If you’re like me, then size really does matter. I think my affliction started through my biking habit. Once you’ve gotten into biking — i mean real into it so that you spend more money than any normal person would ever spend on a bike (which for most people is probably in the $100-$400 range) — it is easy to get sucked into a world where grams matter. Yes that’s right: smaller, faster, lighter is the biker’s mantra. Shave a gram here and ounce there and soon you will flying down the road faster… unencumbered!

Now the funny thing with us bikers is that we often overlook the heaviest thing on the bike in our search for weight savings: the big guy riding it. Trust me, you quickly get to a point where it is cheaper and easier to lose the next ounce yourself… hmm poly-carbon alloy upgrade: $5000… eating less donuts: free… looking less chunky in those biker shorts: priceless.

Two other biker oversights while I’m on a roll. i have to shake my head at the people that trade in a comfortable bike seat to get the lighter weight “racing” seats (read sitting on a hollow metal pole). Then these same people trade in their normal/spandex shorts for special biking shorts with a gel seat. Ah, HELLO, all you did was move the weight to your butt — and most people consider that a bad thing! No offence J Lo. The other thing that I’ve seen on many an expensive bike is 3 or 4 water bottles. Yes that’s right water which weighs 2.2 pounds for every liter or an ounce for every extra 28ml of H20. Trust me 2.2 pounds can equal 2.2 GRAND on some bikes.

Needless to say this is a rant about size not bikes and so i will get to the point. Below is quick reference to the size of some of my products of choice. With dimensions and weight for easy comparison to new products as they come out and attempt to de-throne these as the smallest, the lightest, the best! Read more

ArsTechnica has a nice round up of some current flash drives (Flash drives are those key chain looking things that have a USB connector on one side and hold 32-512 Meg of info) if you are in the market for one. I personally like the flash drives that have MP3 player built in.

• Flash drives

You can get insurance for just about anything. Including your segway. In case you do lots of damage to something or someone while speeding around recklessly at 10 mph! (the max speed of the Segway HT-i) Looks like coverage starts around $300 a year.

• Progessive Segway Insurance

” Nature.com, PhysicsWeb, and the BBC all report on the latest results from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. ‘The most powerful search yet for the Universe’s missing matter has come up empty handed, contradicting an earlier study that claimed to have seen new particles.’ ‘A favoured theory is that the dark matter consists of Wimps (weakly interacting massive particles) about a thousand times more massive than a proton, one of the particles found in an atom’s nucleus… on the rare occasions a Wimp strikes an ordinary atom, the effect should be noticeable.’ ‘Writing in the Physical Review Letters, the team says that while a detection has yet to occur, there is now a better idea of how much dark matter must exist.’ They ‘hope to improve the sensitivity of the experiment by another factor of 20 over the next few years.’” — timothy (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/05/2039206&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=134)

“The theory of dark matter is based on the assumption that the basic properties of the Universe have never changed over time. If the intrinsic properties of space itself HAVE changed significantly, then there is no need to postulate such a thing as dark matter. Scientists are very reluctant to accept new data that shakes their preconceived pet ideas to their foundations. It took over 200 years after Roemer first measured a finite light speed, for the majority of scientists to accept the fact that light did not get instantaneously from point A to point B, as was the belief for centuries. In the same way, the majority of scientists today refuse to even consider the idea that some very fundamental “constants” may have changed dramatically since the beginning of time. For example, the cause for the “Red Shift” of distant star light is traditionally attributed to the Doppler effect, and in light of that INTERPRETATION of the cause for an observed fact, (the shifted light) all sorts of cosmological observations are very difficult to explain. Humans (including scientists) like to assume that certain things stay the same for all time, but that is a fervently desired wish based on faith, not observed fact. It seems that in the physical universe, there is nothing as constant as change! AAW” — arminw Arminw, You point out the huge assumption whenever historical facts are attempted to be gleened from current data which is called Uniformitarianism. (Uniformitarianism, is the belief in the Uniformity Principal which states: that everything observed today is uniform with the past and therefore experiments done in the present can give answer to the past.)I believe that another fundamental assumption has been overlooked with regards to Dark Matter and that is: the Big Bang.

Read more

I didn’t believe this at first because it apparently is only true with Bunny Peeps and not - uh - Peep Peeps.

