Bike + Tech Gadgets = My New Parlee Z5 SLi

Those of you that have known me for awhile are aware that two of my personal hobbies/passions are cycling and tech gadgets.  Well, a few months back I decided to pull the trigger on a new bike, and after going back and forth on all the available options I finally settled on the recently released Parlee Z5 SLi frame, married with Shimano Dura-Ace components.  And not just any Dura-Ace component group, mind you, but the latest DI2 electronic shifting version of it.  That's where the gadgetry comes in, and the resulting combination is oh so sweet.

The idea of electric shifting is not new, and in fact back in the 90's the French component manufacturer Mavic came out with the Zap electronic shifting system...and sure enough, yours truly was one of the early adopters of it.  I will say this...when it worked it worked pretty well, but after a few unfortunate mishaps I gave up on it and went back to a more traditional setup.  Then finally, a couple of years ago Shimano announced the new DI2 system, and knowing how good Japanese companies do electronics I just knew that one day I would have to have it.  One of the issues with DI2, though (well, other than the expense), is that with all the electrical wiring running around it doesn't make for a very clean look on the bike.  So, that's where the Parlee comes in.  I've always admired Parlee for their handiwork and they were always near the top of my list for my next frame.  And I always respected the fact that they only cared about making the best frames possible rather doing anything gimmicky like weird tube shapes or loud paint schemes.  So when the Z5 SLi came out I just knew I had to have it.  The "SL" stands for "super light", and at 820 grams it is indeed one of the lightest frames in the world.  And the "i" in SLi stands for "internal routing", which means the frame is pre-drilled to allow the electrical wires to run inside of the frame vs. routing them externally and looking a tad ugly.  The result is simply awesome!

I think pictures are worth a thousand words here, so let the cameras roll.  First up, here is the bare frame and fork, just after I unboxed it at my bike shop.  See the hole close to where the down tube meets the heat tube?  That's for the internal wiring:

I debated quite awhile between going with a traditional gloss finish vs. the matte finish that is very popular today.  I'm glad I went with matte, as in addition to looking great it has bit of stealthiness to it that I like a lot. And the Parlee guys did a fabulous custom paint job for me with the white racing logos, the stealthy head tube logo and just a hint of pink in a couple of places.

And just to prove I wasn't lying earlier, here's the frame up on the scale...yup, just .82 kg:

One of the cooler things I did was to substitute the stock Shimano lithium iron battery with Calfee Design's new version which mounts inside of the seat post.  Normally the DI2 battery would need to be mounted somewhere on the frame itself; again, rather ugly.  Here's a picture of the seat post (incl. battery) being installed in the frame:

In case you're wondering if you need to remove the seat post in order to recharge the battery, the answer is no.  The latest version of the Calfee battery allows you to charge it through a connector attached to the rear derailleur...very cool indeed!

I was told by my shop that getting all the wiring in place within the frame was a bit time consuming.  I guess this next picture (my favorite) says it all:

Is this a bicycle or a computer?  All those little zip ties actually serve a purpose...while inside of the frame they "hug" the surface of the frame so that the wires don't rattle around in there...pretty clever.

The electronic shifting is amazing.  The levers are located in the same locations as the non-electric version, but they act a bit more like buttons than levers since there's not as much throw to them.  As expected shifting is precise and flawless...it's also dead simple to make micro-adjustments to the rear derailleur - just hold the button on the "control panel" for a couple of seconds and then tap the levers in the proper direction.  Even more impressive in my opinion is the front derailleur; in addition to the flawless shifting the front derailleur auto-adjusts itself depending on the chain angle...no more having to manually trim!  You can also shift while braking as well as shift both derailleurs simultaneously - very nice!

The "control panel" is used to fine-tune the rear derailleur as well as check the strength of the battery

Here are a selection of other pictures:

The "cockpit".  Lots of wires and cables here, but all nice and tidy.  Enve bars and stem.  BTW, Enve also supplies Parlee with their forks.

