I have come to the end of my crazy road trip. After 2300 miles I am back in San Diego as the semester starts tomorrow. The trip was fun I got to see a bunch of friends and travel all of the place. Probably a better use of time over anything else I would have done over my break.
During the entire trip I had my eyes glued to my dash which displays my gas mileage. Since it was such a long trip I felt it would be good to track my mileage and see if my display is accurate. I ended up with a grand total of traveling 2300 miles, burning 44 gallons of gasoline, paying $86.80 at prices ranging from 1.899-2.079 dollars/gallon, while getting an overall 54 MPG. The price came to a bit more than I had originally estimated but I ended up traveling more miles as I drove around a bit at most of my stops.
I drive a Honda insight which is the first hybrid sold in America. The dash displays the instantaneous MPG as well as the MPG for the current trip. I tracked the entire journey with one trip while used the other two trip settings to give me estimates for each leg of the journey. My mileage was much different depending on how I was driving and my driving conditions. During the first leg of the trip I got mileage in the low 60s. I was driving at about the speed limit the whole way and very conscious of my driving to try to get better mileage. Unfortunately that did not keep up the whole time. I did quite a bit of city driving at various points which hurt my mileage quite a bit.
The insight does get very good mileage on surface streets due to the regenerative breaking but it only gets up in the 50's if one is careful with their driving habits, and on unfamiliar streets and with traffic it is difficult. At many points of the drive I was in a hurry either because I needed to get to my next destination quickly and speed makes a huge difference in mileage. The best mileage I got was the long flat straight of the 5 interstate in northern California. On that section I slowed down to about 55-60 and drafted behind semi trucks. By driving like that I was able to get MPG in the high 70's for hours of driving. The worst mileage part was in Oregon. I was driving faster there as I was more in a hurry, but also found that I couldn't get the same mileage up there as I could for similar speeds, and I believe because the roads are rougher in Oregon, but it might have all been in my head.
A successful trip to Portland and back without having to ford any rivers, no deaths due to dysentery and round trip for a fraction of the cost of a plane ticket.
1.21.2009
1.14.2009
象棋
On my trip I hung out with Geoff in Berkeley. Berkeley ends up closing up pretty early when school is not in session so we spent the evening playing Chinese chess. Chinese chess is a strategy game with many similarities to western chess and may be just as complex. It is pretty quick to learn but takes a long time to master and we played a few games of it over beers.
The next day we ended up going to SF for lunch and to see some sights. I had never seen Chinatown so I wanted to check it out. It was pretty cool to check out Chinatown with Geoff since he is fluent in Cantonese and could communicate with people in the shops if we were looking for things. While wandering around we came by a open park area and saw groups of old Chinese men huddled around small tables playing and observing Chinese chess! It was great since we had just played and had refreshed the rules so we could watch them play and understand the game (although I was unable to understand the discussion/debate over strategies which they were yelling at each other.) It was really cool, and so I decided a great souvenir would be to buy a Chinese chess set. I found one for about $3 which was pretty cool.
We ended up walking back to the park, sitting down at a table and playing a game together. At first I was worried that I would be offending them as I would be seen as a scruffy white guy mocking their past time. After just a few moves a few men started to stand around and watching our game. First they were giving me weird looks and seemed confused or maybe just curious about what we were doing, I think a few chuckled a bit. It was really embarrassing because neither of us are good at the game but a bunch of guys who watch the game played all day long were certainly aware of our lack of strategy. After a while they began to give me tips by pointing at squares on the board or moving my pieces for me, while of course giving me instructions in Chinese. It was frustrating as I did not even know how to say thank you for the tips they gave me. At some point they were basically just playing for me and debating with each other over the merits of various moves. It was amazing, but all very surreal. Was not at all what we were planing to do in SF but I cant imagine anything better.
The game of Chinese chess or 象棋 (xiàngqí) is extremely popular in China. The scene in chinatown of groups of men playing it in public is apparently seen in cities all over china. While playing it I decided it would be a unique and fun project to program, and something that is within my abilities. So I have decided to create a Chinese chess Facebook application. There already are successful western chess applications so I have something to model it after. I currently do not see an Chinese chess application out there and who knows maybe Facebook will one day become popular in china and I will get a ton of users. I think it will be a great learning experience for me to actually write code with users other than myself, and will be great to put on a resume if it ever became popular!
The next day we ended up going to SF for lunch and to see some sights. I had never seen Chinatown so I wanted to check it out. It was pretty cool to check out Chinatown with Geoff since he is fluent in Cantonese and could communicate with people in the shops if we were looking for things. While wandering around we came by a open park area and saw groups of old Chinese men huddled around small tables playing and observing Chinese chess! It was great since we had just played and had refreshed the rules so we could watch them play and understand the game (although I was unable to understand the discussion/debate over strategies which they were yelling at each other.) It was really cool, and so I decided a great souvenir would be to buy a Chinese chess set. I found one for about $3 which was pretty cool.
