Steve From “Blues Clues”

Steve Burns (aka Steve, the impossibly badly-educated, green-striped shirt-wearing guy from the hit children’s show “Blues Clues”) has an indie alternative band.  He released one album in 2003 called Songs for Dustmites, which was also worked on by members of The Flaming Lips.  He then formed his band The Struggle, and is currently working on another album, Deep Sea Recovery Efforts. Guess what, guys…

He’s good.

My favorite songs are “Mighty Little Man” (YouTube, kinda cruddy quality) and “What I Do on Saturday” (YouTube).  Listen this stuff up, then befriend his band on MySpace or visit his website.

lol, epic (MySpace Video)

Why I Can’t Maintain A Blog

So… I’m usually very on top of the tech scene as far as gadgets go.  However, I’m usually way behind in social networking.  I was using MySpace way past its prime, then I moved on to Facebook.  I still update my Facebook all the time, even though I don’t have many friends on there (not that I don’t have many friends in real life… I just like to uphold that MySpace-conservative “I’m not adding you as a friend unless you’re REALLY a friend” attitude.)  I also just started using Twitter… err… again.  I had previously used it under a different name, but it fell into disuse and I became embarrassed of the hollow shell of a profile it had become.

Anyway, I used to maintain a WordPress blog a long while back, where I’d write about my tech-related ideas.  That eventually fell into disuse.  I always tell myself that I NEED to start keeping a blog because that’s what all the cool people do.  But I can’t.  This is why:

Blogging is slow.  Seriously, it takes MINUTES.  Twitter takes seconds, and can be done from a cell phone.  True, most blog hosts do allow mobile updates, but who really wants to type a big essay on their phone?  Come on, we’re in an era of instanteous gratification.  It’s all about the here and the now.  It’s all about the “I’m washing my dog” and the “lol my dog just got me soaked, going to shower” and the “I’m in the shower now; man I have a huge dong.”

Okay, I’ve lost my train of thought while thinking about how gigantic my dong is.

Here’s my Facebook
Here’s my Twitter
…and here’s my MySpace.

Enjoy my sub-par Internet social life.

Hybrid/Electric Public Transportation

I think that the biggest step in relieving the costs of transportation for the average American would be to make all forms of public transportation electric or hybrid, including taxis and busses.

Think about it; most of the taxis in New York are Ford Crown Vics.  With their V8 engines and all the starting and stopping they do in the city traffic, there’s no way they’re getting more than 10 mpg.  That’s a lot of gas, considering all the hundreds of taxis moving around every day.

Now replace all those Crown Vics with hybrid cars that would get perhaps 30 mpg.  The cost for the taxi company per mile driven is now 1/3 of what it was.  Instead of immediately thirding the per-mile cost for the customer, they could cut it back a little at a time to help recoup the cost of the hybrid cars.

This would be a MAJOR step forward.  Not only would people have a much cheaper way of getting to work and back, but it would be really good for the Earth.  Think of the carbon emissions that come from those hundreds of V8-powered smog machines every day.

There’s no telling what could happen once hybrid/electric technology is applied to other forms of public transportation, including busses.  There’s no better way to encourage public transportation than by making it a lot cheaper.

So yeah… if you’re reading this and you’re in charge of some taxi company, do it.  Thank you.

Texting while Driving: I do it!

And I do it in a car with a standard shift.

I’m actually quite a multi-tasker.  I eat, talk on the phone, drink (not alcohol), and fiddle with the radio while driving and shifting.  When people ask how I do it, I usually reply in jokingly, “We have knees for a reason.”

The actual answer is that I know how to prioritize my tasks.  I know that if I’m sitting in something that weighs 3000 pounds moving at 40+ mph, I had better give it all the attention it deserves.  This is why typing a text message that would normally take me twenty seconds will take me a minute to type while driving.  This is why I consistently trail off while talking on a phone while driving.  This is why I’ve missed my mouth on many occasions trying to eat while driving.

I liken it to being a CPU.  Driving requires a certain percentage of my processing bandwidth; let’s say it’s 80%.  In an emergency maneuver, it might require 100%.  So what do I do?  I schedule all other tasks to use 20% of my processing bandwidth or less, and make sure that they can be instantaneously ended at any point.

Don’t go out and try doing this unless you’re already a really good driver.

Oversimplified Guide to Getting Better Gas Mileage

These tips are listed in order of greatest savings to least savings.

1. Accelerate and brake less aggressively (traffic permitting).
2. Drive AT THE SPEED LIMIT using cruise control.
3. Shut down the engine if stopping for over a minute.
4. Your car takes about 10 seconds to warm up, even in the winter.

These are the only four tips you need to pay attention to.

If you trust me, you can stop reading. If you want an explanation, keep going.

