I'm a big fan of golf, both real and virtual. The best iPhone golf game I've yet found is Tiger Woods PGA Tour, from EA. At $10, it's not cheap, but it is fun. It does, however, suffer from one fairly annoying problem: it's way too easy in its default mode. As an example, here are the final results from a four-round tournament at St. Andrews:
Per round, my average score (my player's first name is Wheat) was 15.25 under par, which is simply unbelievable. Look at second place--14 under par for four rounds, or worse than I do for one round! At about 3.5 strokes under par per round, however, the second place score is much more realistic.
So what's the problem? The problem is that TW for the iPhone includes both a caddy and a putt preview feature. Combined, those two features making putting the ball ridiculously easy. Here's how to use those two features together to crush the PGA events in Tiger Woods. [continue reading…]
For quite a while, I've wanted an electric radio controlled (R/C) helicopter--one of the small ones you can fly around inside the house. Over the last couple years, I've tried cheap versions (complete waste of money; they fly like crud), and the expensive versions seemed too, well, expensive for what would be nothing more than a silly time waster.
Then, just before Christmas, E-Flite released the new Blade mCX, a smaller, lighter, and easier-to-fly version of their Blade CX2. The CX2 was one of the expensive models I'd passed on earlier. The mCX, however, comes in $50 cheaper than the CX2, and came close enough to my self-imposed $100 limit that I bought myself one for Christmas :). (Click the image at left [and any image in this writeup] for a larger view.)
After only a few minutes with the mCX, I was hooked. This machine is unlike any other R/C helicopter I've ever tried to fly. Within a couple minutes of my first power-up, I had it hovering in place, and could maneuver it relatively well. Even for me, a complete novice to R/C flying, this machine is incredibly easy to fly. R/C purists probably dislike it, though--relying on dual counter-rotating rotor blades and a gyro, the mCX isn't a "real" R/C helicopter in any sense. But for my desires, it's (nearly) perfect.
The mCX weighs one ounce (with battery), and has a rotor span of just 7.5 inches. Everything about this machine is tiny, including the motors (the round items in the image at left) and the battery (visible at the bottom of the image; it's got a red dot on it). The front of the machine is the brains, though--a circuit board there holds the gyro, motor control units, fully proportional servos, and radio receiver. Amazing that it all weighs but an ounce.
Combine that with very sensitive flight controls, and you can fly the mCX almost anywhere--I've flown it above the garage's workbench, for instance. The throttle is amazingly precise, making it easy to fly at whatever altitude you desire. As a brief example, here's a video of me flying around in the den, trying to keep the mCX within view of the fixed video camera:
I found the following examples of horrendously poor translation on the same box--a kid's play set called Fairyland Journey that we bought a while back at the local mall (click each image for a larger version):
I know good translation is difficult and expensive, but some of these are so bad they're hilarious. My favorite is probably "FLASHING ENTER!", used in a context where it makes absolutely no sense (not that I can think of many contexts where it does make sense!).
OK, so it's strange math :). The top-left image (taken before we bought the place; I didn't actually take any "before" pictures) is the wall of brick that surrounded the fireplace in our home. Add to that a Dasco Pro Mason Chisel with Hand Guard and a Stanley Three-Pound Drilling Hammer, and the end result is a pile of brick in the driveway ... oh yea, you need to add a fair bit of sweat, and a wheelbarrow will greatly ease the task of hauling out the brick.
This was the first time I'd ever tried to demolish a brick wall. Overall, it was actually a bit easier than I expected, other than the sheer number of bricks involved. I can highly recommend the chisel I used; it made short work of the mortar between the bricks, and the hand guard definitely works well--I didn't hit my hand once, despite swinging the three-pound hammer probably well over 1,000 times to break out all the bricks. If you're going to break down a brick wall, I definitely recommend a chisel with the hand guard.
(I took out the wall so that we could use the space on the right of the fireplace for a built-in bookshelf and storage cabinet, and to install a gas fireplace in place of the current wood-burning insert. Those projects, however, will be handed off to a professional--I can destroy, but I'm not so good at the build-it-up part!)
For the last few weeks, I've been getting hundreds of registrations here, and given (a) there's no reason to register except to post a comment, and (b) there aren't very many comments posted, I figured something was up. Until yesterday, though, I didn't know what was going on. Now, thanks to the WordPress 2.6.2 release, I do:
With open registration enabled, it is possible in WordPress versions 2.6.1 and earlier to craft a username such that it will allow resetting another user’s password to a randomly generated password. The randomly generated password is not disclosed to the attacker, so this problem by itself is annoying but not a security exploit. However, this attack coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand() could be used to predict the randomly generated password.
In other words, by registering often enough with specially-crafted usernames, you may eventually be able to force the admin user's password to be reset to something random, and you may know that random password. Scary stuff. So today, I upgraded to 2.6.2, and cleaned out the vast majority of recently-created accounts.
If you'd signed up for a legit account and I zapped it, please just register again -- and sorry for the inconvenience.
The following will probably only be of interest to aviation buffs--so if that's not you, you can stop reading now :).
My wife and I recently took a week to go scuba diving in Bonaire. I'll be posting more about that trip shortly, but getting to and from Bonaire from Portland, Oregon, isn't exactly simple. There's an overnight Continental flight that leaves out of Houston once a week, but neither of us enjoy such flights, so that was out. We wound up flying to Dallas (on an MD-80), then to San Juan, Puerto Rico (757-200WL), and then on to Bonaire (ATR-72). On the way down, we spent a night in Dallas, but coming home, we did it as one (long) 20-hour day.
