What’s to like? Well, it’s pretty. It’s fast. It’s got way less bloat and clutter than the horrible IE8. In a word, it’s now a lot more like Chrome and Firefox. It’s almost as if Microsoft were listening to customers’ complaints.

And speaking of beta versions of browsers, the beta version of Firefox 4.0 is available, too. Maybe I’ll take that for a test drive as well.

It’s been a while, and in case anyone reads this blog, that’s why it looks different. (I decided to change the theme, too.)

That’s it!

I was very happy with the students that I met today. One class consisted entirely of Lowell students. Not a single student from another school. We have more Lowell students at TestMagic than we do students from any other school, so I am very familiar with the Lowell students. In general they tend to be bright, but often a bit tired because they’re loaded with so much work. But my students today were very promising, and for the most part, hard-working.

I always like to make a lot of jokes during class (to be honest, I get bored if I don’t make the class interesting), and this group was pretty fun to work with. We got a lot done, which to me is ultimately the most important thing.

Solution: Buy a machine to remove those CD scratches. I bought a Disc-Go-Pod PLUS for about $500.

My review:

First impressions

• Wow, this is small! It’s bigger than a roll of toilet paper, but smaller than a bowling ball.
• And what, no anodized aluminum casing? No brushed steel anywhere? What’s all this gray plastic?
• Hmmm… This is just a motor in a plastic case. The motor spins the CD against some pads. $500 for that??

So I take it out of the box. The instructions seems pretty short, and I see that I have everything I need to get started–the liquid polishes and a few other things. I follow the instructions carefully, and put in a scratched CD. Sure enough, after one cycle, I’ve got a mirror-shiny disc.

Following the instructions, I spray it with the finishing spray, and hand wipe it clean with the soft white cloth that the machine ships with. I take it over to my computer to test it with Exact Audio Copy (the standard freeware software to test the readability of the data on audio CDs) to check it, and sure enough, the CD has no errors.

So I run a few more CDs through it, and I receive mostly the same results, with a couple of exceptions, which I’ll talk about in a bit.

Problems

The first pair of pads stopped working for some reason, perhaps because they got gummed up with ink or other material from the CD I put in upside down! What do I mean by saying the pads didn’t work? Well, they were effectively too ‘sticky’; i.e., they were holding onto the CDs with too much force, which kept the CD from spinning at the high RPM necessary for a good clean. I took them out and cleaned them with warm water and a toothbrush, the cleaning method I saw mentioned in the manual, but they still didn’t work. Fortunately the Disc-Go-Pod comes with a spare set of pads, and these worked fine. On Monday I’m going to contact the company to ask for advice.

One CD had some damage to the label side, which apparently was caused by the rubber mat that sits between the label side and the CD resurfacer. No other CD had this kind of damage, so perhaps it’s a problem with the CD, not the Disc-Go-Pod. The CD looks to be twenty years old at least, and the label says Made in W Germany.

The pump stopped working on one of my discs, and for some reason, the timer didn’t seem to work either.

Questions

1. When do I start using the second bottle of polish? After about 30 to 50 repairs, depending on the length of the cycles.
2. One set of pads seems to grip too tightly. Can I fix this? Add some polish or final spray directly to the pads to lubricate them.
3. How do I remove the pads? Push them out from the back.
4. Why does the reservoir develop foam? Try using distilled water or bottled water.
5. Can I rinse off the CD with water before using the final spray? That’s okay.
6. What is the purpose of the final spray? It’s basically like a wax.They say that Windex doesn’t work as well as their final spray.
7. Why did the label side of one CD wear away?
8. Don’t use hot water; use lukewarm water.

Tips

Be careful about placing the CD in the resurfacer the right way! I put in one CD upside down by mistake, and almost the entire side was taken off. I tested it, and no data was found.

If you dig a bit in the manual and the website, you’ll see a few things mentioned that would seem to be important enough to have a dedicated space in the manual, but do not. I’ve also picked up a few tips along the way.

