Vespa P200 Rebuild
Photos and details on going through my old Vespa.
Tetris
A version of the classic puzzle game Tetris written purely in Javascript and Canvas. It seems like everything is heading towards Javascript lately so I mostly wrote this just for fun and to improve my JS skills. It is playable in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and does not work on mobile. The source is available here.
7 Weeks After the Cannonball
A little bit about what it took to get the P200 back on the road after the cannonball.
Two Extra Cannonball Videos
Two extra cannonball videos.
2012 Scooter Cannonball
A full account of that time I competed with 50 other riders on my old Vespa in the Scooter Cannonball. A 2500 mile endurance event from Savannah, GA to San Diego, CA
Day 8 - West Coast
Day 8 of the Scooter Cannonball heads to the finish in California.
Day 7 - Arizona
Day 7 of the Scooter Cannonball rolls through the mountains and deserts of Arizona.
Day 6 - High Altitude
Day 6 of the Scooter Cannonball heads up high in New Mexico and Arizona.
Day 5 - Beat the Heat
Day 5 of the Scooter Cannonball cruises through the desert.
Day 4 - Nothing But Texas
Day 4 of the Scooter Cannonball manages to stay in one state for an entire day.
Day 3 - Drive Friendly
Day 3 of the Scooter Cannonball Heads to Texas
Day 2 - Alabama and Mississippi
Day 2 of the Cannonball in the South.
Day 1 - Watch for Wild Boar
Day 1 of the Scooter Cannonball
Ready
All that's left now is to sit on the damn scooter for a week.
Truck Full of Scooters and Girlfriends
A day trip to Richmond to drop the bikes off.
300 Mile Practice Ride
A 300 mile ride out to Ocean City to make sure the bike is going to hold up.
What I’ll Be Sitting on For 8 Days
Because riding across the country on something practical wouldn't be any fun.
Largest Parts Order Ever
A big old box of parts on the back of a scooter.
Ice Climbing in the Adirondacks
A great day of Ice Climbing up in Northern NY.
ORM with Validation in Kohana 3
It took me a while to get this working correctly and I'm betting I'm not the only one. This example will give you everything you need to setup user creation with ORM and model level validation.
Charm City Mods vs Rockers
"So what did you do with your weekend Matt?" "Pretended I was in a gang from 1960s Britain.... trust me it's cooler than it sounds."
9/25 - Summit Point Track Day
A great first track day with Motorcycle Xcitement and a Ninja 250.
Colonial Beach Scooter Camping Trip
Just a short weekend camping trip with the P200.
Motorcycle Trip to Nashville
1400 mile trip to Nashville and back on an 81 CB750
North of San Francisco
Riding a Triumph Bonneville north of San Francisco for the day.
June Northern Virginia Ride
Monthly ride on some of the best roads around DC.
Pittsburgh Vintage Scooter Club: Band Camp XII
Vintage scooters take over a band camp in Ohio.
East Coast Classic Scooter Rally
What kind of maniac rides a tiny little 37 year old scooter over a 200 miles? Pretty awesome weekend at the largest scooter rally I've ever gone to.
Seneca Rocks
A really great weekend of hiking, climbing, camping, swimming, live music, and via ferrata out in West Virginia.
Hiking and Camping in Cental Shenandoah
A weekend of camping nearly ruined by storms turned out pretty awesome.
Linking to YouTube on Mobile Websites
Launching a native video player via the HTML5 video element if possible is the slickest way to handle video on mobile websites. An alternative that requires less development and QA time is simply uploading the video to YouTube and then linking to it. This approach has the advantage of letting YouTube deal with optimization, CDN (content delivery network) caching, and also having the video play on BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 which can be problematic (also not likely worth the effort) to implement yourself.
Rocky Top Shenandoah Hike
20 mile hike in central Shenandoah near Skyline Drive. Got in at 11PM on Friday night and hiked 3 hours with headlamps before setting up camp. Hiked the remaining 17 the next day through some of the thickest fog I've ever seen.
Developing Web Pages for BlackBerry
You may not use one, your friends may not be using one, but the people who sign the checks for large mobile web project likely are. BlackBerry (BB) is still a large part of the smartphone ecosystem and any mobile web project should have support for BlackBerry.
74 Vespa Super
I've owned a 74 Vespa Super for about a year now and racked up over 2,000 miles on it. Luckily I've yet to run into any issues with it that I haven't been able to fix. It is extremely satisfying learning how to work on old scooters like this and I would highly encourage anyone who owns one to spend the time learning how to fix it (you pretty much have to though). Below are resources and notes that have helped me through any repairs I've encountered.