Replaced Brake Pads and Rotors today.

About 2 months ago, I was warned that my front break pads and rotors were 99% worn out and the rear brake shoes were 95% worn out, when I got my engine oil changed at Canadian Tire. I then asked the price for the replacement, and the answer was 600 ~ 700 bucks. Harsh! I don't have that much money and I went there for oil change only because I got a free oil change voucher. Actually the pads and rotors cost way less than the full service. Then I decided to do it by myself. Fortunately, the old brake stuffs still did their job until they got replace.

Last week I went to Canadian Tire and bought 2 pair brake pads, 2 front rotors, 2 pair brake shoes, and brake spring set for about $170 after taxes. Of course I need some tools as well.

This weekend I finally got sometime to replaced the brake pads and rotors of my ride's front wheels. I'd say it's not technically difficult by physically hard. This makes me think I'd better work out every day. It might take a professional mechanic 1 hour to finish the job but I spent 5 hours on it. What a shame :(

Anyway, I am still happy to see the old, dirty, heavily worn out pads and rotors were replaced by the shinning brand new ones :) Here are some photos to keep the nice memory.

Prepare work to protect the environment.

Prepare work to protect myself :P

Jack my ride up and ready to go!!!


Wheels are removed and "My God" the old pad and rotor were totally worn out.

I removed the rear wheel as well because I will exchange the front and rear tire later.

Hehe, Shining brand new Rotor and Pads

The retired old pads and rotors.

Actually I planned to replace the rear brake shoes as well this time. However, when I take the brake drum off, I found the the drum was also heavily worn out and I didn't buy the new drum for the replacement. Normally the drum last much longer than the rotors, and it seems I just ran out of my luck this time. So I've to replace the rear brake next time. Give me a break~~~

FIFAStreet 3

A cool commercial ads video found at Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/z8c4otFXqTM

Official Website: www.fifastreet3.com

"Die Nibelungen - Der Fluch des Drachen"

It's a fine movie to my opinion. The story line was based on the Germanic myth "Das Nibelungenlied" and the Nordic "Volsunga Saga" which also inspired the four-opera cycle by Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien's epic "The Lord of the Rings".

Reading the story and history behind the movie brought even more fun to me. For example, the word "Nibelung" is the German title was borrowed by it's English title, which is called "Ring of the Nibelungs". However, that might confuse the English speakers. Actually the Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the Ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhinegold. The title therefore means "Alberich's Ring". About the word Nibelung (Nibelunge, Niflunger) is derived from the German/old Norse word "Nebel" (mist), and means darkness. In some case, people think Nibelung also refers to the Son of Mist (Nebel).

Windows: IDE ATA and ATAPI disks use PIO mode after multiple time-out or CRC errors occur

This problem occurs since my new SATA HD installed. I noticed after several days my Windows XP became extremely slow and the HD access uses a lot CPU time. However everything seems to be fine under Linux. Odd!

Then I checked the settings under Device Manager and found that windows automatically re-set my new SATA driver to run in PIO mode. That was in sin.  My first guess was my new driver has problem and windows couldn't let it work under UDMA. But it's just hard to believe. After several hours research. It turns out that my new SATA has NCQ (Native Command Queuing) while my Intel mainboard chip 845PE dosen't support it. That incompatible issue causes a lot error interruption to windows, which then consider the bad of my new driver :(

OK, our M$ indeed has a solution to that, although it can't be called a solution at all. I will list the step in below:

1) Make sure we got SP2 installed.
2) use "regedit" open the key [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002]
3) add a new DWORD Value by name ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and set the value to be 1
4) repeat the above step if you have more IDE controllors. They must be named in a number sequence, like \003, \004 ....
5) If necessary, uninstall the IDE driver through device manager, which will manually reset the error count to be zero.

OK, enjoy, it's done.

Greater Vancouver's First Snow in 2007

I have heard that Vancouver is a warm city even in winter. However, in my first 6 moths in Vancouver, we met this heavy snow.

I guess many people are still not ready for this and most of the cars on the road were going like snails, since they don't have the winter tires.

