iPod Hard Drive Replacement

Although I only ever dropped my old iPod once, my newer iPod fell on the cement about once a week for a few weeks in a row. I would watch it fall in slow motion, its metallic case gleaming in the sunlight as it twisted and turned. On impact, the protective case would immediately split open plastic falling to the side leaving the iPod free to slide along the pavement scratching the face.

The plastic case that snaps around it kept it free from scratches in my backpack, but was a little too slippery for my uncoordinated hands. Maybe the case saved the iPod from some of the impact of landing on concrete by sacrificially exploding open, but not enough.

On the third or fourth hard landing I picked it up and put the earphones on. It was still playing and I listened to it for probably another fifteen minutes, but then the music stopped. I heard static and was surprised to still hear static when I took the headphones off. Some little part had come loose in the hard drive and as it tried to spin the disc I could hear it scrapping a little groove. My little iPod had decided to grow up and become a DJ scratching analog sounds.

After its aria was played, a red X appeared advising me to visit http://apple.com/support/ipod



So instead I searched for sites on how to replace a hard drive. At first I was thinking of replacing it with a flash disk since there's little hope of my coordination (especially before my morning coffee) will improve, but at the moment that would entail a major shortage in available space. So instead I found a good blog by someone who had experience replacing fifth generation iPod hard drives.

I purchased a replacement size drive on eBay for around $60 and assumed it would come with the wonderful plastic tool that every blog mentions alongside iPod mods. But instead I just got a miniature drive in the mail. So I decided to be resourceful.

Those are Metrocards from the NYC subway. I was collecting them for a friend's art project, but ended up relizing they would work as wedges. I slid them into the long sides of the iPod to release the tabs that hold the iPod together.




As it turned out it took more than one card.



The cards wedged it open enough that I could slide each progressive card further in. Eventually it was wide enough that I could fit an old credit card in and apply a little pressure. Once the gap opened enough I used a micro screw driver to carefully pry the iPod open.

Unplugging the battery is easy, but the ZIF socket on the drive wasn't obvious. The long black (or yellow) tab lifts up towards the ribbon cable and away from the drive. It lays parallel to the ribbon cable and lifts to be perpendicular to the cable.



I was a little concerned at the exposed circuitry on the new drive (1), so I used the plastic separator from the old drive (2) and put a few pieces of electrical tape on it (3). The blue foam separators were still a little sticky so I didn't use any extra adhesive (4).

After that it was just a matter of putting everything back together. Before snapping it back together I plugged it into my laptop. Instead of putting the drive in disk mode I just connected it to iTunes.



iTunes announced that the iPod was in recovery mode, so I clicked the restore button and it went to work. After a minute or so iTunes reported an error. I unplugged the iPod, plugged it in again, and clicked restore again. This time it was successful. After seeing that it was working ok, I disconnected it and snapped the iPod back together. So far it hasn't decided to become a DJ, so things look good.

who amazon owns

Here's a great use of mixing subway map and corporation ownership for visual presentation. It is also an interesting look into how Amazon.com has grown.

All Points West

Yesterday I went to see Gogol Bordello at this festival I knew something vaguely about. The Jersey summer torrential downpours this year left the ground muddy, but there was no rain on the one day we were there. The festival was All Points West and all I knew was the name kinda confused me since it is an East coast thing. I dug through their site though and found this:

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the now abandoned Central Railroad Station at Liberty State Park served as the gateway for immigrants on their journey into the United States as they embarked across the country to ALL POINTS WEST.

What a great metaphor for a festival which takes artits who have followings but launch them into the spotlight and take them to all points of other fan basses (especially on Saturday which was to my eyes an eclectic lineup). Maybe it is a complex metaphor, but in its second year I do not understand why the marketing for an arts fest doesn't make use of such a rich one. Ellis Island is down a little bridge to your left, Gogol Bordello is playing on the main stage, and the only reference I see in the marketing is Lady Libery's torch.

I actually like a lot of the art, imagery, and general marketing for the festival and think it is top notch, don't get me wrong. I just see this as missed potential. And it's not totally missing, they use trains in some of the art, but it just seemed incidental to me since there's a train station and the Statue of Liberty at Liberty State Park.

