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Category: acquired things

Busy, busy, busy!

Published April 26, 2010

I haven’t posted anything in roughly 20 days, mostly because I’ve been busy traveling Europe and generally being busy with stuff. I arrived home today, and I’ll post more about that later after I’ve sorted through the photos. Instead I’ll just mention the brief things that my day held:

· Waking at 4:30am UK time to catch a flight. Thus I’ve been up almost 23 hours straight and traveled by a car (on the left and right side of the road), train, bus, and airplane.
· Replacing a hard drive in banstyle.nuxx.net on the way home, as my mom waited in the car. I was very thankful for this, as it kept me from having to drive back to Southfield during rush hour.
· Got a replacement SIM card to put in my replacement Nexus One. My other one was lost / stolen (I’m really not sure which) in the airport on the way to the UK.
· Finished setting up a rigid fork on my Specialized 26″ hard tail, getting it ready to be used as a commuter / light trail bike complete with rack and new rear blinky light.
· Went for a 20-ish mile test ride mixing single track, two track, and pavement. The fork works well and I like it, so I stopped for frozen custard at Custard Spot. I don’t know the distance because the bike doesn’t have a computer on it.
· Washed sheets and showered to remove mud from me, and started other laundry.
· Downloaded all the queued work email so I can begin reading it tomorrow morning.

Now I think it’s time for bed. It was a really excellent trip filled with good friends and lots of nice people, but I must admit that I’m a bit glad to be home.

Sleep will be needed, because I suspect work is going to get quite busy as soon as I return tomorrow morning.

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New Crabon Fibre Breaks

Published March 27, 2010

After coming across a rather good deal for a barely used (installed, but removed before the bike was built up) set of 2009 Avid Elixir CR disc brakes with black carbon fiber levers (blades) I got them installed last night. While they felt soft at first, the brief ride that Danielle and I took around Stony Creek’s Trolley Trails got them about 50% bedded in. Even using a smaller rotor in the front than I’d previously had (160mm vs. 185mm) they seem to be quite sufficient stopping my heavy person on big 29er wheels.

Since I had to disassemble things a bit to fit the new rotors and such, I ended up swapping out the 2.2″ Kenda Nevegals that came with the bike for some 2″ Specialized The Captain Control tires that I’d picked up in the MMBA annual meeting fundraiser auction for $40. These are simply a larger version of the tire I’ve had on my 26″ bike since July 2008, and a tire that I rather like.

I also swapped out the NiteRider Rebel 1.0 computer for my old Cateye Strada Wireless, which despite having a large and somewhat fiddly speed sensor is much more readable and usable. The NiteRider Rebel 1.0 had two problems that I couldn’t get over. The first is the angle of the display coupled with my stem mounting and the stem angle, leading to the LCD being hard to read when leaning right over it or standing over the bike. The second is a lot of latency between button pushes (up to 1.5 seconds while moving) making it hard to switch modes and check things while en route. It would be hard to tell if a button press was not registering or simply being slow†. Both of these were irritating enough to make me simply go back to the old computer.

With all of this working out it looks like I might have a pair of BB7s and a NiteRider Rebel 1.0 computer for sale soon. I might even consider selling off the Nevegals, although having some 2.2″ tires hanging around could be nice come winter, or if I’m heading anywhere sandy.

†I suspect the device uses an interrupt on change for the wheel sensor then just polls the button, and has a few opportunities for user input to be slowly read. Perhaps their higher end computers are better.

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Multi-wood Coasters

Published February 28, 2010

After some friends headed to Belize a few weeks ago for some sailing and general relaxing they brought me back this really, really cool set of coasters. With each being made out of four strips of different woods (mahogany, black poison, red wood, and billy webb, as illustrated in this photo) they are quite neat looking. I just added four rubber feet to each and now they re in the living room ready for use. They look particularly great on the tables in there.

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Cross-Country (XC) Skis!

Published February 27, 2010

After trying out cross-country skiing a coupletimes I decided it’d be good to get my own set of skis and supporting equipment. Thanks to end of season clearance sales at REI I was able to get everything seen above for US$243.40, after tax, plus another $16 for the REI shop to mount the bindings and give the tips and tails of the skis an initial hot wax.

I had one problem with REI, as when I went to pick up the skis this afternoon I noticed that the bindings weren’t sitting flat against the ski, and there appeared to be a bit of flashing around the screw. The person I was working with immediately agreed that was wrong and looked into it. It turns out that the skis are pre-drilled for NNN bindings and the person doing the installation of my SNS bindings simply screwed them into those holes. Apparently that doesn’t work quite right and also put the binding at the wrong point for the skis to be properly balanced. While this was immediately rectified, had I not noticed this I would have ended up with improperly set up skis.

Tomorrow I’m meeting some friends at Stony Creek at 11am for skiing. Hopefully the conditions will continue to be good and I’ll do well with the new equipment. I’d spent almost an hour weighing out the UK11.5 vs. UK12 boot size, but I’m pretty sure that the final choice of UK12 was the appropriate way to go. The skis are sized based on weight, and the poles are the same as I’d last used at Stony Creek and felt comfortable with, so they should be fine.

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XC Skiing and Swell Hats!

