Relatively Ignorant Blog

Last year I bought a pair of LOOK Kéo Carbon pedals from an America eBay store for about $50 less than I would have paid in Australia. I knew that warranty repair might be a problem but assumed they would not break (old-design LOOK pedals have some reputation for being indestructible).

I was wrong – they did break, and right – warranty repair is a problem.

I received no help in Australia (mechanics at the bike shop I use didn’t want to attempt a repair). Next step is to try both LOOK and the the seller via e-mail to see if they will help. (I tried to register the pedals via the LOOK website but I couldn’t find a valid serial number on the box.)

The cause of this grief? A single screw fell out of the left pedal. It simply fell out, on the road somewhere. It screws into the end of the axle for the sprung flap that holds the cleat into place. The complete right pedal looks like this from underneath:

The incomplete left pedal looks like this:

The missing screw appears to be made of aluminium alloy and has a very strange thread:

A replacement one of those screws is all I want.

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I have discovered iusethis mac software and have been nominating the software I use.

It’s a great way to learn about other Mac software by seeing what other people use.

A bonus – you can log in using OpenID. I wouldn’t have bothered if I had to create a new online username and password.

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I bought some bicycle pedals from an overseas dealer (via eBay).

One of them broke recently, less than six months old. Under normal circumstances, it would be a simple warranty replacement case (LOOK Kéo pedals have a two-year warranty, according to the box). But I bought them via eBay, at a reasonable (but not huge) discount. I should still be able to claim the manufacturer’s warranty directly from LOOK directly and I will try, but it might be a bit tricky.

I rang the Australian distributor of LOOK products about getting spare parts. After telling the man that I bought the pedals overseas he said, “Isn’t it a bit cheeky asking for parts from us?” His premise is that they are willing to assist someone who bought products through their distribution channel, but not otherwise. I told him I was happy to pay for the replacement part but that made no difference to his attitude.

I understand their position, but it is bad business. The onus is not on the distributor but on LOOK to replace defective parts.

Wake up guys! We are in a global marketplace.

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Over at Digg, they wondered if this musical prank had ever been done before.

Not quite as classy, but my dad told of his uni days where one of the academics complained about a student eating a banana in his lecture. Next lecture he gave, a group of students turned up as a small brass band playing (you guessed it): Yes, We Have No Bananas.

That was at the University of Melbourne about 60 years ago.

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We are suffering a prolonged drought in much of eastern Australia and Brisbane is subject to long-term water restrictions. Our state premier recently announced that Queensland would start mixing treated waste water into the supply. There was going to be a plebiscite but he wisely decided to not ask for public opinion on what easily becomes an unnecessarily emotional issue.

The radio news announcer told us that by the end of next year, Brisbane residents would be drinking recycled sewerage! (Of course she meant recycled sewage.)

Perhaps the extra r’s could be put back into secretary or February.

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Woo-hoo! The clouds were largely gone tonight and we got a clear view of McNaught’s Comet from our front deck!

I might never see another comet again in my life. I doubt the view will ever be as clear. In 1986 we got up at 2 am and drove out of Canberra (where I lived) to see Halley’s Comet. All we saw was a small, fuzzy, whitish patch in the night sky. Tonight’s view was much better:

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Thanks to Simon Willison’s clear description of how to delegate an OpenID, I can use michaelstrasser.com as my OpenID URL.

In my previous investigations of OpenID I hadn’t discovered delegation. Brilliant!

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The latest web idea that might catch on is revyu (and it’s alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha alpha, so don’t expect too much).

It looks like a good idea, but to use it I need to create yet another bloody net login! Aren’t we past that yet? Why no OpenID?

I almost Googlewhacked with a search for revyu openid: two pages generated by del.icio.us and one No such article from Gmane.

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Phew! I did goodest at the Are You Gooder at Grammar? quiz:

OK, so it’s really about punctuation, but it is fun.

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When I got my PowerBook nearly two years ago I started using NeoOffice for office documents. It is a Mac-specific port of OpenOffice.org and was a bit slow on the PB, but usable. I don’t use office apps very much at home and it was perfectly adequate for my needs.

After upgrading to the MacBook Pro I had to ditch NeoOffice because it didn’t work on Intel-powered Macs. It was also based on OOo version 1.x so it was a bit out of date. I switched to the OOo version 2 release that uses Mac’s X11.

OOo worked fine (but not very Mac-like) until last week, when it broke: it wouldn’t even start. The killer was probably Apple’s X11 update which I automatically installed (as you do…). Installing a new version of OOo and deleting OOo pref files did not fix things.

I couldn’t be bothered trawling the Net for solutions, reverting X11, etc. (the usual geeky fix-it-yourself stuff) so I took another look at NeoOffice. Lo and behold! the NeoOffice team had updated it to be based on OOo 2.x and to work on Intel Macs. A double bonus.

It is in beta but has worked fine for me so far. I can use the Command key again (As God Intended™). I have even donated money to support NeoOffice development.

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