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Month: October 2009

My NiteRider TriNewt Is Broken

Published October 19, 2009

Tonight was a perfect night for a ride. Beautiful clear skies, upper 50s, and a light breeze greeted us as we rode from my house to River Bends Park to poke around the new limestone path and some unofficial single track. Not long after entering the park we even ran into some other people we knew who were out enjoying the same trails.

Heading back into the woods things were going well, until I ducked some overgrown brush and caught my head light. While I stayed on the bike, my NiteRider TriNewt stayed with the brush for a bit, breaking off the mount and apparently stretching the cable to uselessness. I was then left holding a non-working head light, roughly two miles into overgrown single track trails which were frequently bench cut along ponds. Thankfully the two people I was with rode behind me, so I was able to see well enough to make it out, even if some of those points involved ensuring that the front wheel was pointed at the narrow, dark shadow in front of me.

Once we made it back to the wider limestone / paved paths in River Bends things were much easier, and I was generally able to ride along next to people, using overflow light to see by. We were then able to finish up a nice loop, totaling ~17 miles. I’m quite lucky that I wasn’t out alone tonight, as a broken light six miles from home on trails would have meant lots of walking and not-safe riding.

Tomorrow I’ll try contacting NiteRider about getting the light fixed. Per their warranty website this should cost $30 in bench time, plus a new cable and light mount. I opened up the light briefly to check for broken solder points, but everything looked fine, so I suspect the cable. Since the cable and its strain relief is not something I can easily remold myself, I think I’ll just pay them to do it. Hopefully I can have it back quickly. Until then I will probably be using a borrowed HID, which should be interesting. There’s a reason why people are moving in droves to LEDs for bike headlights.

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Ride Log

Published October 18, 2009

Today I headed out to Stony Creek and rode a 9.15 mile lap, non-stop. By the time I got back to the parking lot I was a bit winded, but felt like I could ride quite a bit more. I’d considered more trails, or possibly doing a lap or two of the park’s paved road, but there are some shifting problems with my bike and the chain was squeaking over its need to be lubricated, so I figured it was best to head home instead.

Taking after Bob’s example I’ve also started logging my riding to a spreadsheet. Having a bike computer makes it easy to know how far I’ve gone, so I’m now just entering these numbers and random notes in a Google Spreadsheet. This should make it easy to track things long term, and provide a concise historical record. If any of you would like to view this spreadsheet, it’s available here.

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Corroded Bryant CES0110057-01

Published October 16, 2009

My coworker Brian’s furnace went out and during troubleshooting he came across a bunch of water deposits on the Bryant CES0110057-01 control board, as seen here (full res). I first suggested that he clean the deposits off with vinegar, but after doing so he found that one of the jumper wires on this single sided PCB seemed to have corroded in half, as seen above or here (full res).

He asked that I take a look at it, and in doing so I decided to replace it and the jumper next to it, as seen here. I touched up one other iffy looking solder point near the bottom of the board, but otherwise everything else looked good. He’s taking the board home to try now and hopefully this will fix the problem. A new control board for the furnace is $140, and it’d be best if he didn’t have to pay that.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that repairing this jumper fixed the problem. Yay!

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CO2!

Published October 16, 2009

Danielle brought me a box 1/3 full of dry ice today, as it was left over from a shipment they received at the lab. Thus far I’ve placed it in water, put it in soapy water to make a bubble tower, drowned it in apple juice (and drank the juice), and lowered burning magnesium into a sink full of CO2. The magnesium sputters a bit before going out, and the juice tasted nicely acidic with a bit of carbonation. Now to figure out what else to do with it.

It’s being stored in a foam box, in a cardboard box, on the front porch. I imagine there will be plenty left to play with tomorrow after work. Now to think of things to do. Ice cream is an option, although I’m not sure of that one yet…

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All Aboard!

Published October 15, 2009

I just booked a one-way train trip on Amtrak, from Birmingham, MI to Emeryville, CA. Danielle will fly out a couple days after I arrive, then back just under a week later, with me flying back home a few days after that.

