Kristof Goossens

A friend had his phone stolen and I had the same model as he wanted, so i sold mine and bought an LG KP500 cookie since I wanted a cheap smartphone. I do love it as it has handwriting recognition, an acceptable camera (no flash or focus unfortunately) but a memory card slot at the side so I can quickly get it out and copy stuff from the card onto the pc and put music on the card. most smartphones have the card buried away underneath the battery so that it has to be taken apart, so this was a big selling point to me.

The supplied pc suite software is mediocre at best as it keeps crashing on my windows vista pc, but I did manage to get the contacts and important settings onto it after a few tries.  USB connection speed is very slow at best, so having the removable memory card really solves all this.

The email settings were a bit more difficult to set up so here they are for those using hotmail or gmail via a belgian base account. (Thanks to P. Suhas from the microsoft mobile support helpdesk for the settings and quick reply to help request)

and the BASE GPRS EMAIL settings are

I got a new set of gloves from chainreactioncycles. it’s the Dakine Cross-x glove. They fit perfectly and are very cool due to the mesh fabric, but the smell is truly awful. I’m going to put these in front of a fan for a while until the nasty chemical odour has worn off cause my hands smell as if I’ve been working on a toxic spill. There is a nice soft fabric on the thumb to swipe away the sweat and I really love that in this hot weather.

And for the really rainy days, I got the oakley OTG visor which goes over my glasses when it rains. I also took the fire lens which looks really cool and actually improves contrast. There are large vent openings, but I have my doubts about how well the oakley OTG will survive usage with the soft foam. It’s really flexible though, so it feels very safe. Downside of the fact that it is an OTG is that it is incredibly big and looks somewhat ridiculous under a mountain bike helmet. Still it’ll keep my glasses from fogging up in the winter when it snows.

And finaly my long-desired Giro ionos helmet. It’s so cool that you even get a cap to wear under it during colder days. I must say that you really feel the wind trough the vents, but my hair is a bit too long to really get the full effect, so I’ll be trying a shorter haircut next time. It has huge vents and carbon inserts, but I can’t really say that it is lighter than my very cheap giro indicator. On the top right picture, the extra insulation is inserted to show you how it looks. There is also an extra set of inside paddings provided so that you can replace everything when it wears out. it is anti-bacterial silver and with the best fit I’ve ever seen. In short, I love it, but on rainy days, I’ll take the indicator helmet, cause all the water seeps down my glasses with the Ionos. You can’t beat ir for comfort and coolness though. Still, the indicator is a lot more value for money at only a fifth of the price.

Well, we bought a croozer for two since I couldn’t take my daughter along on the mountainbike.

And she really loves the way she can see everything from in there. Together with a book and a teddybear to keep her occupied when the road gets boring, it makes for a perfect combination. my top speed is reduced from 33 to 20-something though and you really feel the added weight when pedalling and on the brakes. There is a special cover against the rain and a second cover to protect her from debris coming of the wheels. There is a lot of room for luggage in the back as well.

I got the new Brita water filtering can (our third by now, we really use those things a lot to make tea, coffee and soda-club lemonade) and it beats having to drag plastic bottles of water from the store, not to mention a lot of space in the plastic container. Ours is called the elemaris Brita meter and it measures how much you filter, how long you are using the filter and the water hardness. I am curious to know how it compares to our previous filter, which only measured time and wanted replacement of the filter cartridge every four weeks. The taste will be exactly the same as it uses the same filter cartridge.

The funny thing is that the display also shows when you are filtering water by animating water droplets

The measuring element consists of a display with two metal prongs of different length. The good thing is that this one is removable so you can finally wash the filter lid, which was not possible with the previous model as the electronics were not dishwasher proof.

I have replaced the filter on my classic elemaris and on the new elemaris on the same day and I’ll let you know when they will ask for replacement cartridges (the classic will ask in four weeks time)

Update 01-09-2009

The indicator now shows that the filter has to be replaced. This is only one day later than the normal brita filter with timer. Thus far I  can’t see much difference. I’m going to swap their locations in the house so that it gets used elss to see if it will make a bigger difference in time or if it simply goes for the same four week interval.