good offer for a used Litespeed road bike, I pounced. It’s a 2004—I think—Litespeed Tuscany and it had a mix of Campagnolo Record/Chorus 2×10 components, Zonda G3 & G4 wheels, a 46/36 carbon FSA crankset, and a 13–26 cassette.

Hopping on the bike for the first time was a strange feeling. Not only had I never ridden a Campagnolo group¹ before, the geometry was completely off. And I mean … what?
The previous owner of the bike supposedly is 2 cm shorter than I am and has a 1 cm shorter inseam length. It felt like I was lying on the bike and not sitting on it. My only guess is that the previous owner must have a long torso and long arms. I wasn’t able to do anything about the crazy long reach of the drop bars or the 110 mm stem or the 35 mm setback of the seat post but all of this was going to change anyway.

I was going to completely dismantle the bike and upgrade the components, mostly with things I still had in my workshop and some which I bought used off classifieds:

• Full mechanical Shimano Ultegra R8000 groupset with a 11-speed 11–32 cassette.
• The Easton EA90 crankset with a 46/30 chainring, that I ran on my gravel bike, because I like my legs and the hills here are steep.
• An Easton EA70 seat post and stem. The seat post has no setback and the stem is 70 mm long.
• A Canyon H17 drop bar replaces the very strangely shaped FSA drop bars.
• The Fabric Scoop Pro Shallow saddle that served me on my commuter until then.
• Specialized HD Wrap bar tape.²

I searched for a new wheel set, too, but anything that could have be seen as an improvement over the Campagnolo wheels that were already on the bike would’ve made this project unnecessarily expensive. To my utter delight I found that Campagnolo used to make (and maybe still makes) 11-speed Shimano HG free hubs for these old wheel sets and the switch was just as easy as with the DT Swiss wheels that I’ve come to get used to over the past few years. Considering that this wheel set is 14+ years old, I was rather impressed, and really; it looks hella cool.
The tyres are Continental Four Seasons in 25 mm and barely show signs of wear, so they’re sticking around, too.³

This past weekend, after I had all components and tools I needed, including a Shimano ISIS bottom bracket removal tool that was kindly lent to me by the owner of a local bike shop, and I began the process of disassembling bike, cleaning everything thoroughly, checking for as of then unseen defects, and putting it back together with new parts.

The process involved a few neat little bike maintenance firsts for me: shortening a carbon steerer tube, installing a BSA bottom bracket, and setting up modern symmetric dual pivot road bike rim brakes — and there I was thinking properly aligning disc brake pads was fiddly. I’ve learned quite a bit and I’m happy about it.

The end result looks like this:

I’m still getting used to the horizontal top tube—it kind of betrays the age of the frame—but the first proper ride this morning was gobs of fun. I picked a short but taxing route up a familiar hill with a manageable gradient to see how it climbs and down a proper descent to see how fast it would go.⁴

During the assembly process, I kept wondering what to call this new bike and it came to me while blasting down the road from St. Peter towards Eschbach: sticking with the „Masters of the Universe“ theme the bike will carry the name „Swift Wind“.

The aero bars are coming on over the next few days and I need different pedals for it but I am very much looking forward to all of the riding I’ll be doing with it.

In the process of setting up my second CR 1600 Spline wheel set tubeless, I ran into the issue of the wheels not holding pressure again. The tubeless valves that DT Swiss provide with their wheels, or rather the gasket used, simply doesn’t seal well in those rims (the middle and right gaskets in the picture below).

For this wheel set I bought a set of Muc-Off Tubeless Presta Valves, which also came with three different types of gaskets. Being hopeful, I tried using the gasket that looked similar to the one supplied by DT Swiss and it was a failure, like last time. The tyres/wheels wouldn’t hold air well and my workshop smelled like Muc-Off sealant all day.

The solution was to switch to the biggest gasket supplied with the valves (pictured left). Even with the valve screw tightened down with less force, I got a proper seal immediately and the next morning the tyre pressure gauge showed the same 4.8 Bar I pumped the tyres up to.

Yesterday I took the bike out for a ride and everything worked perfectly with no pressure loss whatsoever.

Side note:
Apart from this issue with getting a good tubeless valve seal, the wheel set(s) have been incredible. Considering the amount of abuse I subject one of them to, it’s surprising that it still runs perfectly true. Really good value for money. Fitting most tyres (tubeless or tubed) is a breeze.

I adore Amber Ruffin’s comedy and I look forward to her appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers every time.

With the protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in the U.S. continuing and the Trump Regime doing everything they can to brutally crush them, Seth Meyers and his team have started bringing on more black voices during the recent shows. Amber Ruffin spoke of two of many encounters she had with police as a black person.

