A link to a WMV movie of a rotary engine that is NOT a Wankle. It has been built and it's being tested in a Yamaha scooter. The manufacturer claims the engine can give you the same torque at half the RPMs - I don't know if that's half the RPMs of a piston engine (which is implied) or a Wankle, which would be a fair comparison.
The part that's got my attention is the whole guide grove. That looks to me like something that will get a lot of wear and tear over time, especially with the pressure of the ignition cycle pushing outward on it, never the less, I find this interesting and like to see it at least put to a fair test.
Sarah and I rode around the block many times today. Turns out all I needed to do was show up with mine, and she was ready to go. I was told when I first sat on it that I needed training wheels. I showed her I didn't. I was also told after the ride that it was very important that I always have someone with me every time I ride my bike because it was very dangerous bike since it doesn't have training wheels.
I've been trying to figure out how to get automatic disk image mounting/program executing to work on OS X Tiger the same way I did on XP, for the same reason "We still require a stupid disk to run". All but two of the games I'm doing this for run in classic mode. Even though images are far easier to create and mount on OS X, no special knowledge required, doing it automatically is harder.
Every time I ripped a Mac compatible disk to an image I got a message stating the image was probably screwy and could possibly screw my machine. It didn't screw anything up of course, but I didn't want the prompt. I've found the best way to handle a disk image in OS X is to create a fresh blank image and drag and drop all the files from the CD into it. I could not find a way to just directly rip an image that didn't create error messages, even ripping them to an ISO on a Linux machine. Oddly enough, even though the nifty icon and background folder settings are lost on the OS X compatible games, the drag and drop thing appears to work.
I've figured out how to use Automator to mount an image and execute the program.
First thing I need, if anyone know how to just rip the bleeding image without Mac OS thinking it's a garbage image that would be great and save me a lot of work.
Second, does anyone know how to make Automator wait until the game is closed to try to unmount? I've tried user interaction unmount methods, but that doesn't appear to work, they sit on top of the application demanding input.
Notes for me, and a couple of folks like Pi might like them as well.
Jul. 1st, 2008 @ 04:51 pm
It looks like I'm going to have one, maybe two extra G4 iMac 17" monitors without a system (the old iLamp type), and maybe one 15" - it works but looks like hammered shit. It would be a shame to let those go to waste. Think of the custom machine hacking potential! This is just some research notes for me to look at when I have a little more time.
When I was younger, I was famous around my town for getting around on my bike. People who didn't know my name would generally say something about the kid who always had his bike to describe me, it was such an accepted thing I actually sat on my bike for the church directory picture.
Never mind the fact that physically I began to dwarf my 20" Summit Freestyle BMX bike with GT Mag rims, shark bite pedals, and whatever else I put on to maintain it, it was a part of my soul. When it was taken it was a like giving up a part of myself I did not willing give up, even though at the time I didn't give my bike the attention and time I used to.
So yesterday, I went looking for a new bike. "Santa" got my daughter a really nice Purple/Chrome Schwinn Christmas of 06. The first time she got on it, she was great on it even though it was a bit to big for her then. She was going fast doing great, turned a little to sharp and toppled, now a year and half later she'll get on it, but she tries to go really slow and wont build any momentum, she'll only muscle the pedals preferring her tricycle to her bike. She's getting a bit big for the tricycle and she's on the "big girl" kick now, so I figured one of the better ways to motivate her was to get my own bike and ride it with her.
This of course lead me to the next question. What kind of bike? I've had a 10 speed before, I destroyed it over time, I've always been a rough rider. BMX's always seemed to be the type that was best for me. I figured I would probably get an old fashioned adult industrial type cruiser bike, but that really wasn't me. When I went to the bike shop the guy asked me what I wanted, I told him I didn't know, but I used to ride those (pointing at the BMX's). He suggested a 24" BMX. I decided that wasn't such a bad idea.
He didn't have any built at the moment, but we had two picked out, I went with the Diamondback Lucky 24. I was a bit hesitant to get a Diamondback since they've actually started selling that brand at Wal-Mart, but it has a history of being a good bike, this was a real bike shop, it appeared to be a good bike on my inspection, so I'm hoping Diamond back pulled a Levi, where they sell a crappy line at Wal-Mart and maintain a good line elsewhere. I guess they could sell a good line in both places.
It rides pretty good, but I can tell the handle bars are shorter. The guy told me I could 20" style handle bars on it if I want, that's actually a really popular thing to do. I'm going to hold off on it and try it out as is first, but I may do that in the future. Maybe a part of me will return.
So last Thursday a little more than two weeks after I ordered it my unopened copy of Mac OS 9 finally came in. The eBay seller said he had been sick, I forgave him and gave good feedback since it was unopened and retail as promised.
So, being 9.0 it needed updating. I had to step it through 9.1, then 9.2.1, then up to 9.2.2. 9.0 reminded me of why I hated Macs prior to OS X coming out, there were times that I didn't know if the machine was hung up or was just being slow, it was usually being extremely slow, but at 9.2.1 it actually started working great.
I found Firmware update 4.2.8, I had to update it to at least 9.1 to run the update, I waited to 9.2.2. The reason I'm writing this is the updater tells me to hit the shutdown button, which I do, then hold down the programmer button and turn it on, wait for the long tone then let go, which I do. It says it's then supposed to display a progress bar and after the bar my update is done. Unfortunately it makes a sound like it just got turned on again and it sits at blackness forever. Hitting the reset button does nothing. I have to pull the power cord, it makes the startup noise, goes to black, makes the startup noise again, boots then comes up to a You're doing it wrong! message. I'm rather certain I'm following directions. Any input for the long time Mac folks? My main reason for wanting the update was to see if I could make an nVidia card work, some success has been reported after this particular update.
--update
No progress, but I decided to run the OS 9 update utility, this firmware update was a part of that as well, but it didn't work any better from this source. I'm beginning to wonder if there's a write protect feature I don't know about.
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