GeekLimit

I love these thing. Here's some specs I found on a few alternative-powered motorcycles. (US conversions done by me)

Diesel-Electric

Motoring – Hybrid eCycle is fun and super-eConomical:

Motor: Air-cooled two-stroke diesel twin.
Capacity: 125cc.
Power: 7.5kW. (10 hp)
Induction: Parker Aerospace Macrospray injectors.
Ignition: Compression.
Starting: Electric.
Transmission: 2-speed constant mesh with final drive by belt.
Suspension: 48mm FAR inverted cartridge forks at front, Penske Racing hydraulic shock absorber at rear.
Brakes: 298mm (11.73 inches) disc with four-pot opposed piston Grimeca calliper at front, 216mm (8.5 inches) disc with single-piston Grimeca calliper at rear.
Tyres: Front: 110/70-17 tubeless. Rear: 130/70-17 tubeless.
Wheelbase: 1321mm. (52 inches)
Seat height: 762mm. (30 inches)
Dry weight: 132kg. (291 pounds)

Electric

GprHome:

Motor: Rare Earth Magnet
Power: 15 Peak Horsepower
Top Speed: 45 to 65 mph (adjustable)
Range: 20 to 40 miles (adjustable)
Brakes: Dual Hydraulic Disks
Charge Time: 3.5 hours

What's nice about this is that you can actually buy one of these, unlike the eCycle, from what I have found. The downside (?) is that it's entirely electric, so it's range is limited by who will let you plug in.

However, with its range, it remains a viable solution for commuters or weekend fun, but probably wouldn't be too good on the interstate highways, with a max speed of 65 mph.

Still, for a $7000 bike, not bad performance at all. 

Project Name: Compact Fluorescent Replacement x 50

Initial Cost: $250
Recurring cost: $250 every 8000 hours, plus $14.92/month
(new bulbs and energy costs, bulbs will probably be cheaper by then)
Time involved: 90 minutes
(Get the bulbs, remove old, install new)
Time to pay off initial investment: about 8 months
(varies, the more you use them, the faster they pay off)

GEEK MONEY: $31.37/month for every 50 replacements
(about 63 cents per bulb replaced)

When I first moved into my townhouse, I couldn’ figure out why my electric bill was so bad. I had attributed it to summertime and the air conditioning, but soon noticed something else…
The fire hazard

A light bulb had burned out, and while replacing it, I noticed that the bulb was a 70-watt unit, and the recessed lighting receptacle was only rated for 60W. This can be a fire hazard, so I checked a few other bulbs – all 70 watts! A few were even 100 watts, with the labels on the recessed lighting turning brown from the heat!

This was bad. I counted how many 60W bulbs I would need. For my small house, I needed about 50. Ouch. “But wait”, I thought, “If I have 50 bulbs at 60W each, and I pay ComEd 8.275 cents per kilowatt/hour, I can figure out how much these bulbs are costing me.”

A kilowatt/hour is a measurement of how much energy is flowing to your house. It represents 1000 watts being used in an hour. So let’s say I have my lights on for about 43.5 hours per week… (when I’m home during the week, and 8 hours on the weekend)
Excel to the rescue

60W x 50 bulbs = 3000 watts
3000 watts x 43.5 hours per week = 130,500 watt/hours = 130.5 kilowatt/hours
130.5 kW/hours per week * 4 weeks = 522 kW/hours per month
522 kW/hours per month * 8.275 cents per kW/hour = $50.39 43.20 per month

$50 per month! Just for these lights! That doesn’t count for computers, bathroom lights, fridge, TV, AC, etc.

OK, so settling down, I could just go and buy 50 60W bulbs. This would cost me about $1.00 for a 4-pack from Home Depot, or about $12.50. It would also save me $7.19 per month, making my bill about $43 instead of $50. I would pay off the new bulbs in 1.7 months, and save $7 per month after that. Pretty weak, especially since 60W bulbs usually need to be replaced about every 400-800 hours (on average), which means every 9-18 weeks.

However, Home depot also sells Compact Fluorescent bulbs. compact fluorescent bulbs are basically like the big, long bulbs you see at work or in the grocery store. They are filled with a gas that glows when a small amount of electricity is applied to it. They use hardly any energy, and are more efficient than a regular bulb, which uses a lot of electricity to heat a small wire. compact fluorescent’s are different than the big, long ones, in that someone made the tubes very narrow and curled them all into the shape of a normal light bulb. Sometimes there is even a glass covering over the fluorescent tubing to make it look more “normal”.