First, the manual tells you to give the bottle of CD polish a good shake to make sure the polish (the ‘sediment’) is distributed evenly throughout. Because the bottle is white and not clear, and the polish itself is also a white liquid, it’s hard to see the sediment. So I shook the bottle vigorously, poured it into the pump and saw that sediment was left over. Obviously I didn’t shake it enough, but I read the manual a bit more, and it said to now fill the bottle with water and use that water to top off the pump reservoir so that liquid covered the pump entirely (presumably so that the pump will stay lubricated with liquid at all times). So I added a bit of water, shook it again, and this time the remaining sediment was distrubuted throughout the water-polish solution.
It seems like a good idea to let the machine rest for a minute or so between disc resurfaces. This apparently gives the motor time to cool down.

One cycle is 4 minutes and 40 seconds, which is almost the five minutes stated in the Disc-Go-Pod literature. Two cycles is about 9 minutes and 25 seconds.
Sometimes it gets hot inside the unit, especially if you run it for two cycles (almost ten minutes), or if you have run a few CDs through it one after the other. You may see some steam inside, but the manual says this is normal.

The pump reservoir foams up after a few hours of use.

So the Google Christmas (or whatever holiday you do or do not like or like to celebrate) is basically a small media player. It’s got an LCD screen, a small speaker, and an even smaller microphone. It’s also got a slot for an SD card or MMC card. Wikipedia tells me that an MMC card is an older format that can be used in SD slots.
It comes preloaded with some images and a couple of sample MP3s and MP4 movies. I’ve got mine loaded up with NiMH batteries, showing the pre-loaded media.

It seems pretty easy to load media onto the device. Windows explorer tells me I’ve got about 25 MB of space. However, it doesn’t seem to automatically resize images, as the huge image I dragged and dropped with Windows Explorer threw an error.

I’m going to play with this a bit more. It could be fun. Funny, I was just thinking about getting something like this when it showed up in the Amazon Gold Box the other day.

But I lost it. I’d picked up another one at some point and given it to my father, and one day over at his house on Lakeview, I quietly lifted it out of his lazy-susan pen tray. (I still need to tell him about that.)

I was happy again. But one day, after telling my students how much I liked the pen and how they weren’t made any longer, it disappeared from my classroom.

Now I’ve been looking for one of them again, but I don’t know what they’re called. I’ve got a standing search on eBay for ‘plastic Waterman’, but I’m not too hopeful.

Anybody know where to buy another one? Or at least what they’re called?

Last week I was interviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle (by Ellen Lee) about the CD-swapping site lala.com (see my review of lala). I talked for a while, a bit more than 30 minutes, if I recally. A freelance photographer (Megan Rathfon) came over to my house the next day to take a few shots of me working on the computer.

Not a whole lot to tell. They were a lot friendlier and more professional than some of the reporters I’ve dealt with in the past, and I had a nice conversation with the photographer about the business in general and about photography equipment.

To simplify further, to trade CDs that you have, here’s what you do:

• You have an original CD that you are willing to part with.
• You list it on their system. This is pretty easy to do, and their search function employs the latest trendy AJAX technology, so various search results appear as you type.
• If another lala member wants your CD, you get a message tellling you that somebody wants your CD.
• You put that CD (must be an original!! no burned CDs!!) into a CD protector and a prepaid envelope that lala has already sent you. (I’ve already received four shipments of Tyvek envelopes, protectors, stamps, and instructions, all before I provided a credit card number.)
• You get a credit for that CD; you can use this credit to receive a CD.

