return void;

I must have felt a little crazy agreeing to go on my first mountain bike trail ride ever in the 103 degree temperature, but Erwin Park was calling and a bike was waiting. An acquaintance of mine offered to let me use his mountain bike for the trails, and on our way over to the park he was explaining how to handle certain situations, and techniques needed for completing the course in one piece. When we arrived at the park there were quite a few cars, much to my surprise.

We quickly got the bikes off the roof of the car, attached the front wheels and I was getting a feel for the bike on asphalt before heading towards the trail. Despite what people say, “once you learn how to ride a bike you never forget”, the actual balance act may be true, but the handling and feel for the bike is just as different as various cars, especially when the terrain is made up of extremely dry dirt which has been grinded into a fine powder in spots.

The trails were not much wider than twenty-four inches wide, and the land was suffering from any sort of adequate rain fall making the course very fast and slippery. After a short distance we headed into the shade of the trees, maneuvering between branches, hairpin turns, gaps and roots left on the trail as “obstacles”. We reached the first steep decline and I was instructed to hold the back brake and let the rear wheel lock up, essentially skidding all the way down. It was a strange experience down this, but I managed my way down the first decline without falling off (yay!).

The dense trees offered little to no reprieve from the heat as we rode, and I had a fair share of “touches” with my foot trying to go around trees, roots, or other things left on the trail. I was having a hard time trusting my instincts to guide me through the turns I was currently on, and looking to the next – there were several times I caught myself caught looking just in front of me, thankfully I didn’t take a header into a tree due to this little lapse.

A dip into a small ravine was next, the drop was close to twelve feet down with the path at what seemed like just steeper than a 45 degree angle. The other side up was just as steep and a turn was going to maneuvered though along with a tree root, and unlike the other one you needed enough speed going down to assist you in getting up the other side before succumbing to incline and toppling over backwards. I took a deep breath and flew down the hill with determination to make it up the other side with out taking a header before getting there, and much to my delight the down portion was quite a rush – similar to that of a roller coaster. The up part didn’t turn out so well as my momentum quickly disappeared and I couldn’t crank in time to save myself from having another touch, so close to the top. Ultimately, it was a success, and what a rush.

The ride continued though more trees, and then we made it to an open field full of weeds which had been burned to a brown crisp. You could feel the heat radiating off, blasting you in the face with a strange musty scent. This was one of the fastest parts of the trail for me as I started to pedal with confidence that I wasn’t going to take a header into a tree or go flying into a ravine. Never had a hot breeze felt so good either, as the blazing sun was relentless, I was beginning to hope I was drinking enough water from my camelback, so I wouldn’t succumb to the heat.

Part two of the ride seemed a little more advanced than the first half, as the dips came in multiples with turns and tree roots to negotiate as you reached the top. I chose the high path on one portion, but there were two others which I was going to have to take head on. Outside of a few close calls, and brushing up against a couple of trees with my shoulder I turned out okay. I had a good time riding the trails and liked its variety, but I am not sure if I prefer it to riding on the road, but you have to worry about cars when you are on the road.

I had a great time riding today, despite the heat, and I look forward to riding again.

That’s right, this week’s Grinds My Gears is about Apple’s recent abuse of the patent system. In case you didn’t wanted to take the time to read the entire article, Apple has decided to start handing out cease and desist letters to any company using the word “POD” in their products. Their reasoning is that consumers may confuse these products with the iPod product line.

Apparently, Apple has decided the word ‘pod’, in which they stuck the letter ‘i’ in front of, cannot be used by anyone else. From my understanding, patent laws prevent a company from owning common language words. What Apple is attempting to do is own a TON of words in the English language. In fact, under their assinine reasoning, the band POD might confuse me with the portable music player.

Screw you Apple, those third party products make up half of the iPod’s success. Since there are so many accessories to the iPod, they boost the continued sales of the device. If the PODSkins boost sales of the iPod by 10%, shut up and enjoy the unauthorized bonus. How could anyone mistake any one of the 500-something accessories and non-related items? For shame Apple, many years you have been casting a sour look at Microsoft for their heavy-handed tactics and here you are trying to defend ownership of an English word.

