A jaunt up North

Honey, dude, baby pie and I took a road trip up to Kuala Lumpur to attend a wedding last weekend.

The Silver Tortoise made its way there and back with an average fuel consumption of 17km/L. This isn't a good number. We have done previous trips to Malacca at 20km/L. My excuse for the poor showing this time around is the frequent attempts to follow a lead car through KL traffic. Not an ideal situation for hypermiling.

** Silver Tortoise is a 2007 Nissan Latio with a HR15DE and CVT under the bonnet. Also known as the Nissan Versa or Nissan Tiida in other regions.

Continue

Bleach...

Household bleach is amazing stuff. General consensus on the Internet is that bleach isn't the chemical of choice in the fight against mold. My take is that it can be the ultimate solution in two common household scenarios:

• A mold and scum infested washing machine

• Moldy silicone sealant on the bathroom sink

For the first problem, add two small cups of the stuff into the detergent tray and run a hot wash without any clothes. Never ever keep the door closed on a front load washing machine after a wash. Always leave the door ajar so that moisture can evaporate.

To take out mold on the silicone strips around your bathroom fixtures, apply a 1:1 dilution bleach to some paper towels. Lay the rolled up, soaked paper against the affected areas and wait 12hrs. Ensure that the bleach solution in the paper towel contacts the moldy silicone. The black stuff just disappear. It's amazing. I was pleasantly surprised to discover this actually works!

Continue

10 excuses to buy a Gpsmap 62s

Here's a short list of excuses to justify that toy you always wanted...

• The Battery Contrary to popular belief, the iPad/2 is not the only device with 10hrs of battery life. The Gpsmap 62s chugs along for 15hrs on a pair of NiMH AA cells. Really. Now, can your Nuvi do that? Besides, you can always pop into a store and pick up alkaline cells for those rare emergencies.
• MCX Connector The Gpsmap 62s has an MCX connector for external antennas. You won't find this on an Oregon nor a Dakota. And only the older discontinued Nuvis have them. It's great for those who have fancy windshield solar films that block out more stuff than it should. You can stick the antenna on the car roof. The best thing about it is that the amplified antennas like the Gilsson are available for a very reasonable USD$25.
• IPX 7 Is your iPhone waterproof? Well, mine isn't. Whip out the Gpsmap 62s when everyone else is packing away their iPhones. It's true you can waterproof your phone by tucking it into a Ziplock bag. But then, you'll loose The Touch. And by the way, if you're into iPhones and trails or hobby mapping projects, check out Motion-X GPS.
• The Stubby It's different. There's an antenna sticking out of the casing! How cool is that. You can tell all your friends that it has a quadrifilar helix antenna. It'll pick up signals from satellite close to the horizon that patch antennas cannot see. Of course you may also want to downplay the fact that you might end up with more multipath interference in urban canyons.
• Buttons It's got BUTTONS! Did I mention it's different? Buttons are great for some things but I wish it had voice commands for when you need to key in addresses.
• The Display It's got a retro 65k colour transflective LCD screen with a purposeful 160x240 pixels. Unbelievably low tech by today's standards. But wait till you mount it on your bicycle and ride into the high noon sun. Your trusty Gpsmap 62s display will your maps in full glory with the backlight OFF while the others just fade away. No contest.
• Custom Maps and Bird's Eye imagery. It's like having cached Google Satellite maps overlaid on your Garmin maps. About time. It's available on Oregon and Dakota GPSRs too. Not supported on Nuvis.
• Barometer It's like having your own weather station. The algorithms used to measure altitude with both GPS coordinates and barometric pressure are somewhat obscure. I do not understand it. Both are problematic.
• Compass This is a lot like the iPhone compass except more highly damped so the needle doesn't do a rain dance when a truck or some other unidentified magnetic object blows past.
• For some reason, I can't come up with Excuse No. 10...

Continue

iPad 2 imminent?

Looks like Apple is preparing to launch the iPad 2... Singapore online store is temporarily unavailable.

Continue

Gilsson GPS Antenna

Here's my Gilsson active GPS antenna with the MCX connector. Comes with a suction
mount for the windshield. The antenna itself is magnetic so you can stick it on the car roof. But that would ruin the aerodynamics...

Continue

At the playground

Dude working out... his smile.

Continue