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Review: Napoleon bar end mirror
Submitted by chad on Mon, 2008-02-11 03:57The stock mirrors on my Blur scooter were just not cutting it. So I ordered a Napoleon Bar End Mirror.

With the stock mirrors I could only see off to the sides of the bike. When the mirrors were adjusted so I could see behind the bike, then about half of the mirror would be blocked by my elbow.

Motorcycle Airbag jackets/vests - Are they worth it?
Submitted by chad on Sat, 2008-01-12 06:30I just recently purchased my first two wheeler. After I bought it, I started looking for safety gear. While looking at riding jackets online I found a few airbag jackets.
The concept of a motorcycle airbag jacket (or vest) is fairly new. The only jackets that I found commercially available are:
Impact Jacket
HitAir
MotoAir
Airetronics
Review - Genuine Scooter Company Blur 150
Submitted by chad on Wed, 2007-12-26 20:42With my '93 Mazda 626 getting a little long in the tooth, I decided to get a new vehicle. Rather than buying a new car, I opted for a scooter, keeping my old car as a backup for rainy days. After doing some research and test riding a couple of scooters, I decided on a Blur 150 from Genuine Scooter Company.

Using mod_backhand for a better test environment
Submitted by chad on Wed, 2007-10-24 02:15Setting up a good apache test website can be a pain. Mod_backhand can help simply things.
Usually your have your live website, www.mycompany.com, then you may have a dev website called something like dev.www.mycompany.com. Sometimes using a non production domain name causes problems. It shouldn't but sometimes when you use legacy code or third party programs, you don't have total control of everything. Then you can get into DNS tricks, changing host files, etc...
Convert lawnmower to run off of propane camp stove
Submitted by chad on Sat, 2007-10-20 04:03
Here is simple howto, to run your lawnmower off of propane gas instead of gasoline.
It was much easier to run off of propane than I thought it would be. First I pulled off the gas tank and carburetor. Next I got a length of hose. I took one end and put it just inside the intake manifold. I then got my propane stove and took of its burner. I attached the other end of the hose to the stove's gas outlet, then used some duct tape to try and hold everything in place.
Simple wood gasifier
Submitted by chad on Wed, 2007-09-26 03:01Wood gasification is the process of turning wood into carbon monoxide and hydrogen by reacting the raw material (wood) at high temperatures with a controlled amount of oxygen. Without oxygen, the wood can't burn so it transforms into gas. This gas can be used as fuel in an internal combustion engine.
About
Submitted by chad on Thu, 2007-07-05 03:12Hey folks,
Here is my obligatory "About" page. I group in an a small West Texas town with three stop lights. My dad had tons of tools for me to play with and I loved taking my toys a part.
Now I live in the big city of Kansas City MO. I have B.S. in Computer Information Systems and a J.D. from Texas Wesleyan School of Law. I liked computers more than law so I stuck with that. Now I write software for websites.
I work with Apache, Linux, Mysql, perl. Slowly but surely I am dipping into the Microsoft world and have started coding in C# and using MS Sqlserver.
Google gives different search results based on browser?
Submitted by chad on Wed, 2007-03-21 03:31I was doing some searching on Google the other day and noticed that I got different search results when using Firefox and Konqueror. I thought it would be fun to do a little search experiment.
I downloaded a list of 138 user agent strings. Next I picked five words from Google's zeitgeitst (Bar Refaeli, brad delp, god of war 2, richard jeni and sinbad). I set up a perl script to run search queiries against google. The script would search each word 138 times, using each of the 138 browser user agents. Then I ran the script 10 times to make sure I got consistent results.
Wiitastic !
Submitted by chad on Sun, 2007-01-07 04:54After much trying I finally got a Wii! I have had it only 3 days and my arms are very sore. I am not sure if that has more to do with how fun the wii is or how out of shape I am.

The wiimote is much more accurate and sensitive than I imagined. I ordered a blue tooth adapter for my computer. I can't wait to try and get the remote connected to my linux box. The groundwork for connecting to the wiimote to a PC has already been laid by the folks at wiili.org. From what I have searched, no one has used perl to interact with the wiimote. My hope is that I can use the Net::Bluetooth module to talk to the wiimote.

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