Easy Ethanol

(Jay Leno's 600 hp E85 Corvette)

What does GM think the future fuel source of autos will be? Hybrid? No, although they make a few models to "keep up with the competition." Plug in electric? No, although they are trying their damnedest to bring the first one (Chevy Volt) to market, again to "beat the competition." Diesel? Heh, no.. I don't think they have any interest in that.

No, none of that stuff... they're betting on E85. Why? One reason, according to Maximum Bob, is that it requires the least amount of change to our current lifestyle and fuel infrastructure. If we all switch to E85, what would be different? Nothing really... we still fill up our cars at gas stations like we have for the past century. Furthermore, any car can be converted to use E85 for like $100. Path of least change is good.

Great, so why aren't we already on E85? Well, the current method to produce it (with corn) is somewhat difficult and inefficient, but the main reason, IMO, is that we simply don't have enough corn to make a dent in our nation's fuel consumption. Hell, even if we converted 100% of our farm lands to corn, we still wouldn't have enough.

Enter Coskata and their "breakthrough" method for producing cellulosic ethanol...(click for full article). Another article here.

To summarize...

• patented process to produce ethanol from almost any carbon based matter (garbage, plant waste, old tires)
• consumes 3 times less water than other processes
• generates 7.7 times the energy it takes to produce it (vs 1.3 times for corn based ethanol)
• reduces CO2 emissions by 84% compared to gasoline
• GM expects to have the facilities to produce 50 to 100 million gallons per year by 2011
• less than $1 per gallon

Sounds pretty promising, no?? I dream of a day when I can have a 600 hp, guilt free sports car!!

Tunnel of Death

(thanks to Adam for the link)

Ok, I usually hate blog posts that just recap another cool post elsewhere, but I had to do it... this video is highly entertaining!!

It's traffic camera footage of a tunnel in Russia. It's the longest tunnel in Europe or something, but that's not what makes it interesting. What makes it interesting is that a river runs over part of it and leaks water onto the road... and winters are very cold in Russia.

Btw, this collage was supposedly made from a single day's worth of traffic footage.

Red Tortilla Soup

This is a modified version of Spicy Tortilla Soup by Becky Bradshaw of Bedford, Texas.

Ingredients

• 1 HEB rotisserie chicken (I like honey mesquite flavor)
• 1 large yellow (sweet) onion
• 1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 8-12 corn tortillas, coarsely chopped
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped
• 2 cans (10 3/4 oz) tomato puree (or sauce)
• 2 quarts low sodium chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1-2 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne powder
• 2 bay leaves

Procedure

1. De-bone chicken, shred it up kinda with your hands, set aside.
2. Coarsely chop the corn tortillas. I usually just cut them into strips like 2 inches long and 3/4 inches wide. Set them aside.
3. Make a puree out of the onion by chopping it up and blending it with some of the chicken broth. Put it aside.
4. In a very large pot, sautee the garlic and cilantro in the vegetable oil. Try to go easy on the oil cuz it has a lot of fat.
5. Dump in all the chicken broth.
6. Dump in the onion puree.
7. Dump in the shredded chicken.
8. Dump in the chopped tortilla.
9. Dump in the tomato puree.
10. Dump in all the herbs and spices.
11. Bring to boil, reduce heat and let simmer until the tortilla pieces kind of break apart and thicken the soup.

This is an awesome recipe if you can get it to come out well... :) It tastes so damn good! The trick is getting the right amount of herbs/spices/tortilla for your tastes. It's easy to do that since it's a soup. Just start small and keep adding and tasting.

The really great thing about this recipe is that it's not bad for you at all. Check out the ingredients. It might be a little carby, but at least the fat is really low.

All Natural Smoothie Recipe

Ingredients

• small (6 oz) Yoplait Light
• 6 oz skim (fat free) milk
• teaspoon natural peanut butter
• one frozen banana (ripe)

Procedure

1. Put frozen banana in blender.
2. Dump in yogurt.
3. Measure skim milk in empty yogurt container, dump in blender.
4. Put in peanut butter.
5. Blend till smooth.

