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Biking is getting easier…

Published July 28, 2008

The entrance to The Pines trail in Stony Creek standing at marker #6.

Since I’d picked up a CamelBak yesterday I decided to give it a try today, but only after removing the rack and bottle cages from my bike to make my bike as light as (realistically) possible. While I previously didn’t like biking with a backpack, one of the cycling-specific CamelBaks isn’t too bad. Yes, I got a good bit hotter and sweatier, but after the first couple miles I didn’t really notice it was there.

The lack of extra weight on the bike made it (much) easier to hop over logs and handle log piles, although I did find that the extra weight on my body caused me to stand up a little less, and my butt was getting a bit more sore. No numbness in a bit over 15 miles, though.

While reading a bit on line about cleaning CamelBaks I found that a number of people just empty the bladder then throw it in the freezer. This keeps things from growing in it between uses so one doesn’t have to wash/dry it every time. I tossed mine in the freezer and hopefully it’ll work out well.

It was also suggested to me that I try to ride in the center chainring more often, because it makes it easier to keep one’s speed up which is quite often the key to getting through tricky areas. I spent most of today’s ride trying this and it really did work out well, and I was able to make it through a particularly difficult uphill rutted switchback comfortably. I don’t know if it is this different gearing contributing to more speed, more experience, or both, but I’m feeling much more comfortable covering routes at Stony much more quickly. I hope this feeling of comfort on trails applies elsewhere.

Oh, I also brought my camera (the Coolpix 5400) along with me today. One of the nice things about the CamelBak is that there is plenty of room in it for my normal set of tools, camera, food (if needed), and things like that. Since I was out there alone there wasn’t much to take pictures of, but I did grab that photo above (also here) at the entrance to The Pines, a switchback filled but not too hilly part of the Stony Creek trails. I also grabbed this photo from the top of Mt. Sheldon, the highest point in the park, looking out at Crittenton Hospital in Rochester, MI.

If you’d like to reference things, here is the MMBA provided map of Stony Creek, and the entrance to The Pines is marker #6, the top of Mt. Sheldon is marker #25.

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Korg DS-10 Synthesizer for Nintendo DS

Published July 27, 2008

Korg DS-10 running on my DS.

In case you were wondering, yes, the Korg DS-10 Synthesizer for Nintendo DS is excellent. It’s awesome. Fun, very easy to understand, the works. I can’t wait until it’s released in the US so that I can have multiple copies running.

The only thing I can’t figure out is what the SMT/HLD setting on the Kaos Pad is supposed to do. Oh, and it does seem like some of the settings (in particular those on the patch panel) don’t do anything until one slightly turns a knob, but that may be intentional.

This sounds excellent on headphones. I can’t wait to see what people come up with using it. Hopefully there is a good way to trade songs beyond peered DS’.

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8GB iPod Touch For Auction / Sale

Published July 27, 2008

8GB iPod Touch for Auction / Sale

Due to an interesting series of events (more on this at some point in the future) my sister has had to purchase a new computer and such for herself. As part of her purchase of a Macbook she received an 8GB iPod Touch for free (after rebate). She doesn’t need the iPod, so I’m attempting to sell it for her.

I am currently selling it via eBay auction #290249097988 with a starting bid of US$1. If any of you are interested in purchasing it I can make it available outside of eBay. I expect that we’ll get somewhere around US$240 for it once the auction has closed, but I’d take US$220 cash (or equivalent). This goes for folks overseas or not. Yes, that’s a much better price than you’ll pay for one at a store.

This is a brand new iPod purchased a couple of weeks ago at the local Apple store at the Partridge Creek shopping center. It comes with the original receipt, so there should be no problems with any sort of warranty support on it. It should also be quite easy to get the 2.0 firmware (jailbroken or not) on it, if you so desire.

So, anyone want it? Otherwise I’ll just leave it up to the eBay peoples…

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CamelBak M.U.L.E. (Coyote / Black)

Published July 27, 2008

Camelbak M.U.L.E. in Coyote / Black color, purchased from REI for US$85.

Today while out and about Danielle swung by REI where I used one of those silly VISA gift cards to purchase a CamelBak M.U.L.E. hydration pack. I’ve been contemplating getting one for a while now, but I finally decided just to get one and see if I like it. Because it was purchased at REI, if I really don’t like it I can just take it back.

I had wanted the orange / charcoal colored one, but it wasn’t in stock so I went with coyote / black, which is a nice brownish color. I figure that black would be a bit hot to wear and it’d also show all acquired dirt very easily, whereas this brown should be considerably lighter.

I also picked up a US$1 brass Presta to Schrader adapter to keep in my bag. Last time I was out riding I happened across someone with a flat who needed to borrow a pump, but as my pump doesn’t do Presta very well (getting the fitting on is a huge hassle) I couldn’t help him out. Also, my sister’s bike has Presta valves and if I’m out riding with her I need to be sure that I can adjust her tires as well.

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Michigan Brewer’s Guild 2008 Summer Beer Fest

Published July 27, 2008

My glass of Tiramisu Stout and a handful of tokens.

The Michigan Brewer’s Guild 2008 Summer Beer Fest was, at least from my perspective, a great success.

There was a bit of bothersome traffic on the way, but we arrived with plenty of time to meet up with everyone, apply sunscreen, then wander over to the park. Despite being in a rather long line to get in, we were only waiting for about 15 minutes.

There was a set of dark clouds that rolled through and sprinkled a little rain, but not enough to even make one wet.

