Holy Fire Fire!

On August 8, 2006 at 1:00am I was awaken to sirens and the lights of numerous emergency vehicles through my window but there was something unusual about the streets there was smoke. Smoke? I thought so I immediately rushed to my porch, the sight to behold was more than words alone could describe.








Today the news is calling this a three alarm blaze on Niagara st. From what I could tell it completely destroyed the third floor of the town house. As to why a fire would start on the third floor it is as of yet unknown. Many of the residents near the fire were just thankful the gusts of wind didn not send the fire down further, and the fireman were successful at containing the blaze.

Useless-O-Pic of the day


What Jesus can do I can now do better.


Ever person creates ripples in the flow of time.

Dreamfall

I've just finished the masterpiece that is Dreamfall: The Longest Journey. Dreamfall is an action adventure game with the emphasis on adventure, with alot of cinematic flair. This alone isn't new, however the depth and richness of Dreamfall's multilayered story is extrordinary. In playing through the game each player litterally makes their own journey. Along the way troubling questions are presented to the player as well as real world lessons. I know this seems unrealistic and somewhat cliche but some of the in game dialogue was deeply insightful and gives another perspective to how we live through the day to day.

In the end Dreamfall is a very good novel the excellent graphics pale in comparison to the complexity and mulitfaceted nature of the story. Dreamfall reads like a book, a book that you will be dying to get to the next chapter through a sense of discovery.

And maybe if you just play Dreamfall with a open mind like me, you might just be able to find that Dreamfall has stopped being a game so much as a chance to live and learn some life lessons.

Finally A Non-Wimpy Electric Car




It took a long time but someone finally made an electric car that beat out my inital enthusiasm for the TZero from ac propulsion. It's called the Tesla and it's a serious electric car, it looks like one too however what's really impressive is that it can go 0-100km in less than 4 seconds and has a range of around 400km. I have to say that I don't care much for the first figure but the second figure is mighty impressive and if it were available I'd seriously consider it over a conventional combustion engine. What's more impressive is it runs about 2 cents / km. So let's compare with a modern econocar raitings.

The Tesla Roadster: $0.02 / km = $2.00 / 100km (Theoretical Max Range 400KM)

We'll assume the price of Gas is 100.0 / L even though it's currently 106.3
We are taking best case highway numbers as well to give the Gas cars an advantage and calculating the max ranges with an assumed 50L fill at those best case numbers.

Mazda3 GS 2.0L : 6.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $6.10 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 810KM
Honda Civic : 5.7L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $5.70 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 870KM
Honda Civic Hybrid: 4.3L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $4.30 / 100 KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 1160KM
Toyota Prius: 4.2L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $4.20 / 100 KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 1190KM

As we know sports cars are huge gas guzzlers so let's take a quick look at some exotic cars to compare:

Lamborghini Murcielago: 18.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $18.10 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 270KM
Aston Martin Vanquish: 13.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $13.10 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 382KM
Porche Carrera GT: 11.7L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $11.70 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 427KM
Bugatti Veyron (Highway): 14.7L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $14.70 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 340KM
Bugatti Veyron (City): 40.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $40.1 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 125KM

As you can see the specs look good if the Tesla delivers on what it says it'll deliver on paper it'll be the speed and range of a sports car, with the running cost of an econocar. As long as you can find a spare power plug every 400KM and can take 3 hours to charge it seems like a great deal, and a huge plus is no green house gases.

However part of the package for an exotic sports car is the looks and to me at least this one's got it.

The Tesla was designed by Lotus Elise engineers and it shows.


Low component count makes the Tesla mechanically simpler than most cars.


Notice the car only has forward and reverse, there is no gear changing since electric motors work well from 0rpm all the way to 13000+rpm.


Here's the car's powerplant, significantly smaller than a modern car engine and much less complex. The electric motor is infinitely more efficient as it is simpler than the internal combustion engine.

A few caveats though because the car uses laptop batteries after the first year the car will lose 20% of it's charge if stored at 100% charge level which is probably what everyone does if given a car like this. That means that after year one your range will go from 400KM to 320KM and after year 2 it's looking like 256KM by year 3 you will need a replacement since your now doing 204KM that's half the original range. So if you were going to own you must consider battery wear as a part of the cost, although everyone these days is a "right now" society and might just ignore this running cost.

The EBay itch

Ever wonder why people pay more for things on EBay? The way EBay is set it it's addictive, like many other's I've placed a bid that I thought later that I didn't really need and ended up praying to be outbid (luckily the prices were usually ridiculously low so I was out bid). The clever setup of EBay makes it reflect more of a gambling web site than a place of commerce. Ebay uses the words like Win, and encourages users to feel like they've accomplished something when you've outbid someone as metal rewards and reinforcement. With Ebay money is represented by strokes of your keyboard and seldom do users actually think of money, hence unlike a real auction when the users is upping his or her bid there's no guilt felt from the wallet. In the end the users that end up paying more than retail for items on Ebay will also be the ones that regard their Ebay experience as fun, entertainment almost, and that extra cost might as well be the price of fun.

