This is a brilliant idea and day out that apparently began in 1965. Youngsters at the school who have varying degrees of sight challenges, from partially sighted to completely without sight become Navigators for a day for a staged Rallye.

The idea is that it gives students an opportunity to practice their Braille skills and/or practice reading large type to give instructions to a driver to guide him or her on a fairly long Rallye that has checkpoints and is timed.

It is, of course far more than that. It was a great opportunity to meet a really cool person to navigate me around LA, whilst having fun out and about in the Atom. My Navigator was Ivy and she was brilliant. Kept the directions perfectly and we'd have been up there in among the most accurate in time had we not stopped to help a very unfortunate Signal Hill PD Sergeant who had "surfing issues" (more on that later). Here's a pic of Ivy and I at one of the checkpoints:

The day began fairly early. I arrived at the Braille Institute at about 7AM and was among the first to get there. There was a great turnout from the Mini Owners Club and Smart Car Owners Club. There were some very cool vehicles there too, Lotus Elises, Alfa Romeo Spyders and the one that had me drooling was an Aston Martin DB9. As I mentioned, Dave from the Atom Club had let me know about the event so of course he was there too with his Atom.

The principle was to receive instructions like "turn left First OPP" (turn left first opportunity), CAST 37 (Continue average speed 37MPH), etc. Basically following these instructions and using a timer to get to checkpoints and to the finish as accurately as possible in terms of time taken. It wasn't about getting there quickly, but accurately.

As I had never done anything like this before, I was actually a bit nervous as I didn't want to get us stranded and completely lost! Fortunately, Ivy had done the Rallye the year before, so she was clued in to the abbreviations and descriptions. We did have an "if all else fails" bail out packet. Apparently, this contained instructions on how to get to the end point if completely without clue as to where you were.

The Atom was a wee bit challenging in a couple of areas. First, sticking the signs on the side involved miles and miles of painters tape. Thank you to the person that let me blow through a whole roll! Also, the noise factor made communication "tricky", especially on the freeways.

The instructions first took us all the way down to Long Beach. They actually had us do a lap of the Grand Prix course. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to try "warp speed".

We toured around Long Beach, San Pedro, Laguna Niguel and ended up at Honda's head office in Torrance for grub and refreshments.

One of the instructions that was to head us back over a bridge to San Pedro was a little confusing. I was following a PD car, who was part of the Rallye. He must have thought like I did that we were heading the wrong way and tried a U-Turn over a meridian "hump". Desperately unfortunately for the Officer, whilst the hump looked small from our side, it dropped off dramatically on the other and he completely beached the squad car.

Now it would have been so, so wrong for anyone to take a picture of that wouldn't it? ;)

We tried manhandling it, even a semi-tractor tried pushing it, but unfortunately he ended up getting rescued by an LAPD tow truck. I'm sure they will all forget about that quickly and not give him any stick right?

I'm delighted to say that Dave and his Navigator "Edge" won best in class in the other Atom! Great performance. Ivy won a "Good Samaritan" prize for trying to help the Officer and therefore messing up our time.

As I said, it was not about "winning", it was just a great day out with very cool students and the other drivers were great to meet too. Definitely looking forward to the Braille Rallye next year.

LINKS: The Braille Institute,  Atom Club, Vetraceuticals, 5x5 Life

I prodotti Acer non mi hanno mai ispirato...ma sono rimasto subito colpito dal nuovo Aspire ONE, che verrà venduto in esclusiva da Mediaworld dal 26 Luglio.

Questa macchina si pone in concorrenza diretta con eeePC di Asus: le dimensioni sono le stesse, la fetta di mercato la stessa.

Ma perchè preferire questo oggetto rispetto all'ottimo eeePC?

Qui di seguito riporto quelli che secondo me sono i vantaggi di Aspire ONE rispetto ad eeePC:

1- Design: è sempre una cosa molto soggettiva, ma personalmente mi piacciono di più le forme arrotondate di Aspire ONE rispetto a quelle più spigolose di eeePC.

2- CPU: Intel Atom N270 1.6 Ghz. Atom è una piattaforma prodotta quasi esclusivamente per gli UMPC. Una cpu Atom @ 1.6 Ghz è sicuramente meglio del Celeron @ 900 Mhz che monta eeePC.

3- Prezzo: 100 euro in meno non sono pochi...

ovviamente c'è da dire che eeePC monta 512 Mb di ram in più e che il suo SSD è di 20 Gb contro gli 8 di Aspire ONE, ma personalmente questi particolari non influenzano il mio giudizio. Chi acquista questo genere di macchina secondo me non ha bisogno di 20 Gb.

Attendiamo l'uscita sul mercato per dare un giudizio sulla "robustezza" e solidità della macchina...

