Andrew Akers

this thought brought to you by the once a week drive into work to ensure my car doesn’t rot away.

Man, with how much of the built environment of the Los Angeles suburbs is dedicated to moving cars, you’d think that my commute would be faster and less miserable by car than by bike.
And yet driving saves 13 minutes on a good day, and also rates substantially higher on misery.

an 5 pointed traffic intersection in a residential neighborhood. there's a crosswalk across it that looks like a backwards h

why does this car intersection have a crosswalk intersection inside it.

please, tag your NSFB content.

my bike was reading over my shoulder and now they’ve locked themselves in the closet and won’t come out.

It's 2025 and we're still using "amount of time drivers spend sitting at specific traffic lights" as a primary guide for how we judge the environmental impact of "more housing in cities."

I biked to work this morning and personally banished three cars to the shadow realm.

Waxing a bike chain is worth it just to put on the freshly waxed chain and watch a perfectly dialed derailer just completely fail to shift correctly at all until you turn the crank a few dozen times.

This is the first time I've ridden the entirety of the Marvin Braude Bike Path since high school, and now I want to ride all the LA county bike paths.
I've done the strand, Ballona creek, and Laguna Dominguez. I think if I push, I could do all of the LA river and San Gabriele paths in one go.

Bike handlebars at the 0.00 mile marker for the Marvin Braude bike path in Los Angeles (technically at Torrance Beach).

A bike parked to next to the “bike path ends” sign at the other end of the Marvin Braude bike path. The bike is pale yellow, and slightly grimy with beach dust, almost like it’s just ridden 25 miles next to the beach.

every end is a beginning, every beginning an end.
or
I paid for the whole bike path, I’m gonna use the whole bike path.

A photo of an Apple keyboard with the alphabet keys changed depending on the frequency of letters in English in this case. the E, A, D, T, I, O, L and N keys are quite large, while Q, X, Z, K, and V are quite small.

Studies have found the most logical and fastest keyboard layout is not between key orders like qwerty and dvorak, but one that prioritises the size of keys depending on the frequency of those letters in the language being typed, regardless of the ordering.

Huh, my pebble watchface runs out of moonphase information next August: apps.rebble.io/en_US/applic...

guess it’s time to install the new SDK, figure out how to get the cobble app working on iOS, and get re-generating.

Do you need ID to read the REAL-ID rules? – Papers, Please! The problems we have faced just trying to get access to the text of the TSA’s rules raise issuess about (recursive) incorporation by reference of third-party, nongovernmental text in regulations, secret law, and access to Federal services and rights by those without ID, as well as the underlying issues of REAL-ID, mobile driver’s licenses, and digital IDs.

At the federal level, the standards are allegedly available, but actually reading them is another matter.
papersplease.org/wp/2024/11/2...

Battery only spec seems to be UL 2271, yeah.
I’m real grumpy it’s incorporated by reference into state code but not available without paying.

A bike path along the beach in the Los Angeles suburb of Manhattan beach. The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and it looks like a perfect day. There’s a bike handlebar just visible in the bottom of the frame

A bicycle cockpit aims down a beach bike path. It looks kinda like it belongs to a mountain bike, or perhaps an upright e-bike, or some tangled mess of the two. There’s a snack bag attached to the stem holding AirPods, and a hand holding the handlebars preventing the speed shakes from occurring.

commute via bike continues to be great

Pile o bikes at the park last weekend

A lone lifeguard tower stands amongst the sand, watching over any who venture into the ocean. It’s light blue and squat, enclosed with windows all around and a ramp leading down to the sand. A small American flag flies from a flagpole on it. Behind it, the Pacific Ocean stretches away to the horizon. Above it, blue skies with the beginnings of the marine layer clouds beginning to form on the ocean, ready to roll in with the evening breeze. Before it, a vast expanse of yellow sand.

could be worse

Rarely does something cross all my interests so effectively: www.usenix.org/conference/w...

I might grab an SDR at work and try this out.

me, every morning:
“ugh, I do I have to bicycle to work, sounds too hard, maybe I should drive”
me, after spinning my pedals for about 45 seconds:
“I love you bicycle”

Peacock with a long tail hanging out in a door zone bike lane

Hello, I would like to report a bike lane violation

Woke up to a flat, spent 20 minutes wrestling my tire, swapped in a new tube, got it back on, only to find out I put it on backwards. Spent the entirety of the time I could have snuck out for a bike ride wrestling with the flat. :(

A stereotypical Los Angeles beach scene. Above, blue sky with scattered clouds; to the left, dunes with native vegetation leading down to a broad sand beach; to the right, a bike path leading along the beach, with a few cyclists. On the beach, there are some people, volleyball nets, and one of the iconic light blue lifeguard towers with a lifeguard truck parked next to it.

sun, you are very pretty, but you are making things warm.

A picture of Manhattan Beach, in Los Angeles. The sun is shining, the day is perfect, there’s a very blue sky, yellow sand, volleyball nets, and a good selection of people playing volleyball and hanging out. There’s a ton of people in beach chairs and bikes parked on the sand.

the sky is blue, the commutes are good

wait, the USB Implementers Forum has gone and released a spec named USB4 v2.0? Was USB v3.2 Gen 2x2 not suffering enough?

the spoke is replaced, my beloved bike comes home tonight.

I have e-bikes I can ride, but they’re good for getting from A to B, but don’t spark as much joy.
Do have a 34 year old mountain bike I can take out, won’t be as comfy as my road bike though.

broke a spoke on my ride home yesterday, so my road bike is in the shop.
I don’t think I’ll survive without bike ride commutes.

I am also the kind of rider who will wear my silly Lycra shorts and ride an “easy” 50 miles. A pretty okay cyclist, if you will.
E-bikes can replace so many car trips, they can provide mobility to people who otherwise couldn’t ride a bike, they expand cycling, they let people carry more, go further.

I have seen e-bike discourse.
E-bikes allow me to haul a kid plus a weeks worth of groceries back from the store, or 2 kids to church in my Sunday best without sweating like a stuck pig. E-bikes are great, and don’t let anyone tell you different.

A yellow Canyon Endurace road bike leans against a low stone wall. Behind it is some kind of weird concrete and glass amoeba looking thing, which is allegedly the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art galleries, or will be, when it opens next year.

A yellow Canyon Endurace road bike leans against “Urban Lights” a collection of restored Los Angeles street lamps.

took my bike out to see the lights and the blob

I went for the Kamasi Washington concert, and it replaced my amoeba aversion with a grudging appreciation of the amoeba I guess?
The windows at sunset were pretty great.