The good thing about the compact fluorescent bulbs is that you can get a 6-pack that costs less than $30 these days, with each bulb putting out as much light as a 60W bulb, while only using 13 watts each. In addition, these bulbs are rated for anywhere between 8000 to 10,000+ hours.

The bad part is that each bulb costs about $5, instead of 25 cents.

OK, so let’s see what would be better over the course of 8000 hours of use, the equivalent of 3.8 years of use for me.

Regular bulbs
Cost for bulbs: 50 bulbs, each replaced (on average) every 800 hours = $125
Cost of electricity for 8000 hours: $1,986.00
Total cost: $2111, or about $46.29 per monthcompact fluorescent bulbs
Cost for bulbs: 50 bulbs, lasts for 8000 hours = $250
Cost of electricity for 8000 hours: $430.30
Total cost: $680.30, or about $14.92 per month

Conclusion

So what do I do? Replace the 70W bulbs with 60W bulbs, or bite the $250 bullet and go with the 13W bulbs that output as uch as 60W bulbs?

The compact fluorescent bulbs, of course.

In fact, I then replaced every bulb in my entire house with compact fluorescent, including bathrooms, lamps, outside lights, even the garage light. Total cost was around $325, no small amount, to be sure. But then again, saving $50 per month on 70+ bulbs…pretty sweet.

We've all got great ideas for the next big thing. Before you invest in a personalized license plate that says 'Web20' or 'AJAX 7334', you'll need to develop a simple way of getting information in and out of a web server.

There are many ways to do this, but I like PHP and MySQL, because they are easy and cheap. (PHP and MySQL are free, but you can find hosting on a PHP-MySQL server for as low as $8/month.)

So let's say we want to build a web app…

Step 1: lay out what info you're going to need

I think of it like this: if you were to do this process on paper, what would you need? First of all, you'll need User information. On a 'User Information' sheet, I might have the following info:

User Info

• First Name
• Last name
• Employee ID number
• Email Address

OK, so that's pretty easy to figure out. It's also easy to take this info and plan out how you're going to store the info in a MySQL table. (a MySQL table is like a spreadsheet in Excel (OpenOffice Calc!)) So I will take my data requirements and make a table called user_info, as follows. I will also define what will be in each data type. I also need to add some more fields…

user_info

• *user_id
• passwd
• fname
• lname
• email

(* this data will be required to be unique – I can't have 2 users with the same name!)

This is going to lay out a table in MySQL that looks like this when it is full:

Each row is called a record, and contains all of that person's info. The user info table is pretty standard, but what other tables you will need depend on your application. Let's say we're making a simple chat room web page. Another table we will need will be for people's comments, like this:

Now the important thing to notice here is my re-use of user_id. By re-using this data, I can now link the two tables together.

So my friend just had me help him buy a laptop from Dell (he had an Employee Purchase discount), and I'm helping him set it up. It's a Dell XPS M140 with Windows XP Media Center Edition. What would you consider an 'essential application' for him? Now, before someone chimes in with the 'OSX' or 'Gentoo' comments, think about what you would recommend to someone other than yourselves, possibly your mother or first-time computer user. You're still on the mac/linux thing. OK, he wants to leverage his investment in Win32 software. (ok, stop with the 'Wine' already)
I'm thinking the following:

A VirusScan utility. Preferably something like Symantec Antivirus or other application that comes on a CD. Costs money, but so does a hijacked box. I can't recommend Norton, I've seen way too many machines destroyed for it to be a coincidence… haven't been impressed with the free offerings, but the last time I tried was about 18 months ago, and haven't had a reason to test since then…

A browser. Firefox. Possibly with Google toolbar (for the spell-check, he's a blogger also) and StumbleUpon (we all get bored) Got any other killer extensions?

An email client / RSS aggregator. Thunderbird 1.5, but I would set him up myself. I'll be writing a post later on the annoyances of Thunderbird, and how once you get them sorted out, it rocks! (default settings are counter-intuitive, though – what's with putting my signature underneath the inline reply text???) The RSS is a nice addition. It's an easy-to-use tech that most people have never heard of.

