Relating horspower and torque to real life

Much of what I've accomplished in my life has been in the way of analogies. See, I have developed something of an ability to explain computers in ways that people understand.

If I'm talking to a car guy I tell it like it's a car. See, this is your motherboard. It is like the frame of the vehicle. The case is like the body. Everything plugs into the frame, right, so that's the motherboard and we'll put our engine on that. Cpu is the motor, blah blah blah.

I just try to figure out some system the user understands and relate computering to that. Anyway, it makes sense to the person and they often thank me for the insight and its nice.

So today I came up with the solution to a problem.

Here's the problem:
How do you explain the difference in horsepower and torque to someone who isn't a gearhead? Well I came up with a workable solution. Sure, it isn't entirely accurate, but it seems to be a good way to get the overall point across in a manner most will understand.

Here's the solution:
The difference between horsepower and torque for Everyman:

First of all forget about horsepower and torque, we're not going to start with those. Let's think of your favorite bicycle. I've had a bunch and I would have to say all of us have ridden down a hill. Well let's do that. Imagine yourself on this bike and you are riding down a hill. It's a hot day and there isn't much breeze so you pick up the pace to get some of the wind whipping through your helmet (you ARE wearing your helmet, aren't you?!) The wind feels good so you pick up the pace a bit more to get more of a good thing and then get drunk with pleasure and are pumping full speed down this hill with the wind whipping your hair and bugs in your teeth and freedom in your soul. This is horsepower.

Now, you've made it to the bottom of the hill, had a nice little dip in the stream in the valley and you're all hydrated and ready to head back up. I'm afraid the imagery isn't as poetic this time around. Your muscles ache, you grind the pedals in a circular rotation and the hill is as such that you are easily able to count the rotations to keep your mind off the fact that your upper thigh is burning like a rash you had back in college, you're sweating like something from another world, and you generally just hate having to trudge back up the hill. This is torque.

You use a little bit of each (horsepower / torque ) depending on your terrain and load. The numbers you see shown on websites and literature are their peak numbers. Actual performance in either a real engine or a person would be a gradual graph of values up to their peak and then falling off again. These numbers are not, of course, meaningless. But you can take it on face value that if you want more get up and go right off the bat without revving all the way up you'll want something with torque in the low end. This means you want your torque numbers to be high at low revolutions of the engine. This is what tugs you up the hill on your bike, your pedaling the crank is the torque.


Anyway, it makes sense to me. :P

Turn off your tv

Recently read an article detailing the manner in which companies attempt to market to the general public, ie you and me. Some of the main points were tivo type devices, spyware and search engine history, and a couple other topics. Mostly it dealt with visual media which begs the question:

Why not turn it off?

I think in much the same way that our society has eating problems we have an addiction to the television. I don't see people outside anymore. The number of people I know that sew for a hobby is diminishing. The number of "Rock Band/Guitar Hero" musicians now seems to outnumber the real deal.

People often ask me, "hey, did you see the ad about such and such?"
No, I don't watch tv.
They continue to tell me how great and clever an ad is and quite honestly I don't care. I guess for the most part I've shut off the switch for tv loving in my brain and I think its to my own advantage. Do still have a soft spot for Love Boat and Fantasy Island though.

music, a lover.

What is it about music and me? Well unless you know me personally that's just a random question. Those that know me understand that question well but as of yet nobody has been able to offer any answers.

Here's how it broke down:

At age 8 I jumped off a barn. Told mom I broke my ankle running. Subsequently I was given a new guitar and showed some chords. I practiced my chords and enjoyed the guitar. I had to walk with crutches so I had plenty of time to sit on the couch and make little noises. It was all great fun.

One tragic evening.

The family requested I sing "Home on the Range" while I played it. I declined. They insisted. I declined. They made it an order. I complied. They laughed. I cried.

My 8 year old psyche changed that evening. I had always been the "class clown" type and was ok with some ridicule but I found out I was only ok with ridicule when I was asking for it.

I vowed never to sing again. I got over it.

I guess I came to a point in my psychological development where I realized I really wasn't too great of a singer, player, or songwriter and I really didn't care. I enjoyed making the music and I decided that was good enough for me.

I've recorded my own songs since I was about 15. They are all very distinct. I've yet to find a person that can tell me what style of music it is that comes out of me. There's a lot of country in there. Some 50's type stuff. Dissonance, sustained chords. Always a catchy hook. I'm addicted to them. But when its all brought together it's just, well, distinct. I don't want to sound all high and mighty but it's rather like when Metallica came out. You didn't have to know the song to know immediately it was Metallica. I'm kind of the same way in a whole other genre.

