The official site’s download page hasn’t been updated yet, but the user forum is reporting the latest version of the SuperCard patching software (v. 2.56) is available:

http://eng.supercard.cn/download/setupmicrosdV256en.rar

Hopefully this will fix some of the compatibility issues with some more recent games.

I decided to cut my motorcycle trip a day short in order to beat out a rain storm and twenty degree temperature drop in Syracuse. I left New York at 9AM under the threat of dark clouds and a steady wind. Despite the annoying wind, I made it all the way through New York state and Pennsylvania without any rain. I crossed into Maryland and the gray clouds broke, and the sun shone down on me. It was an omen! I whooped, happy to be out of the gloom. Then the sun left as quickly as it came. Black clouds rolled in, and I was soaked in a downpour.

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I have a pair of Oakley Juliettes that I’ve owned for almost six years. I love them, but they have very wide arms that makes wearing them under my motorcycle helmet impossible. Last fall I went shopping for a pair of sunglasses that would fit comfortably. I had no requirements other than flexible arms and a decent amount of styling. Since I would wear the glasses with my faceshield down, I wasn’t too concerned about how they looked on my face.

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I made it to Syracuse without incident or serious soreness in about eight and a half hours, not including the four small stops I made along the way. I had an hour and a half lunch/coffee break with Configuratrix, which was very pleasant. I had Thai food, and I was concerned that the choice would come back to haunt me. Luckily, I didn’t have any problems on the way up.

I managed to kill a bee on the border of Pennsylvania. I spied him on the ledge of my visor, still, hopping around and partially stunned from the impact. I flicked at him, only to discover he was inside my helmet. I watched him do his death dance, less than two inches from my face. I slowly turned my head to the right and opened up my visor, hoping the wind sheer would blow him away instead of directly onto my face. The bee flopped over on his back with his legs and stinger (the most important part) curled up. I cracked my visor and the wind carried his body onto the highway at 90MPH.

Today my stepfather and I are off to Fort Ticonderoga. It should be an easy drive through some mountain roads. I’m a little concerned about the temperature. My stepfather isn’t as well geared as I am, and it’s probably in the high forties or low fifties right now. It’s supposed to be in the high sixties by noon, and in the mid-seventies for a high. It’s just getting there that I’m worried about.

I’m heading out on my motorcycle to see my folks in New York state today. I’ll be around ten hours on the road today, and who knows how long with my stepfather once I arrive. I should be back either Thursday or Friday, depending on a variety of factors, including the weather and how much of a mother hen my mom will be over me and my stepdad.

Yesterday was chocked full with installing heated grips on Cylon and doing a wiring modification so he now uses both headlights at once.

Be good — I have another entry queued for tomorrow and that will be it for the week unless I can figure out how to post by cell phone.

The Gestalt Theory, developed in the 1930s and 1940s by psychologists, attempts to explain how humans process visual information. The laws of the Gestalt Theory are presented below, and shamelessly ripped from Wikipedia:

• Proximity – the objects closest together are more likely to form a group.
• Similarity – objects similar in size or shape are more likely to form a group.
• Closure – our brains add missing components to complete a larger pattern.
• Symmetry – symmetrical items are more likely to group together.
• Common fate – items moving in the same direction are more likely to group together.
• Continuity – once a pattern is formed, it is more likely to continue even if the elements are redistributed.

The Gestalt Theory laws distill nicely for motorcyclists: cagers (car drivers) are going to perceive objects of similar size and shape sooner than an object of smaller and non-standard size. A motorcycle’s slimmer profile puts us at a disadvantage in a sea of cars. Cars turn in front of motorcyclists quite often; it’s the number one situation where motorcycles crash with cars. Another common situation is being rear-ended at a stop light.

Automotorists are used to looking out for other cars and pedestrians. Lots of car drivers play into the Gestalt Theory of similarity and symmetry that work against a motorcyclist. Instead of noticing the “odd man out,” most drivers tend to see other cars first, and motorcycles second. It’s very easy for a motorcycle to slip into a car’s blind spot. Motorcyclists are taught to avoid the blind spot, but dense traffic strongly coerces a motorcyclist to get into places they shouldn’t be. Combine thick traffic and a hurried or distracted driver and you have a car vs. motorcycle accident waiting to happen. Things are even worse at night.

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I made a trip up to Rockville/DC yesterday for work and for an Ars Technica meet in DC proper. I decided a few things on my ride.

