Adidas Kanadia TR 3 winter running shoes with screws

This winter I'm really willing to run outdoors. Until now, I was always afraid of doing that, but after some research on the internet, I've found the screws attached on the bottom would do a nice job, so, I wanted to share what I did with my pair of running shoes.

These are the screws I used

My pair of Adidas Kanadia TR 3 Winter

20 screws on each shoe

I went for a short 3K run to test these bad boys. There were patches of ice because we had a freezing rain 2 days ago and the temperature dropped so that the snow was hard. A perfect scenario to try them out.

If feels strange because of the noise on the asphalt, and on the ice you really have a grip BUT (there's a big BUT) you have to be careful. Change of pacing is inevitable. I didn't fall but there were times that I felt my shoes slipping.

Now, when I changed the surface where some parts were packed snow and some other were a mix of icy patches and snow under, then, these shine. The grip is amazing. I could speed up the pace and did some testing like stopping in an emergency, and it held well.

To summarize, yes, you can run on black ice and the screws will grip on it, but, be careful. It's still slippery.

On a mix of packed, icy snow, these are excellent.

I'm considering maybe put some more on the front of the shoes to have an even height. When I was on the road, I could feel the difference.

Happy running folks!!!

Black Diamond Storm with UFO light

This is my new setup for a run in the dark. I coupled it with the UFO red lights in the headband.

Garmin 405CX heart rate strap while sleeping

So last tonight I decided to sleep with my heart rate strap on to see my average bpm and to determine my resting heart rate. I turned it off after 3:30hrs of sleep. Interesting to see the graphic. My average was 44bpm and the lowest recorded was 38bpm.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/211514193

Enjoy!

My heart rate while sleeping

Inside my Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG

To all of you who's curious about how a lens look like from the "inside". I decided to dismantle (it was some while ago) my Sigma 24-70 2.8 EX DG because there was some strange noise in the zoom ring. Looked like something was loose (and indeed was). A small bolt was not in place.

Here I put some photos of my adventure. (note: after I mounted it, it worked perfectly, so if you know what you're doing, you're golden !)

Hope you enjoy !

My Sony DSC-HX9V flash does not pop-up !!!

My compact camera is a Sony DSC-HX9V. Amazing compact with a big 16x optical zoom lens. Today I needed to use it and wanted my pop-up flash to work (usually I don't use the flash).

But, to my surprise, it was not popping-up. To solve this, I had to put in manual mode, set the flash to "always" and while pressing the shutter, I used my nail and gently pull out the flash. It worked !!! From now on, I will at least turn it on once a day (ok... maybe not once a day... but once a week...)

Cheers !

Dual monitor onboard MSI 880G-E45 motherboard

So I wanted to connect 2 monitors using my onboard video from my MSI 880G-E45 motherboard. I could do it but using one high def and VGA (DVI + VGA or HDMI + VGA).
Connecting DVI and HDMI didn't work. So the idea now was to plug another video card and use the DVI from the onboard and from the video card.
I tried several combinations of primary graphics adapter in the BIOS and my PCI-e video card. No kudos.
I ended up buying an EVGA 8400GS and now I'm a happy user of a dual monitor setup (DVI + HDMI).

Don't forget to turn on your PC before removing the CPU heatsink !

I just bought a new CPU heatsink, the Cooler Master Hyper 212+ to replace my stock one in my AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition processor.
After carefully reading the instructions on how to install the new cooler, I unpacked it and had everything ready to roll.
Now it was time to remove my stock cooler. I unscrewed the base that goes attached to the motherboard and started removing it from the CPU. It was hard. Damn... I thought, maybe it's like that... and continued until I got it. But, for my surprise, the CPU came TOGETHER in the heatsink. My heart was beating fast. I checked the pins... everything seemed ok...

Found some posts to heat the heatsink using a heatgun. I used a hair dryer to heat the copper base (not the CPU itself) and carefully started twisting the CPU right to left until it started moving... and voilà... the CPU unglued.
I plugged it in and mounted the new cooler. I was so luck that nothing was damaged.


So, a word of caution. ALWAYS turn on your PC to heat up the CPU before taking it apart.