Went to play at Furry Creek this weekend and shot a personal best 104. It was a nice round to have as the muddy conditions cost me a heap of shots and the slow greens had me leaving putt after putt just short. It could have been easily a 93-94 instead on a course that’s about the hardest I’ve ever played.
A couple weeks ago I swapped out the incandescent lightbulbs in one of my Ikea lamps out for CFLs. Out went three 40 watt bulbs that had an useful life of about a year and in went three 9 watt CFLs that I installed with only a hint of trepidation.
The lights turned out to be very good replacements and today I picked up 4 more CFLs to swap into my other living lamps. The bulbs will last 6-7 years for me and use significantly less energy than my current lights.
In terms of performance the bulbs are similarly bright and have a nice hue to them. The only downside is that they need a couple minutes to warm up to full brightness but otherwise they are a total win. Oh yeah, they do cost more but it’s worth it.
Now go swap your bulbs out and save the environment.
Yesterday while going to grab lunch a shiny red Ferrari F430 rolled up the street. Driven by a middle aged balding gentleman it was only getting a little bit of throttle, I don’t think it went past 2000 rpm but the sound coming out of its pipes was just amazing. A deep burble that carried just the right undertones of menace.
There’s also an Aston Martin DB9 that gets driven around Yaletown from time to time and that car sounds great too but it doesn’t have that race car engine note that the Ferrari has. At low revs the Ferrari sounds like it’s a caged animal.
I hope that driver lets that motor loose once in a while.
Watching the Malaysian Grand Prix I was reminded of how amazing Formula 1 cars are. The cars were approaching turn 1 at about 200mph and they were were braking the 60-70 metre range and getting down to 60mph in what appeared to be about 3 blinks of the eye. The g-loads exceeded 3gs while they were decelerating, just the effort of the driver to lift his foot off the brake is enormous.
The magic is actually beyond the fact that they can scrub 140mph in about 160 feet (a road car Corvette or Porsche would take about 500 feet to do the same) but that the truly fast drivers are slowing down as a secondary effect. They are more concerned about how they manage the transfer of weight so that they can maximize cornering speed.
Too much weight moving forward and you get a loose rear end or a front end that washes out. Too little and you can get the car to turn in properly. Some drivers keep on the throttle slightly while braking to keep too much weight from moving forward – Schumacher was one of those.
It’s absolutely fascinating.
