Coresect

It started off as a normal Monday, though a little later than normal. I hit the road at 9:30 a.m., and after a short pause to fill up with petrol I settled into the 60 km trip. The weather was good, I had a leather jacket on but as long as I kept moving I wasn't going to get too hot.
The first 15 km are on the Via Flaminia: a winding single lane road descending from the hills and leading into the north of Rome. In a car you only need a small amount of traffic to make the 15 minute journey to Rome's ringroad into a 45 minute crawl, but on the bike there are enough straights to make passing possible, and fun, and the journey flies by. Pulling on to the ringroad, a big three lane affair that fluctates between a 160 kmh race circuit and Rome's largest car park, traffic was pretty mild and I switched into defensive mode, trying to spot morons out to kill me.

10 minutes on the road, coming out of a series of tunnels and just concluding an overtaking manuvre the engine revs quickly hit the roof and at the same time I lost all power to the rear wheel. On a manual change motorbike I'd worry about the chain having snapped (that happened to me once, with the chain wrapping itself round the rear wheel cog locking it solid in less than 3 seconds, but on the scooter the transmission is all down to a belt hidden from view behind metal and plastic. All I heard was a quiet snap, and that was it. Luckily I was heading downhill, so I coasted as far as I could: every metre I slowed down some more, and got hotter and hotter. As I reached a standstill I got off and started pushing till I arrived at a service station.

It was hot, oh yes it was.

I was lucky, I had just finished overtaking and was already in the slow lane, otherwise I'd have been stuck in the fast lane rapidly slowing from 115 kmh to zero with three lanes to cross. I was lucky that I only pushed the bike for less than a kilometre. All things considered I couldn't complain, but that didn't make me feel any better.

Calls were made, help was called for, and help did indeed arrive. I discovered something important though, a Yamaha Majesty 250 will fit inside a Seat Alhambra MPV if you take out all the seats in the car, and then remove the bike's screen and mirrors. And lean it right over as you struggle to push it in. Oh, I also confirmed that 340 Kg is a lot of bike, and pushing it up a narrow board is not fun, especially when it's 35° centigrade. Sure, if the engine had seized it would have been a lot harder, but if the engine had seized I think I would have left the bike where it came to a stop with a brief prayer and that would have been that.




Once the bike was back home, and I was fed and changed I started to remove bits of plastic, then more bits of plastic, and then bits of alloy. As I removed parts small bits of shredded rubber and canvas started to fall out and litter the garage floor. The belt had indeed snapped, and then the spinning variator and clutch had taken it in turns to shred whatever was left to a fine dust.



Yup, that was the transmission belt...


I dismantled everything slowly and tried to remember where all the bits went. I hit a problem with the variator, one of the four crosshead screws didn't want to let go. I tried penetrating oil, hitting the screwdriver with a hammer, and even heating up the screw with a paint remover hot air gun, all to no avail. In the end we took the whole vaiator to a local garage where the mechanic hit it harder than I wanted to and it unscrewed without a murmer. The rollers were not as much little cylinders as little misshapes with some flat bits and some curves, they needed changing too.



The new belt was sourced off the web, and it arrived after a day and a half. I also tried to get some new rollers for the variator, but everywhere I went I met blank stares and shaking heads. One local moped and bicycle spare parts shop almost came to the rescue. It was one of those family-run businesses from years past, complete with football scarves, framed photographs of a pope or two (one dead, one undecided), alongside those of pre-war cyclists who must have been black and white in real life too. To their credit they actually did have rollers, and the right size, but not the right weight. I asked the guy if they'd work, any slightly positive reply would have seen me buying the bits there and then, but he replied with a not so helpful, “what do I know?” It wasn't an honest “I won't tell you somthing I'm not sure about”, but rather a “I don't give a damn either way”. I expect that shop to have shut down in a year or so, with selling techniques like that...

Armed with the new belt I decided the rollers could wait, and I studied online guides to how to install the belt and put all the bits back together. Much to my surprise it all went back together without any problems, and I didn't have any bits missing and none left over! Of course she wouldn't start, and the battery died trying, but the spark plug was doing its thing, namely sparking, so the battery was charged up, and turning the throttle a few times got the petrol flowing through again (when we'd put the bike at an angle the carb had emptied). Back on the road all is well, acceleration is as smooth as it once was, and top speed is now up to 127 kph, better than when I got the bike. Good stuff indeed. Now I have to find new rollers and then take it all apart again.


I just love machinery...

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And just how far down this spiral have you fallen?

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A man buys a goat from a farmer. The farmer goes to his farm to get it, but when he comes back he says that the goat died while he was out. The man asks for his money back, but the farmer says that he's really sorry, but he spent it in town. The man says "alright, give me the goat anyway, I'll raffle it off." The farmer responds, " You can't raffle of a dead goat!" "Sure I can, I just won't tell anyone that it's dead."