The flavor of yogurt largely determines what this is going to taste like. I like strawberry cheesecake, white chocolate raspberry, mixed berries, or vanilla.

This is so easy to make, tastes great, and isn't bad for you. It's very (simple) carb heavy, so I tend to eat it after working out.

If you're looking for protein, substitute pasteurized egg whites for the skim milk.

OS X Leopard Woes

(Image plucked from Google Images)

I've been talking about getting Mac for a long time. I'm kind of tired of tweaking, configuring and sometimes battling Linux. I just want a simple home computer (mostly for Aimee and her new iPod) that "just works."

And that's Mac's big schtick (sp?) right? They just work. Ask anyone who uses ones and they'll tell you... they'll never go back to the broken PC/Windows world. It seems like Mac/OS X is so awesome, that converts don't just become fans... they become fanbois (that's super extreme fanboys).

Well, I finally picked up a Mac Mini with OS X Leopard... here's my take on it.

Home/end/pgup/pgdown keys don't work as expected.
Home and end take the cursor to the beginning and end of a line respectively in EVERY F-ING OS IN EXISTANCE... except for OS X. And that's fine... I'll just learn the Mac way to move the cursor to the end of the line. Well guess fucking what... it's different for different applications!! Here's a sample of what the keystrokes are for beginning /end of a line for different OS X apps. Most OS X programs: command+left / command+right Terminal: ctrl-a / ctrl-e Firefox: who fucking knows / command+right

Massive security issue.
The first day I had the machine, I had to reinstall the entire f-ing OS because for some god knows reason, it was starting every program as root (administrator for you Windows people). There is a long thread about it that ended with the guy throwing in the towel and reinstalling OS X, just like I had to.

Sluggish and hiccups.
Sometimes when I'm typing, the cursor will just freeze for a sec and then when it unfreezes, all the characters come out all at once. Also, minor hiccups (slight delays) when choosing menu items, sending instant messages, or closing apps. There is a thread on Apple's support site about it.

The mouse acceleration is crappy and non adjustable.
Wtf is Apple such a pretentious piece of shit that they force their users to buy a $20 shareware app to adjust something that should have been adjustable in the first place?

Answer: because Apple isn't about choice or freedom... iTunes + iPod.
iTunes -> iPod is a one way street. There is no way to get songs on your iPod back into iTunes (say, in the case of reinstalling the OS like I had to do the first night I had the machine). Also, imagine this... You happily use iTunes and your iPod with your home computer, but then you take your iPod to work and decide you want to download a song and put it on your iPod to listen to at the gym on your way home from work. Think again, asshole. Can't do it without erasing all the songs already on your iPod.

No focus follows mouse policy.
This is just a personal gripe. If you're a seasoned Unix user, you might understand.

Doesn't reconnect to wireless network after waking up.
Aimee loves this one. Almost everytime she wakes up the computer, she has to connect and enter in our WEP password manually to reestablish the internet connection. I think I've tracked this down to a Keychain Access issue, but it's still not resolved 100%... and it pisses me off because....

I thought Macs "just worked."

John Rambo

(Yes, he tears that guy's throat right out of his neck.)

Oh em eff gee... this is the movie that us children of the 80's action movie genre have been waiting for!! You see, my memories of action movies consists of close up shots of larger than life stars (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) shooting a machine gun one handed, then cutting to a shot of dozens of men falling down. And that was cool back then... you know, when I was a kid.

Now I'm older... and I don't want to see campy nods to the old style 80's actions movies. I want all my old action stars like Rambo and Commando redone as modern, somewhat more believable films.

And that's exactly what Rambo delivers!! It ain't your 80's action flick that you take your 10 year old boy to see. It is violent. I mean really fucking violent. It has what I call "war atrocities" violence. Tons of innocent villagers are slaughtered in really gruesome ways. The war action is "realistic" like Saving Private Ryan... except there is TONS more of it. JR himself is really damn brutal... and he doesn't hold back even in front of the queasy ladies who are obviously very disturbed by the brutality of war (heh, I loved that scene).

