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Toshi's thread

Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
here's an honest review of the infiniti m35x. it's worth reading even if you have no interest in that particular car because it's by philip greenspun, of mit, photo.net, and traveling to alaska fame.

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/cars/infiniti-m35

he makes some good points about cars, which i will distill down to the one key point: cars are about as useful as they can be right now. what is needed to make them more than what they are (boxes that carry people +/- leather upholstery) is some combination of personal service a la onstar or internet access and vastly more intelligent programming in car stereos and navi systems, to name two low-hanging pieces of fruit.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
if you're still with me after the m35x review and liked philip greenspun's style then you also might be interested in the other articles on his site. it's an arbitrary starting point, but the early retirement/where to live article is a decent launching point:

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/where-to-live

although i'm still quite some distance from retirement :D i am going to use his advice as a guide to picking out where i'll apply for residency programs...
 
ALEXIS_DH

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,292
902
Lima, Peru, Peru
Toshi said:
if you're still with me after the m35x review and liked philip greenspun's style then you also might be interested in the other articles on his site. it's an arbitrary starting point, but the early retirement/where to live article is a decent launching point:

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/where-to-live
Click to expand...
i love his style.
read pretty much all his website months ago.
the wonders of working 12 hour shifts on sloooooooooow weekends.

since i started to take serious count of my gas mileage (about 24-25mpg on the first tank)... am about halfway on my 2nd tank (same 95 oct rating, different brand and $0.35 per gal more expensive), and it isnt looking much brighter either....

25mpg out of a '07 toyota yaris? :disgust1: :disgust1:
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
refer back a page or two to when you described putting your yaris through the paces. drive it like it's a racecar and you'll get that kind of mileage... :pirate2:

on the other hand, did you see in the march mileage thread that i averaged under 15 mpg in my rx-8 for the month? all city jaunts of less than 10 miles + 2 trips up into the mountains for skiing did the trick. even babying it on the freeway on the way home only netted 23 mpg.
 
ALEXIS_DH

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,292
902
Lima, Peru, Peru
Toshi said:
refer back a page or two to when you described putting your yaris through the paces. drive it like it's a racecar and you'll get that kind of mileage... :pirate2:

on the other hand, did you see in the march mileage thread that i averaged under 15 mpg in my rx-8 for the month? all city jaunts of less than 10 miles + 2 trips up into the mountains for skiing did the trick. even babying it on the freeway on the way home only netted 23 mpg.
Click to expand...
under 15mpg for your car, am impressed.

i dont drive it like that everyday....
just that day, and a few other nights of empty roads when i miss my rx7 and evo6 daily-driver days, and i kinda feel the need to make 3 wheeled turns.

i need to really rev it up to keep up with traffic or pass. the other day i found myself shifting at 4500rpm off a stop light to keep up with an suv next to me :twitch:.
the car, beside the engine, behaves extremely nice in every way... but the 1.3L engine is seriously undersized (and i even read there is an even smalles 1.1 or 1L version in asia :eek:).
its basically the same engine (plus vvti dialed in for extra economy) my previous daily driver (toyota echo) had... although the echo was like 150kg lighter, and slow enough already.
the 1.5L option would have been nicer (although a $3k option, it would have put me in corolla pricing ballpark and doesnt make much economical sense imho). my echo got 30mpg at worst.

my mood is slowly swinging back to forget-about-mpg-and-reliability cars again. the idea of an unbearable impractical car like an slk, z3 or even a 10 year old supercharged clk is chomping my brain out. but then i remeber the $80-90 tank fill ups and weeks long car-less periods of time while a rubber o-ring arrives and silly stuff like that...

most (like 80+%) of my drives are under 5 miles. usually with a couple minutes of warming up. my commute is 2-3 miles. my gf lives 5-6 miles away. short drives in city traffic and summertime A/C are taking their toll.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
scooter? a glorified electric golf cart? a road bike? make your gf drive to where you are? :p
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,239
1,498
NC
My dad shipped me a bunch of his old Olympus OM equipment. Nice! This was the first camera I ever touched but didn't know he was such a photo geek :D

Zuiko: 200mm f/3.5, 50mm f/1.4, 35-70 f/3.5
Tokina: 70-210 f/4-5.6

Bunch of adapters... Some extension rings, a 2x teleconverter, t-mount for putting it on a telescope...

Cool stuff - I'm pretty excited to play with it. Going to use the 50mm as a reversed macro lens and experiment with that. Just sharing with a fellow photo geek :monkeydance:
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
cool stuff indeed. i might have to resort to the reversed 50mm trick myself if the sigma sells.
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,239
1,498
NC
What an interesting technique.

