I’ve been using the 1×9 drivetrain for about two months, and it’s time for some updates.  I finally got around to weighing the Eriksen and the overall weight dropped from a 3×9 10.9kg to the now 1×9 10.3kg.

The new Chain Keeper chain guide was initially jamming and rubbing.  I tired realigning the guide with no success, and even resorted to riding with no chain guide.  The chain dropped fairly frequently without a guide, so I continued tweaking the Chain Keeper until I finally found a position that worked.  That was about a month ago and I haven’t had any issues since.

Last weekend I rode the 1×9 Eriksen io an XC race in very muddy, wet and cold conditions.  Despite riding though clay, deep mud and hub-deep “puddles” the chain didn’t suck or jam.  The drivetrain worked perfectly throughout my near three-hour race.  Three hours in those conditions without a single sucked chain would have been a miracle with the 3×9 or even 2×9 drivetrain.  Being very happy with drivetrain, the only change I’m likely to make is to swapping the aluminum XT 32t ring for a stainless steel 32-34t ring.  Swapping the 11-32t cassette for a one with a 34t cog is also a possibility, but I’m not convinced it’s necessary.

Based on my experience, I’d definitely recommend giving 1×9 a try, although you may want to consider appropriate gearing for the terrain you ride.  The Chain Keeper is the only 1×9-specific component I’ve used, and it seems to be a reasonable, though pricey chain guide.  Aside from the touchy setup and alignment, the only other issue I’ve found with the Chain Keeper is the placement of the mounting hardware.  The allen bolts on the Chain Keeper are aligned parallel to the downtube, and as a result, they are difficult to access.  This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue on a frame with a smaller diameter downtube, but it would likely be an issue with most.  I’ve found that neither my trail-friendly multi-tool or T-handled allen wrenches work.  A small L-shaped allay key does work, but that means I have to carry one more tool when I ride.

That’s all for now.  I have another XC race in a couple weeks –Hopefully this time the trails will be a little drier.

In the previous iPad post I mentioned this case design.  Here’s my version.  The procedure is documented fairly well on the linked page, so I’ll just cover the highlights.  I used the same basic plans, but changed most of the materials.  My materials list includes:

• 3.0mm MDF
• Cotton fabric, black
• 13mm elastic, black
• Felt, A4, ruby (dark red)
• PVA glue, spray adhesive, fabric cement

I started off cutting the 3.0mm MDF into two 20 x 25cm covers and a 2.5 x 25cm spine.  I rounded the corners of the covers with both clamped together so the covers would match.  Behind the covers you’ll notice that trash server now has a display.  Sanding MDF makes a lot of dust, so having a garage computer was useful during the case build.

Back to the case:  I glued the cotton fabric to the covers and spine with spray adhesive.  The spacing between the covers and spine is 3.0mm; I used some scrap MDF to align the pieces.  The cotton fabric that I chose has the weight and texture of light canvas or perhaps a cheap suit.

After the glue set I wrapped the fabric around the covers and attached the flaps with PVA glue.  I pressed the cover for about 30 minutes before continuing to the next step.  The next step, pictured above, was to punch the cover for the elastic band using the 2.5cm spacing recommended in the original article.  For this I used a my split-window-bus-door-hinge-removing flat blade screw driver and a hammer.  After threading the elastic through the back cover, it was further secured using fabric cement.

Skipping ahead, I have the elastic bands for iPad retention attached with staples and fabric cement to a piece of card stock/cereal box, which is in turn adhered to the back cover with PVA.  The dark red felt is attached to the inside of the covers/spine with spray adhesive.  The felt is cut to allow the elastic bands to pass through.  There is a seam between the felt (above) and a piece not pictured.  The seam is small, but it would be visible if not covered by the iPad.  The fully assembled case was pressed under the considerable weight of a phone book, 4.5 kg box of economy laundry detergent,  a bike repair manual and a short length of railroad track.

Here is the finished product.  Above you will see the case open with the iPad mounted.

Here the case acts as a convenient stand.

Finally, the case can be used to angle the iPad slightly towards (or I suppose away) from you.

Overall, the case turned out well.  However, I’m going to make one change next time. –Yes, there will be a next time as I have stacks of MDF, fabric and adhesives.  The felt liner has a larger margin at the top and bottom due to the A4-sized sheets; seams in the felt would have been visible if the felt was aligned in the other direction.  The solution is obviously a larger sheet of felt.  Fortunately, I found a local shop with rolls of felt available by the meter, though not in this nice dark red.

