AAA Inspection Mechanic in Santa Monica

More Joy Automotive, Inc.

1325 Pico Blvd Santa Monica , CA 90405

310-450-1712

Hours Open:
(M-F)  8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
(Sat)  8:00 AM - 1:00 PM

--
[kwatz!]

Highly Recommended Mechanic in Van Nuys

California Automotive and Mobile Mechanics

14254 Oxnard St
Unit B
Van Nuys, CA 91401

(818) 780-4369

www.carchick.com

Jaek Automotive (Cali Automotive and Mobile Mechanics) is on Oxnard Street at the corner of Tyrone Ave, about 3 blocks east of Van Nuys Blvd. They open at 7:30 AM on weekdays and Saturdays. To schedule repair work, you should call Rebecca (or stop in to see her) after 7:45 AM.

Another nice point is that Jaek's is just a 10 minute walk  from the Van Nuys Blvd. station of the MTA Orange bus line. So it's a breeze for me to ride the bus home to Woodland Hills after leaving my car with Jaek, and then to ride back to pick it up a few hours later.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/california-automotive-and-mobile-mechanics-van-nuys-2#hrid:83P8VOWHPpMMo2rduIOjwQ/src:search/query:mobile%20mechanic

--
[kwatz!]

KCRW on Sunday

~12:35 three songs ending on Peter Gabriel covering Paul Simon

Sun Catalytix

Daniel Nocera's solar start up. I would invest in this if I could figure out how =]

http://www.suncatalytix.com/

Cam.
--
[kwatz!]

Post-mortem on Tron light-cycle AI (Google AI Challenge)

This is cool!

http://a1k0n.net/blah/archives/2010/03/index.html#e2010-03-04T14_00_21.txt

Proverbs from a car ad on Craigslist...

When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly. - Michel de Montaigne

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well. - Amos Bronson Alcott

The maxims of men disclose their hearts. - French Proverb

To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones. - Nicholas Charles Trublet

I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own. - Michel de Montaigne

Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind. - William R. Alger

What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and the thinking. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stealing someone else's words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own. - Peter Anderson

A short saying oft contains much wisdom. - Sophocles

[link]

--
[kwatz!]

Retro Fuel Efficient Cars

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/reader_rides/4288444.html?page=1

NYTimes: Even More Reasons to Get a Move On

From The New York Times - a nice overview of the long term benefits
of exercise:

http://s.nyt.com/u/0gp

Vespa Buyer's Guide

http://www.scooterlounge.com/Vespa/Gen/Gen.shtml

Bloom Box launch

Very interesting fuel cell tech:

http://mashable.com/2010/02/24/bloom-box-launch/

Interactive Buddha - Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha

http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml

David Cope and "Artificial Creativity"

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-8507/

The "Emily Howell" tracks really are cool!

The Longest Journey

http://www.longestjourney.com/

Stupid Ideas Involving Roller Coasters

Build a roller-coaster that:

* Is based on the ups and downs, twists and turns of major stories
(e.g., the Wizard of Oz or Lord of the Rings)

* Is based on the DOW. Late 2009 would be fun, I bet =]

Huffington Post: The Financial Blogosphere's Pearls Of Wisdom

 

		The Financial Blogosphere's Pearls Of Wisdom
	Each weekday, we'll be scouring the financial blogosphere for the best bits of wisdom from financial insiders, analysts and economists. Check back every weekday for...

 

Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp (1964)

"Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas."

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html

Clipart ETC

This is the best clip art site I've ever found! Lots of public domain images of really cool stuff like:

http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/galleries/science/electricity_fields.php

DeGreave.com Online Tools

Cool business card generator, and other things:

http://www.degraeve.com/

Gorilla vs. Bear

Good music blog:

http://gorillavsbear.blogspot.com/

Self-powered ARM chip

From the article: "Our system can run nearly perpetually if periodically exposed to reasonable lighting conditions, even indoors," said David Blaauw, an electrical and computer engineering professor. "Its only limiting factor is battery wear-out, but the battery would last many years."

http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7520

That's cool! The Arm Cortex-M3 is a very standard microcontroller - it supports USB! Article doesn't say what the battery chemistry is... shame the device is limited to the lifespan of a battery (I don't imagine the battery is replaceable) but that's hard to avoid! This is really cool idea and achievement.

Some relevant links:

• Arm Cortex-M3 - "Introduced in 2004 and recently updated with new technologies and configurability, the Cortex-M3 is the mainstream ARM processor developed specifically with microcontroller applications in mind."
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
  

Chart: Microsoft Revenue by Division

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-operating-income-by-division-2010-2

Poop!

