Captain America, Ice Cream, and Tools...how Red-Blooded is that?

So the first images of Captain America (aka "Cap", "Wing Head") for the upcoming movie "Captain America: The First Avenger" (in theaters July 22, 2011) have been released at Comic-Con . I have to say for the most part I like it. A bit rougher and raw than his comic book costume (and a bit like the leather get-up worn by Daredevil in the 2003 film). However one thing I've always liked about Cap's gear are the wings on his head and they're missing here. No idea why I like them, but without them it just doesn't quite look like Cap. We'll see what happens when Cap shows up in the Avengers movie; maybe he'll get his wings back - given the that this happens a number of decades after his "creation" during WWII it's possible he'll have a different look (long story but he was injected with a "super soldier" serum and bombarded with "vitarays" which transformed him into a perfect human specimen...thus he doesn't age.)

The only "odd" thing about the casting of the movie is that Chris Evans has been cast in the part. Why odd? Because he also played the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four movies...if you're not in the know, Cap and the Fantastic Four are both part of the Marvel Comics universe. This caused a bit of a stir in the Marvel fan base. Such is life, and I think Chris will do the role justice. Honestly, if I were an actor it would be the one super hero role I'd want the most and be the most afraid to play - the character has literally been around since WWII, is pretty much universally loved by comic book fans, and is the embodiment of all that is good about America - those are some big shoes to fill.

I'm a self-admitted DIY kind of guy and have a workshop full of tools to back that claim up. Power tools and hand tools. No doubt power tools make a lot of mundane jobs quick and easy - I'd be lost without my cordless drill; I use it more as a screw gun than a drill and it makes putting in an taking out screws and bolts a cinch...I remember (not too fondly) helping my father put in and take out screws by hand when I was a kid. Ugh. However, there is a lot to be said about hand tools in certain situations and I've come to see them in a whole new light. I recently bought my first bench plane - not a high quality one as I simply wanted to explore what I can do with it. I'm already hooked and ready to spend some money on a better one. This past Christmas I received a high-end dovetail saw (and wrote about it in an earlier posting). I'd also love to have a set of wood carving tools.

The short of it is that hand tools are a pleasure to use, especially when they are high quality ones. That's the key. I've discussed this before - buying cheap tools is never worth the savings. You can find a fantastic selection of high-end tools at Lee Valley. Check it out.

If you’ve ever been a tinkerer, or you’re some kind of mechanical-electronics whiz kid, or you just like neat-o gadgets, you definitely need to check out kipkay.com.

In a nutshell, hacker-modifier extraordinaire Kip Kedersha takes fairly common household items (often electronics) then shows you how to, via a short video clip, modify, hack, and combine them in unique ways that result in cool stuff. Like a Bic lighter turned into a laser lighter that lights fireworks and cigars. Kip also can save you a load of money by, for example, modifying a $5 flashlight to outperform a $95 high-end model. With a little bit of knowledge and some extra parts readily available at places like RadioShack, Kip does some pretty remarkable things. He’s also got a few pranks up his sleeve, of course. How about a calculator that talks to the user when they hit the = button? Or a stapler that squirts blood? Brilliant.

Two of the cooler hack-tricks? Jimmying a “single-use” digital camera so that you can use it again and again … for free (instead of paying the fee to retrieve your pictures only to toss it out). And the night-vision headset was sort of bad-ass, too, with the quality far better than most commercially available models.

Granted, most of the hacks require that you have some more-than-basic tools at your disposal and at least a rudimentary knowledge of electronics. For most of the projects, he provides parts lists (and links for where to get them) in addition to the videos, along with detailed directions. Personally, I think they it’s a great way to figure out how things work, and since the projects all result in fun gadgets, it’s also the perfect way to spend time with your kids while you both learn.

I’m thinking my first attempt will be the modified flashlight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

It’s summer and it’s been hot, hot, HOT here in New Jersey. Like record-breaking hot. What’s a person to do to cool off other than languish in front of the air conditioner or soak in a pool till your fingers and toes become prune-like? I’ve got a sweet idea—ice cream! And not just grocery store schlock, but some of the best darn ice cream in the country. You heard me: Not just the best in the area or the state but…

The. Best. In. The. Country.

A recent ranking of the top ten best ice cream purveyors in the country gives Jersey not one but two of the coveted spots on the list (the only state with two on the list, in fact). And guess what else? One of those places is practically in our backyard, in Princeton right on Nassau Street. If you haven’t guessed by now it’s (drumroll, please) none other than Thomas Sweet, home of the blend-in and various other frozen confections.

