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Dear Apple,
Go to hell. Apple's insistence that there is an "unclear patent landscape" is about as obvious and transparent a maneuver as you can get; it's a thinly-veiled market protection tactic, and we all see it for what it is. As for the the lack of native hardware support, call it what it is: you don't have hardware decoding for Theora in the current generation iPod and iPhone. Whose fault is that again? Right. You're acting in your shareholder's best interests, surely, but you're pissing off everyone else who has to play in the sandbox with you.
So, go to hell.
Sincererly,
Teh internets.
P.S Google, you too.
As the first part of eventually getting Erica's wagon an upgraded turbo, I've started planning out the fuel system for her. Her goals are very modest; she wants the car to be responsive in day-to-day traffic, and I'm sure she'd like to be able to at least keep up with my Evo. ;) So, fueling isn't a huge deal; running under the assumption that she won't be running E-85 (she's quite adamant about that, although I'm still hoping to change her mind), a 255lph pump should be plenty for most 40-50lbs/min turbos.
Originally I'd planned on picking up the usual choice: a 255lph HP Walbro pump. After doing a bit of searching, I came across TRE, a company out of California selling what appeared to be "Walbro clones"; they even carry the same part number designations. I suspect they're simply a reproduction from another country, but TRE seems to care enough about the perception of their product that they went to the trouble of having an independent company (RC Engineering) test their output, and give a one-year warranty on them. The biggest plus was that they claimed to not have the typical Walbro "whine"; if you've ever had a Walbro pump, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and it's annoying, especially for a pure street car like my wife's. After seeing a few other folks getting them and being generally happy with them, I decided to take a chance and give it a shot. If you don't see an update here about them within a year or two, you can assume it worked out fine. :) Installation was a snap, and the kit came with everything necessary to install them, along with a "pump cozie"; a foam rubber sleeve that should do a good job of further reducing noise. As for the sound: you can hear it power on when you turn the key, but once the car is running, it doesn't make a peep. Perfect.
Next up will be fuel injectors; I've had my eye on a set of Injector Dynamics injectors, which are basically flow-matched modified Bosch OEM injectors. While it's a bit much for her application, I'm planning on grabbing a set of their 1000cc injectors; plenty of headroom for alternative fuels later, if necessary, and the price is close enough to not matter much. The upshot with these, besides the flow-matching, is that Tony at T1 supplies voltage latency compensation values for them at a variety of common base pressures, which should make tuning for them a breeze.
After that, I have an adjustable fuel pressure regulator that I was originally planning on installing on the Eclipse sitting on the shelf that I'll probably install for her, along with converting her fuel rails to a parallel feed configuration. In stock form, fuel is fed to the two fuel rails serially; that is, fuel enters one rail and feeds those injectors, then flows to the other rail to feed the second set. The result can be a pressure drop in the second rail, and potentially inadequate fueling to one or both injectors in that rail. The fix is pretty simple: deliver fuel to both rails in parallel using a y-fitting to split the flow, then connect the output of the rails together at the fuel pressure regulator. Simple enough to say, but we'll see how accommodating the stock lines will be to a reconfiguration, or if I'll have to fabricate a bunch of new lines for this.
Finally, the plan is to pick up a turbo for her. I have my eye on the new Forced Performance HTA68 turbo, which is a heavily-modified Mitsubishi 16g. The price is decent, and responsiveness should be on par with a typical 16g (with improved top-end), so it should be a good fit for her application.
Sometime next year, once all of this is done, we'll need to focus on improving charge air cooling; either a front-mount intercooler, or a larger top-mount. But that's down the road a bit.
I hate laptops.
Desktops are infinitely serviceable. Need to replace a fan? No problem, pop off two screws, and that's probably enough to get at it. Want to upgrade the video card? No worries, just pop off those same two screws, and there you go. Repeat for just about every component.
Laptops are the opposite. I would argue that they are anti-serviceable: they are not only difficult to work on, I suspect they may actually be working against me when I'm trying to fit my fat fingers into tiny little crevices hunting for yet another screw that I've dropped.