"Libes Diari! Mit diesem Antii-Atomgetue gehen mir die Menschen aufs Molekül. Wrum ist nur niemant so sozial integrierlich, wie ich als Kindin? Ich weiß es nit. Vernunftgründe sagen mir, dass die irgendwas gegen mich haben, die Müller denkt genauso. Die Menschen wollen doch teflonieren mit den Mobildingern und ich finde die auch schön. Mein Libeslingsspiel ist snake und tekken 4, das fetzt! Und womit soll mein Haus in Berlin erhellt werden, im dunkelen Winter, wenn nicht mit Strom aus der Atomdose? Und das Internetz? Und die vielen Komputa, mit denen die Kindern vorr den Harddiskfernseher sitzen?

Die Welt praucht Strom und der fällt nit fom Himmel, außer ich lass fallen. Die Müller meint mir gleich. Also bauern wir auch in Zukunft auch Atomkraftwerke, damit wir auch in Zukunft was haben, womit wir im Staat Ruhe schaffen können, denn damit kommts an. Drauf. Ein Glück was? Denn ich bin die Kanzelerin.

So, genug jetzt Buch, ich muss jezt was tun gehn. Pis morgen. Deine Angelala, die fröhliche."

CSU-Chef Erwin Huber will nach der Bundestagswahl neu über Laufzeiten und Endlagerung verhandeln. Den Neubau von Atomkraftwerken, wie er aus der Union vereinzelt gefordert wird, schloss er nicht aus: "Ich sehe heute niemanden, der neue Kernkraftwerke in Deutschland auf den Weg bringen will. Aber ich sage, Kernkraft ist Ökostrom, und Ökostrom soll man per Grundgesetz verbieten?"

Das berichtet die NGZ. Huber sagt: "Kernkraft ist Ökostrom." Dazu muss man sagen: "Huber spricht vernünftig." Das kann man verstehen, wie man will.

Er hat übrigens nicht gesagt, wo genau in Bayern das Endlager errichtet werden soll. So werden ihm vorerst alle Bayern dankbar sein. So ein Endlager fördert schließlich auch den Tourismus. Den Castourismus. Ganz öko, natürlich.

Allein der Auftakt "Für die deutschen Kernkraftwerke spricht ein handfester Grund: Sie sind da, und sie funktionieren." - Kann man mit weniger Argumenten einen Artikel beginnen? Wohl kaum.

"Wenn sie nicht funktionieren, weil sie falsche Dübel haben, werden sie abgeschaltet und repariert."

Oh ja... das kenne ich von meinen Wänden - einfach neuer Dübel rein - hält meistens auch.... Ich als Hobbyhandwerke kann bestätigen das Dübel total unwichtig sind - und so kann es auch Herr "Von Winand von Petersdorff-Campen" Jaja, so ein Betriebswirtschaftler hat halt den Durchblick. Und sogar Weisssagungen auf wissenschaftlicher Basis bekommen wir: "Entwickelt werden Reaktoren der vierten Generation, die Kernschmelzen unmöglich machen." Ich verstehe zwar nicht, warum man etwas, was nach der Meinung der Atomlobby noch nie möglich war noch unmöglicher machen kann, aber bitte unmöglicher ist immer noch besser als unmöglich, oder?

Ihr seid der Meinung das das zu schwammig formuliert war. Dann gibt euch das: "Andere Wissenschaftler beschäftigen sich damit, die Lebenszeit der radioaktiven Abfälle deutlich zu verkürzen, was die Sicherheitsanforderungen an die Endlagerstätten reduzieren würde." Hier werden also Roß und Reiter genannt - klar genannt werden hier die Wissenschaftler, die Aussichten und wie kurz die Halbwertszeit tatsächlich wird. Na jedenfalls vermute ich das es irgendwo zwischen den Zeilen steht. Beruhigend auf jeden Fall zu wissen, das es noch Wissenschaftler gibt, die nicht arbeitslos sind und eine "sinnvolle" Beschäftigung haben. Eigentlich könnte er hier den Artikel auch beenden, denn wir sind von Fakten ja quasi schon erschlagen. (Deswegen habe ich auch einige Fakten weggelassen)

Überall lauern die bösen AKW-Gegner "... zur erfolgreichen Strategie der Kernkraftgegner in Deutschland gehörte es stets, die Zukunftsfähigkeit der Kernkraft zu eliminieren – mit zwei Methoden: die technische Lösung der riesigen Endlagerproblematik politisch zu blockieren und die Forschung zu stoppen."

Genau - deswegen verhindern die Atombefürworter auch neumodische Bewertungsmethoden wie den Standortvergleich, die in anderen Ländern längst Standard sind. Die wirklich beste Methode im Umgang mit Atommüll ist die Augen vor der Wirklichkeit zu verschließen. Probiert es mal: Stellt vor euch einen Eimer Müll und schliesst dann die Augen. Ihr werdet sehen wie er dann verschwunden ist.

Der Artikel schließt mit den Worten "Die Konsequenz ist eine Knappheit der neuen Dimension. Dann wird Deutschland mit Stromausfällen kalkulieren müssen und mit Höchstpreisen. Die Kraftwerksgegner haben noch nicht verraten, wie sie diese Bedrohung vermeiden."

Genau - wir haben ja durch die AKWs einen historischen Tiefststand der Strompreise erreicht. Und alle die gegen AKWs sind, sind gegen jede Art von Kraftwerk?

