dr2chase

Not a physician, utility-bikes a lot (~5000km/year), DFH, works on Go compiler. (I do not speak for my employer.) Sometimes know things about programming languages, (cargo) bicycles, lilies, Florida.

He/him. Ex(?) Florida Man.
Now near Boston, MA, USA.
Married to a sociologist.
Tootfinder searchable.

Biased towards following people unlike me but with overlapping interests.

I'm aware that not everyone can ride a bike, it's been mentioned once or twice in the past.

Blog: https://dr2chase.wordpress.com/about
Vimeo channel: https://vimeo.com/dr2chase
Log-replotted MWRA Covid data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UKrPBFedwo-pBhroqP6racz1ReUvhg7L0dEm2wsXoEM/edit?usp=sharing
Github (mostly Go, mostly work-related): https://github.com/dr2chase

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Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

relay.primal.net

relay.nostr.net

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Last Notes

2026-06-22 13:48:25 CEST

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I get all my shots, I don't dawdle in the supermarket. There's risk in everything, eventually we make tradeoffs. I certainly hope you don't drive to work instead of biking -- that's a 25-30% increase in your annual mortality risk. Or are there other factors, and you make compromises? (ah, actually you post in Dutch, decent chance you do bike to work. Here in the US people simply don't believe the repeated studies showing that they get nowhere near enough exercise.)

2026-06-21 15:04:19 CEST

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this choice -- levels are *currently* low, at least in the Boston area, as measured by sewage sampling.

2026-03-10 03:33:45 CET

I need to pick up a repaired snowblower tomorrow, and drop some stuff (gifts, taxes) off at the post office. By bike, as one does. Pick up the snowblower first, so I can park the bike+loaded trailer outside the post office, people need to see that it's possible (easy, even). I seem to have sorted the electrical problem on the e-bike, which is nice.
#CarryShitOlympics #Because
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/116/202/538/537/402/202/original/af11643dfc12ecf9.jpg

2026-03-08 20:03:10 CET

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Nowadays almost all the cargo bikes are e-bikes, I look at some of them, it's not just e-assist, but e-shifting, automatic shifting, bluetooth, etc, etc, blah-blah-blah, is all this stuff designed for 20 Boston winters? Experience with the US bike industry suggests haha, no, what sort of weirdo are you to ride a bike in *weather*?
Dammit to hell, transportation, not toys. Maybe nobody else can tolerate the weather, maybe nobody else can do on-the-road fixes, but I can. I expect a tough bike.

2026-03-08 20:00:30 CET

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and used my little bottle of 91% isopropyl to rinse every places where dirt and slime was visible, no change. Then I looked at this one thing where one wire entered, and 4 emerged, including the three I had stubbed off. For grins, I sprayed alcohol onto there, then used the bottle (vertically) to spray air in to move the alcohol out.
And the problem cleared. So, great, I solved the problem, but dammit to heck, why is this potential failure there?
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/116/195/093/967/986/051/original/7e1bbd792e20cd2d.jpg

2026-03-08 19:45:49 CET

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and because I ride year-round, I rode it in the winter. I have it configured as minimally as I can -- type 1 crank input only, no throttle, no brake cutouts, and the connectors for those covered in silicone (after an episode in the rain where the throttle input just started to go-go-go, very exciting!).
Over the weekend, the display started telling me "err 04", which the internet says means "bad throttle input". BUT THERE IS NO THROTTLE. I carefully fiddled all the connectors and cleaned them

2026-03-08 19:42:32 CET

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dabbled in homemade lighting because when I started (1) LEDs were not as good and (2) I had less money and (3) I did not appreciate how much money I could spend saving money. But I designed lights that worked in several ways, and finally settle on a design that has more drag, but is utterly durable, will function immersed in water, etc. Latest iteration tolerates intermittent wire breaks, which is another failure mode.
Last I year I got an e-bike upgrade for one of my bikes,

2026-03-08 19:39:36 CET

I wish to rant about #bike technology. My rant may not generalize to anyone else, but I've patiently read other people's rants, this one is mine. I've been riding a #cargobike to work and errands since 2006, year round, accumulating 10s of thousands of miles in the process. I expect my bikes to be reliable, and as part of that, when they break, for most failures, I have the tools and ability to repair them. And of course I bike in all sorts of weather. Over the years I have also sometimes

2025-12-27 14:14:15 CET

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guessing, the emissions come from parts of the maser that are spinning so fast (and the spin axis is perpendicular-ish to our line of sight) that they are red/blue shifted from their neutral values?

