All posts tagged videos

Winter salt stains

January 10, 2009

salt-stained-shoes

The Leffot shoe store’s blog share some tips for protecting your shoes from road salt stains this winter:

The best way to combat the stain is to rinse the shoes off while they are still wet. If that’s not possible the salt will dry leaving a white stain, and the longer it’s left on will begin further damaging the leather.

Yes there are products made to remove salt stains, but I’ve always used a 50/50 mixture of warm water and white vinegar. Use a soft cloth and wipe away the stain, after the shoe is dry proceed to a leather balm or conditioner and then polish.

(h/t A Continuous Lean)

I don’t know which special products he had in mind, but I am as likely to use Lexol leather cleaner as his remedy, since I happen to have a big squirt bottle of it. Why? Because I needed some Lexol leather conditioner (rather essential), and thought, why not get the whole kit.

A commenter makes the sensible point that if you keep your shoes polished well enough (polish being basically wax), your shoes will soak up foreign substances less to begin with. Which stimulates my guilty conscience about not having polished my main pair of brogues myself.

As a former vegan I never thought I’d be write a blog post about leather care. More on that another time perhaps.

Something completely different –

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBZ8LzPC48M[/youtube]

Deep thoughts from John McCain

June 6, 2008

Mutek Non Stop

June 2, 2008

Went to the Friday evening show at Mutek, an annual electronic music festival in Montreal. Continue reading →

This is why I’m hostelling

April 3, 2008

(I.e., because it’s fly.)

The Loop area near the hostelSo I’m in Chicago for two days (a half day left), en route to New Mexico, staying in the downtown hostel. One of my roommates is Chinese, a poli sci student, and last night I asked him about Tibet.

He sighs, and says it’s hard to know what to think. The Communist Party tells the Chinese that the Dalai Lama is a “conspirator,” but Western media outlets say there is a big crackdown by China. The important thing is for everyone to live in peace. Both parties need to understand each other’s intentions better, and perhaps the atheistic Community Party should learn that religion is important for most people in the world.

He mentioned a YouTube video (perhaps this one) that claims Tibet was, is, and will always be a part of China. He and his friends find it funny, because the video lacks evidence. We are civilized people, he said, and when we say things there should be some evidence for them — otherwise it’s just propaganda.

Another person asked him why he’s come here to study politics. He said he feels the biggest challenge in China is political reform, and that the Chinese need to know more about other systems of government, e.g. democratic ones, so that they can, perhaps, join the free world sometime — which he said with a smile.