Category Archives: News

Whaddya say? Collect the rays? Or too much to pay?

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Should we cover all our roads with solar panels? That’s the $64,000 question or more like the $56,000,000,000,000. This stuff is pretty expensive upfront but just think of the benefits:

* with embedded led lights – road lane markings and signs built right into the roadway
* with embedded heat element – never plow or shovel again
* road repairs as easy as removing one panel
* electricity shuttled right to your doorstep
* electric cars recharge while parked in any parking area

Part of this technology incorporates a panel, say at a crosswalk, that senses you’re standing on it and flashes an appropriate message. Oy, I can see problems with this like maybe some wisenheimer hackers with their very limited vocabularies telling you where to get off or worse yet (shudder) broadcasting your weight to the world, etc.

What do you think?

* on track?
* one for the road?
* test drive?
* the end of the road?
* the road to hell is paved with good intentions?

 

 

 

Muscle Cars (Forever)

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The United States Postal Service has just issued Muscle Car stamps. Can you believe it? I almost feel like going out and buying something to mail just so I can use them. They’re rolling out  the 1966 Pontiac GTO, the 1967 Shelby GT-500, the 1969 Dodge Charger Daytona, the 1970 Plymouth Hemi ‘Cuda, and the 1970 Chevelle SS. There’s a nice little write-up about each vehicle as an added bonus at the USPS website. Sweet.

musclecarstamps

Give me a brake.

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Don’t you just hate trying to figure out what to give someone as a gift? Dodge has taken the quess-work out of that by introducing a new registry program where you can pick out the features you want in a new Dart and then invite friends and family to sponsor individual parts of the car. You can raise a portion of the cost of a new Dart or the full price. Then all you have to do is go to a dealership and pick it up. It works just like a wedding registry but you can use it for birthdays, graduations or any other special occasion you can think of. You have up to 90 days to reach your goal and the amount that can be raised is capped at $30,000. So call Grandma and see if she’ll buy you a steering wheel, that way you can save her poor arthritic hands from knitting you another tie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BCfxOWLuNwU

NHDOT Highway Cameras Open to the Public

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traffic cam imageCheck it out, the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) has teamed up with TrafficLand to provide public access to highway cameras around the state. Click “See Live Traffic,” then pick which state and which city you’re interested in. Your choices in NH are: Claremont, Concord, Franconia, Keene, Laconia, Lebanon, Manchester, Portsmouth, Rochester and Salem. If you choose Rochester you will see a Google map on the top right hand side of the page with different colored lines which tell you how fast the traffic is flowing (green=normal, yellow=slow, red=slow or stopped). On the left hand side is the actual camera which will show you the different locations you choose. You can either click on the large circles marked on the Google map or click on individual camera thumbnails underneath. For Rochester on the date I looked the top choices were between cameras on NH-4@Cedar Point Rd, NH-16@Hilton Dr (Dover Exit 5), NH-16@Indian Brook Rd (NH-108), NH-16 n/o Rochester Tolls, NH-16@Roberta Dr. (Dover), NH-16 s/o Indian Brook Rd (Exit 9), NH-16@Tebbetts Rd (Roch), NH-16@US-4 (Dover Exit 6) and NH-16@Blackwater Rd (Roch). (Which cameras are included in the thumbnail area are the ones that are currently being viewed the most in that region.)

The Google map shows a larger region and you can click cameras up and down a corridor and see real-time snapshots of more than just the city you chose if you’re going on a longer trip. Great resource for when you’re heading out on the highway.

If you build it, they will come.

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In a shed located in a garden in the back of a normal house on a normal street in a little town in England you’ll find Kevin Thomas working on his car. What’s so unusual about that you might say, seeing the same thing plays out just about everywhere around the world on any given day? Ahh, but you see, Mr. Thomas is building a Formula 1 car. You heard that right – with parts he’s cobbled together from ebay, memorabilia sites and a network of contacts, he’s putting together as best he can a 2001 BAR003. Yes, some things are going to have to be parceled out because they are beyond his expertise, but he is doing the bulk of the construction himself and as a do-it-yourselfer myself, I say more power to him. (I’ve built a few project cars including a 1966 GTO and more recently a 1987 Chevy Silverado but nothing along the lines of what he’s tackling.)

I don’t think he would’ve been able to get as far as he has without the use of the internet. It’s a beautiful thing when it comes to locating hard-to-find auto parts and I’ve even been dipping my toe in the water lately learning how to search and purchase things that are hard to find locally. If I can do it, anyone can but my hat’s off to Mr. Thomas for taking this to the ultimate extreme. He’s built a shed of dreams that have all the gear-heads out there rethinking some ideas they’ve put on the back-burner. If I lived in England, I would certainly be beating a path to his back door to have a look-see.

News for Week of 12-9-12

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1. The car tech industry is working on a cool seat belt latch that unhooks when wet helping to keep more people from drowning when their car is submerged. When water hits the inside of the Escape Belt a salt pill dissolves and releases the hammer of the male section of the belt freeing the occupant. It’s the same tech used by airlines in self-inflating life jackets. The mechanism costs around $40 and the cartridge needs to be changed every few years. Great stuff coming from this Dutch manufacturer.

2. London cabs are getting free wifi. You have to watch a 15-second ad every 15 minutes but that could be just what the doctor ordered if you’re trying to avoid roaming charges on your smartphone. Is it viable? Londoners will just have to wait and see.

3. This one is truly creep-worthy (is that a word? I’ll add a hyphen). The US is planning to listen in on people’s conversations on buses. “With the new systems, experts say, transit officials can effectively send an invisible police officer to transcribe the individual conversations of every passenger riding on a public bus.”  Watch out good people of Eugene, Ore.; San Francisco; Athens, Ga.; Baltimore; Traverse City, Mich.; Hartford, Conn.; and Columbus, Ohio because you seem to be the first to have this implemented. Big Brother is getting his ears on.

 

News for Week of 12-2-12

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Here are three articles that caught my eye this week. The first two have to do with distractions while driving while the third is just distracting any way you look at it.

1. What do you think? Do red-light traffic cameras cause more accidents?

2. Wow, look at this (I hope you’re not driving). As if we don’t have enough things to concentrate on behind the wheel, but this article actually says that computers for your car’s windshield would actually be “helping to improve safety.” I guess I just can’t think of a tweet I needed to see that badly (but then again, I’m kinda old and like my bad news delivered in person and not when I’m driving a 4,000 pound projectile).

3. White House wants 100% of vehicles to have black boxes by 2013. I’m just gonna leave that one alone except to say it’s 1984 all over again.