See, that's another thing. When you heard Metallica, not only did you know it was some form of Rock, you also knew it was Metallica. With my songs you won't be able to put a term on the genre but you'd be able to say, "Yup, that's JohnCub."

I guess I've had a musical bug lately that coincided with the opening of a local (to me) venue that has bands. I live in this odd place that doesn't have bars. With no bars comes no music so I've been being bled dry musically. Life on scan, no live music... gah.

But what gave me the bug? I think it was two main factors that told me to get off my ass and get to practicing.
1. Guitar hero. Here's my opinion of guitar hero: wtf. It costs nearly as much as a starter instrument when you have all the pieces. screw that, give me a real guitar. I'll never be a hero but I'll be great fun around a campfire.
2. Current popular music. I have no idea what the song was exactly. I was in the back seat on a work trip and the driver put the radio to some station with some song that I thought was a joke until it lasted for 5 minutes. It was so absolutely horrendous that I decided even I was better than that.

So maybe I'm not better than whoever it was. But it sounds better to me. I don't rap. I know I can't sing well but I try. I know I miss notes and entire chords but meh, it seems to flow well enough for my brain to smooth it over. I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to music, quite the opposite. I've often wondered if my genre should be "Lo-Fi" or something. AM Gold? heh.

Lately I've been riding a maelstrom of musicality. I've written two songs in the past week or so and I really believe they are of pretty good quality. They aren't recorded well but I'm not so worried about that sticky bit. I mainly record so I don't forget my own songs. I know that sounds impossible but I know from personal experience it is not only possible, it happens more often than not.

Anyway since I record my songs so I don't forget them and am ok with sounding as mediocre as I do I decided to put them online as I make them. The myspace band profile lets you put 6 songs up and they pay for the bandwidth. Seemed like a pretty decent deal to me so I hooked it up and did the whole friend list thing. Meh, I don't know. Over 500 plays now and I think only one actual comment on the music itself.

Maybe I'm wondering if it is better to be aware of people laughing and pointing or just to stay in the dark as I am?

Time will tell.


In the meantime, grab a lounge chair and a margarita and listen to my song Love Boat at my music page.

Life, on scan

So my cd player quit working in my 2 year old jeep. :-\

I don't have a favorite radio station primarily because the amount of talking far exceeds the amount of music any one of them play. I do occasionally listen to NPR but lately I've been in more of a music-ey way so I've lived the past couple months on "Scan."

"Scan" is a spot on your radio as much as it is a black hole in the entertainment matrix.

Living on scan gives you a wide variety of what is available. I've always been diverse in my listening pleasures so this isn't too bad for me, I like to shake things up. I've learned some new funny songs this way and for a while the ones I seemed to gravitate towards were country songs. I especially like songs with a story and very few non-country artists are able to do this. It seems there are two camps: Set up a scenario and Tell a story. I enjoy both camps but my bunk is in the tell a story one.

Recently I was in a large american city and I decided to try my scan tactic. I figured it would be mere moments before I found something so wonderful and enriching I'd never need to leave the station. As such was not the case. I found it to be a droll and quiet on the good music front as it is here in podunk. There was less static though, I'll admit that.

Live within your means

Having dealt with people with computer problems for many many years now taught me a valuable lesson: Live within your means. I'm not talking about monetary concerns. I'm talking about what programs and settings are turned on inside an individual computer. One of the most common complaints I hear when I get the "can you fix it" call is, "It doesn't run like it used to."


I think one of my strong suits is that I can "Bring something home" ie I think I make good analogies that people can relate to. Not in a Buddhism or Yoda kind of way, but one that simply "Makes sense."

Somebody gets a new computer, they love it. It zips zooms and flies to their expectations, like most new computers do. Within days it is loaded up with the software that the individual desires on there. We all have our favorites and it seems almost everyone has at least one "non-standard" favorite. I have several, unsurprisingly, since I deal mostly with computer programming. Nobody like paint or any of the usual graphical editors (hello? paint? gah!) So we all install our favorite image editor. I made my choice long ago on one that doesn't touch any of my file associations without asking. If I change a file association manually (as I sometimes do for animated gifs) the program doesn't give me a warning that I'm doing something potentially unsafe or whatever (at least nothing more than windows itself does.) Quicktime? It will never go on another one of my computers by my hand and my family is aware that quicktime is not to be installed on my machine. See that little Q down by your clock? You might have to click the double carat to open up that full gargantuan list of crap that starts at startup.


