Archive for 'technology' Category

2011.01.29

Electric Motorcycles

As we slowly run out of oil (either literally or by way of cost) there has been a greatly increased amount of interest in electric vehicles. The car industry has been variously innovative (like the Chevy Volt, Honda FCX Clarity, Subaru R1e and the sporty Tesla Motors) to cynical (all but Tesla still pump out gas guzzlers, including a few SUVs). There hasn’t been a lot of focus on electric motorcycles, however, at least not in the larger press.

My friend Josh was out and about with his brother recently, and visited Scuderia West where they are now selling the Brammo Enertia, an all electric motorcycle. After talking about it I wanted to look a bit more into how practical electric motorcycles are and, after reading some specs from Brammo, Zero Motorcycles and Native, and my conclusion is these things aren’t ready. At least they aren’t ready as marketed.
Read the rest of this entry…

2011.01.27

Brand New Site?

I’ve been thinking for a while that I might start a brand new blog. Not that I would delete this one, but I’d simply leave it online (commenting off) for “archival” purposes.

There are a couple reason for this. The first is that from and administrative POV things have finally gotten out of hand. The site runs on WordPress (and previously Blosxom) and I started when WP was still on version 1. I built my own theme based on my Blosxom template and imported the entries. It wasn’t perfect, but it got the job done. Themes in WP can be tricky, and I’ve been trying to upgrade mine with each significant release to include features, but it’s been a pain in the ass. Now I’m looking at what WP3 has to offer and I realize that there’s just no way I will be able to effectively upgrade my theme.

Another desire is to start working on a fresh site with my wife, Rosa. Both of us have dropped off Facebook (she did it quite a bit before I did) and we still like to communicate with the outside world, especially since our family and friends are scattered over several continents.

So we’re going to do it. We’re trying to come up with a name for the site and looking at various themes we could use. There are a load of great pre-built themes but I’m especially interested in Sandbox, Toolbox and JustCSS. These are barebones themes that you can customize and are something I was sorely missing when I built my own theme for this site from scratch. We’re also thinking of something along the lines of Magazine Basic and Platform because we like their layout.

Any other ideas?

2011.01.24

I Left Facebook

Well, I’ve deactivated my account on Facebook. Why? For a whole host of reasons too long to really go into, but which can be summarized thus:

1: It doesn’t actually enhance my social life.
2: Vicariously following my “friends” doesn’t enhance my relationship with them.
3: Facebook has some serious privacy issues, and that’s not all.
4: My personal life is my own, and doesn’t need to be complicated by a site that feels so impersonal.

Each one of those points could be an entire essay. Note that many of these same reasons apply to why I never got into many of the other “social” media trends except Twitter, and that was purely to get me some free software; huzzah!

It was great when they had Scrabulous but since then I’ve hardly used it. I rarely checked on friend’s profiles, never used any of their games, and pretty much only followed the news feed, which was almost useless since it posted people’s updates that I didn’t care to follow and removed the ability to customize it. After a while I stopped checking that even. Upon a wild occasion I would post my own status update. I think the last ones were wishing folks a Happy XMas (which I could do here) and posting pictures from the wedding, which I did post here. So why don’t I just do what I’m doing here, where the only privacy concerns are the ones I make myself, where you can read what you want (or not!), and live my life by arranging to meet people in person that I can and calling or sending an email to the people I can’t? No reason.

So, that’s all for now. Maybe (maybe!) someday I’ll return but in the meantime I’m going to make a concerted effort to update this site a bit more. I know, I’ve been saying that for a long time, but I’m hoping that this time it actually sticks.

In the meantime, I know in this “modern” and “social” environment that it’s kind of shocking to some if they see their “friend” suddenly not on their “list” and feel put out. I hope you find this page and realize it’s nothing personal against you. This is just something I wanted to do. We can still be friends in the real world.

