Search results

My last move was 35 years ago. I hated it and I had 1/10th the stuff I had now (not surprising because I was 15 at the time). Honestly, if I have any choice in the matter the next move will be to the grave. Moving is a major PITA any way you slice it. Unless the neighborhood changes for the...

I'm going to hazard a guess here based on my knowledge of vehicle physics that fuel economy drafting a semi will be roughly inversely proportional to the weight. All you have is tire drag, and that's directly proportional to weight to a first approximation. Of course, gearing can make a...

:beer: Happy 33rd birthday, Dave! :beer:

Yep. I can draft behind a semi on my bike at 70 mph if I have a high enough gear to keep my cadence reasonable. This video shows how little power is needed (he's only going about 55 mph but he could go faster with a higher gear). Right behind a semi it's pretty much all rolling resistance and...

Thankfully the electorate is gradually shifting away from that perspective. My guess is once gas goes over $5 per gallon and stays there support for public transit will be a winning platform. Also, a fair number of younger people see driving as wasted time. They would rather take public transit...

I was going to suggest that also but I figured it might go over like a lead balloon. But yes, in places like Manhattan, perhaps even the entirety of NYC, you can make a great case for banning personal motorized transportation on the grounds that we have great public transit. I also feel bikes...

I just wanted to add something here about this. In practical terms, it wouldn't matter whether or not you hacked such a system because most people won't. The practical effect if even 25% of vehicles have GPS speed limiters will be that the rest won't be able to exceed the speed limit except at...

That's interesting. I'm glad to see automakers think of these things. My only concern is why shouldn't we be designing all vehicles in such a manner? Here is the US urban populations are rising, so vehicles should be designed to cope with such environments. I don't know if it would be possible...

How about if you just disabled the devices on urban streets then? That's a fair compromise in my book. Here's the issue-if you either ride or drive in an auto, you've entered into a implicit contract where you're accepting some risk in exchange for some perceived benefit, same as people who fly...

Merc, the key is context. On the highway, talking on a phone doesn't seem as dangerous. In fact, it might even help you stay more alert on long, boring stretches of road. On urban streets, where often the situation already demands your full attention and then some, using a phone can have deadly...

Agreed on the device which blocks cell phone signals. If you read what I wrote, I said 3 mph/sec on urban streets. In other places, the acceleration rates would be whatever the vehicle was capable of. There's a time and place for everything. IMO, high speeds and high acceleration rates are...

I'm curious here about what type of emergencies you're referring to. Most of the "emergencies" in driving situations which require other drivers to react are exactly the result of people driving too fast for conditions. I tend to think if you limit speeds and acceleration rates you won't end up...

I know you didn't imply that. ESC is very useful, little doubt about it. My entire rant was that the best way to prevent collisions due to drunk driving is to ensure that vehicles won't operate if the driver is drunk (or unlicensed, or tired or on the phone). Not drunk driving related, but I'm...

My take on this is without mandatory safety devices cars still wouldn't even have brakes, never mind all the other stuff. That said, I question whether things like ABS actually make things safer. People compensate when they know they can stop faster by cutting things closer. End result is no...

Strangle the bean counters instead. The engineers I'm sure want the best thermal interface. It's the accountants who tell them otherwise. I can't say how many otherwise great products have been ruined by planned obsolescence and/or intentionally designing in failure points, all in the name of...

It's actually even worse that. It's more like an intelligent comment on Yahoo is like royalty visiting a trailer park. I read through the comments there, especially anything having to do with politics or global warming, and find myself wondering if it's possible to have a negative IQ, meaning...

I personally think comment rating is one of the dumbest recent trends. I also consistently find on Yahoo news that the most intelligent comments get the most down votes. It's almost as if people don't want to think, and don't want to be shown that their opinions are wrong because they're based...

My sincerest condolences. Having gone through the loss of my father in 2006, I know how difficult times like this are, and also how unfair life seems when loved ones who led a good life are suddenly taken from us. If it's any consolation, eventually life will seem normal again, but it will take...

Get a few cans of spray paint, some masking tape, and do it yourself. The idea of paint is to keep the body from rusting. A DIY paint job will accomplish that just as well as an expensive one. It's true that eventually it's not worth putting money into a car any more, but if you do things...

The most I ever rode in one day was 70.2 miles (113.0 km). That was in two separate rides. The most I did in one ride was 60.2 miles (96.9 km). That was almost 31 years ago. It took 3 hours, 20 minutes but it didn't involve as much climbing as your 87 km ride. There was no GPS in those days but...

Don't some SSDs deal with the leakage issue by "refreshing" charge levels when they're active? I'm guessing it works as follows: the entire drive is read maybe once daily during periods in between reads/writes. Any cells where the measured voltage is trending towards marginal levels are...

That's what I'm thinking as well. I read too much stuff saying you should aim for 90 to 100 RPM, but that might apply mostly to pros trying to develop their maximum power for extended periods. I'll try to aim for 70 or 75 from now on, and see if the numbness subsides. I couldn't tell on last...

I adjusted the bike myself after reading a number of guides online. It's adjusted to me about as well as it can be, although I realize there's nothing like getting a new bike properly fitted to you. Anyway, I'm 100% sure cadence is making the difference here. Towards the end of the ride, I...

I don't know if this will help anyone here but I've been experiencing numbness of my hands and feet starting about 15 minutes into a ride when it's hot and humid for a number of years. This is partially a result of dehydration from sweating, although the hand numbness is 90% carpal tunnel...

That looks like a car I might have designed. Turbine engines suck when directly connected to the wheels via a conventional transmission. The way the C-X75 uses them (to recharge a battery which in turn drives electric motors) is exactly the best way to use them. This is a case where modern motor...

