Roast Burger? ..more like Gross Burger.

I've not posted any fast food in a while, so I guess it's time.

Arby's Roast Burgers have been available for a while, and once I realized that they were just roast beef sandwiches with "seasonings" added and dressed like a burger, I decided that I didn't want one. As is usually the case, the temptation of saving a few buck lured me in - the Arby's e-mail list sent out another round of "Free Roast Burger with the purchase of any drink" coupons.



To be concise, the Roast Burger was awful. The particular variety I had was the BBQ Bacon Cheddar. It's possible that some part of it was good, but there's no way I would have known because the BBQ sauce was kind of gross and overpowered everything else on the sandwich with the exception of the occasional stale tasting fried onion things on top. Now that I think about it, the BBQ was so overwhelming that I can't even remember eating the bacon on the sandwich. I couldn't really detect the "seasoning" at all, so I can't comment there, but I think it's safe to say this sandwich should be skipped. Regular roast beef sandwiches are way better.

The flatland bike project..

So for the past couple of months I've really been spending a lot of time on bicycle related projects. I pseduo-restored my childhood bike, an ~1985 mongoose expert, and I've also been piecing together a flatland bike.

I started with a 1999 Dyno Slammer frame and fork that I bought from another local BMX enthusiast. I was pretty into it because it's got the "pac-man" dropouts which both protect and align the pegs. This should save me from bent axles. I also liked the amount of foot clearance behind the front tire.



From there I went in search of some inexpensive, used three piece cranks. I ended up getting a deal on some profile SS cranks. They came a little beat, but with a sealed bottom bracket, 3 DC990 brakes and a pair of Dia-compe tech-77 levers which I'd also been on the lookout for. The downside is that I didn't realize that the SS cranks had an oddball size spindle, which turned out to be kind of a pain. They are the only cranks with a 7/8" spindle, so I ended up having to machine out my sprocket and spacers..

I went crazy on www.flatlandluel.com and got a St Martin 26T sprocket, Odyssey Bar Mitzvah bars, a KHE Geisha/Sun Big City Lite rear wheel, clear Odyssey brake pads and red Twisted PC pedals. I grabbed a new Gyro GTX off of ebay, and got a pair of old school Odyssey Bermuda tires and 4 of the aluminum GT pegs that go with the special dropouts from www.bmxmuseum.com. A stem, seat, headset, front wheel and cables came from a donor 2000 Dyno Compe from Craigslist.

The parts I'm still waiting on include Odyssey Griswald grips
that match the pedals, a 27.0mm seatpost, headset cap and a chain.

The super cheap closeout prices at flatlandfuel have been really helpful in putting this project together, as was all the help and scores I've gotten at the BMX museum, and as usual, the help from Old Skool Cycles in Lafayette. I've been learning a lot about "newer" BMX technology from this project (even though it's probably considered "mid-school" by most) and I've especially come to have a great appreciation for the Odyssey company for the amount of really cool/useful products they are making, and the research and development methods they employ in doing so. Back in the day, they just made Gyros and goofy looking brakes, but with offerings like Evolver brakes, Twombolt cranks and their 41 thermal steel treating process, they really seem at the front of the pack.

With any luck I'll have this project wrapped up within a week. Perhaps some time riding it will make me forget about the crazy idea I have to build some Odyssey 7k-a/g-sport homer wheels.

Twittigration

The general use of Twitter has always been kind of nebulous, and sometimes even confusing. It certainly is a weird phenomenon. I personally use it as a mini-blog and a web link manager, but I've added a new function to it lately. It seems more applications, whether mobile or not, offer integration with twitter and/or facebook. I'm personally using such features with MapMyRide.com and Yelp.com. Yelp tweets to my account with a web link whenever I post a new review, and Map My Ride tweets whenever I submit a ride. The information that each of these apps is posting is pretty trivial, but I've been ruminating over whether these things are more or less relevant than my usual status updates like "i'm hungry", "studying", "going to see a movie", etc. Also, posting such information also kind of changes the functional idea of twitter for me. With this integration, it seems to me more like a stream of whats actually going on in my life.

