My two Insta360 One X cameras, however, were not. They saw significant action over the next five years. I often mounted a GoPro to my bike. Even with its wide-angle lens, however, I still had to point it at whatever I wanted to capture. That meant that it often missed things that would happen around me when I was riding. More often, I missed things because I simply wasn’t recording, so naturally, that’s when things happen. Bonnie and I joke that the best way to make sure nothing exciting happens is to hit record. 

The ability to record in all directions simultaneously made the Insta360 One X perfect for bike rides. The one thing I didn’t like about it, though, was that, mounted to my handlebar, it recorded me from a very low angle, which is never a good look. When used with the Insta360 selfie stick, however, it brought the camera up to the level of my face for a more natural image.

Mounting it to the bike was a challenge, though, or at least I made it a challenge. For some reason, I had the idea to weld a 1/4 – 20 screw to my bike frame. Then, I screwed the selfie stick straight onto it. It worked well enough until it didn’t. Without warning, the screw broke off, sending the Insa360 One X crashing to the ground. One lens was badly scratched on the hard concrete just a few months after I bought it.

There Were No DIY Insta360 One X Repairs Back in 2019

Back then, parts for Insta360 cameras were non-existent, so I had little choice but to send it out for repair. With shipping, it was about half the price of buying a new Insta360 One X to have the lens replaced. I wasn’t happy, but I learned a lesson. 

I’m An Insta360’s Worst Nightmare

Unfortunately, I still had other lessons to learn. I generally only used one camera at a time, and I liked to use it with a selfie stick. It doesn’t fit easily into a pocket, but I found a clever way to carry it when I wasn’t recording. My pants had hammer loops on each leg. I know a lot of people don’t like hammer loops, but I do. When I was a carpet cleaner, I found them invaluable. I always had a towel tucked into one of them, and they were great for hanging spray bottles.

They were also a great place to tuck an Insta360 One X on a selfie stick. Not all hammer loops are equal, though, and I discovered the hard way twice that some are bigger than others. I had one of my cameras tucked into my hammer loop as I walked with my family to the park. It was in its protective pouch, but it slipped right out of both the pouch and the loop.

The damage was far less significant than the last time, but one of the lenses was still scratched. Incredibly, I didn’t learn my lesson, and the same thing happened a short time later. I guess it took me two times to learn that lesson, but I still had one more lesson to learn.

The Big One

Bonnie and I were running to catch a bus. We were going to miss it if we didn’t hurry. My Insta360 One X was tucked into a pocket on the shoulder strap of my backpack because I had discovered that I could record from the forward-facing lens when I was out in public, and no one seemed to notice and, therefore, were not bothered by the camera.

It worked fine when I was walking, but running jostled it too much, and it was ejected onto the sidewalk, where it bounced, flipped, and skidded along the concrete driveway outside the QuikStop. This was by far the most violent and destructive drop yet. Now, both of my Insta360 One Xs were damaged. 

To Fix or Not To Fix?

In another time, I might have just bought a new 360º camera, but this was in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and nobody was coming out with new cameras. GoPro, DJI, Canon, Nikon, and Sony were all stuck in a pre-COVID freeze frame. The newest Insta360 camera I could buy was two years old. I figured new models would be released once all of this pandemic nonsense was over, but who knew when that was going to be? I saw a YouTube video that showed how to fix a crack in an Insta360 One X lens using epoxy, so I tried it, but it didn’t work.

Finally DIY Insta360 One X Repair Is Possible

So, I did some research and discovered that lenses were now available, and for significantly less than the last time I sent one of these out for repair and for a fraction of the cost of a new camera, so I ordered four new lenses from eBay for about $25 each.

I was hesitant to dive into this repair, but once I got the first camera open, it was much less daunting. Getting the camera open took some figuring out, but it wasn’t hard.

So, now I have one working camera and one non-working camera, and I’m okay with that… for now.

