Snowboard Clean, Wax & Edge

I've seen loads of stuff on the net about snowboard maintenance and even some of the guys at work who snowboard don't know much about board tech and as far as I can see, it's quite straight forward. Which probably means I'm doing it wrong.

High level overview:

• Cheap basic iron. Doesn't matter if it has steam vents. We ain't using steam.


• Snowbaord wax from a snowboard shop. Not candle wax.


• Decent scrubbing brush. With proper firm bristles.


• Edge tool. Not just a file.


• Base cleaner. Get proper stuff, not turps


• Duster. Clean yellow one.


• Scrapers. These are going to get blunt, good to have spare sharp backups.


• Patience. It takes time.


• Vacuum Cleaner. There will be mess on the floor.


• Remove bindings and screws. Heat from the iron can bring the binding connections through the board. Bad times.


• Prop board on table on some books, but put newspaper & sheets down to catch the mess

I was fortunate enough to get a couple of scrapers with Whitelines Snowboard Magazine a while ago, so I use one of these to just scrape the the bottom of the board, tip to tail to get rid of surface crap.

Next, spray on the Magical Bottom Blaster to the base and leave to soak in for 5 minutes.

Get an old iron (the one we use is a £10 supermarket special). Doesn't matter if it's got steam vents on, just make sure it's completely clear of water.

Put on lowest setting, or whatever melts the wax without creating a fog in your dining room and drip all over your board.

Once the board is covered in little wax beads, start to iron your board. Just let the iron float as much as it can over the board, until you have a smeared all the wax out and there are no beads left. Don't need to worry about the tip and tail too much.

Now, much of the stuff I've read has said that you should leave it for five mins to let it the wax soak in, but this time I waxed my board I left it (not deliberately, through laziness) about a month before scraping the wax off and after a good scrub with the stiff brush and then the yellow duster, the base feels smooth as hell.

Apart from all the rocks I've been over. That needs P-Tex to solve and I've never used that, so I cannot comment.

The Dakine Edging Tool is quite straight forward, but not if you've not done it before.

I wasn't sure what I was doing, so just went for it on the HEAD Tribute i, by just holding the board with one hand and running the edge tool down, tip to tail. If you can get someone to hold the board, that would be better.  The file the tool comes with is directional; there is a little arrow on the side and it feels rougher in one direction.

After running the tool, with medium pressure (any less and you're gonna get stuck on bur) 4 times, do the nail layer trick - just see if the edge will take a layer from your fingernail. Another good tip is to run a blacker marker pen down the board's edges: once you've run the tool down a few times, the mark will be gone, and you're done.

 

 

Windows Media Center cross fading

On my Windows Media Center playlists, I think during a random playlist, it's good to attempt as continuous a mix a possible; this means using the cross fader settings on Windows Media Player (as that's what behind 7MC).

Trouble is, the location of this option is really well hidden. As far as I can tell, it can only be accessed once a track is playing and you put WMP into visualisation mode. You can then right click on the window and access all the good stuff like graphic equalisers and cross fading options.

Windows Media Center Key Word Search

Earlier this year, we put a load of search words into Window Media Center, so it would record anything with those words in the title or description.

Now. we do end up with false positives (like the Scooby-Doo episode that featured snowboarding, along with Lee Majors voicing the bad guy), but generally it's pretty good.

One of the phrases we'd put in was "Twin Peaks", as I remember the red room and bouncing ball scaring the daylights out of me and Emma wasn't allowed to watch it when it was on, so we wanted to see it again, but weren't bothered about buying it on DVD.

Now, on 7MC, we create a guide filter for all the channels we can't get/ not interested in, and one of these happend to be Zone Horror, so I was really pleased the other day to see Twin Peaks from the very start, including pilot, was being recorded, as requested.

Another key word was "Thief Of Hearts", a terrible 80's Jerry Bruckheimer film we watched in Laos in 2009. It hasn't recorded that yet.