Fazit: Einen schlechteren Artikel habe ich in der FAZ noch nie gelesen - ich lese die zwar nichtregelmäßig aber einige Artikel habe ich da schon gelesen - aber wie man so schön sagt: Es gibt kein Niveau, das man nicht noch unterschreiten kann. ;-)

es ist absolut unglaublich, was in der aktuellen debatte um die salonfähigkeit von atomenergie und die laufzeitverlängerung der längst abgeschriebenen atomkraftwerke derzeit diskutiert wird. trotz des aktuellen unfalls in frankreich setzt sich, die doktorin der physik, angela merkel lauthals  für die verlängerung der laufzeit von kernkraftwerken ein:

Sie werde sich dafür einsetzen, "dass wir die Laufzeiten unserer sicheren Kernkraftwerke in Deutschland verlängern", kündigte Merkel an. (Quelle: heute.de)

die kanzlerin hofft gemeinsam mit einigen cdu- und csuler_innen auf eine neue koalition, die es ermöglicht, einen neuen schwung in die debatte um den atomausstieg zu bringen.

CDU und CSU wollen längere Laufzeiten für die 17 Atomreaktoren als nach dem Ausstiegsbeschluss vorgesehen. Für die Regierungschefin sei aber klar, dass dies in der großen Koalition mit der SPD nicht zur Debatte stehe, sagte der Regierungssprecher. (quelle: reuter)

Doch plötzlich ändert sich etwas. Menschen, die Sie immer für mündig und intelligent hielten, denken plötzlich darüber nach, dass man vielleicht doch die Laufzeiten der Atommeiler in Deutschland verlängern könnte. (taz vom 11.07.)

gemeinsam mit den lobbygruppen der atomwirtschaft setzen die strahlenfreundlichen politiker_innen dabei auf die klimadiskussion und auf den mythos, dass atomenergie co2-frei produziert werden kann. einen kleinen einblick in diese co2-debatte bietet das schweizer fernsehen in folgender dokumentation:

in der zdf-sendung maybrit illner zum thema  "ist atomstrom doch die lösung?" lassen sich die argumente der atomausstiegsgegener_innen und atomaussiegsbefürworter_innen noch einmal geballt zu gemüte führen.

es bleibt abzuwarten, ob auch die derzeitig amtierende kanzlerin, nach ihrer abwahl, einen netten job bei einem der atomstrom produzierenden energiekonzerne bekommen wird. die einstellungbedingungen hat sie ja bereits erfüllt ;-) .

Wir werden von einer beispiellosen
Desinformationskampagne der Atomlobby überzogen.
Und es ist erstaunlich, wer alles dabei behilflich ist.

Besonders Sozialdemokraten erweisen sich, nicht nur vertreten durch RWE-Clement
und den IG BCE Gewerkschafter Hubertus Schmoldt, als besonders verlogen und korrupt.

Atomkraft ist nicht klimaschonend,
nicht billiger, nicht sicher, und schon gar nicht erneuerbar!

Gesine Schwan, die Bundespräsidentschaftskandidatin,
wollte sich ja bei einer Präsidentschaft besonders darum kümmern,
dem Volk demokratische Abläufe näher zu bringen.

Bei allem Respekt,
mit ihrer neuerlichen Äußerung, die Laufzeiten von Atomkraftwerken zu verlängern, um damit mehr Zeit zur Entwicklung von Alternativen zu haben, zeigt uns leider, daß es sich bei Frau Schwan, doch nicht um eine so intelligente Frau handelt.

Wir haben schon die letzten dreißig Jahre geschlafen,
jeder Tag, den wir mit dem Abschalten warten, kostet Geld und produziert weiteren Müll!
Dessen Jahrtausende währende Endlagerung ist weiterhin ungelöst und wird es bleiben!

Die Fortentwicklung bereits vorhandener, sauberer Technologien
zu Energieerzeugung; effizientere, monopolfreie Netze und eine dezentrale Stromerzeugung;
schaffen Arbeitsplätze und können die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung
der Bundesrepublik Deutschland auf Jahrzehnte sichern!

Spätestens, wenn Israelis und Amerikaner ihre Drohung wahrmachen, und mit den selben, altbekannten Lügen einen Krieg vom Zaun brechen und Luftangriffe gegen iranische Atomanlagen fliegen, werden Atomkraftgegner weltweit, jedes Gegenargument in der Hand halten.

Mindestens fünfzig radioaktiv strahlende Quellen nach dem Erdbeben in China,
sprechen für sich.
Die Folgen des neuerlichen Atomunfalls in Frankreich werden weiterhin vertuscht!
Dennoch wurde ein Weiterbetrieb untersagt.
Dreißig Hektoliter radioaktive Flüssigkeit sind übrigens 30 000 Liter,
auch die US-Atomraketen in Deutschland können uns jeden Moment um die Ohren fliegen...

Natürlich muß ins Grundgesetz, daß wir nachfolgenden Generationen nicht ein jahrtausendelang strahlendes Erbe hinterlassen dürfen!

