Bandwidth experiment

Since my internet has been slow lately, I decided to do a little experiment and see how much bandwidth is used while doing various internet activities.

Here’s a plot over 10 minutes of three things (in this order):

1. Listening to music on somebody’s myspace page
2. Watching a (MP4) video streamed by castfire
3. Watching a YouTube video

Float placement in LaTeX

I’ve been plagued by misplaced figures in a paper I’m writing, but fortunately I just figured out how to solve it and I want to write it down (here) so I don’t forget.

The problem involves a LaTeX document with sections and subsections. In one of the subsections I want to place a LARGE table (an instance of \begin{sidewaystable} … \end{sidewaystable}). However, no matter what parameters I give to the figure environment, LaTeX always decides to push the table’s appearance until sometime after the start of the next section (sometimes even to the very end of the document, right in the middle of the bibliography in fact!)

So basically I want to tell LaTeX that, no matter what, you should place the figure before the start of the next section. There should be a command to do this right?

\clearpage

This tells LaTeX to place all outstanding floats, on their own page if necessary, before continuing to the next page. So putting this after the table in question and before the start of the next section works perfectly.

Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not sure I know why this works in my document because the if I remove the table, the beginning of the next subsection starts in the middle of a page. So in principle, \clearpage could have the effect of putting the table on the first page after the start of said subsection.

Oh well..

(update — Thanks to Piet van Oostrum)

Collecting some links

Various fixed gear conversions, builds, and articles.

JR’s examples (in chronological order):

1. http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/2004/ratzkin.htm
2. http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/2005/nov/JesseRatzkin.htm
4. http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/2006/may/JesseRatzkin.htm
5. http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/2007/dec/3/JesseRatzkin.htm

Articles:

1. JR’s offroad: http://www.fixedgeargallery.com/articles/jesseratzkin/offroad/
2. Sheldon Brown’s fixed gear page (RIP) (complete with pictures of severed fingers!):
   http://www.sheldonbrown.com/fixed.html

Bike Pics

No words, just pictures.

Inagural ride

Home to beer store, along Prince, up the hill into town, U-turn, back down Prince, through the hospital, and back home.

New Badass Bike

I picked up my new set of wheels today (built by Ben’s Bikes in Athens), photos to follow. Here are some specs before I forget them.

• 1985 blue Reighly sportif “sport touring” frame, 53 cm (see Retro Raleigh Catologues)
• P cranks (170 cm) and narrow profile flat road pedals
• SP track chain (silver)
• Surly flip flop hub with a 17T freewheel
• 47×17 gearing (that I need to workout a bit to handle)
• compact TekTRO aero brake levers (which are actually comfortable to my diminutive hands)
• original front and rear calipers
• Mavic open sport rims
• Kenda KWEST 700×28cm tires (much kinder than the 23c’s I’ve been riding for 10 years now)
• Swobo saddle, synthetic (it was either this or a $120 Brooks saddle, but I decided to indulge my inner cheapskate vegan)

Now I need a decent lock, an 19T track cog and lockring, and some good weather. I put the first mile on it riding back from the shop. I’m planning on 50+ miles next week. The forecast is mid to high 60’s, lows around 35 all week.

update–

Here are some calculations based on the gearing:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Gear Inch & Shifting Pattern Calculator        www.jbarrm.com
     Copyright 1996-2003 Barry Masterson              jbarrm@panix.com
               Single-speed Track Bicycle Version
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 SP	Shifting Pattern
 CRxFW	Chainring x FreeWheel
 GI	Gear Inches
 MPH	Miles Per Hour

 Wheel Diameter: 27.60 inches

   GI  76.3
CRxFW 47x17
RPM:-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 80:  18.16 MPH
 85:  19.30 MPH
 90:  20.43 MPH
 95:  21.57 MPH
100:  22.70 MPH
105:  23.84 MPH
110:  24.97 MPH
115:  26.11 MPH
120:  27.24 MPH
125:  28.38 MPH
130:  29.51 MPH

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Form Created: March 01, 2008 : 17:26:38

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Gear Inch & Shifting Pattern Calculator      www.jbarrm.com
     Copyright 1996-2003 Barry Masterson            jbarrm@panix.com
               Single-speed Track Bicycle Version
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 SP        Shifting Pattern
 CRxFW     ChainRing x FreeWheel
 GI        Gear Inches
 GIdf      Percentage of increase between present GI value and the
           next sequential GI value.
 DI        Distance traveled in INCHES in a single pedal rotation
 diff      Difference in INCHES between the present DI value and
           the next sequential DI value.
 DF        Distance traveled in FEET in a single pedal rotation
           displayed as FEET' INCHES.decimal_remainder"
 PRPM      Pedal Rotations Per Mile
 RT        Gear Ratios

 Wheel Diameter: 27.60 inches
 Gears: 47x17
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 SP  CRxFW    GI      GIdf      DI      diff      DF        PRPM      RT
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1>  47x17   76.31    0.00%   239.72    0.00   19'11.72"   264.31   1:2.76
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 SP  CRxFW    GI      GIdf      DI      diff      DF        PRPM      RT
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Form Created: March 01, 2008 : 17:26:00