I estimate the total cost of materials in this case around $3-5 AUD.  The purchase price of all the materials was closer to $30 AUD with a significant remaining surplus of everything but the felt and elastic.

Okay, so this is an iPad.  Specifically, it is the Australian iPad 3G 32GB on a Peruvian llama blanket.

Why? Well, I was looking at netbooks and really never found anything I wanted.  If you recall, I did get a Microsoft TechNet membership, which gave me access to Windows 7 without getting new hardware. Now, it would have been reasonable to assume that I could have gone with any Apple notebook so that I could use Windows 7 on a portable system.  However, I went with the one Apple portable that can’t run Windows, or OS X for that matter.  As a side note, the recently announced  Toshiba Libretto W100 may have been a good Windows netbook, but the price would have been too high.  Also, I recently worked with an Asus 1005P.  Being roughly one half to one third the cost of an iPad, I was impressed with the system and would probably consider one if I were still in the market.

Anyway, back to the iPad.  I’m not going to cover the size, cost or design of the iPad as may others have already done this.  I’m not even going to include any review links– just do a search and I’m sure you’ll see hundreds of reviews.  Instead, I’ll discuss some of the software and uses I’ve found for the iPad in the first few weeks of use.

First, news (RSS) readers.  I’ve been regularly using Google Reader for the past few years.  I’ve found news readers are a convenient and quick way of keeping up with my preferred news sites.  Shortly after receiving the iPad I purchased a copy of Reeder, one of many iPad RSS/news readers. The Reeder interface is intuitive, minimal and works very well on the iPad.  While Reeder can import the subscribed feeds from Google Reeder, it lacks Google’s ‘Recommended Items/Sources’ feature.  Even with this omission, I far prefer reading the news on the iPad over a laptop or desktop.

Flipboard is a ‘social magazine’ (pseudo news reader?) that I’ve tried.  The Flipboard interface is nice, but the sources aren’t very configurable and are fairly generic.   On top of that, it isn’t possible to disable or remove the links to ‘my’ Facebook/Twitter accounts.  I have little to no interest in either of these services, so their prominent presence in the interface is annoying.  On the other hand, I don’t think I’m in the target audience for this app, so my complaints are likely irrelevant.  I suppose Flipboard puts more emphasis ’social’ than I’d like.

UPDATE: I received an invitation to associate my Twitter account (I don’t have a FaceBook account) with Flipboard, and the result is shown above. I only ‘follow’ the TWIT network, so the result is less than impressive.

Second, newspapers.  In addition to getting my news via RSS feeds, I do like some of the single news source applications.  The NPR, BBC News and Thomson Reuters News Pro apps are all excellent.  On the other end of the spectrum we find USA Today, which has a nice interface, but the content isn’t any better than the paper version.  While not a newspaper, the Bloomberg app is a nice single-source news app with some nice charts.

Third, books. Like the iPhone, the iPad includes iBooks, a book reader from Apple.  There are some other book readers out there, but I haven’t seen the need to try one.  The iPad is very nice for reading books, though I’m not convinced it will replace my paper books, yet.  As far as books go, the iTunes store has quite a few books, and some free.  Another good source is Project Gutenberg, where you can find thousands of free books and periodicals.

Number four, video podcasts.  I listen to quite a few podcasts, but prior to the iPad I didn’t have much interest in video podcasts.  However, the iPad makes viewing podcasts convenient and makes the video versions of some of the shorter podcasts more appealing.  So far, the Cranky Geeks podcast and the new iPad Today are the only video podcasts I’ve been watching.

Number five, 3G: I chose to go with the pre-paid Vodafone 3G data service for the iPad.  Vodafone offers a free SIM card and data plans from $10/250MB/30 days to $30/4GB/30 days and some long-term plans including $150/12GB/1 year.  There are several other carriers with iPad data service in Australia, but most don’t offer free SIM cards and none have the selection of data plans.  Optus, with whom I have my pre-paid phone plan, isn’t very competitive with very short expiration periods and generally high prices.  The Vodafone service has been good so far, and their pre-paid phone plans appear to compare favorably to Optus as well.  If things continue to go well I may switch all of my services to Vodafone.

