Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.
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Today I received a Christmas card with glitter on it. While I appreciate the card, the glitter is a bit difficult to like. It’s already on my pants, stuck to my hands, on my desk, and in the carpet. I’m sure I’ll find bits of it for years to come. After all, glitter is the herpes of the craft world. (I believe this phrase must be attributed to Demetri Martin.)
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A number of months ago I purchased a pair of CrankBrothers Eggbeater MXR pedals. A few weeks ago I let a friend of mine borrow them for his new bike, to use until a set that he ordered arrived. Unfortunately within a few rides they had failed, with the plastic end cap popping out, the body wobbling around the shaft, and the bearings feeling very stiff. While these are the cheapest Eggbeater pedals made I had expected them to last for more than a handful of rides. After all, I’ve been using the second-lowest-end Eggbeater C pedals all year and they continue to work great.
Seeing as the pedals should still be under warranty I filled out a support ticket and submitted it, along with the image above and this one. They had space to upload two images for context, but I only had one image of the pedals. Here’s the text of the support ticket which I hope will result in upgraded replacement pedals:
Leave a CommentI purchased some Eggbeater MXR pedals back in May as spares and put them on a bike a couple weeks ago. Within a handful of rides rides on fairly basic Michigan trails the end cap had come out of one pedal while riding and the pedal stopped moving smoothly and began wobbling. Closer inspection showed a ball bearing in the grease behind where the cap was. This is shown in the picture of the pedals below. The other picture is my girlfriend’s dog, wet from a bath.
While I understand that these are your cheapest pedals, I was hoping that they would last for more than a few rides. If you are able to help me out with these under warranty, is there a way which I could upgrade them to the SL model instead, even if for an additional charge? I’ve recently used a friend’s set and found that I prefer them over either the MXRs or the Cs which I use on my other bike.
Thanks very much!
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Here’s Bob putting more air in the rear tire of his bike after tonight’s cold weather made it feel particularly soft and uncomfortable to ride on.
For tonight’s ride we started out from my house with the temperature in the low 20s and headed up to River Bends for a quick ride on the trails there. This resulted in 14.31 miles over an hour and a half, making for a rather pokey 10.1 MPH average. With the air as cold as it is anything over 13 MPH or so hurt, and the trails we were on are lumpy and icy enough that one tends to poke along in a relatively low gear. Not long after returning the National Weather Service had my area listed at 18°F.
Cold weather riding is nifty, and I’m glad that I’m appropriately equipped to do so, but it sure is a lot harder than when its nice out.
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A new X10.com-branded X10-speaking appliance module has been installed along with my old receiver for switching the light behind my iMac. It’s now much nicer, as I can turn the light on and off without reaching behind or under the desk. Now I just need to wait for Monoprice to get a stock of the short USB cables so I can order them along with a bunch of other stuff to finish the office wiring.
Yes, this is the infamous X10 Wireless Technologies with the terrible popup/popunder banner ads that came to embody the irritation of online advertising. Thankfully I was able to find the devices on eBay from Big John’s Place out of northern Illinois.
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Here’s a photo of my desk from a few minutes ago, after fitting a light behind the iMac. Taking a cue from home theater stuff where placing a dim light behind a TV provides nice ambient light and increases apparent contrast in the display, I fitted a 9W daylight colored compact fluorescent light† behind the display on a cheap clip-on light. This makes a nice glow behind the monitor and on the white ceiling which provides enough light for computer and peripherial use, but is dim enough to make for comfortable evening working. This light will eventually be switched using an X10 appliance switch, just as the normal desk lamp is, but these devices haven’t been received yet. Thanks to eBay they were cheap and should be here in a week or so.
Beneath the iMac you may notice the Millet Hybrid Maxed headphone amp which I built last year. It is connected to the AMB γ1 DAC which sits nicely on the Twelve South BackPack. Audio output for non-system sounds are switched from the main speakers to the DAC (and thus the headphones) as needed using Rogue Amoeba’s SoundSource. This works out well for when Danielle and I are both at our desks with audio playing, as respective use of headphones keeps us from driving each other insane. A few new cables are needed to sort out the connections without a rat’s nest, but these are on back order and likely won’t be here until the beginning of next year.
All in all, this is shaping up to be a nice workspace. The iMac is doing everything asked of it with gusto, the display is excellent, and the overall sound level in my office is down to profanely low levels. This is very nice.
† The lamp is a cheap Home Depot 5000K lamp with a rather poor CRI. It is not appropriate for photographic or color-critical work, but it’s just fine for room illumination, particularly indirect illumination bouncing off of a blue-painted wall.
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Today I went for my first below-freezing ride of the season, ending up in River Bends (surprise!) poking around both single track trails that I already knew and some that I just came across for the first time. Some of these new (to me) trails resulted in a better mental picture of how the trails, disc golf course, and rivers fit together.
