Kiski Junction Railroad, Pennsylvania, June 26th 2016.
I’d taken my family to ride this little railroad just the week before. On the road down I’d noted the last few miles would make a good bike ride, and so one week later I took my Ninja 300 there.
It was a boiling hot day, but a curiosity is how it’s the details of the bike’s life that stay with me: That chain was on its last legs, and had a tight spot I just could not massage out. The rear sprocket would soon be gone too, but the greatest recollection of all was the valve adjustment. just a few days later over the July 4th weekend, I tackled the valves. The diminutive Ninja had about 8000 miles on it; the recommended check was 7600; conventional wisdom on the Kawasaki Ninja 300 forum was to leave it to 15000, I did not want to leave it to chance.
It actually turned out to be a long undertaking, and the exhaust valves were indeed out of spec. I got the job done, and the bike still runs today. It remains the most complex thing I’ve done mechanically.
The joy of bike ownership, learning to do things you never thought you could.
N.B. this post originally appeared in edited form at chinariders.net
I bought my stainless ‘ebay exhaust’ – the one everybody uses – months ago but never had the chance to get it fitted. These kits almost fit the TT250, but there’s one definite modification required; you have to widen or cut the flange as it’s not drilled wide enough for the 229cc engine’s exhaust port studs. My neighbour (actually the maintenance guy for place I live in) offered to help me cut the flanges with his grinder and vice. On friday night we did this with the accompanying (somewhat terrifying to the uninitiated) shower of sparks.
I was a bit worried about the studs and cap nuts, already haven taken the bike through winter. In fact they came off with just a light turn of a ring spanner; however the bottom stud unscrewed from the cylinder block rather than the cap nut. The threads were in good condition; but I couldn’t get the cap nut off so resolved to get a spare. Autozone and Advance Auto Parts didn’t have anything suitable – they sold M8 x 1.25 studs but they were too long. A local hardware store had a good selection so I armed myself with a couple of spares. I also bought a nut splitter and some small locking vise grips, placed the grips on the smooth part of the stud and was able to turn it off. My cleaning and scrubbing the nut while it was on the bike had let a lot of WD40 penetrate in and gum up the threads, but it was basically fine, so I put it back on the bike, screwing it in with my fingers. No problems. I bought new nuts and lock washers.
Next challenge was the gasket. I’d ordered a new one from ebay and it’s basically a little copper ring, but I couldn’t see the existing one; I then noticed the exhaust port appeared to have some weirdly machined interior edges. The ‘wet’ spots are some cleaner I had sprayed on earlier:
The photo revealed these were deformed at the top, and I realised I was looking at the existing gasket which had a squared cross section, and had been pretty well squashed. I grabbed it with some needle-nose pliers and it popped out. I put the new one in (I dabbed a little grease on it to make it stick as it kept dropping out and tried the new header for size, screwing the nuts on finger tight to get an idea of fit.
Some people have got lucky with the fit of these things. I knew straight away the clutch arm was going to be close, and I figured it would be a little clearer when it was all tightened up, but for now it made a little ‘tink’ every time I let the clutch lever out.
Secondly on fitting the mid pipe and muffler, it cleared the frame by about 5mm and easily passed under the airbox, but there was absolutely no way I could get it to meet the bolt eye under the seat where everyone usually fixes it. It had about an inch to spare:
I could not move it up as this would bring the pipe into contact with the frame; I could try and bend or dimple it, but it really didn’t have much motion available at all. So I knew I had to make some sort of bracket.
I haven’t made anything out of metal…well, ever, really. I went to Home Depot and found a length of Aluminium ‘flat’ that was three feet long (lol) and two inches wide, and a mini hacksaw. It was .0125 thick, so plenty stiff. I reckoned that If I cut a simple rectangle 12cm x 5cm I could drill holes in it and make a bracket, so that’s what I did. Well, I sort of butchered the holes a bit (I didn’t measure well) but it fitted; you can see it here:
Exhaust clearance to the license plate holder is marginal (I used the included spacer and even bought some nylon ones from Home Depot in case I needed more room) but it’s fine. Lots of riding today, no melting:
I was still unhappy about the clutch clearance, so I Googled some advice about how to, er, ‘shape’ exhaust pipes and the most simple way appeard to be to whack it with a ball-peen hammer. So I got a regular ball peen hammer (6 bucks, Harbor Freight) and marked the spot with a sharpie where the clutch actuator was touching, and set about whacking my exhaust. A few blows made the material dimple enough to give about 2mm clearance (it actually increases when bike is hot) and it’s on the underside so not visible.
Last job was to take the carb off and fit the 115 main jet (already had a 27.5 pilot which I knew is a little rich so should be fine with a more open pipe) and put it all back together.
It sounds great, and the bike pulls strongly throughout the rev range. I was pretty pleased with the result.
My Ninja 300 with Shane’s KTM 1290 Superduke, hours before I realised something was going very wrong with my vision.
I’d had a great couple of weeks. I’d just got back from visiting my Dad in Spain, along with my sister and beautiful niece (whom I had never met).
My sister and niece in Salobrena, Spain.Yours truly in the hills of the Valle De Lecrin, Spain.
Spain had really inspired me this visit, and I dreamed of being able to take a bike to some of those pristine roads in Andalucia. Maybe next time.
A couple of weeks back home had seen the unusually long winter finally give way to rising temperatures, and the longer day allowed riding with friends after work again. I met my friend Shane for a short ride out and meal afterwards to see in the new riding season. During the ride I became aware of something in my left eye; what looked like a large vitreous floater; the kind of ghostly web that one sees occasionally, but much larger. Later on, in the pub, it came and went. I recall thinking that in a certain light it looked as if someone dressed in black was standing in my periphal vision. Due to a sense of optimism and well-entrenched morbid fear of hospitals and doctors, I thought I’d sleep on it and see how it was the next day. I wasn’t especially worried at this point.
Well, you’ve got some blood in there.
I awoke the next morning, and as soon as I sat upright that ghostly floater had turned an inky, impenetrable black. If you imagine your vision simplified as a rectangle, the bottom left-hand quarter was completely gone, replaced by a shapeless dark void.
Obviously this warranted a trip to the ER, which fortunately was just up the road. After handing over $100 (my ‘copay’) I was seen almost immediately. I described the symptoms and had to place a towel across my eyes, sit in the dark for ten minutes, and await the retinal scanner.
