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damien stolarz blog

Presidential Race thoughts

I like Obama. I like Clinton. I even like McCain. I’m happy.

McCain will fight - and I don’t like war - but he will fight with practicality. He’s a real soldier, not a G.I. Joe doll like bush. Something will have to improve.

I don’t think he’s as bought and sold to the current Republican party as it is made out. He pays his dues. Try being a part of a group like that some time - at a top level - and you’ll see how much you have to bow down and pay your dues. I think he’s a pragmatist.

I think the venom against Clinton is strong. I remember going to an old person’s house and seeing some Bill Clinton expose book of innuendo they were reading. They also ranted once or twice about Clinton (the male, philandering one). I imagine some of that carries forward. I don’t know, this was anecdotal.

I would absolutely love it if Obama could go the distance. We all want him to.

The battle is going to come down to “experience” if he’s running. Which is ridiculous, because usually the president has a cabinet. The cabinet is made up of other people who also have experience. It’s not like the president makes every decision - he/she puts together a good team, like a CEO or any other kind of boss.

Electrical protection for toddlers - too interesting to leave alone

There are these little plastic protectors that go over electrical sockets to protect them from toddlers.
This morning while vacuuming the vacuum suddenly stopped… and on the other end of the line, my son had yanked the cord and was replacing the plastic cover, presumably to keep it safe from babies.

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Malls are for cars, not pedestrians ;(

I’ve lived in short walking distance from the Topanga Westfield mall for nearly a decade. I have been there literally hundreds of times with my daughter. They recently doubled the size of the mall, adding an Apple store, a 2-story carousel, a Target, and a bunch of amenities.

The problem is, it has always been hard to walk to the mall, and now it is getting harder, and the architects of the mall don’t seem to have foot traffic TO the mall in any of their plans. The parking lot is being constructed as a huge moat of fast moving SUVs, and there aren’t even any designated crosswalks - not even some painted lines - to permit pedestrians to approach the mall on foot, perhaps from the increasingly popular public transportation that Los Angeles has developed.

Here’s a video showing the difficulty of walking/rolling to the mall:

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Monetizing Podcasts & Videoblogs

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A recent article I wrote, Monetizing Podcasts & Videoblogs, was just published in Streaming Media magazine and has now been reprinted on streamingmedia.com.

“Any business built around podcasts and videoblogs has to start with the fundamentals: Compelling content that can be exchanged with an audience for their attention. Still, the past two years have taught us many lessons about how we can turn that exchange into a successful business model.”

Read the article

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Maker’s Faire Nash Exhibit - How it went

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Hi, I’m Adam Stolarz, Damien’s brother and carputer hacker cohort. We just got done showing off our restored and computerized Nash at the Maker’s Faire.

So I was in charge of demonstrating the Nash’s computer features and GUI, and quite a few people said they had seen the original Nash blurb page but didn’t feel like they actually learned anything about it (which was a neat trick in that it gave us the element of surprise, but I imagine some people went “Oh old car I get it” and thought nothing more about it).

Our 1950 Nash Ambassador is rigged up with two computers: One for “audiovisual infotainment” as my brother would say-Streetdeck, and its complete in-car media and navigation features (so many demonstrations…)- and one dedicated to Skype video conferencing. It also has two wireless hotspots, pulling down internet over EVDO, one using Sprint, the other using Verizon, which provided us with wireless connectivity and satellite images for our navigation all the way up from Los Angeles. (With impressive speeds, I might add).
There are three screens in the front: two on the dash, one on the windshield. The left one is a touchscreen for controlling the media/nav computer, the right one a smaller ultra-bright screen for video conferencing. Those can be hidden by the original roll-down metal radio cover, leaving just the rearview screen (which mirrors the image on the touchscreen). This was a feature we used on the drive up. Once we had our music playing we turned on the nav screen with a GPS-based speedometer, trip meter, lat/long etc., shut the window, and relied on the rearview monitor. (The speedometer, incidentally, was much preferred over our authentic but woefully inaccurate steering wheel speedometer.)

All in all, the Nash exhibit was a rousing success. Last year we had a similar set-up, only in a hybrid Toyota Highlander. One thing we learned in comparing that year and this year, is that it’s more impressive and eye-catching to have an old restored car rigged with computers than a new hybrid. Even though the Highlander was pretty, it was not as interesting as the Nash with computers run all through it. Also, it gave the wrong impression that we were a custom shop pimping out cars with computer system, as opposed to carputer hackers and makers, there to spread the message of “Yes, you can also do this in your car!”

