Google Chrome scroll fix

I downloaded Google's Chrome internet browser and it's been really sweet for a first attempt. Overall, I like the layout and have become an instant fan. It's definitely FAST!!! It loads so much faster than Internet Explorer 6, and you can surf faster also. If you take the time to read the Google Chrome comic book, you'll get an understanding of why.

My one big complaint has been that I could not scroll up with the trackpad on my HP laptop. I wasn't the only person. Fortunately, with some time, PaulusDev has come up with a working solution. I downloaded it here and now I have scroll up. Yea!!

Finally went motorcycling in Scotland

As you may know, I've been really bad about not posting anything for a few months. There have been things goind on, so here's some highlights. I went back to the US for couple weeks at the end of June, Dena and I took a weekend trip to Paris the first weekend of July, then two weeks of vacation in France mid July, and then a weekend trip to London the first weekend of August. I have lots of pictures that I need to get uploaded to my Flickr site. I just haven't had anything REALLY exciting to post about until now. Well, maybe I have, and I've just been lazy. :) Back to my motorcycle ride.

Yes, I've been here for over a year now, and Dena and I have been for little rides on both bikes out of and around Aberdeen, but I have not been on a serious motorcycle ride. I haven't had any business trips planned for a couple weeks, so on Monday, I asked one of the guys at work with a brand new 2008 GSXR 1000 if he wanted to go riding this weekend. He agreed, so all we had to do was hope for good weather. It rained all week, but finally on Saturday things started to clear and the sun came out. I cleaned the Kawi, and Sunday was looking good! I wanted to get my TomTom set up to record the route we would take, but I didn't download the software in time for this ride, and I still have to wire an adapter for 5V power.

We met up at work this morning, and he brought another friend of his along with a '06 GSXR 1000. Both of them were in leathers and both had scuffed knee pucks, so I knew I was in for a good time. WOW, could both of them set a pace!

The ride started about 11 am and I just got back at 5:30 pm. We put on roughly 250 miles. The roads over here are incredible! Very few truely straight stretches. The pace was close to the ton most of the time, and quite terrifing. I was probably riding at about 90% of my ability most of the time trying to keep up. I was always following because as long as either one of them was in front, I could jugde the corner speed. Most of the corners are blind, but somehow they just knew how quick they could ride through them. Unlike the US, the corners are not posted with a suggested corner speed sign. Here, there were really just 3 items to help judge corners, and they were "SLOW" painted on the road, and either a sign indicating a corner or a sign with black and white alternating arrows pointing into the really slow corners. In my opinion, not really helpful, but with all the corners, they'd have to put up a LOT of signs.

I just about ran off one of the corners early in the day. After a series of 80+ corners, this one was much slower, and I braked really hard for it leaving a nice black skid mark from my rear tire. I did get slowed down in time, but ended up jamming my right foot down as I skidded with the front tire briefly on some gravel as I was almost stopped. My right big toe is now purple from jamming the nail to the inside of my boot. Then, about midday, I ended up running a little wide on a corner, but luckily there was no car coming. Overall, I had a blast! The roads over here are excellent. I just wish the corners were marked a little better. I'm hoping there are a couple more sunny weekends to go out riding. Everyone keeps telling me I need to go ride some of the roads on the west coast. So, I guess I need to go plan and ride some of the roads on the west of Scotland. :)

Polar bears listed as threatened!

It took three years, a LOT of work, and a lawsuit to finally make the U.S. Department of the Interior make a decision on whether polar bears are at risk due to climate change. One day before they HAD to make a decision, polar bears have been listed as THREATENED, which is the first step before becoming endangered. Read the official release from the U.S. DOI.
I hope that history will look back and see this as the turning point that the US recognized climate change and global warming due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emisions. Bush has messed up badly. He will be leaving office as the least popular President in decades, that delievered a horrible response to one of the greatest natural disaters in US history - hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys controversy, rising inflation, agreeing to use of "harsh interrogation techniques", continuing the second longest US war, misleading the US in regards to climate change and not acting on it, leaving when fuel prices are at record highs, food prices are going up, the economy is essentially in a recession, and the US popularity is at an all time low with governements around the world. Someone has to serve as the bad example.
I really hope the next President of the United States of America takes climate change as his top priority. Change is good, and necessary at times. It may be painful at first, but good things will happen.
Greenpeace has a 96 page document that they've defined as a blueprint to a sustainable energy future. I'm about to read it now. I'm pretty sure that for the $1.5 TRILLION dollars we spent on trying to wage an oil war in Iraq (Iraq has the second biggest oil reserved in the world), we could have secured an independant, renewable energy future for the US, which would also lead to better national security because we wouldn't be dependant on foreign oil.
No, I'm not really happy that my tax dollars will be going to pay for a messy war for many, many years into the future.

