100 posts over a two year period, wow. I need to get back to doing this as soon as I stop thinking about (in that order) work related stuff, the car (downshift rev matching it is now).
Need to practice the rev matching part more, will post on that sometime.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Friday, June 25, 2010
iTunes under Virtualization
I generally do not update my iPhone on a regular basis thru iTunes since there isn’t a native iTunes client on Ubuntu , iTunes even under XP is a generally buggy s/w. Since I did not want to jailbreak my iPhone I ended up running a XP image inside VirtualBox under Hardy. Now this was working fine until recently when the latest iTunes 9.2 update came out. Apple for some reason decided to crash iTunes if virtualization was underway over here. Now this I realized pretty late until after I had made multiple images of my WinXP and after several unsuccessful attempts to get iTunes going on each of these multiple images. I even tried to get Vista to play nice, but the Vista iso itself had issues, so had to call it a day there.
Coming back to the issue at hand, the quick fix for this was to revert back to an older version of iTunes, I mean who really cares about an iTunes update anyway. I use iTunes for transferring music to the iPhone because Apple makes me do so (unless I jailbreak), but that’s all I really do with iTunes. No Podcasts/Video, nothing. But the catch over reverting back to an older iTunes version is that apparently iTunes uses a library file called (you’ll never guess this one !! ) ‘iTunes Library’, now this file gets timestamped with the latest date that it was generated by iTunes and the version of iTunes used to generate it. And this file isn’t exactly backward compatible too, so several attempts to replace the existing lib with the older lib didn’t work either. Finally the easiest fix for this was to simply delete the lib itself and have iTunes regenerate it. Yes, I do lose my playlist info and stuff, but that’s ok, I was booting up from a fresh XP iso anyway.
But all said and done at the end of the day the only reason am still going to stick with the iPhone over Droid phones is since the G37 has a complete iPod interface and I intend to make full use of that without buying another iTouch for the same. I did try to do an update today after several months since I needed a backup of my Contact List after I switch to the iPhone 4.
Coming back to the issue at hand, the quick fix for this was to revert back to an older version of iTunes, I mean who really cares about an iTunes update anyway. I use iTunes for transferring music to the iPhone because Apple makes me do so (unless I jailbreak), but that’s all I really do with iTunes. No Podcasts/Video, nothing. But the catch over reverting back to an older iTunes version is that apparently iTunes uses a library file called (you’ll never guess this one !! ) ‘iTunes Library’, now this file gets timestamped with the latest date that it was generated by iTunes and the version of iTunes used to generate it. And this file isn’t exactly backward compatible too, so several attempts to replace the existing lib with the older lib didn’t work either. Finally the easiest fix for this was to simply delete the lib itself and have iTunes regenerate it. Yes, I do lose my playlist info and stuff, but that’s ok, I was booting up from a fresh XP iso anyway.
But all said and done at the end of the day the only reason am still going to stick with the iPhone over Droid phones is since the G37 has a complete iPod interface and I intend to make full use of that without buying another iTouch for the same. I did try to do an update today after several months since I needed a backup of my Contact List after I switch to the iPhone 4.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Ride Review
The first 1000 miles are done on the car now and I had promised a review to several folks, so here we go.
This car is incredibly fun to drive. I have driven the 335i so lets start with that. Yes, the 335i does carry the tag of 'the ultimate driving machine' but there is still German refinement in there, but not so much in the G37. Simply put the 335i is like an escort service whereas the G37 is just a high class hooker. They both will finally lead to the same result, total ecstasy, but there is a whole lot more fun to be had in the G37 than the 335i. This is the car that can bring out the child in you, who simply wants to have a blast on his day out. The 330 horses in this are more than enough for regular folks on city streets and most ppl will never ever go upto the red line here anyway except on rare occasions. Yes, the 335i does produce more torque(30 lb-ft) but it is a lot more entertaining in the G37 because you need to rev it upto 5200rpm to fetch the 270 lb-ft.
I had a friend (Pam), comment on the looks once as ' A Batmobile lookalike', enough said. Everyone knows that the Batmobile is by far the coolest car anyone can ever have. The number of gizmo's loaded in this is HUGE. Damn, there is also a USB host port in it, so basically anything and everything goes now. A special mention goes for the 4th gear, which will keep pulling from 1500 rpm all the way to 7000 rpm. The sound from the dual exhausts is mind blowing. The gear ratios are perfect higher up, 6th has a sublime 1:1.
There are cars in which you need to think twice when coming up to a traffic light changing from green to yellow about if you press the throttle whether you will clear the light or not but no such doubts over here, the G37 is up there all the time with you during these decisions. A joy for weaving as well thru traffic. If you think that you can get thru sticky situations then this car will do so too. Simply put, when at a traffic light you get into a drag race then pretend your inferiority and encourage your adversary.
Curvy mountain roads are where this thing comes into its own. The power is savage, speed is exhilarating and handling on a knife's edge, so you really need to be awake to push this car and when you do the rewards are there too.
Once another friend (Rama) gets back to Pittsburgh I will be taking this on the Pennsylvania TurnPike thru the Appalachian Mountains. I also have started using the WMATA bus service to get to work and back and taking the car out now on weekends when I can really enjoy the drive :)
On long drives I intend to take the D90 with me now everytime to get some panorama's from the east coast.
This car is incredibly fun to drive. I have driven the 335i so lets start with that. Yes, the 335i does carry the tag of 'the ultimate driving machine' but there is still German refinement in there, but not so much in the G37. Simply put the 335i is like an escort service whereas the G37 is just a high class hooker. They both will finally lead to the same result, total ecstasy, but there is a whole lot more fun to be had in the G37 than the 335i. This is the car that can bring out the child in you, who simply wants to have a blast on his day out. The 330 horses in this are more than enough for regular folks on city streets and most ppl will never ever go upto the red line here anyway except on rare occasions. Yes, the 335i does produce more torque(30 lb-ft) but it is a lot more entertaining in the G37 because you need to rev it upto 5200rpm to fetch the 270 lb-ft.
I had a friend (Pam), comment on the looks once as ' A Batmobile lookalike', enough said. Everyone knows that the Batmobile is by far the coolest car anyone can ever have. The number of gizmo's loaded in this is HUGE. Damn, there is also a USB host port in it, so basically anything and everything goes now. A special mention goes for the 4th gear, which will keep pulling from 1500 rpm all the way to 7000 rpm. The sound from the dual exhausts is mind blowing. The gear ratios are perfect higher up, 6th has a sublime 1:1.
There are cars in which you need to think twice when coming up to a traffic light changing from green to yellow about if you press the throttle whether you will clear the light or not but no such doubts over here, the G37 is up there all the time with you during these decisions. A joy for weaving as well thru traffic. If you think that you can get thru sticky situations then this car will do so too. Simply put, when at a traffic light you get into a drag race then pretend your inferiority and encourage your adversary.
Curvy mountain roads are where this thing comes into its own. The power is savage, speed is exhilarating and handling on a knife's edge, so you really need to be awake to push this car and when you do the rewards are there too.
Once another friend (Rama) gets back to Pittsburgh I will be taking this on the Pennsylvania TurnPike thru the Appalachian Mountains. I also have started using the WMATA bus service to get to work and back and taking the car out now on weekends when I can really enjoy the drive :)
On long drives I intend to take the D90 with me now everytime to get some panorama's from the east coast.
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