Pricing us out of our lifestyle
This is not a popular opinion, but I hope this leads to a fundamental change in our collective lifestyle here in the United States. This pipe dream we’ve been living subsidized by the future had to end sometime.
Archive for May, 2008
Curious about Django
One of my Twitter friends has made me curious about the Django web application framework. This basically sits on top of Python to make it easier to develop applications for the web. I decided to check into it myself. The first thing I have learned is that the documentation available for free is really amazing. I’m going through the free book right now, and learning tons along the way. I actually have an Associate’s Degree in programming, but, honestly, I don’t know any language well. I do have the basic concepts of programming down for the most part. I have been able to follow along with very little trouble. The comment system that is built into the book in which there is comment space for each paragraph is elegant and functional. It’s a major asset in a tight spot.
Spammers gaming Twitter
I have only recently noticed this although my experience with Twitter has been fairly limited until the last couple of weeks. It appears some devious spammers have learned of sites that track the number of times a given link is posted on Twitter (see Twitturly among others) and are taking full advantage of this by spamming their own links on the service. The Twitturly feed, which has mostly served as a fast-track for links that will soon appear on Digg and Reddit, has recently been hit with a number of links to a site that asks for your e-mail address in exchange for secret hints on how to last longer in sex. Personally, I find the Konami code has been the only secret I have ever needed in any walk of life (up, up, down down, left, right, left, right…).
Pop Rocks trivia
I just found this comment posted about Pop Rocks
Pop rocks are awesome for a number of reasons. These reasons are as follows:
1: When you build up a lot of saliva behind your bottom teeth and dump a pack of pop rocks in there, the occasional pop rock pops so hard that it knocks another pop rock out. like your mouth was some kinda volcano
Right brain versus left brain
I had a lengthy political discussion with a hardline right-wing co-worker. I would never willingly enter into this kind of thing, but it just happened. So, we are talking, and, at some point, I realized he was not attacking my ideas but the facts upon which they are based. Every fact I sited had been manipulated to make my side come out smelling like a rose. Fortunately for him, the facts he sited were beyond reproach.
Hypermiling update: Puzzling results
I have discontinued using some of my hypermiling techniques to test their effectiveness. I have been watching my tachometer closely, and, rather than using cruise control, I have been manually keeping the RPMs under 2000 at all times which usually results in an interstate cruising speed of 60mph. I have also been practicing engine-off-coasting. I am still driving conservatively, but I have resumed using my cruise control and started driving up to 70mph. I have also started shifting to neutral rather than turning the engine off for coasting. After one day of this, I have some surprising results.
Update: Hypermiling experiment
What looked like a success may not be (or at least not so much as it seemed). I previously claimed a modest mileage gain of 3.5mpg over a measurement taken before I started hypermiling. In two more recent measurements, I calculated 27.5mpg and 28.9mpg. This is really much less than the gains I was hoping for as many people who are doing this (granted I’m sure they are much more skilled than I) are really achieving dramatic increases in fuel economy.
Explanation of economic stimulus
I received a delightful note in the mail yesterday: a (so-called) explanation of the economic stimulus plan. Hurray! If there is anything I don’t understand, it is the economic stimulus plan. However, the note unfortunately clear up any of the problems I have with the package.
Meta: New comments system!
I am auditioning a new comment system for the blog. It adds a really cool social aspect to the comments along with a feature that should have been included with WordPress from the beginning: comment threading! We’ll see how it works over the next few days. It may make things look a little strange. As yet, there is no way to migrate existing comments. Rather than lose them, I kept the old comment system on those pages with comments. Other pages will employ the new system. The comment count (next to the story title) is also different from old to new which will cause the homepage to look a little touched until all the stories there are using the new system. I hope it’s worth the minor issues. Let me know what you think.
Hypermiling update
I previously posted about hypermiling and started employing some of the techniques in my own driving. I can now claim minor success! On the last two gallons of gas purchased, my mileage was 31.5—a gain of 3.5mpg on my measurement when I purchased the car! It’s pretty exciting to me considering there are still a number of other things I can do to improve my mileage like replacing the air filter, having an oil change (I’m overdue.), and correcting the tire pressure. I’ll keep you posted