The times they are a changin'. From here on out, personal thoughts, ideas, and posts will land here at me.raddevon.com. My former blog is now devoted to tech, the Internet, and gaming. Check that out at raddevon.com.
I have discontinued using some of my hypermiling techniques to test their effectiveness. I have been watching my tachometer closely, and, rather than using cruise control, I have been manually keeping the RPMs under 2000 at all times which usually results in an interstate cruising speed of 60mph. I have also been practicing engine-off-coasting. I am still driving conservatively, but I have resumed using my cruise control and started driving up to 70mph. I have also started shifting to neutral rather than turning the engine off for coasting. After one day of this, I have some surprising results.
What looked like a success may not be (or at least not so much as it seemed). I previously claimed a modest mileage gain of 3.5mpg over a measurement taken before I started hypermiling. In two more recent measurements, I calculated 27.5mpg and 28.9mpg. This is really much less than the gains I was hoping for as many people who are doing this (granted I’m sure they are much more skilled than I) are really achieving dramatic increases in fuel economy.
I received a delightful note in the mail yesterday: a (so-called) explanation of the economic stimulus plan. Hurray! If there is anything I don’t understand, it is the economic stimulus plan. However, the note unfortunately clear up any of the problems I have with the package.
I am auditioning a new comment system for the blog. It adds a really cool social aspect to the comments along with a feature that should have been included with WordPress from the beginning: comment threading! We’ll see how it works over the next few days. It may make things look a little strange. As yet, there is no way to migrate existing comments. Rather than lose them, I kept the old comment system on those pages with comments. Other pages will employ the new system. The comment count (next to the story title) is also different from old to new which will cause the homepage to look a little touched until all the stories there are using the new system. I hope it’s worth the minor issues. Let me know what you think.
I previously posted about hypermiling and started employing some of the techniques in my own driving. I can now claim minor success! On the last two gallons of gas purchased, my mileage was 31.5—a gain of 3.5mpg on my measurement when I purchased the car! It’s pretty exciting to me considering there are still a number of other things I can do to improve my mileage like replacing the air filter, having an oil change (I’m overdue.), and correcting the tire pressure. I’ll keep you posted
On and off over the past couple of years, I have been trying to downshift. I have faltered in some ways, but in many I have succeeded. It seems almost ingrained in me that I can solve most any problem by buying something. In some cases, that is the best way to solve a problem. In most, it is very satisfying on the front-end but not so much in the end. I have an unfortunate gadget addiction that has set me back a little, but I think I can claim overall success in this endeavor.
I want to like Twitterrific so badly because it is obviously a Mac-native app. It is gorgeous. It has cool notification sounds when someone tweets. There are also some problems. I can’t look at a single individual’s tweets within the interface. I can’t follow people from within the interface. I can’t easily switch between the public and my own timeline.
I want to like twhirl so badly because it has nearly every feature of twitter.com and then some. The aesthetics are not at all shabby. It has great notifications. I love the added picture and url shortening functionality. There are some problems. I can’t get to the public timeline at all. It stops responding at all from time to time. I would prefer it on the menubar, or, at the very least, the “Hide when minimized” option in the preferences should work!
I was inspired to write this post by the latest episode of Dan Carlin’s fantastic podcast, Hardcore History . If you are interested in podcasts, history, or even if you aren’t, you should definitely hear at least one episode.
My philosophy is that life is as it should be. This is a problematic assertion since I really believe your life should be what you want it to be. There are two other problems with this philosophy I can’t really reconcile:
I am unfortunate enough to have a fairly substantial commute to work—28 miles one-way. I am going to have to find a way to seriously cut back with climbing gas prices. Don’t worry. This isn’t going to turn into a bitch session about gas prices. They are high and should probably be higher to pay for road maintenance, pollution cleanup, oil industry subsidies, and the like, but there’s no use in complaining. I want to do something about it. Read the rest of this entry »
I am auditioning a new comment system for the blog. It adds a really cool social aspect to the comments along with a feature that should have been included with WordPress from the beginning: comment threading! We’ll see how it works over the next few days. It may make things look a little strange. As yet, there is no way to migrate existing comments. Rather than lose them, I kept the old comment system on those pages with comments. Other pages will employ the new system. The comment count (next to the story title) is also different from old to new which will cause the homepage to look a little touched until all the stories there are using the new system. I hope it’s worth the minor issues. Let me know what you think.