Monday, September 19, 2005 3:29:31 PM UTC :: Filed Under Fitness

If you’re a remotely serious cyclists and you wear a helmet (which any remotely serious cyclist should), you’ve undoubtedly come-across the situation where a bug direct-injects himself into your helmet and won’t come out.   Helmets in the late 80’s and 90’s had lycra covers on them that covered the air holes and prevented this problem. However, it seems like many of the most popular helmet companies seem to not think that getting a hornet, wasp, or a mad bee in your helmet isn’t a problem.

I did some research on this last night and found that quite a few manufacturers actually make helmets with 'bug screens' in them:

  1. LAS
  2. Rudy Project
  3. Shain
  4. Spiuk
  5. Uvex

Unfortunately, most of these helmets are rather expensive (most over $100) and many are difficult to purchase because they are made by small European manufacturers…. But they do exist.  Some brands, like the Shain and the LAS, have metal bug screens which sounds like a good idea to me in terms of durability of the screen.

After asking about such helmets on a cycling forum, apparently many cyclists just retro-fit their current helmets by buying a small piece of screen and taping it into their helmets or sandwiching the screen between the helmets foam and the outer shell.

Thursday, September 08, 2005 9:06:52 PM UTC :: Filed Under VB.NET

It’s a sad day when a web developer like me has to resort to writing batch files.  Since I had to write some today, I guess that makes this a sad day? ;-)

Anyway, so I don’t forget, here is a sample script with some notes so I don’t completely forget what I did.   The script below takes two file paths as input parameters, then generates a file name using some date manipulation so that file may be moved from the first file path to the second:

rem Clear any previous commands
cls

rem Hide output from showing unless ECHO is used
@echo off rem Name: MoveIt.Bat

rem
rem Purpose: To copy a file from one directory to another.
rem The file name is dynamically created in this script.
rem
rem Variables:
rem %1 = The 'from' file path
rem %2 = The 'to' file path
rem 
rem Example:
rem 
rem C:\moveit.bat “C:\downloads\“ “C:\uploads\“
rem 
rem Create filename for last month's report PDF

set day=%date:~-7,2%
set month=%date:~-10,2%
set year=%date:~-2,2%

if %month:~-2,1% equ 0 set month=%month:~-1,1%
if %month% lss 1 goto error
if %month% gtr 12 goto error

set /a month=%month%-1

if %month% equ 0 set month=12
if %month% lss 10 set month=0%month%

set reportfile=SomeFileName %month%%year%.pdf
set reportpath=%1%reportfile%

rem Move the web report PDF from path %1 to %2
if not exist %reportpath% goto nofile
move %reportpath% %2

rem Create a text file for DIP importing
rem ">" Over-writes the file, ">>" Appends to the file
set dipfile=%2WEBDIP.txt

rem Reset the dates in case they were modified above
set day=%date:~-10,2%
set month=%date:~-7,2%
set year=%date:~-4,4%
set currentdate=%day%/%month%/%year%

rem Write the DIP file directly in the %2 path
echo BEGIN >> %dipfile%
echo DOCTYPE: doctype >> %dipfile%
echo DATE: %currentdate% >> %dipfile%
echo PATH: %reportfile% >> %dipfile%
echo END >> %dipfile%

:error
if errorlevel 4 goto lowmemory 
if errorlevel 2 goto abort 
if errorlevel 0 goto exit 

:nofile
echo The requested PDF report (%reportfile%) was not found
goto exit

:lowmemory 
echo Insufficient memory to copy files or 
echo invalid drive or command-line syntax. 
goto exit

:abort 
echo You pressed CTRL+C to end the copy operation.
goto exit 

:exit
EXIT

rem Use ‘pause’ to prevent the DOS window from closing
rem pause

Note that this is my first batch file. If it's the worst thing you've ever seen, don't just sit there, help me out! :-)

Monday, August 29, 2005 4:59:43 PM UTC :: Filed Under Web Design

Here I thought I had seen every (valid) HTML tag that existed, until I was reading some articles on the W3C site and stumbled across the <FIELDSET> and <LEGEND> tags.

<FIELDSET> groups form fields into a 'container by wrapping a border around all of the fields.  Obviously, you could put anything you want in the Fieldset tags, but it's designed for grouping form fields.

The <LEGEND> tag simply puts a label on the border of the <FIELDSET>.  Here's an ugly sample (which could be made pretty with some CSS):

A Fieldset LegendWho ever knew there was an HTML tag called "FIELDSET"?

Internet Explorer 6, FireFox 1.1, and Netscape 7.01 all recognized this tag, so I guess that means it's 'fair-game'!

Saturday, August 13, 2005 6:29:50 AM UTC :: Filed Under Fitness

After riding a Selle Italia Flight Titanium saddle for a few years, I decided that it’s not likely the seat is going to “break-in” any more and the only way I’d get my butt to stop hurting after my rides was to try something else.   I tried the SaddleCo Flow because it seemed like the perfect saddle: light, airy, and had a ‘suspension’ system kind of like my Herman Miller Aeron office chair.  In theory it was nice, but it felt like I was riding a cookie-cutter so back to the store it went.  I recently purchased a Selle Italia SLK saddle, but it went back to the store after just two rides.  It looked cool, but was just too narrow and harder than my Flight.

I finally decided to bite-the-bullet and get a Fi´zi:k Aliante that I’ve heard so many good things about.  My local bike store had some and I was really impressed… except I wasn’t impressed with the $260 price for the carbon version!  So I bought a titanium version on eBay for $150… kind of a risky investment since that is a LOT of money for a saddle I’ve never tried and couldn’t return.

No need to return this puppy… I love it!   After only one ride, it felt great (or should I say that my butt felt great!)  I’ve never had a saddle that made me happy on the first ride before.  I can’t remember ever coming back from a ride and not feeling any pain in my butt… it was almost unusual to me to be able to focus on riding and not how much my rear hurt.

What I think makes this saddle so nice, aside from its ample padding, is the carbon and Kevlar shell.  My Flight saddle had a very hard plastic shell (and so did all the other saddles I’ve owned except the Flow) which doesn’t give at all.  The Aliante’s Kevlar shell is rigid but has a little give to it which I’d assume helps absorb some of the road shock, kind of like the SaddleCo Flow saddle, only better because there are no hard plastic edges.   

For anyone who’s looking for a ‘cool looking’ saddle that doesn’t weigh much and still offers great comfort, I’d suggest giving this one a try… if you don’t mind transferring the pain in your butt to a pain in your wallet!

Thursday, August 11, 2005 2:29:30 PM UTC :: Filed Under ASP.NET

I see Microsoft isn’t always devoted to creating serious business apps… some times they like to play: http://www.escapeyesterworld.com/

This site is for marketing Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 and features old movie clips and the like… pretty funny!

Monday, August 08, 2005 2:33:09 PM UTC :: Filed Under Geek Tips

One of the most highly annoying *features* of Adobe’s Acrobat 7 product is that it installs itself in all of the Microsoft Office applications whether you want it to or not and there appears to be no easy way to stop it. If you use Adobe Acrobat, Outlook has a Send as PDF button on the toolbar. To remove the button, you need to disable the COM addin.

Go to:

HKEY LOCAL MACHINE
   \Software
      \Microsoft
         \Office
            \Outlook
               \Addins
                  \PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook

Change the LoadBehavior value from 3 to 2. Restart Outlook. The PDF functions will still be available in Word and the other Office programs. The same registry key appears to exist for Word, Excel, and Access as well. I haven't figured-out how to remove Acrobat from Visio though.

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