Spyware protection. Spybot Search and Destroy with TeaTimer and IE. Update the def's and scan, WinXP MCE had a few red flags out of the box…

Productivity suite. He had a free copy of Office XP through his graduate program, but otherwise I'd advise people to use OpenOffice. A few days ago I completely uninstalled Office XP (my org's standard). Only annoyances so far are difficulty graphing in Calc. Definitely set it up to save as Microsoft file format by default though, otherwise no-one else will be able to open your stuff. (for now. When the next version of office natively supports the open office standard, wait 5 years fr everyone to upgrade, then switch the defaults back…) If they don't already have Office, install OO and go spend the $373 they save on a new __________? Multifunction printer? iPod? 7 day thermostat and light bulbs? (ok, shameless, nerdy plug) $20 donations to each of the free softwares listed here?

PrimoPDF. This free utility will allow you to make anything printable into a pdf file, no adobe products needed. (except viewer).

What else? I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Post your suggestions with the URL's.

It looks like Google is taking one step closer to killing off the locally-installed program. In this case, it looks like they're looking for an online Word Processor. They've already implemented IM collaboration in their mail product, Gmail.

This brings up a new point. Microsoft is quickly falling behind Google. Google appears to be following IBM's lead and working to bring all its tools together to give multi-channel collaboration. IBM has known this for years with its Lotus lineup.

With this move, Google may be cutting off Microsoft's ability to generate revenue by making its users purchase multiple products to do their work, then purchasing multiple servers to make them all work nicely together. Google's move also is highlighted by it's offerings to host domain-based gmail accounts.

Could Google be positioning itself to have a web-based collaborative tool encompassing the features of Microsoft's Office and Lotus' Email/IM/team collaboration products? I'm not as worried about IBM, since the Lotus platform offer much, much more than just email. A product like Exchange/MSN Messenger/Office, however… It seems as if people grew tired of paying for those standalone products a long time ago…

By now, you've heard that Apple has decided to let anyone dual-boot an Intel mac with OSX and WinXP! Now I can finally get my hands on that mac hardware, and still be able to play the Win32 games I want. That means I could use a mac for multimedia creation, WinXP for games, and Ubuntu for everything else… Here's an idea for a SWEET triple-boot (as opposed to dual-boot) rig! (and yes, someone has already tried, and it looks do-able!) [link courtesy Atariboy]

I love the minimalist look. There's nothing better than a glass-tabled desk with a nice flat screen on it, and the proper cable management so it looks ultra-clean. This is a special project though, and deserves some extra attention.

I already have the desk.

Let's go for a good monitor. This is going to be an all-purpose rig with multimedia and gaming, so I need proper color rendering and a fast panel. I turn to my friends at Tom's Hardware for their as-usual scientific approach to hardware reviews, and they've got a spring 2006 post up for LCD's! I love these guys – they take 45 pages to review 11 screens, and it's exactly the way I'd do it, if I had the test equipment. Any less, and you're just parroting the company's marketing department. Looks like I'll be going with a 19" 2ms ViewSonic VX922. Happy to see ViewSonic doing so well, I've always loved the performance of ViewSonic. And yes! it's VESA wall-mount (100mm) compliant, so I can get a sweet wall-mounted arm to get the monitor off the desk completely. Atariboy has a review of a great one (the Ergotron LX) with some terrific cable management – now that is one clean setup!

Now, for the final touch, and I have to admit, this is a thing of beauty. The Mac will be a Dual Core Intel Mac Mini. Except it will be mounted to the back of the monitor. All the cabling will be fixed to the back of the monitor, and allowing for proper airflow. Also probably want to make sure the CD drive doesn't point up, otherwise dust will get in there. Sideways would be best to protect the back for the same reason. I might need to do a bit of ducting so the monitor with its built-in transformer doesn't cook th machine, but that's a simple small sheet aluminum as a heat shield.

The end result?

A wall-mount arm that keeps everything off of the desk, and no cables in sight, except for a gaming mouse and keyboard cabled to the wall-side of the arm. It doesn't even have to be an arm, either, just a fixed monitor mount offset enough for the mac mini and my duct-work.

Now I just need around $1200 for the monitor, mount, Mac and gaming mouse.

There's been a lot of buzz about picture-based sites lately, mostly centered on Zooomr, a Flickr-like web app that has a lot of other functionality. Wouldn't it be great if you could host your own Flickr/Zoomr, and have a ton of great plugins and stuff?

