As some of you know, I’ve committed to riding in the Livestrong Challenge each year. The ride benefits the fight against cancer, something that has affected the lives of several of my family and friends. I hate asking for money from friends, but I do like that it supports a great cause and hope that you agree and choose to sponsor me.
Any little bit helps!
AT&T just announced a near doubling of its Early Termination Fee for canceling your contract. It takes effect for all contracts entered into starting June 1. I guess they’re trying to lock in people who buy the likely-upcoming fourth-generation iPhone for those two years. If the rumored Verizon iPhone comes out, or Android phones get too attractive, they want their pound of flesh.
I love the title of the letter: “An Open Letter to our Valued Customers”.
For customers who enter into new two-year service agreements in connection with the purchase of our more advanced, higher end devices, including netbooks and smartphones, the ETF will increase to $325, and be reduced by $10 for each month that you remain with us as a customer during the balance of your two-year service agreement. After that, the ETF will no longer apply.
The Google TV announcement has some really interesting stuff in it. I enjoyed the Engadget demo of the Logitech box with Google TV. One feature that seemed particularly interesting:
> When we got to Logitech’s demo space, we expected to see a keyboard and mouse. To our surprise, the Logitech product manager pulled out a Nexus One and iPhone. He explained that the companion box has all the technology of Logitech’s $400 Harmony 900 remote and extends it to your handset over WiFi.
Love it.
The San Francisco Chronicle’s web site, SFGate, sometimes does this annoying ad behavior too. So annoying that it’s worth navigating away immediately.
Erik and I decided that we needed a long (for us, in our current shape) ride, compared with the quick after-work rides we’ve been getting in. We settled on Skeggs (El Corte de Madera). It sure did feel good to get a long one in—I need more of that to get into shape. I think we’ll probably add Skeggs—and its requisite long climb out— to the after-work lineup.
I took the Spot out again today. I was enjoying the ability to change the front fork’s travel for the climbs, down to 110 mm from 140. We ended up climbing Manzanita, a trail I rarely ride and never in that direction, and I forgot about a fairly hairy, rocky descent. I also forgot that I had my fork dialed down so low. That, combined with an ill-timed tap of the front brake, sent me over the bars. Other than pride and a skinned knee, I was fine. More of a bummer was that I broke the little clear window on my twist shifters. Those damn things are only 3 rides old and I already damaged them. 😞 At least nothing serious was broken.
In any case, I’m enjoying the bike and the differences from my RFX. I think the deeper front suspension and slack head tube angle might have saved my dumb ass from the OTB experience, but oh well. I need to spend more time on the Spot to get more comfortable on it, although I had a great time carving it along the North Leaf trail. It’s a great bike.
The weather today was gorgeous. Clear skies, and early enough that there were no bugs out—a common annoyance at Skeggs—and the water running through the creek at the bottom was nice.
Check out this preview of some very nice functionality in the upcoming Lightroom 3. It’s demoed in Adobe Camera Raw 6, part of Photoshop CS5, but will also be in LR3. Very cool that they’re releasing the tool to allow users to create custom profiles for lens and camera combinations that they don’t cover out of the box.
I finally had my Turner 5-Spot rebuilt. When I bought the RFX, I used some of the parts from the 5-Spot to finish it, stripped the 5-Spot down and sent the frame back to Turner for a program they have to get it repainted and have the pivots replaced. It’s been back for a long time, just sitting at home waiting to be built up and ridden. Over the course of the months it’s been since then, I’ve collected new gear to outfit it with.
It’s got new wheels, built lighter than the ones that are now on the RFX. It’s got an all-new drivetrain, mostly X.0 and XTR gear. The Pike 454 Air was pretty new when I decommissioned the bike, as were the XTR brakes, and so they’re back on. The only thing I need to do to finish it off is replace the Romic coil rear shock and put a lighter air shock on it. It weighs 28.6 pounds now, down from over 32 before and I imagine that rear shock will take a bit more off of that. I also put on a set of Push rear rockers to balance the Pike some.
Now that I’ve been riding the RFX exclusively for almost 2 years, it’s interesting to go back to the Spot. I was worried that the differences might not be enough to really matter, but those differences can really be felt on the trail, although they aren’t surprising. The Spot is definitely more nimble and climbs better, and I’d say is the more versatile bike of the two. The RFX’s suspension is superior in every way—very confidence inspiring—making it a solid descender. I’m happy to have them both, as it’s nice to have an “extra” bike when one needs a repair, and they’re both versatile enough to be ridden anywhere.
I plan to ride the Spot as my main bike again, and pull out the RFX for rides with more downhill or stunts, like Demo, Downieville or Pacifica. I’ll take it to Canada again, of course. But I’m very happy the Spot is back in the stable.
Man, I remember having to do this kind of thing “manually” back in the day. (Where by “manually” I mean drawing masks with a mouse and by “back in the day”, I mean with PS 2.5. It could have been worse, I suppose—at least I was always working digitally.)
I’ve had a couple of people ask about how I get my mountain bike rides listed in the sidebar here. This blog is run on Movable Type, and the sidebar is created by an MT feature called Action Streams. Action Streams are essentially feeds from other sites which are aggregated together on an MT site by a plugin.
The Action Streams plugin itself can be extended by other plugins, usually to add more external sites and services to poll for content. I created one for Garmin Connect, which can be found on my GitHub account or on its page on the Movable Type plugin directory.
It was easy to write, but hopefully this saves someone a little time.
Eruption in Eyjafjallajökull, originally uploaded by Gunnar Gestur.
Wonderful picture from the eruption in Iceland.
These are some very nice improvements to the web inspector in the nightly builds of webkit.
This is pretty cool looking. If it weren’t for my deep-seated hatred of Sprint (having been a recipient of their “customer service”), I might consider something like this.
“The product was new and complex, but the deception and conflicts are old and simple.”
Wally Byam is the creator of Airstream, and responsible for the aluminum trailers that are synonymous with the brand’s name. He arranged some fascinating trailer caravans in the middle of the last century, and the Airstream Life blog has an interesting article about those trips and two books he wrote. Airstream Life is publishing these books in one collection for $19. Seems like a good price for an interesting look into the history of an American icon. I’ve ordered mine.