If your bored one day and you have 8 billion dollars to spare maybe you should build a machine that creates mini black holes, yeah what a fantastic idea! The large Hadron Collider! next they will be splitting atoms! oh wait they already did, ladies and gentlemen, the Hydrogen Bomb. surely there is a better way to spend such wealth?

Which made me wonder where the money for the LHC comes from, and is it worth it. There are a few threads out on the internets about this subject. Quite a few people question the validity of the project and question its cost. Do you know how many people that money could feed? could educate? could save?

I wonder how many people consider the opposite question. What is the cost of not building the LHC? What knowledge do we miss out on that changes our lives forever?

Here is a list of the work and upgrades that have been performed on this fantastic bike.

South Bay Triumph
904 Big Bore Kit
Stay Tuned Stainless Steel PeaShooter Exhaust
Imported English Stainless Headers
OHLINS Rear Shocks
Front Up Graded Brake Rotor
Billet Front Fork Brace
New CAM Bolts
New Exhaust Valves
New Alternator Cover
New Front Rotor Bolts
Hyper Pro Fork Springs
YSS Gold Front Fork Valves
New Oil Seals
Ported Head and Valve Job at M-Tech
Chrome Mirrors
Cafe Style Bar Risers
Adjustable clutch and brake levers
Billet running turn signals
Bobbed front fender
Airbox removal kit
halogen headlites
Hand Polished side covers
Drilled and polished sproket cover
additional clear dress sprocket cover
two sets of triumph tank badges
new set of thruxton side covers
matched painted set of side covers
norman hyde stearing dampner
oil temperature guage
Drilled billet chain guard
Renthal Gold Chain
Aviation Fuel Cap
Upgraded coil
Factory gell seat
Rear racing sets
C&R Racing Carbs
K&N Air Filter System
Hot Plugs & upgraded Spark plug wires
Rear Wheel Display/work stand

Historical paint scheme from 1966 Triumph Factory Bike

Original paint, original factory matching by Tom Wilkinson possessor of Triumph formulas, painted by Don Roe, Alpine White & Grenadier Red. Hand painted gold pin stripping and triumph decal on front headlight spoiler finished with 3 coats of clear.

If you’re interested in buying great Triumph you can contact Deno Pulos at denostriumph@gmail.com .

If you’re not looking for the sweetest Triumph out there check out these bikes for sale on Ebay.
[phpbay]Motorcycle, 3, “6024″, “”[/phpbay]

If you’ve read my previous post on riding motorcycles, then you know that I had a great time putting this video together. Let me know what you think, leave me a comment.

Last week I wrote about my brother’s website Proximity Cast During my visit he figured out that he would bribe me to help him out with his project. He offered to buy me a Garmin Nuvi 350. This way it would be easier to upload photographs to his site according to the site requirements. Each photo uploaded to Proximity Cast has to have the geographical coordinates visible on the photograph. This makes it possible for users of Proximity Cast to locate a place of interest, load the coordinates into their gps, and travel easily to the location. Works like a charm.

I agreed to help him out, and as promised he ordered the Garmin for me. It arrived in a huge box. Sometimes I think that they’re in such a rush to get products out that they use the smallest box available that will get the job done. Sometimes that’s a pretty big box.

Inside this big box was the smaller Garmin Nuvi 350 box. The pretty one that’s designed to grab your attention in Best Buy or Target.

This is what was inside that huge shipping box.

Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Inside the box is the Garmin Nuvi 350, a mounting kit, cables, and a small getting started pamphlet.

I’ve enjoyed using the Garmin. Driving cross country I much prefer my maps, and watching the local road signs because the Garmin isn’t the greatest long distance navigator. It will make choices that don’t always make sense which can be frustrating and annoying. What I do like is the trip information screen. This tells me how far I’ve traveled. How far I have left to travel. How long I’ve been traveling. How long I’ve been stopped. My highest speed, and my average speeds. It’s interesting information to me.

Where this little gadget shines is getting around town locally. My car was in bad need of a brake job, I had hoped that it would make it to Hammond where I know a really great auto shop, however when I went flying with my brother’s friend it was clear that the brakes wouldn’t make it to Memphis, let alone Hammond. Dave gave me the coordinates to his friend’s shop and the Garmin took me right to it.

Garmin offers some mapping programs so that you can plan your trip on the computer. I get the idea that somehow I should be able to plan a trip on my computer, upload the information to the Garmin, and have the trip route available in the menu. If the Garmin does this I haven’t been able to figure it out. The most I can get are points of interest (POI’s) uploaded. This makes it easier, I number them and this way I can select each poi as I’m traveling. What would be better is to have routes in the system. For example when I want to travel from Hammond to Bend, Oregon I would be able to plan where to stop each day and select the entire route.

There are two features of Proximity Cast that set it apart from other websites of this sort. Proximity Cast provides you with a photograph of what the establishment looks like. This reduces confusion when you arrive because you’ll be able to recognize the location. You’ll have already been there through Proximity Cast. The second is that each photograph of each establishment has the geographic coordinates. This enables you to enter the latitude and longitude, the geographic coordinates, into your GPS. The advantage over an address is GPS accuracy. Addresses may be similar, and this can confuse the GPS. Geographic Coordinates do not suffer this problem.

Have a visit at Proximity Cast. It’s still in beta and if you’ve got any suggestions I’m sure that David would appreciate them.

Happy travels.

I found this site by accident, and the concept is mind boggling. If you thought that gull wing doors were cool this will change your paradigm.

Link: sevenload.com

My computer crashed today. I’ve been working up a post about my recent road trip from Ashland, Oregon, to Fayetteville, Arkansas. The posts along the way were fun, but now that I’ve been sitting still for more than a few days I wanted to go over the trip in more detail. Talk a little bit about the great malt in Shady Grove, Oregon at Phil’s Frosty or the root beer float from Boise’s Westside Diner.

Instead I’m contemplating computercide. After spending hours putting together a map of my travels on google maps I was just about to import the images into photoshop so that I could put them all together into one wonderful picture. Then everything locked up. When I tried to restart I just got a grey startup screen. No icons. No Happy Mac. No spinning gear. Not good. I’ve tried starting up from the system disk without success. I’ve tried resetting PRAM, Firmware, using a remote boot drive… no luck.

After doing some research online I’m pretty sure that my hard drive is fried. Fortunately I’ve not lost anything thanks to Leopard’s Timemachine. If it is the hard drive then once I install a new one I’ll be able to restore everything from my back up on Timemachine.

There you go. It’s not a matter of if your computer will fail, just a matter of when.