One of the big things that the Japan Earthquake brought home to me was my absolute unpreparedness for any sort of disaster or emergency evacuation situation. I spent a bunch of time online looking for pre-made emergency “bug-out” kits and while there are several decent ones out there I felt that they were all missing various things and decided in the end to make my own. I figure I will share the contents of my kit for other folks who might be interested in making one of if they have comments on things I should or shouldn’t have. Many items will have two links because I have explicitly bought two different brands in order to increase redundancy and reduce the impact of a bad product batch.… Read the rest
Category: thoughts
The fact that I have been using various Nokia phones and attending multiple Iron Maiden concerts (5 at last count) over the years led me to this amazing demonstration of the improving audio quality of Nokia cameraphones. While I have been a big fan of the N95 camera but I always complained about the audio quality when recording video in loud environments. This video that I recorded at the Iron Maiden show in Concord in 2008 shows how the N95 struggled with clipping and noise issues when the environment was too loud.
Now fast forward 2 years and I went to another Iron Maiden show in Concord a few weeks ago with an N900 and recorded the following video clip.… Read the rest
As many of you know I purchased a Lotus Seven replica called the WCM Ultralite S2K late last year to make it a street legal track toy. While the Ultralite may maintain the spirit of the original Seven, as you can see below, it has a distinctly different shape and has generally larger dimensions to accommodate drivers of all sizes. In order to move this extra bulk (relatively speaking) around it comes with the incredible F20C engine out of the Honda S2000. The end product has some astonishing performance figures:
Weight: 1300 lbs
Horsepower: 240 bhp
Redline: 9000 rpm
Power to weight ratio: 400+ hp/ton
0-60 mph: 3.5 seconds
My particular car was the first prototype built by World Class Motorsports and is the actual car used in most of the magazine tests.… Read the rest
Polyphony Digital has announced a new feature in Gran Turismo 5 which will allow you to upload data from an automotive data logger and recreate your laps within GT5. The technology currently requires the use of the CANBUS data along with a Denso GPS controller and will initially be built into the Toyota FT-86G. As the owner of a Race Technology DL1, I can only hope that one day we might be able to use this technology with existing track day dataloggers.
In the meantime check out this video of a Lexus IS-F lapping the Fuji circuit with its virtual recreation side-by-side.… Read the rest
Categories
Cathay Pacific Upgrade Experience
A couple of days before my scheduled return flight from Chennai to SF I was thinking about the wonderfully uncomfortable economy seat and decided that it would probably be worth it to pay a fee and upgrade to business. This was on a Friday night (flight was on Sat night) and the Cathay Pacific office in Chennai was already closed so I went to their website to see if I could upgrade online. After spending some 20 minutes looking through their website I had to admit defeat and decide to instead give their office a call on Saturday morning to see if I could do the upgrade over the phone instead.… Read the rest