One day, I might replace the bad lens module, but I think I would rather spend that money on a camera made in this decade.

You can watch a video of the whole process here:

The post How To and NOT To Repair an Insta360 One X appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

These retro dining chairs sure saw some action in the 15 years since we bought them. No one could argue that we didn’t get our money’s worth from them. Still, we weren’t ready to part with them just yet, so we decided to give them a new life. It wasn’t as difficult as I feared it might be, and the results are stunning.

This isn’t really a beginner sort of upholstery project, though, so if you’ve never sewed before, you may want to start with a more straightforward project before diving into this style of retro dining chairs.

That’s it. Your retro dining chairs are finished and ready for use! If you have any questions about any part of this process, please leave them in the comments, and we’ll do our best to answer them. You can also watch this whole process in the video below.

And now that you have beautiful brand-new retro dining chairs, be sure to check out our post about how to clean your vinyl chairs to keep them looking beautiful.

The post Retro Dining Chairs – Like New In 6 Easy Steps appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookie…

Sometimes a finished product isn’t quite so finished, and it’s up to the user to get it across the line. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, unfinished furniture stores were big business. Evidently paint or stain was the bulk of the furniture cost back then, so it was worthwhile to buy your furniture unfinished and then take it home and finish it yourself.

These days, products are more likely to need a little help because of poor design or workmanship than someone deliberately dipping out before the job was done. Take for instance this wall-mount corkscrew I found at the Goodwill for $3. What a deal! The first time I used it, however, I got a face full of wine, and not in a conventional way. It was such a spectacular and unexpected mishap that I felt it was worthy of recreating for the world to see. Fortunately, the corkscrew sucked in a consistent and measurable way so that recreating the explosion was no trouble at all.

The problem was that the screw was pushing the cork into the bottle instead of threading itself into the cork. That was partly because the shaft needed to be lubed (that’s what she said) but mostly because there was nothing to set the bottle on. This meant that while the corkscrew was coming down, I had to push the bottle up with as much or more force than I was pushing down with the handle resulting in wine all over the kitchen and all over me.

The simple and obvious solution would have been to simply mount the corkscrew over the countertop. Fortunately for me, that isn’t possible in my kitchen because there is not enough room between the countertop and the cabinets, so I had no choice but to build a little shelf to go under the corkscrew. That’s where my Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig comes in. I thought it would be cool to make the shelf with sliding dovetails on two axes.

I had never made a sliding dovetail before, and this just seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out. Plus, if it didn’t come out, no one was ever going to see it. At first, I thought it might be a little overkill to overbuild such a little shelf, but it actually needs to be quite sturdy to handle the downward force being applied as the corkscrew winds its way into the cork, so I think the sliding dovetails were the way to go here.

It’s All In The Planning

As with any project, the prep work takes 80% of the time. In this case, it was laying out my cuts and then getting the Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig dialed in to make them. Once you get it, though, making your cuts goes quickly. The Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig can simultaneously do the mortises and tenons for dovetails. That saves time and ensures that your dovetails fit perfectly. Unfortunately, you must cut your mortises and tenons for sliding dovetails separately.

Since this was my first time, I went slowly, taking off just a little bit of wood with each pass. My joints fit a little looser than I would have liked, but I didn’t worry about it too much since I was gluing them anyway.

Every so often, one must remind oneself of things one already knows. On this project, I was reminded of the importance of marking my pieces of wood. I measured, marked, and drilled four screw holes to align with the studs in the wall. But then, I absent-mindedly glued the piece upside down. Had the screw holes been symmetrical on the piece of wood, it would not have mattered. The screw holes, however, were not symmetrical. Of course, I didn’t discover my mistake until the glue was completely dry, so I had to drill four more holes.

Rather than trying to fill the four extra holes, badly as they would have been, I simply used eight screws and colored the heads with a brown Sharpie. Not an elegant or skillful solution, but it worked. 

