How to re-web your own Chacos

My 5 year old Chacos which I purchased for 40 bucks had seen better days. The soles were peeling off. So I sent them in and got them resoled under the warranty for free. Yipee! It was then that I realized that the webbing was fraying through. I called to see if this was covered under the warranty, but they said it most likely wasn't. They needed to see them first.

Not wanting to spend another $8 to ship them off, certainly not wanting to pay $36 bucks to have them re-webbed, and knowing that my brother had successfully re-webbed his own Chacos, I started my project.

You will need:

• A torch, or matches, or some heat source to melt the ends of your webbing
• About 10' 3/4" wide tubular webbing (costed me a little over a quarter a foot)
• A medium sized needle
• Strong thread (I had to go to Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft for upholstery thread)
• A knife
• Scissors
• A few hours

Here are pictures of the beginning and the end, and then how I did it.

1. Remove the bar tack stitching that connects the main strap to the inside heel riser (the ones between your feet, not on the outside). I just replaced the main strap as my heel strap and buckle straps were fine, as I assume most are. But those seem replaceable too, you just need to take off the chaco logo.

The bar tack stitch also has a straight stitch underneath. So I took a knife and cut the side to side bar tack stitch, and then pulled the thread out with my leatherman. Be very careful that you don't cut any of the heel riser webbing. Take your time so you are just cutting stitches. After the bar tack is gone, you need to cut the straight line of stitches holding the strap in.

2. Cut the end of the webbing you just removed from the heel riser at an angle and fuse it with a torch. Cut the end of your new webbing complementary and fuse it as well.

3. Thread your needle and sew the two ends together well. You want to butt the ends together, not overlap. Make sure it is very secure. Otherwise the connection may break while it is being threaded through, and then you will need to cut through your sole to finish the repair.

To sew it together, I took 10 inches of thread, and threaded 2 inches through the eye of the needle. Don't tie a knot anywhere in the thread. Just sew 4 or 5 times through the smallest bite of webbing on a corner of one of the pieces. Once you have this anchor, just keep looping over that seam between the pieces. I went from one end to the other, and then back and anchored again like I did at the start. Then snip the pieces. You may want to double this if you aren't sure it is strong enough or if you don't have heavy duty thread (I'd recommend upholstery thread, which is 100% nylon and doesn't fray). Trim any protruding corners that may impede threading this seam through your sole.

4. Now pull, and pull hard. You need to pull your new webbing through the whole webbing pattern. You may need to find the right angle of pull so that the webbing moves and you don't tear your foot bed apart. Check your stitching after each pass so it doesn't fall apart on you.

5. Now that it is all the way through, snip off the old webbing by cutting your new webbing at a right angle right after the seam. Fuse the end. You can now cut the other end of your old webbing and disconnect it from the buckle. Note how it is attached, because you will be replicating that.

6. Sew your new webbing on the buckle like the old webbing was sewn. Again, thread the needle, pass through the same bite (as much as you can, you just want to concentrate your stitching on the smallest possible piece of webbing) several times, and do your best to replicate a bar tack stitch (what was there originally). With all the stitches in this project, I did it twice, with about two passes each. So I would anchor, go from one side to the other and back, anchor again, and trim the thread. Then I repeated the process. That way if one stitch breaks, you have a backup.

7. Now, put the sandal on your foot and adjust all the straps just like you normally would. Mark about where you should cut the other end of your new webbing, and cut it at an angle (it comes out of the heel riser at about a 45 degree angle). Fuse the end.

8. Slide the end into the heal riser, thread your needle, anchor, stitch two passes, anchor, trim. Repeat. You've finished repairing one sandal, now do the other.

9. Enjoy the re-webbing job that cost you under $10

I was pretty pleased with the result. My only complaint is that my new webbing is a little softer and floppier than my original webbing so it takes a bit more effort to put them on. The original webbing is tubular, but it looks like it may be stitched flat. It may stiffen up it time, or perhaps wax or a rosin could help it out.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Google Public DNS and Hulu

Usually my computer literacy helps. This time it hurt. I have spent the last couple hours trying to diagnose why Hulu hasn't been able to load videos lately. It has been spotty here and there. Oddly enough it loads the ads just fine, but today it just failed when loading the show, every single time. So, after I dismissed my conspiracy theories about Hulu trying to boost their ad views, I... I don't know what I did. I guess I called Comcast, complained, had them reset my connection twice, bypassed the router, realized it would work bypassing the router, and then somehow ended up two hours later realizing that using Google's Public DNS was the problem.