After riding a bit of the unmaintained single track I happened back up to the normal hiking trail, and ran across two women with dogs on leashes. Following them was a small beagle, and they told me that it just started following them and if I see someone looking for a dog that I should let them know it’s with them. After sniffing me (and allowing me to note the presence of a license and name tag with phone number) on its collar, it started heading back the way it’d come, and the direction I was going. After telling the ladies that I’d take care of the dog I followed it for a while hoping I’d hear someone calling for it.
Since no one was calling for the dog I eventually grabbed it by the collar and played with it while calling one of the numbers on the tag. The person on the other end of the phone seemed pretty excited that I’d found their dog, and in not much time her husband was on his way to meet me. It seems he jogs River Bends frequently, so we were able to establish a place to meet; one of the benches in a notably straight part of the path. No more than 10 minutes later he came jogging through the woods and I was able to get his dog back to him. I’m really glad this worked out well, as both seeing a lost dog looking around for someone familiar and knowing that someone has lost their dog is a pretty sad thing. Here’s a picture of the dog while we were waiting for its person.
While riding around other parts of the park I came across lots of ice, all of which was fun to ride across even without studded tires. As these were mostly narrow and mostly snow covered puddles it was quite solid and not slippery and in places where I did break through there was just a bit of mud beneath. However, at one point I came across a larger flooded area, part of which is seen above, and while it was tempting to try riding through this bit of floodplane on smooth/hard surface it’s possible that this area could have been a few feet deep, and with the ice being an inch or so thick, I didn’t want to risk falling in. Not to mention that unlike the aforementioned puddles it had a slick glare which caused me a great deal of difficulty when setting my bike down, resulting in a controlled slide / almost-fall as seen above.
Towards the end of my ride I was heading along one of the single track-bearing ridges when I veered a little bit off the trail. Normally this isn’t a problem as I can hop up the edge of worn (into a U) single track and continue on like normal, but in this case with the snow kept my front wheel in the groove while my body and bike continued on off the trail. This resulted in a rather amusing tumble into the brush and down the ridge, with me looking back up at my bike (as seen here) after I stopped. I’d previously been afraid to fall here, as the hill is fairly steep and covered in a bunch of woody brush. However, with it being winter-time and my wearing multiple layers of clothes, the fall was mostly something to laugh at. This was actually my first decent tumbling-fall since the crash at Addison Oaks resulting in the skinplug, and thankfully the outcome was much different.
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Here’s the start of a new project, building up a road / path / dirt road bike around a Vassago Fisticuff frame. While I haven’t decided on everything about it yet, I’m pretty certain that it’ll have disc brakes and be setup as a 1×9 with mountain bike parts, starting with a 44t chainring up front and an 11:34 cassette, shifted using an SRAM twist shifter on a HubBub drop bar extension for twist shifters. This should give plenty of range for going fast on smooth stuff and climbing the steepest roads in the area while still being easy to shift. Coloring will be mostly brown/black with silver bits as needed, with things such as brown powder coated Velocity Deep V rims, beige bar tape, Salsa Moto Ace Bell Lap bars, and a honey-colored Brooks B17.
There will be some odd niggles to sort out, such as fender and rack mounting, particularly with the close-proximity brake and fender mounts, the lack of rack mounts, and the slot dropouts, but it shouldn’t be much of a problem. Being a steel frame I’ll also need to seal the inside (with Frame Saver or a similar product) and promptly deal with chips (it arrived with a tiny one on a seat stay), but this shouldn’t be too difficult.
To see pictures of the Vassago Fisticuff as it currently exists (just a frame), please check out this album: Vassago Fisticuff.
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This is the Twelve South BackPack, a nice and simple metal stand for the back of an iMac or Cinema Display which clips (without marring) to the metal stand. It can then be used to hold external disks or whatever else, hidden behind the monitor.
Despite being a bit overpackaged and having fancier silkscreen that I’d expect on a small clamp-on shelf (both of which I suspect contribute quite a bit to the $29.99 price tag), it’s a nice little device. Assembly was pretty straight forward, requiring just a bit of adjustment to get it on the stand and centered. There are a series of plastic spacers which fit into the mounting clips, with different spacers needed for different types of iMacs or Cinema Displays, likely varying based on stand thickness and angle. A fixed screw protruding from the clip and its hexagonal base fit into slots on the metal shelf itself. The clips are then fit around the sides of the stand, and its weight holds it securely in place on the stand.
While some of the photos that I took show it with a hard drive, I suspect that it’ll see most use from me holding the AMB γ1 DAC tucked nicely out of sight, driving some manner of headphone amp. For now this will probably be a Millett Hybrid Maxed, but I’m considering building another headphone amp over the winter. Perhaps the AMB M³ with its active ground would work out well…
More photos of the Twelve South BackPack are available here, if you’re interested: Twelve South BackPack
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When I went downstairs to take some pictures after work today I found that the first of the compact fluorescent bulbs installed in my basement have burned out. I guess I’ll have to get a few more.
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While it’s been here for a while, today I finally opened up my copy of The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters, a book by Ulillillia / Nick Smith. It is available from Lulu for $12.95 plus a bit of shipping.
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