Snowboard clean, pre-waxjob

The mighty smell of "magical gogo bottom blaster" (!)  (chemical oranges) is in my dining room (Snowboard Workroom) at the moment:

http://www.thesnowboardshop.co.uk/magical-gogo-bottom-blaster-p-2120.html?filter_id=51&manufacturers_id=85

Jobbed.

GPS Bike tracking

Recently, I've been using Runmeter (or Cyclemeter, I'm sure they're the same)  iPhone App for all GPS tracking duties when running or out on the bike: http://www.abvio.com/runmeter/

Example of GPS output of rather leisurely "Riding Miss Daisy" type of ride round Cannock Chase:

Route: Cannock Chase
Activity: Cycle
Google Maps URL: http://maps.google.com/?q=http://share.abvio.com/966f/d7d6/4bab/8674/Runmeter-Cycle-20101106-1032.kml
Shortened Google Maps URL: http://j.mp/bUVVC4
Started: 6 Nov 2010 10:32:34
Ride Time: 1:43:04
Stopped Time: 59:43
Distance: 11.19 miles
Average: 6.52 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 12.57 miles/h
Climb: 3343 feet
Calories: 1006
Official Route: Yes

My only gripe is that this App savages the battery; make sure you have a car charger for the drive home. Abvio recommend the use of one those extra battery packs; it's easy to see why. I reckon it'd last about 3 hours...BUT: if it's your phone too, you don't want it running out of juice half way round.

Good Skills, Abvio

Also, I can recommend the Nike+ GPS App too, I prefer that for running with as it has a great looking output when you've finished, showing your fast and slow points on the map route by using gradient colours for each...Battery issue doesn't really apply here as I can't run for more than 2 or 3 minutes ;-)

Good Skills, Nike.

ContourHD Bullet Camera

My next door neighbour rocked up with one of these recently:

http://www.contour-hd.co.uk/

And he's been doing a few films at 720p (Action setting: you get 60FPS, rather than 30FPS if you do 1080P) over at his tube site:

http://www.youtube.com/user/powderdawg33#g/a

While we're on this subject, I put this video together last Sunday morning with the footage from the trip that we had from the Mayrhofen Jib Vid trip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AcwE0UiBsk

The ContourHD is better by a number of country miles, than a couple of pocketcams..

 

Laax RiderCams

Stumbled across this nice bit of video tech:

http://whitelines.mpora.com/videos/wltv/360-degree-interactive-snowboard-video-laax.html

Laax have really stepped up their game: while others offer static webcams, I expect that Laax will provide these sorts of clips to show the slopes..

The Last Word in Tuner Cards so far...

Last month BlackGold launched this awesome bit of tuner card tech:

http://shop.blackgold.tv/BGT3620

As soon as Freeview HD comes here, I'll be certainly be purchasing this; it'll go great with the FreeSat HD.

Dell Unified Server Configurator

This morning I needed to update some new Dell R710 servers with the latest firmware & drivers, prior to going on to the production LAN.

Previously, I'd do this using the SUU and the Build disks that come with the server, but this didn't work.

During my troubleshooting, I noticed "F10 - Server Service", which I'd not used before. So, choosing this option takes me into the Unified Configuration Manager, which is all new server tech, by all accounts. Usually, the updates for SUU would be done using the Linux BINs, but this appears to be some sort of embedded Windows install and as such, uses the Windows EXEs to update.

I put the USB stick in, containing the SUU from the Dell Repository Manager, making sure the catalog.xml file is in the Repository directory and let it up date the BIOS, iDRAC, RAID amongst a couple of others.

Job done.

Virgin Media STB TiVo upgrade

Virgin Media have announced their new STB based on TiVo tech.

http://shop.virginmedia.com/tv/tivo.html

I've never used a TiVo, but the UI looks pretty cool. I'd go as far as saying that it's potentially a 7MC DVR beater, esp. when we consider 3D, 1 TB storage & able to take data from that cable that carries your TV signal.

