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Replacing the screen of a Kindle 3G

Unfortunately after my trip to the US there was a small casualty: my Kindle's screen had cracked and only half worked.

As you can see, the top half was more-or-less stuck on the screen saver image, while the bottom half was still functional. And no wonder, there was a huge crack across the back of the epaper layer. But, notice how there is still an image on the screen even when it is completely disconnected from the device? This epaper stuff is very interesting, requiring power only to change the image; the rest of the time the device can actually be turned off and the image remains present on the screen. Compare this with LCDs and other display technologies which require constant power to produce an image, and you can see why epaper is such a favourable technology for ebook readers. Epaper itself is quite an interesting technology, consisting of lots ot little balls of black and white ink, suspended in little bubbles. Each bubble mak...

Day 32 - Monterey CA to NZ

Once you've reached Monterey you're pretty much done with Highway 1. So with Highway 1 behind me I hit the road again for one last drive. I was getting low on time so had to skip Santa Cruz and instead went on 101, through some farm land to start with but very quickly hitting the endless highways, buildings and chain stores that form the Bay Area.

On and on I drove, through Gilroy, San Martin, San Jose, Redwood City, Belmont, Burlingame, Milbrae and finally into San Francisco Internation Airport itself where I joined the dozens of other people dropping off their cars. Final distance? 7007 miles, or 11,200 km!

I trundled into the airport and had about 5 hours to kill before I could check in, so paid the $20 to store my bag and headed for the BART station.

Soon enough one arrived and on I got. BART means Bay Area Regional Transport, and is a pretty nifty system. It's notable in that it is:

semi-automatic, the tr...

Day 31 - Carpinteria CA to Monterey CA

Goodbye Carpinteria and hello more highways! Back on the road I was surprised by how New Zealandy the scenery appeared to be.

This could quite easily be somewhere around Banks Peninsula or North Canterbury.

Around 1pm I arrived in San Luis Obispo, which is one of the oldest settlements in California being over 300 years old. It seems quite a nice place, according to the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce it's the "happiest place in America". When I arrived there was a 4 pack of SD70 helpers in the loop sunbathing, but soon after I heard some rumbling and an Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train arrived and pulled into the loop.

I wandered down and admired the sudden hive of activity.

It is quite a pleasant station with palm trees and a quiet sleepy dog feel to it. I stood around the cab car and soon the new engineer arrived and settled in...

Day 30 - Barstow CA to Carpinteria CA

Final day for some of us. We loaded up the car and hit the road and headed for LA. Within minutes the traffic picked up and it was getting heavy even by the edge of Cajon Pass. Part way down Cajon I took a detour to check out some of the railroading, but a confusing mishmash of roads and Private Crossing signs and the like made for little progress. One day I will master this pass.

On we pressed under boring gray skies and soon arrived in LA itself and met its atrocious relentless traffic.

We stopped at the La Brea Tar Pits, one of LA's highest rated tourist attractions but balked at their $11 entry fee. Instead we wandered around, looked at some dirty looking pools and piles of mud and went and got lunch.

One of the excavation pits at La Brea.

Lunch was delicious mexican affair, one of the best I've had yet.

On towards the airport we headed. On the way, and I'm not kidding here, but on the way we passed an oil field. ...

Day 29 - Flagstaff AZ to Barstow CA

The eagerly awaited snow storm that had been predicted the night before petered out and there was just a thin dusting being blown around by the wind. When we rose the roads had already been plowed.

We headed off to find breakfast and decided to try IHOP, the International House Of Pancakes. We lucked out and arrived on National Pancake Day which meant a free stack of pancakes for every customer! We ordered our means and were treated to a very yummy feast of many many pancakes. Mine were especially yum, although the grated "cheese" had a distinctly uranium yellow shade, which made me wonder on the origin and composition of it. Maybe it really was some kind of nuclear by-product??

Having finally finished our nuclear by-products and omlettes (they were actually very good) we hit the road again. We hit the 40 and headed west. At Seligman we pulled in for a breather and some caught a train pulling into town, where it stopped for a crew change. Some very very gray lightin...

