Cars DB

OK, I've finally posted up a Sourceforge project for my aforementioned cars database app. So if you go here, you'll see a download link where you can download the ZIP for the project. Right now there are two binary versions: a Mac OS X app and a pure Java version. I'm going to package up the pure Java version into a Windows app as soon as I can get to a Windows box (Monday), so expect a post announcing that. For now, you Macheads get the polish and everybody else can figure out how to get the pure Java version executing. :-p Oh yeah, the whole thing is BSD licensed, I've got CVS set up and committed to, and if anyone wants to pitch in improvements or anything, I more than welcome it.

I Burn a Lot of Gas

So I finished up round three of my gas mileage checking last Thursday night. This time around I drove as I normally would to hopefully get a middle ground. However, since I didn't really successfully establish a lower and upper bound with my first two rounds, the usefulness of this round is sort of in question. However, keeping track of your tripometer and the amount of gas to fill the tank isn't exactly hard, so I figured I'd keep going.

I'll skip the driving summary this time around (it was about the same, but perhaps had a greater percentage of city driving). In the end, I made 275 miles on 11.5 gallons, which is 23.9 MPG. Man, that sucks. I don't really know what happened there. Oh well, I went ahead and recorded the next tank and that took me all of three days. Why? I drove down from Burbank to Temecula for the wine festival (a ripoff, spend your hundred bucks on a couple bottles of wine and invite some friends over) and most of the way back, in addition to some other long distance driving like Irvine to Laguna Beach to Burbank and a quick trip to Pasadena. So that tank was 312 miles on 11.9 miles (yeah, I nearly ran out), which is 26.2 MPG. Here are the rounds so far:

Round 1: 28
Round 2: 28.9
Round 3: 23.9
Round 4: 26.2

Now to contradict myself. My first post here was entitled "Mileage Estimates Are Stupid" and I'm forced to admit that they seem pretty damn good. From what you see above, I seem to be getting something like EPA's estimated 22 city and 31 highway, despite the initial perception of the test's inaccuracy. Further, as this post's title states, I think I use a lot of gas. Oh well, I'll just have to enter a bigger number into that calculator you see below.

Next up I'm going to do the big post I've planned since the start. I'll be releasing a little car tracking database app I made in Java (a standalone app, not an applet). Stay tuned!

Payoff

OK, as promised I have whipped up my little payoff calculator into a usable form for web consumption. I decided that I hate having to work with Java applets for silly little web things like this (larger stuff is still cool) so I ported it to JavaScript and you can just see it below. Basically, the idea I started with was to see if you would ever pay off the difference between a "normal" car (eg. Corolla) and a very fuel efficient car (eg. Prius). Then I naturally wanted to know how long that would take. So I made this and it does not only the simple calculation, but also a little more by calculating how many months of free gas you could buy for the "normal" car if you invested the money you saved buying it at 5%, compounded monthly, which I'm told is a normal simple money market investment. Thanks to Kim for help on that latter part. Enjoy!

Payoff Calculator

Name: City MPG: Highway MPG: MSRP:

Name: City MPG: Highway MPG: MSRP:

Gas price per gallon:	$
Sales tax factor:
Miles driven per year:

Round Two Results

So a long weekend and a little laziness got in the way of me and this post, but at last I have results from round two of my driving experiment. As you may recall, in round one I drove for fuel efficiency above pretty much all else and achieved a solid 28MPG on my mostly-highway route. Then, I set out to drive for the worst mileage I could get. I think I pulled it off, too! I drove at 80 MPH on the highways, gunned it off the line, pretty much never coasted, broke hard, and all kinds of other bad habits. My route was pretty much the same: - One way trip from Vista to Burbank (highway) - Three commutes (city) - Nearly an entire round trip from Burbank to San Clemente (highway) - Miscellaneous city driving around San Clemente and Burbank (city) In the end I made it 318 miles on 11 gallons. Simple division tells us that's 28.9 MPG. Wait a second! How is it higher mileage than when I tried to drive for fuel efficiency? Well, I don't know. I guess I drove a little further down to San Clemente than to Laguna Niguel, but I didn't make it all the way back before having to fill up, so that should be largely mitigated. There could have been some minor discrepancy between the traffic conditions on the freeway (this is LA after all) that led to more cruising this time around. In all, that could really only be a couple of MPG, which would mean that the maximum spread is about one MPG. It's been kind of a bummer, but I'm still going forward with round three. I'll just drive normally this time around and see how it goes. Since it took me so long to post this, I'm already half way through the tank and, well, the results look similar to the first two rounds. I guess we'll see, probably by Friday if I actually get around to posting. Over the weekend, I whipped up a little Java app to do some calculations for me. Last night I turned it into an applet. In some form, I hope to bring it here in the very near term. Look forward to a little calculator tool very soon!

Scratch (still) Rules

On Sunday night I was showing Scratch off to my girlfriend and it kind of spun into the making of a little game. It took about an hour, but all in all it's pretty great what kinds of creativity you can express in Scratch. We sat and, while implementing ideas, came up with new ideas and saw them working in the game in just a minute or two. As a reminder, all my Scratch projects are here. My gas gauge is dropping rapidly and I'll probably have results from round two of my driving style experimentation tomorrow. Stay tuned!

I Drove Green!

So I was thinking about what kind of mileage I get in my own car (a 2002 Daewoo Nubira sedan) and realized I basically didn't know, but suspected it was lower than I should be getting. So I decided to start a series of three tests to gauge my gas usage. Last Wednesday morning, I filled up my tank and hit the tripometer. Then I started mentally recording where I drove: - Three commutes (city) - One trip to Ralph's (city) - Round trip from Burbank to Laguna Niguel (highway) - Miscellaneous driving around Laguna Niguel (city) - One way trip from Burbank to Vista (highway) City: 6%. Highway: 94% (with serious traffic for probably half the highway trips). I forced myself to drive the whole thing with slow takeoffs, maximized coasting, and other good fuel economy driving practices. Further, as much as it hurt me, I limited my freeway speed to 70 MPH. All in all it was an even 294 miles and it took me 10.5 gallons of gas to fill 'er back up. Some simple division tells us that's 28 MPG. Since the EPA estimate says my car's supposed to get 22 MPG city and 31 MPG highway, I say that's pretty damn good. Next up, I'm driving like a bat out of hell to get the worst mileage I can while still feeling safe. This week I'm at 80 MPH, gunning it off the line, and throwing the brake pedal to the wind. I'll probably have the next report pretty soon at that rate. :)

This Isn't Just About Cars

So I'm a computer programmer, specifically for multimedia and games. Lately, I've been interested in some edutainment to teach kids to code. I think it teaches good logic skills and provides a good solid foundation on how to build things. This applies to all kinds of engineering, inventiveness, computer systems that pretty much everyone will be using by the time the kids grow up, and just general life. I made a little simple language a la Logo, but then yesterday I discovered, via Slashdot, an MIT program called Scratch. You use these jigsaw puzzle pieces of code to put together a little visual program to control actors on a stage. You start off with a cat actor and can make it move around, rotate, animate, turn colors, and all kinds of other stuff. You can add more actors, do all kinds of logic, and generally make a cool, artistic, multimedia little app. Once you're done, hit the Share button and your project is instantly posted to MIT's site for Scratch projects. Here are mine. OK, none are fancy or anything, but all took me way under five minutes, make sense, and were a blast to make. You should all make some little apps and then post them here in comments. C'mon. Go. :)