Tour de France ist gedoped; der 'Force de Frappe' Sonnenkönig Sarkozy, dessen bezaubernde Frau Carla Bruni gerade ein neues Album veröffentlichte, es aber als First Lady nicht bei einem No-Nukes-Konzert performen darf, tut so, und damit zieht er mit Angela Merkel gleich: "Als sei nichts gewesen..."

Djdeutschland grüßt, ein weiteres Mal,
die Oberpfälzer Sägefische

Name: Kest Schwartzman

Shop Name: Vagabond Jewelry

Blog/Website: www.VagabondJewelry.net

Location: Somerville, MA

A little bit about Kest:
I went to Massachusetts College of Art. I spent a lot of time in the foundry and by the forge. I didn't wear any jewelry. I had a van, but walked everywhere I needed to get, because parking was such a hassle. Now I work out of my basement and ride a bike nearly everywhere I go (I borrow a car to go to fairs, the tent and table are a bit much for my bicycle). I wear Carrhartts, Blundstones, dirty T-shirts, and a cuff on my left wrist. Times have, I supposed, changed.

What do you sell that would appeal to the guys?
The earthiness of copper appeals to men- the cuffs tend to sell mostly to an urban male population, while the pendants seem to go well with everyone. And, of course, the word panels are entirely unisex, and so easy to wear, I've been selling them to a lot of guys who say things like " well, I'm not really one for jewelry, but..." which is always a wonderful thing to hear!

Where do you sell your stuff?
I sell mostly on my website, VagabondJewelry.net. Etsy has been wonderful, too, and really helped me get started- it took me a long time to actually set my website up so that it worked. This summer I'm doing a lot of fairs (craft fairs, folk festivals, and the like) and that's a lot of fun, too. I even got accepted to sell thing at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival at the end of July- I used to go there as a kid, and I'm really excited.

How long have you been in business?
I started selling cuffs made entirely from other people's scraps in undergrad. It helped make ends meet, but I didn't formally set up business till February of ‘07. I registered with my town as a business one year later, in February of 2008. May of this year, I quit my day job, and now I'm doing this full time.

How did you get started?
Well, back at Mass Art, I was making very large scale installations. I am still proud of what I was doing then, but they were massive things, I was putting in 80 hour weeks and would finish one piece per semester. The first summer I volunteered to watch the studio one day a week, so I had access to all the tools. I worked full time in the summers to pay for school, so there was no way I would be doing anything like I had been doing, so I started to experiment with what I could make copper do that my teachers told me I couldn't. At the time it was all cuffs, and I was having the time of my life. I kept that up for years, making money on the side, before deciding that really, this could support me.

How do you get the word out about your shop?
I pay for advertising. I'm really not very good at self marketing, and a lot of people I know don't even know I do this. This may not be the most efficient form of getting the word out, but for me, the stress of feeling like I'm always supposed to be handing out cards and selling myself just isn't worth it. So far, I've had very good luck with Project Wonderful, and I buy slots on webcomics, because I read them.

What's your creative process?
The cuffs are still my favorite thing to make. I'll usually cut a whole bunch of blanks in various widths and lengths, and I'll go ahead and file those. That's generally a day's labor. Then the next day is the fun. I have a vise, an anvil, a torch, and a whole bunch of different hammers. At this point, I have a repertoire of folds and forms that I know (all the things that turned out not to be nearly as impossible as the professors would have you think!). I basically play with those. What happens if I combine this fold with this form? How about if I only do half this fold? Oh, that's neat, if I do that half fold with this full fold, then... And every few weeks I'll come up with a new one- I figured out a fan fold just the other day that I'm working with now. And I play with the copper. This sounds a bit blasé, but the process of playing is, in fact, quite structured. Nothing can be hit twice with treating the metal in between, there's a whole lot of torch work, some things require gloves, while others do not, etc, but I would be lying if I didn't say it was fun. I'll spend all day working those blanks. The next day is a day of trimming ends, filing (again- the first filing was for my hands, the second is for yours!), sanding, and finally waxing and photographing. 

What do you want people to know about your work?
Every one of my pieces is unique. Every one has a name, because, in some way, every one is a friend of mine. I can't repeat a piece any more than you can find two people who agree on every aspect of the upcoming presidential election- some will have one thing in common, others another. And, like people, they change with time, and they change according to their environment. One might darken, another redden, and another will gain a shine I may never have intended. These pieces are all intended to be both tough enough and comfortable enough that they can be with you all the time; they'll join you on a hike along the Appalachian trail, and they're equally happy tagging along to your mother-in-laws dinner party.

Anything else you'd like us to know?
Having made friends with copper, I am now comfortable enough with it to evoke in it the natural landscape from which it emerged. From bold pieces, shouting of earthquakes, to secretive types whispering of quiet fields rustling with grass, the range of jewelry calls up all the world. Every piece I create is entirely different from every other piece I have ever created. Each has their own personality, as organic and hard to define as each of your friends.

