Trying out Snap Shots

I just installed a tool on my blog called Snap Shots that allows visual previews of the destination sites.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

During this test period if you decide you don't want to see the Snap Shots, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of any Snap Shot and opt-out.

I'll try it out for a short time and any Snap Shares generated during the test will be donated to the Spring City Spinners Bicycle Club.

If it's particularly annoying, let me know, and it will go away.

National Treasure

Over the holiday weekend we picked up the DVD of National Treasure at a bargain price. I liked it, in fact I liked it better than The DaVinci Code. But it's one of those movies that you don't want to think about too much. Ok, I thought about one part. The hiding place of this huge treasure was at the base of a huge hole, that was secretly excavated under a church graveyard. But the part that got me thinking was the wooden stair case that spiraled it's way down the wall. This was a place of Masonic origin, shouldn't it have been a stone stairway? Oh well, it was still entertaining.

iPod repairs

While my daughter was home over the Thanksgiving weekend, she mentioned that her iPod was on the fritz, the Play/Pause button had stopped working. So being the gadget geek and tinkerer that I am I offered to take a look at it. This would actually be the second time that I worked on her iPod mini, I had changed out the battery last summer. So, I used the instructions that came with the battery to get the main components out of the way. The instructions are available online from batteryship.com (which has very good prices on the replacement batteries). Once all the "guts" are pulled out, the scroll wheel can be removed by applying slight downward pressure and sliding it out of the aluminum body. Once the scroll wheel was removed, I disassembled it further by removing the four phillips screws at each corner.







I couldn't see anything obvious, but the small encapsulated micro switches probably have a limited life expectancy. I was able to make it work by pressing the switch directly. As a workaround I placed a small piece of metal tape directly under the switch contact on the metal plate beneath the switch and put everything back together. It's now working, but I think it's just a stop gap, I have a feeling that a new iPod will be on my daughters wish list for Christmas.

My next iPod project is to replace the battery in my wifes old 3rd Gen iPod, it should make a handy 15Gb portable storage device.

James Bond and Happy Feet

This has been a big movie weekend already and it's only Saturday evening. On Friday my wife, son and I went to see the latest James Bond movie "Casino Royale". In the realm of Bond movies I thought this one was very good. I went into it without reading or seeing much about it. This seemed to be a prequel, treating the new Bond (and the actor that played him) as the latest addition to the 007 ranks. I suspect that this might act as an spring-board to re-make some of the previous Bond films with a new Bond, an updated perspective and updated effects, of course. One spoiler, although they never mention the name, I'm sure that the "organization" mentioned during the movie will turn out to be "SPECTRE", but how they will update that is going to be interesting, but we'll see how well this latest film does at the box office.

Happy Feet was very entertaining, it was sort of a "talking penguins" version of the "March of the Penguins", but it was much more than that and had humor for the whole family.

Two very different movies, but I liked both of them.

Having a birthday

49 and counting, it doesn't seem possible that I've been around that long. I don't feel too bad though, after taking the Realage Test, my score was;






Have a look at what was happening the year that I was born.

• Iceland agreeds, formally, to make the U.S. responsible for its defense.
• The Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line.
• Humble Oil (which became Exxon) announces a price increase of 35 cents per barrel, the first crude oil price jump since 1953.
• Sen. John F. Kennedy was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles in Courage.
• A toilet tank is first seen on a national TV series (but not the bowl for a few more years)
  
• The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first artificial satellite.
• The Adventures of Superman series ended.

The Tuesday ride started a little earlier this week, 5:30PM, and we managed to get a 26 mile ride in with daylight to spare. The route out towards Ottawa Lake has some hills and a nice winding decent going north on Waterville road.
This weekend is the club members only PTK Preview. I'm planning on doing the Ride Lead duties for the 100 mile option and riding the route.