Hooray! Nikon D300 and D3 are out.

depreview.com published two articles today to Nikon D300 and D3. The status of D200 might become embarrassing. But Nikon will take some marketing strategy to handle this. I am ready to throw my old D100 away now, and hope We can get a good deal for D200 before Xmas :D

Here are the photos and citation words from depreview.com



Nikon announced the new DX format D300 which also features a 12 megapixel CMOS sensor, 14-bit A/D conversion, EXPEED image processor, sensitivity up to ISO 6400 (with boost), the new CAM3500DX AF sensor (51 point), HDMI video output, UDMA CF support and last but not least the super-impressive 3.0" 922,000 pixel LCD monitor with Live View. See full review at dpreview.com



Nikon has today lifted the covers on their first full-frame digital SLR, the new 12.1 megapixel D3. The D3 is all about speed and sensitivity, twelve megapixels on a big CMOS chip means large photosites (8.45 µm pitch to be precise) and that adds up to base sensitivity of ISO 200 to 6400 with an additional two stop boost over that (up to ISO 25600). See full review at dpreview.com

Sexy Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse under Linux

I recently bought a brand new DELL Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse Bundle (they are actually produced by Logitech) . Here is the picture of this beauty:



The reason of this purchase was I couldn't find my mouse shipped from Germany and my keyboard is old and I was annoyed by those wires and cables and I saw the SALE by DELL. La la la...

When I got it and tried it under windows, I was a bit surprised by its handy functionalities and reliabilities. Em at least, it's installation under Windows was easy and straightforward. Then I tried to use it to drive my lovely Debian system, however I had no lucky this time. The set up of this BT keyboard and mouse was a bit funky and I spent a whole night to work it out. And now it's the time to share my experience.

• Step 1: Setup Kernel

Networking --->

<*> Bluetooth subsystem support  --->--- Bluetooth subsystem support

   L2CAP protocol support

   SCO links support

   RFCOMM protocol support

[*]     RFCOMM TTY support

   BNEP protocol support

[*]     Multicast filter support

[*]     Protocol filter support

   HIDP protocol support

Bluetooth device drivers  --->

 HCI USB driver

[*]   SCO (voice) support

 HCI UART driver

[*]   UART (H4) protocol support

[*]   BCSP protocol support

[*]   Transmit CRC with every BCSP packet

 HCI BCM203x USB driver

 HCI BPA10x USB driver

 HCI BlueFRITZ! USB driver

(The four drivers below are for PCMCIA Bluetooth devices and will only how up if you have also selected PCMCIA support in your kernel.)

 HCI DTL1 (PC Card) driver

 HCI BT3C (PC Card) driver

 HCI BlueCard (PC Card) driver

 HCI UART (PC Card) device driver

(The driver below is intended for HCI Emulation software.)

 HCI VHCI (Virtual HCI device) driver

(Move back three levels to Device Drives and then check if USB is nabled. This is required if you use a Bluetooth dongle, which are mostly USB based.)

USB support  --->

<*> Support for Host-side USB

--- USB Host Controller Drivers

 EHCI HCD (USB 2.0) support

[ ]   Full speed ISO transactions (EXPERIMENTAL)

[ ]   Root Hub Transaction Translators (EXPERIMENTAL)

<*> OHCI HCD support

<*> UHCI HCD (most Intel and VIA) support

< > SL811HS HCD support

Build the kernel and then install it

• Step 2: Bluez-Utils

Install the Bluz-Utils by`ap-get install Bluz-Utils`

• Step3: Configuration (very important)

Now it's the tricky time. The key point is this BT Keyboard and Mouse can not be used as hci, so we need to use hid instead.
A) Find out the MAC address of them by `hcitool scan` or `hidd --search`. If there's no results, then press the sync button on the bottom of the devices, and try again. The result looks like:

# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
       00:0A:0B:0C:0D:0E	DELL BT Mouse

B) Turn off HID2HCI at "/etc/default/bluetooth" : change the value of HID2HCI_ENABLED to 0.

HID2HCI_ENABLED = 0;

C) Enable HID daemon and set the start up options at "/etc/default/bluetooth" :

HIDD_ENABLED=1

# The MAC address here is just a fake example

HIDD_OPTIONS="--master -i 00:0A:0B:0C:0D:0E -i 00:01:02:03:04:05 --server"

Reboot and Cheers!
There are some other softwares for gnome, which can let you setup all the functional buttons, such as volume turner. Very fancy and SEXY.