Monday, 01 June 2020

Tuesday, 02 June 2020

Wednesday, 03 June 2020

Thursday, 04 June 2020

The Dutch artist Mark Dolk posted this drawing on their Instagram page on 10 May 2020. A few days ago, as the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S.A. rose over 100,000 people and Donald Trump went golfing once again, the image went viral.

There is a criminal in the White House. A traitor to the American people, aided and abetted by a corrupt Attorney General, encouraged and protected by a criminally depraved Republican Party who use Trump as a shield to pursue their worst impulses and to enrich themselves and their friends.

This man and his cronies are actively dismantling what remains of the democracy of the United States and they do not care how many U.S. citizens they kill to achieve the goal of turning the republic into an empire.

As the researcher and writer Sarah Kendzior said

This is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government

Trump and the rest of his regime must be voted out and prosecuted. There is nothing they fear more than losing the election in November because if they do, there’s a faint chance they might face consequences for their actions, and they are doing everything in their power to prevent this from happening.

Das unser deutscher Verfassungsschutz zumindest inkompetent ist und häufig höchst bedenkliche Entscheidungen trifft, war schon bekannt, bevor die Ausmaße der Terrorserie des NSU ans Licht kamen. So viel ist, denke ich, unumstritten.

Mit den Äußerungen des ehemaligen Chefs des BfV, Hans-Georg Maaßen, am 07.09.2019 zu den Hetzjagden gegen ausländisch aussehende Menschen durch Rechtsradikale in Chemnitz, fragte ich mich zum ersten Mal wie weit – nicht ob – der Verfassungsschutz von Rechtsradikalen und Rechtsextremen unterwandert wurde.
Die offensichtliche ideologische Nähe von Maaßen und der NSDAP-Nachfolgepartei AfD machen dies nicht besser. Und überhaupt ist Herr Maaßen der Verfassung und dem Grundgesetz gegenüber eher feindlich eingestellt.

Jetzt bewirft sich der Berliner Verfassungsschutz mal wieder nicht mit Ruhm, indem das Klimaschutzbündnis „Ende Gelände“ als linksextrem eingestuft wird.

Diese und viele weitere Vorfälle lassen mich daran zweifeln, ob der Verfassungsschutz tatsächlich noch den ursprünglichen Auftrag verfolgt, oder mittlerweile nur noch ein weiteres Werkzeug von rechten und neoliberalen Akteuren ist. Und diese Vorstellung gefällt mir überhaupt nicht.

Es ist, meiner Meinung nach, Zeit das Bundesamt und die Ableger in den Ländern einer sehr gründlichen Prüfung zu unterziehen. Alle Personalentscheidungen und Handlungen der letzten paar Jahrzehnte gehören genau unter die Lupe genommen und daraus müssen Konsequenzen gezogen werden.

Since going 1× on my gravel bike, I’ve had a couple of instances of dropping my chain on quick and bumpy descents. Pelting down a forest road at 50+ km/h, this was quite scary. It was also a bit surprising because the combination of equipment on the bike is supposed eliminate or heavily reduce the chances of dropping the chain:

• Shimano RD-RX800 clutch rear derailleur
• e*thirteen XCX Plus 9–39 11-speed cassette
• Race Face 32-tooth narrow-wide chain ring

The chain dropping only happened in the 9-tooth cog, which led me to think this might be caused by a lack of chain tension combined with the e*thirteen cassette. I got in touch with the e*thirteen support team and received a really great response, pointing out a number of scenarios and ideas for solving this issue: increasing the B screw tension, shortening the chain by a couple of links, or adding a chain guide.

Since I a) didn’t want to mess with the B screw too much so as not to degrade shifting performance, b) I sized the chain properly, and c) a chain guide is also out of the question because it would completely ruin – Ruin! I say! – the clean aesthetics of the bike, I looked for a different solution and I think I found it in a Garbaruk chainring.

Garbaruk builds these chainrings with 40% taller teeth and an overall longer tooth profile, as the two photos below show well, I think:

The overall fit of the chain on the chainring is also much tighter and the effect of this has been very positive.

Since mounting the Garbaruk chainring, I have yet to drop the chain, no matter the situation. I hope it’s going to stay that way and I’m curious how quickly the chainring is going to wear down.

The e*thirteen XCX Plus 9–39 11-speed cassette has been on my gravel bike for over a month now and I’ve ridden over 250 km with it so far. It replaced a Shimano XT CS-M8000 11–40 cassette that I’ve ridden for over a year and countless of kilometres. These are my first impressions of the cassette.