Via: Online Schools

Cool Electric Car Concepts

Entries for the 2010 Michelin Challenge Design, which invited artists at all levels to create concept cars around the theme "Electrifying! Beautiful, Innovative and Radiant:"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/10/concept-cars-from-the-mic_n_456417.html

10 Best Adventure Games Nobody Played

http://www.justadventure.com/articles/Nobody_Played/10_Best.shtm

Peter Hamilton

Robin says I must read "Reality Dysfunction"

Milky Way Transit Authority: A Tube Map For Our Galaxy

http://arbesman.net/milkyway/

Die Antwoord

Thanks for Mr. Contreras for putting me on to:

http://www.dieantwoord.com/

Eight different kinds of crazy, but crazy- AWESOME =]

Bobby McFerrin - Pentatonic Scale is Innate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJ7mBxi8LM

I wonder if there's "attractors" in the crowd - persons who sing the notes more confidently, causing those nearby to align their pitch?

Hark, a Vagrant!

Is it love or is it toxic radiation?
It's both, but baby who cares?

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=220

Awesome Art Piece

House sucked into a wormhole:

http://www.myinterestingfiles.com/2008/09/texas-house-sucked-into-wormhole.html

These Are Very Cute

http://www.artoflife.com/invite-the-magic-fairy-doors-for-your-garden/

The AI-Box Experiment

Cool idea, but I couldn't find a transcript of the actual dialog...

http://yudkowsky.net/singularity/aibox

You have received a YouTube video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW0yebyGk-8&sns=em

Extreme Efficiency: Beverly Clock

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Clock

Western Australian Mad Scientist

http://tesladownunder.com/

Some amazing projects, really like the ionic lifters!

I Love This Picture

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields 138, 2009:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/pl_arts_sugimoto/7/

it's beautiful... it looks like a caterpillar and and a dandelion, but it's made with electricity. Amazing.

Defense Reutilization & Marketing Webpage

Stumbled across the website where the US DoD handles the "reuse, transfer, donation, sale or disposal of excess/surplus property":

http://www.drms.dla.mil/

Here's the actual search form.

No pics, and lots of confusing text. But who knows what crazy stuff they might have =]

Underwater Sculpture Garden

Check out this awesome sculpture garden:

http://www.underwatersculpture.com/pages/gallery/underwater-gallery/index.htm

=]

Cam.

--
[kwatz!]

Power Brick Service

Tonight I replaced the batteries in the power brick. The old ones were over two years old, and I hadn't really tended them properly. I'm going to try and recondition them for use, but inside the brick (Xantrex xPower 1500) went three new 18Ah SLA batteries.

The Xantrex opened up really easy - lots of screws, so I wanted to use the drill - but the screws are hard up against the case wall. I could have gotten them with a regular screwdriver, but with 20+ screws to do I decided to drop $7 on an extension from OSH. This is basically a rigid spring that gives the drill the reach of a normal screwdriver.

Inside was three 17Ah SLA batteries robustly wired in parallel, the inverter, and some foam to stop the batteries moving too much. Also two panels - the main one with AC outlets and switches and the "battery test" LEDs, and another with just a car-style DC jack.

At first the bank didn't want to take a charge, the AC charger went straight to green light (which I guess is triggered by bank voltage?). Voltage was below 13 so I'm not sure what was going on... can't believe they were fully charged coming off the shelf. It was pretty cold outside which maybe changes things. Ah, I don't know. Load tester was unavailable (long story), so I ran a lamp for an hour to discharge the bank a little. After that the bank started taking a charge.

The other weird thing is that the "battery test" meter has stopped working. It's just a rocker switch and a bank of LEDs, but now the LEDs don't light up. Not helping. I'll have to check it out... in theory I should be able to fix it, in practice I tend to screw these things up =]

Corporations

Premise: "Corporations can cause harm" Premise: "Corporations shouldn't cause harm" + Milton Friedman + Deregulation Advocacy = DOES NOT COMPUTE.

Right?

If we agree that corporations can harm, but shouldn't, then it follows that a corporation's actions must be regulated somehow. The primary options are self-regulation (to avoid doing harm, a corporation voluntarily forgoes a profitable activity) and external regulation (there are rules, enforced by the state, that limit or prohibit some kinds of profitable activity). If, as Friedman argues, CEOs should abstain from self-regulation, then external regulation is required if harm is to be avoided.

I suppose in reality, we have both - there is some self-control from even the worst CEO (there are no too many massacres), and there is plenty of regulation. I suppose those that advocate simultaneously for deregulation and market freedom would agree with the principle here, but take issue with the amount and nature of the external regulations.