The other missed potential I'm wondering about this morning is iTunes. Now that we're at a time when you can buy albums track by track, why not have a festival album pre-show release that has one or two hits from every band in the lineup to generate interest. Sure it would only be more hard core fans, but I know I would have been tempted to buy it. Then my choice of choosing a stage (which by-the-way the stages are named after the old train lines that ran through the park land years ago), would have been educated by the pre-show collection. And of course anyone going probably owns a couple tracks that are in the collection, so iTunes should give the option to not download or be charged for those tracks. And of course once the festival is over offer a after show collection of the set list. There would certainly be gaps because of medleys or new songs that aren't available in iTunes (and some bands may not want their music in iTunes, etc), but you could just put a PDF in the blanks with the APW logo and the explanation that track X is not available and why (with promo info as well).

This idea came to me by a realization by some people of my slightly older generation who were surprised that there was not a single CD for sale at the festival. The younger generation was debating why you would buy a CD. True story, I overheard this debate by some teenagers as we walked home: Why buy a CD when you're just going to rip it into MP3s. If you're going to buy something, buy an analog recording. If you want digital, download it. This of course started the is pirating a bad thing debate, which apparently is an ageless debate.

Prosey poem idea

For one who carries the weight of the world on his shoulders it would have been better to be born in a less troubling time.

Or maybe worry for that kind of person like an immune system: There be allergies of worry created from the lack of true worries to put upon the shoulder. Maybe some are created to hoist the world's troubles upon their shoulders and others are there to see the burdened ones and help.

dishwasher repair - an article for the DIY folks - part 2

Yup, it's all apart again. After replacing the solenoid, I closed the lock, ran the dial around to the different cycles, and saw the solenoid open and close the drain as it should. I didn't have time then for a full cycle so I figured the real test would have to wait.

When I did have a chance, I ran the washer and it burnt out the solenoid again. I was going to closely watch it for its maiden voyage, but the phone rang. When I hung up the phone the scent of burnt electrical doodad was in the air.

I found an appliance repair site that suggested burnt out solenoids twice in a row means the timer is an issue. So back to the old dishwasher in the basement and in a couple minutes I had a new timer installed. Of course now I've burnt out all my solenoids, so I had to order a new one.



The timer assembly


One post I found online suggested that you can save money by just replacing the timer motor in the assembly because it is the problem most of the time. What you should do is test the resistance of the motor and compare it to your schematic. In general, it should be in the 2000 to 3500 ohms range. I had a free full assembly in the basement, so I didn't bother testing the motor. Also I know that the dishwasher in the basement is older but has been run far less than the one in our unit. I would advise you to check how the motor mounts on to the assembly before ordering a new motor. Mine is mounted with little bent metal tabs which are not meant for repeated assembly and disassembly. In my experience it can be tough to get those to hold the motor just right. Also if you fiddle with them too much, they can snap.


The timer motor

It took awhile to match up the numbers from the part online, but eventually I found part 824336 on RepairClinic.com. A search for most of the numbers printed on both the timer and the solenoid had no results in google or on a couple appliance parts sites, so I figured it might be helpful if there was a list posted online of all of the part numbers that are used together in the dishwasher. I tend to prefer confirmation that not only the model number of the appliance agrees, but that the part number does to. You never know if some crazy DIY guy replaced parts in your appliance from a different model in the basement. Anyway without further ado, here's a fascinating list of numbers:


dishwasher
GE
GSD2200G00WW

timer motor
M9Y5Z00271
115VAC CW 3W
RPM 1/3
60 hz
02-39
GH-01

timer gear and switch assembly (from basement)
norm TM061G2
E190094
165D5484P002
H21002123 (stamped on case)

timer gear and switch assembly (from installed unit)
norm TM061G3
E190094
165D5484P003
l21209202 (stamped on case)

drain valve solenoid
E156186
165D5478P002
LR104577-6
120V/60HZ 71WI
STC-13UC B01 (might be 301)

dishwasher repair - an article for the DIY folks

Over the weekend I turned the dishwasher on and within only a minute or so there was a light burning smell. It went away just as quickly as it came and I wondered if I imagined it or it was someone cooking next door. I went to the computer and the vague smell of dishwasher soap wafted into the room. I walked into the kitchen to find suds floating across the floor.