Two types of computer users.

It has recently come to my attention that there are two major types of computer users. There are the ones that prefer the all in one suites and the ones that like lightweight applications. This was brought to my attention with a discussion on Maxton vs Firefox. For those that don't know Maxton, it's a up and comming browser based on IE rendering engine but incorporating many useful tools like tabs.

Maxton's design philosophy from what I can tell is the suite design philosophy. Bundle as much useful funtionality as you possibly can into this application for the user so the user never has to customize the application or get plugins because the popular ones will be integrated in the next release. From what I've seen suite users tend to be suite users for all applications, they prefer large "full featured apps" that try their best at doing everything. They also don't mind the idea that they start off knowing only 20% or less of what the application can do. These end up being the users that will prefer the full version of messenger to gaim outlook to webmail, and don't generally go to the task manager to check how much system resources a particular application is using. A general philosophy for these users is "a good application should predict and include all the tools I need without me having to go out and get them."

Firefox's design is quite different from Maxton's. Firefox has always gained popularity over it's suite program Mozilla by remaining simple and light. Firefox doesn't try and anticipate the functionailty from it's users but rather allows each user to go out and fetch plugins to extend the set of tools Firefox has on their own. As such Firefox attracts the lightweight users, or users that hate over bundling of functionality no matter how efficiently done it might be. The design philosophy behind Firefox seems to be, provide a very strong and basic core application, then allow the users to extend it any way they might like. Users of lightweight application design philosophy might use notepad as opposed to a heavier text editor just because "It's all they need". A general philosophy to these users might be, "just give me what I want with none of the bloat".

I won't debate the merits of either of these solutions because sometimes efficient bundling can cause the package to perform as efficiently as a non-bundled application. I'm purely pointing out these two divergent groups of computer users which I find intreguing. Being in the second group I can't understand the attraction towards the suite packages, but I cannot fail to acknowledge their popularity.

Car = Money Pit

I'm dissapointed with myself recently. A self-fix turned out to be a disaster that requires an entire part replacement. That costs alot of $$$ (about 900 to be exact). This is a huge dissapointment but there comes a time when you really got to cut your losses and just bite the bullet. The store all started when I got a tiny chip on my windshield, it wasn't big enough to merit a trip to the autoglass shop but it was annoying so me with my idiot bright ideas decided to polish it out myself... Against what should've been my good judgement I went online and got myself a glass polishing kit. I thought literally how hard could it be? Big mistake that whole fiasco was, istead of repairing the tempered glass it made the whole thing worse to the point that one can argue it's a driving hazard. This is terrible, I totally love my car but I hate how it always sucks money from me, and I am to blame this time (again).

It seems that I can fix anything mechanically wrong with the car but I really should not try and replace / repair anything cosmetic cause I suck at it. I totally suck at it.... So I'm sort of set back a week, it's almost like not getting 1 week's pay will it be worth it in the end? I don't know, but I'll probably feel better once this whole thing is over with.

And on that note once the service is done I vow to myself that I won't do any car crap for the rest of the year until school starts. It's just becomming too costly and for a highway car it keeps getting stone chips or various chips from everything these damn things are too fragile. Almost makes me wish I got an old banger so I woudn't care, sometimes I think that would be ultimately cheaper.

On a side note I really should be concentrating on my Grad School stuff, but admist all this chaos I'm finding it quite hard, I really wish I can get a bit of calm so I can sort this out but that isn't going to happen and I know it so I better get on top of all this. At least I'm studying the GRE, even though it's what I would consider a slow rate right now no more than 5 or so pages of practice test a day mostly on the English sections. Really my only hope is to be able to take the GRE test by September but that also means I'll need my universities scouted out before then which I haven't been doing lately.

The most difficult part really is that work, personal liabilities (car), and school don't mix at all. What's eating up the most time is switching between these, but I intend to emerge out of this month more on top of things than last so it's time to kick my ass into shape.

Who's the stronger?

Modern society has a problem of identifying our crazy perception of strength. Actually this can be traced back all the way to the spartians. We always honor our fallen in war saying how "they were brave". Not to be disrespectful or anything but what if they were stupid? If I ran into a hail of mini-gun fire I'm brave, but if I throw a smoke grenade and use cleaver tactics to slip through without having to face the minigun I'm not smart, no I'm being cowardly. This is just a rediculous way of thinking, sometimes if your in a ditch and that's keeping you safer that is the more correct thing to do, not jump over and get shot. Here in lies the problem, the people that die are brave and honored, the people that make it back as in the spartian days are considered cowards or suspected as such, if the rest of your company dies.

