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Archive for March, 2009

A great article about racing, what it feels like, and what it costs.

Monday, March 30th, 2009

I race in ITA. Improved Touring A. I also race at the “pointy” end of the field which means “winning”, so the budget ain’t quite as cheap as they say and the racing is not “as” grassroots as noobies in old pos cars. Some of the IT cars would make some Koni challenge cars look bad, and some of the drivers are MUCH MUCH better then Koni challenge drivers, but they came to the realization which this article tries to portray, that racing on TV is so cost prohibitive that is better to do it in your part of the country, with other drivers that are just as good as the guys on TV, but just don’t want to spend their entire life and all of their money doing it.

http://www.speedsportlife.com/2009/03/27/avoidable-contact-25-exploring-the-pyramid-of-speed-the-real-costs-and-stories-behind-entry-level-sedan-racing/

For IT Racing
“Let’s put that in perspective: racing an old VW Golf or Honda Civic once a month costs as much as buying a Nissan GT-R or Porsche Cayman S on a five-year loan.”

For Koni Challenge
“Think about it. At this level, it costs just as much to race a Honda Civic or Volkswagen GTI for a year as it does to own a Lamborghini Gallardo.”

And what “Racing” is
“And once you’ve won a race, the fever to do it again will never truly leave you. Once you’ve put your foot on someone else’s neck — once you’ve looked out of your window net and simply destroyed another man’s confidence on the entry to a critical corner — you will want to do it again and again until it either kills you or ruins your life.”

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Cross Sub Domain Ajax and JSON

Friday, March 27th, 2009

I got a couple comments and emails about my post on cross sub domain JS and AJAX and using an iframe to make that happen. As I was making an example of it so the post made more sense, I thought about the cross sub domain issues we were having at work, and the “duh” solution to the issue of passing data between sub domains. Use JSON instead of XML. The only time you couldn’t use JSON is if you were trying to get a full HTML page instead.

Its absurdly easy with jQuery and there are no iframes or anything else to mess around with. Just setup your js as a function call with a JSON object inside of it with your data.

myData({ "title":"test"})

Then on your page where you want the data, after adding jQuery just run the following

<script type="text/javascript">
function myData(theData) {
	alert(theData.title);
}
$.getJSON("http://test.tomhoppe.com/test.js?callback=?");
</script>

This will grab the test.js file containing the function callback and execute that function on your page. At that point you can do whatever you please with your data. Only do this with trusted sources of course, as the JS that you pull in gets immediately executed on your own page.

Posted in All, Javascript | No Comments »

iPhone 3.0 ain’t too bad

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

I went ahead and installed iPhone 3.0 on my phone despite of all the warnings I read about the instability of the beta software. I did want to play with some of the new maps APIs so I figured it was justified for development reasons, and it couldn’t be SO bad, even on my one and only phone.

So after running it for a few days, its really not as bad as all the blogs make it out to be. I’ve had it hang up maybe once or twice, but holding down the home button got things back on track. Copy and paste is pretty cool, although I haven’t had the actual need to use it other then screwing around the last few days. The MMS doesn’t work, but that’s AT&T’s fault. Not ready yet for prime time, but its not some deal where its constantly locking up and not usable. Quite the opposite in terms of dropped calls actually. Haven’t had one since!

I’m going to play with the tethering over the weekend, supposedly some others got it working and play with some of the APIs to see what all cool things I can do.

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I’m not bad at fixing dents, but I suck at making my car pretty

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

So I received my roll of blingtastic carbon fiber vinyl today. I had great plans and aspirations of wrapping my fenders and hood with this vinyl and avoiding any further paint work and body work on the race car. Whoa I sure failed. Apparently this carbon fiber vinyl is not like th other vinyl in that it can stretch and form itself to curves very easily. Thus it is VERY hard to place around curves like the edges and curves in the fender. It ended up looking “ok” but not nearly what I was expecting. Guess thats what happens with the $40 stuff instead of the $300. Oh well, it was worth the experiment.