This was taken with the Zuiko 50mm f/1.4 reversed on my Sony. Depth of field is horrendously thin. A longer focal length would be easier to work with (100mm maybe, my 200mm is too long), but it's sure a hell of a lot of magnification! Vignetting is mostly due to me hand holding the 50mm on the front, so it slips around.

 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
i dig the effect on that shot. what aperture was it? f/24 or f/32 if possible is always key for macro, even if it only increases the depth of field from 1mm to 5 or whatever it may be.

i haven't been using _any_ of my lenses often, but the 180 often didn't make the cut when deciding to pack for a hiking expedition. it is quite large and heavy. and sold for a good price, btw. :)
 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,239
1,498
NC
It's a little digicam so the best I can do is f/8. I think that shot was at f/5.6, any smaller than that and I couldn't keep it sharp (handheld).

From B&H, along with my adapter for the 50mm, is an off-camera hotshoe adapter & cord for my flash, should help me get that extra DoF in low light.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
ah, but the circle of confusion on the small sensor/short lens combo (assuming it's not some freak model) should make that f/8 or 5.6 equivalent to much more...

random addition. nb: c is the speed of light, of course, that's blue and red shift :D, and the two competitors are chuck norris and the dodge neon srt-4.

 
binary visions

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,239
1,498
NC
Toshi said:
ah, but the circle of confusion on the small sensor/short lens combo (assuming it's not some freak model) should make that f/8 or 5.6 equivalent to much more...
Click to expand...
Yep, f/8 under normal circumstances is a virtually infinite depth of field. I'm not sure if even f/32 on an SLR would provide me with any more.

I'll post up another when my adapter and flash equipment arrives, should be a fun learning experience. Focusing on the LCD/EVF is the hardest - not only is that hard w/ any LCD/EVF, but it's an older model so the LCD is small and the EVF is fairly low resolution. I'm getting better, though.

Speaking of Neons, you having a good time with your RX8?
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
the rx-8 is still working out ok. i was planning to put it through its paces officially at the autox this weekend, but finding out that i'm on call cruelly squashed those plans. it still seems as it did before: a very precise-handling, low car that's faster than most cars, certainly, but not violently fast. i've had a couple of people take pictures of it or pause besides it to gawk when driving around town and on the freeway. :)
 
ALEXIS_DH

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,292
902
Lima, Peru, Peru
Toshi said:
alexis, did you see this?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9178761914513537949

"50 years of onboard F1"

also, www.rap-cat.com has a somewhat amusing commercial (videos -> commercial). people in the south are weiiiird if they go for this stuff, let alone a restaurant named "checkers"
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the whole 39 minutes. amazing.
but more amazingly, i knew the model of almost every car, and recognized almost every track, and where the braking points, apexes and turn-in for all the corners.... hmmmm, it seems i´ve been playing racing games a bit too much.

i´ve eaten at checkers, and more than once. and i gotta admit the burger it wasnt so bad, besides the fact checkers are favorite places of loitering for crackheads and the like.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
while waiting for the bus post-call this afternoon i saw an unfamiliar sight: 3 college age guys trying out their le parkour style moves on some wide concrete handrails. we all must have looked similarly goofy on late night urban rides :D

 
skatetokil

skatetokil

Turbo Monkey
Jan 2, 2005
2,383
-1
DC/Bluemont VA
Toshi said:
here's an interesting article about a famous classical violinist who played in street clothes in a metro station in dc... and was basically ignored.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html?hpid=topnews

moral of the story: america is filled with rubes.
Click to expand...
Especially the federal district in DC. Its like hollywood for ugly people. Doe-eyed noobs arrive by the busload every day expecting to be appointed to interesting and powerful positions only to become soulless mid level paper pushers in the Department of Expensive and Unnecessary Bull****.
 