My wife and I turned off the dishwasher and quickly cleaned up the mess. There didn't appear to be any damage, but of course I now had a project on my hands. I had recently cleaned out a cabinet and found an old bottle of dishwasher gel that I figured I should use up, so I'd dropped it in the dishwasher that morning. This had me mistakenly thinking it was that the gel had separated and the glob that came out was condensed. After running the washer a couple times and bailing out the interior I reluctantly admitted it was something worse.

I found a good article on repair and common issues that pointed me to the strainer, which might be blocked and not allow draining (it wasn't the motor which I could hear running). We have a simple model with one motor and strainer unlike the one pictured in the article. The top of the strainer was pretty ugly with black gunk, but it was obvious there was no blockage.

Looking under the dishwasher for a place where a block might occur I noticed that there's a solenoid that opens the door to let the water drain out. It seemed rigid but I figured maybe there's some locking mechanism. I spun the dial around through the cycles and the thing never budged (be ready to bail water if you try this at home -- a non-draining dishwasher fills up fast). So I took it apart and it definitely was jammed. It also had that same burnt odor that I'd smelt briefly when I'd turned on the dishwasher earlier.

Luckily our old dishwasher is still in the basement and it's a similar model. So I pulled off the solenoid and was sure I had the problem because this one moved freely. In a couple minutes I had the new solenoid installed. A spin of the cycle button poped the solenoid up and down, so I knew I had a good fix.

Now here's the vaguely interesting part and most of the reason I'm writing the article. The odd thing is that the solenoid that burnt out was stamped 9/15/02 and the solenoid I pulled from the old dishwasher was stamped 9/16/02. Hopefully it lasts more than a day longer than the old one :)


The old burnt solenoid


The good as new solenoid

Looting Broke Dreams

What I am
is all that I can carry.
-Deborah Digges

All I can dream
is that which I carry.
For a decade I dreamt
of high school hallways
and last night
for the first time
I dreamt of my workplace
and the characters weren't right
they were real people - not parts


Assignment by Group Consensus: Loot my dreams
(unless you prefer the homophone: lute)

A Cottage in the Woods

It's been a few years, but I'm finally taking the time to update this.

 We decided to spend Pesach (Passover) in one of our favorite towns (and the first stop from our honeymoon), New Paltz. In looking for a great place to stay we found cottages in a nearby town just a few minutes over the hill (mountain really) from New Paltz.

Clove Cottages B&B is a fun set of little separate cottages on a grounds that contains two lamas (a big selling point for us). The cottages were originally for seasonal workers but later converted to a B&B.




This was our little cottage, number 2. It had a perfect little parking spot for our car, one main room with full kitchen and a back bedroom. A perfect spot for our Pesach retreat.

  We brought along all our Kosher Pesach pots and pans (tupperware) and a bunch of art supplies (wooden box).

 What a wonderful smile to come home to. While we were here I wrote a little short story about a man who was a migrant worker and was living in this little cottage with his wife. The simple life in this cabin had really captured me.

I don't have a photo of it, but we woke up one morning to find one of our windows covered in lady bugs. I captured each one and set it free outside. We heard from the owners that each season they congregate on the one side of the buildings (East I think for the sunrise).

On our adventures in the woods we found a bunch of pull tab beer cans in an old fire pit. Amazing how long "disposable" things last. It's ironic how hard we work to make archival prints yet these labels last so well in the elements with little effort towards longevity

And here's one of the lamas that brought us out to the cottages. They were pretty friendly and we made sure to say hello whenever we were coming and going. The owners were very nice and sociable, but I think we spoke to the lamas more :)

In the evenings we worked on a few art projects.

And of course we had wonderful Pesach meals, like our special breakfast farfel treat...

We went on some bike trips in the state beautiful parks nearby.

