A Top Tech Device of the last decade: USB Thumbdrives

I saw a lot of different technologies and devices listed for the "product of the decade", but this one was missing from a most of them, the somewhat lowly USB thumb drive.

Here's an early one that I saved (all 128Mb's)

I remember going to a Comdex in Chicago in 2000 and seeing one of the first USB drives (I think it was by JMtek). It's hard to imagine what we used before the USB drives (floppy disks, zip disks and CDs come to mind). But near the end of 2000 was when some of the first USB drives were announced and introduced. However, the USB drives remained for the most part, a novelty until approximately 2005. That's when the capacities became more usable, approaching that of CDROMs and later DVDs. Their popularity also increased partly due to Apple's abandonment of the somewhat de-facto standard floppy drive from their line of computers (also earlier in the decade) and the increasing number of USB ports that became available on laptop and desktop computers.

The rest is history, with the capacities jumping from mere MBs on the earliest drives to the multi-GB models of today. The ubiquitous thumb drives can now carry portable applications, pictures, documents and encrypted data. They can also be bootable, launch apps automatically, as well play the role of MP3 players, security device and/or forensic device, and the list goes on. The thumb drive is firmly entrenched into the technology landscape of today's modern world.

Upgrades prior to HHHs

After that first training ride at Blue Mounds, WI (on the worst hills of the route) I decided on a gearing change for my bike. Transitioncycle.com helped me out with a "like new" used chainring. For a better gear ratio I went from a 36T to a 34T. After the change (the following weekend) I had a second practice ride at HHH (200k) stages 2 & 3 last and it was a big improvement. Now the only problem, with a couple weeks to go before the event, is finding any hills around Waukesha for training that compete with those around Blue Mounds.

I've been tweaking the insoles of my bike shoes with a couple of different brands; Superfeet and Powerstep), I need the arch support, particularly in the left foot. Right now I use a Superfeet insole in the right shoe and the Powerstep Pro (3/4) in the left.

The last change is that I recently dumped my Polar CS100 and it's multiple sensors for the Garmin FR305. I've been using the FR305 for a little over a year, but I just installed it's accessory quick attach/detach bike mount. It's nice to have the display back up on the handlebars and to be able to pop it on and off the bike. I also added the cadence sensor, for the complete telemetry package.

That's about it, I'll be on vacation for about a week, hopefully I'll get some training rides in while down in the Springfield, IL area.

Safe riding all.

Blue Screen of Death at Circuit City

I snapped this picture from my phone while taking a look through Circuit City on my lunch break. Looks like this Listening Stations needs a reboot. I wonder which song crashed it?

Bike Computer Consolidation

The question I'd invariably get was, "Why do you have two bike computer?" The engineer in me would answer "For redundancy!". But the truth is, I liked the computer (Planet Bike Protege 8.0) that I bought with my SPECIALIZED Allez, nice large display with a 4 line, easy to read LCD display. The second computer a Cateye Astrale 8 came later and was monitoring cadence and the rear tire speed (for my indoor/trainer riding). By the way, there was a third computer, an older model Polar Heart Rate monitor (wrist unit).

So, as I've done in my job, I needed to put together the requirements for a computer consolidation. My requirements;

• A single computer capable of monitoring all of the following;
• cadence
• speed
• Heart Rate

• Wireless sensors (I don't want to deal with the cables)
• Large LCD digits (these eyes aren't getting any younger)
  

I settled on the Polar CS100, it came with almost everything, except the cadence sensor which had to be purchased separately. It did have one issue, limited range between the sensors and the computer. So limited, that I couldn't mount the wheel speed sensor at the rear wheel and have it register on the computer at the handlebars.

Range Limits

• 1.5 ft for the wheel speed sensor
• 2.5 ft for the cadence sensor

So, my solution was to mount the computer on the top tube. But the top tube on my SPECIALIZED Tarmac isn't exactly round, so I cut a small section of an old bike tire to used between the computer mounting bracket and the top tube.

With the computer positioned there, it's now well within range of all the sensors. I was even able to get out yesterday for a short ride to make sure everything was working.






All the products that I've have mentioned in my blog are products that I personally own and use for my day to day bicycle riding.

Personal Computer re-cycling

I've had several different Mac computers over the last 12 years, as mentioned in this previous posting. All of these computers have found new homes as a later version displaced them in our home. The LC40 thru the 6500 all went to our local grade school or high school, but the iMac took a different route. After I purchased the Mac mini the iMac found a new home with my mother in law, who has found it a very easy system to use for several reasons; less risk of malware, virus', etc, the grandkids have their own accounts and it takes up less space than her previous system (pc with monitor & tower). So hopefully there have been a few less computers in land fills due to this method of PC re-cycling. And just so you don't think I'm a total Mac fanboy, I recently reloaded our old Toshiba laptop with Ubuntu. I currently use this laptop as a terminal at work to access our lab system(s), but it has wireless network access and the typical Ubuntu tools, such that a visitor to the office can use it for email or web access.

Weekend Activities

The ride to Hell-enville, got cut short for me, but I did manage to get 35 miles in on Saturday and another 55 miles on Sunday. In between rides I had to restore files from a bad hard drive.

Actually it's now looking like it wasn't a bad drive. It looks like there may have been an infection on my wifes desktop system Windoze XP -- XP for eXasPerating. It took several tries to get a clean recovery started on a different drive and several passes of different file types to do the recovery of the data. I used a program by GetData called RecoverMyFiles. It seems to work very well. The drive appeared to have been partially formatted yet we recovered a significant number of jpeg files and documents.


My Picture of the Day. We're getting ready to travel to Illinois for several weekend events; my sister is getting married and then the following weekend for a family reunion on my wifes side. The last time we were there, it was the "tornado season", and it's no different this time. This picture was of a pretty ominous looking storm coming in from the northwest. The picture is a bit grainy (since it was actually pretty dark) and has been adjusted to show more detail.