ALEXIS_DH

ALEXIS_DH

Tirelessly Awesome
Jan 30, 2003
6,292
902
Lima, Peru, Peru
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
woot: in my first autox outing with the rx-8 i was right up there contending for the lead. i ran street tire class with my car's B stock pax index, and ended up sandwiched by two A Stock cars in 2nd place, with my indexed time 0.02 seconds off from first. 0.02 seconds over just shy of a minute is way less than the fudge factor inherent in the relative softness/weakness of the A Stock vs. B Stock pax indices, so i'm going to call this one a tie.*

:)

* the sanctioning body that put on this race actually does treat it this way, essentially: instead of giving 15 points for 1st place, 10 for 2nd or something like that they give 100.000 for first and then 99.999 if you were 0.001% off from the front runner's time, 90.000 if you were 10% off the winning time, and so forth. that'd mean i'd get a 99.99965 for the day assuming i did the math correctly.

in case any of you are totally lost with this "pax index" talk, it's a method of comparing times between different classes of cars based on how fast they go when driven by regional and local winners in the last year's events.

http://www.scca-chicago.com/solo/indexes/rtp2007.html

the link said:
SS 0.848
AS 0.838
BS 0.828
CS 0.822
DS 0.804
ES 0.812
FS 0.809
GS 0.803
HS 0.789
Click to expand...
what the above-quoted bit means is that to get the indexed time for a B Stock car like my RX-8 you multiply the actual ("raw") time by 0.828. to get the same for an H Stock car like a non-S mini cooper you'd multiply it by 0.789, etc.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
here's a page with a sampling of illustrations and photos by one of my friends from middle school. through chance and the forces of nerd-dom, which causes similarly-minded people to converge at predetermined locations, she ended up at berkeley entomology grad school. this happens to be the same program that one of my undergrad roommates is at now, thus the connection.

http://rydia.net/trilobite/sf/2006folio.html





http://rydia.net/trilobite/sf/2006folio.html
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
knowing me, i probably posted this a few months back already, but if not...





read about the build here: http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1043903

it's a one lap of america racer, and will be competing in the economy car class. :devil: . somehow i think it will be a contender: 464 whp as per the dyno graph on the second page of the linked thread, ~2400# race weight with fluids and cage, also from the thread.
 
WTGPhoben

WTGPhoben

Monkey
Apr 21, 2002
717
0
One of them Boston suburbs
Looks like I stopped getting email reminders again... (note I haven't been here in at least a month). Pleanty of updates to come, but the most biking related news is:

I'm doing the TransRockies Challenge Again! (and this time we're racing it). I've got a new partner (George, one of the Harvard Cycling coaches) and training has begun, which includes racing most of the root66 races (www.root66raceseries.com).
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
here's a puzzle for y'all

come up with the number 22 using four 9s. that is you can use 9, 99, and apply sqrt, factorial, addition, multiplication, division, etc. to your heart's content. 9^2 would not be allowed since that's a 2, but 9*9 would be...

an example, with the number 79:

(sqrt(9)!)!/9 - (9/9)
(3!)!/9 - 1
6!/9 - 1
720/9 - 1, voila

another example, with the number 64:

(sqrt(9)!/sqrt(9))^(sqrt((sqrt(9) * sqrt(9))!)
(3!/3)^(sqrt(9)!)
2^(3!), voila

a friend and i tried to come up with such answers for the numbers 0 through 100. we came up short 18 answers, the first of which is number 22 as above. solve it for us! :D
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
here's a pretty sweet free site:

http://jott.com/

the idea: set up an account, call their toll-free number from your cell, and then send an automatically transcribed email to yourself or anyone in your address book. it seems like the ideal way to, well, jot down that thought that you had on the road.

:)

it also nicely complements www.youmail.com , which gives you free voicemail forwarded to email as a wav attachment, with a supplementary web interface to store/delete/forward to other email accounts. you can also call and push buttons on your phone a la standard voicemail.

another nifty youmail feature is being able to record custom greetings for all of your friends. if anna calls me, the voicemail says "hi anna, leave me a message", etc.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
from a local guy who shoots autox events:

http://fakelag.net/gallery/v/events/race/

coolness (from the link):









somebody buy that man some droop travel!









nice panning...





the guy could really use some self-control in not posting every single shot he snapped tho. there are many nice ones in there, but within a sea of images.
 
Toshi

Toshi

butthole powerwashing evangelist
Oct 23, 2001
40,543
9,323
for those of you who read the washington post article on joshua bell playing the bach chaconne, it's partita #2 in d min bwv 1004, track 5 in this set of excellent recordings by thomas zehetmair:

http://download.yousendit.com/1BBBE4EA16E159F9

the article, for reference:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

and from the article:

thewashingtonpost said:
Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect. Plus, it was written for a solo violin, so I won't be cheating with some half-assed version."

Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound. Composed around 1720, on the eve of the European Enlightenment, it is said to be a celebration of the breadth of human possibility.

If Bell's encomium to "Chaconne" seems overly effusive, consider this from the 19th-century composer Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann: "On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."

So, that's the piece Bell started with.
Click to expand...
i'll be posting another link with more of his sonatas and partitas later today.
 
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