Was It Worthwhile to Use Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig For Such a Simple Project?

Now I have a very sturdy little shelf mounted under my corkscrew. Between it and a little grease on the corkscrew shaft, I now have a functioning bottle opener. It cost $3, and I got the wood for free. Factoring in the cost of the router and the Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig I’m deep in the hole. I would have been better off buying a brand-new corkscrew than going this route. Of course, the shelf’s cost will amortize as I make more dovetails, so I’m confident that in the near future, I’ll be back in the black again. I made a video of the whole project, including the reenactment of the wine explosion. You can see it at that link or at the end of this post. Happy making!

The post Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig And A Needlessly Overbuilt Shelf appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

At first, I tried to see if I could simply replace the motor but a quick search led me to a replacement arm for $27, (though it’s now up to $52.) I decided to replace the Mavic Air arm because besides the motor being damaged the arm was a little crunched from the fall and the landing pad was missing.

When the arm arrived I examined it and saw that it just had three wires coming out of the end of the arm, so I knew that I was going to have to solder them to something inside. Easy enough, so I jumped right in and started tearing down the drone.

That is how to replace a Mavic Air arm. Or at least that’s how I did it. I probably didn’t do everything the “right way,” but it works, and you can’t argue with results.

I have had no issues after many hours of flight time on the new arm. So, I am confident that the repair was legit.

I was a bit surprised at just how serviceable the Mavic Air is. I would have expected it to be more difficult to do a DIY repair on it, like an iPhone. I always prefer repairing to replacing, especially when we’re talking about things that cost as much as a Mavic Air.

I made a video of the repair. You can watch it down below.

The post How To Replace Mavic Air Arm: Easy DIY Guide appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

Why Did I Have So Many Other Books To Read?

About 10 years ago we discovered the marvelous and exciting world of estate sales. We would spend every weekend in strange houses slowly pursuing the effects of the dead. It’s really quite thrilling actually, to be some of the last people to see the way a total stranger lived before their house is flipped and their remaining possessions unceremoniously discarded.

I always found it interesting to see how many people moved into homes in the 1960s and 1970s, decorated them with the latest styles, and then never touched them again. 50 years later the house is a time capsule save for the odd room with boring beige carpet installed after a flood in the 80s or 90s. It’s such an interesting thing to me; to make home decor such a priority and then never revisit it again until the day you die.

Anyway, estate sales are replete with books. Very often you can find the old classics which I never read. I was a terrible student in school and I never read the required reading. I skimmed the book, bought the Clifsnotes at the last minute and B.S.’d my way throght the test. Judge me if you will bit it worked for me. No, that’s total bullshit, it didn’t work for me at all. But now that I’m older I really want to fill in that part of my education. So when I would find an old classic at an estate sale I would buy it. After a few years I had quite a collection of books sitting on the shelf in my closet and everytime I would add another I would say, someday I’m going to get around to reading all these.

Someday

That “someday” was in early 2018. And I swore that I would not buy, or even read another book that did not come from that shelf. One-by-one I would pull a book off the shelf, read it and throw it away. Not really. I would actually put it in our little library. (We have a little library in our front yard.)

Slowly, over the next couple of years, I would make my way through the pile. Some of the books were quite good. I particularly liked To Kill A Mockingbird, Never Let Me Go, and Great Expectations but everything else that Dickens did was total shit. I read a book by Jules Vern called The Mysterious Island. It was so fucking weird that if they made it into a film it would be an instant cult classic. But generally, I think that most of the so-called “classics” are just awful.

My Misadventure with Huckleberry Finn

One of the few books I actually read in high school was The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin. I liked the book so much that I didn’t return it at the end of the year. I kept it, always planning to read it again someday. For over 20 years I held onto that book and the memory of how much I enjoyed it. When I finally revisited Huck and Jim I realized what a miserable piece of shit that book is.