Beautiful sculpted and beefy bottom bracket section.  172.5mm Dura-Ace cranks with standard 39/53 chainrings.

Dura-Ace electric rear derailleur - note the cabling being routed inside of the chainstay.

The "brains" of the system sit here on top of the Dura-Ace front derailleur.

The satellite rear shifters make it super easy to shift without having to take your hands off the bars.  The only "cost" is the additional 70 grams in weight - weight weenies be warned!







And here is the finished product. In addition to the Dura Ace gruppo I went with Enve for the seat post, bars (deep drop) and stem (12 cm.), Look Keo Ti pedals, San Marco Concor saddle (which I may switch out for something else) and Arundel carbon bottle cages.  The only items I didn't purchase new are the Dura-Ace C24 clincher wheels which I bought last year and my trusty Garmin Edge 500 cyclometer.  I also considered going with compact cranks as they are so in vogue now, but since the Euro pros aren't using compact I couldn't bear the thought of doing so myself!

The total package as seen weighs in at about 14 lbs, 12 oz, a bit under the UCI weight limit which means I can't legally ride the Tour de France :-)  Once I finally settle on a saddle the weight will go down an additional ounce or two, as the one I'm using now is not a carbon-railed version.  If I wanted to I could have gone much lighter, but I wanted components which I could use day in and day out under any conditions, with no hassles and with zero compromises.  The bike rides like a dream - fast and responsive, stiff but not overly so, and very comfortable to boot.  And of course, that flawless shifting!  Thanks a bunch to the folks at CycleSports Oakland who worked with me off and on over many months to get to this point.  Special thanks to Chris Blease who continually put up with all my questions and obsessive-compulsive behavior, and also many thanks to Tim Parker whose mechanical abilities are second to none and who is the only person I've let touch my bikes for most of these past 20 years.

My Ice Cream Sandwich is Quickly Melting

You know you're a tech/gadget geek when you decide to perform a major OS upgrade while on vacation...and in Sin City of all places.  But that's exactly what I did while I was in Vegas week before last.  I caught wind of the fact that the latest version of Android, 4.0 (aka "Ice Cream Sandwich") was slowly being released over-the-air for the Nexus S.  Of course, being my impatient self I couldn't wait for that and instead found a download link off of Google's servers and manually upgraded myself.  In typical Android fashion the upgrade process was very straightforward and in less than an hour I was up and running with the latest and greatest from Google.  So how's my Ice Cream Sandwich experience been since then?

Well, let me start out by saying that if you are current Nexus S owner and have not yet upgraded....please don't!  Google pulled the plug on the upgrade shortly after it was released due to a number of issues that were reported by early adopters.  In some cases the upgrade never completed and essentially bricked the phone, in other cases certain functions stopped working post upgrade (e.g. WiFi), and in a lot of cases, myself included, battery consumption has simply been atrocious since the upgrade.  Right now I'm lucky to get half a day of normal use out of my battery before it dies.  Some people say that turning off WiFi or disabling the Google+ app helps, but I've done both and it doesn't seem to matter.  I'm crossing my fingers that Google does something about this soon, and it's been such a royal pain in the ass that I'm even thinking of switching to Verizon and buying a Galaxy Nexus just so that I don't have to deal with it anymore.  And in addition to the power issue there are a couple of other major annoyances with ICS. Text rendering in Gmail and the browser seem to take forever sometimes, and some of my apps just appear to be more sluggish in general.

