My first observation is that I’m probably not using the proper amount of polishing fluid. The first time around the white buffing compound got used up faster than the blue. After my refill purchase I think I have them running down at about the same rate by reducing the amount of white and increasing the amount of blue that I use for each session. I don’t know if they’re supposed to run out at about the same time, but I would think so.

My second observation is that if I polish a number of discs at the same time (which I usually do, since it doesn’t make sense to get the pads wet just for one or two discs) then the machine heats up. As it gets hotter, it seems to “fuse” the blue polishing compound to the pad. That means that when I try to put additional fluid on it is fluid on top of gelled fluid instead of the buffing pad. Periodically I take a pocket knife and scrape the congealed blue fluid off of the buffing bad and that seems to help. I decided to start doing this when the first blue pad eventually wore out, and I saw how much better a new pad worked. By cleaning off the blue build-up the blue pad does a better job of polishing. The white pad does not seem to suffer from this same issue.

As expected, I use about two white pads for every blue pad. The white compound is a buffing compound, meaning it’s responsible for removing material from the disc to get scratches out. The blue compound is a polishing compound which means it uses less friction, and therefore does not wear out as fast. Instead of ordering new pads (and fluid) from the manufacturer or Amazon I found a vendor on eBay that sells the materials much cheaper. I bought pads in bulk (10 pads at a time) last time to get a better “per pad” price. If you have a lot of discs, I suggest you consider doing the same.

I now have close to 3,000 discs in my collection, and I’m pleased to say that the average purchase price has gone down since I know I can pick up a scratched or scuffed disc from the bargain bins and come home and clean it up so that it plays just like new.

There have been a few exceptions. For example, one copy of a Led Zeppelin disc I brought home would not rip no matter how clean the surface looked. Ultimately I found out the problem by holding the disc up to the light. I noticed the light shining through the disc in a couple of places, meaning the data was completely gone in those areas. It affected two of the songs, unfortunately, so that disc had to go away. Now I check my used discs for this sort of defect before I buy them. No amount of buffing or polishing will restore a defective disc.

I also purchased a J Geils Band Greatest Hits disc that was deeply scratched – enough so that I used sand paper on the disc as the initial treatment. I was able to get most of the scratches out on the bottom, but then I noticed that the top was equally scratched. Of course I can’t polish the upper surface of the disc. I’ll probably keep my eyes out for another copy of this disc that is in better shape and pass my current one on to the library.

Before

Here is a picture of the before image of the compact disc I decided to use for this blog post.

The disc was nearly opaque in spots, and there were a number of scuff marks and scratches. Some of the scratches went fairly deep so I decided that this disc would require the use of the full four-cycle system provided by the JFJ Easy Pro Plus. I did not take pictures of the disc at each stage but I will show the final results in a few paragraphs.

Heavy Sandpaper

For deep scratches I have the option of using a heavy grit sandpaper disc. The word “heavy” here is relative. I have some really heavy grit sandpaper sheets that I use in my wood working shop; the heavy grit for this device is nowhere near that coarse. The heavy sandpaper is called for if I can push my fingernail across the surface of the disc and feel it catch in the grooves. I could on this disc, so I ran for about twenty seconds on the heavy grit sandpaper.

Light Sandpaper

On a disc that does not have heavy scratches but still has scuffs that are too numerous for the abrasive fluid I can use the light sand paper. It is required to use the light sandpaper after the heavy sandpaper in order to smooth out any abrasion marks left by the first (coarse) treatment. The light sandpaper leaves a fine, smooth haze over the entire surface of the disc. At this point I should not be able to see any remnants of the deeper scratches (if I have used the heavy sandpaper).

Abrasive Liquid

Next up is the white abrasive that goes on a foam pad. The pad should be damp but not wet. If the pad is throwing off too much excess fluid then it is too wet. With most of the discs that I purchase that are scratched or scuffed this is the first step that I try, and for the most part it’s enough. It took a disc that was unplayable and made it playable after just two minutes of this treatment.

Final Polish

The final step of the four-step process is a wax or finishing polish. It removes most (but sometimes not all) of the swirl marks left from the previous steps and helps put a final treatment on the surface of the disc. The device comes with some special pads and anti-static spray that I can use to clean off the polish residue at this point, but I have been just using a drop of Dawn dish-washing liquid and regular water to clean things up. I dry off with a lint-free drying cloth and the discs come out looking like this:

I took a disc belonging to a friend (not pictured) that was totaled and recovered the entire disc. It took about fifteen minutes of various treatments (all the way from the heavy sandpaper to the final polish) but ultimately the disc played perfectly. Now when I find some of those potentially valuable surprises in my discount shopping I can restore them to a near-new finish in just a few minutes.

I have had very good results with my JFJ Easy Pro, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a disc cleaning device. I opted to go for this one over some of the manual crank options since – even though it was more expensive – it seemed that the consistency of a motorized device would provide much better results in the longer term. The device itself is available on amazon.com for a discount price. Like many devices like this (ink jet printers come to mind) the initial purchase is quite cheap because the company will then be able to sell me supplies for the life of the unit. True, that. But I have discovered that eBay has a host of merchants selling both types of cleaning fluid (stage 1 and 2) as well as replacement pads for prices that are much cheaper than the source company. I’m about to order some new pads since the initial two that came with the unit are showing signs of wear, but in the mean time I have cleaned close to 100 discs from my collection or for my friends.