This machine, about the size of a coffee percolator, whirs and clicks as it locates your eye, then takes a picture. The ER doctor, a genial, middle-aged man looked at the images and said “Well, you’ve got some blood in there.” He suspected a ruptured blood vessel but was emphatic that he couldn’t say for sure. “We see about two per week. It’s common. Just not to you.” Fair enough, this was the ER, they were not going to be able to do much more. I needed to see a specialist at an eye centre as soon as possible, which as far as the ER were concerned meant the next day. There was no immediate urgency at this point; just a kind of calm hurry.
I called my local eye centre and was greeted by a receptionist with all the enthusiasm of someone that wished you were already dead. She told me they were full the next day, she’d have to ring around and would call me back (narrator: She didn’t call back). In the end I decided to call again and this time got someone useful that booked me in at a location the other side of town the next morning.
Sewickley, PA. 11th May, 1100hrs
Oh, that sounds like a retinal detachment. I hope not.
By this time, it had got worse. If I had to describe it in percentage terms, I’d estimate that around half the vision in the left eye was gone. I was scared, my family was scared, and I was starting to feel the onset of some panic. what could be wrong with me? Was it just my eye, or was something else happening?
The triage nurse was efficient, funny, and had a bedside manner that definitely needed a bit of work. She was also, as it turns out, right on the money. As I described my symptoms and she established what I could and couldn’t see by moving her hand around my field of vision, she casually uttered “Oh, that sounds like a retinal detachment. I hope not.” I could have lived without hearing the last sentence, but in hindsight (ho ho ho) I suspect she was referring to the fact this would not be a quick fix, rather than a gloomy prognosis. I was then left in the waiting room for an hour to ruminate (in an extremely anxious state, as you might expect) on what I’d been told. My eyes had some drops to dilate them, so I strained to read my phone (battery: 20%) to try and figure out just how much shit I was in, all the while sending nearly unintelligible text messages to my wife waiting outside with the kids.
Here’s Google’s card about retinal detachment, also featuring an image of an attractive woman in an art gallery, if you like that sort of thing.
When the wait was over and I saw the ophthalmologist, she was absolutely brilliant, warm-mannered and confident enough to greatly reassure me, and confirmed the triage nurse’s suspicions: It was a retinal detachment. I had three small tears at 9,11, and 2 o’clock, the most common form, known as rhegmatogenous detachment. Why? Age and plain bad luck (National Eye Institute, 2009). It would require an operation, and the Dr. told me she would be calling around to find a surgeon, and that I was not to eat anything as the operation might be that day. It was at this point I realised this was fairly serious, but the nurse and doctor confidently assured me I would be fine.
Word came I was to head to UPMC Mercy for surgery immediately. My wife, cool as a cucumber under what must have been enormously stressful conditions with two children to look after, took me there straight away.
UPMC Mercy, 1445hrs
You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and your retina just decides to go and detach itself.
I’d been lucky. I’d never had surgery. First stop was pre-surgery testing, which would typically involve obtaining blood for analysis, but actually turned out to be nothing but verifying paperwork in my case. No blood work required. Then I was admitted which was a matter of bagging my clothes and belongings, donning a gown and letting the scrubs-wearing ninjas get me ready. The surgeon and the fellow assisting him (both absolutely brilliant guys) came to see me, and he introduced himself with a jovial “You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and your retina just decides to go and detach itself.” They both examined my eye and told me the plan: A sclerical buckle, and probably a vitrectomy, due to the number of tear sites. A sclerical buckle is a small band that is fixed around the circumference of the eye like a belt (hence the name), the purpose of which is to apply pressure and help reattach the retina. Due to the offset of one of the tears, it probably would not be sufficient on its own, so a vitrectomy would be required. This involves draining the vitreous; the gel-like liquid inside the eye which maintains the spherical shape. Two precision techniques, laser and cryopexy are used to bond the torn areas of the retina to the wall of the eye. A gas is then used to form a bubble temporarily replacing the vitreous (National Eye Institute, 2009).
The surgeon marked his initials just above my left eyebrow. He described this was necessary to mitigate what is considered a ‘never event’. I’ll let you guess what…
I’d lost track of time at this point. My pupils were profoundly dilated. My watch had been removed and I could no longer read the clock above the nurse’s station. I was wheeled off to the anaesthesia area to prepare for the op. After a chat with the anaesthetist and a great deal of questions I was rolled into the operating room. An oxygen mask went on, the IV was started, and shortly after that, the lights went out.
I came round with no pain, intense nausea, and a big old bandage over my left eye. I had my face in a horseshoe-shaped pillow; until my follow up appointment the next day it would be necessary to keep my head down so the vitreous gas bubble would maintain positive pressure against the retina (Retinadoctor, 2018). The nurses were fantastic; one of them put something in my IV to relieve the nausea and it stopped in a snap. I couldn’t quite read the clock so I wasn’t sure if it was 915pm or 245am. It was the former, thankfully. My wife and kids charged into the recovery room and I felt a lot better.
The nurses helped me into my clothes and I was on my way, almost 12 hours after the day had started.
Aftermath
As I write this, it’s one week later. The follow up appointments revealed the surgery had been successful, now it was a matter of waiting for everything to heal. I feel pretty fortunate, as I never had much pain and the swelling (which was profoundly unpleasant) reduced rapidly. The vitreous gas bubble has shrunk as it is slowly absorbed and replaced by vitreous fluid; I can clearly see its circular shape in my eye. My sight isn’t quite there, it’s rather fuzzy, but it is improving, and it is all there. Best of all I have my peripheral vision back on the left side; I can drive again and I don’t feel dizzy anymore. There is a possibility of developing a cataract as a result of the vitrectomy (NCBI, 2014), which will require further surgery, but I’ll deal with that down the line. It beats being blind.
Some things fall into perspective at a time like this. One of them is, if you have a problem with your eye, don’t fuck about. I should have got it looked at immediately. It may not have changed the outcome, but it could have made things easier, and the extent of sight loss would not have been so great. I’m also fortunate to have such a great wife. We have no help, it’s just us and one or two friends. My wife looked after everything.
Life is short. One moment I was out having fun with a friend, suddenly I’m looking down the barrel of sight loss. Isn’t it amusing how many of these metaphors involve sight? I can tell you my sense of humour has had quite a workout in the last week.
I’m not dying (well, no faster than anyone else), I didn’t go blind, I’ll probably ride my bike this week. I’m pretty lucky, all told.
