God dammit I just sold my van. Fuck ( Read more... )

I own a white cargo van. On rare occasions it is extremely useful: I can pack up my crap, drive to Burning Man, and live inside it for a week without fuss. I can move to LA with 24 hours notice. I can buy large objects at Home Depot. I can steal the enormous fiberglass figurine in front of JollibeeThe rest of the time it's an albatross around ( Read more... )

I keep the Prius parked in the garage and the cargo van parked on the street near my house. This Saturday matrushkaka and I noticed that someone found the plain exterior lacking and added their improvements.


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A while ago I read that Steve Jobs has no license plates on his car. An Apple employee and this flickr page confirmed it. His car isn't unlicensed, but there's a small sticker in place of the license plate. Since learning about the stickerplates I've started noticing them every once in a while, such as last night on my drive home from work:


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So I've had the Prius for a few days and here's my initial thoughts ( Read more... )

I rented a Prius from matrushkaka's zipcar account last Tuesday to have lunch with occulpanid, and I was sold. While the Yaris looks good on paper it seemed like a cheap tiny car. The Prius was quite nice, handled better than its tiny skateboard wheels would indicate, and hauled four occupants comfortably. Talking with drieuxster and taking a short drive in his further ( Read more... )

The interaction between surfaces and the light they emit can be very complicated, but a decent abstraction for most surfaces is to define two types of reflected light: diffuse and specular. Diffuse light is light that is scattered evenly by the object. Take a piece of cardboard and hold it facing the light. See how it's bright? Hold it ( Read more... )

I've been looking for a new car since the White Windowless Child Molester Van Of Doom isn't exactly the most comfortable vehicle for driving up and down I-5. The VW Golf TDI ("turbo diesel") is a top pick for me: it gets better highway mileage than a Prius with far fewer parts, doesn't have batteries that need to be replaced, and can earn the ( Read more... )

I'm considering the purchase of a new car.  I'm also considering the registration of a California personalized licence plate.  Because the purpose of a license plate is to identify a vehicle when its driver has done something wrong, I'd like to register the combination of characters most likely to be misidentified or mistranscribed.  My current ( Read more... )

This morning matrushkaka asked me if biodiesel is "better for the environment" than regular diesel. The answer is "yes and no ( Read more... )