Car Engines

I believe that no one is stupid or smart just people are specialized for different tasks. I liken the brain to a engine, there are many types of engines, all good for certain things. There are engines like what are in most cars, reliable, good at most tasks, doesn't take special fuel. Then there are race engines, unreliable, uneconomical, need special fuel, but create an enormous amount of power for their size. The problem with this metaphor is that it is easy to know what kind of engine is in each vehicle by the look of the vehicle or even the engine itself. It is much harder with people, you can make educated guesses but you can't know for sure. So lets say you put a race engine in a regular everyday car. Now put it in downtown traffic. You are not told what engine you have. Would you be able to tell it was a race engine? Now remember there is so many people honking you can't hear the engine. You are driving(well sitting in traffic). Every so often you may move a little. You can't drive fast or else you are just going to run into someone. Is your car any better than the cars around you with car engines? The other drivers may even get mad at you when you try to speed up. So you drive slow, barely use the throttle. The other cars are idling happily, staying cool, burning little fuel. Then there is you with your race engine idling impatiently, overheating, burning fuel at an alarming rate. For downtown traffic who has the better engine? When you are asked to do normal everyday tasks it can seem very difficult or very easy. It can be a punishment to be stuck with a race engine. It could be a gift to have a car engine. The difference can be so great that the poor sucker stuck with the race engine wished he had a car engine. He even tried to make it seem like that's all he had. Now instead of downtown traffic you are driving on a racetrack. Your car again has the racing engine and everyone else has car engines. At first you may still drive the same speed as everyone else not wanting to make anyone mad or crash into anyone like before in downtown traffic. Eventually though there will be a time where there is clear track in front of you and you push the throttle a little harder. Remember you may not know your engine is any different than anyone else's but you noticed a few differences. You can't see how much throttle they are using. The other cars are starting to notice you are slightly faster than they are. At first you think nothing of it, this is the only engine you've ever had, the only car you've ever driven, you don't know what it is like to have a car engine, you've had a race engine the whole time. So then you start pushing harder trying to drive faster. Some of the other drivers are amazed ”wow your car is fast” , others are furious “why is your car faster than mine”? At this point you can go back to thinking your car has a car engine or realize that you have the race engine. Some people have car engines. Some people have race engines. Having a race engine is a bad idea if you are in downtown traffic and having a car engine on a race track isn't the best idea either. Both are good at what they do. You can't have the best of both worlds there always has to be a compromise. In reality not everyone is a car engine or a race engine, there is a lot in between as well. I have been in downtown traffic, I have been on the race track. I know my faults, I'm just trying to find where I belong. Sometimes it seems like downtown, sometimes the race track, sometimes neither. One is not better than the other. Its a matter of finding out where you are meant to be, then going there.

Pidgin: The Alternative

Some time ago I got annoyed with msn messenger and yahoo messenger. Thats when I stumbled upon Pidgin. This messaging app can handle these two and many more while only requiring you to have one program. It runs on Windows and Linux. The program itself is pretty simple once you get all your accounts set up what is really neat about Pidgin is the plugins. A little searching around and you can find many plugins to basically do anything you want it to do. I installed the purple plugin pack from here which has 30 plugins in one package, such as transparency, and logging. One thing that bothered me about Pidgin is that when someones status changes all there is to let you know is a sound. Thats where my favorite new plugin comes in, Guifications, not only does this plugin notify you that there is a status change via a pop up, you can change the theme of the pop up as well as make your own. Guifications can be found here . The themes can be found here . The tricky part is where you are suppose to save the theme folder, go documents and settings, your user name, application data, .purple, guifications, themes. Now when you go to select themes in Pidgin, plugins, guifications, they will show up. The theme I am using is Human_(by_Mozork). I will never go back, I'm hooked on Pidgin.
Pidgin homepage version 2.4.0 at time of writing.
There is also a portable version available for your usb drive from Portableapps.com

Online Voting

I have wanted to talk about online voting for some time now, and with a local provincial election coming I guess now would be as good of time as any. The current system of going to your local voting station and filling out a paper ballot does not work. Majority of the people I know do not vote. They have different reasons but each one of them would like to vote. I have been unable to vote due to being so busy with work I could not get away to vote. With the percentage of the population that votes dropping it is not getting any better. Now there are two sides to online voting. The one side are those that are afraid of someone(or group) hacking the system to control the vote. This is a valid point and my argument is that any system can be penetrated the only difference is how hard it is. Security systems are rated by the time it takes to penetrate it with average knowledge and average tools. The point I am making is that if a group wanted to control the vote, it could, there is no guarantee that they can't, it is only a matter of time and determination. On the other side there is those like me who believe that the risk of the system being hacked is small compared to the huge number of people that who would vote if it was as easy as filing your taxes online(which is actually pretty easy). In my opinion we should start this system of voting before it is too late. Politicians serve the people. In the current system only the minority is selecting who they want to serve for the majority. We can do banking, apply for university, file our taxes, purchase products and perform many other tasks online. Why not vote?

Lifedrive to Lifeflash Conversion

Although it has been quiet on my blog I have been busy. One of the projects I completed over the new year was converting my lifedrive(which the hard drive crashed for the 6th time) to a LifeFlash drive using a 4 GB Compact flash drive. I won't get into the details but I will provide a couple websites that I used to get the job done.
http://howto.wikia.com/wiki/Howto_replace_microdrive_with_compactflash_in_LifeDrive
1src Forums - Replacing the Microdrive and Partitioning

My first attempt failed because I bought a incompatible flash card(last 3 digits of model # were wrong) but after receiving the right card, had my lifedrive up and running in less than 10 min. What a difference this mod made! The device is much faster on bootup, the battery lasts at least twice as long and due to being flash instead of a moving harddrive which is much more susceptible to drops or vibrations. I would recommend this mod to anyone with a Lifedrive. If you are a little afraid of all the steps required to make the CF card ready you can buy one already set up, you just have to install it into your lifedrive.
http://www.usedpdaparts.com/Lifedrive.html

Music For My Ears!

One thing that stopped me from listening to my music on the go was a decent set of earphones. I had a hard time finding a set that was comfortable to wear, sounded good, and looked decent. The Panasonic RP-HJE200 earphones filled all these needs. They are the closed type which means they are placed inside the ear. The package comes with S,M,L ear pieces to fit different sized ears. Who would have thought that it would be hard to find a small set of earphones? When will they realize one size does not fit all? Not only do they fit great and are the first set of earphones that I can wear for a long period without being painful but sound really good too. Having the earphone in the ear helps reduce noise from the environment allowing you to leave the volume lower yet still hearing the music. I purchased the black option with a touch of chrome which has a nice look. Also available in white, pink, and light blue.

Panasonic USA http://www.panasonic.com Earphones
$19.99

Google Maps for Palm Handhelds

I was searching for some free programs to put on my Palmone Lifedrive when I stumbled upon Google Maps for Palm. I didn't believe it at first but it's true. 367kb, a hotsync and I am finding directions and looking at places on my handheld. The program is pretty basic, can't look at satellite images and roads at the same time and requires a network connection, but other than that it makes a nice addition to my software collection and it's free.

http://www.freeware-palm.com/download-google-maps-mobile.html

BitLet

Need to download the occasional torrent file but don't want to download a program on your computer? Welcome to BitLet. Even though the website is still in experimental form it works as promised. Just right click on the torrent file you want to download, select copy then paste it into the form box on www.bitlet.org , select where you would like to save it and watch it download. Nice. (requires Java)

www.bitlet.org