Sometimes those unusual discs are fairly scratched up. If the scratches are from the inside of the disc out (center to edge) then they normally won’t impact the play much, if at all. But if the scratches are radial (around the center circle) then the odds of having problems go way up. For example, I had one disc that played fine except for two songs in the middle of the disc; they would skip and I was not able to rip them to mp3 format either.

So about a month ago I decided to see what I could do about some of these discs. In some cases I just wanted to polish the disc up a bit to remove surface smudges that I could not wash off normally. In a couple of cases I had more severe defects to work with. I decided to purchase a disc repair device. I looked at some of the manual ones and decided not to go with any of those due to the variety of bad reviews I read. Seems that with a manual process it’s hard to get consistent results. I looked at several of the automatic devices (some of which are $500 or more) too. They seemed to be more reliable, but of course they were quite a bit more expensive. I ended up buying the JFJ Easy Pro from Amazon.com.

I’ll talk more about the device in my next post. For now, I can say that the machine works, and does exactly what I want it to do. For discs with marred surfaces I can polish them in about sixty seconds and they are as good as new. For discs with light scratches I use a mild abrasive on a buffing pad to buff out the marks, then polish the disc. Again, good as new. The disc that I mentioned earlier that would skip on a couple of songs? After two minutes of buffing and one minute of polishing the disc played (and looked) perfect.

The real test was when a friend brought over a disc that had been rattling around on the dashboard of her car. Wow, was it a mess! I started with the buffing and polishing, and that didn’t fix it. Ultimately I used all four features of the Easy Pro, including two different grits of sandpaper (yes, I sanded her music! ), the buffing, and the polish. When we were done the disc still had some very slight marks but it played perfectly.

I considered that a victory.

I’ll write more about the device in a future post, and try to get some “before” and “after” pictures to show how it works. But now when I go discount compact disc shopping to don’t have to worry quite so much about buying items from the $1 bucket that might be a bit scratched up. I know I can fix ‘em myself.

Earlier this year they brought the 160gb model back in the “iPod Classic” line. As I was trying to decide whether to upgrade or not, I went to bestbuy.com to see what the prices were. On the bottom of the page was a link offering a “trade-in” on my old iPod. After going through the process, it seems that they were willing to give me almost $100 for my used iPod.

Since electronics – especially gadgets – don’t usually hold their value very well, I was a bit surprised. I went out on eBay and discovered that used 80gb iPods were in fact going for around $125-ish.

So the question becomes: would you sell your used iPod on eBay? take advantage of the trade-in value, even if it’s a bit less? Keep the old iPod to give to a friend or family member?

I was looking at the Apple store today, thinking that at one point they had a 160gb model. It seems they’ve dropped both that and the 80gb model; the only “classic” left has a capacity of 120gb. The sales rep (the “genius”) suggested that Apple was considering phasing them out altogether in favor of solid state devices. The advantages are obvious, of course. Solid state storage requires less power (longer battery life) and is more reliable (no disk crashes). Memory is also getting much less expensive as well. I have a 4gb media card in my Blackberry that cost me next to nothing, and it takes very little space.

It will be interesting to see if Apple announces anything new in a few months.

These aren’t cheap, so I was a bit mad and depressed all at the same time.

It turns out that for this particular model the cracking headset has become a known issue, and Bose has a process to deal with it. I returned my broken set to the local Bose store, paid them $100, and got a brand new set with the more modern construction. Since the headphones go for $300 new, and a repair would cost about $100 anyway, it seemed like a really quick and easy solution.

I am testing out the new headphones today while working at home, trying to drown out the sound of the jack hammers from the crew here working on the foundation of my house…

Read more details here:

http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR08.08E.html

This is cool stuff, and I look forward to hearing more from these folks. Hopefully they’ll report their results in terms that normal people can understand.

I am really enjoying the email access. The camera is mediocre at best. The web browser is functional but can be challenging. The IM client I have installed on a trial basis is quite good, and will probably be extended once the trial expires. But the E*Trade applet is fantastic, and shows what can be done if you create a solution for a specific platform.

And a video camera.

Check out the LHC Rap, and you just might learn something.

I have to tell you that I’m really excited about this, more than any other new toy in quite a long time. I now get nightly emails from my web sites telling me how many pages were served, how many comments were made, how many new users registered, and all sorts of stuff like that. Earlier today I was going to meet someone for dinner, so while at my desktop I pulled up a mapping web site and located the restaurant. From there I emailed the information directly to my phone, and figured that I was all set. I had the map, I had the address and phone number, what could go wrong?

Well, the map was wrong, and the phone number sent me to a fax machine, and the restaurant was nowhere near the place it was supposed to be. It just goes to show that no matter how good your technology is, with bad data you still get bad results.

I got the full data plan and already have hooked up 5 different email accounts to my phone. I have posted to my blog from beside a swimming pool. I have sent email from a bus. I have IM’d people. I am really having a good time with this.