To our surprise we found a geo cache on the side of the trail.
We added a not about our adventure to the journal.

We visited Mars and took in some of the interesting fauna ;)

Another one of our tasty Pesach meals. Rachel's avocado,
cream cheese, salsa Tam-Tam treat.

along the rail trail

riding the rail trail

our other lama friend from Clove Cottage

The perfect dessert in New Paltz

coffee bliss

seriously?! a Kosher vending machine at the highway rest stop?

How I've Never Heard Red

Friday is blue some say
and others argue
how mauve is Thursday
but either way it is true
that an artist is eight times more likely
to be a synesthete than me or you
and that makes me wonder
is it in the DNA
a genetic gift from generation to generation
and a barrier to would be artists
who are without oddball notions
but in my strange way of thinking
I wonder, knowing that I'm not normal
will I force things together
or discover unique metaphor
will I be a great poet
or a hack with strange lines
that is to say
am I the right type of odd thinker


Assignment by Mary: Choose a color and write about it.

Take a moment to mitigate the urgent

Ever since I had a history teacher who made us draw maps with lakes, mountains, cities, and boarders form memory, I've know how to tell I was going to learn from something in a way that changed me. My first reaction to those map tests was negative, but I must say -- and I know teenage me would hate this -- I must say I actually look back on those positively. I've always liked maps and diagrams of things, but I've never liked rote memory exercise. Still how else can you know the world without a bit of rote memory? But that's for another time.

I had the same feeling about the maps when I read an article my boss forwarded to me about working on the important things and not the trivial ("mitigate the urgent"). I've always tried to manage my time appropriately and pride myself on working well in environments where I have to personally determine the importance of things. So I read the article thinking it'd be in line with what I've learned, but it had something to teach me -- so I hated it... at first.

My job forces me to frequently evaluate things in terms of the bigger picture. I have a lot of input from different people and need to sort through things on my own. I feel I do well, but after reading the article and paying more attention to myself I was depressed for a few days. I felt I was working on the unimportant and yet felt I was politically forced to do so. I struggled a bit, felt very frustrated, and then the lesson sank in.

In simple terms it is always more appealing to do certain tasks that are familiar and well scoped out. The big lesson I learned was that we bias ourselves towards what we know how to do over the unfamiliar. It sounds obvious, but I know I used to rationalize this away saying to myself that I should do what I knew how to do first because it would go faster and then do the slow and new. But that has nothing at all to do with the overall importance of the task. And its rare that you have a clear case where two tasks are only differentiated by how familiar you are with the solution.

Just taking a moment for a couple weeks to quiz yourself with "is this the most important thing I could be doing" will teach you a lot. Of course there's a certain loss to productivity in doing this, so it's probably something to be reserved for a yearly or so schedule. Asking yourself is this the most important thing I could be doing is actually not the most important thing you must be doing, so balance is key.

It's been a few weeks, but I feel I learned from that article. Oh and I'd like to take a moment and blame the article for why I haven't blogged in so long. I've been mitigating the urgent... yeah... that's the ticket...

The Great Bicycle Rebuild part 1

When I transitioned from elementary school to middle school (from 4th to 5th grade) I fell outside the bus limit. Since school was close to a mile away and my first bike was a BMX type that didn't coast, my parents got me a new bike. I fixated on a crazy mountain bike with 32 speeds (I'd had none of course on the BMX). They agreed and for awhile I rode it back and forth to school. This was close to 20 years ago and I still ride that bike. I took it out for a couple summers to a small town in Missouri where all there was to do was ride past corn fields. I put a lot of miles on the bike, but it also sat dormant for long time periods. I didn't own a helmet until I lived in the city and decided the chances of getting hit were up'd a lot more than in the suburbs. I put a little cat eye mirror on it, but otherwise it had remained basically untouched for years.