I’d put on around one-thousand miles on the CSC TT250 as the first green spots started to emerge on the the Pennsylvania woodlands. The bike held up well over Winter, and between the endless rain and salt, winter is a harsh environment for machinery. I’d gambled on the TT250 being a dependable winter warrior, and thus far it has done well. It’s surely a sign that I often choose to ride the bike on my commute over my Ninja 300.
The Good
The TT250 is a well-made bike. The finish is excellent; the frame shows little aggravation from the ravages of winter, though I was decidely liberal with my application of anti-corrosion ACF-50 spray. Some fasteners inevitably dulled, but this is no different from my Kawasaki (which I rode through last winter) and generally speaking I am pleasantly surprised how durable this bike is.
Cold and wet, a typical morning commute for the TT250.The warpaint of a typical winter commute
The engine, an air-cooled 229cc single, is absolutely superb. There’s only around sixteen horses, and about 18nm of torque at 5.5k rpm, but there’s more to it than the numbers. The power band is sweet, and considering it’s a relatively unsophisticated single, it’s very smooth. Western Pennsylvania is not short of hills, and the engine deals with everything with little complaint. I average about 55-60mpg, but this figure has increased over engine break-in, and includes my commute which is terrible for fuel economy.
Once I got my carburetor dialed in (I fitted an aftermarket Mikuni VM26 clone, commonly available on Ebay) the engine started with little hesitation in temperatures right down to 17F. The stock carb was satisfactory, if a little hard-starting when cold, propably due to lean jetting, and by ‘cold’ I mean less than 40F. I chose an aftermarket carb to allow more adjustment should I fit an exhaust system, and the carbs are as cheap as chips. Tuning them is a pain in the arse, but there’s plenty of help at Chinariders if you get stuck.
Stock gearing is 17/50, which isn’t too bad, but if you’re riding mainly on the street I would pick 17/47, which is less hectic at 55mph. Apropos of top speed, you could take this bike on the freeway, but I wouldn’t, unless traffic truly moved around 50-60mph. It’s superb as a back road basher, and absolutely devours city pavement. CSC offer a 49 tooth rear sprocket as an option, and I did actually purchase one, but after researching the forum and the ever useful Gearing Commander site, I went with fitting a 47.
The five-speed gearbox is smooth and precise, but you must ensure you allow the gear lever the full range of movement – that was new to me and before I got used to it I suffered the occasional missed shift.
229cc of fun
The tyres are seemingly generic dual-purpose ‘knobblies’. Conventional wisdom says you should get rid of them and fit some rubber from one of the big brands that you trust.
Don’t.
They are quite simply fantastic road tyres, within the performance envelope of the bike. I have ridden these on soaking wet roads, on gravel and salt, on roads with a film of mud on them, and they have been absolutely marvelous. I have taken them on mud and grass, and they’ve been wonderful, confidence-building tyres every step of the way. When the weather is crap, I will take the TT250 because I know I can trust those tyres. By comparison, my lightweight sportbike with Michelin Pilot Street 4 has excellent traction wet or dry, but as soon as the road surface has any artefacts like gravel or mud, it’s terrifying; see this gif as an example of what mud and a wet road can do:
Looking at the wear rate, I’m not sure I’ll get much more than 2000 miles out of the rear, but I think that is reasonable for a general-purpose tyre that will do asphalt and any off-road riding the bike is capable of.
The TT250 after some fun on a muddy forest trail.
The TT250 is exceedingly comfortable in stock form; I’m 6’3″ and around 210lbs, and the rider triangle is pretty much perfect for me. I didn’t realise how cramped I am on my Ninja until I started riding the TT250 frequently. The stock seat is very comfy. I haven’t ridden the bike that far, but on many weekends I’ll routinely spend a couple of hours riding pretty hard, with no discomfort.
Handling is superb; really very, very good. It feels at times like a giant mountain bike. It’s very easy to hold a line, and turn-in is sharp, perhaps not surprising on a bike so light. Off road (I am by no means experienced here) the light weight and easy manners translate into a stable, well-mannered platform. The bike encourages you to have fun, and this really is the strength of a dual sport. On some back roads and see an open trail, or a gravel road? What about that nasty looking back road? Go check it out. It’s great.
Here’s some video of me riding the TT250 on its second day in my possession around the wet roads near home:
The Bad.
I’ll say up front these are minor gripes, but it would be remiss not to mention them, lest people think I’m taking money from CSC (I wouldn’t do that of course. Though if they wanted to, I’d accept an RX3…:D )
The brakes are well put-together. You get steel-braided lines (I don’t even have those on my Ninja!) and lever feel is firm, but if you’re giving them a workout (for example: aggresive riding on downhill twisties) and it’s a hot day, they can fade pretty quickly. Not an issue if you’ve trained yourself to use both brakes, but if you’re heavy on the front brake only (like a prototypical supersport rider), they’ll fade. They do recover rapidly. Of course, all bikes will do this to a degree, but it’s more pronounced on my TT250 for sure. My front rotor has also had a little runout from day one, and I think I will be replacing it soon as I believe it’s getting worse.
The brake system is well made, but don’t expect to be able to push it like a sportbike without some fade
The clutch isn’t great. I have probably been a little spoilt by the Ninja 300’s clutch, which is just superb. The TT250’s clutch is durable enough, and I suspect it’s a consequence of uprating the clutch to cope with the 229cc’s higher torque (the original CG was 125cc) but once the engine is up to temp, it can be a grabby, snatchy affair until you get used to it. I struggled for a while to get the lever adjustment right and actually ordered a replacement clutch cable, as I wasn’t certain mine hadn’t prematurely stretched too much. In fact, the adjustment is very particular and in my case is better done with the engine warmed; setting it while cold will result in very slight drag once the engine is warm.
These issues won’t present themselves most rides, but if you’re in stop-go traffic on a warm day, the clutch pack’s tight packaging and air-cooled character of the motor will begin to make themselves known. Get used to fighting a little bit to get neutral, and I’d recommend 15w40 synthetic (once you’re past break-in) if you’re running the bike in a city during summer.
The Ugly.
Everything here is a function of where I live, and the fact that I ride my bikes whatever the weather. Except ice and snow. Sometimes even then. I’m British, after all, and we’re a bit daft like that.
The wheels look great, but the spokes aren’t stainless and it’s a fight to keep the weather off them. At some point I will probably replace them with stainless spokes (the rims seem fine), of course, this will cost, but it’s a function of the climate here, and I need something that will take the weather a little better. I don’t think this will be an issue for any owners that aren’t in the rust belt and ride all year round.
