Another side note about tickets. Tickets were $25 each to get in. You have the opportunity to upgrade your tickets to a membership if you do it the same day, with the ability to put your ticket purchase price toward the purchase of your membership. We did this, so for another 50 bucks we get to go as many times as we want. We will definitely be going again so we can see all the stuff we missed!

If you have the opportunity to go, GO! You will not be disappointed!

California Academy of Science visit. 11/01/08 SmugMug Gallery

Lizard @ The Academy Of Science Museum from Jason Burk on Vimeo.

The Academy of Science Museum roof from Jason Burk on Vimeo.

I recently went to the local Fry’s to look for some robot kits and came across some really cool little electronics soldering kits. Needless to say I picked up a couple to practice soldering!

I picked up 2 kits:
Sound-to-Light Kit
Dual Electronic Dice Kit

The first project (this post) I did was the Sound-To-Light kit. It is a pretty simple kit that only serves one purpose, not totally useful in daily life, but fun none the less! So lets get into it.

Kit Maker: Velleman
Kit Name: SOUND-TO-LIGHT Kit
Price: $5.99
Items Needed: Soldering Iron, Solder, 9V Battery.

Four high-intensity LEDs light up and react simultaneously on every sound. For different funny and practical applications, such as : sound indicator, simple sound-to-light unit for music, for the hearing impaired : can be used to indicate the telephone, door bell. Adjustable sensitivity with potentiometer. Built-in microphone.

From start to finish this kit took me about 30 minutes to complete. The instructions were a little confusing as first, but are actually really well laid out. You do really need to pay attention to how they lay the instructions out. There are minimal written instructions, most of the instructions are in picture form. The kit came with everything you need as far as parts go. If you are looking to get into electronics or just want to learn more about soldering and electronics, these kits are a great place to start. They have MANY different kits to choose from, check out their catalog.

I will be posting more projects as I get through them and try out some more kits. It was very fulfilling working on this project. I can’t express how good it feels to get away from the computer for a while and get into the analog world of building something with your hands.

Here are a couple pictures of my finished project and a short video of it working.

circuit-1 (link to short video)

I have had an iPhone since version 1.0, and although the iPhone is great, it has been a rough road. The first generation iPhone was absolutely amazing, considering what its competitors were at launch. I was in line for 6 hours on launch day to get mine, and it was completely worth it. After a few months, much of the wow began to wear off after I started noticing what it didn’t have. It didn’t have MMS, video recording, or the ability to install extra applications. Along came Jailbroken applications, which did alleviate much of this. The problem with that is that jailbreaking wasn’t really an option for the “everyman”.

Throughout the 1.x releases Apple added a FEW extra features and fixed bugs, but that was pretty much the extent. It wasn’t really until the 2.0 release that we began to really have the “New Platform” that we had been promised. Problem though, 2.0 had a TON of bugs and flakey apps. Apple hit us with a couple incremental updates: 2.0.1, then 2.0.2.

Some of the biggest issues with the initial 2.x releases were:
- Horrible battery life.
- Insanely long backup times. (hours)
- Very crashy apps

Flash forward, and we have iPhone Firmware Version 2.1

Version 2.1 finally feels like a finished product. It fixed a lot of the battery life issues, reception issues, and overall crashiness.

Along with iPhone 2.1 came iTunes 8. With these 2 updates combined, we are definitely seeing a product that feels finished. I am in no way saying that as customers, we are getting everything we deserve, but it’s getting closer. We still are missing major features that are available in just about every other phone on the market.

I would love to end this article by saying that Apple is heading in the right direction and steering the ship toward the island of happy customers, but this is very much not the case! Apple has been making moves lately concerning the iPhone that frankly scare the hell out of me. This once dream phone is starting to turn into a locked down nightmare. With Apple seeming to block whatever they want for any reason and letting through apps that have little more value than a gimmick, it leads me to wonder, do they want this phone to be what it could be, what it should be, and what we deserve it to be? Or rather have they been in first place in this market just long enough to lose sight of the real goal?

Being a loyal user, I am hoping much of this is going to blow over fairly soon and they will realize the error of their ways. If they don’t, they are going to have a very serious problem of users switching to other options. More importantly perhaps, if they keep screwing their developers, they aren’t going to have enough content to keep the few users that do stick around.

If the problem does continue, or heaven forbid gets worse, it will make getting the word out that much more important. I hope I won’t have to, but just in case, I am starting a project called Apptimism. This project will be for developers to get the word out about their dealings with Apple. It will also be a place for developers to have a pool of beta testers to choose from. Additionally, it will lend itself to promotion of apps. The main reason for this project is to help the end user, the customer, get what they deserve. This in turn will give everyone a better overall iPhone experience.

Best of luck to everyone and here’s to Apple doing the right thing!

UPDATE 10/1/08: Apple has removed the NDA! Looks like things are starting to turn around.

The idea of an in car dyno is nothing new, G-Tech is a popular product in this arena, but at $200 - $300 it’s kind of pricey for the average person with curiosity. The iPhone is the same price, but hell you already have that. This is only an additional $13. The iPhone has a great set of accelerometers in it, which is what this app uses to measure HP.

This app measures the following and does it pretty damn accurately I must say:
* 0-60 MPH
* Other Speed Tests (0-10 MPH through 0-100 MPH in 10MPH increments)
* Quarter Mile Elapsed Time
* Quarter Mile Trap Speed
* Elapsed Time and Trap Speed for standard intervals (60′, 330′, 1/8 Mi, 1000′)
* Lateral G’s (current and peak)
* Braking G’s (current and peak)
* Wheel Horsepower
* Estimated Engine Horsepower

Below are some screenshots of the app. For 13 bucks it’s a cool little gadget to mess around with if you are a car enthusiast, or just curious about your cars performance.