This time it's... AGAIN! AREVA. Now, at this moment, Uranium solution leaks out from their plant Romans-sur-Isere (map). AREVA says, the Uranium cannot harm the environment. Source

That't great! Uranium cannot harm the Environment. Why not using it as a plant fertilizer?

Of course NO reaction on AREVAs website

The Atomic Industry / IAEA ignores every scientific proven link between high / low radiation and disease, mutation or death.

Since 1929 genetic and cancer creating effects of radioactivity are known.
In 1946 Hermann J. Mueller got for his experiments the nobelprice: Source

Here is the ASN reaction

Dear AREVA CEOs: Don’t forget to drink that Uranium water. With electrolyte!

More French atomic scandals here:

EdF - Eléctricité der France and the rising suicide rate in in Chinon atomic power plant

Cooperation between Lybia and France on the atomic sector

French atomic power plant: Worker contaminated with radiation - Again

Bad Business - France and Lybia on the atomic sector

French people - join us Germans: TOTAL PULL-OUT from Atomic Energy!

Life-Upgrade.com

Have a look at these headlines here:

Atomic power - electricity prices selfmade!

Atomic power and lobbyism - who is the winner?

The German Government (which consits of the two major parties CDU - pro atomic power and SPD - contra atomic power) donates contamination rights to the industry for free.

The value of these contaminations rights  (emission rights) is added on the electricity prices by the energy concerns. Although the energy concerns haven't paid for them.

For all Wiki people out there, here is the English link

This is how our economy works.

So, the electricity price is (by an average) 4 - 5,00,000,000 EUROs higher than the funding for Renewable Energies! as Herman Scheer President of EUROSOLAR said - web.

So, RWE for example can afford to build a new brown coal power plant - which is especial climate damaging. Therefor they get even more contamination rights.

And so, 45 new coal plants are planned in Germany.

Who wonders?

And these are the people who are responsible for this development:

Former Federal Minister Margareta Wolf of the German Greens - now making PR for longer atomic power plant milages - see HERE

Former Federal Minister Wolfgang Clement of the German SPD party - now in the board of directors of RWE - an atomic power plant operator - see HERE

Department chief for reactor safety, radiation protection, and nuclear dumping, Walter Hohlefelder became general agent of E.ON - see HERE - he was no longer Supervisior of it - no! Instead he became the Leader of it!

Atomic convern VIAGs top civil servant Gerhard Hennenhöfer also became a “E.ON member”. - see HERE

Energy referent Wolfgang Dirschauer (long time nodal point of energy in German Government) - went into the climate safety department of Vattenfall - remember them as the big loser of 2007 HERE

Former Energy servant of the SPD party Gerd von der Gröben now is attorny in fact of E.ON - see HERE

Former state secretary and politician of the German Greens Rezzo Schlauch now is an advisor of the concern and atomic power plant operator EnBW - see HERE

SWR Broadcaster director Willi Steul became also an EnBW advisor.

These German politicans were actually PAID by the Atomic Industry:

CDU Economy politician Laurenz Mayer regularly “granted benefits” from atomic concern RWE. He still is in Government (!) - web

FDP Technology politician Ulrike Flach was paid by atomic power plants constructor and concern SIEMENS. - also still in Government (!) - web

The energy concerns are allowed to earn up to 8,000,000,000 EUROs of money - which WE PAY!
Life-Upgrade.com

And, don't miss the eye witness report about the 2006 Demonstrations.

And now, more impressions from Belarus / Minsk:

And this is me infront of the National Library in Minsk (it's all mine!!!):

Of course, the Government Palace photos are from 2006, when construction was still going on infront of it. Next to this building for Belarussian dictator is the beautiful red church, in whichs cellar, people met in 1986 to inform each one about the explosion in the atomic reactor. A thing not many people know - and I've got this information from the BAG Tschernobyl Germany.

Life-Upgrade.com

When I first came to LA, I was a motorcycle messenger for a couple of years while I "found my feet" (yes I'm legal here so no Guantanamo, thank you). These two years smashed any mechanical desire out of me. Long hours thrashing around the City, looking forward to a weekend, only having to spend that weekend cleaning carbs, servicing, changing tyres, etc., so I could go back out for another week of work. It made me want to throw my tool kit away forever.

The Atom has begun to re-kindle those almost dead embers of interest in tinkering, however. Aside from the obvious beauty of the mechanical components of the Atom and the ability to see many mechanical components actually doing their jobs, there are significant advantages to the Atom in terms of being able to "do-it-myself".

There are also some significant downsides and foibles. This post will go through some of the issues that have arisen since I got the Atom and the plusses and minuses of the car in relation to them.

The first issue I encountered was the day I first got her home. Basically, the clutch would not disengage and kept driving her.

I had first hand seen that the lack of ground clearance was a massive issue and had to move my trailer to a "hump" to even get the Atom on to the trailer without crunching the tub. I got her home, found a hump, was trying to gingerly back up so as I could stop if the angle was wrong. At that point the clutch bit, I couldn't disengage and she drove off the trailer. I honestly think that the only thing that stopped the tub crunching was the vacuum created by me clenching my bum!

