Dakine Heli Pro II

Is getting close to the end of it's natural life

After maybe 8 years of abuse snowboarding, mountain biking and general travelling the globe I noticed the outer compartment has a tear and just now the front top pocket zip has given up the ghost.

5 stars Dakine .. take a bow.

Going down to a single front chainring

The more I think about this the better it sounds. My angle is really from a maintenance perspective - simplicity is good. Chain-rings and derailleurs all cost money. OK so front derailleurs don't die often or even need that much maintenance but fundamentally changing gear causes additional wear on the chain and chain-rings. I've come to decide that the reason I find myself changing is that the bike by default is not geared for me given the type of riding I do (switching from middle to large chain-ring mainly on my hard-tail).

So I'm thinking:

a) 38 front chain-ring with a bash guard - I'll use the bash-guard on another bike.

b) Switched the 11-32 with the 11-34 from my full-sys bike

This will mean I can test out single-speed ratios of ~18-38 but also close to my lowest 'usual' off-road ration of 1:1 (currently 32:32).

Things I may consider:
1) a 12-36 cassette from 29er set-ups. I have read posts suggesting the additional torque from 36 on rear hub might be too much for lightweight hubs.
2) E13 XCX chainguide

MaharaDroid v1.8 released

Minor changes - added Japanese support and fixed a few bugs.

Still working on OAuth and additional concepts, but no time for major work at the moment.

OpenBox S10 Satellite Receiver

In summary: don't buy one .. read on for details.

Well I've ditched Sky .. was too expensive and the programming wasn't working for me (for the money). So I'm on the hunt again for a cheap satellite (terrestrial no good for me due to hills) receiver with PVR and EPG. So .. hunting around the Openbox S10 looks to to have the specs on paper (ethernet in, 1080i, usb pvr) .. all good.

Well almost.

Problems to date:

1. Lip Sync issues .. still working on a resolution
2. Record function has .. Once and Daily .. WTF? No weekly?
3. Recording locks the channel - limited to one transponder. OK so I should have checked the number of receivers/tunes, etc.
4. Recording output is a .dvr .. urg, yet to try conversion tools or playback as-is on laptop. Will update.

Still to test:

1. Ethernet - worryingly I can't see anything that looks like web-browsing capability on the menus. But I don't have it cabled so they may be disabled atm - will update.
2. Time-shift and proper / more extensive PVR to USB disk capability

Android OAuth experimentation

In searching for some sample OAuth client implementations in Android I came across Implementing the OAuth Flow in Android.

Android 2.3.4 SIP stack disconnects?

Now that I've moved to NDSL and VOIP for calling I can (via Trixbox) route all inbound calls to a calling group including everyone connected (i.e. everyones Android mobile sip client + the analogue phone via a Linksys / Cisco SPA2102).

That said some I found the Android SIP stack very limiting in that calls drop sounds and then disconnect after a short period of time (maybe 30s - 1 minute). Hunting the Internet I find mention of similar problems with links to resolution [1]. Something to try in the next few days (will update if it resolves my problem).

[1] http://forum.sipsorcery.com/viewtopic.php?t=3029&p=18029#p18098

Migrating to Naked DSL + VOIP

Been a bit quiet lately but some major changes at home to tackle the phone / Internet bills (going down to 1 income has it's issues). Phone line ported to 2talk.co.nz which worked out very sweet. Loving the ability to control calls as and when needed, etc.

So along with 2talk 10 ($10 /month package) we're taking up snap.net.nz's offer for $55 5GB base plan with $2 /month all you eat Google+Youtube.com. Worth a crack. Also by dropping my cell package down a notch I've almosty halved the comms bill. Will update with progress.