Fixing v-brakes

Last night I fixed the brakes on my city bike. One of the arms of the v-brakes wasn't moving. This happened both on the front brake and on the rear brake too. I asked a guy from the bike shop how to fix the problem and he said that probably it got rusted or some dirt caused the brakes to brake.

I went home and unscrewed the screw but the brake arm didn't come loose. I gave up after a few tries and abandoned the project. After I turned on my laptop I searched on the web for a tutorial to fix v-brakes and I found this video:

Although my brakes are a bit different I got the tools and unscrewed the screw again. This time I got a screwdriver and tried to force the brake arm. I didn't succeed at first but then I started to twist the arm and it started to get loose. I found out that a lot of rust was causing the brake to malfunction.

the rust

the tools

I cleaned the brake with a fine sand paper and then like the guy does it in the video I greased it up an resembled it. It was working so well that the other side, which was working before, got stiff. So I had to clean the other side too.  

After fixing the front brakes I did the same thing to the rear brakes to. The rear brakes came off a lot easier.

The whole operation took me about 40 minutes but next time I will be a lot faster because I know what to do :D

The rear brake got stiff a bit but maybe it will recover in a few days, if it doesn't I will lube the cable. I didn't line up the brake pads with the rims eater because I'm expecting the springs to get loose a bit after they were stiff for a while.

How to Adjust your Disc Brakes?

I never tried to adjust my brakes and I didn't know it's so easy. YouTube knows everything :D

Fix Chrome to support extensions

I bumped in to another problem with my new browser. My AdSweep just stopped working so i started to search for a solution. The fix is to switch from Beta to Dev, because it seems that they disabled extensions in the beta version. I found the fix here :)

The browsers I use

A few weeks ago I started using the Google browser, Chrome 4 beta. It is a lot faster then Firefox :D
The only reason I still use Firefox sometimes is the Firebug :)

The only problem with Chrome is that it doesn't display pdf files. I searched around and I found the fix. Just resize the window and the document magically appears :D

Firefox vs Chrome
What is better in FF:
    - Firebug
    - how you can search in the history, you just type part of the URL or the page title and it searches in the history
    - you can delete pages from the history just pressing "Delete"

What is better in Chrome:
    - speed
    - syncing browsing data with your Google account, this way if you have more computers you can have all your bookmarks and history everywhere :)

I'm waiting for FF 4, and I'm curious if it will beat Chrome 4, but if Chrome will have Firebug I will downgrade Firefox to testing browser  :)

My Browsers:
    - Chrome: main browser
    - Firefox: only for debugging
    - Opera: did you know it has a torrent client? ;)
    - ie: just for testing or downloading other browsers on a fresh windows install :D