My Royal Exceed is getting ready for export to Canada. I finally got some photographs of the Delica.

Here is a shot of the front of the Van:

The left side (this is actually the passengers side):

The rear:

The right side - the drivers side!:

A shot of the rear inside with the Crystal Lite roof open:

Here is a photo of the underside, showing the condition of the diff and frame:

Here is a picture of the drivers console. Yes, it is a right hand drive:

Here is a look at the gauges, the mileage is high for a Japanese import, but it is a Diesel:

Here is a close look at the mag wheels. 4 Wheel Disc brakes on this vehicle:

I have decided to name my Delica Starbug. Starbug should be in my possession in mid April.

Well, it was time to upgrade. My 1989 Toyota 4Runner with 350,000 KM on it is finally starting to die.

I ordered a 1995 Delica Royal Exceed from Amazing Auto Imports. I should get it in roughly a month. I will be posting pictures on here soon.

Been ages since I last posted, but on Friday, January 15 2009 I passed my Vmware VCP version 4 exam. This means I am a certified VCP on versions 3 and 4. I am also considering getting my Sun Solaris 10 System Administrators certification as I have been working with various flavours of Unix for so long I might as well put that one under my belt.

THIS from the globe and mail is unacceptable. I had issues with his nomination to the post given his employment history, but the fact that he won’t come clear on his position on evolution, when that is the central tenant of biology says enough.

Gary Goodyear must step down. He is not competent to fill the role of science minister and must be removed immediately.

I shall be writing a dead-tree letter to Parliament as soon as I find the appropriate people to write to (aside from my MP).

When I was in grade 8 biology we were shown the scientific method. It really fascinated me. I thought about it constantly after learning it. In fact, it took me a full week to really understand it. Once I did, I felt a little stupid. After all, it is such a simple idea. There are a few basic rules, and you can expand these rules into critical thinking which is basically the same process.

This stuck with me, and always seemed to me to be obvious.

Now, that I am older and I use critical thinking all the time I am still shocked at how many people around are incapable of this basic skill. In fact, I only know a few people who I would consider to be extremely skilled at using critical thinking.

This does not mean that my critical thinking skills are always correct. You can get things wrong of course. Still, that goes right back to the scientific method again. If you get something wrong, that is good! And people don’t understand that. It is as if they are afraid to fail. Yet, the entire scientific method is bolstered by failure. Each failure is recorded and remembered. The things that work are the things that don’t fail. These are the things that remain, and science advances.

I published this back in 2006, and I knew at the time it was total BS. How did I know? Critical thinking and a basic understanding of thermodynamics. Could I have been wrong? Sure, but I would put the odds of thermodynamics being wrong being much greater than winning 10 different lotteries at once. And now, 2 years on? It turns out that I was right. It was a hoax.

Still, it is not the only one. There are so many others around, and people just don’t see them. I think it is because they don’t want to. They are afraid of being wrong, afraid of feeling stupid. 24 years ago I felt stupid in biology class because it took me a week to learn the scientific method. Others in the class had memorized that material in minutes. Yet, now I feel like I was one of the few who still remembers how it works after the test was over. Don’t be afraid to be wrong, or feel stupid because you don’t understand something, it will work in the long run.

I responded to a Craigslist posting for the following:

Athlon 3500+ 2.2GHZ CPU
GigaByte K8NSC-939 motherboard
1 GB pc3200 DDR RAM
250 GB western Digital HDD
256 MB Nvidea vid card
Sound Blaster Audigy sound card
ACEPOWER 400 WATT PSU
LINKSYS Wireless pci card/Wireless router
dvd player/cd burner
Windows XP home with C.O.A.
17 inch crt monitor.

$250

Not a bad deal, I was looking at a brand new Dell Core 2 Duo for $300 including shipping, but I chose the above system for the following reasons:

Dell refused to sell the system with either a Ubuntu operating system or no OS. I knew I would not be using Vista, so I had no desire to pay for that, but moreso, I have no desire to contribute to Microsofts sales numbers in this regard for an OS I have no intention of using.

Also, the GigaByte motherboard has more PCI slots, and the system comes with a 400 watt power supply. The Dell has 1 PCI slot, and a 250 Watt power supply. Since I need to install add in cards for the PVR features of MythBuntu, I need more power and more room. In fact, this system is perfect for MythBuntu other than I don’t much care for the case. Still, I can always put the contents into a new case for MythBuntu.

I am currently running through the MythBuntu install, and I am impressed that the installer includes Memtest X86 version 1.70.

Wordpress upgrade seems to have broken my categories on the right, replaced them with numbers. *groan* As if I don’t do enough computer stuff on my own. Update, it appears I am not alone:

Solution 1 Solution 2
Using the Google cache I have pulled my categories up (I could have used my MySQL backup, but the Google cache is faster).

Looks like solution 2 will be easiest for me.

Edit:

Looks like solution one, or rather a hybrid of it worked best. I took my wordpress backup from before the upgrade, and ran the SQL statements to recreate the wp_categories table, and then populate it with the original data. Then I ran the SQL statements to copy over the data from wp_categories to wp_term_taxonomy. Really painful that I had to do it that way, but attempting to manually insert data into the wp_term_taxonomy table was giving me very bizzare SQL errors that should NOT have been cropping up.

And I am going to test something here:

I was surprised to find a wreckers in Victoria BC that specializes in Toyota 4Runners. I had been heading up to Nanaimo and South Island Auto for all my parts. It made sense, as I used to live in Nanaimo. But now I know of “Corvette Holdings” 1063 Dunford Avenue, Victoria, BC V9B 2S4, Telephone : 250-474-6051.

Don’t ask me why it is called Corvette when they have tons of 4Runner parts.

On my birthday I decided to buy myself a Toyota Clinometer off of Ebay for my 4Runner. It was originally in a Toyota Surf - the diesel Japanese version of the 4Runner. I had wanted one for some time for off-road use. After it arrived, I disassembled it to see how it worked as seen here.

I took my dashboard apart:

Then I removed the metal mounting hardware from the Clinometer to measure it for the dash:

After figuring out the fit, I began drilling the dashboard (The hole for the wiring is not drilled in this image):

And finally, reattaching the dashboard to see how it looks:

Not bad, although it appears crooked. This is because the Clinometer is from a Toyota Surf, and thus was not meant to attach to a First Gen 4Runner dash, especially a left hand drive like mine. Toyota Surf’s are right hand drive, thus the Clinometer mounts differently.

I just need to finish off the wiring now so that it lights up when my dash lights come on. I verified that the Altimeter works well, both for altitude and predicting the weather. The tilt to the left and the right is handy, although the forward and back tilt is rather pointless.

This was recorded about a year ago, but I never linked it off of my blog.

It is a video of me surfing on Tarp and Play on the Puntledge river. I am in my Super Ego. This is before I owned my Bliss-Stick boats - which I have not even had the chance to try on the Puntledge due to a broken collarbone.