Auto Woes

I have a 1987 BMW 635CSI. Wonderful car. But not today. I can't drive it 'cause it wont idle. It all started in early august when I changed the plugs and oil. I put in Bosch platinum +2's in there. Not good. I forgot that I had banished multi-prong spark plugs from my cars. What started happening as the temps dropped was that it started to idle badly until it warmed up. It would stall intermittently. Now this engine has been rock solid since I got it 2 years ago. even in the winter. Turn key, car starts. Not any more. So having seen this problem on my '88 325i I thought that it was the fuel injector temp sensor. So I replaced that. Same problem. So then I went and tossed the plugs. The OEM ones were not available so I put in another single prong plug. Still rough idle. Now I'm concerned. I ordered the specified Bosch silver plugs and installed 'em. The other plugs showed no signs of any combustion problems. Started her up and she ran nice. Then she tried to stall a bit. I thought that perhaps the ECU needed to adjust.

Anyway I took my other car to my moms house. The next day I thought I'd put it on the road. Started it up and it went to rough idling as expected. I got about 3 blocks when the car went to bucking like a first time stick shift driver. Then the car stalled out. I managed to get it into a parking lot where it became hard to start and would not idle. I could gas it and keep it running somewhat and managed to get it back home.

So today I checked the plugs. Not fouled. Checked for vacuum leaks again. None. Then I discovered that the crank position sensor connection was broken at the connector clip. I'm not sure how much that is the problem but I had to order a replacement. I also discovered that this little vacuum hose sitting on the thermostat housing was broken. Well the sensor part. Had to order that too. The I discovered that one of the relays had a connector lose. I put that back on. No change. So basically the car is immobile and I can't get all the parts I need for 10 days. Never mind the rule here in my complex that you can't leave your car in the same spot for more than 48 hours. So I'll have to tell the super about my problems.

Unfortunately if these parts don't fix the car I'll have to part with it. Which presents another problem. I keep two cars because they are both old so if one acts up or I break something when I'm working on one (it's happened) I can still go to work or the parts store. If I have to part with the 6 I will have to buy another car which I really don't want to do. I'd want another 6 but they are hard to find in the configuration I want: Black with a manual transmission preferably a tan interior.

Gabriel Union Mad at some Black Bloggers

Apparently Gabriel Union is mad at some black gossip bloggers who have her running around with all kinds of people. All I got to say is:

Gabriel If you're reading this: If you're in NY/NJ and bored drop me a line and I'll write whatever you want!

;-)

The Trouble with Kindle

And so Amazon has released an e-book reader named 'Kindle" in hopes of, as stated, to be the iPods of books. There are a couple of huge problems with this idea the least of which is that the proprietary DRM they are going to use on this thing.

I own a N800 for which there is an ebook reader available. I can get books from the website WOWIO transfer it to my N800 and read it as I recently did with "Where Darwin meets the Bible". Those books are PDFs so any PDF reader will open them. The biggest problem has been that I could not make notes with the reader I was using I often want to annotate my readings. The bigger problem is access. I deal with a lot of history and science books. A lot of times I need to reference a topic and going to my library is easy. I don't have all my books in electronic form so being able to search across volumes, which is what any heavy reader or researcher would need to do, is what is lacking.

Lastly the fact that these books are far easier to lose is a debatable issue. If one is as careful with your e-books as most of us are with our digital music (I have three copies one of which is off-site), then it really shouldn't be an issue.

What is good about Amazon's offering is that it helps to push us into the era of the Star Trek D-pad. One of the issues is that we are on the verge of a generation that will see the computer as more than somewhere you do work. Many of us older folk still have have the mindset of our computers being tools rather than extensions of ourselves. Another generation is coming that will see their digital devices as extensions of themselves (for better or worse). They will grow up in schools where the books are all electronic and there is no library only a central server that books are accessed and or downloaded from.

We may quibble with the Kindle for the services shortcomings but eventually this type of device is going to happen. It is the same reason that the Nokia Internet Tablet was created. It is about ubiquitous internet access which is about ubiquitous data access to any and every piece of information legally (and not so) available.

One Image to Boot Them All

Finally I can boot my PPC Macs and Intel Macs from the same image with 10.5. It took a while but I got what I wanted. Yay!

