The Jaded Tech

There are times in my life when the skills I have developed in technology really do have a big impact on me. I realize that not everyone puts so much effort in understanding technology as much as I do. Heck, how many people will follow a Google search 40 pages deep just to see what’s there? Or who do you know that has ever made a university’s print out 20 colour copies of the candy bra and laugh their ass off while having a hard time seeing the screen through teary eyes, all from their home system?

The point is that with all this technology that has been in all of our lives there are still people who seemed to live in caves and stare in wonder at awe at a wooden wheel. The following is a true conversation that happened this past saturday night.

LLPH “Do dvds have to be rewound?”

I was about to laugh but something made me pause. The way it was said that had an odd flavour of innocence to it.

Me: “Are you serious?”

LLP: “Oh, I uh, guess you don’t eh?”

Me: “No, you don’t.”

True story, as painful as it was.

In case you missed this classic vid, I suggest you watch and learn!

Ever wonder what makes me tick? With all the crap out there you might be asking ‘what the hell does he like any ways?’. Or maybe not, but I’ll be telling you any ways

Having been annoyed with my last post getting blown away before it properly saved (so much for autosave eh?) I decided to write about something I like to help get over that annoyance.

Let’s go with my newest acquisition: Logitech TrackMan Wheel. (Sigh, browser is stupidly slow…gonna reboot…..)
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(Ok, back, let’s see if this is any quicker)

As I was saying….the

Logitech TrackMan Wheel:

I had a ‘trackball’ a few years back, lost it, probably during a move, and have been pining for one for a while. Finally bought one the other day. Ahh…..the control….the ‘no need to move the cat so I can click on a link because the cat is taking up the whole damn desk’ feeling!  Maximum amount of control for minimum amount of effort.  What more reasons do you need for getting one?

Ubuntu: This free operating system is a pure joy for the geek in you! Heck, it even works just fine for the non-geeks. I love it because I finally NOW have the freedom to do things I simply could never do with

Windows, or even Macs. For example, I work with a lot of digital media at times. Let’s say I have about 100 pictures that I want to put online. I don’t need 100 times 6MB high-quality images(web browsers only display 72dpi anyways so the rest is just wasted server space and upload time). it was simply stupid to have to go into each file, edit them down to the right size/resolution when I ran XP. Not now! I found a Script by ImageMagick and bam, all edited at once! It was awesome and HUGELY time saving!

Let’s not forget mass editing of MP3s!  While not ground breaking here, what you may not realize that having the ability to also convert MP4 (iTunes songs) into MP3s with a simple script, screw anyone trying to ‘protect’ anything!  Seriously, you have someone who wants to share his creation with the world but only conditionally?  No true artist has ever really done that.  But that is a whole other debate

PCV jar. A cool little device that removes the oil from the air intake of a car.  Car??  Yes, I said car.  Surprised that my techie love goes beyond computers?  Don’t be, modern technology really isn’t that modern when you really understand what is going on.  Regardless, the PCV jar is a stupidly simple device and one that works for every vehicle.  The basic premise is this:  ever car has a ‘pcv valve’.  What this does is to allow excess pressure from inside the engine (no, not the combustion chamber, the part where things are moving and oil is stored….) and vent it back into the intake where the excess oil vapour gets burned.  Problem is that cars are really designed to burn gas and not ‘hot oil vapour’.  The PCV jar simply removes the oil vapour thus allowing clean air to flow into the intake and the energy wasted in trying to burn oil goes back to burning the gas vapour.  In theory, this gives you more improved combustion which translates into better power and/or gas mileage.  Ye old ‘your mileage may vary’ warning applies here.  Here is a shot of what my jar collected from my 1978 Volare (Slant 6) after 2 months of daily driving.

I had the same device on my 1991 New Yorker Fifth Avenue and after 2 month all I got was 2 drips.  Obviously a significant amount of difference in how much oil is being consumed by the cars   Still, these things make a difference and it’s yet another piece of ‘tech’ that I enjoy   I’m actually working on making a new version that may be for sale.  We’ll see how that goes.  Wait till I build a MegaSquirt device for a car!  Then I’ll be controlling all the tech directly!

That’s really what it comes down to.  Controlling tech and ‘making things happen at your will’.  That’s where I get my giggle.  Having an idea, implementing it and seeing it work.