Car Evolution

January 8th, 2011

Now I am a BIG fan of cars. Ever since I was a young boy, I was buying auto-magazines, checking out new cars and I was generally fascinated by the way cars look, sound and feel. The whole concept, however, might get turned upside down if the plans of some auto-makers come true.
GM Puma EV
In the picture above GM’s EN-V is presented, a two-seater electric car. The company went public with the idea somewhere in the spring of last year (if I am not wrong). Today as I logged into YM, a news-article with the following video in it caught my eye:

They are actually driveable! This means that in a few years tops we will have to start re-educating driving instructors and start re-writing the rules.

Now I know the whole concept is something very different than what people think of when thinking of cars, but I kind of like the idea. Just think about the space people can save up in parking lots, the places they can access and just look at that cool turn radius: it practically turns around itself. Yes, yes it kills out the original idea of the car, the car as we know it will disapear… or will it? 🙂

[1]

Happy New Year 2011!

January 1st, 2011

Fireworks 2011
Resolutions? Well… I’ll try to write more this year than I did last year (I also plan to travel more 😉 ).

Cleanup

December 19th, 2010

On one of those days when you simply do not know what to do, here’s an idea: clean up the disgusting mess from underneath your laptop keyboard.

There are actually several reasons to do this:
– The keyboard will be clean
– It will keep you occupied for a while (it took me 2 hours)
– It will be less likely that you will have the heart to eat at your laptop again

So, how does one clean the laptop keyboard? Simple, follow these steps:

1. Get something thin with which you can gently pop out ALL your keys. Click off your keys from the joint, and arrange them in the exact same position they were on the laptop (it’s fun and it will keep you from pushing every key till you find the spot, when you will need to put it back).
keyboard
2. Next carefully take off the joints themselves. These can be tiny and fragile pieces so be gentle with them. Take your time, study the mechanism. In my case some of them are really, really tiny.
keyboard
3. Clean off the area underneath the keyboard. Use some kind of alcohol to do this and under no circumstances water (duuuh). It can also help if you have a brush of some sort to do this (I used toothbrush that I bought especially for this job 😉 ).

4. When everything seems clean, move on to the keys themselves: a little alcohol, a little brushing, a little polishing and you’re done with one key. Now, do it about 100 times more 😛 .
keyboard
5. If you are done with all keys (or if you got really bored, whichever comes first) put all the keys back to their position. Hopefully you kept my advice from the first step and did not just pile them up. If not, then you will have lot’s of fun finding the right spot 😀 .

6. Enjoy the shine of your freshly cleaned laptop 😉

—===[#36]===—

Lessons Learnt

December 5th, 2010

This little story actually happened a while ago, but because I was quite busy and/or tired during the last two months, I did not really have the energy to update my blog. I really did not know if I should write this or not, but then I thought, why not? Maybe somebody else can learn from it.
Lessons
The story actually begins with the fact that I changed some parts on my car and I thought I should sell the old ones on the internet for someone who might need it. For this reason I wrote two messages on two of the local BMW forums in the “sales” section hoping that someone would buy them. I made some nice photos, indicating some scratches on the old parts clearly and set a price which is around one fourth of the new parts price. I did not really think someone would come and buy it, but surprise surprise someone did.

My buyer seemed to be a really nice guy who was a little short of money, but in the end we agreed on a price which would be OK for him. I opted for the solution which allowed me to choose and pay for the delivery method. Not knowing the guy (and being from a part of the country which does not have a good reputation on this) I thought this solution would be safer.

The next week on Monday I immediately went to Fan Courier, a local courier service which would deliver my package. After some complications (the courier company did not have it’s own packaging material: great minus) I managed to pack the parts correctly and the operator at the desk completed a form which would allow me to be in control of the delivery: the receiver can not open the package until he pays the price. Package out, phoned the guy, waiting started…. and it continued for about a week. I tried to phone the guy, but now he did not want to pick up. It seemed fishy… I went back to the courier asking for the situation of the return money, he examined it and he noticed that in fact there was no return money picked up… strange… but why?

It turns out that the operator from the desk forgot to complete the return-money section thus the delivery guy did not even bother picking it up. I tried to stay calm: it is not my fault… the operator was the one who made the mistake… he should sort it out. From this point of view I am great-full for the guy, he really did his best by phoning the guy, then the agency at the delivery point to go and search for the guy. In the end they caught him and he agreed to send the money. He was really sorry and claimed that he really wanted to pay but the delivery guy said no. So… that was a relief… at least for two more days, when I went to pick up the return-money: what I found there was actually the parts themselves… no scratch, just unpacked and repacked. The guy now claimed that the parts were actually no good…

So, I learned a few things:
– Try not to sell things over the internet (if there is another alternative, always choose that)
– Make sure you read and understand the forms before you sign them
– Bad reputations of some areas of the country have been confirmed: I’ll try to avoid them in the future.

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Why they are better than us

September 27th, 2010

Have a look at this (good thing they have English subtitles):

Now… let’s stop and think for a minute. Is the above ad actually a good thing? Should we give up our freedom of choice, just because we want to help the local producers? Are we really helping them?

Maybe, just maybe, if the cucumbers were not crooked and ugly we would buy them. The reason why supermarkets sell better, is simple: they have weak competitors. The quality of products in supermarkets is actually quite low (especially the small ones invading local communities). Just give some more soul into your product, and for sure you can outsell them.

Take Italy for example: you can only buy quality goods from local, specialized shops. In Italy you can only buy quality bread or quality meat from specialized shops. The local supermarkets have no chance against them.

The ultimate example of local people fighting back against foreign products is Germany: after WWII, when the whole country was in ruins, what did the authorities do? Opened up the borders, freed up the market, attracted foreign producers to sell their products there. What was the effect? Germans started to produce better products, and eventually pushed back the “invasion”. Nowadays, we know how German products are doing…

Have some more faith, do not give up, adapt to the surroundings, fight back! And for the love of God, do not think that videos like the one above will help you. If they are pushing back, and you are falling back, then take a first step forward… just for the extra stability… then… well, then we’ll see 😉

—===[#34]===—