Sure, there are tons of other tricks that can save you maybe one or two miles per gallon, but they’re usually illegal, extremely annoying to other drivers, dangerous, or annoying for the passengers (pulse and glide technique, engine-off coasting, accelerating as slowly as you possibly can, coasting to stops, etc.) You may end up causing an accident or getting fined for being the most annoying driver on the road. That will definitely negate the few dollars in gas you’ll save every week by trying these stupid “hypermiling” techniques. As far as in-car luxuries go, having the air conditioner on while listening to music is NOT A BAD THING. Your gas mileage only starts to suffer once you start using anything in excess (for example, blasting music with your new 400-watt subwoofers with the windows open and the air conditioning on full blast.) So don’t worry. Drive the car as it was supposed to be driven. And for the love of God, DO NOT remove your spare tire/jack/other emergency equipment from your car thinking you’ll save a bunch of money on gas because your car is now lighter. If you’re going to remove anything from your car, remove the junk from the center console, the boxes of crap in your trunk, and whatever’s left over in the back seat from your last long trip. Your passengers will thank you.

Anyway, how do my tips actually work?

#1: Gas used = throttle x RPM. Less acceleration = less throttle and shifting at lower RPM = less gas used. Braking more moderately will use less power braking (which steals power and therefore gas from the engine) and will allow you to conserve momentum when approaching red lights (increasing your chance of the light turning green and you making it through without having to start from a dead stop). I added in the “traffic permitting” clause because frankly, it’s unsafe to accelerate like an old lady when you’re the first one in the line of traffic at a red light on a 45 mph road, just as it’s unsafe to begin braking 100 yards before a stop sign on a 25 mph road. Don’t piss off other drivers.

#2: For any given gear, higher speed = higher RPM = more gas used. Remember also that traffic lights are timed (based on speed limits) to make traffic flow smoothly. That’s their job. So moving at the speed limit will get you more green lights. Cruise control helps you stay at that speed, smoothes out acceleration, and prevents you from “surging” to keep up with other cars. Lots of people say that cruise control will decrease mileage on hills. While this can be true (since it forces your car to accelerate against gravity), the benefits of the increased mileage on flatter land greatly outweigh the losses on hills. Also, keep in mind that cars with automatic transmissions are smarter nowadays and will always be in the right gear to make it up the hill most efficiently. And again, slowing down while going up a hill will piss off most other drivers.

#3: In modern cars, the amount of extra gas it takes to start a car = less gas than it takes to let it idle for about a minute (this is not an exact number; it’s a general consensus among experts based on the majority of the cars out there). In older cars (especially cars with carburetors), the amount of gas it takes to start = anywhere from two to three minutes of idling. So when you stop to pick up your friend and he/she invites you inside for a drink on a hot day, shut off the engine and set the air to recirculate to keep the car from becoming an oven while you’re inside.

#4: Modern engines do not require any sort of warmup time. Once the engine is started and the RPM settle to idle speed, you’re good to go. The transmission needs to warm up, but this is best accomplished by just driving (and maybe taking it a little easy at first.) Just remember to bundle up in winter; no “warmup” time means your car will be freezing cold for the first few minutes of your trip.

So really, just follow those 4 tips and don’t really worry about anything else.

We Need Free Internets

I think America needs nation-wide free Internets.

My buddy and I just went to this cyber café and they were charging $6.00 per hour for access to their mediocre connection.

So we went back to the condo we’re staying at and raped our neighbor’s 5 mbps pipe.

But yeah.  We need free Internets.  Al Gore meant for it to be free.

More on the MacBook…

Also, the MacBook is a performance machine.  Last night I was testing its performance for a friend who was curious… and the results were quite impressive.

I was playing a DVD, a 720×480 MPEG-4 video (running at 4x speed), had the iTunes visualizer running, had a YouTube video playing, had the iSight camera playing all 9 video variations in Photo Booth, had System Preferences and Activity Monitor open, and various Finder windows… all while I had Vista running in Parallels using half of my 2 gigs of RAM.

Surprisingly, when viewing all the windows in Exposé, the videos and audio were running fairly smoothly.

My fans were running at about 5500 rpm.  They were fairly loud, but not annoying or intrusive.

My point is; it’s really a performance monster.  Two cores @ 2.4 gHz, 2 gigs of RAM (half of them used by Parallels), and it’s the best computer I’ve ever used.  I couldn’t imagine what a Mac Pro (8x 3.2 gHz cores, up to 16 gigs of RAM) would perform like.

ZOMG

New Black MacBook is Astounding

I grew up on Mac OS 7, OS 8, and OS 9. Mac OS X came out in 2001, and the only Macs I had were old G3 iMacs with 400 mHz processors and 128 megs of RAM, so I didn’t even get to OS X.3 before deciding to just stop trying to upgrade. My grandfather died in 2005, leaving me with his HP Pavilion laptop with a 2 gHz Pentium 4 and 512 megs of RAM. Since that was the best hardware that was available to me, I switched to Windows XP for almost three years. I had used XP many times before and knew my way around it fairly well, but after the first year I was a pro.

Well, to make a long story short, I realized that Windows rot had slowed down my computer enough that when it crapped out (the pin that sticks out of my laptop where I plug the adapter in to charge decided to break off, leaving me with the option of replacing the motherboard for a few hundred bucks) I decided that I needed a new laptop.

