Posted by Jason Lancaster on March 2, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Today we are going to talk about my feet. Over the weekend, I stopped by a href=”http://www.blogger.com/mec.ca”Mountain Equipment Co-op /ato buy some new socks. They had some new socks — a href=”http://www.injinji.com/”Injinji /a– which are like the a href=”http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/”Five Fingers /aof socks. One of the ideas behind the Five Finger shoes is that they spread you toes apart so that each toe is allowed to carry its share of your body weight rather than being scrunched together with his pals. The Injinji socks use the same principle as each toes lives inside its own pocket. Like the Five Fingers fitting your toes into the Injinji takes a little bit of effort but once you put the sock on they are quite comfortable. I bought two pairs of white and black and will put them through there paces for the next little while. I am curious to see if I notice a difference when I go a run wearing them.
Posted by Jason Lancaster on February 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment
A couple of years ago, I bought a seagate FreeAgent disk drive to backup my laptop. In keeping with tradition, my father bought the same drive to backup his computer. Over the Christmas holidays, the backup drive stopped working as you could feel the drive spinning but Windows Vista would not detect the drive. While at home on the weekend my father asked me to take a look at it. We ran the diagnostic software and it said that the drive was toast. We ran the disk recovery software and it said that it could not recovery any files. Once back in Ottawa, I did a couple of more tests and found to my surprise that the drive is still under warranty. Sweet! The repair depot is located near Toronto. Seagate is very precise on how they want the drive packaged for return. The drive has to be surrounded by 2″ of foam on all sides. Where to find 2″ foam rubber? I had a brainwave which saved the day. Fabric stores sell foam rubber for folks that want to make cushions and comforters. I headed out at lunch to a fabric stores and bought a 2′ x 2′ x 1″ foam rubber pad and cut it into segments to fit a box. I’ll send the box on its way tomorrow and see what Seagate does.
Posted by Jason Lancaster on October 18, 2008 · Leave a Comment
While on my run tonight I had a ibMacGyver /b/imoment. When I packed my running gear this morning I packed my large winter overpants. They are designed to be worn over a couple of layers. As I started out on my run they started to slide down. Every so often I would pull them up a bit. At the midpoint of run there is a span class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1224298917_0″construction site/span with miles of span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1224298917_1″yellow caution tape laying around/span. I grabbed a foot of tape and used it to secure my pants. My run back to the university was at a faster and more relaxed pace.
Posted by Jason Lancaster on February 12, 2008 · Leave a Comment
p class=”MsoNormal”span lang=”EN-US”Earlier this year, I bought an Apple iPod touch and am still amazed with what I can do with it. The five iPod touch applications Apple released in January made the toy more powerful. On Saturday, the home button stopped working. I would select the Safari icon and do some surfing and hit the home button expecting it to return to the home screen but nothing happened. It would stubbornly stay on the safari screen. The only way to return to the home screen was to turn it off and then on. I checked the a href=”http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa”discussion groups on the Apple site /aand didn’t find any hints as what to do. I had two choice drive to a href=”http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/”st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Montreal/st1:place/st1:City /a(2 hours) or head down to a href=”http://www.apple.com/ca/retail/”st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Toronto/st1:place/st1:City /a(5 hours). I signed up for a st1:time minute=”0″ hour=”15″ st=”on”3:00 pm/st1:time appointment at the a href=”http://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/”Genius bar /aon Monday in st1:place st=”on”st1:city st=”on”Laval/st1:City, st1:state st=”on”Quebec/st1:State/st1:place. The web interface for the Genius bar is fun to use. I headed to st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Montreal/st1:place/st1:City on Monday morning and took the subway north and tried to follow the directions on the Apple retail store web page but made an attempt to speak in broken French to the subway conductor who said to keep heading north. I jumped on the subway again and headed underneath the st1:place st=”on”St. Lawrence River/st1:place and took the a href=”http://www.stm.info/English/metro/a-mapmet.htm”subway/metro/a to the last stop on the line known as Montmorency. I was now in a different city with a different bus system and rules. There were a couple of buses that would take you to La Carrefour shopping center. I caught the first bus apparently destined for the mall and ended in north st1:city st=”on”st1:place st=”on”Laval/st1:place/st1:City miles from anywhere. After talking to the driver in broken French he suggested an express bus and I headed back to the bus hub. The second bus took me to the shopping center. /span/p p class=”MsoNormal”span lang=”EN-US”The Apple store was a hive of activity with a lot of people receiving 1-on-1 Apple training. I spoke to one of the “blue” shirts girls would confirmed that my appointment was still good. In the meantime, I explored the fun on display and imagined what it would be like to use a Macbook. It was sort of like being in a toy store for adult with all this neat gear. A little while later I met with the genius “black” shirt and we tried to do an iPod restore which didn’t work. The iPod was sicker than we thought. Apple replaced the iPod touch as it was still on warranty (Thanks Apple). It was a fun experience and my first visit to an Apple store and hopefully not my last as it was a fun place./span/p
