Here are my own thoughts about learning stick shift. Kelsey learned from me, though there’s no true teacher aside from experience. I think there are two essential tricks to learning a stick shift:
1. Practice Makes Perfect.
It’s muscle and reflex training, not head training. It takes time to get the feel of the clutch, especially from a dead stop. Take advantage of opportunities to practice stop-and-go with the clutch. Be sure to do it on hills, too.
2. Listen To The Engine
The tachometer and speedometer tell you interesting things, but the sound of the engine really tells you when to shift gears. If it’s high-pitched, you need to shift. For improved gas mileage, you want to shift sooner rather than later.
[This has been revised since first posted 7/31/10]
Continue reading 'Learning Stick Shift'»
Last fall, Alex warned me that Apple was dropping their support for the Palm Treo. I couldn’t upgrade to Spotted Lynx, or whatever the latest OS-X is called, until I switched phones. While I had been hoping to hold out for a Verizon iPhone, my patience ended a couple of weeks ago. After a weekend with a Droid, and a brief flirtation with the Palm Pre Plus, I settled on the Blackberry Storm II.
Aside from the built-in contact list and calendar (oh yes, and the phone) I rely on a smart phone for two other things: an ebook reader and a password manager. And I also want to feel some comfort for the phone’s security model. And, oh yes, I need easy access to contacts and calendar on my desktop, presumably through a sync feature.
I didn’t warm to the Droid because it’s too much like having a laptop on your pocket. And since the Pre Plus was a complete rework, I figured it wouldn’t be that similar to the Treo in practice. There was a period of suspense after acquiring the Storm, since I wasn’t sure it would in fact do all I wanted, but things eventually worked out.
Family, Technology
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Blackberry, Droid, ebooks, eWallet, IBM 360, Ilium Software, Palm, passwords, PDP-1, Pre Plus, smart phone, Storm 2, wallpaper
Cousin Jon sent me a link to David Pogue’s recent column on “Why We Make Home Videos.”
Pogue starts by complaining about how consumer video has gone through several recent media transitions, making it very hard to view older videos. He’s developed an almost industrial process for copying his Mini DV tapes to a hard drive “in the background” while doing other work. The Mini DV format is disappearing since modern recorders just use built in flash memory.
I remember moving a lot of Hi-8 and VHS video to Mini DV when it first came out. I transferred several Mini-DV tapes to DVD, but the task remains unfinished.
Personally I’m ambivalent about having a huge family video archive. It’s nice at times, but lots of it is arguably nonsense. Pogue addresses this question, coming down in favor of family video.
Jack is the newest member of our family:
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He’s a four year old Australian Shepherd whose owners moved into too-small of an apartment. It must have been awful to give him up, because Jack is a terrific dog. He can catch a tennis ball in the air, and he knows “cookie on the nose,” though he doesn’t quite do that one for us (not yet, anyway).
Jack may look a little morose in the picture (I don’t think he liked the flash) but you haven’t seen exuberance until you’ve seen him jump in the air while chasing a tennis ball.
I think chain saws gain mythic proportions in any safety-conscious household. My dad grew up on a rural farm in the early 1900s, and statistically, a farm is about the most dangerous “natural” workplace there is.
I don’t think we ever owned a chain saw. I remember my dad “borrowing” one, maybe once, or maybe it was a friend or neighbor using it. In any case, I have a stronger memory of Dad’s countless horror stories than I do of actually seeing the saw in use.
Anyway, it seemed fitting to buy Biscuit her very own chain saw for Mother’s Day several years back. An intentionally Amazonian gift. In practice, we rarely use it, but it’s there.
Continue reading 'Dangerous Yardwork'»
Here is an adorably geeky photo of Alex and his fiancee, Courtney.
The big story, though, is in constructing the Spock ears. Alex and Courtney made a desperate search of costume stores and such to find pointy ears for Halloween, and found nothing.
Then Alex searched the Internet.
Continue reading 'Making Spock Ears'»
My secret vice is that I read adolescent fiction on my smart phone. This awful habit started years ago. I have the collected works of Louisa May Alcott and Lucy Maud Montgomery and I pore over them when stuck in line or waiting for food at a cafe.
Now I find that Bear is likewise reading reading Eight Cousins on her smart phone.
This is particularly interesting because the womens’ roles in Alcott’s fiction tend to be super-traditional, while Bear’s politics are “progressive” to put it mildly. I generally agree with both Bear’s attitude on womens’ rights and her attitude towards Alcott: who cares if her female characters are so traditional!
I think we both appreciate Alcott’s underlying themes: the pursuit of moral ideals over superficial values (despite the difference in moral values) and the fundamental rights of women to self-determination (despite the different view of womens’ roles). Alcott portrays “strong minded” women as positive role models despite the negative reactions of conventionally attractive male characters.
Continue reading 'Reading Alcott'»
I posted some buddy photos in our photo collection. Some were for Kelsey’s school friends, but one had the old gang from various Boston area rented homes:
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I also posted it on Facebook.
We said goodbye to Whimsey this morning. She’s been a wonderful dog, though we knew the cancer would be taking her soon.
I’ve finally posted photos from the 7th street block party. Click on the photo below to see them!
If that doesn’t bring them up, click on “Photos” above and visit the 2009 Album.
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Here are my own thoughts about learning stick shift. Kelsey learned from me, though there’s no true teacher aside from experience. I think there are two essential tricks to learning a stick shift:
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