The upside of trying to sort this was that bleeding both ends of the clutch line is a piece of cake. The downside was that it didn't cure the issue. It seemed that the slave cylinder might be the culprit. If that were the case it was a full "engine out" job with only 40 miles on her. Taking her back to Brammo was a non-starter and they helped me find a place familiar with the Atom locally - TLC.

They had an endoscope that could see into the bell housing. By this time, there was a significant fluid leak. They found the pipe connecting the quick fit to the slave cylinder was not on properly - which they remedied.

Alas, that's not been the end of the clutch issue. Every once in a while, the clutch still refuses to disengage. As it's no longer leaking fluid, it points to the master cylinder, which will be replaced this weekend. Never truly knowing where the clutch is going to bite is a bit of a mission on top of the actual driving. It also ruins the street cred when you lurch off at a light too!

Next up, yet another fluid leak coming from exactly the same place. This time it wasn't clutch fluid as I drew a line on the reservoir to see if I was losing any. I wasn't and this was a significant leak.

The upside of the Atom is that once the "tea tray" is removed, the motor is really easy to access. The downside of this problem was that I couldn't tell what the fluid was, or see where it was coming from. I spotted a leak in one of the coolant lines, added a hose clamp and thought "sorted". Wrong. I found an oil leak from the pan gasket. fixed that and thought "sorted". Wrong. After pulling my hair out and nearly succumbing to the temptation of adding a dye to the oil, I eventually found another coolant leak right at the top of the motor. The problem had been that I had had in fact, three fluids leak and collect and drip from exactly the same point under the engine. Anyhow, she's been dry as a bone since then - knock on wood!

Next up! She blew 2 exhaust gaskets. One connecting the muffler to the "upspout" (my word) and one connecting headers to "downspout". This happened on a Canyon run. While the sound of a Chieftan Tank on creatine did have some merits, I was pretty ticked off that the gaskets had only lasted 1000 miles.

The downside - Brammo's design of exhaust has flaws, particularly the "ram horn" headers that generate and trap a lot of heat. Not only does this reduce HP because of hot air being sucked in the supercharger, I'm sure it also caused the gaskets to fail.

The upside - The Atom is stock in many ways. The Ecotec motor is standard issue Saturn plus supercharger, for example. I went to my local Auto store, $17.00 and 1/2 hour later, the gaskets were replaced and functional. I'm definitely going to replace the Brammo exhaust with an aftermarket system as funds and time allow as it's inevitable the gaskets will blow again and I want to address the "hot air" issue too.

Last but not least, the starter motor solenoid. Yep. 1200 miles it went. On the face of it an easy fix. Up on jacks and stands, the starter is right there. However, whoever designed the upper mounting bolt to be located where it is should be "punished" with the rough end of a rag man's trumpet. An utter swine to get out, worse to put back. I think in fact that when the motor does come out for something, that bolt location will need to be helicoiled. $50 for the solenoid though and back on the road.

So, all in all, a fair amount of niggles and un-necessaries. I was expecting foibles, but not really the ones I've had. The upside is that the Atom is relatively easy to work on, parts are not expensive for motor and drive train at least.

I have been re-inspired to work on a vehicle. There are other Atom owners who have gone to town re-building theirs, in one case to make it 450HP! I'm not that inspired yet, but happy to do the work to keep her running so far and as I add the aftermarket improvements like the exhaust, maybe I'll get the full bug that some owners have to constantly have her apart.

For now, I hope the work that's been done and the upcoming work will just allow me to drive the heck out of her for a few thousand miles! If I can do that, I'll also be taking her to the track and am very much looking forward to tinkering on the set up of shocks and so on. Lots to learn there.

LINKS: Atom Club, Vetraceuticals, 5x5 Life

But this time, it's all about an independet report from a person I know, who lives in Minsk. She was at the October Square in Minsk, during the brutal abatement of the peaceful April 2006 demonstrations by Belarussian Omon Police. Recently a bomb exploded there, in July 2008 - read about it HERE. Or have a look at the old Minsk from 1944 instead.

Here are the photos - plus an authentic report:

Eye witness - Demonstration in Minsk April 2006

I'm writing to inform you about important things which have happened in my country and with me these days. I should say that I lost all my scepticism during the last week. I couldn't believe that so many people are ready [b]to show their negation to the regime of Lukashenko. The hole week from the 19th - 24th of march people came to the October square to demonstrate their wishes. And all these days a group of activists spent their day and night time in the tends in front of the Republic Palace.

]It was the 24th of March, 3a.m. when the activists were arrested. Belorussion state TV channels told that these people where sitting in the tends drinking alcohol, taking drugs and doing sex, all together. Belorussion state journalists found there lots of empty syringes and porno-magazines. Among these people was my friend from Gomel who got into the prison for 10 days. She is a professional sportsman and she came to Minsk to show that people from other cities of our country support minskers. But I'm not sure that this is the end of her story.
So in the morning,  March,25  I came to the central park with my sister and two more friends from Gomel, where people decided to meet asking for the freedom of prisoners.