Other info: I’ve been using the iPad in an eBay $5 silicon case, as seen in the first photo.  The case is very toddler friendly, and is quite good considering the price.  However, I may make a new case for it soon.  This case design looks pretty nice.

I haven’t found a need for it, but it is now legal to jailbreak your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone.  I did have my iPod touch jailbroken for a while, but it didn’t offer anything I wanted.  It went back to jail and has been happy ever since.  The iPad will remain in jail for the foreseeable future.

That cheap Nokia I bought didn’t work out as well as I had hoped.  The keyboard was really bad, and it didn’t work in the U.S.  That last point isn’t a huge problem, but it was inconvenient.

So, pictured above you’ll see a hand-me-down BlackBerry 8100.   After unlocking the phone, adding a new trackball, battery, battery door and a silicone case, I have a nice phone with a much better keyboard.  Surprisingly, all of those parts only cost around $20 USD.

I can’t really give a complete opinion on the phone as I’m using it on a voice/text only pre-paid plan.  However, I will say that the  8100 is a nice size with a nice keyboard and a decent display.  The camera is a bit of a disappointment, but it does an adequate job.  The USB port for charging/data transfer is a huge improvement of the proprietary Nokia connectors, and the semi-common 2.5mm headphone/mic jack had proven useful.  The built-in MP3 player is clunky, but functional, and is a reasonable substitute for carrying my iPod shuffle.  Other than that, the interface is fairly nice, and the trackball is a reasonable input device (when it isn’t dirty).

Since I don’t have much else to say, here are some shots from the camera in different lighting conditions:

The Eriksen at Eagle Park

A foggy Winter day at Fox Creek

An Amtrak train

Rusty bridge

An archway

I’ve been traveling, so you’ll have to excuse the gap since the last update. For the first update, you get photos of a very foggy Eagle Park in the early winter.

Next, a breif update on the BB7 brake upgrade. I’ve used the BB7s in a few races, and in dry, wet and muddy conditions. My conclusion is that they work and they are a worth while upgrade. Benefits over my old rims brakes included more predictable braking in the wet and less hand fatigue, which is particularly useful in the enduro events. Areas of concern are the increased weight, braking noise and degraded modulation. However, even with the drawbacks, I would strongly recommend BB7s for cross country use.

Moving on, I’ve converted the Eriksen to 1×9. Prior to the last enduro I removed the granny gear, so removing the big ring was the next logical step. I used a Paul’s Chain Keeper, and kept the XT crankset with the 32t middle ring. I’m still adjusting things (mostly the chain length), but the system seems to work well and the big ring hasn’t been missed.  That said, I’ll give the 1×9 setup more trail time before I give a more detailed review.

Finally, my old (but not that old) Adidas Marathon shoes died. The sole surrounding the cleat cracked after about two years of use. I wasn’t impressed. So, I got a pair of Shimano SM-M086L (catchy name, huh?) shoes as a replacement. The Shimanos aren’t as flashy as some of the shoes out there, but they are reasonably priced and appear to be durable. They have been comfortable on the road, and haven’t given me any reason to complain off-road in the mud. That’s all for now, but I’ll have some non-cycling related updates shortly…

My new Hope Pro II hubs are doing well and I’ve been happy with their performance and durability.  It is hard to say how much distance the hubs have covered, but in the three plus months I’ve had them they have been used in several races in dry and muddy conditions.  The seals seem to be doing a good job of keeping the mud and sand out, and the bearings still feel as good as they did when new.  Other than this recent routine maintenance, I haven’t had to do anything to them.

I’m not going to get into much detail on the maintenance.  If you’re looking for more technical info, I found the videos from Hope sufficiently detailed and informative. In comparison to routine Mavic hub maintenance, these are just as simple and the process doesn’t take much time.

Upon removing the cassette there was obvious wear on the aluminum freehub from the smaller individual cogs on the XT cassette.  This is a widely noted shortcoming of the Hope freehub and can make the cassette a little difficult to remove.  Switching to Hope’s steel freehub is an option if the problem gets worse.

Other than that, all I have to add is that an open water bottle is the perfect diameter to re-seat the drive-side seal between the freehub and hub body.  On a related note I used Park Polylube 1000, which in addition to working well in the these hubs, tastes better than most sports drinks.

For the past few months I’ve been thinking about getting a Windows 7 system.  Why?  Good question.  If I had to guess, it was probably those Bill Gates and Seinfeld commercials.