• Make sure my hard luggage is closed. I rode from Fredericksburg to Rockville with my left side case open. I guess I didn’t set the lid down far enough before I locked the lock. My reflective vest was a quarter of the way out, but everything was there, including my wallet, cell phone and Nintendo DS Lite. I am very surprised the vest didn’t fly out of the case, taking all of my shit with it.
• Riding on the highway is a lot of fun. People are egged on to speed in the presence of a motorcycle, providing me with unending supply of cars to travel behind. I was only in the lead/isolation for about ten miles of my entire trip yesterday. I rode over three hundred miles, so being extra paranoid for ten is a pretty fair trade.
• It’s time to put away the summer gear and break out the solid leather pants and my larger-sized perforated leather jacket. Luckily I had a fleece vest, silk glove liners, and balaclava in a side case, because it was about 50 degrees when I left DC, making wind chill about 38 degrees at my highway cruise speed. My right hand was so cold I had to stop in Fredericksburg on the way back. I held a cup of coffee just to get it to warm up again. I am also looking into a textile jacket for the winter: extra insulation and rainproof/resistant would make a lot of difference on longer trips.
• After sitting at the bottom of my gear box for six months, I’m going to install my handwarmers today. Despite glove-centric solutions (like my silk liners, or heavier gloves), many cyclists on my FZ6 forum believe that handlebar-mounted handwarmers are the only way to go. I put 3000 miles on my bike last winter, maybe I’ll be able to do 5000 with the handwarmers.
• You can change from regular clothes to motorcycle gear in a parking lot at midnight in Rockville and no one will notice. Or if they do notice, they won’t raise a stink about it and call the police.

I am super excited for my trip to start next week. Google Maps reports 500 miles from my home to my first destination, I should be able to do that no problem in one day, especially if I get my damn heated grips installed!

I received a free Gillette Fusion (that’s the six blade face-machete) in the mail from Costco yesterday. After nearly dismembering myself this April with a Gillette Fusion razor, I’m not inclined to keep it. However, those of you without crazy facial growth patterns may find some use for it. The freebie comes with the handle and one razor. It’s sealed, never been used, etc.

The first person in the US to email me gets it. If you feel like sending me the postage via PayPal, so much the better.

I’ll even autograph it for ya ;)

It is well known amongst my meatspace friends that I love Monopoly. My friend Stilts and I play almost every time we see each other. When I saw that Monopoly was featured as one of the games in the aptly titled (but wordy) Monopoly – Boggle – Yahtzee – Battleship cartridge for the Nintendo DS, I got excited. The game was published last year by Atari and created by Sensory Sweep. My hope was to play Monopoly over the Nintendo DS’s built-in WiFi, so that Stilts and I could argue over trading the oranges for the blues and who was the bigger bastard during auctions. However, as I delved more deeply into the game, I knew I was going to be disappointed.

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I want to make sure that emergency responders have the information they need in the event that I am incapacitated in an accident (thinking particularly about my motorcycle, but also in general). I posted a thread on Ars asking for what I should put on an emergency information card I intend to carry in my wallet. While there was the general asshattery at first, including “you ride a motorcycle? Organ donor card,” one of the first suggestions struck me as so ingenious that I wanted to share it here.

APSBiker suggested the ICE contact system, which stands for In Case of Emergency. It was created by paramedic Bob Brotchie in May 2005. The premise is simple. You enter important contact information in your cell phone, using a standardized method for naming your contacts.

The format is as follows

contact ID numberICE-contact name

e.g., 1ICE-MOM

Using a number first ensures that the contacts stay at the top of you phone’s address book.

I wanted to get a little more specific, so I added the person’s relation to me as a second parameter, ala

contact ID numberICE-relation-contact name

My first-priority contact (Lady Jaye), is labelled 1ICE-WIFE-LADYJAYE. Next up I have Stilts, labelled 2ICE-FRIEND-STILTS, then my mom, labelled 3ICE-MOM-MAMA. Since my Motorola E815 supports picture identification on my ringers, I’ve applied the official ICE logo next to each of my emergency contacts. I’ve hosted it below, in case you want to use it on your own phone.

It took me about ten minutes to copy the entries on my phone and “ICE” them. You have no excuse not to do the same. It’s easy and might help save your life, or at least let emergency staff get in touch with key people in your life.