And yet, I'd never give mine up, now that I own one. There's a degree of freedom in having your usual computing experience with you, anywhere, that's very tough to give up. I'm quite convinced that my 17" widescreen was a bit too big to be reasonably portable, but as soon as there's a reasonably-priced 12.1" notebook with a touchscreen (the HP tx2z looks interesting, but note that I said "reasonably priced"), my Inspiron 1721 will be relegated to home desktop duty.
Anyway, today's fun (since I'm feeling like crap and stuck at home anyway) was replacing the CPU fan in my laptop. For the second time. The first time, the laptop was under warranty, so I basically said, "Dell, you fix it". Which they did. Six months later, the fan is dead. AGAIN. Guess who's out of warranty now?
So, I ordered a replacement yesterday, and had it over-nighted to me. I have to give Dell credit here: they processed the order before close of business yesterday, and the delivery guy had a fan in my hands today, which was totally unexpected given the level of service I've received from their support "chat" in the past.
Anyway, I'm grumbling the entire time I'm pulling my laptop completely apart, quite certain that I'm never going to buy another goddamn Dell again because of the obviously terrible components they chose for the construction of this laptop. I finally get down to the fan, remove it...and a wad of dog hair four inches wide and a full inch thick comes out with it, wedged between the heatpipe fins and expanding out into fan inlet.
I think I can forgive Dell for this one. ;-) A note in the box saying, "Dude, your dogs are disgusting" when I got the laptop back last time would have certainly been understandable, after seeing that. Ew.
I wrote a little gadget for Erica a few months ago that automates a daily photography contest she runs on her Photography Beginners Flickr group. It's pretty rudimentary stuff; a database of contest themes and publication dates (past and future), and a nightly job that logs into Flickr (nee Yahoo!) and posts the contest, along with sending an email containing a link to the contest over to the companion mailing list (it also automatically reschedules contests, so it can run on autopilot for the most part). Pretty simple stuff, although automating the Yahoo login process was a little annoying. (Flickr's proper API is quite good, but they've intentionally avoided exposing almost anything related to their discussion groups; presumably spam is the concern, but it boggles the mind as to why a group owner isn't allowed to post and do basic discussion parsing.) Thank goodness for Beautiful Soup.
Anyway, I whipped it up as a quick Django app, since the auto-admin did pretty much everything she'd need for creating and scheduling contests. Meanwhile, she's been moving more and more stuff to her Google Apps account; her web hosting is mostly there now, and she's been using it for her email for as far back as I can remember. So, when Google opened up AppEngine for Apps owners, I jumped in and created a placeholder app for her, with every intention of giving Django on GAE a try.
Well, that was back when urllib2 wasn't supported, and the version of Django shipped with the SDK is still only 0.9.6. But, both of those problems were fixed recently; urllib and urllib2 are both supported in the SDK now, and app-engine-patch gets you most of the way to a workable Django 1.0 installation, with one big exception: it uses the GAE SDK's model interface instead of Django's, which makes porting a somewhat interesting experience. I also didn't realize that enforcement of unique values wasn't something GAE's data backend supported until I was hip-deep in porting it, but that proved to be a problem I was able to work around.
At the end of the day, the port was actually pretty simple: grep for any use of .objects() and replace it with .all(), replace .filter(pub_date=x) with .filter("pub_date =", x), and rewrite the models to use GAE's properties instead, and by and large the whole thing works. I'm having a problem with cookie persistence with cookielib, but aside from that, everything appears to work. I'm also quite impressed with how easy it was to get up and running with a development AppEngine instance locally, and how well pushing updates seems to work. app-engine-patch makes it feel a lot like native Django development (via manage.py) which, while it seems like a small thing, made the process a lot more comfortable.
Anyway, I'm still iffy on whether I'd use this conglomeration of tools for something more important, but for her contest system, it seems like a fine option. The fact that most of my stuff is still primarily Django is a big deal; if GAE goes completely commercial, or disappears for some reason, I'm not stuck with an app written for an SDK with no real use.
I've been tracking my weight loss lately with a little program for the iPhone called Lose It!, and decided to dig into it a bit more, to see if the data I was entering was retrievable or not. Turns out, as long as you have a jailbroken iPhone, all that data is sitting in a very simple SQLite database.