It has been almost a year since I stopped using XP on a daily basis, but that is not to say that I miss it.  These days, I use any of a few different Apples, all running Mac OS 10.5 and a server running Windows Server 2008.  Yes, I’m still using 10.5 as my primary laptop is a five-year-old PPC-based 12″ PowerBook, and 10.6 is of course Intel only.  All of the other Macs are Intel based, but I like consistency so they are all on 10.5.  Anyway, I wanted to see how things are going in the Microsoft world, so I thought I’d try out Windows 7.

Since my laptop is five years old I thought a similarly-sized Windows system would be nice.  For the past month (or more) I’ve been looking at low-cost CULV (Consumer Ultra Lowe Voltage) systems and some of the nicer netbooks.  I’ve looked at everything from Dell, HP, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, Asus, Acer and even Gateway– I didn’t know they still existed.  But, I’d I have to say that I’m pretty underwhelmed by what I’ve found.  My requirements:

• 10-12″ display, preferably matte
• No more than 1″ thick, no protruding battery
• A good keyboard and usable multi-touch trackpad
• No optical drive, 160GB+ HDD
• WiFi (802.11g is sufficient)
• 5+ hours battery life, more is better, but no big batteries
• Capable of playing SD video, HD would be nice, but not necessary
• Less than $500
• Nice extras: webcam, bluetooth, support for 4GB RAM, no glossy plastic

Of the system I’ve actually used and seen in person, most were a huge disappointment.  I was particularly disappointed in the quality and appearance of the Asus netbooks- the keyboards were terrible and I’ve seen milk jugs that compare favorably to the case plastics. I wanted to like the Asus Eee PCs, but they were just too cheap.  The quality and materials on the Dells seemed alright, but the design (particularly the batteries) was just inexcusably awful.  Aside from these, I was surprised that the HP Mini systems looked and felt better than I expected.  I’ve never been a fan of HP laptops, but these actually seem rather well thought out.  The Acer systems are acceptable, but I have reservations about the quality and durability.  I really liked the Samsung netbooks I’ve seen, but they don’t really compete well on price or performance.

To be fair, I’m really comparing these low-cost notebooks to my old PowerBook, which was $1800 in 2005.  That would be $2000 in 2010 dollars, or roughly 4-5x more than these systems.  And, with the exception of running Windows 7, the PowerBook still does everything these systems can do.

So as of now, I haven’t found anything I want.  Of all of the systems, the HP Mini 210/210 HD and Acer 1410 come close, and I will say that the upcoming Acer 532h and Timeline 1830T look promising.  That said, this laptop malfunction rate data from Lifehacker (SquareTrade) may be worth considering:

Lifehacker: Laptop-Reliability Study Highlights the Most Sturdy Laptop Makers

In the mean time, I did hear about a 25% discount off of a Microsoft TechNet subscription on the Windows Weekly podcast.  Among other things, a TechNet subscription allows access to all MS operating systems, applications and utilities.  Included in this software is Windows 7.  So, for the price of a really bad netbook I can play with Windows 7, Office and whatever else looks interesting.

I’m currently running Windows 7 Ultimate on the Core 2 Duo Mac Mini under VMware Fusion. I was going to just upgrade my old version of Parallels, but apparently my version is too old to upgrade.  Feeling slighted, I downloaded an evaluation copy of Fusion 3.  And, I’d have to say that Fusion running Windows 7 is pretty nice.

Oh, and just to rub salt in the wound, I sold the Mac Mini 1.42GHz G4 to cover the cost of the TechNet subscription — almost an even trade.  But don’t worry, I still have two remaining Minis.

After almost four years of flaky and somewhat reliable service, my Motorola RAZR V3 is dead.  No amount of cable re-seating and connector cleaning could revive the RAZR.  Fortunately, the Bluetooth was still functioning, so I was able to recover my address book.

Inspired by Eric’s cheap phone I went in search of a cheap replacement.  After wandering through a few stores, I found my phone.  Inside a secure glass case I found a Nokia 1650.  But not just any 1650, this unlocked version was on clearance for what seemed to be a somewhat reasonable $35 AUD.  Admittedly, this $35 AUD is quite exorbitant in comparison to Eric’s $10 USD Motorola F3.

First, what doesn’t the 1650 have?  Foremost, the 1650 lacks a camera, and not surprisingly, Bluetooth.  Bluetooth would be nice, though I doubt I’ll miss the camera.

