Over the years I’ve noticed a couple bugs that are present in in some or all of NT/Vista/7. I experience these on a daily basis, across dozens of computers. So it can’t just be me, right? Focus bug. If the timing is right, some windows remain on top despite clicking on a background window. The background window obtains focus, but does not move to the front. This is typically when the foreground window does some focus changing action (Showing a dialog, opening a new tab, etc.

I picked up a really cheap ThinkPad T410 from Craigslist. First-gen mobile Core i5, 4GB, 320GB drive and most importantly: 1440×900. A 40% increase in horizontal space (and 17% vertical). Finally I can tune without trying to get TunerStudio to fit. Installing Arch was quick, as usual. The laptop has a fingerprint reader, which works really well in Linux. Now I can log in with a finger swipe-although you have to press enter after swiping.

I update Custom Speed to 1.1. Changes include: An actual theme (consistent colors) More units New icon 2.0 will include an actual settings page that will allow the units to be selected from an easier control, a setting for keeping the display on, and other minor UI improvements. There’s no ETA currently for 2.0.

I’ve decided to consolidate some of my web presence. My car’s website will be merged into this one. Going from WordPress to Drupal is easy, but the other way is not. I found a couple links for SQL scripts to import lots of posts automatically, but these were and are easily outdated by Drupal and to a lesser extent WordPress. It was easier just to create my own SQL JOIN statement and export the resulting list.

That’s the best title I can come up with. The idea is to do this:

THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS
    THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS
    THIS            THIS    THIS    THIS            THIS            THIS
    THIS            THIS    THIS    THIS            THIS            THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THISTHISTHIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THISTHISTHIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS            THISTHIS    THISTHIS            THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS            THISTHIS    THISTHIS            THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THISTHIS    THISTHIS            THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THISTHIS    THISTHISTHISTHIS    THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THISTHIS    THISTHISTHISTHIS    THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THIS            THIS            THIS
    THISTHIS    THISTHIS    THIS    THIS            THIS            THIS
    THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS
    THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS

With any number of alphanumeric characters. The idea comes from a reddit user posting something similar, and then my mind wandered.

After searching for a simple GPS Speedometer app that provided a speed readout in more than just 2 units (a free one, of course), I thought it would be the perfect project for my first Android app. It took only a few hours to make it, the Eclipse ADT makes this pretty easy. Google Play link I’m glad I’ve gotten more familiar with the publishing process. It’ll help when I release a game I’ve been tinkering with for a few years.

Second autocross. This course was a bit more technical, and my car was definitely not setup for it. I was out of the power band most of the time, which was somewhat aggravating. At least I plumbed my wastegate back in, so it’s quiet at full throttle. Here’s my best run:

I noticed that my reddit account had a few posts that were too revealing. So, I decided to remove them. I stumbled upon a couple greasemonkey scripts to delete all posts, which got my interested in seeing if I could write up a quick script to do the same that could run in the Developer Tools of any browser, rather than relying on an extension. The catch is that you, apparently, should edit each comment’s content to remove it before deleting it, otherwise it’s still cached in other users' inboxes or something.

Well I hammered out a few problems with the car and decided to try it out at an autocross. There was slight rain during the first half of the event, but it cleared up completely in the afternoon. To put it blunt: The car is very hard to control. Old suspension, too peaky of a powerband, and a short wheelbase spell trouble. It was fun though.

Best spin out:

My best runs after the jump.

If there’s one thing nice about our new place, it’s that there’s a full quarter mile drag strip nearby. I had my car shipped here, and this is pretty much the first thing I did. The track is really nice, although it’s more expensive (surprise, surprise), and very crowded. The problem seems to be that they have street car night at the same time they have the non-street car night.