Now, I’ve been going to Thomas Sweet since I was in college, so I’ve always known how good it is; but it gives me great pleasure that others beyond Central Jersey will find out soon, too. And with this nationally published ranking, I’m going to guess that it might get a tad busy over there on Nassau Street, especially on Friday and Saturday nights in the summer. So, you might think about heading out to the Thomas Sweet Café in Montgomery off of Route 206 North, or if you don’t mind a bit of a drive, there’s a Thomas Sweet on Easton Avenue in New Brunswick, about a block from the Old Queens building at Rutgers College (yeah, I know; technically there’s no longer a Rutgers College, per se; just a Rutgers University, but old habits die hard and I haven’t completely bought into that whole name-switch thing).

And what about that other top-ten New Jersey ice cream parlor? It’s Springer’s Homemade Ice Cream in Stone Harbor.

Regardless of your current locale, grab the family one of these hot nights and head on over for a sweet treat to beat the heat.

And...at this point the joke has been going on so long I have to continue with it so here she is...

Larissa vs. Kim, Trends and Bread Clips...

Well, 50% of the world's population is breathing a sigh of relief as Larissa Riquelme, the lingerie model from Paraguay, has announced she will run nude through the streets of Asuncion despite her home country being knocked out of the World Cup. She made this decision to give "a present" to those hard-working players who brought pride and recognition to her country. Umm...honestly, I think Ms. Riquelme brought more recognition to her country than the national futball team.

For those of you not in the know, she had pledged to run clad only in body paint the colors of the Paraguayan flag if the team won the World Cup. Upon that announcement, in addition to a world-wide drop in Viagra sales, Paraguay suddenly had pretty much the support of any man from any country knocked out of contention...and probably quite a bit of support (even if in secret) from fans whose team was still in the hunt. I can guarantee this will be a historic run, thoroughly documented by the media with the particular photo assignment being eagerly sought after by sports photographers the world over...and just about any other guy even remotely involved in media. Suddenly the lowly photographer at Sports Illustrated who has covered South American sports in backwater towns for years while suffering the teasing of his colleagues assigned to "more prestigious" assignments like the NFL Combine now has most coveted job in sports.

As usual, visit Dave over at The Savage Truth for better sports analysis and better jokes.

Your Ride: Using that amazing thing called Google, I saved at least $500 if not closer to $1000 on car repair bills. Here's the deal - the AC in my Volvo would stop blowing cold air after 15 minutes or so. If I turned if off for about 10 minutes or more, it would blow cold again for a while before stopping again. Puzzling. When I had the car in the shop for routine maintenance, I asked them to look into it but they couldn't duplicate the problem (and pretty much treated me like I was an idiot with questions like "Did you have the AC turned on?"). 

By visiting a few online forums like Volvospeed and Volvoforum I determined this was actually not an uncommon problem. After reading through a number of the postings, I narrowed my problem down to being that the AC compressor clutch was starting to wear down and the gap to engage too big. Solution: shim it. Recommended method to shim it? Use bread bag plastic clips and Super Glue...no joke!! It took about 10 minutes to fix and now my car AC works perfectly...critically important since it's been over 100 degrees these past few days here in Jersey! Lesson learned? Before taking your car in for potentially expensive repairs, poke around on the web to learn what you can about the problem (especially on owner-forums), and determine if there is an easy and inexpensive way to DIY.

Trends: Speaking of Google, if for no other reason than being bored check out Google Trends. You can type in search words or terms to see how often they are being looked for, even comparing them against other words. There's also a listing of the Top Ten Trends and Searches on Google - some interesting stuff sometimes! For example, type in aforementioned model, "Larissa Riquelme" a comma and then "Kim Kardashian" and you can see that the very attractive Ms. Riquelme was not on the radar until June 14 of this year then suddenly shot up on June 28 (while Kim has held relatively steady for about 3 years), out-stripping (pun definitely intended) searches for Kim due to her announcement of a clothing-free run. The letters indicate news stories about the topic in question, listed to the right of the graph. Below there is additional info on the search term - what country, city and language for which the term was most popular. For Ms. Riquelme, not surprisingly the highest number of searches come from her home country of Paraguay, but oddly enough the language with the most searchers was not Spanish but Korean! For more mundane topics, there is often seasonality such as "Tour de France" in July, "pie" around Thanksgiving and, oddly enough, the searches for "weddings" literally spikes the day after Christmas year-after-year (guess what she got for Christmas).

Le Tour: It's been an exciting first few days of le Tour de France thus far with a seemingly excessive amount of crashes and riders out of the race already (note: anyone who thinks bike racing is for wimps should check out the crashes and the resulting blood and broken bones). On the second day of racing, after nearly 223 km (138 miles) of riding there were three major crashes inside the last 3 km, one of which blocked the narrow road entirely and brought the peleton (the main body of riders) to a complete stop! In the GC (General Classification aka Yellow Jersey aka Maillot Jaune) standings there are a few surprises at this point although Contador looks well-placed going into the Alps in a few days when Stage 7 begins. Lance is a bit further back after suffering from two punctures on the tricky cobblestone stage. Probably the biggest shocker thus far is the Manx Missile, Mark Cavendish, being in 36th place in the Points Standings for the best sprinter. He's figured as a major factor for the Maillot Vert (Green Jersey) but has so far been rendered impotent while his main competition, Thor Hushovd, leads in Points with 80 total to Cavendish's 15. Stay tuned!

