Well fuck me. I guess I am having a stroke of bad luck. First I replaced the Autocom system that gave up on my Balkan trip, only to find out after a test ride that my headset was blown up too. During that test ride, I also found that despite changing the oil, the bike would still not shift to neutral when standing still. Diagnosing the problem and after talking to BMW, we figured the clutch is toast. Apparently this is a known issue with the K1200 series of bikes, and lo and behold at 54,000km mine is one of them. The big question is, will BMW decide I qualify for the leniency warranty that expires 12/31. If it is decided that I don’t, I will have to cough up the cost myself which means I will be looking at a repair bill of about 1500 euro. Merry Christmas. I hope this was the last of the bad luck for a while, because I sure can’t afford any more. I guess this means I will have to put off getting new gear to replace the old worn stuff I wear now. Not a happy camper.

Tags: motorcycle, autocom

I created a little script for myself to make it easier to extract the new compatibility UUID’s from Mail.app and add them to WideMail so that it does not get disabled as an unsupported plugin. I cannot guarantee it will always work (it might actually get really broken at some point), but it does confirmed work for upgrades to OS X 10.6.4 and OS X 10.6.5.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Little script to find the UUID's of Mail.app after an OS upgrade
# and insert them into the WideMail plug-in
#
newMailUUID=$(defaults read /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Info PluginCompatibilityUUID);
newMsgUUID=$(defaults read /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/Info PluginCompatibilityUUID);
defaults write [path_to_widemail_bundle]/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "$newMailUUID";
defaults write [path_to_widemail_bundle]/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "$newMsgUUID";
#
# EOF

Layout gets a bit screwed, but every line end with a ‘;’. Widemail is typically installed under /Users//Library/Mail/Bundles/WideMail.mailbundle. The same principle obviously works with plugins like GrowlMail. I hope this helps some people.

Until next time. :)

Tags: mac

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This weekend, I finished giving the K1200S some much needed maintenance, after having been abused on the Balkan trip this year. Fluids were changed, valves checked (no adjustment necessary at 54000km!), filters changed or cleaned. I also mounted the new Autocom SuperPro AVI on the bike, after the previous one was fried in Greece being submerged in a pool of disinfectant. I now mounted it in the storage compartment underneath the Sargent saddle under the driver seat. This should provide a reasonably clean and at least dry spot for the device and allow me to continue to communicate with my friends and listen to the GPS and/or music. I also bled the brakes hoping it would improve firmness of the lever and give me a better feel, but no such luck. They still are shitty BMW brakes. Time to save up for a pair of Brembo radial masters.

As a little extra, here’s two shots of the bike fully assembled again to give a better view of how things look with the new saddle. Still crappy iPhone pics, but you’ll get the idea.







Until next time. :)

Tags: motorcycle