If you look over on the sidebar of this blog, I've added the data from the RecordedWeights table to a simple model in Django, and added a quickie chart courtesy of the Google Charts API and google-chartwrapper. (If anyone is curious, there's a somewhat simpler implementation that works just as well, if you only want Django template tags; google-chartwrapper provides a more complete object implementation that not everyone will need.)
It serves two purposes: first, I want a copy of my data somewhere other than an iPhone I can lose, and potentially locked in an app I might not be able to extract data from in the future. Second, by sitting right there on my blog sidebar, there's the inherent motivation that comes from publically announcing you're trying to lose weight. Again. :-P
Plus, it was a fun excuse to mess around with Google's charting API. It's a little rudimentary, but given how it works, it's surprisingly good.
I'm finally making more progress on the Eclipse. I picked up a set of DSS "level 5" rear axles and hubs for a very good price, and I have to say, I don't think I'll be breaking these any time soon. I needed to pick up replacement axles anyway, because the old ones didn't come off willingly; the passenger-side threaded end is mushroomed, and the driver's side splined shaft actually broke. Let's hear it for winter road salt in Chicago. Regardless, with this, I have a very nice complete replacement.
Along with the new axles and hubs, the entire rear suspension of the car is finallly off, and the old rubber bushings pressed out (I'd only managed to get the passenger side free before). Now comes the joy of wire-wheeling each piece, giving them a coat of rust inhibitor, and repainting them black again. Once that's dry, in go the last of the urethane bushings, and the whole rear suspension goes back together. Maybe the car could actually rest on the ground again sometime this month. ;)
Because the rear ABS sensors didn't free themselves willingly, it's been a good time to consider whether or not I want to bother with ABS at all on the car, given that it's really going to end up being a track day toy. I have a bit more reading and inspection to do, but the plan I'm going with right now is to completely delete the ABS system from the car. (Which, as luck would have it, saves me a few pennies for those now very dead sensors.)
In the "silly stuff distracting Ed from getting the car done" department, I've been fiddling around with fabricating a new alternator bracket so that the Saturn alternator mounts and tensions exactly the same way the OEM alternator did. I've also gotten Kiggly's crank angle sensor installed, and totally given up on the idea I had of welding an AN bung directly to an NT oil pan, and have decided instead to just go with something I know will fit properly: a decent bolt-on turbo drain tube and a normal turbo oil pan.
I think that's about it. Not much progress, but things are slowly getting done.
It's been a while since I've been to any kind of concert, so when Jonathan Coulton sent out a note to his mailing list that he was going to be in town with Paul and Storm, I had the tickets ordered before I even checked my schedule to see if we were free that day. Luckily, we were; Erica and I headed into the city on Saturday for a wacky night of pirate singalongs and sad vampire songs.
I lucked out and won the grand prize at the end of P&S' set: a "Little Law Man" tin star button thingy, a Nerds rope, and Paul and Storm's latest CD. Woot!
Okay, why is this funny to geeks like me? UNIX (and some other) systems track time by counting the seconds since midnight UTC on January 1, 1970, referred to as the epoch. So, if it were one second past midnight on Jan. 1, 1970, the UNIX time (or POSIX time) would be "1". There's been a lot of seconds since then. :) Today, at 23:31:30 UTC (5:31:30 central time), it will be the 1234567890th second since the epoch. And that's just cool, in a nerdy kind of way.
A recently "interesting" time was 999999999, inspring a lot of Prince references. Another geeky fact about this representation is that the number is typically stored in a signed integer, meaning it actually has a pretty small amount of memory to fit inside of; small enough, in fact, that at 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, it will overflow, making 2038 another one of those "interesting" dates.
A former professor once told my class that you could measure the level of competence you've reached in a given subject by how easily you could crack jokes about the topic that would make ordinary people around you wonder what the devil you're going on about (paraphrased, but that was the gist of it). It struck me as an odd observation at the time, but he was definitely right.