What’s next, are you going to claim ownership to the letter ‘i’? Am I not allowed to use it in a sentance now? Shall we stop using the term podcasting? That whole technology was birthed in the Era of the Pod. Perhaps the product should have been centered around a popular vowel and a commonly used word relating to peas.

While I am at it, perhaps Google should just shut the hell up as well. For years, they’ve been wanting to become synonymous with “search.” Congratulations, the term “googling it” or “googled it” (google as a verb) has made it to main stream media. It is official, when most people think of search, they think of Google. So what the hell is the problem? They go to all of that trouble to create a brand, promote the hell out of it, strive to be the best, and then when the word becomes common place, they complain that it loses its meaning. That is a very self-defeating marketing strategy.

I’ll never understand how a company can go to such great lengths to control your thought and speech so much so that you think of and speak of ther brand, yet don’t let it disassociate it with the actual product. Screw you both. In fact, here’s a nice search that will surely piss off a few companies.

Back in March (2006), I searched many countless hours and poured of countless reviews to find the perfect MP3 player. I needed a flash MP3 player to use while running as the crappy old MiniDisc player was just not cutting it. Well, to be honest, I don’t want it to be just an MP3 player, I wanted to play Ogg Vorbis and Flac files. As it turns out, VERY few players actually play Flac, but more and more are adding Ogg support. One in particular caught my eye.

The Samsung YP-Z5 (ZB). This is the player created by Iventor, the creator of the original iPod click-wheel. I read many underground reports about alleged Ogg support and then stumbled across AnythingButiPod’s review of the sweet device. I’ll spare you the obnoxious amatuer photos and refer you to their rather graphic images (they took the device completely apart). Once I read this, I was hooked. I walked into Best Buy and plunked down $150 for the 1GB version (I was unsure of Samsung’s quality) and a DJO neoprene armband.

I should note that Samsung has not yet officially claimed Ogg support (in any of their packaging or marketing materials). In fact, very few sites mention it, even in the reviews. Amazon (at one point) did not have Ogg file format listed as one of the supported formats (I believe this has changed).

One concern of mine was that MTP devices would be a problem. MTP is a protocol invented my Microsoft and like many of their products, it sucks. I was looking for a USB Mass Storage device that would hook up to my Gentoo machine as a SCSI device like my flash card reader. The salesman at Best Buy was actually helpful (first time EVER) and was able to tell me that most flash players are actually MTP. Well, the second I brought the device home, I tried to get Ogg support working in Windows first; lets just say that Microsoft’s support for Ogg is less than stellar. Even after I had the plugin installed and actually working, the files were dropped in the device outside of the Music folder (I’ll explain how I know this later). I think I’m going to have to write a Grinds My Gears about WMP because the interface to creating playlists and syncing to devices is deplorable.

I was curious, so I plugged the device into my Dell monitor USB 2.0 hub connected to my Gentoo machine. Lo’ and behold, the player hooked up as a UMS device! I’ve been reading around the net that this DID NOT work in Windows, but in Linux it worked like a charm. That’s right, my hardware worked better in Linux than Windows. Come to find out, you can actually use GPhoto to communicate with MTP as well as PTP, but there was no point.

After I hooked up the device, it let me magically create and move any file I felt like anywhere I felt like. All I had to do was mount the device with the SCSI device file (sdf1 on my system, ‘mount /dev/sdf1 /mnt/samsungz5′). Ogg files copied with the greatest of ease. I now have NO devices that only work in Windows; that includes my Kodak camera, Easyshare printerdock, Cannon scanner, and now my Samsung YPZ5 Ogg player.

The player lives up to the hype. The battery works as estimated, even when playing Ogg files. I found out about a recent firmware upgrade that adds UMS support to Windows (haha, I’ve had it for months) and On-The-Go Playlists (“Mobile Playlist”). All you have to do is copy the DAT file to the root of the device and follow the reboot instructions provided in the download. The OTG playlist support is the sweetest new feature. This finally lets me create a good mix for my timed races. You can also browse files as they appear on the filesystem (rather than browsing the tags).

So in conclusion, I eagerly await the Next Big Thing from Samsung. Hopefully I will be able to afford something around 8GB.