Now, of course you want to get some CDs in return:

• You list the CDs that you want.
• You hope that they will match up with the CDs that people are willing to send.
• You pay $1.75 for each CD you receive.
• When you do receive your CD, you need to log into your lala account to let them know that you’ve received it. You currently have several options when you acknowledge receipt:

• Received in good condition
• Received in good condition with liner notes
• Received but the CD is broken
• Received but the CD is not an original
• Received but the CD is not the one I requested
  
• Never received

It’s all pretty easy to do, but you need to make lots of stops at the post office or the local mail box. To date I have sent nine CDs and have received two. The first CD I received was a bit scratched up and wouldn’t play in my old CD player, but by that time, I’d already marked it “received in good condition” in lala.com. In the meantime, I sent off a bunch of other CDs, all in good faith that the system would work out. A few days later I was happy to learn that somebody had promised to send me an old Ministry album that I don’t have on CD. It took a while to arrive, but when it did, it was in perfect condition.

lala throttled me for sending out too many CDs at one time. This is the message I get when I have five original CDs in the mail to the people who have requested the Cds: “You have too many CDs in transit. Please wait a few days for the recipients to receive their CDs in order to continue shipping.”

Now, about the CDs you can expect to receive: granted that I have received only two CDs, but it certainly seems that it is much easier to trade the big name albums. For example, I have many requests for AC/DCs Back in Black and for Van Halen’s Van Halen, but not a single request for Meat Beat Manifesto. To be fair, I do have a bunch of requests for my Sonic Youth, Ministry, and Jane’s Addiction CDs. But nothing for Grotus, Patsy Cline, The Shamen, etc.

But I have high hopes for this site. Hopes so high that I have sent out four times as many CDs as I have received. It’s turning out to be a lot of fun to see what is coming to you.

Edit: I just got notification that I’m receiving some lesser-known stuff that I wouldn’t mind having on CD–Bad Brains’ Eye Against Eye, and eponymous albums from Dirty Vegas and Jane’s Addiction.

]]> http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/review-lala-com/feed/ 6 http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/the-duckberg-times/ http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/the-duckberg-times/#comments Mon, 06 Mar 2006 04:02:33 +0000 Erin http://www.erinbilly.com/test-prep/the-duckberg-times/ Yeah, I know it was an obscure DC ‘zine before zines were cool, but I loved this publication. And I talked to the publisher, Linda, a bunch of times at various clubs, including the short-lived Pub Club and Cagney’s.

To this day, I remember Love Monkey:

• Love monkey, love monkey, set me free.
• It’s gonna have to wait till I take a pee.

And there’s more–one strip about the CIA planting a radio device in somebody’s head.
I’ve still got one strip in my old photography notebook, and I’ve seen something about the Duckberg Times on amazon, so I guess I’m not the only one who remembers the Duckberg Times.

]]> http://www.erinbilly.com/blog/the-duckberg-times/feed/ 2 http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/nikon-f100/ http://www.erinbilly.com/reviews/nikon-f100/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2006 06:22:56 +0000 Erin http://www.erinbilly.com/test-prep/nikon-f100/ I dabbled in photography in college and even took a few classes as electives. I enjoyed them, but my teacher (Dr. Mary Hammond) was very old-school, and never let us use any of the various technologies available to us. She said all you needed was a Pentax K1000, a good lens, and lots of film (she liked Ilford for black and white). We were required to take a semester of manual pinhole photography before we could even pick up an SLR. As I’m sure all of you are aware, a manual pinhole camera requires the use of a very slow film because the shutter is very slow or at the very least, imprecise (since a human hand has to open and close the shutter). We had to shoot all of our pictures using paper negatives (which are grainy compared to film), but that’s what Dr. Hammond wanted.

Well, I need a new hobby like I need a hole in the head. I’ve already got quite a few projects going, but I’ve recently connected with a very professional and personable wedding photographer in Hawaii who has passed on his film cameras to me for a very reasonable price. Dylan told me that he shoots in digital now, and doesn’t need the F100 Nikons any longer.

I’ve got a bunch of questions about the F100, most of which I’m sure Google can answer, but I will try to document my learning process.

My first question (which has been answered by my friend): I dropped the film in, but nothing happend. Por que?

In the meantime, if you feel that overwhelming and passionate urge to share your love of the visual, enlighten me.

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