First of all, it’s like trying to read a foreign language. Or actually, it’s more like trying to talk to a customer who speaks very poor English. You need to know what they’re trying to tell you so you’re concentrating really, really hard to make out their words. It’s just so hard to understand what they’re saying but you can’t just smile and nod and walk away because you have a job to do. He wrote the whole book that way. I’m not sure what was worse, the southern accents or the books ending. I think Twain spent so much time and energy writing this book in some kind of code that he ran out and had to phone in the ending.

A Quarantine Book List Deserving of A Global Pandemic

My quarantine reading list was almost as bad. I started out with Moby Dick. (Does a worse book exist?) I could have tolerated, and even really got into it if it wasn’t for the highly erroneous cetology lessons in every other fucking chapter. Then I moved into The Illiad, The Odyssey, Don Quixote, As You Like It, Macbeth, and The Canterbury Tales. By August I had had all of the “wherefore’s” and “hither’s” and “thou’s” that I could take. I needed a break from antiquity; I needed something written by someone who lived in my lifetime and the only book left on the shelf that fit the bill was the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. It was a welcomed change of pace. Of course it hit me differently now, than when I read it 20 years ago. This time it just reminded me of how much I hate drug people.

Now That You’re Up To Speed…

But after the acid test, there was just one book left on the shelf. This poor beat up and broken old book. It’s by Edgar Allen Poe. I knew it wouldn’t make it through a reading so it was going to have to be fixed. Recently, I happened to come across an old suede skirt that would be the perfect material to mend the binding. I cut it to size and used Titebond Quick & Thick Multi-Surface Glue to adhere the leather to the book cover. Now it’s as good as new, except for the story that is. The Story is shit. It seems to be little more than Poe’s stream of consciousness about god knows what. It’s just one-half step above listening to someone recall the dream they had last night.

So I guess the point I’m trying to make is that I spent a little bit of time and effort to fix a shitty book before I read it and knew that it was shitty. And also that most broken books probably aren’t worth saving. You can watch a video of it down below.

The post Book With An Old Broken Binding Gets New Life appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

I made a video several years ago about cleaning grease and tobacco off a kitchen ceiling. The video demonstrated my process of cleaning a kitchen ceiling. It was not a tutorial about how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. But little did I know that the only thing that viewers of that video wanted to know was what cleaner I used in the video. I made no mention in the video of the cleaner I used partly because it is a commercial cleaning product that I knew the average consumer wouldn’t have access to. So why bother mentioning it?

Well, that video just infuriated people, and they left hateful comments because they wanted to know what I used. So I made a new video about how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling and in this video, I explained exactly what I used. And do you know what happened? People started complaining that they couldn’t find anywhere to buy the cleaner I used. Exactly what I knew would happen but my conscience is clear because I gave the people exactly what they wanted.

Of course, there’s more than one way to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. And even though I offered suggestions in that second video of other products to use people still want to use the one they can’t have because, well, it’s the best. And so here in this post, I will explain exactly what I use to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling and other products that you can use as well as why they work. I will also walk you through my process that will clean grease as well as tobacco and anyother grime from a kitchen ceiling.

So What Should I Use?

• Simple Green
• Formula 409
• that Purple Degreaser they sell at the big orange store
• anything that says “degreaser” on the label

All of these and more will work to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. Some will work more quickly than others but they all will eventually soak into the grease and allow you to wipe it off. Patience is the most important qualification in a good cleaner. Of course, we know you don’t have any of that because once you saw that list of chemicals you clicked right off and never even made it to this sentence. And that’s your misfortune because I left out the single best product I have ever come across to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. But I’ll get to that later.

Let The Chemical Do The Work

Chemicals?! But I don’t want to use chemicals in my home! I have children and pets and a zero carbon footprint and I only use safe, non-toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products in my home. That’s all well and good and I sincerely encourage you to continue in that practice. But I will say two things about green cleaners.