It's certainly a serious step forward for VM, when we consider their clunky, two press to make it work current STB and will certainly put the Sky+ box in second place in the consumer STB space.

I expect this package to be a premium STB offering, probably coming in at around at least £50 pcm.

BUT, for many Sky customers, they pay a bit of this anyway as £13 has to go on BT line rental - I think, whereas you get a 'free' landline with the TV package on VM, IIRC.

7MC certainly has some competition now with YouView & this offering.

Remote Potato

I've been fortunate to be part of the Remote Potato iPhone App trial.

So far, the work that Carlos Remote Potato and his team has done is nothing short of steller stuff.
On my iPhone, I can now browse the Windows Media Center EPG, set recordings (all in realtime, not like with the Sky+ 30 min buffer), stream recordings, stream films, stream music and view photos all from my Media Centre.

Of course, to get this far, there's some tech that you need to do with DynDNS. You'll need to choose your domain name and provide appropriate configuration, but it's all straight forward.

It's great stuff.

www.fatattutude.com

Microsoft MVC Programme

Earlier this year, Microsoft started an initiative called TV on your PC, with the incentive of a free USB TV Tuner supplied by AverMedia. The scheme was to find 1000 users (or TV Ambassadors) of TV on your PC (or Xbox) and provide reports via a Live Spaces blog.

I signed up for this, as did around 4000 others, so I was honoured when I was selected to move from the TV Ambassador scheme to become a Microsoft Most Valuable Consumer, along with 4 other MVCs (Phillip, Graham, Steve & Andrew) and spend a day down at Microsoft, discussing the highs & lows of Media Center, Sky Player & MSN Videos.

I've been using Media Center since 2005, so it was really enjoyable discussing the tech with everyone, especially Andrew Edney; he runs the usingwindowshomeserver.com website and reports with Ian Dixon over at thedigitallifestyle.com - two big hitters in the Media Center arena.

During the day, we met key members of the Media Center EMEA team (Louise, Helena, Rob & Abid) and talked on video camera about our thoughts and concerns. Despite their best efforts to get us to go to sleep in the afternoon after a great al fresco lunch at one of London's best Italian restaurants, everyone was still geared up for a great afternoon.

Overall, I thought the day was a great success and I hope any momentum isn't lost, as we've all (Microsoft included) put in a lot of work to get this far!

Superstar Nano Tech Pedals

The Superstar Nano-Tech Pedals arrived this morning!!!

http://superstar.tibolts.co.uk/product_info.php?cPath=42&products_id=127

Managed to get the other pedals off, with the help of Powderdawg's pedal wrench - these pedals are massive - twice the size of the basic plastic ones supplied at purchase!!!

Sky Player & Windows Media Center

I've been using Sky Player on WMC7 for a few days now and feel it's worthy of some comments...for the unaware, Sky Player is an app that Microsoft kindly downloaded to your Media Center, to provide you with some extra TV channels & functionality (whether you wanted it or not!).

There have been many comments on the forums about 'how do I remove this Sky Player thing' and 'I don't want this, my investment in Media Center is why I don't have a Sky sub' etc but if you look at as an exercise in Silverlight, it seems to be pretty versatile on the face of it.

Now, I'm no Flash expert (rightly or wrongly I've considered Silverlight to be a bit of tech to go against Flash), but I'm not sure that Flash is able to regulate it's quality depending on your bandwidth. If it did/was, I'm sure the original boo.com wouldn't've folded.

So, with that in mind, Sky Player running from my 10 Mb Virgin Media connection, watching Sky Sports News, on it's high quality setting at 1.8 (out of 2) the quality still seems a bit like watching Friends on Friends+1. Is it like a reduced frame rate or something? Interestingly enough, the adverts seem fine though, as good as good SD. Clearly, live encoding at high quality is still short of the mark: compared to the low quality setting, it looks like a MUX4 transmission.