More Leopard complaints

Apparently Mail.App in Leopard is no longer smart enough to automatically change signatures when you change accounts. It simply puts another signature below the first one. Dumb.

Technorati Tags: Mac OS X Leapard

Note To Apple on Leopard

I'd like my blue apple icon back please. I can deal with the grey. Reminds me a bit of the OS 9 days. But the last time I saw a grey apple was on the "toned down" Aqua interface pitched at photographers and video people. I understood the point even though I didn't use it. So, um, could I please have my blue apple icon back?

Thanks.

Palm OS emulation on the N800

Just posted to Internet Tablet Talk

ACCESS Systems Americas, Inc., formerly PalmSource, Inc. has just released Garnet VM Beta for the Nokia Internet Tablet. This virtual machine software lets you run the full Palm OS Garnet on any model of Nokia Internet Tablet (770, N800, N810), giving you full PIM functionality as well as let you install more than 30,000 free and commercial Palm OS applications.

Now I can sync, hopefully, haven't tested yet, all my Macs, my Fossil Wrist PDA and my N800 with passwords and other pertinent info.

[update] ummmmmm on second thought..until the thing can do full screen rather than emulate the exact configuration of a palm device (or at least rotate the screen to portrait view) I'm going to have to stick with the GPE apps. I'm a Mac user. Aesthetics are important to me.

[update] I have successfully synced with my Mac via Missing Sync software over a network connection.

Technorati Tags: N800, Palm OS

Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

WHAT THE *(*&()*&)(*&!!!
I have the Nintendo DS version of this game and it effin' ROCKS!! I haven't had this much fun on my DS since I finished Golden Eye. Yes I ENJOYED Golden Eye. Well OK Golden Eye and Star Trek Tactical Assault. First thing is that this joint has NICE 3D sound. This is the first game I've actually grabbed my headphones for. The fighting is intense. How intense? Lets just say that I would be up for shooting up civilians if this was actual warfare cause at some points I just held down the fire button and pointed at anything that moved or had a hint of red on it. And yo, that was the first mission.

The problem with this game on the DS is that it, at times, like that aforementioned first mission, can move way to fast for the DS. I have large hands and I was cramping up quickly. The screen is too small for this kind of play. on a 42" TV it's one thing but in the little DS screen it can be a bit much. The other annoying thing is that you have to use the touch screen to turn left and right and up and down. unfortunately that same touch screen, when double tapped allows you to aim through the gun scope. How many times did that pop up while I was trying to navigate? Many. Many, many.

Still this is one of the best games I've purchased for my DS and it has renewed my interest in Golden Eye. Normally I'm not into the war games. The genre doesn't do anything for me. In this particular case I'm not feeling the whole "Middle East" thing but I'm ignoring it for the duration.

MaemoMapper V2 is out for N800/N770

MaemoMapper is available here

This is the first release of the 2.x version of
Maemo Mapper. It focuses on increased
functionality at the cost of some CPU efficiency.

Major upgrades include a database-driven map
repository, rotating viewpoint, GPSD compatibility,
and new POI functionality.
See the changelog for the (mostly)
complete list of changes.

I drove cross country with only this app as a guide and it was great. Only gripes were that the route database went down a couple of times so I had to use my laptop to get route info. Also I discovered that if the GPS unit went out of range MM would crash. This apparently has been fixed though I haven't tested it yet.

While my maps are downloading (into a new database rather than single files in many, many directories) I'm noticing heavier CPU usage as well as slower screen redraws. This was noted by the author so I'm not going to complain yet. The ITOS 2008 will be boosting the CPU speed on the N800 so that may help with some of the CPU usage. If there is better power management to go along with the CPU boost then I won't be too worried about charge time.

Overall, if you have an Internet Tablet you need to get this app. If only I could get my iFoney to work with DUN properly I'd be set.

Oh yeah. MaemoMapper is really high on the list of reasons why I have not purchased an iPhone. Many of the apps I have on my N800 are dispensable or have equivalents on the iPhone but this app has no equivalent.

[update] I just tried it out on the road. Having "up" always be the direction of travel is the way navigation is supposed to be. It may be small mental calculus to determine if you need to make a left or right, but when traveling at speed that small but of time can be the difference between arriving and not arriving.

Technorati Tags: MaemoMapper, N800