Water Fueled Car

Since this hasn't been on CNN or any other news I follow, I assume that our corporate masters do not wish us to hear about this new car. Reuters had some information thankfully and with some surfing I was able to learn a little.

The car has been produced by Genepax Co Ltd in Japan. No time line for mass production has been announced yet, but they have stated they intend to do so in the "very near future". The current car is 300W, but they plan to produce 1kw units for both car and homes. They stated that 1 liter of water will run the car at 80kph/50mph for about an hour. I looked but could not find the top speed of the vehicle. I assume that the increased power generation would result in an increase of power, but decrease in efficiency.

I want to learn more about the long term effect of utilizing water this way. I know they are separating the hydrogen out of the water which must generate oxygen, but what happens after the separation I am unsure of. Could billions of cars like this cause global environmental issues such as too much ozone or reduction in our water supply? If anyone knows please pass the information along.

The best links I could find for information were.
NDTV
IPower

George Carlin Died

George Carlin was very possibly my favorite comedian of all time. His views on war, religion and humans in general was insightful and his delivery great. I can remember laughing so hard at some of his routines that I could not stand up.

He passed away from heart failure in LA. Here is the CNN article.

Below is a Carlin youtube video I enjoyed.

ShareYourListing.com has Street View

We just launched our integration of the Google Street View technology. A user now has the ability to switch the map to street view to refine the latitude, longitude, pitch and yaw. These new controls will only show up if the street you have the property on has street view data available. This data is fairly extensive and over half our current properties have it available.

What are the results of this functionality? Check out this current listings map view.
Prestigious Home

I am so impressed with this technology. Google has a lot of impressive tools, but the maps with street view is my favorite.

Movie Review - Incredible Hulk

I would give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. The special effects were very good and Edward Norton was fantastic. More importantly it was not the same old story that I was expecting. They started it out after he was on the run and the plot was enjoyable. I was very excited at the end of the film when Tony Stark showed up. I could see future movies bringing Iron Man, Spider Man, and or the Hulk together.

Live Tyler did an excellent job of acting, but her recent lip injections were distracting and really did not improve her appearance. I find it unfortunate that an actress of her quality feels the need to have surgical enhancements.

The trailer is below.

So You Think You Can Dance - Drinking Game

My wife and I are big fans of the So You Think You Can Dance show. This year I was really disappointed that a particular dancer did not make the final 20, and I had a rough day at work so I was drinking a little for the show.

Rules

1. When any routine completes and the judging begins...take a drink.
2. Anytime they say the word tamale...take a drink.
3. Anytime dancers fall to the floor....take a drink.

I only tried it for the one show, but I found it enjoyable.

On a side note...the dancer whom I really wanted to make it into the top 20 was Evan Kasprzack. His audition is embedded below.

Programming Language Rant

After 18 years of programming I have programmed in more languages than I care to think about. There are certain instances when one language is better than another, but I get so irritated when I hear a programmer going on about how one language is the end all be all of languages.

Any programmer saying php or .net or any other language is the best is really saying thats the language they know. I hear this most commonly about .net. Since this is the current push of the Microsoft marketing giant many peoples eyes glaze over as they chant "we hear and obey corporate master".

I could ramble on for pages regarding the shortcomings and issues with using .net. I have three years experience in .net and have seen a company go under and a PA county in danger of bankruptcy caused by .net projects gone awry. This does not mean that .net is useless or a language that should never be used. If the project has deep pockets, and you have a good .net programming resource then it is a fine language to use. But for the majority of projects another language is likely to be more suitable.

Fudgy Walnut Brownies

As a Jazzercise instructor my wife calls upon me to socialize now and then. Today is a local dance recital and afterward people are gathering for food and drinks. I volunteered to make our covered dish and went with brownies.



I selected the recipe Fudgy Walnut Brownies and added some broken up mini heath bars to the batter. Kendra and I both love the corner pieces so a few weeks ago I purchased the Bakers Edge brownie pan. The results tasted even better than it looked.

ShareYourListing.com

I work for a small company, WA007.com, out of Miami Florida. When I say small I refer to the number of full time employees, not the scale of our work. WA007 is best known for the outstanding design work of James Begera. James and I met up when he was doing design for a Bacardi project and the project manager realized the development team had no one who could integrate the back end with the Flash James had developed. I was brought in to fill that void. After which James brought me in as freelance work on many projects that needed content management or advanced flash. Early in 2007 I became a full time employee.

I brought a new level of capability to WA007, but the work coming in reflects our reputation for amazing designs. James and I decided that we should have a project for us that I could work on when development work was slow. We decided on a site that integrated real estate with our video expertise.

On June 1st of 2008 we launched the beta version of our vision. ShareYourListing.com has a lot of future enhancements planned, but I am pretty proud of where we are. In our first week, with no advertising, we have drawn the attention of several real estate agents and have great hopes for the success of the site.

One of our many features is the ability to embed our media center. Below is a sample property with the player. This is a demo property to show off the video capabilities. It is a very nicely prepared video.

Let the Blogging begin

After many months on twitter I've found out two things.

1. I post more often than I thought I would.
2. I often want to post more than 140 characters.
   

So here I am with my first adult sized blog area. I anticipate this will largely contain programming tips and tidbits, but once I get started who knows what might come out.

-Tom