iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

I’m a big fan of news radio, especially the information programming of the CBC and BBC World Service. If you’ve been looking for this on the iPhone/iPod touch I’d recommend the application FStream.

There are a few paid options, but I’m a fan of free in ever sense of the word.

If you do choose to use FStream the latest version provides a director, but you may need to know the URLs for some of the better services ….. so here they are.

My job at Brock as an “Educational Technologies Support Specialist” not surprisingly involves a lot of support, primarily of faculty using the web as an educational tool. I do a lot of meetings and workshops, but here is a list of the tools that I’ve found invaluable in helping people use technology remotely or asynchronously:

1. The Wiki: A few year ago I created the WebCT Wiki to help document WebCT at Brock and some its idiosyncrasies. It proved to be a great resource to build an FAQ in and write up a few instructions for how to do a few things. The wiki format ensured it could be updated from anywhere by anyone.

   Though it was mainly me and my colleague who contributed to it the ability to post something to address an issue immediately and later refine it was very helpful. I’ve taken the approach that if I think I’ll have to explain something again it’s worth adding to the Wiki where I can either direct others to or simply copy and paste an answer from (the latter being my preference).

   Recently a I spearheaded a project to bring an academic wiki server to Brock that is just getting started: kumu.brocku.ca

   Google recently added their old Jot Spot acquisition to their Google Sites.

   OS: Web based, Cost: Free (open source) + web server
2. Jing: Jing is the best option for quickly recording a “screen cast” or taking screen shots. It’s a stripped-down tool that fills a niche below Tech Smith’s other product Camtasia.

   Screen casts (videos) of how to do something can quickly be recorded of the whole screen or just a section of it and posted to the web as a flash screen.

   Screen captures (images) can quickly be taken and annotated with text, arrows and shapes.
   
   Read more... (488 words, 4 images, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

   OS: Mac & PC, Cost: Free + web server

The Challenge

You may recall that in April I changed the rear rotors on my Acura 1.7 (“The Super Civic”). The Acura 1.7 EL and the American Civic Si are the only two version of this world Honda platform that use rear disc brakes over the not-so-sporty drumb brakes found in the regular Civic. The front disc brakes set up on all of these cars are the same. This summer my front left rotor started to warp as one would expect with its age and I figured that the front rotors need an improvement of quality for the vehicle to meet it’s ultimate potential — and now it does! The best news is if you read this article the whole way you can learn how your Civic 2.0 SI 2002-2003, Civic/EL 1.7 2001-2005, Civic 1.6/EL 1989-2000 or Del Sol VTEC can have the same part cheap!

I did some relatively extensive research on the best option. I wanted brakes that would give good feel, stop hard and look cool but at the same time be street-able and cost-effective. This ruled out bigger rotors, as I didn’t want to change the calibers that clamp down on the rotors. Additionally, I had purchased carbon pads for all of the calibers back in April , I wanted to re-use those. Ultimately this meant increasing the efficiency of the current rotor dimensions. The part I needed turned out to be Magnum Original Cross-Drilled Rotors.

The Solution

Magnum Cross-Drilled Rotors are Canadian made rotors that have holes in them that allow the gas created by the extreme heat of breaking to escape into the venting between the two surfaces of the rotor. This keeps the rotor cooler and prevents the “float” effect of gasses or water building up between the rotor and the pad. An other technology is slotting, which is an actual grove that pushes hot gasses away – that level of venting is really only needed for racing and not my street car.
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My Acura has it headlights pushed out the the top corners of the front end. Like many other cars with a similar design and price-point (the Ford Modeo/Contour comes to mind) the streams of dust and what not they are exposed to with all the highway travel my car sees have obscured the headlight bulbs with a foggy kind of scratching.

What follows is how I fixed this problem to my, ah…. adequate standards. It’s no show worthy solution, but its better than replacing the headlights at over $100 a piece.

Steps:

1. Clean the lens with Windex
2. Rub and kinda-and-kinda-buff the lens with Brasso. This should start to clear the lens up, but will not fix everything. There’s lots of guides out there on how to use Brasso to restore your iPod, I figured this was similar. Google Brasso and ipod to learn more
3. Buff the lens with some wax and a lot of effort — I used a polishing disk on a regular old drill (not a random orbit polisher – again not show quality). The wax I used was MIBRO’s high gloss metal polish. After a good 15 minutes of applying the wax in one direction, polishing, then applying in another, I finally was happy with the results and was almost ready to call it done.
4. The final step for me was applying and buffing with BlueMagic’s Liquid Metal Polish as it promised to remove scratches and leave protective finish (and was cheap)

That’s it.

You can see from the picture below from the overcast Saturday I did this on, the lens on the left is nice and clear and the one on the right has yet to be worked on and is all dull and “fogged”. I’ve since noticed an improvement in the headlights intensity at short distances (but no over-all increase in distance).
Read more... (349 words, 2 images, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

This weekend Lindz and I had our marriage perpetration course in a semi-rural part of Mississauga. It was some nice quality time for me to share with Lindsay and nature. Sunday afternoon while we where leaving my relationship with Lindsay couldn’t have been better, my relationship with nature was at a serious low.

Here’s what happened, as best as I can deduce things. A bird had left its droppings on a tree, the tree was no happy with this and decided to get rid of this by secreting a bunch of sap and forcing the bird dropping of the tree and allowed gravity to take its course. Unfortunately the my Acura was beneath that tree for two days.

The result was a pool of sap slightly larger than a loonie with chuck of bird dropping in it sitting in the middle of my windsheild.

After scrapping this across most of my windshield with my wipers I got home and put more effort into removing this. Spraying and scrubbing with soap did very little. It was a good 15 minutes into the process that I thought of using hot water.

What I did to remove the sap from the windshield was scrub with warm soapy watter while I brought a kettle to a boil and then used the kettle water to finish-off the pre-warmed windshield.

I hope my description of this process helps someone out.