Watching PNE v Hull on Sky Player at low quality, looks like a dodgy internet stream from Iraq or something. Whacking it up to high yields better results, but it's frame rate reduction and subsequent jerkiness leaves me thinking whether or not I'm going to switch on Black Ops or not. Even a couple of shots of Mother's Ruin don't appear to have sorted out the jerkiness. Again, pre-rendered stuff is perfect. Looks great.

Live, high speed sports like football & rugby (not F1!) really test the tech these days; watching live Sky Sports 1 via Sky Player (on my top drawer Panasonic), is like watching broadcast Sky Sports on my old cheap LCD: it couldn't keep up.

Anyway, the audio is flawless, as is the non live content and even the info overlay looks great; it wouldn't surprise me if the next version of WMC has the Sky Player, or similar, overlay. But I'd expect that by then they'd've integrated the Sky Player EPG fully with the remote. While I can bring up the programme info by pressing 'i', and see what is on the other channels right now, I cannot see what is coming up next, unless I grab the mouse - this is not doing anything for the GAF or WAF. Also while I'm at it, there are no recording, or pause/resume functions available. All we're getting is straight feed. Annoying to say the least if you're watching a film and you're suddenly tired half way through. You'll have to resume from the start...

Sky are really protective of their IP, which I have no problem with, but it oversteps the mark when I'm only allowed certain content on certain a PC; it's almost as if I have to have a per-user license for TV when Sky are involved. That extends to Sky multi-room to a certain extent too, IIRC. It should be done on IP address. I'm sure there's more to this than I understand, but it seems overly complicated.

It's an interesting package, I'm sure the take up would be really high if the price was lower. I don't think that they'd run the risk of current subscribers getting the hump; if that was the case they'd all build a media center...and I just don't think this is going to happen, it's too easy to get a Sky or Virgin TV sub - plus most other halves are not happy with PCs in the living room - I'm fortunate; my girlfriend thinks its brilliant; all of our music, pix, films & TV all in one place.

I've been using Sky Player on WMC7 for a few days now and feel it's worthy of some comments...for the unaware, Sky Player is an app that Microsoft kindly downloaded to your Media Center, to provide you with some extra TV channels & functionality (whether you wanted it or not!).



There have been many comments on the forums about 'how do I remove this Sky Player thing' and 'I don't want this, my investment in Media Center is why I don't have a Sky sub' etc but if you look at as an exercise in Silverlight, it seems to be pretty versatile on the face of it.

Now, I'm no Flash expert (rightly or wrongly I've considered Silverlight to be a bit of tech to go against Flash), but I'm not sure that Flash is able to regulate it's quality depending on your bandwidth. If it did/was, I'm sure the original boo.com wouldn't've folded.

So, with that in mind, Sky Player running from my 10 Mb Virgin Media connection, watching Sky Sports News, on it's high quality setting at 1.8 (out of 2) the quality still seems a bit like watching Friends on Friends+1. Is it like a reduced frame rate or something? Interestingly enough, the adverts seem fine though, as good as good SD. Clearly, live encoding at high quality is still short of the mark: compared to the low quality setting, it looks like a MUX4 transmission.

Watching PNE v Hull on Sky Player at low quality, looks like a dodgy internet stream from Iraq or something. Whacking it up to high yields better results, but it's frame rate reduction and subsequent jerkiness leaves me thinking whether or not I'm going to switch on Black Ops or not. Even a couple of shots of Mother's Ruin don't appear to have sorted out the jerkiness. Again, pre-rendered stuff is perfect. Looks great.

Live, high speed sports like football & rugby (not F1!) really test the tech these days; watching live Sky Sports 1 via Sky Player (on my top drawer Panasonic), is like watching broadcast Sky Sports on my old cheap LCD: it couldn't keep up.

Anyway, the audio is flawless, as is the non live content and even the info overlay looks great; it wouldn't surprise me if the next version of WMC has the Sky Player, or similar, overlay. But I'd expect that by then they'd've integrated the Sky Player EPG fully with the remote. While I can bring up the programme info by pressing 'i', and see what is on the other channels right now, I cannot see what is coming up next, unless I grab the mouse - this is not doing anything for the GAF or WAF. Also while I'm at it, there are no recording, or pause/resume functions available. All we're getting is straight feed. Annoying to say the least if you're watching a film and you're suddenly tired half way through. You'll have to resume from the start...