Either way, it's an interesting concept, and I'm anxious to see what other apps add Twitter integration in the near future.

new bike parts etc

Recently I've been spending a lot of time riding my bike. As I've been mostly on city streets, my old mountain bike has been becoming more urban. All these items are available from Old Skool Cycles in Lafayette (who I highly recommend) if you're local, otherwise check out the amazon links for ordering and more details..

I started off with some Tioga city slicker tires. They've got a really low rolling resistance, but they're wide like mountian bike tires. I'm not exactly light, so skinny road bike tires always scared me.. The city slickers worked out great, even in rain.

I also grabbed one of these cheapo cateye mirrors. I really didn't want one of the larger ones mounted on an arm, and you can't go wrong at this price. One the downside, the mirror can move around a lot, so frequent adjustment is necessary. The mirror on this one is plastic, which is kind of a boon for me since the bike manages to fall over on occasion at the bike rack. Altogether, this mirror allows me to see traffic behind me and doesn't get in the way, which were my two main criteria for such a product.

I got these Odyssey gloves about two months ago, and they're really saving my hands. The terrycloth "sweat wiping" area is handy, but the gel palm inserts are what really makes these worthwhile to me. It seems like these run a little small, so I recommend buying a size up if you do. I got Larges and have already managed to tear the seam between the index and middle fingers. I do have a problem getting these off quickly, as well as answering my iPhone while riding, so I'm kind of considering the Knog Orca gloves. They've got quick release finger loops and are fingerless.

I've got a set of these Knog "Frog" safety lights on order after seeing them on a bmx street bike. They blend in quite well, and will hopefully keep me from getting run over. I'm anxious for these to arrive so I can get em on.

I feel kind of bad dumping a lot of money into my old bike. I'm courting the idea of building a new, more urban, more stripped down ride. At the top of my wish list are a rigid fork, a single disc brake, and a single front sprocket. I probably wont mess with these plans for a while though.. too many other projects in the works.

Oh, and one more thing.. I would really like to plug the iMapMyRide iPhone app that works with MapMyRide.com. It uses GPS to track your ride, plots it out on a map, and records your distance and average speed. Really awesome app. I have the free version, but there is a pay version that I think I'm going to have to try out. Definitely a cool thing for those of us who don't have computers.

More iPhone rambles..

With the new 3GS hardware and the 3.0 software coming out this week, I can't help but think about iPhone stuff..

One topic that's been in the news is iPhone as a gaming platform. Until last week, the only game I've ever played on the iPhone was the beer sliding one that comes with iPint. I just never thought of the phone as much of a game machine. Earlier this week I downloaded the game Hero of Sparta lite and was pleasantly surprised. [full game review over at ign.com] The game seems like a take on god of war more or less. The controls are pretty much classic Nintendo styled - directional pad plus two action buttons. The interesting part is that the controls are on the screen. I personally had never really considered the multi-touch screen serving this purpose. The tracking wasn't totally awesome, but it was usable. The graphics were pretty decent, and far more than I expected the iPhone to be capable of. I did have a bit of a problem following the action on the small screen though.. especially with my thumbs covering some of it. This game really tempts me to get an A/V connector and try it on the Television. This would certainly be an interesting direction to take from console gaming. It could have the portability of those all-in-one atari controller games, and the flexibility to do high graphic games and also all the regular palm top computer stuff. Again, this makes me really want some advanced I/O for the iPhone. I don't know off hand the bandwidth required to send full res, full refresh graphics, but wouldn't it be cool if the phone could sync up to a TV wireless-ly?

Another connected topic, that I think has a much larger social impact is the app store. I'm using myself as a benchmark here which doesn't make for the best data, but I find myself so much more likely to buy apps than I would real "software" because of the low prices. I am pretty comfortable going on a $1.99ea shopping spree on the app store, but hesitant to drop $40 for one piece of PC software. I don't know if it's a matter of perceived value or what. I do think that the market penetration of the iPhone could really be a boon for the widespread adoption of micro-payments though. This has been the first platform where it really makes sense.. It's the same with buying music on iTunes. I can get behind a song's value being a dollar. My fear though is that social determinism will rear it's ugly head and people like the RIAA will keep pushing for higher costs and wreck the whole thing. There are already some apps that are $19.99 or more. I recognize that the are probably very useful, and that the authors "gots ta get paid", but at the same time, that price just seems outside of my continuum of reality.