Two days ago, my new black MacBook (2.4 gHz Intel Core2 Duo, 2 gigs of RAM, 250 gig HD) arrived. I had ordered it that Sunday and chosen the 2-day delivery option (to make sure I had it in time for vacation). The total price with tax and everything was just over $1500, thanks to the $100 Apple Education discount. I also got a free ($299 mail-in rebate) 8 gig iPod Touch. Yes, the black color costs $110 extra… but it’s sexy, and therefore, by my twisted logic, worth it.

My friend has a slightly older white Macbook with a 2 gHz processor and 1 gig of RAM. He had always complained about it: it overheats, the fan is way louder than the internal speakers, the screen flickers, etc. Also, I’ve read online horror stories of melting batteries, poorly-constructed screens, crap-colored stains, and lots of other really sucky defects.

The new generation MacBook is PERFECT. It’s nearly silent during normal operation. I experimented with watching a couple of mpegs while listening to iTunes with the visualizer on, and the fan’s sound remained very acceptable the whole time and the CPU’s temperature never touched 145° F. The build quality of the machine is extremely good; everything is flush and solid-looking and solid-feeling. It gets pretty warm on the one side during moderate to heavy use, but it’s never enough to make me need to take it off my lap.

This CPU is pretty awesome. I’m experienced enough to know how a 2.4 gHz Intel Core2 Duo SHOULD perform, and this one has definitely met my expectations, even with only 2 gigs of RAM instead of the optional $180 4 gigs. While I really like 7200+ rpm hard drives, this 5400 one is perfectly snappy. It’s also extremely quiet. I almost wish that it clicked and whirred a little louder so I could make sure that it’s still in there.

As far as the software is concerned, I’ve always been happy with the included software. There’s more than enough stuff for the average user to get situated and begin her [or theoretically, his] talking on AIM, MySpace whoring, and music pirating. For those of us who like to do a little bit more, there’s enough stuff to satisfy your most basic of needs. An image editor with moderately advanced features would be a good addition to their base software package, but most of us have a pirated version of Photoshop lying around anyway

Mac OS X.5 (Leopard) is beautiful. Quickview, Spotlight, Coverflow, and all the delicious little toys make it the most gorgeous operating system out there. Time Machine is extremely nice as well, and the backupping happens in a non-obtrusive way without consuming lots of your resources. I could see Time Machine being very useful for people who are chronically unorganized and have large amounts of files that they change or move on a regular basis.

The only real complaint I have about the MacBook is that my SuperDrive is a little bit noisy. I suppose they could’ve sacrificed a little bit more fan noise for a slightly cooler CPU as well, but that’s just me being picky.

Anyway, my point in writing this is: Apple’s line of notebooks has become very good, and moderately well-priced. Up until recently, Apple’s switch to Intel yielded inconsistent results as far as performance is concerned, but now the powerful processors rest sweetly in the beautiful newer-generation MacBook line.

Notes:

I’m not a Mac Fanboy. I hate people who are fanboys for anything. I’m perfectly capable of objectively comparing a Mac and a PC running Windows. They both have their strong points and weak points. Macs, IMO, last longer and are easier to use out of the box and for first-time computer users. Therefore, I think Macs are better for beginners. PCs running Windows are more about getting extreme performance out of a machine for a time, at the cost of it slowing down and becoming obsolete relatively quickly. Windows, therefore, is for people who know enough about computers to do [very] regular maintenance and tweaking. If you’re a moderately advanced user (like I am), you’ll undoubtedly be able to make up your own mind, and you’ll probably switch to Linux instead. That being said, go test out a MacBook somewhere. It’ll be fun.

Welcome!

My name is Dave.

If you’ve stumbled upon this blog and do not know me personally, here’s a primer on me and what you could find in this blog:

I’m a tech geek.  You’ll find lots of posts about new gadgets that I get, my opinions or ideas
about sofware and hardware, and possibly some help or tips for popular programs.

I’m also an artist.  I am a photographer and a Photoshopper, and when these two talents work together they can create some pretty cool wallpapers, icons, avatars, and other types of fantastic works.  Though you won’t find me posting many of my finished products online (I’m very modest) you’ll probably find that I’ll offer some insight into photography, motion pictures, Photoshopography, and other design concepts.

I am a musician.  More specifically, I’m a drummer.  I’ve been playing for five years or so, and I’ve become quite good.  My last two years in high school, I placed first out of thirty or more drummers in my district.  My strong points are funk and rock on the drum set, but I also religiously practice my rudimentary drumming as necessitated by my 4-year career in my high school marching band.  I’ll probably blog a bit about music, everything from drumming techniques to discussing outstanding musicians to discussing personal tastes in music.

Right now, I’m about to start my freshman year at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.  I’ll be majoring in Physics, with the long-term goal of becoming a professor of either physics or math.

Welcome to my blog!

[Disclaimer: The blog is in no way limited to the aforementioned topic categories.  I reserve the right to blog about whatever the hell I want, including, but not limited to: random stuff, nothing, stuff that makes me lol, food, 4chan, and my family and friends.  It is the sole responsibility of you, the reader, to maintain your sanity if you should encounter a post that makes absolutely no sense.]