Tesla Roadster is in Production

I saw an earlier prototype of the Tesla Roadster at a meeting of the Bay Area EV club and since then I've kept my fingers crossed in hopes that it would actually hit the market.

It did!

Here is a clip of Jay Leno test driving production unit number one.

Nice Work PA Semi

The story is all over the web.  Apple announced their purchase of PA Semi for $278 million today.   I know a lot of people who work there.  Congratulations Bill, Luka, Brian, Fatty Patty, Greg and Jim.  I hope the payouts for you guys are enormous.

Now, what the heck is Apple going to do with you?  You better tell me.

Griffin iTrip AutoPilot for iPhone

Just thought I would let anyone who cares know that the Griffin iTrip AutoPilot barely works in my Honda Civic.  Maybe this is due to the position of my car stereo's antenna which may be built in to the rear window glass, but I'm not really sure.

The AutoPilot for iPhone sports Griffin's "SmartScan" technology which as far as I can tell randomly picks a station regardless if someone is or isn't broadcasting on it.  Very smart.

The sound quality when I could actually hear this thing was terrible.  So smart.

This product comes highly recommended for use as a lesson in how not to build a product.

Passenger Airplane Efficiency

A friend and I were wondering about the efficiency of traveling by passenger airplane.  Again a Wikipedia article comes through and says somewhere around 49 mpg per passenger back in 1998 but efficiencies have been improving since then.  I wonder if that includes the ridiculously long times the airplanes sit at the gate or taxi around with their jet engines on.  Hopefully Airbus and Boeing will be able to license Toyota's hybrid synergy drive so people can feel good about themselves as the electric motors take over while taxiing at the airports.  Then everyone in the cabin would be talking about how they can't even tell the airplane is on.

Dreyer's Mint Karaoke Cookie

Dreyer's has some trial ice cream flavors on the market right now.  They're all made with their slow churned process and are lower fat than the regular flavors.  Today I tried the Mint Karaoke Cookie flavor and its by far the best flavor they have on the market right now.  Its even better than French Silk.  True.

The choice for their new flavor is being put to a public vote, so if you have the time please surf on over to www.slowchurned.com and help make sure Mint Karaoke Cookie is around for the long run.  I need it.

Problems with AVIs in Quicktime

I just spent a good hour trying to get AVI files to play on my Macbook with Leopard.  At first I saw nothing but white screens when opening the files in Quicktime.  After installing a few Quicktime components including Perian and the DivX component, I could see a rendered video frame but trying to play the movie would cause Quicktime to crash.

Others have had the same problem over at the Apple discussion boards.

I assumed that it was some conflicting playback components, so I removed playback components until I was able to playback the video.  Here's what I left in my Quicktime components directory:

The ones I removed:

I can playback the AVIs from my Casio Exilim now.  I have no idea what the problem was but if you know please do tell.  I hope and doubt that removing the EyeTV component was necessary since the AVI file was encoded with mpeg-4, but I really don't know.

Is it just me or does this Quicktime component plug-in mess seem....messy.

Mad Cow Disease in America

I learned today that a person only a few degrees of separation away from myself recently passed due to mad cow disease (vCJD).  My heart goes out to friends and family.  This person fought the disease for years never having been diagnosed with the illness until the autopsy took place.  This peaked my curiosity and I did a little reading which lead to some alarming realizations:

1) Testing of cows in the U.S. is far more relaxed than many other countries.  This Wikipedia article claims there are a large number of countries with import restrictions on meat exported FROM the U.S. due to the lack of thorough testing HERE!

2) In the U.S. hospitals and physicians are not required to report mad cow deaths.  

Why is U.S. mad cow testing not up to par with our neighbors to the point where they're worried about eating the meat we ship them?

The Wikipedia article claims only 3 knows vCJD cases in the U.S.  Maybe I should modify the article and bump that number up to 4?  Now I'm not one for conspiracy theories.  I typically fall in the camp that suggests a large organization doesn't know the left hand from the right hand and therefore things like mad cow testing and accurate reporting of mad cow related deaths might need improvement, but then again there is an awfully large sum of money involved.  I think we're all aware of the nice things people do for money.

I Caught Another Bug

This one is awesome.  He looks like a small bird with owl eyes.  This time I didn't need no stinking non-responsive entomologist to identify him.  He's a White-Lined Sphinx moth, often mistaken for a hummingbird.  Now that's a cool bug.  Props to my lady for letting me know this guy was hanging around in the garage.  This pretty much made my day.

Now THAT'S a Solar Array

Check out the solar array on this covered parking lot. This school is going to be generating electricity for themselves and probably half of San Jose.

Tankless Water Heaters

Today I learned that tankless water heaters for homes are real.

The reason this surprises me is that I've never seen one. I watched a video on the web where the guy claimed these things are new technology, however a person from Spain left a comment saying he has never seen a water heater with a tank.

Great.

So why the hell am I keeping a giant tank of water hot 24/7 when I use hot water once a day for about 10-15 minutes? Why has Spain had this supposed "cutting edge" technology for years while we here in the US go to work and earn money to have it disappear into the ether above our idle water heater tanks?

Lastly, why couldn't I have heard about this 3 months earlier when the Federal tax break of $300 would still apply to this type of appliance purchase bringing the hardware cost down to about $400 for a beautiful Bosch tankless gas heater.

B-boy Cico

I'm not a b-boy or anything but I can certainly appreciate it. This video blows my mind.

EPA's New Automobile Efficiency Ratings

My friend and I keep bringing up the topic of the EPA's new automobile efficiency ratings which were revised for 2008. Neither of us knew what the new standards are or why they were put in place, so I said I would do a little research and sum it up.

Why: People aren't achieving the kinds of fuel efficiencies the cars were advertised to be capable of.

What changed: They added some tougher tests. One of the new test includes operation of the vehicle in a cold climate. One includes operational efficiency with the air conditioner on, and the third includes faster acceleration, higher speeds, and harder braking.

The results are supposed to be efficiency ratings more in line with reality.

My one complaint about the new ratings is it seems like merging the results together might not be the best for the consumer. If I live in Alaska I really don't care if the air conditioner kills my efficiency. If I live in Hawaii I shouldn't be too concerned about how inefficient the engine is in cold weather climates, right? Maybe combining these efficiency tests in to a highway and city rating is a bit of an over simplification.

Here are my sources:
http://www.earthcars.com/articles/article.htm?articleId=6

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm

Iogear Bluetooth Serial Port Adapter Gotchas (GBS301)

I've had some time to play with Iogear's Bluetooth serial port adapter, the GBS301. It looks like a bunch of people on the web have had a few issues with this thing. The documentation is a little concise shall we say? Two big gotchas with these adapters I found are:

1) If your serial port peripheral that you're working with doesn't use hardware flow control, meaning the RTS and CTS pings are not used by the device the bluetooth adapter won't work as is. A work around is to tie the RTS pin to the CTS pin. This tells the bluetooth adapter that your peripheral device is always ready to receive data.

2) For my revision of these adapters, after the adapter was paired, if I wanted to repair with a different device I had to go in to the firmware menu and select the menu option which resets the firmware to factory state. Isn't that nice.

Do ALL bluetooth devices suck?