Also check out Garage419’s video: Dynolicious vs. G-Tech

click images to enlarge.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The 5 car line up was as follows:
1. Toyota Yaris (ehh, ok outside. Boring inside. Very underpowered.)
2. Honda Fit (Overall Blah.)
3. Smart Car (COMPLETE AND TOTAL PIECE OF SHIT, WORST CAR EVER!)
4. Fiat 500 (The only one in the bunch I would consider buying)
6. Nissan Versa (boring as all hell)

The idea of the study was to do some driving in the cars and simulate some normal driving conditions you might come up against in day to day life. So we went and drove all the cars around a course and had some interview questions that followed. Typical questions like, “what did you like and what didn’t you like”. But then the questions began to get very heavily waited toward the Fiat; all questions somehow relating to the Fiat. Long story short it was very apparent this was most likely put on by Fiat to gauge interest in bringing the Fiat stateside to compete in the small car market.

Im not even going to bother talking about the other 4 cars in this post because frankly, they were a non-event. Although I really should do a post about how much of a piece of shit the Smart car is.

The Fiat 500 was a pretty good little car. The trouble was that there IS a MINI, so every part of it was compared to a MINI. The car felt very MINI like, with some of the styling interior and exterior. To be completely honest if there was no MINI, I would definitely think about getting one. Trouble is, there IS a MINI.

I thought the transmission was kind of weird because it didn’t have the creep like most cars, it just completely disengaged when you let of the gas, which was supremely annoying and jerky when doing little stop and go type driving, but solid when driving normal (fast). One of the guys that worked on designing the transmission was there and after hearing me talk about it, took me out again on the course to drive it fast with no supervision. After that I was a little more pleased with the car’s overall performance. (him being there also hinted that this was put on by Fiat). I felt the car was underpowered too, coming from driving a modified R53 for so long, but he assured me there would be a “JCW like” kit for the Fiat 500 soon, so thats a plus for the little Fiat.

Overall it was a pretty solid car, but as I said before, I would still choose my MINI over the Fiat any day of the week.

I snapped a pic of the Fiat on my iPhone before getting yelled at for taking pics and posted it on twitter.

Fiat 500 Site

UPDATE 10/16/08:

Just got a follow up email that states the following:

“During the drive study, we asked how likely you would be to consider purchasing the green Fiat Cinco Cento for a future car, at a price of $13,500 (MSRP) at 40 miles per gallon on the highway. A picture of the car is provided below for your reference.” After yelling at me for taking a pic, they send me a high res pic directly to my email.

“What if you found out that the car was actually manufactured by a different company?  Would that change your purchase consideration?  Please indicate how likely you would be to purchase the same car if it was manufactured by each of the manufacturers below.”

The listed manufacturers were Chrysler / Honda / Ford / Hyundai. With a scale of 1 - 10.

Quite interesting, guess we will have to wait and find out what they do.

So we are walking toward the checkout at the local Staples, and out of the corner of my eye, I see see DVD’s for $4.99. I was somewhat intrigued because for the price and the newness of the DVD titles. I walked over and discovered a display rack titled “Flexplay.” I had never seen these before but they were calling it a “No Return DVD Rental”. I remember Circuit City tried this with their DIVX disposable rental DVD’s back in like 1999. It only lasted about 6 months before they shut it down because it was a horrible idea. Well the idea apparently seems to be a good idea to someone again, namely flexplay, because they are back. Same 48 hour period, same disposable nature, same everything really.

Packaging
The DVDs come in cardboard gatefold sleeve wrapped in shrink wrap. Once you open the cardboard sleeve you find a DVD disc in a vacuum sealed plastic wrapper. The cardboard sleeve has all the typical dvd info that a normal DVD case would have. Once you crack the seal of the vacuum sealed case your 48 hours begins. After 48 hours, the DVD will become unreliable. They do this by using a glue to adhere the 2 halves of the disc together that when introduced to air, starts to become cloudy, making it unreadable by your DVD player.

Ripping / Cracking the DVD
My first thought when seeing these DVDs was, can you rip them like a standard DVD, or did they add another layer of copy protection. Since they are so cheap, they would be a good choice for ripping. I used Handbrake to get a good quality MP4 out of it with no issues. The disks are no different from normal DVD in respect to ripping. If you want the raw VOBs, use your ripper of choice, MacTheRipper, DVDshrink, etc.

Usage / Playing
The DVD has a special (cheap looking) Flexplay menu system, but other than that, it’s the same movie. Pop it in your DVD player and you are off. We actually were able to play it past the 48 hours, so it’s not an exact time, just an approximation that it will “play reliably” for AT LEAST 48 hours. I tried playing it on various computers and DVD players with no kind of play back issues. I really don’t think these discs are gonna make it being sold at Staples, or anywhere for that matter. It’s simply a product that I don’t really think has a market. Not to mention it is SO wasteful. It says they are recyclable, but how many people are really going to do that? Not enough. Maybe I could see this being useful in an airport scenario? You are there and need a movie for your flight? Perhaps.

We will see how successful this idea is this go around. It will be interesting to see if in 8 years people have changed their mind about this technology.

Check out some photos of the packaging, disc changing properties, and of course it being microwaved :) LINK TO PHOTOS

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Extra: weird side effect, as you may know I have had the LONGEST backup times previously (like hours). After the jailbreak my backups take minutes! Quite possibly completely unrelated, but none the less, I’ll take it!

Jailbreaking = loving your iPhone again.

[I did this whole post using the Wordpress iPhone app, it's pretty rad!]

The Big Youngster