One year already

Wow, time flies by when you're working your ass off. It's almost hard to believe that Dena and I have been in Scotland for a year now. We spent the first 3 months in temporary housing and numerous rental cars. Then, we bought a couple of motorcycles, happily moved into a great house in a nice neighborhood, and picked up our BWM. I started travelling for work, and Dena spent time making our house into a home. We flew home for Decemeber to visit friends and family, and to have surgery on my back. Dena spent the next couple of months updating Marine Turbine's website. I've spent the last couple of months working longer and longer hours on various projects.
Because time is flying by, we have made a commitment to see and experience more things while we are here. I'm looking forward to taking a motorcycle trip over to Lock Ness. Dena and I plan to go down to Glasgow. We're also making plans to go visit Frederique in France and spend a couple of days on the beach in Nice.

Internet TV is finally here!

OK, internet TV has been around for a while in some form or another, but at least from my perspective there hasn't been any well know and organized software to watch TV on your computer while connected to the internet. Now there is. Adobe has just released, what else Adobe TV on their new Adobe Media Player software, and just like the PDF viewer, the software is free for Windows and Mac OS!

The Adobe Media Player has a surprising number of channels available considering that this is now going to challenge major cable companies and satelite TV providers. I've only been checking the software and available programs for about the last 45 minutes. I've checked out some Paula Deen on Food Network (Dena misses watching Paula), watched today's Houston Weather Channel, and CSI: Miami. I've also noticed what looks to be the entire original Star Trek TV series. There are commercials, but it appears that there is only one where the normal commercial break would be. The CSI: Miami episode is only 45 minutes long, so that's a noticable reduction in commercials. There aren't a lot of well known programs yet, but I'd bet there will be.

How's the quality? I'm at a Quality Inn in Stavanger, Norway and the downloads are fast and the quality is plenty acceptable for watching on a 17" widescreen laptop. I'm watching on a HP 8710w which has a really nice Nvidia Quadro graphics card. I'm really looking forward to watching episodes on our projector when I get home.

Overall, Adobe Media Player rocks!!! It's going to be a big hit, and likely adopted very quickly. The difficult part may be how to organize everything so programs or channels can be found quickly. I'll try to do a follow up to this in a few weeks, and maybe Adobe will have posted how many downloads they've had.

Dan's 25 hour birthday

Dan's cake - Step 4
Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Yep, I'm now 33. I'd like to thank my lovely wife for the yummy birthday cake.

My birthday celebration started on the 12th of Feb while I was in Holland. I went to a Chinese restaurant with some co-workers. The dishes seemed to take a while to come out, but when they did, the explaination may have been due to the elaborately carved giant carrot sculptures. None of us had the heart to eat the art.

So, leaving Holland on the day of my birthday and flying back to Aberdeen gave me an extra hour to enjoy my birthday. And enjoy it I did! There was a pile of presents waiting for me when I got back home. I scored some Technic lego sets, "Long Way Round" book, some interesting trivia cards, and a disturbing but funny book annimated book on bunny deaths.

For all the pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeasmechanicaldan/sets/72157604130925653/

The Lego brick is 50

What a fun surprise to go to my favorite search engine and see the Google logo made of Lego bricks! The mouseover said "50th Anniversary of LEGO brick", so I had to do a little surfing. It's actually 50 years since the patent was filed, so I looked up the LEGO patent.

I was a huge Legomaniac when I was younger. More of a Legomaniac than Zach. I started with just a few bricks when I was around 6, and then for almost every birthday, Christmas, Easter, and any other special occasion I got a new Lego set. My big facination was with the Space sets, and then eventually got interested in the Technic sets. I'd play with them for hours. I think I had 40-50 sets when I sold them to raise some money for my first car. Looking back, it would have been nice to still have them, but I've been windowshopping on Ebay, and one can get used Legos in bulk pretty cheap. In fact, a Technic Lego set (or Technic blocks) is on my wish list for my birthday, which is February 13.

Even better is that you can download building instructions for new sets directly from the Lego website here and there is a website that collects and posts Lego set building instructions after the set is 3 years old here. A quick Google search shows there are likely a few others that have old scanned instructions. Just more reasons for me to love the internet.

Books I've Read

I've added a section regarding the books I've read over the last few months. I'm not a fast reader, as you can see by the length of the list. Our library is finally set up, and I have plenty of books to read now that Dena's and my book collections are together.

An Inconvenient Truth really helped bring some light to the ongoing global warming issue. Being an engineer, I wish there was more data, but the pictures do speak for themselves.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a heavy philisophical journey about a man, his inner craziness, his son, and a motorcycle trip.

Long Way Round I enjoyed a lot! It's Ewan and Charlie on a couple of BMW motorcycles as they ride around the world. What all happens? Lots. I'm eager to read the follow up journey called Long Way Down where they ride from the UK to the tip of South Africa.