We ended up walking back to the park, sitting down at a table and playing a game together. At first I was worried that I would be offending them as I would be seen as a scruffy white guy mocking their past time. After just a few moves a few men started to stand around and watching our game. First they were giving me weird looks and seemed confused or maybe just curious about what we were doing, I think a few chuckled a bit. It was really embarrassing because neither of us are good at the game but a bunch of guys who watch the game played all day long were certainly aware of our lack of strategy. After a while they began to give me tips by pointing at squares on the board or moving my pieces for me, while of course giving me instructions in Chinese. It was frustrating as I did not even know how to say thank you for the tips they gave me. At some point they were basically just playing for me and debating with each other over the merits of various moves. It was amazing, but all very surreal. Was not at all what we were planing to do in SF but I cant imagine anything better.
The game of Chinese chess or 象棋 (xiàngqí) is extremely popular in China. The scene in chinatown of groups of men playing it in public is apparently seen in cities all over china. While playing it I decided it would be a unique and fun project to program, and something that is within my abilities. So I have decided to create a Chinese chess Facebook application. There already are successful western chess applications so I have something to model it after. I currently do not see an Chinese chess application out there and who knows maybe Facebook will one day become popular in china and I will get a ton of users. I think it will be a great learning experience for me to actually write code with users other than myself, and will be great to put on a resume if it ever became popular!
1.09.2009
Road Trip
I have quite a bit of time off until the start of the next semester. I decided it was a good idea for me get out and do something rather than sit around all break so I have embarked on an adventure north.
I have friends who are scattered as people have moved back home or found jobs all over. So I decided to take some time and visit people. The motivation to do so began with a friend who is in Portland who had been asking me to visit her. Portland is quite far and a it had been difficult find time to make the trip there. So since I now had the time to do so I calculated the cost of driving there vs flying. It is a 2000 mile trip from Orange County California to Portland and back, and since gas prices are low and I drive a hybrid it comes to about $73 in gas money to drive there and back. That is less than half the price to fly one way! So it seemed like this time would be an optimal time to make the trip up there and I may not have another good opportunity.
I got $50 in gas cards for chirstmas which will almost cover the whole trip, and a new ultraportable laptop for me to play with and blog from on the journey. So no excuses not to drive around.
My plan is to visit as many friends as I can along the way. Some I may only see on either the way up or the way back down but I will just stop anywhere I know people. So far it has been fun to see friends and I am exited to see everyone in my path.
I have friends who are scattered as people have moved back home or found jobs all over. So I decided to take some time and visit people. The motivation to do so began with a friend who is in Portland who had been asking me to visit her. Portland is quite far and a it had been difficult find time to make the trip there. So since I now had the time to do so I calculated the cost of driving there vs flying. It is a 2000 mile trip from Orange County California to Portland and back, and since gas prices are low and I drive a hybrid it comes to about $73 in gas money to drive there and back. That is less than half the price to fly one way! So it seemed like this time would be an optimal time to make the trip up there and I may not have another good opportunity.
I got $50 in gas cards for chirstmas which will almost cover the whole trip, and a new ultraportable laptop for me to play with and blog from on the journey. So no excuses not to drive around.
My plan is to visit as many friends as I can along the way. Some I may only see on either the way up or the way back down but I will just stop anywhere I know people. So far it has been fun to see friends and I am exited to see everyone in my path.
1.07.2009
Backup
I hope everyone backs up their data. Think of the time you have spent creating config files, documents, and secret love letters. It would be horrible to lose it all.
Well I am preparing for a long road trip so I figured I would put some music on my media player. My player is old and I am currently eyeing new ogg/flac players but anyway, the software to manage the player has two windows. The left window has your home directory from which one may select files to copy to the media player which is displayed on the right window. I confused which window held which and desired to erase everything currently on the player and select new music for it. Well "select all" plus the delete key soon left me with my entire /home directory deleted. I first noticed when my background disappeared and was struck with terror.
Luckilly I had recently made a full backup and was able to restore. I do not have automated backups and just lucked out that I had recently rsycned everything to a spereate hard drive. I hope this tale is warning to everyone to take a moment to backup their data. I know it is a pain but do it. I am still mad about the weeks worth of tinkering with configuration files that I lost but I am ever greatful of my backup. I had everything in a RAID so I do not worry too much most of the time but that is useless for when you acciedently press delete on your own files.
Take out your flash drive now and place everything important on it now. Thank you.
Well I am preparing for a long road trip so I figured I would put some music on my media player. My player is old and I am currently eyeing new ogg/flac players but anyway, the software to manage the player has two windows. The left window has your home directory from which one may select files to copy to the media player which is displayed on the right window. I confused which window held which and desired to erase everything currently on the player and select new music for it. Well "select all" plus the delete key soon left me with my entire /home directory deleted. I first noticed when my background disappeared and was struck with terror.
Luckilly I had recently made a full backup and was able to restore. I do not have automated backups and just lucked out that I had recently rsycned everything to a spereate hard drive. I hope this tale is warning to everyone to take a moment to backup their data. I know it is a pain but do it. I am still mad about the weeks worth of tinkering with configuration files that I lost but I am ever greatful of my backup. I had everything in a RAID so I do not worry too much most of the time but that is useless for when you acciedently press delete on your own files.
Take out your flash drive now and place everything important on it now. Thank you.
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