It’s almost time for home. As of RIGHT NOW, I’ve done 16 hours 53 minutes, fuelled by nothing but cigarettes and a hastily-scarfed bowl of tantanmen. Which I choked on, sc-horching my throat.
The upshot of all this? Well, I can now see things that arent’t there and have developed a pressing urge - nay, biological imperative - to punch certain 2channellers in the face and steal their shoes.
At least driving home will be fun. Zoom.
After the rider skills course, the manager of the bike school sat me down, and congratulated me for finally getting all the way through the tortuous licence process. Much stamping of forms was accomplished. And then he said this:
On a motorcycle, you fly down the road, open to the elements, but you must remember: that power is not your own. It’s from a machine. And if you forget this, you’ll come to grief.
A salutory reminder for us all.
That said, there are plenty of big roads up around Ariake and Tokyo Bay that are almost empty even on a Sunday, since the whole area is still under redevelopment. So if you really - I mean, medically - need to put the hammer down, try there.
My favourite web app at the moment is the fantastic Navitime. It’s a map, it plans routes - either by Japan’s notoriously pricey expressways or regular roads, and with an estimated taxi fare and carbon emission total (if you’re a hippy: exhaust fumes rock) - train routes, and all sorts of good stuff.
And it’s just got a spiffy new look.
I swear, if I couldn’t already I’d learn Japanese just to use this bad boy.
Take Route 440 west out of Tokyo.
Keep going.
Past Nishitokyo.
Little bit more.
And on the right is AFG Moto, Japan’s only Icon dealer. This would be cool enough, but owner Akira also happens to be a damn nice fella. A pair of boots and a jacket later, and he’s thrown in some gloves, a t-shirt (with boobies on, no less), chucked in some stickers and stuff and topped it all off with free delivery.
Robocop quote:
I love this guy!
Dad sent me the Police Rider’s Handbook the other day. As many of the Amazon reviewers note, a gripping page-turner it is not. What it is, however, is chock-a-block with helpful advice on becoming a better rider, and it’s become my bedtime reading since it arrived last week.
“Knowing yourself” is the basic theme of the first chapter, and thinking back to the ride this morning, I’m seriously thinking of staying off the road for a while, no matter how physically painful it is.
What with one thing and another, the only thing I have to look forward to each day is the ride home. But due to my now near-permanent state of seething irritability, I’m riding stupidly. I know it’s happening: the scuttling up between waiting traffic mere seconds before the lights change, the pointless overtakes if anyone dares to drop beneath the speed limit, etc., etc. I don’t think I’ve done anything really bad yet, but still.
The thing is, if I stop riding, I may have to release my stress in other, oh-so-much-more-anti-social ways. Beating on homeless guys seems to be flavour of the month round here at the moment. :/
…and things with Betty are just peachy.
The Ninja 250 is a wonderful little bike, especially after training on a mammoth Honda CB750 for the last few months. It’s much more forgiving during low speed manouevering, and has enough torque to munch anything off the lights. And it’s just so much fun. As Cam said after giving it a go, “This is the first time since about the age of seventeen that I’ve felt like popping a wheelie!”
Owner’s pride required me to break his leg shortly afterwards.
Annoyances? Well, keeping the tach below 5k is a real bugger, since it means an extra shift up when you really don’t want to, especially when you’re stuck at inner city speeds (50kph max). Also, the mirrors are useless.
Still, I should have broken her in properly by the end of our first month. And to make sure, we’re heading out to Mushashiyama to go and buy some togs later this week, as soon as the fricking rain lets up. A bit of time and I should be able to find some proper mirrors too.
And then I will be naught but a green blur, biatches.
And she’s even prettier than I imagined.
Thanks to Cam for taking the photo.
I’ve had my iMac less than a month, so I was understandably pissed when I found a stuck pixel this morning. Red, of all colours, and of course after I realized it was there I couldn’t focus on anything else.
Fortunately for me - Apple has a pretty arbitrary definition of what constitutes a warranty-covered pixel spooging - I came across this little bad boy. JScreenFix opens a window which cycles every pixel inside it; when placed over the offending pixel, it should dislodge it lickety-split. Instructions say 20 minutes, mine was gone in 5.
Incidentally, a stuck pixel is any pixel displaying a fixed colour. If it’s black, it’s dead, and you’re out of luck.
From b3ta.
Dammit. I was all geared up for a whine about how Apple’s Mighty Mouse is one of the wankiest peripherals I’ve ever got my dabs on - no small claim for someone who grew up during Saitek’s heyday - then I saw this by Dave Shea, which rendered it all a a bit pointless.
Part of the iMac’s attraction for me was the GeForce 8800 GS, which, while not the beefiest graphics card out there, I reckoned should be more than enough to indulge myself in a bit of gaming.
So I was more than happily surprised by the fact that, like a properly disciplined subbie, it was able to handle almost anything Team Fortress 2 threw at it, even at a widescreen 1900×1280 with most of the settings turned up to max (I left anti-aliasing on 4x).
The one blood-encrusted band-aid in my swimming pool of newly-found gaming bliss was that bastard Mighty Mouse sullying the innocent joy of taking a human life by spunking the build menu in my face, when all I want to do is ram my Engineer’s wrench up that wisecracking Scout’s posterior and twist his guts off.
*breathes*
I bought a Razer DeathAdder today after flicking through Bit-Tech. And I’m much better now.
I just wish they could’ve done something about the name. :/