The bike is a white Raleigh Technium Heat. I got it based on the fact that it had a ton of speeds and at the time a brand new thing: push button shifting. I had tried to manage my Dad's bike with a slider type knob where you just sort of know when it's slid to the indistinct right spot, so the push button was just about all I cared about. It never really worked right. We took it back in a couple times for adjustment and then I just lived with a periodically dropped chain and clicking up and down to make one shift. I got skilled at putting the chain back on and learned to click the button just right (possibly more superstition than anything). After a time I started tinkering with the adjustments and eventually got it working fairly well.



A few years back I rotated the original tires which were knobby off road tires. the knobs were well worn down, but still a good 1/8" which seemed good enough to me. After about 20 years though the rubber had started to rot as you can see in the pictures. At one time the wall of the tire was solid orange-ish rubber, but the reinforcement strands started showing through and bits of dry, hard rubber flaked to the touch. I decided I was ridding on time bombs and started thinking long and hard about what to do next.

I love the look of the new cruisers. If I were ever to buy a motorcycle (I've got the license actually) it'd probably be a Honda Shadow or similar cruiser. I just like the rake on the front and the nice slow flow of the frame. This is something that might get my wallet one day, the Elektra Ghostrider:



But for now my plan is to rebuild the old Raleigh. I dropped by Grove Street Bicycles which has an amazing business going for it. A lot of great stuff packed in a little store. Lots of staff and LOTS of customers, so maybe this is one local business that won't fly by night. They set me up with some Kenda hybrid tires and tubes.

At home, the old tires were so stiff with age that most of my time was spent removing them and the new ones felt as though they just flopped on by comparison (though they were a good fit). I learned that my 26" x 1.50 wheels can take 26" x 1.95 tires quite nicely. I figure the hybrid make a lot more sense now that I'm an old man who stays on the trail more often than not. I'm excited to try them out, but I also noticed as I did the tire replacement how dry the cassette had gotten and how worn the teeth are.

Here's some pics of the new tire:




So I think this is the first of many updates on the modernization of my bike. There's some rust in spots, the cables have stretched considerably over the 20 years, and I think I need a little bit more comfort in the ride than I did when I was half my age. Maybe I'll get frustrated and buy a new bike or maybe I'll do a full restore on the old one. Hopefully the weather will clear this weekend and I'll hit the local trail with the new tires and see how excited I am by the first upgrade.

The saddle is first on the replacement list, but I'm having some trouble with those rusty cables and getting the front derailleur adjusted so that might trump it.

Woodland home dream

A friend posted a link to a Low Impact Woodland Home which caught our imagination. For a long time I've thought that building your own home would make it somehow more of a home, more yours. Maybe it's because of the work I put into my Mustang shaping it into my car with my sweat and busted knuckles. I felt a bit of pride in knowing no one would be happier with the car than I since it was designed just for me in certain ways. So I have a bit of appreciation for what it's like to work on something yourself and make it really yours.

When I first moved to the city I found a place that was actually affordable to me back then because it was really run down. It was a two story, 400 sq foot single unit structure with a 800 sq foot plot. The windows were broken, a chain hung limp around the door and it looked as though people had broken in frequently. It didn't have heat or AC, but I felt maybe I could buy it and swing a few months renting and owning and make the place livable. I day dreamed a lot about it knowing full well I'd never live there. Still the idea that after years of work I could have built a place just as I wanted with my own hands enticed me.

So when I saw the woodland home the old dream came back and my wife and I started day dreaming together. We came up with the plan to make a camp inspired by "Kneller's Happy Camp" (from Wristcutters: A Love Story) and the aforementioned woodland home. Maybe build it out on one of the islands outside Seattle and have art and design classes. There could be multiple buildings all made with the woodland home technique.

The place would be our home completely because it would be made by us and would fit us perfectly. It's just a little dream, but it's ours, made by us with our own hands (err, minds).

what's with all the old posts on this blog?

Now and then I create posts for this blog and save them as drafts. This morning I finally got around to publishing them and decided to leave the publish dates as the date I composed the draft.

People Who Read Don't Know How to Live

I don't think anyone would be surprised to think that literature is sometimes thought of as being a high brow kind of thing. In fact some probably feel that is a great thing. The idea though that all of reading has moved up to that deluxe apartment in the sky known as the ivory tower is surprising. A recent survey in the UK concerning attitudes about reading found that

in many such families, books were seen as alien and unattractive, while reading was considered an anti-social activity for people who, as one respondent said, "don’t know how to live".