Hmmm.

Upcoming battery technologies

Nice slashdot comment on battery tech:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/01/27/2318247/Lithium-Air-Batteries-Get-Boost-From-IBM-and-DOE?art_pos=3

by Rei (128717) writes: on Wednesday January 27, @07:14PM (#30927766) Homepage

Lithium-air is, IMHO, one of the least promising upcoming battery techs. It's really more like a fuel cell, and to be blunt, fuel cells suck. By that, I mean:

  * Expensive per watt
  * Short lifespans
  * Inefficient

There are many, many promising next-gen battery techs other than li-air. Here's just a couple of my favorites.

Lithium-sulfur: This has long been worked on, but only just recently one of its big problems has been worked around. It offers great energy density, but some of the intermediary reaction products -- various lithium polysulfides -- are rather soluble. They'd migrate across the membrane and precipitate out on the other side, being rendered permanently useless to the reaction and thus aging the cells very quickly. Older solutions to try to prevent this caused dramatically lower energy density. The latest technique involves wicking the sulfur into the pores of mesoporous carbon and then functionalizing the outside of the carbon with polyethylene glycol to keep the hydrophobic polysulfides inside when they form. The longevity improvements were amazing, without sacrificing energy density. We're talking that when they deliberately chose a worst-case solvent, one that's really good at dissolving polysulfides, the traditional Li-S cell lost 96% of its sulfur in 30 cycles while theirs only lost 25%.

Nickel-lithium: It is, quite literally, a hybrid NiMH/li-ion battery -- a traditional NiMH cathode that can hold a tremendous amount of lithium, and a lithium metal anode (almost obscene anode energy density). That's normally impossible, since you want to run a NiMH battery with an aqueous electrolyte and your various lithium-based cells with an organic electrolyte. They do both -- they use a new tech called a LISICON membrane to keep the two different electrolytes apart but allow lithium ions across. An additional problem with li metal anodes is that dendrites tend to form that rupture the membrane -- but LISICON membranes are a rigid ceramic that resists dendrite damage.

Digital quantum battery: This is my favorite, because it comes straight out of left field. It's really a type of capacitor. Now, capacitors normally hold a lot less energy than batteries; if the voltage gets too high, you get dielectric breakdown, it arcs across, and your energy is lost. But at very tiny scales, current must move as quanta. So if instead of a single big capacitor, you lithographically print an array of nanoscale capacitors, all of the sudden you can make it so that you essentially can't get dielectric breakdown. In fact, you can store so much energy that the stresses become so great that it's best to use a carbon nanotube for one of the electrodes in each nano-capacitor. :)

And even ignoring next-gen battery techs, there is still *huge* range for improvement in li-ion. In particular, for the cathodes, my favorites are layered manganese cathodes which alternate long-life forms and high energy density forms of magnanese oxides to get both properties; and fluorinated metal cathodes. For the anodes, there's many kinds of tin and particularly silicon anodes out there that store nearly an order of magnitude more lithium than conventional graphite anodes. Silicon anode li-ion cells are just this month starting to hit the market. The tech has finally matured to the point where their longevity is sufficient.

Spaceship Cabaret

Spaceship Cabaret is a venue. A place to play, with a certain style: It's a cabaret, on a spaceship =]

Online Dataviz tools

Online data visualization tools:

http://www.greenphosphor.com/

The Big Night

Saladino says I'd like this movie!

Font Equivalents

Constantina ~= Times New Roman ~= DejaVu Serif
Corbel ~= Trebuchet MS
Calibri ~= Arial ~= DejaVu Sans Serif
Cambria ~= Lucida Bold ~= DejaVu Serif (Bold)
Candara ~= Trebuchet MS
Consolas ~= Lucida Console ~= DejaVu

Amazing Field Recording

The sound of a frozen lake thawing, recorded with underwater microphones. Listen with headphones, it's incredibly beautiful and spooky.

Awesome Flying Car Designs

(Also, Ekranoplans =])

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/01/retro-future-mind-boggling.html

Custom Laser

Your leading source for precision laser cutting and laser engraving services, including waterjet cutting, laser welding, forming, die cutting, and laser marking. Processing everything from promotional products to high-tech medical and aerospace:

http://www.customlaserinc.com/

Constructal Law

"The Constructal Theory is a theory of global optimization invented by Adrian Bejan and explaining in a simple manner the shapes that arise in nature. It is the thought that flow architecture comes from a principle of maximization of flow access, in time, and in flow configuration that are free to morph."

http://www.constructal.org/en/theory/presentation.html

A Real Programmer

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html