So after paying a 1000 deposit almost 3 years ago we finally have our new car! It is wonderful. I have never had a new car before, always bought used until now.
It is the most technologically advanced car ever made, and likely will be so for some time. The infotainment system is probably 2 decades ahead of what any other automaker provides.
BONUS: The dog seems to like it as well!
We went with some college friends to Turks and Caicos islands. It was a great trip.
The islands have a tough time with stray dogs. While you are there you can adopt a dog (they are known as "pot cakes") or just foster one for the day.
We took a trip to New Zealand in late February.
We got a steal of a deal on some nonestop New Zealand Air tickets. We paid $1000 for two tickets round trip thanks to Cyber Monday in 2015. We had not been specifically looking for tickets to NZ. But we had been eager for a getaway after we got suckered out of our winter break due to work commitments. So when I saw the deal I pounced.
I had always heard NZ was a nice country to visit, but I had no idea what we were in store for. The place was literally magical, I can see why they chose to film lots of movies there.
Some of the more impressive photos are attached below:
SpaceX has successfully landed one of their first stage rocket boosters after putting a payload in orbit. This has never been done before.
For all space launches in history (except for this one), the first stage is jettisoned and destroyed during reentry.
The reason space exploration is so expensive for individuals corporations and even governments is the cost of launching mass into orbit. This is due in part to the expense of having to build and throw away the first stage for every launch.
A good analogy:
Imagine if commercial airlines had to throw away their Boeing 747s after every international flight. If this were the case, each trip would be so prohibitively expensive that no one except the richest people would be able to pay for it.
The Falcon 9 is the first rocket engineered from the ground up with reuse in mind. Hopefully we see many more Falcon 9 boosters recovered next year. If so, we could see the cost of launching something into orbit fall by as much as 80% by some highly optimistic estimations. This could mark the beginning of a new space age.
NASA Just released recently received footage from the New Horizons probe
These images were taken a few months ago. But we are just now receiving them as they are transmitted back through the Deep Space Network.
Pretty crazy to think about how far away Pluto is. It receives about 1% of the sunlight that the earth receives.
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/images/index.html?id=374871
My wife and I just adopted a new puppy. His name is Cotton, and he is adorable.
My Drupal 7 install had some issues. Rather than fix the issues I am just going to go ahead and install Drupal 8.
Testing inline images
Testing the new WYSIWYG editor
UPDATE: So far i think Drupal 8 is far superior to 7 so I will be sticking with it. I will be importing my old articles one by one.
I recently needed to write a quick power hour app for an event at my house.
The app works with any music playing software. I personally like to use use Spotify. Be sure and have whatever player you are using open and the playlist queued up prior to pressing "Start/Resume." This app needs no special APIs to control the trackes. It uses the media forward button to do all the work. There is a siren on the transition to every song. Enjoy!
It was a quick and dirty implementation but it gets the job done. This was written in C# and runs on Windows. App and zipped source is attached for now. I will be opening a github or public git soon that has the code, so stay tuned!
I may add features and port it to Android/iOS later if there is need.
I am in the process of finishing my garage room into a man cave. I used a CAD program on my Android tablet to design the floorplan. I had about 400 sq ft to work with. I wanted to fit a bathroom, as well as have an entertainment area and work bench.
I am almost done, just have to install the bathroom fixtures and the baseboards.
The projector is set up. I have a 12 foot diagonal screen and 7.2 surround sound setup I have learned a lot about residential electrical, flooring, paint, tile, light fixtures, plumbing, and more throughout the process.
UPDATE: Unfortuantely I dont think I will have room for my work bench.
My man cave over the garage has a mini split installation. In case you are not familiar with mini splits the DOE has an article.
TLDR?
These AC units are common all over the world, except the USA where central air dominates. They are more efficient and easy to install (no ductwork) but tend to be more expensive per BTU.
Through a connection that my father in law has, I bought ading and dent unit for an eighth of the normal price. The unit is a Mitsubishi MSZ-FE18NA with 18k BTUs of cooling/heating capacity. I figured 18k BTUs was ample capacity to stave off the intense Texas summer heat.
Turns out it may have been a bad idea to get a unit this powerful. Apparently these mini split systems never “turn off”; they always run at a percentage of ther capacity so they can allegedly be more efficient by eliminating the powering on and off overhead. Don’t ask me how this ends up working out in the end! Once the set temperature is acheived the indoor radiator is always about the same temperature as the air. So there is hardly ever any condensation that forms on it. Even worse, any condensation that does form quickly re evaporates. So my cave potentially has a humidity of +20% the outside since the temperature is usually cooler.
In Houston Texas this is bad news because the humidity is high enough!
I researched the issue online. Tons of people are having the same problem. One solution is to downgrade to a smaller unit. Well my unit is already installed, I would have to trade units with someone else and a reinstallation would not be cheap. I had to think outside the box. A temporary fix seemed to be turning the AC off and on manually. When the AC unit detects a significant temperature difference between the set temperature and room temperature it goes into a turbo mode where then the radiator part is significantly cooler and humidity is rapidly pulled out of the air.