It was a sunny day. Common people of different age and status came to the demonstration with flowers and colorful balloons. People smiled. We listened to Milinkevich and his wife, Kozulin also had a word (these two men pretended to be a president of RB). After that people decided to go to the walls of the prison. All people moved down the streets of Minsk very organized, no one destroyed anything. But when we reach Derzinskij avenue the speed of the movement became lower. I couldn't understand what happens. We had to round the coner or to cross the street.  My friend Alex and I decided to cross the street to know everything. And when we appeared in the middle of the road I saw a rank of millitians who were making specific noise with their cudgels to frighten us.

I looked behind me and saw hundred of people who didn't want to run away. They had no weapon but they wanted to fight. I went straight on making photos. But when I understood that the millitians would be near me in a few seconds, honestly to say I lost courage. By that moment my sister was near me. We climbed up on the hill. Millitia climbed up too, to catch people, but they didn't beat us, because of my big camera they thought I was a journalist.
I'm sending you photos. You'll understand everything.

I saw with my own eyes how millitians threw the smoke bomb and trampled down a man who died in the hospital in the next few hours. And on the next day state TV told me that the opposition didn't know how to use the real bombs with the help of which they wanted to heart millitians. Can you imagine this?
Finally they let us go. There were too many foreign journalists. But if they wanted they could shoot all of us. They met us on the street which was surrounded by the hills and very high fences.
The leader of the demonstration Kozulin was arrested. One man died.

The next hour after that, millitians were catching young people with dirty boots and non uniform stile and took them into the prison. The boy-friend of my sister Denis was among them. He even wasn't on the demonstration. He came with his friends in the center to drink bear. Millitia didn't like his wear stile. You ask me why? When Lukashenko show Denis on TV, all his electorate, old people will agree that Denis with his bold head, tattoos and big black boots is a real extremist.
It's clear that Lukashenko will stay for the next 4 years. I hope, it'll be his latest.

PHOTOS:

We should never forget, that Dictator Lukashenko is a criminal - even German Television (Channel ZDF) called him a criminal in 2006. All the best to the Belarussian friends. Old Belarussian people call Lukashenko "Our second Chernobyl". Why? Have a look HERE

Life-Upgrade.com

Looking ahead to Q3, Intel's estimate of $10-$10.6B is above consensus of $10B. Gross margin in Q3 is expected to be 58% on lower costs and seasonally higher volumes, and Intel expects Q4's gross margin to be even higher.

A couple of big new products will be impacting Intel in Q3 and is baked into the gross margin guidance.

1) Intel Atom, Intel's new 45nm low-end CPU intended for netbooks and embedded consumer devices is seeing great demand and design win momentum (volumes demanded are 5-6x higher than anticipated) and is currently seeing some production constraints particularly in the back-end test area. For Intel, the 45nm Atom will be a cheaper chip to produce and will help with margins at the low-end of the market and in developing markets. However, a concern is how Atom will fit into Intel's margin structure, and Intel's current guidance includes the assumption that Atom's platform (CPU and chipset) margin is 10 points lower than Intel's Core platform, which is 10 points below Intel's quad-core product line. The strong demand for Atom is a good sign for Intel, as it will be able to close this margin discrepancy sooner as Atom ramps to volume

2) Montevino (next-generation Centrino) is also factoring into Q3 as Intel is expecting that a 30-day pushout due to problems with its radio and integrated graphics will have minimal impact on its back-to-school schools, with OEMs able to integrate chips in with shorter cycle times, though Ottelini did admit that Montevino will probably play a bigger role in the second refresh round of back-to-school PC sales.

The big unknown for Intel is whether Netbook sales will erode demand for mainstream laptops, and Intel is putting forward the thesis that Netbooks are a category unto themselves, and will see lots of demand in emerging markets and first-time laptop buyers. After travelling with a netbook over the past several months, I think this is the one area where Intel may be too optimistic. With the growth of a whole new class of Netbooks coming to market featuring Windows XP Home as an option or standard, and consumers reliant on net applications to an unprecedented degree (e-mail, blogging, social networking), and combined with the real lack of killer client applications (applications that need to run entirely on the laptop like Microsoft Office), the degree of cannibalization and/or pricing pressure in mainstream notebooks may surprise in H2/08. In 2008 then, the gross margin profile of Atom may be material to Intel hitting its 58% margin expectation, but with Intel switching rapidly to all 45nm parts this year, Intel's tone is definitely upbeat in hitting these margin targets.

Longer-term, Intel's gross margin in 2009 will see a few points of gross margin hit due to costs incurred to bring 32nm products coming to market, primarily in the H1/09, but for Intel, maintaining a manufacturing technology lead vis-a-vis AMD will be important for them to keep ahead in the price/volume expansion game.

Bottom line for Intel, the demand trends in notebooks and netbooks is proving to be better than anticipated thus far in 2008 in light of a shaky global economy, but at least thus far, Intel appears to be winning in a race to scale economies versus AMD. And in Netbooks and Internet-enabled consumer devicess, if Intel can execute in satisfying swelling demand for Atom, Intel's stock could be a solid performer through H2/08.