What does the 1650 have?  Aside from a phone, the 1650 includes an FM radio and a flashlight.  The radio is kind of interesting, though inconvenient as the included headphone must be connected for the radio to function.  On the other hand, the flashlight is somewhat more useful.  The relatively bright LED (mounted on top of the phone) is both brighter and more directional than the screen back light, and almost as amusing as a laser pointer.  Which is to say that it is amusing for about three seconds, unless you’re a cat.

How does the 1650 work as a phone?  The sound quality is better than the RAZR, as is the battery life.  On the other hand, the keyboard is positively awful.  As seen here, all 12 keys fit easily under my thumb.  Both the keypad and individual keys are far too small, and make dialing or text entry a pain.  On top of that, the keypad is too close to the bottom of the phone. Not only will anyone with hands larger than a two-year-old have trouble pushing the correct button, but the location of the keypad makes one-handed use nearly impossible.

Other impressions?  The RAZR was charged via a mini-USB port, which is both convenient and flexible.  The Nokia is charged via some unique plug which is both annoying and inconvenient.  In addition to that, the weird-plugged included charger is bulky.  I would gladly take a phone with no charger but charges via USB over this.  Luckily, Nokia does offer a USB charger adapter.  Annoyingly, I’d have to buy yet another cable.  A better alternative may be to just cut up the supplied adapted and make my own.

Conclusion.  The Nokia 1650 is a phone, a flashlight and a radio.  It does all three things poorly.  At $35 AUD it is overpriced, but I haven’t seen too many unlocked phones under this price point.  In the end, I can’t find any reason to buy this phone over any other.

Here it is, the long-awaited video from the 2010 Eagle 6 Hour Enduro. This is the complete 49 minute lap compressed into 10 minutes, so some parts have been slightly sped up.

I raced in a team 6 Hour Enduro at Eagle Park near Adelaide, SA on Sunday. This was my first endurance race, and my first race over an hour (or so). There were about 90 racing with a mix of solo, under-17, veterans, teams and mixed teams.

We had three on our team, Dave, Dave and Tom.  I met Dave and Tom on the Tour Down Under Challenge earlier this year, and we’ve been riding semi-regularly since.  Anyway,  I rode three of the eight laps.  We rotated through each lap, so I did get a chance to recover in the time in between.

I rode the start lap. The day started off cool at around 15C and ended windy and still cool. The course was wet and muddy from overnight rain, but it was quickly dried throughout the day. There was a fair amount of traffic on this lap, but it thinned out by the first climb. I finished this lap without any crashes or incidents.

The course was mostly dry and in good shape for my second and third laps. I did manage to go over the bars three times during these two laps, but neither I or the bike sustained any serious damage. While I was trying to improve on the time of my first lap, both laps came in about a minute and a half slower.  I’m fairly certain the crashed weren’t helping my times.

Above you are looking at one of our “well executed” team transitions.  Note that that both riders should optimally be facing the same direction.

In the end, my lap times were 49:11, 50:27 and 50:55. The average lap time for the teams were completed against was 48:37, with a fast lap of 39:34 and the slowest at 1:41:38. Overall, our team finished 4th of 10, completing eight laps.

Here you will see a view of turn 1 as seen from the start/finish line. I’m the fifth one back, wearing in blue.

The Eriksen and a bag of banana peels after the finish. I swapped my usual Larsen TT/Crossmark tires for my more mud-friendly Hutchinson Toros. The Toros were nice on the first lap, but the Larsen TT/Crossmark combo would have been better for the rest of the day.  That said, the Toros are doing a much better job of holding air than the Maxxis tires ever have.  I mounted the Hutchinson tires tubeless with Stan’s sealant, and a week later they had not lost much (if any) air pressure.

I also took the granny ring off, mostly because I’ve been having chain-suck in the middle ring (and the extra clearance is helpful), but also because removing the ring had the secondary benefit of not letting me use it.  I had not used the granny ring at Eagle in quite a while, and I didn’t miss it during the race.  I’m now contemplating switching the Eriksen to 1×9…

Here is a map I made of the course, just in case you’re inspired to try a lap of your own.  The red-on-white plus red-on-pink route is a full lap.  The red-on-pink alone is the under-17 and recreation class lap. Download a printable PDF of the Eagle 6 Hour Enduro Map.

Finally, here is an elevation map of the course.  This was provided by another competitor, so ignore the time.