I have designed and built a Hanukkah Menorah. The materials are cherry for the bulk of it and maple for the base. The design goal was to marry the traditional and the modern forms. I wanted the design to look contemporary and fresh, for something as traditional as a menorah.
I bought a couple of second-hand Moto X (XT1096) phones and discovered that I cannot sign into the Play Store using the stock firmware. Something must have become incompatible since the latest firmware was released, and I was left in a vicious circle when Google Play Store and services could not be updated because I am not signed in, and I could not add a Google account because Google Play services were crashing.
I figured that I would install Cyanogenmod 14 on the phones, which was pretty straight forward to do after unlocking the bootloader (and, from the first looks at it, seems to be pretty responsive on these older phones). However, CM comes rooted by default, and applications using SafetyNet check refuse to run. I don’t really need root on these phones, so here is a quick procedure I figured out to unroot CM to a condition that SafetyNet validation passes.
I was looking for a watertight case to store a bunch of 3.5″ hard drives. The idea was to protect the off-line backups from water damge in case sprinklers get activated in the building. It was decided that water or dust damage was a more likely threat than fire, so the solution did not have to be fire safe.
I had a really hard time trying to remove the bottom bracket fixed cup from my friend’s Elvish French bike. I replicated Sheldon Brown’s fixed cup removal tool, although my local hardware store did not carry any 5/8″ bolts, so I had to resort to a 1/2″ threaded bolt. I believe that I have made two improvements to the tool, which I’ll detail below.
Last Saturday I was riding in the rain. I had my helmet rain cover on, like I usually do when it’s cold and raining. At some point the rain intensified, and I noted that I was feeling rain drops on my skull. “How funny”, thought I, “I am feeling phantom rain drops on my head even though I’m wearing a helmet cover.”
When I arrived at the destination and took the helmet off…
My 2014 Specialized AWOL came with an FSA Omega MegaExo 19 triple crank and an FSA BB-4000 bottom bracket. I bought the bike in October and in March I started thinking about doing some post-winter maintenance. One of the things that I wanted to do was remove and examine the bottom bracket. Since I was not familiar with outboard bearing bottom brackets, I did some research about the BB-4000 bottom bracket, and here is what I found out.
I could not decipher what was written about the wheel hubs in the official spec sheet for the Specialized AWOL. For both front and rear hubs, the specs say:
Specialized Hi Lo disc, alloy, RCC bearing system, QR, 32h
What exactly is RCC bearing system? I could not find anything related to this term anywhere. So I figured I’d ask Specialized through their dedicated Twitter support account. The dialogue that ensued was quite comic.
It’s been about six months ago that I bought a 2014 Specialized AWOL. I have the standard edition in size Large. I’ve ridden it almost every day since I bought it, all through the Winter, but no long distance rides yet, at most 25km. I have been mostly using it for commuting so far.
Overall, I am quite pleased with the bike, but the impressions are not all peachy.
I’ve been comparing different bar tape with the idea to find something that’s not much more expensive than $20 and provides good enough grip and cushioning. I first tried the SRAM Supercork tape and liked it. I then messed up my handle bar and had to re-tape, so I got a pack of Bontrager Double Gel Cork Tape because I liked how it felt on a Trek touring bike (was it the 520) that the local bike shop had on display.
My 6 year old’s bike was stolen from our front porch, so I set out to find a reasonable replacement. I was looking for a 20 inch wheel bike with no shocks, some gearing, and, after reading online articles comparing the bikes (here is one), I was certain that I wanted a bike that weighed less than 10kg. The odd thing is that there aren’t that many bikes that fit the three parameters.
