BIKESHED ETIQUETTE

i was leaving to run some errands (pay tuition and such) went to get my lovely, harmless, innocent bike and lo, what did i see? my bike and six or so others laying in a domino-heap, all still chained to their slots, mine at the bottom. now, at first, this didn't seem so bad, until i realised that the racks are thin slots for your wheel to go into + my wheels are thin aluminium composites = my front wheel bent and crumpled like a soda can = not happy alex = 3 hours of walking around town trying to find a good, inexpensive replacement. i found a really cheap second-hand wheel, but i wasn't happy with it. it was really beat up and old, so i kept looking. in the mean time, i got on the bus with my two wheels and rode up to Zernikecomplex. After paying tuition and talking to the International Student Office (ISO), i went to the bike shop on campus and found a beautiful italian Fir wheelset with a Shimano hub for 40euro. Ontop of that, the owner of the shop bought my two old wheels, the damaged one for scrap and the other to sell for 15euro and only charged me 10euro for a new tube/tape and assembly. All in all, i bought a new wheelset for 50euro. The new wheel lives in my room now, not the bike shed. And my fiets is no longer subjected to the tortures of the rack. i found a nice quiet spot in the back next to a steel roof-support pole. that was my adventure.

so far, so good.

my actual classes will start on monday. first up is an intro to the tech lab, then on later in the week we start theory and computer visualization. then nothing else until the following week. there really aren't regular classes, just workshops and open hours for the labs. i've been filling my time with trying to get some basic BEAM bots to work (no luck so far) and learning a new program called "Pure Data" which is an open source version of a popular media IDE called Max/MSP/Jitters. Yeah, it's actually called all three of those. Oh, that and i'm working on my Dutch. . .slowly. Well, i'm going to go shower now and get ready to pay the last bit of tuition. Bye, Bye, Money. oh, i also uploaded three photos of my worktables in my room.

cheers.