So the new plan! I’m just going to have Mike at Sentry Auto Body paint the fenders red to match the rest of the car. After that, I’ll get KC from RallyDecals.com make me some sort of base design in carbon fiber vinyl. Not sure what exactly, but it won’t be too crazy. Maybe some carbon fiber flames or something like that. It will look black from far away, but really cool up close. Then go with silver stickers for the rest of the car.

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Tomorrow I learn how to do body work

Friday, March 13th, 2009

I picked up my new fenders and front bumper cover this week. With those parts here, its time to fix the dents on the doors, and the rear quarter panels. Not sure how I feel about the rear panels yet, as the car has had those dents all of last year, but the door definitely needs to be fixed. I think I’m going to learn to bondo/metal work on the door and then see what happens from there. It can’t be harder then touching up holes in drywall right? :)

I also bought the wrap for the hood and fenders and ordered the rest of the stickers from Keith. Since we’re not going late season skiing, I decided to make the Carolina Motorsports Park SARRC race on March 27th. Should be a nice and easy start to the new season. The track has been slightly redesigned since the last time I was there, so it should be a little more fun. I also have to pick up my new lens, so I finally have some damn in-car video!

Posted in All, Racing | No Comments »

Race car is back!

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

Went and picked the car up from Trever’s shop today. She’s straight, corner weighed, new uprights/bearings/balljoints, and the header/exhaust is all welded up. I’m going to tear off the fenders tomorrow, and start working with a sander, hammer, and a touch of bondo to make the quarters/doors look a bit better. I decided to spend some hours of my time instead of the $1000+ it would take to get it fixed at a body shop. If I have a full year of no more banging doors, I’ll get it fixed next winter, but I’m not feeling like dropping a grand in body work just to get it banged up again :)

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I’m in love with a Microsoft product (and Toodledo as well)

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

Never thought I would say this about something from Microsoft, but……Microsoft Office OneNote RULES!

I started using it about a week ago after promising myself that I need to start taking notes instead of keeping everything in my head. The thing is, I hate notepads and pens, my handwriting sucks, and if I have it on paper instead of on the PC, I’ll never actually “act” on it. I tried to find some software that was better then “Notepad” for taking notes for work, and Office OneNote came to the rescue.

The UI for it is fairly good, in that I can setup a Work notebook, monthly Tabs, and then daily pages. On the pages, I can take freeform notes in sections. You aren’t tied to a specific line, like in Notepad or Word. Once I’m done with a note, if I have a to do or follow up from that note, I can go ahead and create either an Outlook task, or a meeting request, straight from OneNote with that note’s content. Sweet! I usually create Meeting requests, as then I can assign a time and block off my calendar for that particular task, so I make sure it actually gets done.

The integration with Outlook gets even better. If I’m in a meeting somewhere w/o my computer, I can then use my iPhone’s built in Notes app to take a note down. Its very easy to email that note to yourself from your iphone. 2 clicks. Once I get back to my desk and am sorting emails, there is a 1 button “make into note” feature, so I can instantly turn that email into a new note. It would be awesome if there was some sort of App to integrate with OneNote, but there are no services or APIs to do that. Would sure be nice if that would sync over wireless straight to my OneNote DB. For now, I can deal with 3 clicks per note/meeting. Especially for free.

On a separate “note” har har, I’ve been using Toodledo to keep track of my personal to-dos. As with work, I always keep everything in my head and just start to forget to do stuff, like get my damn car registered, or sign up for the next semester for classes. Toodledo is pretty much free ($3 for the iPhone app) and allows me to always have my to-dos in front of me. I have the iPhone app, where I can view, enter, sort, assign dates, etc to all my tasks. I have the website, where I can do the same from any computer ever, and I have an iGoogle widget that sits on my homepage reminding me to get my damn car finally registered on Thursday. Now I just need to start actually doing the things I don’t want to do, and I’ll be set :-)

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