• Shifting is crisper but a bit more fiddly to set up. I don’t know if it’s the higher number of shift gates or the tooth profile but it took me a while to get shifting right on the bike stand. The cassette would react more quickly to less than optimal indexing. Once tuned properly, I found that it shifts quicker, even under load, and the shift action feels more positive.
• It’s louder. Not to the point where it annoys me but it took a bit of getting used to. I assume the lightweight construction with the large hollow space amplifies chain noise and shifting sounds.
• The cassette feels solid and it has yet to show any signs of wear.
• Chain wrap on the 9-tooth cog doesn’t seem to be an issue. I had read this in a couple of places and was worried that going with such a small cog for the highest gear could cause chain skipping but I’ve not had a problem. Mind you, I’m using a Ultegra RD-RX800 rear derailleur and a Shimano 105 11-speed chain (didn’t want to put on a fresh Ultegra chain, just yet) and I’ve properly adjusted the B-screw tension. Even going full-bore on a flat section, putting as much power as I can into it, hasn’t caused any problems (more on that further down).
• With the chain on the smallest cog and depending on the chainring used up front (32-tooth and 36-tooth for my bicycles), the chain will be very close to the rear end of the chain stay. Depending on the bike, this may not fit at all. On my Litespeed T5G, I’ve noticed some chain slap going down fast and bumpy descents in the 9-tooth cog, even with a clutch rear derailleur. This is something I’ve never experienced with the 11-tooth cog on the XT cassette and it may be a deal breaker for some.
• Lastly, and this is not something I’d ever see myself write: it’s noticeably lighter than the cassette it replaced. Sure, ~ 100 g might not sound like much to a less experienced cyclist such as myself but the back wheel seems just a bit more nimble, riding across bumpy gravel tracks.

All in all I’m happy with the cassette so far. It’s done exactly what I had hoped it would when converting my bike from a 2× 11 to a 1×11 system. With a 32-tooth chainring up front, the 9–39 spread in the back gives me an ample gear range, an easy 0.82 gear ratio in the lowest gear, a reasonably fast 3.55 gear ratio in the highest gear, and fairly tight and even gear spacing, particularly in the higher gears.

In fact, I’ve been so happy with this piece of kit that I bought an e*thirteen cassette for my city/commuter/road bike that has, up until recently, sported a full SRAM NX Eagle group with a 11–50 cassette and a 32-tooth chainring. I replaced the NX Eagle cassette with the 2nd generation TRS Plus 12-speed 9–46 cassette and the front chainring with a 36-tooth (soon 38-tooth).

Based on my initial experiences with the 9–39 on my gravel bike, what drew me to the 9–46 12-speed was a) the lower weight, b) the greater range of 511% on the e*thirteen compared to 455% on the NX Eagle, while at the same time offering c) a much tighter and, in my eyes, more sensible gear spacing in the higher gears. The first six gears on the TRS Plus cassette are 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 where on the NX Eagle the jumps are 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22. My first road ride with the new cassette was a 45 km trip mostly on the road up a local mountain and then down again and I very quickly appreciated the choices made by e*thirteen.
Finally, chain wrap on the 9-tooth cog is perfectly fine with a SRAM Eagle rear derailleur and a GX Eagle chain. I tried a couple of times to produce any kind of skipping, riding at 80 rpm, on a slight incline, pushing 42 km/h (yes, I was very much winded after) and I experienced no issues whatsoever.

I’m looking forward to many more kilometres with these cassettes and I’ll write a long term review at a later point.

By internet time this story is ages old, I know, but I was reminded again that Apple cares about audio quality and why Neil Young is so.very.wrong. 😉
He made a few waves in the tech sphere in late January by stating something to the effect of the Apple’s MacBook Pro having a shit DAC (Digital Analogue Converter) and Apple generally caring more about consumerism than creating high quality audio equipment for professionals.

Jim Dalrymple thoroughly debunked any of the claims made by Young on The Loop weeks ago but I wanted to offer a different example:
The Apple Lightning/USB-C to 3.5 mm Headphone Jack Adapter

Many people make fun of these little dongles and I get it. Apple removed the headphone jack from its iPhone and iPads and replaced it with an easy-to-lose USD 9.— dongle and they called it courage. My feelings about the dongle went from a solid meh (#donglelyfe) to loving these little things, seriously loving them. The reason is simple: they have amazing sound quality.

In more technical terms (source 1, source 2):

• The output source impedance measures > 1Ω.
• Frequency response is close to perfectly flat.
• Harmonic distortion is almost nonexistent across various resistances (Ω).
• Dynamic range is on par with previous iPhone headphone jacks, which had great audio quality

In less technical terms it means that these little dongles can drive extremely sensitive earphones with no to absolutely minimal changes to the frequency response (their sound signature) on the one hand and can also power full-size headphones on the other hand. To get this kind of flexibility and sound quality, you’d typically have to buy and lug around a dedicated portable DAC.