By "such families" the survey is referring to people "characterized as lower income, non-professional families".

I found the survey troubling on many levels. I think simply as a humanitarian, the idea that something that is possibly essential to alleviating poverty (education) would be discounted in such a way. And reading can also convey the things about life that make life worth living. Certainly this is not absolute and one can have a deeply meaningful or wealthy life without reading, but the forces of good often rely on reading.

As someone in the world of publishing I of course found the survey worrisome though not as worrisome. I'm not sure the business of books has relied on this group. As the survey points out though paying attention to this resource is important to the book world. It deserves thought as both a growth opportunity and as a potential market trend that could encompass a greater number of people.

I'm curious how bundled internet data (such as a printed book version of a blog or chat logs printed as novels) will affect this. When someone moans about no one reading anymore, someone often points out that more people read more often, it's just that we tend not to count reading on a screen as "reading". And maybe that's the slight of hand that can allow publishers to reach out to the people in the survey. Get the people reading on screen in blogs, chat rooms, VR worlds (E.G., Second Life), or video games and then put that media into a printed book.

Or maybe don't worry about that, but just concentrate on getting the book content into various nontraditional streams. Which brings me back to my humanitarian perspective which says don't worry about print books, just make sure the ideas that inspire, the thoughts that turn minds, the concepts that create positive change, the tools of a better history; just make sure those things are imparted from generation to generation and the world may be healed some day.

isinglass finings

After a Facebook friend posted about Guinness not being vegetarian, I looked into it.

The issue is isinglass finings which come fish. It is "the purest form of animal gelatin" that is basically used as a filter. So it's not actually an ingredient, but small amounts make it into your beer or wine which is of course important to some vegetarians (like me). According to wikipedia:

Isinglass is a substance obtained from the swimbladders of fish (especially Beluga sturgeon). It is a form of collagen used mainly for the clarification [IE, remove suspended solids and cloudiness] of wine and beer.

My guess is that this is largely a cosmetic thing done to make the beer or wine more palatable. If it wasn't done it'd probably look like mold was floating in it.

What's annoying to vegetarians is that this process isn't necessary, because according to wiki, "left to itself, beer will clear naturally; however, the use of isinglass finings accelerates the process." Some breweries such as my favorite, Magic Hat, uses a centrifuge as a vegetarian alternative. From what I see on the net they began using finings, but tested the centrifuge on the beer Mother Lager and then years ago moved over to using the centrifuge on all their beers.

It seems a centrifuge is a true alternative to isinglass finings, although I saw reference to Irish moss (a red algae), it is not a true alternative.

The process differs, however: isinglass is added at the end of the brewing process, before bottling, whereas Irish moss is added to the hot wort while it is being boiled, and primarily reduces hazes caused by proteins. Since the two fining agents act differently, some beers will make use of both.

I have not found a general rule of thumb for knowing which wine is vegetarian; however, all beer from Germany is safe because of the Reinheitsgebot, a law passed in 1516 which requires beer to be made with only water, barley, and hops.

I'm not clear on whether Kosher wine is vegetarian, but as a general rule of thumb it sounds as though it is not. Isinglass from sturgeon (the "best-quality" isinglass) is not acceptable (some disagree), but "Isinglass also comes from carp, which is Kohser." I didn't find anything definitive, but one or two articles said Kosher wine uses isinglass finings.

If you are interested in Kosher food and vegetarianism, then you should look into a movement within Judaism called Eco-Kashrut. There is some buzz within the movement right now and I'm not convinced it has clearly defined itself, but someday we may have wine that is Eco-Kashrut meaning nothing unnecessarily suffered to create it. Whether that means fish being killed or workers being treated unfairly.

So the bottom line is that as with all foods if you're a strict vegetarian you have to do your research. Here's some helpful lists from wikipedia:

* [A list of vegetarian beers]
* [Beer and cider suitable for the Vegetarian]