Category Archives: tools

HTC EVO vs iPhone…

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This isn’t a review or even a real comparison as 1) I don’t have an HTC EVO (yet) and 2) my iPhone is a 3g, not even a 3gs or the new iPhone whatevah.

But here’s the thing, I’ve gone ahead and ordered the EVO ahead of the iPhone announcement. I’ll be leaving the iPhone behind for at least a couple of years. Why? It’s just gotten too expensive to live with AT&T, partially because I have too many devices and partially because of changes to AT&T’s policies.

My collection of stuff includes the iPhone 3g, a broadband USB stick, and the 3g iPad. Even with my employers discount (FAN) I’ve discovered I’m paying about $175 a month in telecommunications fees. Worse, were I to drop any the unlimited data plans at this point if I were to sign up again I’d have to do it on AT&T’s new plans which limit the amount of data one can use at the price.

The thing is, I like all those devices and don’t really want to give them up. I want to be able to have data on my phone, my laptop, and my iPad where and when I life, WiFi or no WiFi. I’m often in places where there isn’t any WiFi so there you go.

The solution seems to be the HTC EVO with their unlimited hotspot feature. Theoretically I’ll be able to run my laptop and my iPad at 4g speeds (actually WiMAX not 4g but hey, it’ll be faster than what I have now) when available, and here in Hawaii we have it (at least on Oahu where I live and parts of Maui). The rest of the time I’ll probably have 3g which is what I have now so it’s a wash.

The difference in pricing is what drove me to leave AT&T. I can get all of this for under $120, a savings of at least $50 a month. That’s pretty good as far as I’m concerned. And I’ll get to play with a different sort of phone to boot.

I know I should have waited till Monday to see what the new iPhone will be, but frankly, it’s not Apple, it’s AT&T.

Aloha!

iPad…yep…but I’ve got to wait…

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Sadly(?), I just couldn’t resist and had to order an iPad. No, I didn’t stand in line for the WiFi only version, I want the real deal 3G version. My rationale is simple, I cycle a lot and may not be near a WiFi hotspot, but there are few places on the island I can’t get a phone signal; they do exist though.

In any case it seems like it would be whole lot more fun to lug around an iPad than a netbook, especially since mine weighs several pounds. No, the iPad isn’t a featherweight, but it’ll be a much better fit. At least I should be able to answer my email more easily than with my iPhone (which is really past due for an upgrade).

Of course I probably won’t get my iPad (late April) before I go camping this month, but hey, you can’t have it all. In the meantime here’s the answer to the question everyone must be asking…

Aloha!

Pedal overhaul…

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This weekend’s ride to Malaekahana was great. But like most things it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

My Quickbeam has seemingly had a bit of a problem since day one. It creaks and clicks a bit here and there. Now I’m sure much of this is normal for a new bike and, to be honest, all of my bikes creak a bit here and there. I’m a clydesdale and my stuff takes a beating. I ride pretty well these days and avoid most complications, but believe me, when I started all this in 2008 I broke more than a few things.

I’d pretty much taken care of the noises I could by following the suggestions I’d found online. I’d greased up everything I could find that might be contributing: quill stem, seatpost, the odd bolt here and there. And she’d responded by quieting down quite a bit. Except for the click.

There seemed to be a bit of a click in the cranks. The last time I’d experienced this I’d had to replace the bottom bracket on my Fujiyama. It’s unlikely to be a major catastrophe, but I was worried about it.

On the ride home the click became a real annoyance. I could even feel it through my foot. This was really mimicked the problems I’d had before, so I began to think I’d have to replace the bottom bracket and was planning on doing just that as soon as I could afford a Phil Wood Bottom Bracket. I mean, why not go for the best?

But I wasn’t ready to drop money I didn’t have so I kept researching.

I think I found the answer…it’s the pedals.

I’m using MKS Touring pedals which are a great big platform peddle perfect for me. But it seems they aren’t all that well put together.