But despite all these issues there are some really nice enhancements with ICS.  The Gmail app is a lot more refined and intuitive, and some of the more commonly used functions (e.g. labels, mark as unread) have dedicated icons now instead of your having to pull up the options menu.  The notifications pulldown has also been enhanced to allow you to remove individual notifications by swiping them to the left.  This new swiping gesture has been applied to a number of other places within ICS as well.  Within Gmail you can swipe to go to the next/previous message, and within the "running apps" list you can kill specific apps by swiping them away - very nice.  There's also a really cool new feature which allows you to send one of five preconfigured (and customizable) text messages to a caller during an incoming call when you can't pick up the phone.   Ice Cream sandwich also seems to have addressed a couple of major issues that I often encountered with the Gingerbread OS.  Sometimes when I press on the "home" button it would take at least 15 seconds for the icons to appear, and even worse, sometimes the home screen itself would become totally unresponsive and I would have to power cycle the device to fix it.  Fortunately ICS addressed both of these issues.

Please Google, fix the damn battery issue and allow me to enjoy my Ice Cream Sandwich.

New Kindle is good but not quite on Fire

First off, in answer to the most obvious question...No, I really don't need yet another device to supplement my Macbook Pro, iPad and Nexus S smartphone.  But for $200 I really couldn't resist - compare that price to the price of the original Kindle.   Plus, as an Amazon Prime subscriber I felt if I got the Fire I would be more inclined to use the free services available to Prime subscribers, most notably the movies and TV shows that are available for free as part of my subscription.

My Kindle Fire arrived a day earlier than expected, which was a nice surprise.  Setup was a total breeze - When I turned the device on I went through a short setup process and was up and running in less than 5 minutes.  In fact, I didn't even have to enter my Amazon credentials since it assumed I was purchasing the device for myself and preauthorized my device...hmm, I wonder if that would be a problem if I were to buy one as a gift for somebody.  Anyway, once the setup was completed it instantly made available all of my digital Amazon content - books, videos, music, etc.  And it also made available all of the Amazon Appstore apps that I had previously purchased/installed on my Nexus S.  So far so good.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the form factor of the device itself, as most of the reviews I had read had bashed it.  At this point it's too early to say if a 7-inch screen is preferable to the 10 inches provided by the iPad and other devices, but it does make the device nearly pocketable and also more conducive to one-handed operations.  I also appreciate the rubberized backing and sides of the device, is it makes the device easy to hold for long periods of time.  This is something I don't like at all about the iPad 2, as its tapered edges make it very uncomfortable to hold for extended periods.

In terms of functionality, most of the built-in functions seem to work pretty well.  As others have pointed out, even though the Fire is Android-based you would hardly know that Android is being run under the covers due to the heavy customization made by the Amazon developers.  Video streaming, e-books, and music all worked without a hitch...nice job Amazon.  Some of the apps, however, were less than stellar.  The built-in mail app is really basic, and though it automatically configured my Gmail account it wouldn't detect my work email as also being Google-based and forced me to manually configure the IMAP settings...PITA.  And it seems like the vast majority of 3rd-party apps are still not optimized for tablet devices, so all you get is a bigger version of the phone app.  There are a few notable exceptions, however, like Evernote...those guys can do nothing wrong in my opinion!

By far the biggest disappointment is the performance of the much ballyhooed Silk browser.  In theory Silk was supposed to render pages more quickly than any mobile browser due to the fact that Amazon was using its own EC2 to serve and/or pre-cache a lot of your web content...resulting in fewer HTTP connections and speedier rendering.  But in reality the Silk browser is probably the slowest mobile browser I've used.  Perhaps Amazon hasn't enabled all of its fancy algorithms yet to optimize the Silk browsing experience, or maybe it needs to "learn" my browsing habits first.  I sure hope they address this, as Silk was one of the biggest reasons for my getting the device in the first place.

Am I going to keep the Fire?  Hard to say right now.  On the one hand it's a great content consumption device, particularly for Prime subscribers.  And for $200 you're getting great value for the dollar.  But it certainly won't replace my iPad, and apart from the integration with Amazon's own services it doesn't do anything that the iPad doesn't already do...and in most cases doesn't do them nearly as well.

As the Saying Goes, Once you Go Mac.....

Let me start out by just cutting to the chase...I'll never go back to Windows again!