According to alleged "insiders", Dell's upcoming UMPC called the "E" will go on sale next month and the basic model called the "E Classic" will go for just $299.

Specs for this super cheap version reportedly include

• Intel 1.6GHz Atom processor
• 8.9-inch LCD screen
• 512MB of RAM
• 4GB of storage
• Linux operating system (Ubuntu, I'd assume)

A more expensive model with more RAM, storage space, a built-in webcam and a 12-inch screen should also be available.

Something you might remember when the E was first talked about last month, it will not have function keys, giving more room to the other keys.

[Via Electronista]

Task I: Reading Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds

Let’s read in a “classic” web feed in the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) format pulled from the Vancouver.rb site and print out the latest headlines.

require 'rss'
require 'open-uri'

feed  = RSS::Parser.parse( 'http://vanrb.wordpress.com/feed' )

puts "==  #{feed.channel.title} ==" 

feed.items.each do |item|
  puts "- #{item.title}"
  puts "  (#{item.link})"
  puts
end

Prints:

==  Vancouver Ruby & Rails Central ==

- Vancouver.rb Q&A with Adam Palmblad on Startup TeamPages.com, Ruby on Rails, and More
  (http://vanrb.wordpress.com/2008/06/12/adampalmblad/)

- Ruby/Rails Meetup - Inside DogOnRails - A Wifidog Auth Server w/ Joe Bowser
  (http://vanrb.wordpress.com/2008/05/08/june-meetup/)

- Vancouver.rb Q&A with Brock Whitten on Rails, Getting Off Rails (Merb), PmpknPi and More
  (http://vanrb.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/brockwhitten/)

- Vancouver.rb Project Spotlight: Slide Show (S9) - A Free Web Alternative to PowerPoint and KeyNote
  (http://vanrb.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/s9/)

To include a post’s summary use item.description or to include a post’s full-text use content_encoded. Example:

puts item.description
puts item.content_encoded

That’s it. Next, let’s try to read in a “modern” web feed in the Atom Publishing format pulled again from the Vancouver.rb site.

Detour: Upgrade your standard RSS library to get Atom Publishing support

Note, that the standard RSS library supports the Atom Publishing format since version 0.1.8 (the latest version is 0.2.4). To check up what version ships with your Ruby installation use the RSS::VERSION constant. Example:

puts "RSS::VERSION #{RSS::VERSION}"

Prints:

RSS::VERSION 0.1.6

Ooops. We need to upgrade! Let’s grab the latest version from the Ruby Application Archive and try again.

RSS:VERSION 0.2.4

Ready to roll.

Task II: Reading Atom Publishing Feeds

Let’s pull a “modern” web feed in the Atom Publishing format from the Vancouver.rb site and print out the latest headlines.

feed = RSS::Parser.parse( 'http://vanrb.wordpress.com/feed/atom' )

puts "== #{feed.title.content} ==" 

feed.items.each do |item|
  puts "- #{item.title.content}"
  puts "  (#{item.link.href})"
  puts
end

And use item.content.content to get a post’s full-text. That’s it.

Note, that the standard library maps the different web feed flavors 1:1 to Ruby fields reflecting the different formats e.g. the feed title stored in feed.channel.title in RSS 0.9x/2.0 becomes feed.title.content in Atom and the feed item’s full-text stored in feed.item.content_encoded in RSS 2.0 becomes feed.item.content.content in Atom (Yes, it’s content.content). Welcome to the wonderful world of web feed formats.

Appendix: Alternative libraries to read web feeds in Ruby

• Simple RSS
• FeedTools
• rFeedParser
• Feed Normalizer

Any libraries missing? Questions? Comments? Send them along to the Vancouver.rb forum/mailing list. Thanks!

Dopo tanta attesa e le nostre prove preliminari, abbiamo avuto l'occasione di dare uno sguardo ravvicinato ad Intel Atom (nome in codice "Silverthorne" e "Diamondville", a seconda dell'impiego), una CPU dedicata ai MID, ai NetBook e ai mini-PC. Atom porta con sé alcune sorprese, scopriamole insieme.

Una scelta interessante e sorprendente

Le CPU Atom sono sorprendenti per più di una ragione, a cominciare dal fatto che integrano funzionalità moderne (EM64T, SSSE3, etc.) in una vecchia architettura . Atom è il primo processore x86 in-order dai tempi del Pentium. L'amministrazione energetica e i costi produttivi sono due degli imperativi che hanno guidato Intel nella progettazione di questa CPU, a spese delle prestazioni. Quindi, non aspettatevi un concorrente del Core 2 Duo.

FONTE: tomshw.it

Δημοσιεύθηκαν φωτογραφίες σε γερμανικό site που αναφέρουν ότι απεικονίζουν το αναμενόμενο netbook από την εταιρεία. Συγκρίνει μάλιστα το μέγεθός του με το μοντέλο XA 3530 »

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