2025-09-24 04:34:19 CEST

From this weekend, a cargo bike demo
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/115/256/934/806/940/283/original/91c77e7fb31bf237.jpg

2025-08-16 17:43:35 CEST

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I have minor quibbles, I wish that handlebars were more North-Road-y (better for hands, near as I can tell) and do the tires really need those knobs and at that size how many choices will I get, but overall nice. Tempting to look for an IGH upgrade but it's not a cargo bike, so, eh. Would it fit a trailer, though?

2025-08-16 17:34:12 CEST

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by the numbers, the Xafari looks like a surprisingly good choice.

2025-07-29 21:07:30 CEST

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I'm actually fine with that intersection, there's an itty-bitty triangle that I aim for where I can wait for traffic to clear. But:
https://vimeo.com/1105448505?share=copy#t=0

2025-07-29 14:42:10 CEST

What's wrong with this picture?
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/114/936/573/369/415/691/original/88f2bd69d45adc8b.png

2025-01-17 23:15:40 CET

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I saw no mention of its range, which I expect is tiny, because super capacitors are not energy dense.

2025-01-06 06:43:29 CET

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ohai.social is pretty good I think, goldilocks-sized, and here is an invite code. Phanpy is a good app/agent for viewing.
https://ohai.social/invite/TjdQth6u

2024-10-19 20:43:47 CEST

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I didn't clobber Yo-Yo Ma in a crosswalk.

2024-09-24 00:03:34 CEST

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My opinion on this is influenced by growing up in Florida, where people pay a premium to live on barrier islands, and seem utterly uninterested in how a thing called "Hurricane Pass" got its name and whether that has any relevance to the stability of the land under their home, and neither the person selling the home/land nor the local government seem particularly interested in bringing it to their attention. (My grandfather lived nearby when it happened.)
Caveat Emptor!

2024-09-23 21:12:08 CEST

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pretty sure that most of the "responsible" parties are long gone. Some developer decided they wanted to build there, some official decided to allow it, and that was decades ago. After that, it was just houses on the housing market, presumed safe and habitable. It sure can't be fixed in place; a "fix" involves spending enough money to put those people in other houses somewhere else.

2024-09-23 19:29:13 CEST

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but is that what it was? The default explanation is "racism".

2024-09-14 17:09:11 CEST

Recently, I realized that US housing policy is "cheap gasoline".

2024-09-11 17:50:04 CEST

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this fails when we are sitting in the same room. All the messages that are supposed to be SMS to my phone, end up as messages on my laptop.

2024-09-11 17:38:17 CEST

Apple messages figured out that it can reach me by iMessage at an Apple account so now when my wife sends me SMS haha no she doesn't. Bit of a shame Android phones don't get iMessage. "It just works."

2024-09-08 22:34:49 CEST

From week before last, my contribution to #CarryShitOlympics. I did in fact move a child into a Boston apartment on the worst moving day of the year (September 1), by staging 4 loads earlier in the week into empty space at work, then all four the last 1.8 miles on moving day. Here's two of those loads, and bike+trailer parking that worked much better than I had expected.
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/113/103/843/346/913/654/original/0b02445ff99261af.jpg
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/113/103/843/343/431/174/original/24cd3a343c5687b7.jpg
https://files.ohai.social/media_attachments/files/113/103/843/337/164/990/original/7f80f938a41b30b4.jpg