I did strip one of the sprocket carrier bolt holes when swapping the sprocket out; I suspect this was because they were very tight from the factory. It was a straightforward repair, but I’ve read of a couple of other instances of this on the Chinariders forum. The bolts are hard, M10x1.25 steel and the hub is pretty soft; I think studs might have been a better choice. Still, if you potter about with bikes, this isn’t unknown by any means.
Also – and this is by no means an uncommon problem on most OEM fitment using steel pipes – the stock exhaust header is looking worse for wear, and I will probably replace it soon with a stainless system, but this is a largely cosmetic concern.
Is it worth it?
Unreservedly. You really can’t go wrong, and I’m looking forward to many more adventures on the bike, especially now the good weather is here. Put it another way, I’m strongly considering an RX3 Cyclone as my next bike, possibly as a replacement for the Ninja. That’s my faith in the company’s product.
I’d got the call I was waiting for, from my older sister. “You’d better come”. It was time. My mum had been fighting terminal cancer since the previous August, over the new year we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. She’d become increasingly frail and had lost a shocking amount of weight. A couple of days earlier – Valentine’s Day, just to twist the knife a little – she’d had a precipitous decline. I didn’t fully understand the biological mechanism, but her failing liver being slowly consumed by cancer (which would go on to kill her) meant she was slowly poisoning herself, most evident of which was the loss of mental faculties. I had been warned she was in a pretty bad state, neurologically.
I had understood some of this when I arrived in Southwark, but not the extent of it. Leaving the underground at London Bridge and walking to my parent’s flat, a journey I had taken so many times in happier days, I did not know what to expect.
My sister opened the door. As I walked into the entryway I caught sight of my mum sitting upright in bed, apparently trying to get on her feet.
Is that my boy?
The words were feeble and quiet, but It sounded like an anvil dropping to my ears. She was obviously in very poor shape but wanted to get out of bed to meet me, to put on a bit of a show, to let me know she was alright. She wasn’t alright. Those four words were the last coherent thing I would hear from her. For the rest of the day she just looked into the distance, making no sound.
want to trip inside your head Spend the day there To hear the things you haven’t said And see what you might see I want to hear you when you call Do you feel anything at all? I want to see your thoughts take shape and walk right out
There was no life in her eyes. This hurt most of all. I remember looking deeply into them to see If I could see any flicker, any remnant of my mum in there (that U2 lyric would be swimming around my head for days. I still cannot listen to that song without thinking of the lonely evening train up to London) I was struck by the thought that his person – my mother – was no longer there; that all she was and ever had been had been taken from me, leaving just this corporeal thing, an empty shell. It sounds dramatic, but I had about 15 minutes alone with her and the memory is still absolutely devastating to me. She was so still and quiet. The slow destruction of a person -a parent – is a terrible thing to witness. In time I recognised this was worse than anything that followed. I wanted to scream, I was so upset, so confused, so absolutely wounded, but I kept it all in, because i was desperate to reach her. For me, this was worse than death; someone stripped of their faculties and their dignity, helpless, frail, and dying. What this disease can take of a person made me loathe it. This woman carried me into the world, and she had been so greatly diminished (she was tiny, tiny by the end) I still wince at the memory.
She would hang on for another 9 days, before passing away with us all there around 6.30pm on February 25th, 2 days after her 62nd birthday. I think my dad thought she’d held on for it, but I’m not sure if she had sufficient awareness to know either way. I almost had a nervous breakdown during that period, it came out as a bit of a tantrum in Tesco at Surrey Quays, but I was sleep deprived, under severe stress, and starting to crack. I had to get her a birthday card, and it sort of lit the fuse. No, I was not alright. I don’t know if I’m alright now.
I swore at the time that if anything like cancer happened to me I would not let it go that far, that I would not want anyone to see me like that. I have no idea what that might have entailed. Maybe I would jump off Beachy Head, or go and walk into the sea somewhere, let the waves claim me. I was, of course, completely full of shit, because I would get to find out. Life, as the saying goes, is a bitch. Also Irony when I think about it, thanks Alannis.
Who said God had no sense of humour?
Fate would take a run at me. I would get get the disease, not the same kind and mercifully not as severe, although in fact very dangerous. Melanoma is a big, big killer, and I really won the lottery in getting to remission. I may be half-blind, but in all likelihood it’s not going to kill me. Yes I’m tempting fate, but fuck fate.
Bad days are better than no days
There’s a sticker that says this at the reception desk at the infusion centre. It made me laugh at the time, because it’s a bit Oprah, but it’s definitely true. it’s easy to retreat into solipsism and self-pity, and I have definitely had those moments (“why me?” Why anyone, dickhead…) but you have to just keep going and be there. It’s a different story when you have a family. You learn to eat some shit and smile, then eat some more. Every day is a small victory. I know that if the worst were to happen to me, my family would be there to the end, and they would deal with everything that followed, because when the time comes, people find it in themselves. Every three weeks I sit down and get 200mg of immunotherapy drugs. The people there always impress me. Some are very much in the trenches with their illness, but they have such incredible spirit. It’s not at all what you might imagine a chemo treatment centre to be. I mean, it’s not cartwheels and fireworks – it’s still a godawful situation for all concerned, for fuck’s sake, but everyone just grins and bears it. For obvious reasons, I’ve a bad association with hospitals – the smell of disinfectant, rumbling air vents, and prospect of death – and I’ve come to realise it’s not like that at all.
This helped me understand what happened with my mum that day, finding that last shred of strength and dignity to try and show me that she’s okay; that through all she was enduring she would stand tall for her son.
I recently started to dream about her pretty regularly. The illusion of dreams is that you don’t really question context – “What am I doing here? Why can I fly?” I never question that she shouldn’t be there – although I had those dreams in the past. It’s just normal, she’s alive and we’re doing mundane things.
The month before she died, I think it was the first week of January, she had a distinct rebound, a period of high function I would learn is not unusual in the course of terminal illness. We had a nice weekend together, we chatted and watched a film (2004’s Collateral) and I thought for a moment that maybe she’s getting better. But it was not to be. Anyway, I mention because that’s how she is in my dreams. Just normal.
I don’t question it too deeply, but it’s a pretty comforting thing for my brain to do. Her headstone in a quiet hilltop Andalusian cemetary reads “Until we meet again”. I don’t know if that will happen. I don’t know if I believe such a thing is possible, but we’ll see I suppose. Hopefully later rather than sooner.