2010.12.18

Augmented Reality

Quest Visual has created an application for the iPhone that will, on the fly, translate English to Spanish, or visa versa. You should really check out their demonstration. The translation is very far from perfect as it is, at least right now, doing a straight swap word for word. Even still, the technology is pretty freaking amazing, and as the font recognition improves and the translation algorithm improves… Pretty soon we’ll be able to wear special glasses with a miniature camera and move anywhere in the world with instant translations right there, overlapping what we’re seeing. Augmented reality. Between that and using your iPhone to correct for color blindness it’s pretty amazing what is coming down the pike.

2010.09.16

Scrivener 2.0 Coming Soon

матрациMy favorite writing tool in the world, Scrivener, is getting an upgrade. I’ve used the program for years to do anything from writing stories to an employee handbook. There are two great articles describing what the new Scrivener will and won’t have. On the “will have” side is better overall integration of the documents, corkboard and outliner. Each one has key improvements as well (I’m very curious about corkboard’s freeform mode and the commenting and footnotes for documents).

Some of the key things that will not be included are a timeline function, mindmapping or a Windows version (though there are random hints that the last might not be true). Honestly, I don’t mind that there isn’t a timeline even though it seems like this would be an easy thing to code. As for mindmapping or a Windows version, not a bother at all. It will keep the code base easier for the developer, too, and keep the application from turning in the bloated wreck that is most word processing/writing packages out there right now.

(A thought just occurred to me to try and figure out how to create a timeline with either Document Notes, keywords or corkboard summaries, export to a file and import it to my favorite timeline application, Timeline 3D. Must investigate).

For a full list of features just follow the links in the first paragraph. The “will have” link is particularly interesting as it include screenshots giving a tantalizing taste of what is to come. At a mere $45 (for v.2) Scrivener is a great deal. If you have a Mac and aren’t sure, go get the demo of the current version and give it a spin.

2010.06.16

The Anachronism

I like small films, and I like some of the steampunk stuff out there (though too much is punk, and not enough steam, or visa versa). The Anachronism strikes a fine balance and is worth watching if just for the great acting of the kids. Usually child actors are annoying, but these two are quite good.

2010.03.03

MacHeist nanoBundle 2

For those of you interested in trying out new kinds of software on the cheap for a good cause, MacHeist is having their second nanoBundle sale. Featured are MacJournal, RipIt, Clips, CoverScout and Flow, plus if enough people purchase this $19.95 bundle, Tales of Monkey Island and RapidWeaver. While I haven’t used all the software I’ve gotten from these bundles in the past, usually the bundle costs less than most of the applications listed individually. In other words, a pretty good deal!

2010.02.12

Facebook is Not a Blog

While I have to admit that I appreciate Facebook’s status updates, I have to say I hate how some users seem to think status updates are some form of blog. I realize they should be short and succinct. However, don’t just say, “Cool!” followed by a link. I don’t want to follow links out of Facebook, especially from my phone. Give me some indication of what is so “Cool!” will ya? Like this:

Cool! Doug finally uses his blog!

Short, succinct, with all the information I need to determine if I want to bother, which in my example I’m probably not too interested…

2009.10.15

Intertron’s Back!

After RMCA and I started moving I badly planned ordering our new internet hookup so for the past couple weeks we’ve been at home… internet-less. Today it is back! For those of you interested I went with Sonic. Very good customer service, great speeds for what I need, and working intertrons!

Incidentally, the previous cork entry is getting some nice comments and ideas. If you have any ideas of what to do with my hundreds of wine corks then click on the link and contribute!

Now then, back to your regularly scheduled stuffs.

2009.05.27

Photo Manipulation; Tilt and Tile

I’ve got two interesting online apps that Banana Boy sent my way about photo manipulation. One is to change your pictures into fancy (but fake) tilt-shift images. Called TiltShift Generator, it has an online and downloadable version (downloadable version requires Adobe Air to be installed). Here’s an example I made. The first is unmodified and the second is, obviously, modified.

The second online app is called Repper and will create patterns out of a selection of an image. Some of the possibilities are pretty amazing for designers. I had some trouble uploading the image above but eventually created the images below. On the left is the image you download. When you make it a repeat you get the image on the right.

Nice stuff. I’m particularly happy to be experimenting with the tilt shift app!