Oh, wait, there is! Introducing Gallery 2!

It's beyond me why people aren't freaking out about this. I've been using Gallery for my family's website for quite a while, and Gallery 2 is an incredible work of art.

Check out these screenshots! (appropriately, the screenshots are hosted in a Gallery 2 app).

Now just add in some AJAXy stuff, and you've got your own unrestricted Flickr/Zoomr! (provided you have a host with php/mysql) An active user base, great plugins, what's not to love?

If you've got your own hosting, gallery is a must-have.

Well it's been a fantastic week, and the authors here have exceeded my own thoughts at how well a start-from-scratch team blog could do.  In our first 7 days online, GeekLimit.com managed to pull in 15,000 visitors who performed 25,000 page views!

Thank You!

I've been poking through the admin panel of the site, and see many, many great stories coming up that I'm sure will really knock you guys out.  Week 2 is going to be even better,  In addition, we've got two new authors coming in, one with some coding-specific posts, and a *gasp* girl gamer who is currently active with pretty much every console ever made, in additon to gaming elsewhere.

Thank you again for your readership, and we are looking forward to really knockin' your socks off this next week, and the months ahead.

This topic became my white whale today. This has been a problem with Wordpress 2.0, and the cause of many, many forum posts.

I sat down, told myself that I wouldn’t get up until I could embed a YouTube video in WP2 with the WYSIWYG Editor turned on, and ended up not getting up for the next three hours.

In the end, the solution was simple. I just shouldn’t have drank so much Water Joe.

Author’s Note: This post describes how to hack Wordpress into letting you post video code while the WYSIWYG editor is turned on.  I wrote this on April 26, 2006.  Since then, there have been many attempts to make an easy-to-use plugin, but I haven’t been impressed.

Until today. (August 21, 2006)  Check out Video Quicktags.  It’s a great WYSIWYG-editor plugin for doing video, and I highly recommend it over the following method.  Both work, but the plugin is easier.

Of course, if you want to keep reading and watch me struggle to develop the method that has allowed for WYSIWYG video usage for the last 4 months, feel free to keep reading…

Beginnings

The search for a good plugin that does this without fail ended in frustration. All of the plugins I could find, and all the tutorials and help in the forums always said somewhere to add xxx code there and yyy code here, and be sure to disable the wysiwyg editor, otherwise it will strip outthe special tags that each plugin used to embed the video.

Snap

<rant> Well I don’t want to disable it! It’s there for a reason! I’m lazy! Ther, you happy? I said it. I’m lazy. I want to click the little buttons and answer the little questions. I want to make the javascript think for me. I want to be stupid! Let me be stupid! Me love buttons!</rant>

Sorry ’bout that.

Making things simple

Ok, so I had a plan, but I needed the simplest dang way of embedding the video. I wanted one tag to work with, and let some plugin worry about taking whatever was in-between my <supertags> and make the video happen. For now, I wanted to pretend WP2’s TinyMCE-based WYSIWYG Editor wasn’t going to punch my tag in the neck as soon as I clicked save. So I went and did that.

There are maybe a few dozen plugins out there that help embed video. I found one called WPvideo that would let me take a YouTube permalink (like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whGVaLoIvkw) and let me put a <video> tag around it. Then it did all the work of embedding it in a flash player. Best plugin out there? I’m not saying that. Just got the job done, for now.

TinyMCE, we need to have a talk

Now, I know your friend Wordpress 2.0, and she’s really nice. She’s letting me enter my nice code (<video>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whGVaLoIvkw</video>), and is waiting with my nice plugin for this code. But youkeep taking out my <video> tags. Not cool. I’m afraid we’re going to have to find a replacement for you. But you’re so irresistable!

OK, so anyway, I don’t want to modify the version of TinyMCE that comes with WordPress, because my changes will get destroyed when I update my WP install. But on the other hand, I’m a huge fan of TinyMCE and its plugin support. So I set out to find another wordpress plugin that would allow me to use my own installation of TinyMCE that I could hack to pieces and not worry about my changes getting overwritten.

My new friend

Introducing EditorMonkey. Not only does it have the TinyMCE interface I’m looking for, it also has an expanded feature set that includes a lot of optional TinyMCE features that don’t come with Wordpress. A few of my favorite additions are spell check, full screen editing and multiple-page support, but there are many others. It’s TinyMCE gone crazy, basically.