Spaced S02E02 is a playful tale about the pitfalls of fandom. I have to say up front that I am at great risk of doing exactly what Bilbo Bagshot (Bill Bailey) cautions against:
“…Defending the genre with terminal intensity”
Yeah yeah, I know. In the episode Tim (Simon Pegg) gets himself sacked by Bilbo for bullying a child over The Phantom Menace (seriously, watch Spaced, it’s brilliant), followed by the amusing efforts of a remorseful Bilbo to get Tim to return by means of getting himself fired from his new job. Tim achieves this by informing his boss (Martin Treneman) that “Babylon 5 is a big pile of shit”, and getting dismissed on the spot.
Tim decides on direct action to abandon Silent Reading
I like Spaced so much that this opinion seeped into my conventional wisdom, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover that B5 really isn’t shite at all. I’m not a devout Sci Fi fan, I don’t know the genre especially well, but I do enjoy a bit of TV and Babylon 5’s great strength is that it avoids a lot of modern telly’s problems, namely the writer’s room getting lost (not an accidental word choice) in the whiteboard. Too many shows have a brilliant premise, great characters, and just don’t land it (LOST), characters that lose any consistency (Walking Dead) start plot lines they can’t hope to finish (LOST) or wander out into the dark, talking to themselves, never to be seen again (Westworld). B5 for its minor flaws avoids this. I think much of this is down to J. Michael Straczynski, who had a story to tell, and apparently doesn’t compromise in telling it.
Babylon 5 is unashamedly long-form. It isn’t perfect (S4 is fantastic but has very,very odd pacing for reasons I understand but won’t go into here) and I write this having started S5 which is polished but feels a bit redundant (again, there are known reasons why). The fans are tough on S5, but I am enjoying it and sticking with it. A little bit like Blake’s Seven, you have to get past the production glitter (It looks pretty naff early on in S1) and seemingly hokey characters (“Who the fuck is this Napoleonic looking guy with the absurd hair?”) to reveal some real depth, and great, even brilliant storytelling. I was surprised how much I liked it.
Spaced was made just at the beginning of the dot-com boom. Internet ‘culture’, was not yet ubiquitous, the show barely mentioning it. In 1998-2001 social media didn’t exist and fandom as we now define it hadn’t really taken off; IRC, chat, and forums were still king but it was all still very niche, however writers Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes were well aware of the ferocity that the subcultures were capable of. I wonder what they’d make of it all now, because now it’s fucking awful.
It’s a Sunday. My trip is over, and it’s time for me to go. There is a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach – some call this butterflies – and I can feel the minutes tumbling away, as a veteran procrastinator can.
Somehow, It’s now the afternoon. I have of course been putting the return journey off. I am all too aware of the clock turning past 1pm. I’ve a long journey ahead of me, around six hours. I look at my mum in the kitchen, her soft smile invites me to stay, at least that’s what I want it to mean. If I leave now I’ll be home around 7pm. Plenty of time. And yet…
The sky dims ever so slightly, it’s later, I think around 5pm. I can still get home in time for bed. I’ll have to drive in the dark, but it’s not really a problem, but then I realise I have to retrieve my car. I know it’s parked further away, for whatever reason I couldn’t park closer to home. Where did I put it? I can picture the street. It’s somewhere in Pimlico, in London. I need to go and find it, so I set out, the journey and the confusion about the whereabouts of my car and the anxiety of the long drive ahead race around in my head. Do I even know the way home? I’ve done it so many times, but suddenly I realize I have no idea how to navigate home.
London is about 300 miles from where I supposedly am. I don’t question the spatial impossibility. I don’t question the fact my mum’s alive. These are the considerations of daytime; things just are in this dream world, and my higher functions don’t get a vote.
Wilson Adams / M2 Motorway at Night https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
If I leave now, I can just get home in time for work tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll drive through the night. I just need to find the car. The dream – of course – becomes all about finding the car.
In the dream the journey never actually starts. Other times it starts, but I never get to where I’m supposed to go (I remember being stuck at a motorway service station, an actual nightmare of dour buildings and expensive shite sandwiches) It is the state of needing to be somewhere that prevails. The missing car is funny; this is a common theme, in another dream it was in a parking garage so tall and labyrinthine It was like a Terry Gilliam creation. There is always some obstacle to making progress, like Clockwise with John Cleese but deeply, deeply filled with anxiety. It’s closer to Mark Corrigan, honestly.
I’ve never felt these problems that much in real life, but I have always had butterflies about travel, a restless urge to get going. Friends and family have said that when I have somewhere to be, I get antsy.
London: somewhere on the underground.
I have to get to Waterloo railway station,I know I’ve got to change trains, this London Underground station is vast, with seemingly endless stairs and walkways. There’s people everyhwere. I need to get a through ticket to Southampton, too (why don’t I have one already?) I go to the ticket office – which is impossibly, ridiculously far away – but it’s all confusion and queues. I am certain that if I join a queue I’ll never make the train I need. I decide to go upstairs and outside. The outside of the station feels familiar but I don’t recognise it at all, it’s open like a city square, spacious and absolutely not anywhere I know. It’s like a version of those huge open spaces you see in places like Pyongyang (which I have also dreamed of…another story!)
By Yoni Rubin, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58951668
I am again not sure where I’m supposed to be going. I did know, now it has left me, and it’s just the feeling of whirling anxiety and disconnection. I have to be somewhere. I’ll never make my connection, I don’t even know what time it is, or where It is going. I’ve tried to catch connecting trains at stations so vast it’s comical when I think about it. The overground train of my dreams in London ran on on tracks so vast they were like a huge metal belt over the city, 10 lines wide and undulating like an old wooden rollercoaster. You could also walk on them, if you wanted to. I (as usual) never really know how these end, but I don’t get there. Sometimes it’s a bus, but the stories the same – I am racing a clock, and sometimes the specifics of time don’t matter, I just know I’m running out of it.
Spain
It’s the last evening at my dad’s place in Spain. But it’s not anywhere I really know, it’s a strange little world I dreamt up. There’s a large hillside behind it which is actually from a childhood holiday In Scotland (try harder, brain) and a beach that I’m pretty certain is Dubai, and the dream shifts seamlessly to these places when I look at or go to the location. On the hill? Back on the isle of Skye. On the beach? This is Dubai. Again, I do not question it. It is my dad’s universe and I’m floating around in it. But what’s this you say? Yes. Time is running out. Of course it is. Don’t enjoy the scenery too much because you have somewhere to be, young man.
