• Since my garage door broke several weeks ago, I've been parking the Silent E outside. Eri has been concerned that someone will steal my extension cord, since it's a really nice version I paid some extra money for.

    But we live in a nice neighborhood, so we haven't had any problems with that. Instead, somebody's been unplugging my car.

    It's happened 3 times now. I've detected each occurrence with plenty of time to correct the problem, but it's still a little disturbing. The big question is, "Why?" Does someone just hate EVs? Is someone jealous? Is my charger or fan making a noise that's driving someone crazy?

    Or is a squirrel trying to climb the wire and pulling it free?

    If I had enough money, I'd set up a little camera to watch the car. The cheap, low-tech solution is to just tie a knot in the cord; at least that'll deter anyone who isn't actually upset.

    (1 comments)

  • I'm still rating UML editors. Last time, Gaphor disappointed me tremendously. After two contenders, can Umbrello restore my confidence in Open-Source programmers?

    Let's check that list!

    Continue reading "UML Editors: Umbrello"

    (2 comments)

  • Electric motors and their supporting electronics are much more durable than the corresponding ICE equipment. That means I'll own this car for a long time. Therefore, I'd like it to look good and feel comfortable.

    Nathan offered to pay for a paint job for my birthday. I got some references and asked for estimates; they were uniformly in the $3000 to $5000 range.

    Yesterday I got a $1400 estimate. I'd have to leave the car for a week.

    I'd also lose my nice caution striping. :( But I've got an idea in that area: since the $1400 doesn't include any of the soft rubber molding, I'll just take it off and stripe it myself. Then I'll have refreshed bumpers and molding, with a high-voltage look from all directions!

    (1 comments)

  • I'm still rating UML editors. Last time, BOUML failed to impress me. This time, I'm trying Gaphor.

    I thought Gaphor would be terrific, since it's a Python/GTK project, and therefore native to my system (Ubuntu/Gnome). Should be easy to modify, too. And the home page looks good!

    But Gaphor failed miserably for my purposes. Let's see why.

    Continue reading "UML Editors: Gaphor"

    (6 comments)

  • I'm rating UML editors while I look for a good one. This week's candidate: BOUML.

    To be as objective as possible, let's go over the list of criteria I made earlier.

    Edit 2009-04-10: BOUML has been updated since my first review. I was originally quite disappointed, and made a rather harsh acronym from its name. While I still don't think BOUML meets my minimum qualifications, it's a heck of a lot better than the other editors I've tried. I've updated the review to reflect BOUML's new capabilities.

    Continue reading "UML Editors: BOUML"

    (13 comments)