My car got new brakepads and rotors two weeks ago. The stock pads were not quite worn down
yet but they squeaked and I wanted something better. A friend with a lot of experience in brakes
recommended Porterfield R4S.
We mounted the brake pads and rotors at his house and I broke them in on the little mountain roads
around his place.
Wow, what a difference. The stock brakes are not bad as such, but the Porterfields are a lot better
in both stopping power and control.
Now I need new tires. My current BF Goodrich KDW are worn and I was not unhappy with them, but
I wouldn't mind getting something better. Recommendations are appreciated.
Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by duttermanI discovered Rammstein when a coworker popped the CD in when we were driving to
lunch. I bought "Sehnsucht" the same day and by now I have all Rammstein CDs
as well as a couple of Video compilations.
I figured out how to get around the 2048x2048 pixel limitation in mergedfb by stacking the monitors one on top of the other instead of side-by-side. The 1280x800 display of the work notebook and the 1280x1024 19 inch LCD would have been too wide together to run mergedfb at native resolution (1280+1280=2560) but on top of each other (1024+800=1824) the resolution fits.
When the dual monitor display was worked out I proceeded to get beryl installed. It works despite the Latitude D420 only having 32M of video RAM. I sometimes miss my own notebook and its 1920x1200 display but its a lot better than having to work with Windows.
In early May we took a trip to Yosemite for my birthday. Unlike last time we decided to stay on campgrounds in the park, which meant using our new (well, never used before) tent. It was great staying in the park instead of having to drive down to the KOA in Mariposa every evening. We took a longer hike, to the base of Vernal Fall, on the last day.
On the drive back we got to see hundreds of bats hunting for insects above the road winding through the foothills, a special treat for both of us because we love bats.
On the trip to Yosemite I used the new graduated neutral density filter i bought a lot and found that I should have bought it earlier on.
Mid May I started a new contract, developing Perl scripts on Linux for a major internet company. It is interesting work and I can make a impact there. They gave me a Windows Notebook as workplace system though, which was not conductive to rapid development so used a new Ubuntu installer which sets up Ubuntu inside a large file on the NTFS partition and modifies the Windows bootloader so it allows dual booting.
The team is spread all across the US and the communication mostly happens through Skype chat. And surprising enough, it works very well.
My car needs new tires this summer and I am trying to decide what to buy. There seem to be no reliable tire tests for the format I need so the question is, stay with a known type or try something new?
And yesterday I found there is a HDR imaging software for Linux (High dynamic range imaging). In the future when I come across a situation where the dynamic range is too great for a picture (e.g. a window in a room where the outside is so bright that when it is exposed properly the inside will be black and if the inside is properly exposed the outside is burned out) I can just bracket and have the HDR software create a picture from the different exposures.
Anyway, enough for today, I am dead tired.
What do you do if you have an old Mac iBook G3, with only a CD drive, Mac OS X Tiger only on DVD and no other Mac to use firewire target mode? You can send your DVD to Apple and have it exchanged for a set of CDs for a 'small' fee of $9.95 (on cost of OS X) and wait until your DVD arrives at Apple and they get around to sending the CD set back.
Alternative solution:
1) Go to Electronics retailer
2) Buy Firewire DVD drive (less than $100)
3) Connect DVD drive to Apple
4) Press Option during power on and select DVD drive as boot media
5) Install Tiger as usual
6) Enjoy
I also installed some freeware, most notably Abi-Word (its an old machine with only 320MB RAM), Firefox and Seascape (a gimp derived image editor).
Interestingly Tiger works quite well on the old Mac. It sure is no speed demon but it is fast enough to surf and chat and email.
In my last post I promised to write some more about Ubuntu Feisty. Today I installed the beta of Ubuntu Linux 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) in a virtual machine.
In terms of hardware compatibility I was impressed how it handled a state of the art Dell notebook at the last Linux meeting though. As expected the VM worked out of the box too.
The installer on the other hand is very impressive. A couple of weeks ago I installed Vista in a VM and it was the usual windows headache, long install time, scattered questions and a lot of work required to make it work properly with the hardware.
The Ubuntu installer is on a Live CD and works in the background, so you can work or surf while Ubuntu installs to your hard disk.
You can also test Ubuntu without installing anything to the hard disk, so after you take the CD out of the drive and reboot the PC is back to the state it was in before you tried the Live CD.
Supposedly Feisty has a 3D work environment (beryl) out of the box but this works only with 3D accelerator cards so I was unable to test this in a VM.
Otherwise the default install has everything you need for a working environment and more than ten thousand additional (free) software packages are just a few mouseclicks away thanks to apt and synaptic.
The bottom line is, if you are looking for a sophisticated and user friendly desktop Linux distribution, look at Ubuntu, you won't regret it.
Luckily the rain held off over the weekend. We enjoyed a nice walk today, through the local parks and to our favorite used bookstore. Some of the trees are in full bloom and I took some pictures with rou's camera,
Yesterday we went to a biweekly Linux Party. The beta of Ubuntu Feisty is finally out so we got a look at that. I also fixed a stubborn X.org on a SUSE installation for another party guest. The contrast between SUSE and Ubuntu Feisty became even more obvious when we ran the Feisty live CD on the host's brand new WUXGA notebook. Not only did it come up with an actual WUXGA display from the Live CD, all the other hardware including WiFi works out of the box.
My Debian bias aside currently (Debian based) Ubuntu currently is the best choice for an end user and makes Linux a lot easier to install and manage than Windows. I'll write some more about Feisty in a later posting.
I have been following NHRA dragracing for years. My brother originally introduced me to it and I went to the Race in Sears Point (now known as Infineon Raceway) for the last 6 years. One of my favorites is John Force's four car Nitro Funny Car team.
Last Monday Eric Medlen, one of JFR's drivers was hurt badly in a testing accident when his car hit the wall hard and he died today.
I had not had a very fun day today, with the landscapers making noise outside so I couldnt concentrate and then going to a prospective client less prepared than I wanted to be, but the sobering news of Eric's death lets all these things appear petty and unimportant.
Rou and I are still going to go to the Sears Point race but a piece of it will be missing.
Godspeed, Eric.
Rou and I went to the Software Developer convention in Santa Clara on Wednesday and Thursday. I think I made an enemy at the Microsoft booth. We collected valuable information and drooled over the new Blackberry, made contacts and tried to win a Nintendo Wii (we didnt). On the plus side a publisher was giving away books at the end of the show and we ended up with a bunch of free books I had considered purchasing earlier on.
And after fun comes ...
I had an interview for a business contract today. Seemed to have gone well but I won't know details until next week. If I can land this contract I might actually be able to finally justify the lens I have been eyeing lately (Nikkor 85mm/2.8 PC Macro lens)...
Yesterday night I started preparing some pictures for Shutterstock. Most of them I took on our road trip last fall, but havent gotten around to selecting and editing yet. The picture of Bryce Canyon on my blog theme was taken on the trip too. Once I get through with sorting I'll post some pictures here.
It's interesting how even pictures I really liked have some flaw somewhere and I could tinker endlessly to get them in shape. I think I have a reasonably good collection now, hopefully the judges will see fit to accept me into the circle of photographers.
