Granted, not exactly a technology topic, so consider this article your “timeout” from the computer.  When I’m not staring at my computer screen, I enjoy being outdoors, especially playing sports.  And one of my favorite sports is tennis.   If you or your family is interested in learning the game of tennis, I encourage you to look into a new program called “QuickStart Tennis”.  The basic concept is instead of learning to play tennis on a full size court, you learn to volley on a much smaller court.  It was a concept designed for teaching young children the game of tennis.  With their short attention spans, kids can often become frustrated and bored with learning a new skill that requires much coordination, especially  if they don’t master it quickly.  But frankly, I can see a lot of value in this learning method for adults (ie. parents!), who, too, become just as easily frustrated!  Š

I find tennis to be a most enjoyable sport to play, whether you are doing so competitively or just for fun.  It’s a shame to give up on learning the game so easily.  Tennis, much like other sports, is a skill that can only be developed after much practice and patience.  

Here are some links if you’d like to learn more about this new teaching program:

• http://consumers.quickstarttennis.com/
• http://consumers.quickstarttennis.com/index.php?page=get-started—court-setup

There appears to be a lot of confusion by some surrounding the upcoming switch by the United States government from traditional analog television service to the new digital transmission (DTV) standard.  This despite a long term and I thought pretty thorough ad campaign about the pending change.

In a nutshell, if you receive your television signal over the air by means of an antenna, whether that antenna is sitting on top of your television (“rabbit-ears”) or on the roof of your house/building, then you will definately be affected by the transition to digital broadcasting.  But if you receive your television programming from a satellite or cable company, you should not be affected.  At least there is no technical reason why you should be affected.  But turns out the answer really depends on who your cable or satellite provider is.  If you are a Comcast customer, for example, you may very well be affected.  

Appears Comcast has made a business decision to discontinue full analog service for their customers.  There is no technical reason they have to make this change, but for whatever reason, they have done so anyway.  I suspect this is just a move by them to try to force customers to the higher revenue digital packages and get rid of their legacy analog transmission systems.  Even the DTV.gov website shares my opinion of cable companies like Comcast!

I tend to subscribe to more magazines than I have time to read.  Yesterday I was going thru some old professional audio recording magazines and came across an interesting article from EQMagazine titled “The Secrets of Home Tape Baking” [March 2008] by Jonathan Stars.  I was intrigued by the idea and though I don’t currently have a need to try it myself, I do still have my own collection (gathering dust in the garage right now) of some audio reel-to-reel masters that such a trick might prove useful for down the road.   Basically the author talks about a way you can literally “bake” your precious analog tapes at high temperature using a food dehydrator as a way to prevent the iron oxide coating from sticking to the tape heads on playback. 

The phenonem is known as “sticky shed syndrome”.  Analog tapes are made with an iron oxide coating (this is the part that is magnetized and records your audio information for playback) along with a glue that makes it stick to the backing.  It is this glue that absorbs moisture over time and can become undone.   Not only does this result in really poor audio playback (like popping noises and losing the high end), but as you can imagine, it can ruin your precious tapes!  The author describes the worst symptom was when “bits of the tape got stuck to the heads (and anything else the tape touched along the path between the reels), and literally peeled off — sometimes, in little flakes, and, sometimes, in string-like shavings up to an inch long.”  YIKES! 

This technique is not a cue for all situations, however.  Jonathan does caution to watch out for tapes with splices as they do tend to break or acetate tapes for that matter as heating will actually make the situation worse.  And don’t even think about trying this trick out in your kitchen oven, etiher.  The thermostats just aren’t accurate enough.  Instead, Jonathan recommends using is the Nesco American Food Harvest Snackmaster Pro FD-50 Food DeHydrator [$80 from nesco.com].   Check out Jonathan’s article in the March 2008 issue of EQ Magazine for more dos and don’ts about baking your old tapes.

Is your laptop battery just not holding a charge anymore? And it’s only a year old? Sound all too familar?  Have you asked yourself is this because of a defective battery or a defective laptop?  Honestly more likely the answer is neither.  More likely it’s user error.

I find most people, even many technology professionals themselves, don’t truly understand how battery technology works, and as a result, often don’t understand how to properly charge and maintain their own fleet of batteries.  If you’re not getting at least 2 to 3 years of use from your rechargeable batteries, this article is for you!   A properly maintained rechargable battery should provide at least 2 years but more likely 3 to 5 years of useable, trouble free life.  In this article we’ll focus on the more common types of rechargeables used in modern consumer electronics, particularly laptops — the Nickel Cadmium (NiCAD), Nickel Metal-Hydride (Ni-MH), and Lithium Ion (Li-ion) type rechargeable batteries.

The analogy I always like to use to explain how to charge a Nickel Cadmium, Nickel Metal Hydride,  or Lithium Ion type battery is to compare how you refill your gas tank for your car.  To avoid running out of gas and getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, you would be wise to not wait for your tank to reach empty before refilling it.  Instead routinely refilling it at about the halfway level is wise.  In actual practice you could refill your gas tank at any time and it wouldn’t harm or degrade your car’s performance in any way.

But how you charge your battery does matter.  Following the same practice of recharging a battery that is only partially discharged is actually a bad idea.  A very bad idea indeed!   Here’s an important point to remember: It is actually harmful to the life of a battery to recharge it when it is only halfway discharged. 

Battery power is not derived in the same way as the power for your vehicle.  Unlike that gas tank which doesn’t care at what point you refill it, the power created inside a battery is actually a chemical reaction involving the transfer of electrons from one side of each battery cell to the other.  The recharging process helps to “reset” those electrons and ready them for the next time you need power delivered to  your favorite toy.  To prolong the life of your battery, it is actually best to run it down to as close to empty as possible before recharging. 

NiCads are notorious for what’s commonly referred to as the “Memory Effect”.  Overtime, if you continually recharge your battery when it is only halfway discharged eventually your battery will “remember” that halfway mark and will not be able to discharge beyond it.  Which means you will eventually lose all that original headroom.  So your battery will effectively lose half it’s charging capacity, and you will no longer be able to recharge it fully — it will only charge 50% of when you bought it.

Same thing holds true for a laptop that is always plugged in to the wall charger and never allowed to discharge.  That, too, is not a good practice and in a similar way leads to a “memory effect”. 

So best practice when it comes to recharging a battery is to actually allow that battery to fully discharge (not quite to totally dead but just before the “dead” mark), and then recharge it fully (back to 100% capacity).  Partially charging a battery is just as harmful as partially discharging, so don’t use a battery, charge it for a while, then use it some more, then recharge for a bit, etc.   Your battery needs to be fully discharged and then fully recharged to maintain the full capacity of it’s “fuel tank”.

Also, it’s best charge your batteries regularly.  If you let a rechargeable battery sit idle for a long period of time, the chemical process occuring internally will breakdown, and the battery will essentially “die”.  It will be unable to hold a charge or be recharged.  So even if you don’t use a battery for a long period of time, my advice is to recharge it every 6 months or so even if you aren’t using it.

Finally a word about the difference between the NiCad and newer Ni-MH type batteries.  The NiCad is probably still the more common type of battery in use in portable electronics and is most prone to the memory effect described above.  But the Nickel Metal-Hydride is quickly gaining in popularity over the Nickel Cadmium.  One reason is that the Ni-MH type of battery is not supposed to suffer from the memory effect to the same degree as the NiCad, but my advice to you is to treat a Ni-MH battery the same way you would a NiCAD.  By that I mean fully discharge it and then fully recharge it before reusing, just as you would a NiCad. Following this simple practice will extend the life of your rechargeable batteries to between 3 -5 years easily.