• I still haven't fixed the batteries, and insurance is expensive, so...

    Today we decommissioned Silent E.

    I'm saving up for a lithium-ion pack. Maybe I can get some of those new ones, with the polymer anode, that store six times the energy. That would be awesome.

    I haven't turned in the plate yet, but we've cancelled the insurance. Yes, I "Killed the Electric Car".

    BUT! She will rise again!

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  • There's an article at MetaPixel explaining a Federal court's decision that citizens can film police officers.

    I have long believed that filming police officers and other authorities is legal. Considering how easily authority gets out of hand, I could make a case for it being a citizen's duty to watch the police.

    The only other problem is how long this took. The original filming was in October, 2007; the lawsuit just settled was filed in February, 2010. That's more than a year to admit that watching the watchers is not criminal.

    And it's not really even over yet. They've only settled that filming doesn't expose an officer to harassment, nor causes him to be personally liable for reasonably performing his public duties. The police can still appeal on other grounds.

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  • I was recently exposed to another stupid political commercial, this one ridiculing the government spending $500,000 to "see how sick shrimp performed on a treadmill". I've seen a lot of knee-jerk reaction on this, but I'm not the kind to react without investigation.

    Here's what I found.

    Continue reading "Shrimp in Political Commercials"

    (4 comments)

  • My old phone had GPS, reset, and other issues. I recently got a replacement. Now I'm trying to get Google to fix their Android Market webpage so I can install my old apps.

    I'm really confused about why a company with as much talent as Google would make such a crappy page. There's no way to delete the apps; there's no way to delete an old device; and worst of all, it just plain FAILS: on the My Library page, you can't see any apps beyond the 11th page. The pages after the 11th are all blank. Sucks for us people with a lot of apps.

    Meanwhile, if you play around with FireBug, you'll see that all the pages are actually loaded. They're just not displayed correctly. Deleting a few of the earlier pages makes them visible again. That's how I found all my old apps and got them re-installed.

    Anyway, that's had me busy for a bit. Between that and my actual job, it's taking me forever to finish this app I'm working on.