I have to get to the airport. I habitually (in reality) like to leave a couple of hours in hand for a flight. I haven’t really packed anything, so I tell myself to get on with it. Imperceptibly, moments pass and I suddenly realise time is now very tight. am in the car with my dad, I don’t think we’re going to make it. We cannot possibly make it. What flight is it anyway? I don’t remember. I’ll find out when we get there. I get to the airport and realise I didn’t even book a flight, so I set about organising one, as if it is like taking a train. The lines for the counters are so massive that I wonder if I will ever leave that airport. Sometimes i get on the plane, and the dream breaks completely; we have to drive down the road because there’s a problem with the runway. That’s right – the plane drives along the road, like a bus. This has happened enough times I don’t even question it.
University
I’m in a hall of residence (a dorm, in American parlance), my room feels familiar, but I do not know this place. It is an amalgamation of many places I have known, but again large and complex in the way only an imaginary thing can be. I can hear my neighbours running around. They’re all aged about 20, and apparently, so am I. I remember that I haven’t been going to class for weeks on end, and at some point somebody is going to realise. I’ve got a mathematics class this morning. I decide not to go. I don’t know if I’ve ever been, It’s impossible for me to pass the year now, this must be catching up with me. What am I going to do?
I walk out into the corridor and chat with friends. I am extremely anxious about explaining all of this, when the time comes, and come it will. I’m sure of it, and it is the only thing I think of as I contemplate the magnolia walls and beige carpet. There is a smell of disinfectant and stale beer coming from the kitchen, which doubles as a common room. I’ve never had a recurring dream that actually goes anywhere near a classroom, it is always a version of this place, but the place is different every time, but it has the same look and feel.
Sometimes it’s York university campus (of the 90s), or a version of it. Artificial lakes, paved walkways, 60s concrete buildings everywhere.
It’s huge though, far bigger than the real thing (see a trend?) and seems to go on forever, and I never get beyond walking around the little paths going from building to building. The dream always ends in this transient situation.
Sometimes it’s an obvious replica of the University of Huddersfield central services building (which I knew), that held accommodation, except the elevator is gigantic, like a living room, and as you go downstairs it becomes a rural hotel, but outside on top of the building are little rotundas with more accomodation in them – a total figment of my imagination, almost like science fiction but rooted in a sort of brutalist aesthetic. The places all start real enough but then my head doesn’t keep it all together and it becomes disconnected and ridiculous, but there is always the pressure, and the worry, about something that is like dreaming of having no clothes on at work or something daft like that. It’s this panicked feeling of missing work and classes and being found out.
. So what does it all mean? Well it’s pretty obvious, innit. It’s anxiety. These dreams come along like buses as soon as I have something on my mind. Just before I moved to America, I would have the travel dreams daily. Whenever I get busy or stressed they start up, and they’re a good indicator of that.
I also dream of the past a lot. Friends, exes, and loved ones. Sometimes it’s about being back in a living situation I’ve long since moved on from, and weirdly they’re almost always in England. I just don’t dream of America, and I’ve been here a decade, so this is very much my head ruminating on the past, for whatever reason. It’s a life I let go of. Or did I?
Trailer has spoilers, as as is the fashion unfortunately.
Kevin Smith, without me noticing, made a third Clerks film, released Summer 2022. I’m not a Smith superfan by any means, but I would be lying if his films did not sit somewhere between guilty pleasure and cinematic comfort food. We’re not far apart in age, and his 90s output (I originally wrote oeuvre but got over myself) put his characters at my age, too. His stuff is relatable to me. I’ll say up front I find Kevin Smith’s comedy funny. If you don’t, I doubt the film or this post will change your mind. The guy was, and remains, famously Marmite.
The first Smith film I actually saw was 1997’s Chasing Amy, and I immediately loved the snappy, shit-talking dialogue, endless Star Wars references, and admittedly crass humour. I didn’t see Clerks – the Smith film – until a little later, and while I enjoyed it, the film didn’t grab me the way it did some people, but I did like the chemistry Dante and Randall displayed. At that time, Randall seemed interchangeable with Chasing Amy’s Binky (Jason Lee); to me the characters were written very similarly, but this is me splitting hairs, honestly.
In 2006 I was living with a Kevin Smith fan (at the time, I doubt he is now) who was a real child of the always-online internet, and I got swept up in what seemed like tremendous buzz around Clerks 2. There were web shorts showing behind-the-scenes stuff; long before it was fashionable. YouTube was in its infancy, Facebook was barely out of Zuckerberg’s balls, Tom was still shitting up your MySpace. Smith had a canny knack for the internet’s marketing potential, definitely. Everyone does it these days.
People say Kevin Smith isn’t a good filmmaker, but I don’t know enough about the art to notice. I think it is one of those perceptions that isn’t accurate but nevertheless persists. Zack & Miri was good. Red State was good. I ‘know what I like’ as twats say, and Clerks 2 delivered for me. It did feel a bit more SoCal, a bit Hollywood? Polished and whittled. It was a Miramax product, just before Smith parted ways after Zack & Miri underperformed. Definitely lost a bit of that Jersey patina.
I still think it holds up well. I did struggle a little with Dante and Becky (Rosario Dawson) having a relationship because to paraphrase Stirling Archer she was so out of his league it was practically inter-species mating. But I rationalised it as them being the exception that proves the rule. That’s a thing, right? You see these beautiful women with guys that look like Shrek and you wonder how that happens.
Clerks III is good. Someone on Reddit (yes, I know…) said it was the best thing Smith made in a decade. Maybe. As I watched it, I had the impression that – as much as I enjoyed the second film – this perhaps could have been it. It feels – by design – much closer to the first film, because without giving much away it basically follows the first film’s beat very closely. Yes, there is a film within a film. Yes, it works.
It’s autobiographical. Smith had a serious heart attack not long ago, and that’s the motivation for one of the characters in this third entry. What the film really pulls off is being genuinely affectionate towards its subject, fans, and earlier films. It is, at the risk of sounding like a tit, sincere. I said ‘comfort food’ earlier. Or maybe like a cigarette with a sharp beer, after a shit day at work. It gives you what you expect, and what you want. Of course, you have to like that kind of thing in the first place, and if you don’t, you’re not about to start. I don’t think I could recommend it to someone that doesn’t know, or more importantly, enjoys the View Askew universe, but it would be interesting to find out.