All in all, it was a really nice time. After the festival closed we all headed back to Brian and Debbie’s place for food and sober-up time and things like that. Unfortunately I just never became sober, so Danielle, who had no problems getting back to normal, drove back to my place.

If you are interested, here is a list of all the breweries and beers at the festival this year, and here is my Michigan Brewer’s Guild Summer Beer Fest 2008 album. All photos were taken with Danielle’s nicely pocket sized Panasonic DMC-FX3. It’s a nice small camera, but it still takes decent photos.

When wandering around we ended up at the tent for Adventures in Homebrewing. Brian knew the person there, and he offered us some root beer in these nice red plastic cups he had. Well, the root beer was excellent, and it turned out that the breweries would happen to fill these cups as well, half a cup for a token. Since 1/3 of a red plastic cup was equivalent to a full normal cup, we ended up with quite a bit more beer than expected. As seen here, Eric had no problem ending up with a large full cup of beer for two tokens.

Oh, and extra tokens were 10 for $5, so near the end of the day Danielle and I acquired $10 worth of extra tokens (one of the red special cups can also be seen here). As most of them didn’t get used we’ll just have to save them for the Winter festival, which is happening on 28-Feb-2009 in Grand Rapids.

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Southern Tier’s Jah-Va

Published July 22, 2008

Southern Tier's Jah-Va poured into a glass. This is a very, very nice 12% coffee stout.

I do declare, Southern Tier makes some of the finest beers I’ve ever had. They are consistently good, with only one or two of their styles ever being something that didn’t set well with me.

Tonight while eating a rather late dinner of leftovers† I had this nice bottle of Souther Tier’s Jah-Va, a 12% coffee stout. I think I spent two hours on this bottle, sipping the 1.5 (or so) pints of it while watching some TiVo’d stuff, balancing my checkbook, talking to friends online, and relaxing. It’s very, very good. I’d highly recommend trying some yourself if you like thick, strong stouts.

Also, based on the flags and sprayed markings in front of my house it appears that either Comcast is installing new boxes or Wide Open West is bringing service to our complex. Here is a photo of the new box, and the short one behind it is specifically labeled Comcast. Maybe I should give WOW a go.

† Thanks, work. At least I got some stuff fixed, I guess.

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Salt Is Not Snack Food

Published July 21, 2008

From #mi2600 a few minutes back:

22:33 < c0nsumer> when i was little i would pick rock salt up off the sidewalk and eat it at school
22:33 < c0nsumer> i'd get horrible headaches for some reason

Also, the MMBA Metro North meeting tonight at Rochester Mills was pretty neat. I got to meet some new people, talk to others, things like that. There was also good beer, and I ate some very nice (but not filling enough, and not rock salty) fish tacos during the meeting, then a basket of fries.

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How To Make an iPhone 3G Fail

Published July 20, 2008

A iPhone 3G at the Apple Store rebooting after I managed to crash it by viewing a 7MB JPEG.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been contemplating an iPhone 3G as a replacement for my aging (and failing) Nokia 6600. Today I went by the Apple store at the local outdoor mall†, Partridge Creek to spend some time playing with one. Unfortunately, I crashed it hard once and made the UI slow horribly another time. I also ran into one other potentially show stopping bug.

First, 3G was a lot slower than local wireless. When using 802.11 things zipped along nicely, but 3G was still wholly acceptable on both web pages and maps. I think it’d be just fine for mobile use.

I then wanted to try to see how it renders my personal site, including my photo gallery, so I loaded up a few things. Everything worked great, except for when I’d try and visit a full size image in the gallery, then the image wouldn’t display. For example, take this page. It worked great, except that large image of the P3 case just simply wouldn’t display.

Thinking that maybe the iPhone had problems with large images I then browsed to https://nuxx.net/images and tried to view this image. While downloading and rendering it (via 802.11) the phone got really slow, the volume buttons and ringer switch stopped responding, and then phone laggedly noticed that I’d turned it sideways. The whole phone was very slow, and after four or five minutes of being nearly unresponsive it gave up. The phone was displaying partially downloaded image and half-heartedly rotated screen (it must have noticed that I’d been moving the phone around) when it went blank and rebooted, displaying the screen shown above.

After the phone rebooted I made a point of disabling 3G, thinking that maybe the phone was somehow failing over to it and just let it go with 802.11. (This is done by turning on airplane mode, then turning WiFi on.)

The image was then able to load and display, although it took quite a bit of time. I can’t help but think that the iPhone just isn’t set up to deal with / display images of this size. With how popular digital photography and things like Flickr in particular are, I’d hope that Apple would have found a way to deal with it. Wanting to break things further I loaded up this 9.7MB JPEG panorama of a part of the USAF Museum at Wright-Patterson. This too caused the iPhone 3G to lag horribly and the UI to become unresponsive, but eventually (after maybe four minutes) it acquired the image and displayed it. This time the phone didn’t crash.

While I can understand that a mobile device might not be able to handle images of this size, I think there should be something in place to ensure that the end user experience doesn’t turn to crap. Also, I really don’t like how the image in my gallery silently failed to display.

† Speaking of outdoor malls in Michigan, check out the map of Twelve Mile Crossing at Fountain Walk, aka The Fountain walk, in Novi. See all the empty space? I don’t know what developer could possibly think that an outdoor mall in a state with Michigan’s drawn out, harsh winter and frequently rainy summers is a good idea.

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