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.