There’s a great scene where Randall is describing what is very obviously (if you’re a fan) The Mandalorian and the CGI regenerated Luke Skywalker turning up and just fucking everything up, like a virtuous stud. He’s so hot and young you don’t give a shit he’s not real. This is in contrast to the Sunday morning haggard and bitter Luke we see in The Last Jedi. Young, ass-kicking Luke – yes, the Luke of our childhood – is all we ever wanted, even if it’s not real.
This is a good metaphor for the film – it services the fan, which is treated like a regressive thing now, but the film is built on the premise that, why not? It’s okay to indulge and to be indulged, to relive the salad days of 30yrs ago, just for a couple of hours. We all die, soon enough.
Daniel Craig was peak Bond in 2008. Still warm on the success of Casino Royale (which is a fucking banger of a film) he did the slightly shit Quantum of Solace, and around the same time, this got released.
Not the main trailer but they don’t allow hotlinking so you get this
I’ve only just seen it, having wanted to watch it for a while. I really like reflection and redemption stories, and this is..difficult. The film does that frustrating thing of somehow being less than the sum of its parts.
Craig, still in peak physical form from his Bond role, plays Joseph Scot. We meet Joseph in the midst of a cocaine and booze-fueled shagging fest with what is implied are working girls. “Where did it all go wrong” in the fashion of George Best. There’s a touching scene with his assistant Ophelia played with much charm by Eve – easily the most likable character of the film – and we’re straight into the setup. Firstly, Ophelia wants out:
When I show up here, I never know what to expect. Whether you’ve eaten mushrooms or acid or coke or all of the above.
Joseph, for all his apparent vices, is actually pretty likable. He clearly likes, even loves Ophelia, and seems to want an authentic connection to people, but boy is he in the wrong town for that. Every relationship is transactional, except Ophelia but his approach to her unmet expectations is to solve it with more money, which is a big part of Joseph’s problem. He can buy anything but self-awareness.
Scot, we are shown, is past it. addicted to drugs, girls, booze “It’s cocktail hour somewhere” he says in a falsetto as he mixes a drink first thing in the morning, in front of a frowning Ophelia. This is someone on the drop. He’s vain, selfish, and needy. An actor in Hollywood, in other words. Scot gets word a childhood friend has died, and is obviously moved but it is implied he’s not expected to make the funeral because he’s probably busy (subtext: He’s a flakey shithead) and then he goes out for lunch.
A word on the cinematography; the first third of the film is beautiful. I really thought it was Malibu CA (it’s supposed to be) but it is in fact Cape Town in South Africa. Once I knew this it caused me some issues because it is also meant to double as the South Coast of England which if you know either country is kind of a stretch.
Scot’s Tony Stark house
Scot has lunch with his agent, the ever-brilliant and perpetually intense Mark Strong, where he learns he’s not getting pitched for a film, but fired for Hollywood’s original sin: Age, and the much less punished sin of being a fuckup. The film, after a running joke about a dog, takes a turn into the titular flashback, and this is where it starts to wobble. The world of the first act is very well drawn, the characters work, and it’s a good skewering of the unhappily rich and famous – who doesn’t love that?
The shift to 1970s England feels jarring, not least because we lose Craig and all the others. It feels like two films and never quite worked for me. The point of it is to tell us all about Joe’s friendship with the departed, and it’s all very competent but never really grabbed me. Scot’s neighbour (Jodhi May) is a bored young mother and clearly has a lustful eye on the teenage Joseph.
Jodhi May as Evelyn
The biggest problem is we don’t really see much of what made present-day Joseph; the younger version is a fairly typical confused teenager that gets taken advantage of; he’s neither abnormally selfish or unusual, just a typical good-looking young lad. Older Joe is a lot more interesting.
There’s a love triangle with his friend Ruth (Felicity Jones) who is established as the town’s most eligible chill girl, and Boots (Max Deacon). Joseph lets Ruth down by finally giving into Evelyn’s advances (well aware of the game she is playing), with eventually explosive consequences.
There’s much to like in this part of the story. The excellent Olivia Williams plays Scot’s mother, and Miriam Karlin gives a solid turn as Mrs Rodgers, who sees everything before it unfolds, as only the elderly can. Evelyn’s a believable portrayal of an attractive young woman who is unhappy with settling, and thinks adultery with her neighbor’s son will do something for her (there is a definite parallel between Evelyn and adult Joseph), and Boots and Joseph have a convincing enough dynamic.
What really did not land is this hazy summer of fishing, Roxy Music and illicit sex is supposed to be pivotal to present day Joseph, but it feels disconnected. His later life is his responsibility, but in this chapter he’s arguably a victim of a predatory woman, adolescent impulse, and plain bad luck. It’s not explained how and why this cast such a big shadow. Why did he leave and not look back? There is something of answer to this (the trauma of the tragedy) but the story never unpacks it.
If the 2nd act is weaker than the first, the 3rd is very flat. Back to present day, there’s no particular resolution. Joe already knows he’s a bit of a shit, decides to help out Ruth (who we learn went onto marry Boots after Joe left them all behind) and that’s it.
I liked the film in spite of itself. It so nearly does something really decent, but just flatlines. There’s gold in the individual parts, which really are very good. I wanted to see a lot more of Joseph and Olivia, if he sorts any of it out, but you get left hanging. Is that the script’s failing, or mine?
I’ve been using Linux in some capacity since tinkering with it in a lab at my old job in 2005. That’s not a long time by enthusiast standards, but it’s not nothing, either. I saw this post on Reddit and the sentiment stuck in my throat a little bit.
I’m a bit of a distrohopper – not on my main PC, but I have the “luxury” of having literally dozens of older boxes laying around my house and I’ve tinkered with a lot of distros since 2009, when I went full Linux. For the past few years I’ve been thinking what changed in Slackware to turn it from my favorite distro once into the one that is immensely frustrating for me to use – and I don’t think anything has changed about Slackware itself. The concept of “slack” in “Slackware” stems from you not having to install anything – it has you covered with all that software it provides. But am I wrong or is that a really “mid-2000s” thing to want? As Internet speeds grew, it became quicker and easier to just get everything you want from repos – not stuff preselected by the distro either, the stuff YOU prefer. And you can use Slackware like that – build up from base system, install package by package with Slackbuilds, tracking dependencies yourself. I know, because I have built my OS like that in the past. And the results can be great! But Slackware fights you on that. It recommends you install a whole lot of useless crap, it doesn’t provide any tools to get rid of unneeded dependencies automatically when you delete something you no longer need (sbopkg does, but slackpkg doesn’t). It’s a good learning experience, but it’s frustrating and hard to do – especially compared to most modern distros, where you can get a minimal system with the selection of packages of your choosing in minutes. I think Slackware may still have it’s place somewhere with limited internet speed/access (similar to endlessOS, perhaps). Personally, I just can’t really justify using it any more – between either accepting a bloated and arbitrary default package selection, going through the long and frustrating process of deselecting individual packages during installation or building from base system, which feels like working against the flow of what Slackware wants to be.
I started out with Lindows (now Linspire), which was a highly beginner-friendly distro of the time, intended to tempt the Windows XP refugee. We couldn’t get it to work at first (lol). Went to Debian after a battle with the graphics card in the aging IBM desktop I was using, discovered Ubuntu (Swahili for ‘Can’t Install Debian’ as The Register quipped) which was manifestly an easier experience (Wifi worked out of the box, a miracle at the time. You kids have no idea how good you have it) and realized I wanted to learn more.
So I tried out Arch Linux. Arch, I will say up front is a fantastic distro, probably one of the best around (still). It gives you nothing but a boot disk and excellent documentation, and following the install guide to the letter gets you a working linux system, and the means to do what you want thereafter. It’s an incredible learning tool (what it teaches in terms of basics is a foundation you can use everywhere) and has the distinction of now being a meme.
There’s nothing difficult about Arch; if you can follow instructions you can install it. The community is mysteriously up its own arse. They can be proud of their distribution, if not themselves.
I was fortunate enough to find a career involving Linux. System Administration has a way of really getting to the root of just how simultaneously difficult and wonderful open source can be, but also – I have to say – how irrelevant desktop Linux is to it all. I tended to try and follow the open source way, minimizing proprietary software and dog-fooding a linux desktop just to force myself to always be learning something.
For the most part, I loved it, and still do. If all you really need is a terminal and a web browser (a mail client at a push…) you can’t beat desktop Linux. It’s reliable, flexible, can be left alone and just stays out of the way. For the most part. Those last two represent one of the challenges of ‘enthusiast’ distros.
That is to say, if you’re spending more time trying to get your distro up and running and maintaining it than actually using it to do a job of work, it will start to get on your nerves sooner rather than later. As with relationships and cars, high maintenance becomes tedious and annoying.
I ran Arch for a little while. An update broke it (it happens; the forum will usually chide you for not reading the news items on the front page which say something like “Because we can, this latest update will cause breakage because we really like yelling at people on the forum for not reading this”)
Arch’s news items often contain critical notes about frangible package updates.
It wasn’t broken badly, but I did not have all day to sort it out, so off it fucked. I replaced it with Slackware, which is the longest running Linux distribution still in development, and the subject of the Reddit post above.
Where Arch gives you the building blocks and a framework for building out a system for whatever purpose you want, Slackware provides a working system with software as the standard install. You can get cracking wherever you are, internet connection or not. There is a package manager, but uniquely in Linux distros it does not handle dependency resolution. This is not as crazy as it sounds, as the base system has most of what you need to work, and most of what you need to compile packages from the extensive Slackbuilds project (which uses the same system to build packages from source that the distro does). You can say Slackware is not just a distro, but a whole way of thinking about a distro. It is both cutting edge (if you run the current branch or are close in time to a stable release) and conservative in that things should be simple, and they should work. You’ll find plenty of ostensibly old software in Slackware, but if it works (and has no vulnerabilities) it gets included. It is utterly reliable and stable, in my experience.
I ran 14.2 on my work desktop for ages, until the day my desktop hardware got refreshed and meant a switch to something newer (the Xorg stack was just too old for the GPU and I was not going to take the time trying to sort that out) and I could not get the migration to the Current branch to work without a full reinstall. I needed to get working, and that was that. The fact that basic internet these days allows one to ‘get anything they need’ (which is actually how you build Arch Linux up from base) doesn’t mean Slackware’s approach is redundant, because choice is still going to be constrained by your distro’s package manager or your ability to build it yourself, which isn’t particularly easy if you’re unfamiliar.
Good luck maintaining your system when it’s composed of a mix of official packages and source-compiled specials (ask me how I know…) Slackware’s philosophy of adopting the Slackbuild system (a simple shell script) to create a standard package is a really nice approach, and you appreciate the beauty of it over time. If you take a bit of effort to organize things it’s not hard to stay on top of it all.
I ran Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for a while, and it worked really well. It was simple, had everything I needed, supported things like Zoom which became essential to my job, and ran without fail for a long time, I was able to integrate it with some other proprietary tools like our endpoint protection and backup agent which made life easier, if taking me a bit from ‘the way’. I do not love Canonical’s drift into increasingly restrictive proprietary practices, like fencing off updates to a subscription model after five years from LTS epoch. That can be a pretty short period if you’re mid or late cycle.
The point is if you want to tinker with distros that’s a pursuit in and of itself, but it’s fuck all to do with productivity. I have to emphasise It doesn’t have to be, especially if that makes you happy. Slackware is great for just getting to work and being exceptionally easy to maintain once you know its ways. It also has the loveliest people behind its development and community.
I built KISS Linux on a laptop recently just as an exercise in faffing about, and honestly going back to basics (though getting it working was anything but basic) was really interesting in reminding me what I enjoy about Linux and open source, but also how far Linux has come in terms of bells and whistles. You lose a lot in a simple WM environment. Do you need it? No. Is it nice to have? Absolutely. I really got sold on i3 and its Wayland derivative Sway as a working environment, it’s really efficient. Would I attempt it as a productivity platform? Not now. Too many compromises I’m not patient enough for at this time, but it’s good to go back to basics and I have a play on the laptop when the mood takes me.
Bloat is a common complaint of much in computing, and open source. But you can’t escape it really. Even KISS has to use the Linux Kernel, which is an absolute nightmare of LOC chonk. It also amused me that Dylan Araps (author of KISS Linux) made Flatpak available as an optional personal package, Flatpak being the absolute total fucking antithesis of keeping things simple, But it works, and users like what it provides (I even built it on Slackware as I wanted things like Spotify and Plex Desktop because I’m a tart. Sorry, Pat!)
Don’t worry about the thing, use the thing. That’s all that matters.
These kits almost fit the TT250, but there’s one definite modification required; you have to widen or cut the flange as it’s not drilled wide enough for the 229cc engine’s exhaust port studs. My neighbour (actually the maintenance guy for place I live in) offered to help me cut the flanges with his grinder and vice. On friday night we did this with the accompanying (somewhat terrifying to the uninitiated) shower of sparks.