Guy Books - Are you guys looking for good beach-reading material this summer? I've got some for you. Normally my wife (and sometimes the kids too!) likes to gently tease me about my usual reading selections and their general lack of excitement...such as Understanding Wood, The Intelligent Investor, The Handplane Book, and other such non-fiction fare. However I do have one favorite fiction author who writes action-packed historical fiction. Meet (if you aren't already familiar with him) Bernard Cornwell, one of the most prolific writers out there. For the most part he writes series - which is great since I have always enjoyed his books so much I want more of the characters - with my favorite to date being The Saxon Stories. Five books (and counting) written in the first person, the series follows the life of Uhtred, a warrior in 9th century Saxon Britain/England (or what will one day become England). Many of the characters portrayed are figures known to history and the larger framework of the books follows historical events. So if you're up for page-turning adventures back and forth across the landscape, mighty battles, definite bad guys (more often-than-not a demonic member of the clergy), switching allegiances as necessary, comely women, drunken victory feasts...it's all there.

Bike Races, Fireballs, 4th of July, Kim in Wax...and traffic from California (??!!)

Haven't figured out why, but my site is getting an inordinate amount of traffic from California. Certainly not complaining! Just leaves me scratching my head, especially since it's fairly evenly distributed around the state with a slight clustering in the LA area. So if you're in CA, drop me a line at thebalancedguy@gmail.com and tell me how you landed here. Small aside - if you have a website but don't use Google Analytics, you really should if you want to track visits to your site and just about any other metric you can think of.

On a related note, you may have noticed in the last couple of months, any books I discuss (and other items) are now accompanied not only but a pic of the cover but a link to the item on Amazon so you can click through and buy it. Had my first commission from Amazon recently from a book I recommended, Enough by John Bogle. I don't think I'll be retiring just yet...however that $0.28 is a start! 

 

 

Fourth of July - Summer is full-upon us with the Fourth of July weekend in a couple of days. Due to the tough economy many localities have canceled fireworks displays; sad but if it means keeping a few more cops on the beat or teachers in the classroom I'm all for it. However, there are still fireworks shows to be found; here is a partial listing of where to find displays around the country:

USA (biggest ones nationwide)

USA (another list)

Atlanta

Baltimore, MD area

Boston

Branson, MO (Ozark region)

Chicago

Colorado

Dallas region

Disney World (Florida)

Houston

Kansas City

Los Angeles area (since I'm getting a lot of traffic from there!)

Miami

Michigan

New Jersey

NYC

Phoenix area

Philadelphia

Pittsburgh

Rhode Island

St. Louis

San Francisco (Bay area)

Seattle

Tulsa

Washington DC

 Tour De France - This weekend also starts one of the great annual athletic and spectator events of the world, the Tour de France - otherwise known as "Le Tour". This year marks Lance Armstrong's finale in the sport (or so he claims...for the second time), but at nearly 39 years old, he's got to be nearing the end of his ability to win despite his otherworldly cardiovascular system. Look for a major battle between Armstrong and Alberto Contador (winner in 2009 and 2007 and Lance's former teammate).

With 21 stages, including the Prologue, taking the cyclists along speedy flats, rolling hills, and lung-burning, leg-searing, unbelievably steep Alpine roads, it's a true test of endurance with only two rest days along the way. It winds its way across France (and this year the Netherlands), totaling a mind-numbing 2,263 miles in length (that's further than riding your bike from Atlanta to LA...at top speed...in only three weeks).

Some people might find the sport a bit mystifying or even boring. What can be so exciting about watching a bunch of skinny guys ride bikes? The same might be said of baseball - what's so exciting about watching a bunch of (sometimes) fat guys stand around watching another guy hit a ball? Here's the catch - they both can be likened to a game of chess, requiring strategy, cunning, skill, and an ability to read not only the current situation but see several steps ahead. Le Tour offers the viewer wild crashes, crazy sprint finishes, white-knuckle mountain road descents, drama, and amazing feats of endurance and gamesmanship. Not only that but there are few other world-class sporting events (if any) where the spectators can literally reach out and touch the athletes. Add to all this the spectacular scenery of the French countryside and you have a recipe for great viewing.

Here's the link to the official Tour website and here is my favorite website from Yahoo-EuroSport for following le Tour during its annual three-week run. The Eurosport site provides not only great coverage but a fantastic real-time race follower (should you be trapped in the office or away from Versus television channel). While there are other Tour-like races such as the Giro d'Italia (Italy) and the Vuelta a Espana (Spain), le Tour c'est le Roi (the King)!