Day 28 - Grand Canyon

Off on an adventure today, the Grand Canyon! First stop though was breakfast at the Downtown Diner where we learned that if we'd had breakfast a couple of streets over the tax rate would be a few percent less; yep, tax rates vary even within the same town.

Then we headed off on highway 180 west out of town which is a small highway snaking out arond the San Franciscos (the volcanic range that Flagstaff nestles around). We passed through lots of ponerosa pine forest, and then quite unexpectedly emerged into a large meadow. There was a stiff breeze blowing and big clouds scooting across the sky but it looked fantastic.

Onwards we drove and joined the main road to the Grand Canyon. Arrived at gates and paid our park entrance fee then found a park and went looking for the canyon.

You'd think something as big as the Grand Canyon should be easy to find but it took us a wee bit of hunting to actually find, not helped by the fa...

Day 27 - Las Vegas NV to Flagstaff AZ

Goodbye Vegas, hello desert. We left as the third couple of the of the morning completed their marriage ceremonies at the Little Chapel O' Love across the road and the 30th limo drove by. As we headed out of town we passed the numerous ticky-tacky subdivisions that are sprouting up to house the ever increasing population; in the last 10 years it has increased three times , from 740,000 in 1990 to over 2 million presently.

Soon we were out in the desert heading south. An hour later and we were zig zagging down a road to a security checkpoint, although this time they weren't too worried about us. We paid the outragous parking fee and went exploring around the Hoover Dam.

It is, of course, quite impressive, having been chosen as one the 7 wonders of the modern civil engineering world, others being things like the Panama Canal, the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland (not the Golden Gate Bridge), and the Chicago Sewage&#x...

Day 26 - Las Vegas NV

What does one do during the day in Las Vegas? Well unlike LA, the options seemed endless. Sky diving, machine gun firing, visitng headless statues, drive a digger, helicopter rides, etc. Of course the prices were also pretty endless. With all these options we did of course have trouble deciding what to do, so we went to Walmart and stocked up on junk food for the car. I suggested visiting the Atomic Testing Museum. The Atomic Testing Museum came about after the 50 years of silence around Project Manhattan came to an end and people started sharing their stories. It is an interesting mix of deadly serious and very quirky.

They have quite a few exhibits and artifacts, what I found especially interesting was some of the more technical measurement gear that had been retrieved from inside the caves where nuclear bombs had been tested. The gear was mounted on special shock absorbing springs (called "pogo sticks" by the workers) to prevent da...

Day 25 - Los Angeles CA to Las Vegas NV

Los Angeles. A city of 4 million people, and yet when it comes to things to do , there seems to be surprisingly little. We decided that heading towards Griffith Park would be the thing to do, that way we could see the Hollywood sign, and maybe a bit of Hollywood itself and some of the city. So we set off.

We were soon zooming down the freeway, listening to "Backspin", a retro 80s and 90s hiphop and rap station on Sirrius XM; after all, if one is in LA, one should listening try and blend in!

Unfortunately LA traffic had other ideas and we were soon stuck in traffic, staring at smog. We could just make out the faintest outlines of skyscrapers amongst the chronic smog. One particularly amusing sight we saw was a local walking their dog, carrying a baseball bat! Obviously a safe neighbourhood?!

We eventually arrived at Griffith Park and after a few dead ends found our way down to Hollywood Boulevard. Of course there is more to Hollywood Boulevard that what you s...

Day 24 - Barstow CA to Los Angeles CA

Today my adventures as a lone explorer come to an end, as I meet up with Geoff and Dan and we explore the west coast of the US together. So part one of that is to get into Los Angeles airport and collect them. I decided to allow an extra hour on the 2 hour journey from Barstow, so after emptying the car of 3 weeks of rubbish I set off. I ran into a bit of congestion, and their flight was running early, so it worked out quite well. The drive into LA was, predictably enough, mad. Screaming down the freeways with cars everywhere; exactly what I expected, and quite a adrenaline rush.

I arrived at LAX just as their flight landed and was there and waiting when Geoff and Den excited. We loaded up the car and headed off to the Surf City Hostel, a relatively quick trip. Checked in, unloaded, and moved the car to a free parking zone. Then we came back and admired the view. We were almost right on the beach. In front of us a pier stretched out. To the left and right, beach volleyball ...