I had set up my Airport connections to use 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as their DNS (those are Google's DNS IPs), however, I hadn't set my ethernet connections to use them. Somehow I managed to realize that it wasn't the router (after restoring to factory defaults), but that it was the DNS. I'm actually still impressed with myself for determining that and not getting carried away with my other possible solutions which included buying a new router and more drastically cancelling Comcast and switching to Verizon. But switching back and forth between Comcast's DNS and Google's DNS proved that for some reason Google's DNS was breaking Hulu for me.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if the intermittent 2 minute blocks of no internet connectivity followed by a return to connectivity were also DNS-related.

Bye-bye Google DNS.

Google Calendar in Menu Bar OS X

Okay, so really, this post is almost exactly the same post as on theappleblog.com. However, their instructions won't get you the most functional calendar (the navigation is sketchy). So I thought I'd review how I was able to do this.

Do what? Well, today I got frustrated with the fact that iCal and Google calendar do not always play well. Specifically, on my Google calendar I have an all-day event every school day called "Assignments" which is a summary of what is due that day, and what lectures are being given. Because this event was created originally as a repeating event and later modified so that it was no longer a part of the series, it doesn't sync correctly with iCal. Actually, it did until about two days ago. Then something broke. So now, iCal merely has every "Assignment" event every school day, with nothing more than the generic template I used to set up the original event.

So, here was my setup: Google Calendar is my primary calendar. It syncs (along with GMail which no one told me is now push) with my iPhone. My Macbook Pro had iCal syncing with Google calendar. However, I don't like the interface of iCal, and didn't want to be bothered to browse to a new calendar each time I wanted to review my schedule. So I used iSlayer's Organized dashboard widget which seems to be the best way to access iCal quickly. And then to add events to iCal (which would then push to Google Calendar and then my phone) I would use a nice natural language parser widget QuickCal which recognizes phrases like "Dinner tomorrow with Jon at 3pm for 60 mins."

And then it all broke. To be honest, I had been having problems with the events I added through QuickCal making it from iCal to Google Calendar. It would give me an error and delete my event on the next sync. But as of two days ago, my repeating events refused to sync to iCal as separate events, so I threw it all out of the window. Now there's a gaping hole in my dashboard, and my dashboard is a whole lot less useful. Because this is what I have going on now.


Today I discovered the amazing world of Fluid and Site Specific Browsers. Basically, it is a stripped down browser window that is dedicated to one site. So now I have an icon for GMail, Google Reader, and Google Calendar. They even support badges. The only problem I have right now is that it lacks support for multitouch gestures.
So, that is all fine and dandy, and setting those up is pretty straight forward. Make sure you use "http://www.google.com/reader/" for your badges to work on reader. But I still hadn't solved the problem of having a quick reference to my schedule without going into Google Calendar. So here is how I made a menubar application for Google Calendar using the iPhone mobile version.

1. Download Fluid
2. Unpack, drag into your applications folder, and run.
3. Pick a name like "Menubar Cal" and use the URL "www.google.com/calendar/gp?source=mog&gl=us" (This is the only real step that differs from the link I used. The theappleblog article references a more generic mobile version that didn't give you any way to go back without right clicking and selecting back)
4. Use an icon from here.
5. Click create.
6. Launch your new creation.
7. Click on the "Menubar Cal" dropdown, and then "Convert to MenuExtra SSB..."
8. There you have it, a fully functional iPhone Google Calendar in your menu bar.

Tip for the Fluid apps: You may want to install a few userscripts by going clicking on the script icon in your app and then "Browse Userscripts.org" and searching for and installing:
-"Fluid Gmail Growl" - Gmail: Gives you grow notifications for new messages. Currently the only solution I have to get up to date gmail notifications since Google's notifier is quite laggy.
-"GMail without Ads" - Gmail: Self explanatory
-"Today's Date Dock Badge for Fluid" - Calendar (desktop verson): Adds a badge for the current date to your dock item.

You'll also want to go to Preferences for each app, and then Behavior Preferences, and check the checkbox for "Only hides the window" next to "Closing the Last Browser Window." This will let you Cmmd-W out of your Fluid apps, but keep the badges, growl notifications, and date badges coming.

Tip: Here are the URLS I used for my Fluid Apps:
http://www.gmail.com
http://www.google.com/calendar/render
http://www.google.com/reader/

UPDATE: I have now found a better solution. Instead use the URL "http://www.google.com/calendar/ig" which is the url for the iGoogle calendar widget. It displays a nice monthly calendar, shows you your agenda, formats your event notes with newlines (main complaint with the iphone version), and includes the equivalent of the QuickCal language parsing widget. Woot! Here's a screenshot.