Published February 14, 2010

Today Erik, Kristi, Jon, Jeff (who is in town for a long weekend) and I headed out to Stony Creek for some cross country skiing. It was an absolutely wonderful day for and I finally got a good feel for the motions involved. Now I really want to get some equipment of my own so I can head out without needing to locate a rental first.

Everything went really well today, except for two equipment failures. Both Jon and Jeff’s left shoes, which use the older Nordic Norm bindings, had their soles partially let go. Jeff’s was bad enough that he couldn’t lift or turn his ski. The point where his failure occurred was particularly bad, as we were right in The Pines, a particularly twisty mountain bike trail. Thankfully my belt was of a style that allowed his shoe to be lashed back together near the binding (photo) and he was able to continue out the day happily (photo of a happy and warm Jeff with a lashed up shoe).

Just before the ride, right when getting to the parking lot, Kristi gave me the incredibly nifty hat seen above. Beyond just warm and water-shedding wool, being hand-knitted by her, and include nifty random binary it’s also large enough to fit on my head and cover my ears. It’s great! I immediately donned it and wore it for the ski instead of my boring, not-great stretchy stocking hat and was very comfortable the whole time. This is now my go-to winter hat. Here is another photo of it laying flat, but the image above (or here) shows its structure and design much better. And yes, I am eating a pancake in that photo.

Here’s a KML of today’s ski if you want it, and here’s a photo showing my belt frozen into a D after Jeff removed it from his foot. Now the belt is hanging in the bathroom to dry so I may wear it tomorrow.

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Titus Racer X 29er

Published January 23, 2010

Here’s my new bike, the one which I’ve been hinting at for a while now, a Titus Racer X 29er. This is a discontinued model that I was able to get at a fairly reasonable price because it’s replacement is considerably higher end (and also titanium alloy or carbon fiber only). I’ve had the bike for roughly a month and have been taking my time getting it set up as I want, with an appropriate saddle, pedals, brakes, and other such bits.

Now that it’s essentially complete I wanted to take it out for a test ride. With the recent lack of snow, reasonably warm weather without much risk of mud (due to cold ground), and heavy precipitation forecasted for the next few days, today was the day. The result was a basic 21.1 mile ride over the course of 1:37:28, for an average of 12.9 MPH. Everything on the bike performed wonderfully and as expected, although I did realize that I need to move the saddle forward a bit and adjust the suspension a bit. The seatpost may also have slipped down a few millimeters, but that’s probably because I didn’t have the seatpost clamp particularly tight.

Thus far I’m really happy with the bike. I’m still waiting on the arrival of Carnegie’s Bar from Ragley, but that should be here any day now. It was ordered from Chain Reaction Cycles in the UK (Ragley does not yet have US distribution for their stuff), and postage from the UK always seems to take a while. I look forward to trying this bar because it looks like it’ll be comfortable, but if not I’ll probably be able to sell it for close to its cost.

If you’d like to see the full geeky list of parts currently on the bike, take the link below and look inside.

Continue readingTitus Racer X 29er
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IS1621N on BCK-08 PCB

Published January 19, 2010

In other cheap Chinese device news here’s DealExtreme p/n 8422 with the case removed, powered by a benchtop supply, peered to my Nexus One, and playing audio. I’m hoping to redo the output circuitry on this and put it in another case to make a decent Bluetooth audio device for connecting to either a home or car stereo. It runs off of 3.7 VDC and has an on-PCB antenna, so it should be pretty easy to work with.

The PCB contains an I.S.S.C. IS1621N and FM24C08B EEPROM, which likely contains the IS1621N’s config. I’ve requested the data sheet for the chip from I.S.S.C., so hopefully I’ll have that soon and can work on it. I’d also like to change the identifier string in the EEPROM, but I probably won’t touch that until I know what the IS1621N expects to find in other parts of it. I also hope to find an example implementation, as it should be easy to build off of that to get line level output.

Here’s a few more pictures of the board:

· Detail of the FM24C08B EEPROM which likely houses the config for the IS1621N on the BCK-08.
· Top / button side of the BCK-08 PCB.
· Bottom / component side of the BCK-08 PCB showing the I.S.S.C. IS1621N Bluetooth IC and FM24C08B EEPROM.

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TFXTDOL

Published January 19, 2010

I guess this is what I get for buying discount ZIF sockets on eBay: one “genuine” TFXTDOL-brand DIP28 ZIF socket. It’ll probably be fine, even though I had to fight with pins which are too wide for sockets and almost too wide for the drill holes in one of the SDrive NUXX prototype boards.

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Kenda Small Block Eight

Published January 18, 2010

A rep from Kenda was set up at Ray’s MTB on Saturday displaying all manner of tires, tubes, and such. Conveniently all tires were also available for sale, at US$20/each, which is quite a bit below retail. I’ve been wanting to try out the Small Block Eight (SB8), a small knob smooth-rolling tire good for hard pack surfaces, so I picked up a pair of them in 29″ x 2.1″, the only 29er size made.

The Nevegals (which came stock on the bike, front and rear) don’t roll particularly smoothly but supposedly offer great control. Following some online recommendations I fitted the SB8 on the rear of the bike, leaving the nice, big knobs up front for better control. We’ll see how this shakes out once I actually start riding the bike, but at least I’ve now got a few options to play with. If nothing else I’m sure I can sell the Nevegals and SB8s for a reasonable price to fund some other tires.

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