This is your first clue that you aren't living within your means.

1. Count the number of icons in the full list of what is commonly called (but much controversy surrounds the actual name) the system tray.

This is where you clock is and likely a little speaker icon of some fashion. I hope one of the icons down there indicates a real time virus scanner. AVG is free for personal usage and while it does a couple of things that annoy me (I don't like double-confirmation boxen) it IS free (money-wise, not source code) and works well. You may or may not have a double computer icon down there indicating your network connection status. You may have several actually: It all depends on how many network interfaces you have on your computer and how many are set to display. Some may have a red x over the computers. This indicates there is no connection on that interface and as long as you have some connection that red x can be ignored or turned off. If there are any requests I can look at how to do this and detail it.

If you have a full set of graphics drivers installed you may get some form of video icon in the system tray. If you keep a card reader or anything usb plugged in you'll see the "safely remove hardware" icon. Use this, won't you? Don't just pull your cards. Eject them first. Go to my computer, figure out which one is your card, right click and choose eject or unmount or whatever that item is. This tells windows, "Last chance, anything you want to write down on here before we go?" Do get in the habit. There's no recovering from half of a file on the camera card and half in windows memory that I know of. If you're like me you keep a lot more on a memory stick than pictures anyway.

So the rundown in your system menu: Clock, Antivirus, networking, sound, video, usb, and if absolutely necessary printer bloat.
I highly discourage printer bloat (anything that runs real time to interface with your printer/scanner/copier/faxer/toast maker. If it is necessary then so be it but if you can lose it you're much better off. Live within your means.

Now in all likelihood you have Quicktime, Bonus Miles, Yahoo, MSN Messenger, and half a dozen other items coming up down there. I've seen people with over 20 and it's almost unheard of to see less than 10. I have 5 on my windows startup at home. Networking, AVG, usb, sound, and video. Pare yours down. Uninstall the programs you don't actually use. The only suggestion I have about quicktime and itunes is to rid them of your system and live with the fact that .mov files are off limits without a lot of trouble. Get rid of weatherbug. Do it now. Uninstall. There are rss feeds for weather that do not tax your system like such items do. Same with bonus coupons and anything that claims to "give you a deal." It's a lie. Universally. Just get rid of the bloat.

Spyware is a big component of many slowdown issues I've dealt with. There's no easy answer here because of the complexity of the issue. Some people want complete and utter privacy until they realize that to obtain that they must not store their usernames and passwords anywhere and must log into each website on each visit. "Hmmm, that's not for me," says just about everyone. But there's a middle ground. It requires the user to think and to make a decision based on trust. For example, when you go to windows update it might ask if you want to install some software. There might be a box that says "Always trust content from Microsoft." Always is forever. It isn't forever yet so I'm not going to commit to trusting them all the time. And I feel the same way about almost everything else. Personally I give more faith to an open source software effort than any commercial venture. I trust mozilla and its products, but not always and forever. I don't commit to that. You shouldn't either if you want to keep tabs on who is doing what. If you are "Starting from zero got nothing to lose" (Tracy Chapman, ~1989) then your best bet is to get a reputable spyware scanner and let it start by cleaning everything out. BE WARNED: You will likely need to know your username and password on most of the websites you visit, if not all. This is the biggest, hardest part of the process but a necessary step. This won't take "A couple minutes." This is the beginning of a lifelong process. You are about to become aware that when you allow something on your computer you are allowing it into your home. Even if you're "okay" with something being able to access personal information is it within your computing means?

Computer hardware is what it is. It evolves fairly quickly but not by leaps and bounds. It seems to be more of a migratory process than anything revolutionary. We're all, for the most part, living on modest machines around an average of what I'll guess to be 2 gigahertz. My laptop is only 1 and my desktop is only about 1.6 but I think for the most part I'm on the low end of the spectrum.

Software continues to evolve and grow. More programs are created every day to help us be more productive, interest our minds, and to do whatever it is we do with computers. We want more. But is it within our means? Do we have the processor required, the hard drive space available, and are willing to fight with it in the event that it does something we don't like (for example, installs a secondary application that you do not desire or installs the Yahoo toolbar, dirge of the internet.) This is part of the process of keeping a clean system.

So go have a poke around in your add/remove programs. Get crazy with it. In addition, removing Microsoft Office does NOT remove your documents. And Openoffice is so much better and free-er (like thought and beer.)