More on this later.. I'm also going to post a bit about some of the apps I've found that have proven useful.

iPhone stuff and portable computing thoughts

Last week while discussing the soon to be released iPhone 3GS, I was reminded of a defunct Microsoft project that I'd forgotten about. It had come up in MS propoganda e-mails in the mid to late nineties, but eventually disappeared. The project was called "Microsoft Personal Server". I don't think it ever saw the actual light of day, but from the spam emails, it sounded like a small piece of hardware that you would attach to any windows PC and it would host your personal data and profile information. At the time it was a pretty "out-there" idea, but with the cheapness of flash memory and the modularity of XP profiles with the roaming profile and other options as well as many apps coming in "portable" forms, it shouldn't be that hard to run such a configuration.

This conversation started me thinking about some kind of symbiotic use of portable computing's immediate data access with the horsepower, better I/O and mass storage of a desktop machine. Of course laptop computers fill this need, but I don't know if it's the most practical in terms of portability and expenditure for all situations. I would really like it if iPhone could connect to a bluetooth keyboard mouse and some kind of monitor. It can handle most of the day-to-day tasks that I require if it just had better I/O. It might even be ok if when docked I could have a pseudo KVM switch to flip back and forth from my PC to the phone. this would be great because Outlook seems to have a lot of overhead which is problematic if I'm gaming or recording something at the same time.


Anyhow, I have pre-ordered the new iPhone 3GS. Skipping the 3G worked out for me, since I was eligible for the upgrade price. Plus, it appears that first gen phones are still in demand for unlocking/jail-breaking uses, so I will likely break even. I think I'm most looking forward to the faster CPU and increased system memory, but the voice control has long been on my wish list, as is MMS.

Some recent food notes..

I haven't had time for any real writeups, but in the past couple of months I've had a Taco Bell taco with bacon on it(gross), ribs(not great, but edible) and "breakfast shots"(ok except for the cheese sauce. excellent packaging) at Burger King and other fast food disasters, but at the moment, I would like to mention a couple of local-to-Lafayette eateries.

First and foremost, I'd like to publicly state how much of a ripoff the Great Wall Chinese buffet near SR52 and Union is. I've only eaten there 2 times. The first was pretty good, and it was a little expensive, but within the realm of reality - around 8 bucks. I went last night, and had some decent, but standard chinese buffet food, but got a bill for $19 something. When I asked, I was informed that the buffet was $18 and the rest was the cost of a drink. I don't know how exactly this happened, but I can't imagine they would be as busy as they were if it was 18 bucks for a buffet. especially when En Lai has a better one and it's only $5. Either way, never going back there again.

Second, I've had some good sushi experiences lately. Unfortunately, the Bluefin Grill ended their all you can eat lunch sushi deal, but as a result, I found myself going to Ah-Z at Chauncey hill a lot. Ah-Z totally sucked the first time I ate there, but has improved vastly. The rolls are big, the rice is not to dry and the price is reasonable. They've also got a pretty good chicken katsu bento that comes with a salad, soup, and a couple pieces of tempura.

I also finally had a chance to stop in Maru sushi recently. It wasn't super upscale, but it's a nice place. I had an avocado and cucumber roll and a couple pieces of maguro. It was very fresh, and I got some soup and a couple of sides with it. The staff were super nice and the sushi menu was one of the larger ones I've seen. Definitely headed back there soon.

Lastly, I wanted to mention the Green Sprout. It's a cool little pan-asian bakery / eatery right across the street from Maru. I've been there several times and really like it. Of primary interest is their Baru sushi, which is kind of like a sushi salad served in a bowl. It's got rice at the bottom with sushi components like cucumber, imitation crab, fried egg, nori, etc piled up on top of it. It also comes with optional spicy mayo, wasabi sauce and a sweet soy sauce. It was altogether pretty awesome, and much to my pleasure they also have kimchi! They have a lot of other dishes I'm anxious to try.