Charles and Christy’s Weblog

According to this Consumer Reports / Wall Street Journal article, the line up for hybrid vehicles seems to be filled with SUVs as far as the eye can see, especially for the US automakers.

It makes no sense to me that they focus so much on the big sedans and SUVs when those models are completely against the value system driving the hybridization. People that value fuel efficiency do not drive those cars.

The only company that seems to have a clue is Toyota/Lexus. By offering a hybrid luxury sedan, Lexus is appealing to the upmarket status symbol of being environmentally conscious. Though this car perhaps too big and un-svelte to really appeal to the blue-state elite, it is a step in the right direction.

Additionally, Toyota is rumored to create a hybrid Sienna minivan. This makes sense to me because it appeals economically to a potentially cash-strapped family. However it will depend on Toyota’s pricing strategy. I doubt a Prius-level premium will play well on the minivan.

Finally, the more hybrid sedans on the market, the better. However, I was overall disappointed to see which sedans were selected. The Altima and Camry, while popular, are not the most vibrant cars. (Although Altima has come a long way in recent years due to Nissan refreshing its entire lineup.) When the car companies only hybridize their most boring models, they are forfeiting the entire hip factor. Prius is sucessful in part because it is extremely well done, and in part because it is hip and distinctive. I was pleasantly surprised to see Chevy Malibu on the list. This makes sense to me because it plays a solid value for a mid-sized, somewhat stylish car.

The folks who are really blowing it are Mazda, Volvo, and Subaru - I know many a liberal who drive these cars and love em for their practicality and image. Driving a hybrid car would be the perfect alignment of interests. If Honda could make the Civic and Accord look decent, they’d probably absorb this segment.

Marketing is the art of aligning perceived attributes with consumer desires. Focusing on the boring cars, the big sedans, the SUVs - only the most mass-market popular models - proves to me that the car companies only know how to market on demographics but haven’t a clue about psychographics. Therefore my guess is that the current slate of proposed hybrids will not align with the hybrid-interested buyers’ interests and these entrants will underperform.

I’ve been really pleased with Thunderbird’s RSS reader. Having tried the Firefox reader, Feedonfeeds, and various standalone GUIs, this has been by far the most useful.

Probably largely because it is right there with the rest of my primary input, email. Also because it is uncomplicated and does what I want. All the others got to be annoying, some much more quickly than others.

For a good long while, I was using Feedonfeeds, but the MySQL backing was a bit complicated and I got tired of cron spam whenever my webserver was down for maintenance. The allure of having my feeds available online at anytime was kinda cool, but in the end not very compelling. Thunderbird is simply far easier to navigate, update, and manage.

I’m tempted to set up an LDAP server to get better address book integration. Anyone know a better way to tie Thunderbird into the rest of everything?

I think the thing I liked most about Test-First development was that it had such a simple routine. This routine allowed me to focus on the task(s) at hand for at least a while and Get Stuff Done.

The routine:

1. Define the next baby step in the project
2. Write a specific criterion for what it means to be complete
3. Implement to meet that criterion
4. Repeat

That simple loop increased my productivity tremendously. Before, I would get distracted about some new library, or thinking big thoughts, or worrying about things irrelevant to the task at hand. All of those things are fine, of course, in moderation. However sometimes they prevented (distracted) me and the end result was significantly less productivity.

If I had to estimate, I’d say test-first development accelerated my coding by about 25-40% just because of the routine. That I spent less time debugging (because everything passed tests!) sped me up an additional 25-40%. Sometimes I’d lose a little time because I couldn’t figure out how to create a test framework for the task at hand (GUI especially). But that wasn’t a tremendous drain.

Now, if only I could make a similarly simple routine for getting through other knowledge work.

Looks like I’m not the only one struggling to navigate PIM-Land.

Today I stumbled across some folks who are also intrigued by Getting Things Done and are trying to maximize their personal productivity.

They describe such productivity tricks as “Life Hacks.” These blogs were largely inspired by a talk at some conference where Danny O’Brien introduced the concept.

Related Blogs:

• 43 Folders
• Lifehacker

I’ve used some pretty cool astronomy software in the past, namely Starry Night Pro. The other day, I stumbled on to Celestia (GPL) and was immediately impressed.

This little program is all OpenGL. While its initial run right after download may seem “eh - ok” this puppy starts singing once you begin playing with various add-on features contributed by the user community.

Here’s my usage and add-on recommendations:

1. Grab the Earth Location File and plunk it in the extras folder.
2. Fire up the program. Run the demo from the Help menu to get a sense of its capabilities.
3. Run this tutorial script to try out some additional controls.
4. Turn on Label Features under Render -> Location. Find your hometown by rotating and zooming in.
5. In the Navigation menu, click Goto Object... and type your hometown as Earth/[hometown] as in Earth/Carrboro.
6. Rotate the Earth until you are more-or-less normal to your hometown.
7. Follow the directions to setup the “backyard planetarium” to simulate your view outside. (With the locations database add-on, you shouldn’t have to lookup your hometown’s coordinates.)
8. Add a bookmark for your current view in the Bookmarks menu.
9. To make the Earth look incredible, download a series of add-ons. They can be pretty huge - all in, about 900 MB.
   • JMII levels 0-4
   • JMII level 5
   • JNight
   • JNormal
   • earth-clouds

It doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as Starry Night Pro, but it’s darn good for Open Source software with a great supporting community.

Only complaints are that it has a lag as it’s loading texture files for an object you’re approaching. Really makes a convincing argument to get a wicked-fast video card!