If you still have any Peeps (Bunnies) left from Easter, look at the back of the packaging. Note the serving size, 4 bunnies (1 row): 31 grams. Next note Total Carbohydrates: 33 grams. Hmmmm…. I passed 4th grade, so I know that these are not equal. I’m not sure how they squeeze those 2 extra grams of sugar into the Peeps, but that must the secret to the Peep Magic. And it was written on the back all this time, right in front of our faces! You are now a much wiser person. Your welcome.

This was originially posted by reddragon on 6-09-2003 at PocketPCPassion.com

The Samsung chip is based on V4 of the Arm tech, this is the same as the StrongARM from Intel. Xscale is based on V5 of the Arm tech both from www.arm.com. Samsung has taken the V4 chip put it into a .13u process and put the ROM and main memory with the processor, so it’s an all in one chip design. Intel’s strongARM was a .32u process which caused it to draw more power. The Samsung chip will be faster than the old StrongARM chips and run with less power, but it will have none of the new code which is in the V5 Arm tech, so some of the new code in PPC2003 will not be taken advantage of due to the lack of processing capability. This is however not a bad thing as this is a beefier version of the V4 Arm chip. Only time will tell if it does pan out, so don’t make any judgments yet.

Over the next year you’ll be hearing a lot about the National Deficit and the National Debt - it being an election year and all. The deficit is how much we are spending beyond what we brought in as a country. The consumer equivolent would be how much we spent on our credit cards in one month that we couldn’t pay off at the end of the month. The debt is owed total for all our years of government. This would be like your balance you on your credit cards.

The National Debt Clock gives an up to the minute total of our Debt as a nation (through magic i assume). I found the adjusted totals graph under the FAQ to be quite telling personally.
Read more

In my browsing through the net, I found THE engine swap. Forget about putting an Integra engine in your Civic. Forget about shoving that big block into your Impala. The Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel is ALL the engine you’ll EVER need. Let’s compare it with the specs of the enviable Dodge Viper and the new F150 that Ford seems so proud of lately.

Engine Comparison 2004

Engine Type	Ford F150 5.4L TRITON? V8 Cylinder Engine	Dodge Viper 8.3L V10 Cylinder Engine	Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C Inline 14 Cylinder Engine
Horsepower	300hp (@ 5000rpm)	500hp	108,920hp (@ 102rpm)
Torque	365 lb/ft (@ 3750rpm)	525 lb/ft	5,608,312 lb/ft (@ 102rpm)
Fuel Economy	14 / 17 mpg (City / Hwy )	12 / 20 mpg (City / Hwy )	75 FEET per gallon (estimate)

Awesome! Now THAT is some POWER! Of course, it’ll be killer at the pumps with record high gas prices around the country… Oh did I mention that the RTA96-C was designed primarily for use in very large container ships. Ship owners like a single engine/single propeller design and the new generation of larger container ships needed a bigger engine to propel them.

Read more

A recent report shares some startling news. America’s weight problem is about to become it’s #1 killer (in preventable deaths at least). As soon as 2005 obesity is going to pass cigarette smoking as the favored way for Americans to kill themselves. Which begs the question: is smoking/eating/drinking your way to death simply a slow form of suicide? Does thinking about it in that manner change the basic predisposition for Americans to let other Americans do as they please?

The study showed that America is curtailing smoking (as it becomes more socially unacceptable and frankly harder to find a place where you can smoke) while growing fatter by the minute. This amazes me amid the current low-carb craze that is sweeping the nation.

DEATH TOLL
Causes of preventable deaths in the US in 2000
Source: USA Today; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read more

~5-7-98

Ever wonder about why you can’t get approved for that credit card / car loan / ect? Here is some basic credit / credit report info I put together a while back to answer some basic questions.

Credit Primer

Today you can get your credit report online instantly (instead via mail which took up to 8 days) after answering enough questions to prove your identity. I personally like equifax’s reports because you can your FICO score which is what most lenders use to determine if and how much to approve you for. I tend to laugh at most credit protection “services” (out loud at the people offering them) that charge $50-120 a year to protect your credit and give you a “free” copy of your credit report (sometimes more than 1!) “OR” I say “I can go get my credit report for $12 (ah remember the good old days when it was $8 — damn Euro devaluing the dollar!) and take myself out somewhere nice with my money saved…”

Checking your credit more than once a year is pretty much overkill… it often only updates every 3 or 4 months, but checking in every year or so is a good idea — just so any mistakes are taken care of in your free time and not when you really, really, really want to buy that new Porche 911 now, now, now! Not to mention the embarassment saved at your local Porche dealership. (ah the nouveau riche…)