Building myself a faired recumbent from scratch would be one of my dreams. I don't know if I could improve much on the aerodynamics, but I would certainly like to try. If you ever move beyond the planning stage, be sure to post pictures.

If those were the only two criteria all cars would be using turbine engines.

You're a car hobbyist. Nothing wrong with that. My brother falls into the same camp, just he's not flush enough to buy new cars as often as he might like. Actually, he says his Mark VIII has better fit and finish, and is nicer to drive, than many newer cars. Not surprising given that it was $42K...

It's pretty much the same with everything. I've even noticed it with cycling. An upgrade from a 105 to an Ultegra gruppo is usually worth the price in terms of added functionality. Even a 105 gruppo is just fine for many riders. To go from Ultegra to Dura-Ace is a huge price jump for minor...

That ride seems pretty respectable to me also. You averaged 14.9 mph in spite of the climbing and the wind. I hear you on the wind. Despite Chicago being called the windy city, the average wind speeds in NYC are higher. Yesterday towards the end of the ride there was easily steady winds of at...

I have a rear blinker (modded with a red power LED to be visible from at least 1/4 mile), and a fairly bright front headlight ( ~150 lumens). I have a ~1800 lumen headlight of my own design which I'll eventually be using as soon as I have time to finish it. Blinking lights are fine in the rear...

Yes, I think that's it. My sister is driving a 10+ year old Elantra with about 170K on it. My brother is using a 1993 Mark VIII with 240K. Neither could afford even a low-end new car at this point, never mind one of the cars in this thread.

Man, what I would give for 11°C temps right now. We're having a heat wave all week with highs in the 90s F. Rode at 3 AM last night. I was still warm ( ~23°C,73°F) and 100% humidity. I was plastered with sweat after 15 minutes. Surprisingly, I last nearly an hour and a half. It's going to be...

I think it's just a case of "boys and their toys" rather than practicality. For strict practicality and low operating costs nothing beats some kind of electric vehicle like a Leaf, or one of the low-end Teslas. If more people bought electrics, there wouldn't even be a price premium over gas...

Actually, sub 30 second 1/4 mile times under human power are possible: http://www.recumbents.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2070 The record is 26.96 sec @ 46.7 mph

Those videos make my case that about 90% of the population has no business driving. Drivers are nearly this bad in NYC, except the commercial truck drivers are better. Cars plowing into pedestrians on sidewalks are a pretty regular occurrence, sadly. No crashes, but typical asshat NYC driver...

He probably it just for the experience of saying he was out in such high temps. I did the same last year when Sandy was in full swing just to say I was out in the middle of a hurricane. I've never rode my bike during a blizzard but that's on my bucket list. Maybe this winter if a suitable storm...

Move to NYC. Fireworks are banned here. It doesn't mean you won't hear some this week, but it's certainly not constantly.

Doug, I suspect it's a combination of both the bike and your gearing. The fat tires and upright riding position of mountain bikes tend to make reaching high speeds problematic. And a lot of mountain bikes have something like a 44-12 gear as the maximum. That's only good for maybe 35 mph unless...

+1 I learned the hard way years ago that sometimes you just have to let some things slide. People will always make demands on your time. At some point you just need to say "sorry, I can't do it". Sleep deprivation sucks. I was on a schedule like Dave's through high school and much of college. 3...

I have that feature also on my Asus F2A85-V PRO. Most of the time the CPU fan is on minimum speed. The fan on my power supply doesn't even start turning until CPU usage is fairly heavy. When I put the two mechanical hard drives in standby, the system is inaudible, even in a quiet room.

If I had to climb grades like 25%+ I think I would have a Rohloff Speedhub. 526% total range with 14 evenly-spaced gears. If you made the top gear equivalent to 53-11, your low gear would be the same as 39-42. Have you considered a chainring with a triple crank? Those are usually used in...

I've been trying for a long time to lose about 30 extra pounds (I used to be 160). The extra weight hurts on climbs for sure. It also hurts everywhere else because it seems the rolling resistance of my airless tires isn't linearly proportional to weight. I wouldn't doubt my average speeds would...

Totally agree. In fact, for most people who have a system which is less than about 7 or 8 years old, and still working well, I might recommend they buy an SSD before even thinking about upgrading. Often just doing that will give an old machine new life. If it doesn't, they can always use the SSD...

You guys are making me jealous here with your maximum speeds! Most days I'm lucky to get much over 30 mph, although I'm not really pushing much on account of the potholes. I did hit 61 mph descending the Queensboro Bridge in the 1980s when I rode to Manhattan one night. There was a fierce...

I assume you mean improvements due to architecture changes? To me it seems that way. Haswell is only marginally faster than SB or IB for most things. You have AVX2 which doubles floating point performance but I'll guess nothing except benchmark software is taking advantage of that right now...

Yep-we still have a landline. It's part of our combined internet/phone/TV package. So far I haven't had compelling need for a cell phone. I just never do anything where I've needed to make a phone call from anywhere other than home.

I don't have one, either. In fact, I don't have a cell phone at all. I like gadgets, but not ones you have to pay x dollars per month to use. Now if someone came out with a very basic cell phone with no monthly fee I would think about it.

I can find plenty of buildings but the steps at Lexington Avenue are the only ones I've used regularly. Next time I visit a apairofpcs I'll time myself going up all 21 flights in his building.

The closest I can come to that is taking the stairs at the Lexington Avenue and 53rd Street station (escalator in pic but stairs are next to it). I think it's equivalent to at least 4 flights. I'm sure I've done it in under 30 seconds going up (and <10 going down).