While flying home, I snapped a number of pictures of the various islands we flew over--starting with the Turks and Caicos Islands and ending as we flew over the Bahamas. I found the mix of clouds, shadows, land, sky, and water to make for some very interesting images. None of these are award-winners (I was using my Canon 850is again, and there are often reflections in the window), but I just loved the colors.
As noted, more on Bonaire later--including a review of the island as a destination for scuba divers, as well as some of my underwater images from the week's dives.
The other evening, our Toyota Camry came home with a leaking back right tire--it was leaking so badly that my wife could hear it when she went to get our eldest out of her car seat. A quick visual inspection found the culprit; I could just see the flat head of what looked to be a steel construction staple embedded in the tread, and hear the air rushing out around the staple.
After figuring out how to get the spare and tools out of the trunk of the Camry--by far, the most convoluted such system I've run into; I'm glad I was working on it in the garage and not in a driving rainstorm at night by the side of the road--I put on the mini-donut spare and tossed the now nearly-flat full-sized tire in the trunk and called it an evening.
The next day, I was trying to figure out where to take the tire to have it repaired, when I remembered something from many years back: America's Tire (called Discount Tire in some areas of the country) had once repaired a flat for me for free--but that was nearly 15 years ago in another state. I remembered them telling me (at the time) that it was standard company policy to patch tires for free, even if you've never bought anything from the company. So my first thought was to return to America's Tire--but surely, such a generous policy couldn't have survived the cost-cutting and bottom-line-focus that's afflicted seemingly every company over the last 15 years, could it?
After driving a few miles to the local America's Tire outlet, I was thrilled to find that yes, in fact, their generous 'free tire repair' program was still in place. About the only requirement is that you provide your name and address, and some information about your car. They'll then repair the tire (if it's repairable; holes on the shoulder areas of tires are not repairable), mount it back on your car, and put the spare back in the trunk--all for free. What's really amazing about this is that the employees don't treat this free service as a hassle--they were professional and treated me very well, and at no time did I feel like they were upset that I was taking up their time with a free service. From the time I entered the store until I left about 20 minutes later, I was treated just like the customers there who were dropping $600+ on new tires.
To find such service in today's cost-reduction-era is rare enough. To find it delivered with excellent customer service and in a courteous manner is simply amazing. Granted, I've only taken advantage of this service twice in 15 years. But both times, I've had a great experience, and I think that's worth sharing. So if you find yourself with a flat tire, you might want to visit a local America's Tire (Discount Tire) at which to have it repaired. (I also use them when I need tires for our vehicles, but there is absolutely no requirement that you be a customer in order to have a tire repaired for free.)
So thanks, America's Tire, for bucking the cost-cutting trend, and for providing a free service in a courteous and professional manner.
Today, WordPress released WordPress for iPhone. So I thought I'd try it out--given how little I post here, any excuse to write something is worth a shot!
Anyway, we bought this electric pump to inflate our kids' pool. I found the combination of the warning and the left-hand image somewhat at odds with each other! (In case the image isn't clear, that's the pump being used to inflate a child's swimming pool, which is not generally considered an "indoor household" item.)
Happy Fourth of July to those of you in the United States. In honor of the holiday, I thought I'd share a fireworks memory from my childhood. It's both educational (in terms of what not to do) and somewhat entertaining (in hindsight)...though as to whether it's more educational or entertaining, well, I'll leave that up to you. As this is based on really old memories, some of the details are definitely wrong, but the basic facts are 100% as presented.
I grew up in Colorado, in a small neighborhood known as Heatherwood. Our home was the brown-roofed one just up and to the right from the "A" on this Google map. As you can see, there's a relatively large park just south of our house. This was a great place to hit golf balls, toss the frisbee, and generally goof off...and on the Fourth of July, the area around the park became a great place to set off and watch fireworks.
When I was growing up--I'm not sure if this is still true or not--Colorado had banned all the interesting fireworks. You couldn't buy anything that flew or exploded, basically. So you were left with little sparkler things, various fountains, and smoke bombs--yawn! Wyoming, however, which was but 90 or so miles north, had no such laws--everything was legal there. (Somewhat ironically, I now live in a very similar situation. Oregon allows only the basic stuff, but Washington (only 30 miles north) allows everything.) So one year when I was maybe 10 or so, my dad drove up to Cheyenne and came home with the motherload--a large bag full of bottle rockets, buzz bombs, roman candles (a bunch of them tied together in one massive device), various small firecrackers, and a couple of large cherry bombs. After seeing the bag, that year's Fourth of July holiday couldn't come fast enough.
Finally the day arrived, and after the requisite picnics, we set off for the park. We always took a couple buckets of water, just in case any small fires started (but the park was much greener when I was growing up, and we never had any problems). We found a spot to set up the flying fireworks (firecrackers were lit in the street), and set up our first display of the evening. I don't recall exactly what the thing was called, but its cone-shaped casing promised something along the lines of a "huge shower of colorful sparks!" The cone was maybe 18" tall, so we set it on the ground, lit the fuse, then backed away a good distance. Soon enough, a huge shower of colorful sparks did indeed erupt from the cone.
However, as we watched the cone, we noticed something else: the angle of the shower of sparks was changing. [continue reading…]
All (or as many as could be found online) of my 2008 writings for Macworld.