The first thing I have to say is that manufacturers of “green” cleaning products are responsible to NOBODY when it comes to labeling their products with words like “natural” and “non-toxic”. There is no regulation regarding “green” cleaners. A manufacturer can put just about whatever they want in a bottle and call it whatever they want. So you shouldn’t feel as comfortable with your “green” cleaners as you do.

But You Still Don’t Want To Use Chemicals To Clean Grease Off Your Kitchen Ceiling

I understand. And so the second thing I have to say about green cleaners is that while legitimately green cleaning products have their place they are not suitable for every job. Most of that sticky mess up there is oil from cooking things in your kitchen. Most of the “green” cleaners you have under your sink are for routine, general maintenance sort of cleaning. They can’t cut through the years of accumulation of thick, oil-based muck. You need something that the grease will absorb; something that will get inside like a Trojan Horse to emulsify the grease from the inside out allowing you to easily rinse it away.

One of the fundamentals of cleaning is that “Like cleans like” meaning that if you have a water-based mess to clean up you need to use a water-based cleaner. Likewise, if you are trying to clean up an oil-based mess like, oh, I don’t know, a greasy kitchen ceiling you need an oil-based cleaner.

Most degreasers (like the aforementioned) are made with solvents called glycol ethers. D-limonene is another common solvent. It’s the active ingredient in “green” degreasers. Since it comes from oranges it sounds very safe and non-toxic but it’s not as safe and non-toxic as it sounds. Products with either of those ingredients will work very well to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling.

The way I see it is this: the grime on your kitchen ceiling probably isn’t any more safe and non-toxic than the cleaners needed to clean it. So you might as well just peel the band-aid and use a product that will get the job done as quickly as possible.

And besides, if you wear PPE and use these chemicals the way they were intended they are perfectly safe.

But Then There’s Always My Way…

Of course, if you want to get really aggressive with the grease you could use the best product I have ever come across to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling: Husky 901 Industrial Cleaner/Degreaser. It’s a glycol ether degreaser with an extra, special ingredient that sets it apart from any other glycol ether degreaser. It’s chock full of potassium hydroxide and that turns an ordinary degreaser into a highly alkaline grease destroying machine. The high alkalinity makes quick work of dissolving grease. Through a process called saponification, it actually turns the grease into soap which further aids in the cleaning! How cool is that!

You’ll be hard-pressed to find any place to buy Husky 901 though. It’s a commercial cleaning product and it’s only available from commercial, janitorial distributors. I only mention it because everyone always wants to know what I use to clean greasy kitchen ceilings. It’s not my fault it’s not available to the general public.

But like I said, home stores, grocery stores, and any other store where you buy your cleaning products will sell a degreaser that will work to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. And now that I’ve told you what to use I’ll tell you how to use it.

That’s How To Clean Grease Off Your Kitchen Ceiling

That’s all there is to it. Now you know how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling. If you are prepping to paint, repeat the process using Tri-Sodium Phosphate instead of a degreaser. TSP will degloss the paint allowing fresh paint to stick to it. Otherwise, your ceiling should be clean and ready to start building a fresh new layer of grease.

Check out this video I made about how to clean grease off your kitchen ceiling.

The post How To Clean Grease Off Your Kitchen Ceiling appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.

In this post, we will teach you how to clean vinyl furniture the way the professionals do. It’s really easy and fast and it hardly costs anything at all. With this process, you can keep your vinyl furniture looking great and make it last forever.

Don’t sit on the piece for a few hours. Residual cleaner left on the vinyl will stain your clothes.

That’s all there is to it. Now you know how to clean vinyl furniture. It’s fast and easy. You can clean your vinyl furniture with this process as often as necessary and your furniture will stay looking new for a lifetime. You can even teach your kids how to clean vinyl furniture and then make it a part of their routine chores. Check out the video below to see this process in action.

The post How to Clean Vinyl Furniture Fast, Easy and Cheap appeared first on Retro Active Lifestyle.