My earphones of choice are the Campfire Audio Andromeda, great sounding earphones that are very hard to drive properly. Sources with an output resistance of larger than 1Ω will quickly and negatively impact the sound signature, starting with reducing the bass response dramatically.

Using Apple’s dongles, they sound brilliant, same as they do on my MacBook Pro. I even use the USB-C dongle to listen to music on the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 that I use for work a lot. Its 3.5 mm audio jack is … not good, to be polite. With a USB-A to USB-C adapter and the USB-C audio dongle (again #donglelyfe), I get perfect audio quality listening to losslessly compressed music.

So no, Mr. Young, Apple does care about audio quality even on a consumer level. And what I use for proof are these tiny, easy-to-lose, beautifully sounding, flexible dongles.

No no no, hear me out…

It’s crazy how many things I can get done on this little super computer that is my smartphone but sometimes when writing longer texts, particularly email responses, or blog post, or telling someone on the internet how they’re so wrong about something (kidding), having a physical keyboard is a blessing.

So when this video popped up in my youtube recommendations, I thought, yeah no, not something like this because that’s stupid and unusable unless you have very thin fingers.

I’ve found this little old ThinkOutside foldable bluetooth keyboard for Pocket PCs over a year ago for € 30.— and take it with me as a redundancy if my laptop or iPad doesn’t work on a trip. They keys assignments are obviously made for Pocket PCs/Windows CE and the keys are not big but it’s still a huge productivity boost if you really need to write a lot.

The Psion 5mx was maybe my favourite PDAs back in the day. The keyboard was big enough for some semblance of multi-finger typing and it was a pleasure to type on. If someone where to make a keyboard case for smartphones with a versatile insert system for different smartphones (read: future proofing) and a wired connection (think: adapters for USB-C, Lightning, Micro-USB), I’d be all …

I could live with a bluetooth connection too and in that case, add a big battery into the bottom to give it some heft and long battery life.

Alternatively, just make the Palm Foldable Keyboard again (at some point Targus had the rights to it), lest I might seriously consider making an adapter for it.

Yesterday Fujifilm announced a few new things at their “X Summit” in London. The most consequential one for me was the announcement of the X100V. It’s the fifth generation of the X100 series and it’s going to be my next camera.

I’ve been in love with the concept of the X100 series since shortly after I started shooting with Fujifilm APS-C cameras but it always had too many crucial drawbacks for me to consider actually buying one.

The lens

The first lens I bought for my X-E1 way back when, was the XF23mmF1.4 R. I purchased it because after inspecting the photos I had taken with the XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM kit lens, I saw that most of my shots were in the 22–24 mm range and I wanted something with a wider aperture to play around with. The 23/1.4 is still the lens I shoot with the most. I absolutely love it.

The lens in the X100 series, while decent, simply didn’t have the same versatility. Corner sharpness wasn’t very good at f/2 and shooting at close focus distances wide open resulted in very soft pictures. Coming from the XF23mmF1.4 R, that’s simply not something I would be able to accept.

(As a side note, the same drawbacks of the X100 lens also apply to the XF23mmF2 R WR lens, albeit not in the severity as found in the X100 series lenses up until now. It’s the reason why I sold the lens again after having used it for a few months.)

Weather sealing

I can’t begin to say how much I appreciate this on my Fujifilm cameras. I have it on the X-Pro2, on the X-T3, and I had it on the X-T1. I take a camera with me almost everywhere I go in any weather. Be it for a trip downtown or going hiking with my dogs. The cameras and weather sealed lenses have handled everything I’ve thrown at them so far and I had hoped Fujifilm would’ve added this to the X100F already, but no.

Now, the new X100V is properly weather sealed once you put a protective filter on the lens and that gives you an extremely compact package that you can take anywhere.

Flippy screen

Maybe you like it maybe you don’t, I like having it and dislike not having it on the X-Pro2. To get this in a camera as small as the X100V is just a nice bonus that only increases the camera’s usefulness.

After the announcement, I read the excellent preview written by Jonas Rask and immediately knew that it would be very hard to pass up on the X100V.

Then the first review by Chris and Jordan of DPReview TV was published and that completely sealed the deal. It’s worth a watch.

An observation regarding Fujifilm’s product policy

Chris Nichols and Jordan Drake mentioned something interesting in the video. Fujifilm has put almost all features found in the very recently released X-Pro3 into the X100V. More than you’d typically expect for what is essentially a compact large-sensor camera. Even the video features are solid for the most part.
This really made me happy because it shows that Fujifilm is essentially following Apple’s (and particularly Steve Jobs’s playbook) for positioning and releasing products:
Instead of artificially separating their product lines to prevent cannibalisation, by limiting the feature sets compared to the flagship products, they let their products cannibalise themselves instead of letting products by other manufacturers do so. This creates true choice for customers and—to me—is a sign of respect for the customers by the company.