Those that know me know that I've been weaning myself slowly off of Microsoft-based technologies.  It started off with moving off of MS Exchange, then Outlook, then Office...the last holdout being Windows itself.  But after my recent job switch I decided I needed to finally bite the bullet...plus I was envious of seeing all the "cool and hip" people toting their Macbooks around from place to place while I was still lugging my uncool and unhip Thinkpad.  I was told by several friends that the switch from Windows to Mac was going to be initially painful - one buddy of mine told me that "you will hate the damn thing for the first two weeks".  Plus, every time I would walk into an Apple store and start playing around with a Mac it would last less than 5 minutes, as I would get so frustrated not being able to right-click,  not figuring out how to resize a window, looking for the "file" menu, etc.  The other complication is the fact that for the life of me I could never get used to touchpad-style pointing devices - I was a firm believer of the Trackpoint and even preferred it over a regular mouse.    Anyway, I definitely had my work cut out for me.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the fact that I was only completely frustrated on the first day, and after the second day I already knew I had made the right decision and knew that I would never go back to a PC again.  I think there were a few reasons why the transition was not as painful as I had anticipated.  First off, the fact that I've owned an iPad for awhile has conditioned me to "think like a Mac user"...if that makes any sense. There are a number of similarities between Mac OS and iOS, and with the recent Lion release the two operating systems are even more alike than ever.  Secondly, I don't use a ton of keyboard macros, and the ones I do use are all the basic ones and so it's simply a matter of remembering to use the "command" key instead of "ctrl"...so I had a much easier time of it when compared to the MS Office super-user types who get thrown off by all the keyboard macro differences between PC and Mac.  And lastly, though I still miss the Trackpoint I've come to appreciate some of the benefits of the touchpad, particularly some of the multi-touch gestures that Mac OS provides.

Compared to Windows, Mac OS does seem to be a lot more stable and efficient in its use of system resources, and I've rarely run into issues that have caused me to reboot the machine, let alone encounter a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) equivalent.  With Windows I would periodically need to do a "therapeutic reboot" in order to free up system resources, or Windows itself would do that for me by blue-screening on me every once in awhile. And the hardware design of the Macbook Pro is so well thought out and the build quality is second to none.  I can't even hear my hard disk spinning unless I press my ear against its surface - you would think there was an SSD inside of the machine.  And all the little touches, such as the magnetically attached AC adapter and the little clips attached to the adapter that you wrap the cord around.  It's no wonder Apple has won all those awards for design excellence.

But despite all of the improvements, far and away the best thing about my Mac is the fact that I now have suspend/resume that actually works!  With Windows this has always been a crapshoot.  I've had so many occasions in the past where I shut the lid on my laptop, commute home or to the office, get there and discover my laptop is still burning hot because it never went into suspend mode.  Equally frustrating are the frequent occasions where you open the lid and wait for 10-15 minutes until you finally see the screen, all the while your hard disk is spinning away like crazy.  I remember at one of my startups when we were fundraising and seeing VC's on a regular basis.  We would go through this routine where we would open the lid on one of our laptops while parking the car,  and carry it with the lid still open while walking into the VC reception area.  We must have looked a bit silly, but we wanted to ensure our presentation/demo went without a hitch and didn't want to take a chance on the laptop screen staying blank.  It's so comforting now to be able to just shut/open the lid freely anytime I need to and know that my machine will just work.

Is the Mac perfect?  Heck no...there are a number of little things that still annoy me today.  Why Steve Jobs doesn't allow you to cut-and-paste files is beyond me.  And the fact that you can only see the "file" menu for the foreground app is a real pain in the butt. But overall it's been a great move for me, one that's been a long time coming.  I'm also relieved that my multi-year quest to divorce myself of all things Microsoft has finally come to end...well, at least until the Skype acquisition is complete.  I guess I still have a few months of freedom before needing to tackle this again!

