Simon’s Blog

I want this for Christmas.  All I need is 3 Xbox’s, 3 screens, a fancy wheel and some kinda super hydraulic racing chair.  Forza 3 comes out October 27th and I’m gonna be all over it. One of the coolest new features is the rewind feature that all racing games seem to be adding (Full Auto, Dirt 2). It’s like the driver is holding the dagger of time in his hand.

I have been tracking my fuel consumption since 2007 and I would love to know which app would best replace my paper notebook. Macworld has a great roundup of of the best fuel tracker apps.

To me, an ideal application in this category would meet all of the following criteria:

Has a fast and easy-to-use data input screen.
Supports more than one vehicle.
Tracks per-tank and overall fuel mileage data.
Can import and export data.
Has a database of vehicles, to make setup quicker.
Can use the vehicle’s trip meter or its odometer for mileage tracking.
Generates useful reports based off the stored data.
While no program successfully met every single criteria, two came quite close, while three others fell short in a number of areas.

Griffith’s finds that AccuFuel (1$) best fulfills all of these features so I bought it and it’s awesome. Also recommended was Car Care ($5) which adds car maintenance tracking and reminds you to maintain your car.

Just saw this on engadget. I’ve always been interested in active noise control. Lotus has had it in their cars for a while, I’m glad to see that it is coming to mainstream automobiles. ANC will probably be a standard feature in cars in 10-20 years. It works just like noise-cancelling headphones, by counteracting noise with ‘antinoise’ sound waves. Headphones have microphones on the outside of the earcups which detect and counter incoming noise. This works well because the microphone is right next to your ear, so it hears the same thing you do. It is much more difficult to achieve noise cancellation in a car, because each passenger is hearing slightly different noise, and noise bounces around inside the cabin. Anyway check out this fancy diagram: