Bike Maps By Ian

Vote No on 1100 and 1105!

beerandbikenerd — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:24:12 +0000

Today my boss called a company wide meeting. This is very unusual because I'm a beer distributor and my job is to schlep the beer from theÂ warehouseÂ to the various accounts andÂ merchandiseÂ those accounts. It's not rocket science by any means Â so when we got called into the meeting I was curious as to what it could be about.Â

As soon as he walked in the room, my boss told us about the liquorÂ initiatives 1100 & 1105 on the Washington state ballot this year. The title of the initiatives is something along the lines of: "Let's get rid of these horrible state run liquor stores in WA state, they are sooooo communist." However! These initiatives do not stop at the liquor stores. They have oilyÂ tentaclesÂ wrapped around a lot of 'liquor laws' in Washington state including our beer and wine laws as well.Â

In a nutshell these initiatives would gut the regulations of the beer and wine industries. Normally I'd welcome the release from many of our archaic 'liquor laws' which were put into place after prohibition as aÂ compromiseÂ to the forces that brought about our country's dry spell. This brand of deregulation is not the repeal of those laws, rather, it would get rid of the laws which give our small breweries and wineries a more even playing field with the larger wineries and breweries (think craft breweries like Boundry Bay, Chuckanut, Hales, Pike, Fish, Mac and Jacks, etc. vs Budweiser, Miller and Coors). Without these regulations the big breweries could literally price out craft beer in WA state by giving discounts to big retailers and bribes to smaller ones (this applies to bars/taverns as well). For example, right now a six pack of Pyramid Hefeweizen retails for ~ $7.99 (often on sale for $6.99 as well). Your six pack of bud/miller/coors retails for ~ $6.49 ($5.99 on sale). The difference there isn't much. If a Bud guy wanted to try something new, say a delicious craft beer, he might just pick up that craft beer instead of another mass marketed American Lager. That's good for craft beer and good for Washington state. If these initiatives were to pass Bud would be allowed toÂ artificiallyÂ lower prices in WA so that all the Bud guys would look at the craft beer as a drink only the wealthy can afford. That hurts craft beer and Washington state. Not only that, the local Bud salesman would be legally allowed to go down the your local watering hole and give the owner a bribe if they were to take off a tap of tasty craft beer and replace it with Budweiser Select. We can't let that happen!

As much as I'd like to see the demise of our state run liquor stores this is not the way to do this. Please vote NO on 1100 and 1105.

Shanky Two-Wheels

beerandbikenerd — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 05:51:27 +0000

Shanky Two-Wheels, originally uploaded by TheGrossUncle.

I love this! Look it’s the super-friendly sketchy guy on a bike! He’s got a great mustache too. I’ve met a couple of these types and the interaction has always been positive. I think it’s mostly the bicycle, truly evil people get burned by bicycles I think. Also none of the folks I’ve met have ever been wielding a knife so that might be important too.

Bikehugger Demonstrates Google Bike Maps

beerandbikenerd — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:22:30 +0000

I found this while musing about Google’s bike maps. The video is shot by bikehugger. It is a simple demonstration of Google’s bike maps. I was looking for way to improve my bike mapsweb app. When I found the video.

It isn’t super special but it does show how and why users should report problems to Google when they encounter problems using the bike maps.

Google Bike Maps Video

beerandbikenerd — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:05:46 +0000

I was doing a bit of reminiscing today about my journey into the internet beyond a passive consumer. Specifically I remembered the build-up to Google’s release of their bike maps. I went hunting for the video to clear the cobwebs a bit.

The bike maps video isn’t as good as some of their others, especialy the chrome speed test! I like it though because the addition of bike maps was huge for me.

My web app at ridefreebikemaps.com/map-creator got a huge boost in functionality from the update. Along with the benefits of having bike maps came several drawbacks as well: printing, way-point limits, map search, etc. It is the nature of things I suppose.

Well today’s closing is inspired by the El Nino rain: Now is a good time to do all those boring projects before the sun comes out again!

The Death of Beer? – Food – The Atlantic

beerandbikenerd — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:24:36 +0000

I've been seeing a lot of talk about the recent decline in the top beer manufacturers sales lately. The big number to focus on is the decline in Bud Lite sales, which haven't declined in a ridiculously long time (39 years maybe?). On the other hand craft beer has been a growing segment for the past 20 years. That's been said over and over. I just read an article my the Atlantic that put an interesting point into the discussion, where macro-brews are on the decline liquor and wine are growing. The article then makes some speculations about what this means given that it is more of an opinion piece I stopped paying attention (plus the title is "The Death of Beer" so and that's just retarded). You can boil it down to this: people are drinking less beer and more wine or liquor. That's interesting. Personally I think that beer will regain dominance with the accent of craft beer.

The main reason why this stands out to me is because of a conversation I had with a salesman from a beer/wine distribution company about the changing nature of the industry. Like the big brewing companies the distribution houses have been consolidating (he works for one of those). He said that the big ones in WA have been buying a LOT of liquor. That is really interesting because in WA the state does its own distribution. Those distribution houses are banking on getting the law changed so that the state will get out of the liquor distribution game. This would be a huge boon to the distributors not because the margin on liquor is much better but because the cost associated with distributing liquor is much lower. Think about it: you could buy a 6-pack of your choice of beer for about the same cost as a tiny 250 ml bottle of liquor. The weight and size of that 6-pack is going to make it more expensive to distribute. Thus the stockpile of liquor in a state where private companies can't sell it.

I don't know if any of this is really true but I think it's worth looking out for.

Original article: The Death of Beer

Friday Friday Friday!

beerandbikenerd — Fri, 28 May 2010 23:05:40 +0000

Woot! I'm celebrating this wonderful end of the work week with a Belgian beer made by monks, Orval. Its an incredibly effervescent beer due to the addition of wild yeast. The wild yeast gives it a tart taste similar to buttermilk. The malt backbone is simple and slightly sweet. It does more to showcase the yeast character than anything else. This bottle also has some hoppyness to it. I've had an older bottle that did not show much hops. Both are good. The hops are not the focus of this beer, however, if drank fresh i'll bet they would be quite strong. This beer does well with age in part because of the hops and because of the wild yeast. The wild yeast acts slowly but can ferment the beer to 'bone dry' in the bottle. This can cause even more carbonation so be careful when opening.

Testing a Bicycle Camera Mount

beerandbikenerd — Sat, 15 May 2010 20:48:06 +0000

I mounted my camera to my bike and shot a short video! The audio quality is pretty horrible, there was a lot of wind noise. I was able to remove some of it using Audacity but the real fix to remove wind noise is "don't stand in the wind." I'm going to try this again with something wrapped around the camera's mic and see if that works better.

Stairways To Heaven Race – Los Angeles

beerandbikenerd — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:42:05 +0000

From the site: This video covers a race that took place on November 15, 2009 in Downtown Los Angeles. The people a tTakeoverLA put together a race that consisted of 3 sprints and 2 sets of stairclimbs that eventually lead to a free for all race to the Bike Day LA event in Hollywood. Knowledge of streets was very important since the route was open to explore. We decided to film the event to showcase some of our local cyclists while also creating an 8 mile visual trip with a racers perspective.

Oh man this video is awesome! It gets my heart pumping just watching it! The race is organized but it isn't permitted. The racers ride just about everywhere. It starts with them climbing up stairs on foot and riding on the walkways that connect the stairs then they make a mad dash through the streets of LA. They completely ignore normal traffic rules and run through every red light, sometimes on the wrong side of the road even. I wanted to plot the route of this race but the beginning part is "off road" so I can't. The video is a bit long at 21 min, however, the music is great. Check it out!

Amazing Bicycle Rush Hour Utrecht (Netherlands)

beerandbikenerd — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:31:09 +0000

This is an amazing video! It is shot from a single corner during rush hour. It shows the intersection of two main bicycle roads and a pair of train tracks. It's stunning to watch. Part of that is because it is played back just above normal speed so everybody looks agitated and the sound is a bit higher pitched. I've had similar experiences with large organized rides like the Portland Bridge Pedal or the Seattle to Portland ride. Being in a crowd of cyclists like that is a great experience and seeing this video made me remember those times.

Moving Forward?

beerandbikenerd — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:14:33 +0000

So over the past week I've rolled out some great improvements to HTTP://WWW.ridefreebikemaps.com. I've added a way for users to add routes to the database; I made a short script to display those routes with their name and description in a way that Google can index; and I wrote in an option which lets users create routes outside of the USA. Awesome!

I'm well on my way to creating an honest to god web 2.0 bike maps app. Every day I learn new ways to integrate my app with the existing web 2.0 apps. Everything I learn inspires me to create better features for the app itself. I think my next big project is going to be adding author pages to the site. Here's some of the ideas I've been thinking about:

Author Pages
Achievement Badges (x number of routes, long route, short route…)
Share routes with facebook upon creation.
Combine 'Members Only' and regular map creator.
Image/description previews of routes.
Browse routes via an interactive map (wow!)

On top of all that I've got to increase the traffic to my site. As it stands I get a good trickle from http://www.crazyguyonabike.com but I have to update the 'time stamp' on my link to keep it going. My roommate keeps telling me to start working some SEO magic but I don't know where to begin. Eh I think I'll just cross my fingers and hope somebody starts passing some serious stumbleupon/del.ici.ous/digg/facebook love on the site.