A couple months ago I wrote about the four phase traffic signals I saw in Sweden and Denmark. These are better than the three phase lights we use in the United States. The improved lights help smooth the flow of traffic, improve safety, and save gas. Today I saw a post about a fancier version. [...]
Apple’s MagSafe power supply connector is one of the rare inventions that I wish I had thought of. Once you see one, it is an obvious solution to a common problem. It is much more convenient than standard power connectors, and has the advantage of easily breaking away if someone trips over your power cord. [...]
I was able to spend some time in Sweden and Denmark a while ago. Other than the fun of traveling, the trip was to look at the differences between Scandinavian countries and the United States. One of the first differences I noticed is that they use four phase traffic lights instead of the three phase [...]
One of the many modern `conveniences’ that actually take more time than they save is voicemail. Answering machines and voicemail are occasionally useful, but more often than not, someone just leaves a rambling message with details they end up repeating when you call them back. Fortunately, Caller ID has mostly eliminated the need for voicemail: [...]
In an unsurprising move, GM announced that they are killing Pontiac. I think it is amazing that Pontiac has survived this long. They produced very few good cars since the end of the muscle car era. For the past several decades, they have been known for poor designs that are ugly and hard to work [...]
I just watched a couple episodes of Season Three of Rocky and Bullwinkle on DVD. This is a great show, but the DVD collection is an example of something that has been bugging me for years.
I’m sick of the silly animated menus on movies. They were moderately interesting the first four times ten years ago. [...]
I finally fixed the electrical problems in the tailgate of my Subaru Impreza. Four wires were broken where they pass from the frame of the car to the frame of the tailgate. I tried to fix the problem a while ago, but couldn’t locate the source. My multimeter gave correct readings, but nothing worked. The [...]