In a very small nutshell, here's the gig (if you want a better primer that explains not only the rules but the history and strategies try Tour de France for Dummies) - it's a team sport with 22 invited teams, each with 9 riders (no substitutions allowed). The big, obvious goal is to win the entire freakin' thing, earning the top rider the Maillot Jaune (Yellow Jersey - yellow because that's the color of the newsprint the original sponsor of the tour, the newspaper, L'Auto, was printed on...they think. Same reason the winner of the Giro d'Italia wins a pink jersey - the sponsor's paper, La Gazzetta dello Sport, is printed on pink paper). Each team has a leader who is generally expected to compete to wear the yellow at the end with the other 8 riders supporting him along the way. You win by having the lowest cumulative elapsed time for all the stages. That's the ultra-simplified version.

Of course there are other jerseys and awards besides the yellow jersey: the green jersey for the best sprinter (determined by winning points at various intermediate sprints along each stage as well as at the end of stages, the polka-dot jersey for the King of the Mountains (the best climber), the white jersey for the best young rider (under 26), the most combative rider (the rider who brought the most excitement to the race the previous day), the team prize (awarded by adding the times for each teams best three riders each day; lowest cumulative total at the end wins) and finally, Lanterne Rouge (red light) for the rider with the overall slowest time. However, given the extreme difficulty in actually finishing the race, this is not wholly a bad award and all the riders completing le Tour pay respects to the man awarded la Lanterne Rouge.

On any given day, depending on the standings, the weather, what day on le Tour it is (a factor with respect to endurance), and what type of stage (mountains, flat, time trial, etc) you can expect to see different cyclists taking center stage. If it's a sprint day expect to see the sprinters - guys like Cavendish, Hushovd, McEwen, and Boonan - featured front and center. Sprint finishes can be pretty exciting to watch. If a mountain stage, look for riders like Contador, Fedrigo and Martinez as they push their bikes at unreal speeds up slopes you might want climbing gear to get up. This year there is only one time trial, an individual one, set for the 19th stage. Given the next day (the final, 20th stage) is usually nothing more than a ceremonial victory ride into Paris for the winner, having a time trial the day before could prove to be high drama if the race is still close at this late stage, especially if it's raining.

So if you've not ever watched le Tour, I highly recommend you do this year (it's broadcast live in the US on Versus - formerly Outdoor Life Network). The excitement builds over the three weeks of competition and you'll witness one of the greatest sporting events in the world.

Star Gazing - I recently took my Cub Scout Den Star Gazing - well actually more like moon gazing since the night I had planned was the evening before a full moon. Luckily I thought about the lunar calendar a week or so ahead of time, then checked my family's summer schedule and realized it was pretty much that night or not since two weeks later during the new moon we would be out of town. Then we'd have to wait another full month until the next new moon.

Anyway, it turned out to be just fine since I have a telescope and turned it into a night of moon gazing instead. Most of the boys (and their parents) had never looked at the moon through a telescope. That night they were able to see mountains and craters as well as identify features shown on the moon maps I had printed out. Mars was also out that night and they got a chance to see it, although through my telescope it just looks like an orange circle. Due to the nearly full moon and relatively early hour after sunset, few stars were visible except for the brightest ones. Not surprisingly, most of the 8-year-old boys did not know even the most basic constellations; more surprisingly, most of the parents didn't know the major constellations visible. Nevertheless, everyone enjoyed learning how to locate and identify the Big Dipper and North Star.

If you've never been star gazing, I highly recommend you do. You can find a listing of top-notch star gazing locations here. A few things have to line up in order to make the most of it: the night (or a day or two either side) of a new moon, no clouds, and be far enough away from light pollution. Visit skymaps.com to print out a star chart for the correct month (in the northern hemisphere), bring a compass along to get your bearings and a red-light flashlight to read your star chart. Make sure you DO NOT use a regular flashlight; the white light will really screw up your night vision. You need to be outside in the dark for 20-30 minutes before you really are able to see well at night and any white light will set you back.

If you take the time to allow your eyes to adjust to being in the dark, lay back on a blanket (put on bug spray!), and then find the easy stars and constellations, pretty soon you'll be able to identify the more obscure ones or even find your Zodiac sign (if it's out that time of year). No doubt, if you watch the heavens for more than 15-20 minutes you'll also see a shooting star or two. I've spent many nights outside looking at the stars and so have seen countless meteors over the years (even two fireballs), and I'm always surprised when people tell me they've never seen one because they're actually fairly common.

Wax Museums - I've never had much interest in visiting Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, but now that Kim Kardashian is being memorialized in wax...nah...just not the same. Nevertheless, it's true..odd but true. Wonder if she'll be too hot and the wax will melt...?