And, to spread that message, here be some links:
Streetdeck - The software used in our Nash, with it’s in-car loveliness.
The Mp3Car Forums - The biggest carputer community in the tubes that I know of.
Car PC Hacks - Damien’s book, of course, and my reference of choice.
Now that the senseless plugging rampage is over, I’ll bid you all adieu. We had a long exciting six hour drive up, and have another six hour drive back down to LA ahead of us. For all those who saw us at the show and all those simply reading about our car, thanks very much for the interest.

-adam

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TransitTV - on Los Angeles’ Orange Line

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I’ve been watching a bit of the evenly-bilingual TransitTV content since I’ve been commuting on the Los Angleles Orange Line across the San Fernando valley. I seem to be one of the few who uses a laptop/EVDO combination on LA rapid transit.

The system cycles through a lot of short form content, weather, news clips and also shows a map (powered by Microsoft’s Live Maps) so you can see where the bus is. I believe the content refreshes over WiFi when the bus is in the station.

But it doesn’t always go according to plan. Last time I took the bus, the video was having stuttering problems. You could recognize the cause - it looks like some background process was flailing in the background, causing everything to stutter once every few seconds on whatever linux or windows machine was doing the playback. The period of the stutter was just long enough to let you get interested in what the talking head was saying, and then punish you by pausing painfully.

I build those same sorts of systems for cars and online, and I certainly sympathize, but I didn’t know how to let the TransitTV people know that bus number whatever was going to have an inaccurate count of ads served that day.

Save Net Radio, again (sigh)

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In the early ’00s I had a company that developed P2P streaming software that powered Internet radio broadcasts. At that time, there was a big risk that Internet radio would get shut down. It didn’t - but it was burdened with regulations that made it pay MORE fees than terrestrial or satellite radio. (Net radio has to pay composer and performers, whereas, due to it’s roots as a promotional vehicle, terrestrial radio only has to pay composers).
Anyway, it’s very important that Internet radio survives. A new proposal is trying to vastly increase the fees in such a way that all the indie stations that are paying hundreds to several thousands a year would go into 5 digits - i.e. they would have to shut down their stations and cease to exist.

This issue has nothing to do with digital piracy or anything exciting and contentious like that; it’s just standard incumbents vs. upstarts, with Internet radio fighting the uphill battle for over a decade now.

In a few years, your car and mobile phone will be bathed in ubiquitous broadband. You’ll be able to tune into any station you’d like, anywhere around the world. The promise of this is great - but some ill-conceieved regulation could establish too high a bar - and prevent the kind of independent communication essential to a healthy culture.

You can call your representative and say Support H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act, if the issue is important to you.

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A mid-century car with next-century features

Will you be coming to the Maker’s Faire?

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http://www.makerfaire.com/

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Make:-ing my 1950 Nash Ambassador roadworthy

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Those who know me well know that my interest in hacking cars goes far earlier than CarBot / MP3Car /StreetDeck and now, The Walt Disney Company.

I’ve been tinkering with my beautiful Nash Ambassador for about a decade, and in that time it’s had an engine upgrade, conversion from 6V to 12V system, added power steering, and of course, had several screens including a VGA touchscreen and a car PC navigation system installed.
I’ll be driving my nash up to the Bay Area Maker Faire (in San Mateo) for May 19th and 20th. Over the last few days my Nash has had it’s carburetor rebuilt, it’s engine steam cleaned, all the hoses repaired, and I’ll be patching all the exhaust pipes in the next week.

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Make sure you come too!

http://www.makerfaire.com/

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Astro: Garmin’s GPS for dogs

When I first read this post, I thought it was going to be a lojack for stolen dogs.
Astro-Banner

Nope, it’s a system for tracking your “fleet” of dogs while hunting.

It can even tell you if your dog is “on point” , sitting, running, or “treeing” (standing up against the tree).

Garmin has an entire interactive, video/flash site to help you learn about the product. If you’ve hunted with dogs, you’ll probably find the site incredibly informative. If you haven’t hunted with dogs, you’ll probably find the site hilarious.

I just never thought there’d be a device with a dedicated button called “dog” on it.

Garmin4Dogs

Link

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