Unfortunately, this version of TinyMCE is just like the one that comes with WP when it comes to stripping tags. Except this one will do what I tell her.

(by the way, not that I want to, but this plugin supposedly also will let you switch over to FCKeditor. I couldn’t get it to work, but I don’t care.)

In addition, this plugin needs some additions to your theme’s css to make the pretty frame. Just follow the installation instructions.

Next Page

With the coming age of municipal wi-fi, it won't be long before Companies like Google will integrate their Local Search into location-aware vehicles. Here are a few Car-puter applications I see as being the killer mashup apps in the first 2-3 years of vehicle-integrated wi-fi.

Navigation + gas price search In this product, your car will be giving you navigation as many cars do today, but with the option of GPS or by wireless location awareness. However, by tying into the vehicle's engine control computer, the application will know how far you can go on your remaining fuel, and suggest the cheapest place to refill along your route. Now there are some caveats with this system. It should probably only make you fill up when you're below 1/4 tank or so, and there might not be a way to make sure that you're being told to fill up in a safe neighborhood. But the option is there to save you a few bucks on fuel, and to remind you when it's time to fill up.

Navigation + congestion avoidance We've seen this before. Even early navigation systems have a feature where you can tell it 'skip the next mile of my commute', and it will find a detour. However, with so much traffic data online, it would be a shame to not use this information to your benefit. With every vehicle connected, getting a real-time snapshot of current traffic conditions within a mile or so would be a snap. (this algorithm could increase the range of the forecasting depending on what types of roads are on your route…local forecast for city streets, long-range for the highways) In addition, by tying into the engine control computer, a vehicle could broadcast when its airbags are deployed, and automatically ping rescue personnel. In addition, that area could be red-flagged for everyone else to avoid, if the detour would not be too much of a time penalty. note: no personally identifiable information should be broadcasted for traffic monitoring, although you could count on the govt. eventually building a database of MAC address vs. VIN, even if they promise not to do so when the concept is launched…it's just too enticing. (Remember how long toll booths were supposed to be around?)

Navigation + Networked retail Take a home that is networked to your amazon wish list, etc., and have it alert you when someone has a deal on your stuff on the way to wherever you're going. In addition, have the car alert you to deals you've opted in to know about. Your grocery store knows you always buy tomatoes when you come in (already implemented in those 'club cards'), so come to the store on your way home and get a good deal today. Pizza place on your way home? press yes on the dash to order whatever you ordered last time, we'll give you $2 off for being a good customer, and we'll time it so it comes out of the oven as you're pulling up to the curb. Billed to your PayPal account, of course.

All of the above suggestions should most likely be done as the car is started, and after the driver has used a very easy-to-use navigation system to quickly choose from their most frequent destinations ('favorites list') They should NOT be done while in motion. Not only is it dangerous, but would put the businesses at enormous liability. However, here is one suggestion for while the car is in motion.

Feedback system + Heads Up Display Ooh, I like this one. Implement an eBay-like feedback system for other drivers. You know that guy that just drove up the shoulder, like he's too good to wait with the rest of you? point at the license plate, and the computer will allow you to give him a -1 courtesy feedback. Someone wants you to slow down and let them in, even though you're not legally bound to? Well, this one has a +200 courtesy score according to the HUD, (her details showing up automatically when she has the turn signal on), so she deserves it. Uh oh, though, an alarm just came up on the HUD of a vehicle approaching the same intersection as you. -4 accident score! Beware! The idea here is to make the person's individual score an indicator of how considerate they've been, and to penalize those who aren't. Subject to abuse, I know, so there would probably have to be some sort of mechanism where all your scores move one point towards zero every week. This would mean that you would have to be consistently good (or bad) to maintain any score. In addition, this may be an alternative to speed limits altogether. Everyone is allowed to do whatever they do, and if anyone if flagged multiple times, the police will check out the situation, since multiple random people are seeing the same thing. In addition, it wouldn't be difficult to also display on the HUD how people are ranking others. Likewise, if an account is consistently marking others down with reckless abandon, that would be something to look into, and possible penalize.

OK, Geeks, what else can you think of? Remember, demand drives innovation here, so if you can dream it, it can (and might) be built!