Freakonomics was another book I enjoyed. It's Economics, but very interesting. How do big topic items in the world relate to other completely different objects. I highly recommend the book.

The Party's Over is about Peak Oil and what will the world do after the oil is all gone. My personal feeling is that we've hit Peak Oil right now. Another recommended read if you're interested in how energy effects the human race, but it will leave you feeling very depressed for a few days.

If you have any books that you'd recommend, feel free to post in the comments or send me an email.

Back Surgery Update: End of Week 6

This weekend was the end of week 6 after my back surgery, and I didn't need to take any Ibuprofen during the waking hours of both days. There was still a little pain in my back and my right calf, but very mild. I did take some Ibuprofen so I could sleep comfortably. I'm finally starting to see the benefits of the surgery! It's so nice to finally get a taste of normalcy.

It was 55 F today in Aberdeen. The sun was out, so I vaccummed and washed the BMW. I'm slowly getting some additional lights up in the garage so I can work on the Kawasaki. I hit a car with it just before Christmas and need to fix the front nose fairing. The days have been so short here, and thus dark, hench the need for lights in the garage. As of January 26, we now have 8 hours of daylight, curtesy of TimeandDate.com.

I have a bunch of pictures from our trip back to the US that I still need to get posted on my Flickr album. It's on my To-Do List.

Diesel Forcast

Well, it looks like I was just a little behind regarding my idea for a diesel technology news based website, DieselForcaset.com It's OK, now I can enjoy it without all the hard work. :)

Making money from your interests

Over the last couple days I've once again been considering a little online business on the side. Right before I moved to Scotland, I had been the middleman between and Aprilia dealership and Formula SAE teams selling them crate engines. It was pretty sweet as I made $150 for each sale. I ended up selling 8 engines in a matter of about 5 months and all I had to do was post on a forum and then answer some emails. From that, I started to plan a website called FSAEnetwork.com. It's still up, but nothing more than a welcome screen and an empty forum. I realized too late that the market just wasn't there to make decent money for the effort. For 2008, I've committed myself to finally getting into investing. I have a 401K started, but I'm interested in really learning how to invest in stocks, bonds, etc. I've picked up a couple books, and I've even set up a practice portfolio on CNNMoney.com. Starting at January 1st, I've picked some stocks that I think will do well, but so far the market is just shit. One day I was up about $200, but most days it's been negative. I know investing is really about the long term, but it's been fun to watch so far. Probably because I don't have any real money invested yet. I need to finish reading my books so I can figure out which stocks are really a good value instead of just a good guess.
The North American International Auto Show a.k.a. the Detroit Auto Show has been taking place this week. I've been reading hyperlinks on Google News over the last few days. The main theme this year has been 'green', although not surprising considering high gas prices, global warming, and the passage of the new energy bill which will force manufacturers to increase their Corporate Average Fuel Economy. Most of the manufacturers have been announcing hybrids or diesels depending on the vehicle. I personally feel that hybrids are good in small cars in town in stop and go traffic, but diesels make more sense in big vehicles that travel the highways.
With all the manufacturers getting ready to release cars or trucks with diesel engines in them, I've once again been considering starting a website centered around the general topic of diesel engines, which obviously is a larger audience. This would take a pretty good time commitment, so I’m putting some thought into it. I might make a tiny commitment and just start another blog with news feeds from various diesel sources.

The dreaded filing cabinet monster

It was early Saturday morning when I crept upstairs into our office. I was still half asleep when I attacked.....the filing cabinet and it's dreaded paper monster!!! I've been putting off organizing it for about a year and half now. Papers have usually just ended up in piles on the floor. When I need something, I just dig through the pile. There is about 4 inches of old bank statements that I now need to shread. Well, with this being a new year, the pain going down in my back and leg and thus having a little more motivation, I finally spent most of the weekend organizing the filing cabinet. It's the first major step that I've taken this year to balance my life. I must admit that I felt pretty good by the end of the weekend. It's not completely done, but it made me aware of a few more items I need to take care of. One of those being to get my rewards programs updated so I can start taking advantage of the traveling that I do.

Unfortunately, our US vacation is over

Dena and I are in Atlanta waiting to catch our flight back to the UK. This flight is a day late due to yesterday's flight being cancelled. I really don't like flying. Mostly, I don't like the lack of control I have over when and where I go somewhere. There seem to be more and more delays, overbookings, strikes, etc. Direct flights are usually fine, but anything with a connecting flight causes me to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Being back in the US was really nice. I've never taken 5 weeks of vacation at one time before. I apparently needed it though. I feel so much better. It took me the first week and a half to just stop checking work email everyday. Then, I had my surgery, and my pain has been going down. It's so nice to have less pain in my right leg and back.

What's in future for 2008? I'm working on getting balanced again. For some time now, I've been out of balance after getting injured and leaving Louisiana. I need to balance my time with Dena, time with friends, work, hobbies, health, and fitness.