So how does it stand up as a "movie"? Ehh.. the plot is extremely simple and is developed very quickly. Character development? I think JR is as developed as he's going to get. So it's standard action movie fair in that respect, but it's the action that makes the movie so great. Everyone want to see their favorite action hero kick some ass, but not in some cheesy, campy or too over the top way. Don't get me wrong... the action is crazy and over the top... and there are a few kinda cheesy parts... but all in all, it's not.

It's just damn brutal. I can't convey how graphically violent it is!! I think there was a good portion of the audience who went there to "have a laugh" or whatever. The movie isn't funny at all. No one was laughing. In fact, it's kind of hard to watch at times.

Kudos to Stallone (writer, director, star) for bringing back Rambo... even better than I remember.

Here are some fun Rambo stats that my friend Aaron sent to me...

Jake Gyllenhaal Dressed Me

No, not in some Brokeback Mountain way...

I got a new wardrobe! Well, not really... I got the beginnings of a new wardrobe! Damn clothes are expensive!! It cost me 3/4 of a MacBook and all I got were 2 pairs of jeans, 4 tee shirts, 3 collared shirts, and one pair of shoes. It's all "designer" stuff, that's why it's so damn expensive.

Why the change? Aimee (and even some of my guy friends) were starting to be a bit embarrassed for me by the way I dress. Hell, even I was embarrassed! It's not that I wanted to look bad... I just knew it would be expensive and to be honest, I find it difficult to clothes shop for myself because I don't have a good sense of style.

Aimee provided the motivation to just accept that I would have to drop a decent chunk of change. The fashion sense was provided by Brandon of Nordstroms... who looks exactly like Jake Gyllenhaal (maybe crossed with a little Toby Meguire). He was super helpful and was very honest about what worked and didn't work on me.

I'm really glad I have some decent clothes to go out in now... but honestly, I can't stop thinking about the money thing... it's plaguing me.

Apple Innovation: Stacks and Spaces

This is just a rant that started as an IM conversation with a friend. Understand that this is just a lighthearted rant and I'm an Apple fan with a recently acquired Mac Mini with a possibility of buying a MacBook in the near future.

Apple is starting to pull Microsoft's bs marketing crap now... "Look how innovative we are. We created this incredible UI paradigm called Stacks." Are they kidding? That's called dragging a folder to the task bar in KDE and it's been around since the 90's (or earlier?). In fact, it's such a basic concept in any Linux desktop GUI, that it took me a while to even grasp what Stacks was because I thought it was something "new".

Same deal with Spaces. It's called multiple desktops, again a basic concept in Unix as far back as I can remember. "Oh, but Apple was the first to make a cool UI for managing them." Wrong. Compiz/Beryl/CompizFusion was around well before Leopard.

Alien vs. Predator: Requiem

After seeing the red banner (rated R) trailer for this movie, I was so excited! I remember watching the first AVP and thinking, that wasn't too bad... would've been a lot better if it was rated R though. Well, the red banner trailer looked very R rated.

What a disappointment. Heh, disappointment is an understatement. I think it is worse than the first one. Here are my complaints...

The action, violence and gore is actually pretty weak. They showed every single cool scene for the entire movie in the red banner trailer. Do your self a favor, save $8 and just watch the red banner trailer instead.

The Predator is too weak. He's suppose to be a bad ass "cleaner"... in fact, his name is Wolf like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction, but he seems to struggle with every single kill. Also, his kill count is retardedly low.

The ending is stupid. As you can imagine, neither the Aliens nor the Predator wins. That's such a f-ing cop out to appease both Alien fans and Predator fans, but the ridiculousness of it is, wtf is an Alien fan? Everyone wants to see the Predator kick some ass with authority.

The Predator has some cool new weapons, but he only gets like one kill out of each of them. For god sakes, the city gets infested and there's hundreds of Aliens to choose from, he should have taken out at least 10 with each of his weapons. Like I said before, the Predator is too weak and his kill count is too low.