No, I don’t mean they are badly made. Au contraire, they are great sturdy pedals. It just seems that when they are assembled there is a decided dearth of lubrication. They often, I’ve read, click. I had a click. What to do.

The answer was forthcoming over at bikeforums.net in a post by Panthers007. After finding that article I found more instructions just like them out on the web.

Panthers007 seemed to be speaking to me when he wrote:

The problem with them is you didn’t open them up and clean them and grease them. A pedal-overhaul is needed before you put most new pedals – especially with loose bearings – on the bike and use them.

I hear this complaint all the time regards MKS pedals. And it’s NOT your fault. Overhauling pedals is a dying art. One I’m trying to resurrect.

Since I had some bearing grease around the next step would be to follow instructions and have at those pedals.

At the StankerTanker blog you can find a bit more information with an image of the pedals pulled apart…

I did have to give one of the nuts in the pedal a shot of PB Blaster and let it stew for a while, but eventually I was able to disassemble everything without losing a single ball bearing. That’s a good thing too as I had no spares.

All in all it didn’t take too long to clean, repack the bearings, and rebuild the pedals. It was even a fun evening project. I haven’t had a chance to try them yet, but that’ll come tonight when I pull the QB back out for a ride.

Aloha!

Las Vegas weather…

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I’m off to Vegas for a bit in November and, as I’ll be riding a bit, I thought I’d check and see what the weather will be like. One of my favorite weather resources is the Weather Underground site. I’m a paying member, all of $10 a year to get rid of the ads. For me, with all the travel, it’s a deal.

Click for Henderson, Nevada Forecast

One of the best features is the historical data feature allowing one to research a location through time. Today I did Las Vegas for the month of November.

But before we go there, today I attended an O’Reilly Media webcast on data analysis…

Two Big Data Analysis Tricks for Everyone
Presented by Michael Milton, author of Head First Data Analysis

It’s over now, of course, but it was a good one. Essentially it was a look at how to work with data if you are not a statistician. I’m not, though I play one at work every so often. Michael Milton, the presenter, wrote Head First Data Analysis: A learner’s guide to big numbers, statistics, and good decisions.

I learned a lot, but was most interested in learning more about the R language or, The R Project for Statistical Computing. It’s one of the tools that Michael showed in his webcast, specifically using for historgram analysis.

Las Vegas, weather, histograms…perfect.

I went and got five years worth of November temperature data and tried to do something with it in R. In just a couple of minutes I had this histogram of the November max temperatures.

Las Vegas Max Temp Historgram

It’s pretty crude – you can do a lot better with practice – but it got the point across pretty quickly. Rather than looking at 150 points (30 days x 5 years), I can see at a glance that I probably won’t need thermal underwear biking but a jacket and sweats might be a good thing to have for this warm weather boy.

But wait a minute. High temperatures are one this…what about low? What about low and high? Can do…

Scatter plot of min max LV temps

Well that’s about it for now.

Aloha!

Google Voicemail…

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My iPhone 2G seems to be on its way out. It’s been acting up a bit lately, taking longer and longer to do things. It may be that I’ve got too many apps, or perhaps it’s that I really haven’t sync’d it since my desktop computer died. Add to that failing battery life and I’ve got a problem. I’m not due for an upgrade till December sometime and even then it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to afford a new phone so…

What’s a boy to do?

Well I may have an old phone around somewhere. I can’t find it at the moment, but I know I was going to lend it to someone about six months ago, so it’s around. But it doesn’t have cool, iPhone-like, voicemail. Enter Google Voice.

It seems they’ve just started to allow you to port your own phone number over to GV. That’s great, but I want both my GV number and my “real” number. And voila! They allow that sort of too.

I now have switched my iPhone voicemail over to GV. That means I know longer get to use the cool data driven iPhone version; I get to use the cool data driven GV version. I’m testing it out now.

If you have GV (or a GV invite) you can give it a try too. The non-GV number version doesn’t have as many features, but hey, I remember a time before cell phones. Here’s a link to Google’s page on GV vs non-GV numbers.

GV vs non-GV numbers table

Aloha!