 

So the farmer gives the man the goat, and doesn't see him again until a week later. The farmer asks, "How'd the raffle go?" "Great, I sold 100 tickets for $10 bucks each. I made $990". The farmer is incredulous. "Didn't anybody complain about the dead goat?" "Only the guy that won, so I gave him his money back."

Nice, combining Joy Division with Star Wars was a flash of genius for someone.

So I spotted this photograph somewhere during my wandering (drop me a line and I'll link and credit you) and it struck a chord. Advances in technology have made things a lot easier, but not always a lot better. Taking photography as the example (but this could be just as easily applied to many things, like making music or driving cars) when people first started freezing time on to paper it was a mysterious form of alchemy and magic, understood by few and practised by even fewer.
Even as technology took great strides forward and cameras stopped being the size of suitcases and the art evolved into something more and more people could do, it wasn't for "everyone". To take a photograph took a combination of skill, technique and vision, and every photograph was considered carefully. There was no auto-focus, no auto-exposure, no matrix metering, no auto everything, no zoom lens, no dedicated automatic flash, no instant view of what you did (or didn't) freeze for posterity. Sometimes you wouldn't be able to see precisely what you were taking photographs of without adapters, a cloth over your head or just a great deal of imagination.
Having a manual only camera forced photographers to understand how the camera worked, why aperture and shutter speed were important, as well as the film speed and the different characteristics the films had. There was no "fixing it with photoshop", though there were wizards who performed "shadow puppet" magic in the darkroom, not everyone was prepared to go and stand in the dark in a room often not much bigger than a cupboard for hours on end with only chemical fumes and a red light for company.
Taking good photographs was harder, even taking bad photographs was more difficult, and when something is different, not many people want to do it. Don't get me wrong, this isn't about exclusivity, it's about dedication, it's about the spirit and it's about the "art". Buying a violin does not make one a violinist, or a musician. Having a saw does not make you a carpenter, and having oil paint and an easel does not make you a painter. I think twice before calling myself a musician: I can create music, I can make songs, I produce an album of music, but I cannot play an instrument, and I don't know a crotchet from a quaver. Am I a musician? How about a person who is a classically trained pianist, who can not only read music score but also write it. Is he a musician? What about if he cannot create any music of his own at all? He isn't a composer then, nor a songwriter, but he is an instrumentalist, so perhaps musician is too strong a word?
Nowadays the rules have changed, you can buy a cheap camera and be taking pictures the moment you put the batteries in it. You can drive your car with its ABS and countless other three letter acronyms that give you skills that once took years to master, but that doesn't make you as good a driver.

What's in a name?

I've just put up a new photography gallery or two, one is dedicated to flowers, in various forms and styles, whilst the second is actually dedicated to some photographs I've taken of my bike.

Concept vehicles are often a bit hit and miss: either you're left wondering who would be stupid enough to considered driving or riding something that looks like bowl of fruit, or you find yourself salivating and planning to change your lifestyle to something a little more healthy just to up the odds of living long enough to at least see one of the futuristic beasties. Now I like helicopters, and bikes, so this work by  Igarashi Design falls into the latter category. The helicopter above looks like something you would use to travel from Bladerunner into Akira, and is almost enough to make me go vegan.

Promotional pin-up calendars have withstood the test of time, with garages and lorry cabs having one or two proudly on display, challenging our politically correct times. Only one of them ever made it through to the bigtime, with the world's press eagerly awaiting eachnew year's offering of arty (and therefore respectable) smut, and all to promote tyres... So I was pleasantly surprised to see this offering, from a medical supplies company called Eizo. Their innovative Pin-up Calendar 2010 actually has a nice twist, as all the photographs are X-rays. I've no idea if they are real or faked up, but the look great, and I'd happily have one of these on my wall. Beauty is sometimes more than just skin deep.

Created by the German advertising agency Butter.

See the rest of the pictures over at Boing Boing.

Israeli forces storm humanitarian aid ships in international waters and shoot dead at least ten pacifists (perhaps as many as 19).

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky

There's a new look for the www.coresect.com first page, and I've adeed a new section dedicated to my photography.

UK political comedian has released a book called  The People's Manifesto based on proposals for UK politicians given by audience-members at his stand up shows. Some are genius:

MPs should not be paid wages, rather loans like students which they pay back once they leave parliament (and inevitably walk into highly paid jobs thanks to their "political experience").

Those in favour of ID cards should be banned from having curtains.

Ganked from Boing Boing.

Some footage of the very tempting mini Monotron, with Skinny Puppy's Cevin Key in Japan having just bought one. Me jealous? Japan? Monotron? Nah...

So, I'm trying to link my facebook page with this blog at www.coresect.com/dblog so this should get duplicated nicely. Listening the Aphex Twin's Drukqs and it was worth waiting nine years to play the damn thing. Now it doesn't feel so long since he released anything, right?

Yup