They completely ripoff then utterly overuse that one scene from Alien 3 where the Alien gets really close to Ripley's face and sniffs/hisses at her while she's freaking out (see above picture). It seems like the Aliens did that to every fucking human victim in this movie. It's just retarded. The Alien had a reason to do that Alien 3, but in AVP:R, it's just the director's lame ass attempt at "dramatic effect" because he can't come up with any ideas on his own.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sigourney Weaver should have made cameos.

2/5 stars.

Callie's little sister!

We got another baby!

I can't believe how lucky we got with her. She's an 8 month old rescue dachshund that fit all of our requirements:

• longhair
• small
• submissive
• plays with Callie
• very affectionate

Her name is Coco (already named by the time we got her). She came from a breeder who didn't want her because she is too small and timid (not good breeding characteristics), but that's exactly what we wanted.

The first day with us, she wouldn't let anyone touch her or get near her. If we cornered her and picked her up, she was start bucking wildly. It took her only a day to warm up and let me and Aimee hold her. Now she's super affectionate towards us, licks us all the time, crawls on us, follows us around, etc... but she still doesn't like other people to touch her or get near her.

I'm really surprised at how well she gets along with Callie, because Callie usually doesn't like other dogs (she hides or tries to jump in someone's lap if another dog comes close). She still won't cuddle up to her, but they eat together and play together all the time... which is exactly what we wanted because Callie is alone 10 hours a day while we're at work.

We've had her two weeks now, but it feels like she's been a part of the family already.

P.S. Yes, her nickname is Peepee (those who know Callie's nickname will get it).

2008 LS3 Corvette Oil Change

I always forget what I need to change my oil, so this is just a shopping list to remind me in the future.

• Mobile 1 5W-30 Synthetic Oil 6 Qt
• Mobile 1 M1-113 Oil Filter

Prices of aforementioned items at Walmart...

• 5 Qt jug - $21.97
• 1 Qt bottle - $6.57
• Filter - $9.18

Total cost is $40.83.

I hate shopping at Walmart, but they have a killer price on the 5 qt jug of Mobile 1.

New website idea

Those of you who know me know that I'm always coming up with web ideas and half-implementing them before giving up. I hate that. I hate that I haven't come up with an idea that's worth following through with.

So I've been trying to figure out what kind of website idea can feasibly be done single handedly and why all my other ideas fail... and I keep coming back to Lindsey's Dishola. I think that it's a great idea for a single person to implement for two main reasons (well, besides that the creator is extremely talented and motivated):

1. The creator has a passion for the subject. Lindsey is a foodie, so he's following his passion.
2. The site is based on limited content.

It's hard working on a project that you're not "into". I don't want to work 9 hours a day and come home and continue working on a Craigslist rip off. I'm just not that into selling stuff or posting job listings. That's why you need the passion.

The main problem with most of my website ideas is that they require a huge amount of content for people to even consider leaving the already established websites. Sharedive? No way it would ever come close to even taking on a portion of YouTube's content. Craigslist clone? Same problem... requires tons of new content on a daily basis to be useful.

Dishola, though, is different for two reasons. First, the content doesn't become old or stale- Craigslist and YouTube require tons of new content everyday to keep people interested. If I look up a dish or restaurant review, I don't really care that it's 6 months old. The second reason is that the content is limited. Lindsey and a few friends can probably cover most of Austin's restaurants in a few months, and that's enough to get the ball rolling for the site.

So what's my new idea? It's simply an Ultimate Car Page clone. Here's how I see it...

• Yes it's already been done, but so has dish/restaurant reviews and Dishola is still a success.
• It fits my passion. I will enjoy filling in the content for it, just like Lindsey enjoys doing dish reviews for Dishola.
• The content is limited. Think of every make and model of car ever made. It's only in the thousands. Between me and a couple friends, I bet we could knock out 300 cars or so in a few months... and that's enough to get the ball rolling.

Obviously if I follow through on this, it would be an improvement on Ultimate Car Page and not just a clone. Think of it as Ultimate Car Page redone in Web 2.0... ;)