Carl Hutzler's Blog

Back in March I was looking for a fun place to go for spring break. While most people think Florida and Mexico, I found a cheap flight from Dulles to Albuquerque (direct) for just $178 a head.

We spent a week in and around Albuquerque visiting the White Sands Missle Range, White Sands National Monument, Roswell’s Alien Museums, Carlsbad Cavers and even made it up to Santa Fe to visit my Aunt Terri and see the very nice little town. We had some nice food at the Artichoke Café in Albuquerque as well as several Mexican joints along the way. And if the kids had been into it, we even could have skied in Santa Fe or even up in Taos….it was cold enough and even snowed on us a little.

We camped a couple of nights along the way in a KOA campground in Alamagorda and another in Santa Fe. Other than that, we stayed in inexpensive hotels….inexpensive for NM is fairly good actually. The cost of living out there is dirt cheap.

Highlights? Well maybe sledding on sand at White Sands. Or seeing my cousin Terry and her place which I had never been to. But we also had fun in the Albuquerque kids musueum. Absolutely the best science museum I have ever been to. The displays were very unique and the staff was excellent. We really enjoyed that place a lot.

Roswell was fun too. A lot of UFO (scary!!) stuff going on. We went to the “International” Museum of UFO stuff and it was just as cheesy as I had hoped. Very fun. Roswell even has street lights with Alien heads on them.

Maybe next year we will head out for a week or skiing and see Taos.

When the new iPhone 3G devices were released last year, one of my clients gave me his old iPhone (he upgraded). I played with the device and loaded it up with games. It was basically an iPod Touch on steroids (camera, etc).

Anyway, my kids loved playing games on it so we always took it on long drives. This past week my son was using it and stuck it in his jacket pocket but forgot to zip it shut. Later when he took off his jacket, the iphone fell out onto the concrete parking lot. Ouch!

The glass had 2 small “divots” but it was not cracked. The divots were a result of the impact which also seemed to broke many sections of the LCD display. The display was not cracked, but as I would later understand, the liquid itself had been forced out of some of the areas and as such the display had a lot of lines through it. I was especially bummed as I was about to switch to ATT and buy an iPhone 3g and give the old iPhone to my wife. Whoops!

When we got back I did a little research on the web and some experimentation with Brasso, a dremel tool, steel wool and a few other things. What I found that worked was some very fine wet/dry sandpaper. Like 1200 or 2500 grit type stuff. I used a somewhat coarse version (1200 grit) with water to literally sand out the scratched areas…all but the biggest one which I was only comfortable sanding out part way. I had to use a reasonable amount of pressure in the sanding process. The divots in the iPhone screen got a lot less noticeable from the 1200 grit sand paper but in the end the glass surface had a very finely scratched finish left over from the sand paper.

Next I used a finer grit (2500 or so) to smooth out the area a bit more. This worked well and left the iphone with more or less a “matte” finish in the area where I was sanding – basically finer scratches. The scratches from sanding were gone and what was left was more or less a haze. Oh, and a nice side effect of the sanding process (pressure) was that some parts of the LCD screen got better. I had fewer bad sections/lines in the LCD screen. I think the pressure forced some of the liquid back into some parts of the screen. As you can see from the pictures, the LCD is still not perfect, but it is better than it was (trust me).

While the iPhone’s screen was very usable now, I wanted to get rid of the haze/matte look to the half of the screen where I had been sanding. So I ordered some Cerium Oxide and a large buffing/polishing wheel from Caswell Plating. The kit arrived in 3-4 days and I went to work.

I put the polishing/buffing attachment in my drill press and ratcheted the speed (RPMs) to the highest setting it would go. I mixed some of the cerium oxide powder with water to make a substance with the thickness of heavy cream. According to the directions, you want enough water in the solution so that the buffing does not heat up the glass too much. This is important as it is not only glass we are polishing, but an LCD display right underneath.

I applied the liquid cerium oxide mixture with my fingers directly to the iPhone screen and polished the screen for about 30-40 minutes total. The actual process was tedious…put solution on the screen, polish for 10 seconds, put on more solution, polish some more, repeat. Warning: you don’t want to put too much pressure on the buffing action as it will heat up the glass in one spot and might crack the glass or damage the LCD underneath. I would buff for a few seconds and feel the heat of the glass to see how I was doing.

Periodically I would wash the iphone with a wet rag to see my progress. This slowed me down, but being the first time I had done this, I wanted to make sure everything was going well.

In the end, I think you will agree that the screen is 1000% better than it was. I could likely go further and get it to be perfect, but that would take a lot of time and might risk damage to the screen. The only areas of the screen I found hard to polish was the area near the edge. I think the polishing wheel was not making full contact with the glass due to the small metal lip that runs around the edge of the iPhone. But it is pretty good.

After the polishing, I used a pin, a wet clothe and some canned air to get the polishing compound out of the small holes and gaps in the iphone case. Not sure if there is a better way or not, but this seemed to work just fine.

One of our closest friends, Michelle Dortignac, performed “suspended yoga” last weekend at the Galapagos Art Space in NYC. The show was entitled “Across the Water” (fitting as the venue was filled with water just below the island like seating area).

What is suspended yoga? Well, it is pretty much what you might think. Slow strength manuevers….lifts, stretches, balance….performed to music while suspended in air. Take something your might see at some other french sounding circus and put it up in the air, hung from nylon fabric, and you will get a sense of what it is like (or check out the pix)

The Suspended Cirque

It was not my first time seeing Michelle perform, but this was the first time I have seen her in an actual show. In the past she had music and the choreography and her sense of performance was amazing, but she was usually alone or more in a demonstration type of performance. But this was a show! A show with four other professionals  performers, beautiful lighting, excellent use of the space, well thought out music and perfect orchestration. This was the real deal. And the (standing room only) audience knew it, as they were totally infatuated with the show which they kind of had to be as it was literally performed right above their heads!

The owners of the venue loved the show (and the completely packed house) and invited the troop back for several more shows this summer. I will try and post something when I hear about the dates.

While in NYC for the rest of our (kid free!) weekend we visited with Michelle and Kenny and dined at a great Ethiopian resturaunt in Brooklyn’s park slope, enjoyed a day at the Met and an experience at Katz’s deli. All in all we had a very fun time as always.