Sky are really protective of their IP, which I have no problem with, but it oversteps the mark when I'm only allowed certain content on certain a PC; it's almost as if I have to have a per-user license for TV when Sky are involved. That extends to Sky multi-room to a certain extent too, IIRC. It should be done on IP address. I'm sure there's more to this than I understand, but it seems overly complicated.

It's an interesting package, I'm sure the take up would be really high if the price was lower. I don't think that they'd run the risk of current subscribers getting the hump; if that was the case they'd all build a media center...and I just don't think this is going to happen, it's too easy to get a Sky or Virgin TV sub - plus most other halves are not happy with PCs in the living room - I'm fortunate; my girlfriend thinks its brilliant; all of our music, pix, films & TV all in one place.

BTW, despite threatening to go over to the PS3, I've not played Black Ops yet, I had to wait for  the PS3 to finish updating, for 3D Blu-Ray no less.

Spiceworks

This afternoon, I finally got around to configuring my Spiceworks desktop / server / LAN infrastructure management software - really impressed with how straight forward it was! More comments when it's done and in.

VMCmote

I found an app called VMCmote, that allows remote control of your music. This allows you to control what's playing on your Media Center via your iPod Touch or iPhone over your wireless network. It works like the iTunes remote, but for 7MC.

Have to admit, it was pretty good choosing the music from outside.

7MC playlists

I've been using iTunes for ages now and find it easier to create playlists using that than creating playlists in 7MC.

In iTunes, just export your playlist as m3u and then import into WMP and they'll appear in 7MC

Once WMP knows about the playlist, it reads it in from the disk location, so it's easy to make additions to your playlist in iTunes, then just export out over the top of the original file.

Media Centre Spec & customisations

Sony Vaio XL-201
Windows 7 Home Premium (from hereon 7MC)
3 GB RAM
64 GB SSD - OS
750 GB HD: Recorded TV & Films
500 GB HD: Pictures & Music

750 GB USB external disk for robocopy backup

3 x DVB-T Tuners:
1 x Twinhan USB Tuner
1 x AverMedia PCI

1 x DVB-S2
Hauppage HVR 4000

In addition to the above, the following other customisations have been done:

Remote Desktop enabled, so I can RDP to iTunes while 7MC is still running things.

We use iTunes, because I've got an iPod and MP3 tech is a 20 year old codec and it shows (sounds?). We use a combination of AAC encoded at 320 kbps and Apple Lossloss for music storage. Hard drive space is cheap and if you're going to rip, do it well. The cover is than dl'd from Amazon and called folder.jpg, albumartsmall.jpg & artwork.jpg for the covers.

Modified The Guide to display 10 lines of channels, instead of 7
Installed Remote Potato to allow remote scheduling
Installed Media Browser for Film trailers
Installed Auto Rip & Compress
Installed TunerFree MCE for all Internet TV
Installed MacroTube for YouTube
Installed Music Browser (prefer to browse via folder list sometimes)

Sky Player
MSN Videos

Optical out for music

The Freeview feed is split using a non cheapo splitter i.e not a 99p supermarket special. We use always use a decent metal splitter (£10) from Maplin and gold plated decent RF coax cables, as we found that cheapo RF cables didn't carry the split signals too well.

As with decent hi-fi separates, you shouldn't just use the standard thin 13-strand or whatever phono cables that are supplied; these are just to make the units functional - they don't necessarily get the best from the tech.

There's a satellite dish that has a quad LNB; we use two of those cables, one to the Media Centre, the other to the Freesat enabled TV (no point losing out on another tuner).

I'll be expanding on some of these points in future posts, as otherwise we'll just end up with one big rambling post and we don't want that.

Installing Wifi using NPS

Windows Server 2008 Enterprise