We’ve made a lot of progress on the Devin this weekend. We narrowed the C4 rear-end by 16 inches! That thing looks like a dragster now, and looks really mean… from the back. We are also in the process of cutting the rear frame rails to support the rear-end. Next on the list, we need to get two new half-shafts made that are 8 inches long (not including the end caps). This will give us enough suspension travel (should be around 6.33 inches), and width on the rear-end to fit the car properly. Once I get back to an ipod cable, I’ll be uploading some videos I took documenting what we’ve done. All-in-all, it’s a lot of work, but it’s not too difficult. The most challenging part so far has been making sure that we are considering all possible scenarios.

Check back later this evening for my vids.

car, Devin, frame, SS

I’m looking for an old Jaguar IRS with an overall measurement of about 50″. If someone can source one for me on the cheap (<$500), please contact me cause I’m interested.

Cars

Greatest motivational poster EVER! I don’t know who to credit for this, but they are brilliant.

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Well, I gave Chrome OS a try for about 2 hours, but the claustrophobia is pretty severe.  I feel a really strong urge to minimize the browser and open a music player, or watch a video locally, but you just can’t do it.  I’m not sure I like that.  There are a lot fo things I like to do locally on my machine that I just don’t see co-existing with a browser-only OS.

Also, I couldn’t figure out how to load the image in VMware, so I had to use virtual box, which made it run like crap.  I’m sure this affected my perception of the experience.  It was also stuck in 640×480 or 800×600 – couldn’t tell which.

Admittedly, this isn’t even Beta, so I’m going to wait and see what develops.  Who knows, maybe some enterprising individuals will develop some really neat and flexible extensions to the OS that meet the consumer demand that will exist there.

In the mean time, this gave me an opportunity to learn how to use VMware, which is really sweet.  I’m now running Ubuntu Karmic, and that’s pretty cool.  With VMW, I’m finally getting the opportunity to use linux in an environment where I don’t sacrifice everything that windows can/will do in exchange for an OS that I know little-to-nothing about.

More later after I go back and tinker some more.  I’m still hopeful!

chrome, google, linux, os

Well, I’m gonna try a Google Chrome OS install tonight.  We’ll see how it goes!  For anyone interested, you can read how it’s done at the Chromium Forums

chrome, google, linux, os

It was a pretty quiet day today overall.  Nice for a change.  Saw the immediate aftermath of a glancing head-on collision tonight on the way home from work.  It looked like a van caught the left front corner of a sedan that started turning left in front of it.  Looked like everyone was OK though.

I beat COD MW2.  It was good for the most part.  I was a bit disappointed with the end, as I felt a lot was left too unfinished.  I realize there needs to be a sequel, but this was a bit too sparse.  Whomever it was that decided putting massively important story elements in dialog during the middle of a several hundred-man firefight, they really need to learn what it’s like to play the game in stereo.  I completely missed some really important stuff because.. well, I was running across a battlefield.

The whole “kill the player then jump to a new soldier” bit was also wearing thin.  Now that I’m done complaining about the parts I didn’t like, I can say the one thing I really wanted to…

The space sequence was one of the most memorable gaming moments I’ve had.  That was just pure genius!  From a physics standpoint, it’s pretty hard to rationalize, but from a gameplay factor, it was impressive as hell!  Multi-player is, of course, excellent.

Overall, an 89 – I don’t think the game deserves a 90 because of some of the gimmicky tricks they pull, and the massive disconnects between each campaign.  It would be an 85 or so, but the online component is so solid, I have to give it a better rating.

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All right, I’m going to try to keep this thing updated – promise!  We’re working on a new project car.  It’s called a “Devin SS”, and it’s a great little shell.  My dad and I are building a custom frame for it, and so far so good.  Once we get near the completion of the frame, I’ll post a Google Sketch-Up schematic of it.

If you haven’t used Sketch-up before, it’s a pretty amazing 3D tool that’s free.  Just google the term and you’ll find it immediately.  In any case, once we have the frame wrapped up, I’ll update the file to reflect the work we’ve done.

I’m also going to work on getting a lot of the photos I have been taking up onto the site.   Possibly tonight.

Lastly, I think I’m going to be redoing the engine mounts for the Mustang’s LS1.  I’m not thrilled with how they look, and I’m starting to get some real interest in how we did this conversion. Maybe I’ll sell “conversion kit” on the cheap to off-set some of the costs associated with building this thing.

Yes, I know, I’m talking about SELLING something that I learned how to do – a real shocker isn’t it?  And here we all thought capitalism was dead!

Stay tuned!

UPDATE (23:55 11/19/09)

I have posted a TON of photos tonight.  You can find the galleries along the top menu.  Check them out!

Devin, kit, Mustang, products

A) Cleaning the garage?

B) Laying around being lazy until 11 AM?

C) Doing burnouts in the Mustang?

Answer:

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Well, I pulled about 45 lbs worth of stereo amplifier and associated crapola out of the back of the Z today.  The previous installation was… decent.  The only problem was adjustability post installation.  There was no way to change anything once installed.  All the wires were completely concealed and couldn’t be re-tightened without removing the whole setup, which took me the better part of 5 hours.  But now that it’s out, all the rattles from the back end of the car are gone.  That in itself was worth the effort! I’ll take a picture of all the junk I pulled out later, but at least it’s done.

Oh, and I hooked up two little 6.5″ Polk Audio coaxial speakers in place of the LPF 6.5″ Boston acoustics that were in the middle headrest bar.  MUCH BETTER!

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Griffin Technology makes a cool little USB device called the Radio Shark 2, and for about $50, you get AM/FM radio on your computer.  Seems pretty slick.  I’ll probably use it for my carputer if reviews of it are good!

car, carputer, radio, USB