Pearl Marshall, my mom, passed away on January 23, 2009: last Friday night. At 2:00 today, a small memorial was held in Unity, Saskatchewan to remember her. Because I had made the trip up there a couple of weeks ago to be with her, I wasn't able to be there today, but I'm still thinking about her just the same.
There's not much else for me to say right now. I miss you, Mom.
$DEITY help me, I'm going to be somewhere around here tonight as the 2008 election results come in. Erica is renting one (two, if they have them) Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lenses with 2x tele-converters for us to capture some of the event.
I'm nervous. Just last week, Phillies fans basically destroyed part of their own city, and that was because of a sporting event, where the stakes are...well, you might win your office pool? I'm more than a little bit nervous walking into an event like this, where the turnout is expected to top the million-strong crowd that comes out annually for July 4th fireworks, and where the stakes are considerably higher.
One million people, inside of several city blocks, hearing that their candidate of choice is now the "leader of the free world". Or worse, that he has lost to his opponent, after all the polls for the past several weeks have suggested otherwise.
But it should be a hell of a show: history in the making.
I've had a couple of productive automotive-related weekends. Last weekend, I finally got the hard-wired power inverter installed in the Evo (4ga wire directly from the battery; it's an 800W inverter, so I didn't want to go small on it). This weekend, I finally re-constructed Jamie's map switching harness in the Evo (I think Jamie had a couple of extra beers the night he made my cable *grin*), and voila: I can now switch between my E85 tune and a 93 octane tune.
So, high on my success from that, I tackled the Laser again today. After testing the wiring harness to the alternator and the high-voltage line from the alternator to the battery, I was left with the possibility that I had TWO dead 1g alternators. We ran out to Pep Boys and had them test the alternator, and yep: 0V produced. A quick swap with one of their "lifetime warranty" remans (I fully expect to be getting my money's worth out of that warranty), and the Laser runs smoother than the Evo.
But, it's been sitting for almost exactly a year, and the usual problems are cropping up: every hydraulic line needs bleeding (clutch and brakes are terrible right now), and the rotors and pads were basically rusted together. So, it runs, and I'll be driving it to work a couple of days this week to get an idea of what else needs attention, but it's not perfect.
And it's a lot slower than the Evo. ;-)
There are quite a few people this election season, myself included, who are quietly shaking our heads, deeply disappointed in our fellow human beings and the people they choose to represent them.
Don't understand why? Take a look around. I've seen the absolute worst in people paraded around these past few months, as though this kind of behavior were acceptable. When a family member of someone we know falls gravely ill, do we act out of sympathy toward them, or do we engage in schadenfreude at best, and assume it is merely a political ploy at worst?
It's not all bad: while recent rallies have not been something to be proud of, a few people recently stood their ground against a gentleman whose sole interest was creating ignorant social division as a means to profit.
But I can't help but think our standards have lowered unacceptably. Is a small group of people who were directly impacted by the issue speaking up against a vendor selling obviously distasteful innuendo the best we can do?
It's not just the blatant sexism and racism that has permeated these campaigns. It's the vitriol spat in each direction, at all levels of campaigning. Local candidates are busy telling everyone what's wrong with their opponents, but not spending a whole lot of time talking about what they have in mind. I've been hearing what I swear is the same woman doing her "in these troubled times" and "we can't afford another four years" voice-over lines for nearly every local political candidate on radio and TV.
Have our standards lowered so much that the best we can hope for from these campaigns is the occasional nugget of policy discussion? Should we accept that digging up dirt on your opponent, mis-characterizing their positions and actions, encouraging all manner of hateful behavior if it favors your campaign, and ill-considered innuendo is just the cost of democracy?
I'm disappointed in our "leaders", because when they are at their most competitive, they demonstrate that leadership to us. And what they've demonstrated is something you would scold a petulant child for.
It's a political scandal, caught on tape. Thanks to Digg for the link.
Yeah, that's right. You've been Barack Roll'd.
I can't even begin to describe how little fun this is. As an old friend of mine once said, it's possibly the best weight loss plan even conceived of. I've been lucky enough to keep the nausea at bay so far, something I remind myself every time I cramp up or run screaming for the bathroom: "just think, it could be worse!" :-P
Some things, people just shouldn't get. This is one of them.
