I’m no expert in the field of safety testing and crash test dummies, but these particular dummies can transmit data 10,000 times per second, and they come with 50-100 sensors each. Now the article isn’t 100% clear on if that’s 10,000 times from all the sensors collectively, or 10,000 timers PER sensor. But if it’s the latter then that is an amazing amount of information. Each transmission at the lowest level can be a “yes” or “no” answer – a.k.a – 1 byte of information, so that’s atleast 10,000 bytes (10kb) of information per second, 80(ish) sensors that’s 800Kb of data per second, so nearly 1 Mb per second. Sadly – that’s faster than my internet downloads data, about 730Kb faster in fact. Driving a car into a wall and capturing that reaction must take about 45 seconds, so that comes to 36Mb per dummy in an accident, and that’s assuming that each transmission is 1 byte. Each sensor could be measuring a multitude of variables with each transmission.

That is pretty awesome in a geek kinda way. I understand if no one else shares my excitement, this is a combination of my favourite things: cars, destruction and data.

This got me thinking about reading and the way it has evolved with technology. Before the world we live in of  computers, websites, blogs and e-readers people read books. If you needed to know how a volcano worked you pulled out the “v” edition of your encyclopedia and sat down for a serious reading session. That was the only option you had for in home media consumption, your only other real option was finding someone who knew about it and could teach you. TV at that stage was just the news and a collection of awesome soap operas and sit-coms (the 70′s really did spawn some good stuff).

So how has the evolution of technology changed the way we learn? Now days if you want to know something you just google it (I love that fact that the general term for searching on the internet has become known as “googling”, but that’s off topic). So you go to google, search your desired topic and usually you will be presented with wikipedia articles, howstuffworks articles and youtube videos on the topic. Not to mention blogs, websites and forums which exist to help create opinions and provide platforms people people to discuss and debate these topics.

But what does this mean for Sir Bob’s question of what have you read? Personally I’m not the best when it comes to reading books. In the last year I’ve read about 8 books. I just have trouble making myself stop and sit down to read a book. But in a normal day I might read 10+ Wikipedia articles, 2+ HowStuffWorks aricles, atleast 10 blogs, 5+news sites and watch a handful of documentaries on youtube. If asked by Bob Jones “What books have you read?” I would have to sheepishly reply with “not many”.

I’m not overly sure where I am going with this but it is interesting to look at how the consumption of the written word, and learning in general has evolved with technology. I am working on reading actual books more at the moment, but I think the problem I have is I often associate books with fiction and fiction just does not interest me. I’m all about brass tacks.

What do people prefer? The real deal or digital?

For those of you who aren’t fortunate enough to have watched Gargoyles the story is about a clan of Gargoyles from Scotland 984 A.D who were cast into slumber for a millenium by a sorcerer. They were released from the spell by a wealthy businessman called Xanatos, who moved their castle to New York brick by brick and planned to use them for his own dastardly deeds. During sunlight hours they turn to stone, so this is their vulnerable time where people can shatter them. In modern New York they learn about technology, fight crime, fight a rogue Gargoyle called Demona and hang out with a cop.

It has everything: ridiculously rich billionaire, criminals, unexplainably evil gargoyle, ancient mythology, gothic undertones, magic and Scotland.

The style of animation is incredibly similar to the Batman animated series which a lot of people will remember from the early 90′s era.

I have acquired the entire first season and watched it within two days and all I can say is it was freakin’ sweet! All I can say is that I feel sorry for kids growing up now days because they don’t get the same quality cartoons that I enjoyed when I was a kid. You can bet your bottom dollar my kids will be watching my dvd collection of cartoons when they grow up and not the latest crap on TV or awful remakes of classic (looking at you Scooby Doo remakes).

Sparrow mail is a desktop based e-mail client developed specifically for Gmail and Google Apps based e-mail accounts, AND it only works on Apple computers. So if neither of those are you, I would probably stop reading now.

Sparrow from my point of view is fantastic; I haven’t used a mail client so far that tops it. The design is something else, with it’s simple clean lines and easy readability, it turns that rather ho-hum GMail page into a work of art (note: I quite like the gmail.com page as well, so that’s saying something).

From a functionality perspective I will admit it has a few little issues, but the pro’s far out weigh the cons.

I may as well start with the first step: adding an account. With every other mail client I have used this has been a relatively annoying step because you have to know your imap and smtp details and even though all google based e-mails should be the same for some reason they don’t always work first time. With Sparrow however it’s dead simple. Enter your name, enter your e-mail, enter your password. Done. 15 minutes in Entourage, 15 seconds in Sparrow. This brings with it another added bonus. Those of you who are evenly remotely “good at computers” must be sick of the questions that come with that phrase. I get everything from printers to word document formatting. I love helping my friends out, but Sparrow means that my google mail based chums are now easier to help.

Reading e-mails is a breeze and the rather handy mail icon which appears in the top bar of your Mac means you can check at a glance if you have new e-mails.

Every aspect of sparrow is easy, user-friendly and damned good looking. However there are a few things to keep in mind.

1) When you send an e-mail it isn’t instant. This is the same as every other desktop based mail client in the world, it just isn’t possible for it to be instant. The only difference is that other mail clients will prompt you before quitting and warn you that you are still sending an e-mail, Sparrow doesn’t appear to do this.

2) It takes forever for sent messages to appear in the sent box, and the same with drafts. It’s not the end of the world but I often get the urge to check that I have actually sent an e-mail to someone and when I can’t find it I tend to freak out a little bit.

3) The search function searches the current e-mail you have highlighted. This doesn’t bother me too much, but I have heard a lot of people complain that when they want to search for an e-mail, they want to search all their e-mail accounts. It does make sense if you actively use 8 e-mail accounts for various businesses and can’t remember which account was used for an e-mail.

Overall sparrow is awesome, as long as you remember to be patient with it. Some people will love it, some people will hate it, but it’s definitely worth a try.

Find out more at sparrowmailapp.com

Once upon a time cars were something that you didn’t just drive, they were something you maintained yourself on the weekend. The image below is of a 1936 Ford Model CX; I am currently in the process of restoring a 1937 CX with my brothers and a mate.

While taking our ’37 apart we were amazed to find the whole chassis is pretty much held together by 28 bolts, and in some cases not 28 nuts… Obviously in the 25+ years that it’s been in dry storage it has lost some bits and pieces here and there. 28! Obviously the roaring 30 bhp engine was hardly going to shake it apart, but it’s still cool all the same.

This is a prime example of when motoring wasn’t just a means of transport it was something you took great pride in. While reading through the orignal owners manual I discovered that ever 1000 miles a vast majority of the engine components had to be greased to prevent the car for completely carking itself. I doubt that most modern drivers even know how to perform an oil change, let alone know what kind of oil their car requires.

When we collected the car from Mum and Dad  (it’s dad’s first car) he told us that he replaced a piston when it blew while he was in his twenties and could describe in great detail how everything worked and pieced together. I have already learnt so much more about basic motoring as a result of the early days of this project, and I really do encourage people who want to learn automotive basics to do the research on classic cars themselves.

Awesome book, easy to read, and just all round good. Especially if you are like me and aren’t really into reading books, it’s only 250 odd pages and I managed to flick through it in 3 nights, which is pretty spectacular considering my usual turn around time for a novel is 6-8 months.

I don’t really know what else to say, I’m hardly what you would call knowledgable when it comes to books, and due to my relatively low turn around rate of books it’s not like I have much to compare it to. But still I thought it was good.