iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

As is my habit, more information about each link can be found via the WikiPedia links – they’ll open in a new window, but they’ll all share it.

Why do I love Formula 1 racing? If I had to give on reason it would be the sound. The 3.0-litre, ten-cylinder naturally aspirated engines sound amazing as they rev to 17,000 rpm, 18,000 RPM, and perhaps more. It’s one thing to hear these things on TV, but the two GPs I’ve been to in Montreal’s took that experience to a new level. Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is on an island, and as you approach it during warm-up the whole waterfront is consumed by the sound of cars screaming to the hair-pin, thundering down the gears to break, then screaming off again.

An F1 Car the 3.0-litre, six-cylinder naturally aspirated engine in most mini-vans put out between 170HP and 200HP and can hit about 6,500 RPM. The 3.0-litre in an F1 car puts out around 900HP. The valves in F1 cars (which let in the air for the combustion inside the cylinders and allow the exhaust to escape afterwards) use hydraulics because conventional springs can’t open and close fast enough to handle 18,000RPM. The aerodynamics and tyres enable these cars to corner at speeds fast enough to create G-forces that would make you or I black out. The engine, the aerodynamics and the tyres combine to make F1 cars faster than any other single-seater circuit racers and the ‘Formula’ behind Formula 1 the most high-tech and expensive there is.
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Good ‘ol Wikipedia. What a great resource it is. I know it shouldn’t be in the bibliography of a high school essay, but it’s always a good place to start.

Today I was thinking how I could embiggen my blog, especially with this lousy Smarch weather we’ve been having. Wikipedia had the answer in it’s entry: Made-up words in The Simpsons

I just upgraded to Wordpress version 1.5 – still no spell check Please let me know if you notice any problems.

The Changes: So far the themes interface has been updated, and a few other management things have been tweaked and now you can easily build an entire site beyond the main blog page. The only other change is that pages should load faster.

Fresh from this year’s autoshow, the new Mercedes SLK. Which is a better car than the previous all-looks version.

My drive back to St. Catharines on Sunday took a good three hours because of the snow storm, but it could have been worse. This car is pointed west in the east bound lane of the QEW Niagara. As we crept up on the accident I managed to snap this photo.

The autoshow was interesting, but not as good as other years. Only Honda brought a race car (an F1 mock-up), not even Subaru brought a rally car. The street-mod scene was the big thing, again. It was cool three years ago Mini had a DJ booth setup, but when GM did it the effect was lost.

My highlight was a poster of historic Ferrari race cars and the Subaru Rally similator. I asked the guy working on belting people into this system to co-drive for me and apparently did the second best drive of his shift.
If you’re wondering if you should go this year: only if you’re out for a new car, otherwise wait until the next one. This year was a great year for high end cars (The Ferrari F430, the 360’s replacement is sweet) but for the modest ones we all drive… engh.

Here’s my pictures from the 2005 Auto Show. My review is to come, but first, to the bar!

Here’s what the sizable opposition wanted to remain as our flag. One has to assume that it was because of monarchists and ex-brits that there was such concern over our current, and perfect, flag. I guess that’s the difference between and ex-brit and an expert.

Two weeks ago Apple released the latest revision of their PowerBooks. I bought mine at the end of the summer, and I don’t feel like I missed out on this update. I’m happy with the 1.3 GHz processor I have, and the speed-bump of 1.5 GHz that my machine would have got doesn’t bother me. That said, the feature that makes want to trade up is the scrolling track pad.

The idea is you get the functionality of the scroll wheel on many mice, but you don’t have the dead space you have on PCs with a scroll section. Just place two fingers on the pad and drag them in the direction you want to scroll.

Thanks to the Open Source core of OSX (called darwin) your too can compile (or download a pre-compiled) version of the driver that makes the new systems work. I found the hint on MacOSXHints.com at 11:30PM and had it running by 11:33PM.

Here’s the MacOSXHints.com
article, and Daniel Becker’s actual description of how to do it.

Two years ago Hans Blix gave a 45 minute presentation to the UN that concluded that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Two years and a day later North Korea openly claims to have Nuclear Weapons (maybe 2 years to the day if you are generous with the international date line). This is the consequence of this New American Century style foreign policy of using America’s might to crush countries that could never fight back in the first place.

Forget the obvious consequences of dismantling a state and trying to rebuild it from the ground up. What we have to worry about now is leaders like Kim Jung Il figuring out that as soon as you go nuclear America can’t just invade and remove you and destroy your state.

Rumsfeld has apparently stated that he is not sure if North Korea has the nukes or not: if Rumsfeld previous intelligence is any indication, we should take North Korea at their word. We had to listen to Colin Powell talk about tubes and show us pictures of blurry trucks, and a few circumstantial wiretaps, claiming these items posed a real threat to America. A country now claims to have weapons of mass destruction and Rumsfeld thinks we should sit around and hope that they are bluffing?

When you label someone as a real and immediate threat and do nothing about it for over two years it sends a signal. America’s complete lack of interest in negotiations has demonstrated that the only way Bush will ’solve’ a problem with a foreign nation is to invade it. So as long as America’s Army is otherwise disposed rouge nations clearly need to build their army to ensure that when America is ready to engage them the task is too large. Five years ago the Clinton administration had North Korea talking, and was placating their need for resources and pacifying them. Ironically, four years ago when Bush came into office North Korea might have been the one rouge nation that might have been solved militarily – if any one cared about it.
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Hasbro has reissued the Millennium Falcon! The greatest toy I have ever had, and thusly the one which I probably abused the most, is born again. I’ll have to go out and get one, and perhaps treat this one a little better.

If I’m really going to geek-it-up I should buy a Mac mini and install it into the Falcon! Ohhhh the nerdy fun I could have!