This is going to be an interesting ride. It’s a bit over six hours to Chicago on the Wolverine, a couple hour layover, then another 56 hours or so to Emeryville on the California Zephyr. To Chicago I’ll have a business class seat, and then beyond that I’ll have a private Superliner Roomette.

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Tarkan Akdam’s iFlash iPod Compact Flash Adapter (mk II)

Published October 9, 2009

I use my iPod daily, both in the car and at work for listening to music. I’d also recently come across a nice little PCB made by Tarkan Akdam called the iFlash iPod Compact Flash Adapter (mk II) which allows one to replace the 1.8″ hard drive in their iPod with a CompactFlash card. This card is a very nice, basic design, and can be purchased for a very reasonable price directly from the person who came up with it.

Since the hard drive in my iPod will eventually fail, I wanted to replace with flash before this happened and sell the working disk on eBay. A few months back I’d purchased one of Tarkan’s adapters for £14.50 (US$24.45, at the time) and kept it sitting on the shelf, waiting for a good time to do the replacement. Seeing that a 32GB Kingston CompactFlash card could be purchased for roughly $76.25 from Newegg I figured that now was the time, cashed in some change at a Coinstar machine, and ordered the card. (I was originally going to purchase it with an fee-less Amazon gift card from Coinstar, but the machine couldn’t issue one and thus did fee-less change counting. I then made the purchase from Newegg, who had faster free shipping.)

I’d also considered replacing the battery at the same time, but as I still get great battery life out of my iPod, I couldn’t see the need. Opening the iPod is easy enough, so when the time comes to replace that, I’ll do so.

The 32GB CF card arrived yesterday, and since I’m home watching Danielle as she recovers from having her wisdom teeth removed, I set to work today installing it. Opening the iPod was easily accomplished using one of Danielle’s guitar picks, and after disconnecting the flexible PCB cables and removing two little gray plastic spacers, the compact flash adapter was placed in the iPod frame, where the foam rubber cusions made for a nicely snug fit. After closing the iPod it presented me with a screen indicating that it needed to be connected to a computer for restoration, which puts the OS back on it. After doing so, the flash conversion was complete.

Since there is no longer a need to wait for the disk to spin up, the UI is much more responsive now. Battery life should also be improved greatly, as flash takes less power to run. The only current downside is that the iPod now feels off balance. Previously it’d felt very evenly weighted; solid and firm, but not overly heavy. Now the top of the device, where the battery is, feels a bit heavier than the bottom. Thankfully this shouldn’t matter for me, as most of the time my iPod is sitting on a desk or in a car mount.

Later tonight I’ll post an eBay auction for the old hard drive from the iPod, a Toshiba MK3008GAL 1.8″ 30GB hard disk. I hope that it’ll fetch $20 or $30, to offset the cost of the flash adapter and card. Now, here’s to hoping this iPod has another three years of life left in the rest of it.

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Danielle’s Wisdom Teeth

Published October 9, 2009

Danielle had her wisdom teeth removed this morning and is currently in the living room napping. While all four wisdom teeth were impacted, three were removed intact, which impresses me. In particular I find the one on the right with the twisty root to be neat.

Click here or on the image above to see all the detail, including the yet-to-dry-out pieces of her gingiva.

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New Bike Ideas

Published October 8, 2009

I’ve been wanting a bike for more paved / dirt road uses, but something rugged enough to be banged around as I’m wont to do. For a while I was looking at the Salsa Fargo, but now I’m starting to have other thoughts, steering me towards building up something myself. In particular, I’ve been thinking that a black Surly Karate Monkey frame could do quite nicely with an Shimano Alfine hub and Avid BB7 Road disc brakes. With dirt drop bars and a Jtek Engineering Bar-end Shifter, I think this would be quite the machine for random go-anywhere-but-singletrack rides.

Swapping the bars for a more standard mountain bike bar would even turn it into an interesting, fully rigid off-road device if I wanted to do that. Or, I could even consider something between the two like a On-One Mary Bar or Titec H-Bar or J-Bar, as long as the brake levers chosen work right wtih the shorter pull BB7 Road calipers…

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