I think it's the opposite the ones that come back have proven their darwinistic advantage. That should be honored, and if that means they hid in a whole until it was safe there's NOTHING wrong with that in my opinion.

Why us monkeys are brainwashed to believe that the correct tactic is to run like duck madly flailing along with our rifles while getting our head shot off is beyond me. Anyone that uses tactics is considered, cheap, unfair, or not honorable. Excuse me but if it was a 1 on 1 match and I can beat you buy throwing sand in your face, then I will throw sand in your face. It's not personal it's just WAR and all is fair.

Before I get a million angry comments I respect and fully appreciate what our armed forces are doing to protect what little rights our current goverment is trying equally as hard to strip away. I'm just a little pissed that most people don't know how wrong their perceptions of what's fair is when it comes to the subject of actual combat.

Quick Update

Recently with most things completed I've been consumed with the task of studying for the GRE which, in retrospect is kind of nice to have a stable long term task. Now I'm already bored with the math sections as can be expected. However, the english sections are actually turning out to be quite difficult.

Alot of questions are requiring a very large vocabulary of very specialized words that will only work in certain context in order to solve them.

Otherwise though my life is boring right now and for the time being that couldn't be better news.

Good service isn't dead it's just hard to find

If your like me you hate going to your car's dealer to get service for small issues after getting the car. My dealer (Dufferin Mazda) had a bad habit of having difficult open hours, inaccessable to the bus system after drop off, and sometime's I'd get the car back with a greasy steering wheel.

Well no more! Yesterday my car went to Avante Mazda for service a recommended dealer from a forum. Let me tell you the experience was night and day. Even on the phone the service dept was much nicer informing me of if they could perform the service and when they can get the parts by so they can combine services together. They even went through a list of known issues for my car to see if anything else needed to be fixed.

When I arrived and dropped off my car they had a driver send me to work. What amazed me more is that they offered to pick me up after work to pick up my car. Now that's exceptional. It didn't stop there, while at work they called to update me on what was happening with my vehicle. When done they road tested my vehichle to make sure that I would not be comming back concerning anything (my original dealer never did that).

Finally when I actually arrived to pick up my car I was surprised to find a new plastic plate protector on my license plate and that my car was washed. The service department said that wash and free plate protectors are complimentary... WOW.

So moral of the story, excellent service does exist. These days you really have to look hard for it. The difference is I no longer dread going to my dealer in fact the whole experience was actually fun, and made me happier.

Avante Mazda:

Pros:
* Excellent service staff, friendly and the kind of people you can chat with.
* They will drive you to work, and back again!
* Free plastic plate protectors if your missing them.
* Excellent communication they never will leave you in the dark about what's going on.
* Extended service hours (7:30am - 6:30pm) so you can go to work and get picked up any day of the week.
* The kind of service that puts smiles on your face, and that's a rarity.

Cons:
* They are a bit far for me but well worth the drive.

HL2 first impressions

Ok to some this is old news. Even to me it seems a bit old and dated, however I haven't had a computer capable of playing HL2 until now and let me tell you reading about the innovation and playing it is completely different.

This physics engine is nothing short of incredible. I'm frequently baffled about how well it can simulate how objects would realistically behave. So much so that even in the earily parts of the game I learned to used my new found ability to interact with the enviroment to my advantage. In fact without thinking about it I did things like knock down tables for cover. Grab a barrel for protection against fire. All of which later I sat back just to let it all sink in that this game reached a level of realism previously unheard of.

And it's not a dumb shooter either. There are frequent stops along the way where the game throws you into puzzle solving scenario. These end up being stages where they demonstrate the power of their physics engine. For example in one scene there's a titer tottler type scenario where you run around the room piling up bricks on one end until the titer toter is heavy enough to let you stand on the other end without going down. Things also have boyancy, and this is demonstrated by a scenario where you have to raise a platform by making it more boyant.

I think what's most impressive about half-life is how the game never feels flat. Frequently I find myself in the toybox scenario where every game object is like a toy because the physics engine so good at modeling realistic behavior.

For anyone that has glossed over HL2 because their computer wasn't fast enough be sure to try it when your computer is. Although I would also recommend playing HL1 to understand the storyline. Although the sad part is I don't think I'll ever run into a game that's this well thought out in terms of storyline, and gameplay. More and more games go for the all graphics approach, and like supermodels they might look beautiful, but you surely get fed up with them quickly. HL2's graphics might not be as spectacular as farcry but in every other way HL2 is a more superior game, and the level of polish is above everthing I'm used to seeing.