Amazon Cloud Player vs. Google Music Beta

Last week Apple gave us a previous of iCloud and iOS 5 at its annual WWDC conference. What they showed was pretty impressive, but most of it is still beta and won't be generally available until the Fall.  Of particular interest to me are their plans around moving iTunes to the cloud and finally relieving us of the painful and outdated method of cabled sync in order to move content to mobile devices.  But if you're like me you don't live in a world where Steve Jobs has complete control over your mobile existence, there are a couple of Android-based alternatives available right now that you might want to look at;  Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta.

Amazon Cloud Player has been around for the past two months or so, and I've been using it off and on since then with generally good success.  They give everyone 5GB of storage for free, but as I mentioned in a prior blog post you can get an upgrade to 20GB by purchasing any album, including a bunch for just 99 cents.  Google Music Beta came out shortly after Amazon and gives you storage for up to 20,000 songs; plenty more than most people will require. I finally received an invite to the beta a couple of weeks ago and so I installed it right away and had a chance to compare it with Amazon.  Here's how the two offerings compare:

Installation: Both products download and install very easily, and both use a Flash-based component for scanning music on your local machine and uploading it to the cloud.  But they greatly differ in their approaches to this.  The Amazon uploader must be manually initiated, and once it kicks off it spends a few minutes analyzing your iTunes library, compares it to what's already been stored in the cloud, and then presents you a screen where you can either automatically upload all the music it finds that's not already in the cloud or selectively upload the playlists, albums, artists, etc. that you'd like to be synced.  It also provides a comprehensive report of content that it finds that it is unable to sync, e.g. DRM'd content.  By contrast, Google's default mode is to always run in the background and automatically upload new iTunes music to the cloud, without the user having to take action.  In theory this seems like a better and more elegant solution.  However, in my case the Google software consumed nearly all of the CPU on my machine while scanning/uploading my iTunes content, and to add to my frustration the upload process itself took an incredibly long time - roughly a couple of days to upload just 3500 songs.  In fact, the CPU consumption was so bad that I had to go into Task Manager and lower the priority of the Google music manager process.
Advantage: Amazon


Web Music Player: To be honest, I didn't spend much time using either player - after all, I've got iTunes running on my laptop!  But they both seemed to do the job, and Google's player has a few extra features such as thumbs up/thumbs down and keeping track of the play count.  But I do like the look of the Amazon player a little more, plus it has the advantage of being able to play music purchased from the Amazon MP3 store.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.


Mobile App: Both mobile apps did the job and generally worked well over Wi-Fi or when wireless coverage wasn't in issue.  But on several occasions the Google app would just stop midway through a song for no explainable reason.   I like the UI better on Amazon, and I like the fact that it lets you easily switch between music in the cloud vs. music sitting on your device.  Google lets you do this as well, but you have to go into one of the options settings in order to switch back and forth...a bit of a pain.   I've also used both applications during long bike rides that went through areas of spotty to low coverage, and I have to say that both applications had their share of issues when dealing with bad coverage and both frequently just stop working and never recover even when reception improves - maybe they should reverse engineer the Pandora app and figure out how they are so good at dealing with this. Google would also randomly skip both forwards and backwards within a song when experiencing reception issues...very strange.  Amazon performed a bit better, and I suspect it "reads ahead" within a playlist and stores upcoming songs within its local cache.  I'm sure Google does some of this too, but perhaps its cache is smaller.  One very annoying problem with Amazon is that it sometimes caches garbage for a song, and once it does then each time you play that song you'll hit that garbage and it just stops playing..at least until the cache is cleared.
Advantage: Amazon


iOS Support: Well, as you would expect neither offering has native iOS support, although both claim to be usable from Mobile Safari.  I was able to verify this myself using my iPad.
Advantage: Neither - it's a tie.


In summary, I have to give a slight edge to Amazon, although not by much.  And both companies need to spend time on their Android apps and improve their handling and recovery of reception issues.

Oh, and it looks like Spotify is close to launching here in the U.S....I can't wait.