Blessed by the Potato

I took the opportunity today to head up to the Toyota Hybrid Tour at the Bass Pro Shops mall off the 400 (just north of Hwy7). Man, nobody would have found that place that wasn’t already looking for it. It was way around the north-east corner of the mall. I had exited onto Bass Pro Mills Drive like my map told me to, and there were no signs or anything to indicate where it might be (but I did see roadside signs for a mattress and piano sales). In fact, it would have been closer to get off at Rutherford. The size of that shopping district (it’s not really one continuous mall) was pretty amazing though, I had never been up there before.

The preview of the event I had seen (can’t remember where now) had pavilions with videos describing the hybrid technology, and flags, banners, and all sorts of promotion. This was much more low-key: 4 staff members in a tent, 6 cars standing by to be shown off and test-driven, and that was about it. It actually worked out pretty well like that, though. Since this is an event not linked to any particular dealer, there was absolutely no sales pressure. They didn’t care if I was interested in buying or not, they didn’t try to get my number to call me later for a follow-up sales call, they didn’t try to sell the car at all. They just wanted to show me how the technology worked, where all the secret compartments were, and give me a few minutes to press all the buttons and see what it was like. If you’re at all interested in the Prius or Camry Hybrid (I didn’t see a HiHy, but they might have had one out on a test drive) then by all means go up and take a look: they’ll be there until 5 tomorrow and Sunday (July 14 + 15). After that, I think that’s the end of the run for Ontario.

After seeing the Civic Hybrid, I was fairly pleased, but there was a significant question surrounding the trunk space. The Prius, it was clear, had a bigger trunk than the Civic, but how big it was exactly was tough to say. Looking around the internet, there are pictures of the insane amount of things people have stuffed in there, particularly of large things that the hatchback and folding seats allow one to carry (water heaters, clothes dryers, fridges, lumber…). That showed off well how versatile it was, but versatility is a bit different from gross carrying capacity. I wanted to know what would fit with the seats up. Of course, there are other owner stories showing a completely stuffed hatchback for a road trip, with the cargo going right up to the roof and blocking the view out the rear window. Those weren’t hugely helpful, since as a safe (read: paranoid) driver, I’m hesitant to block my rear view with cargo, and have only done so a few times on my current car. They also didn’t help me see how big the trunk was relatively speaking since I didn’t know how big the owner’s luggage was. The Prius is rated as having 456 L (16 cu.ft) of cargo space, compared to just under 300 L for the Civic hybrid, and somewhere in the neighbourhood of 370 L for my Accord. The Prius is often Tardis-like in its ability to fold space and become larger on the inside than it looks on the outside, but that cargo capacity looked too good to be true, and I figured it must be measured up to the windows.

So, one burning question I had when going to the hybrid tour was how the actual (that is, non-visibility blocking) trunk space compared to that in my Accord. To test this I grabbed some collapsible laundry bags that Wayfare loves (we’ve got like 5 of them now) as well as a big green transport bin. My Accord trunk fit two “full” (opened/expanded) laundry bags, the green bin, my backpack, and had space to spare: some laptops or small items could have gone on top of everything, there was some room on either side for more stuff, and in the back cut-in part (perhaps I’ll have to MS-paint up a diagram of my trunk’s layout) there was just enough room for a small-ish backpack beside the rearmost laundry bag. Note that my backpack isn’t shown in the picture because I took it out to get my camera. You can see where it would fit though.

Then I went to the Prius, and was at first fairly disappointed that I only got the green bin and a laundry bag:

But of course a tiny bit of intelligent packing showed that two bags and a green bin just fit. This is low enough that it wasn’t blocking any visibility out the rear window, but just barely (due to the angles, some stuff could be put closer to the rear headrests, but not closer to the window). There was a bit of a nook to the left of the green bin, but not so much on the right side (I believe the jack or an enclosed cargo compartment is on the right).

That’s a fair bit smaller than my trunk, but workable, especially since that isn’t the sum total of the Prius’ trunk. There’s also the hidden compartment in the floor, shown here with my backpack for scale. It’s bigger than I thought, but not very deep; my backpack was too full to let the door close on it. Of course, the door can be taken out (I think) and leave a single, somewhat awkwardly-shaped cargo compartment. Combined, the total cargo space is close enough to that of my Accord that it will work for me, so that’s one fear assuaged (and when the need calls, I can fill it to the roof, block the view, and get more space than the Accord; plus for most things, the higher/shorter trunk of the Prius would be more useful, as there have been times when seats folded or not, I just couldn’t get something like a chair through the low hole for my trunk).

The test-drive consisted of a loop around the ring road that enclosed the Vaughn mall. Plenty of stop signs, accelerating to 50 km/h, and a few turns; but no highway test. It was reasonably fun to drive though (of course, my Accord is one of the best-driving/most fun cars I’ve had, just about as good as my BMW); I was afraid there wouldn’t be much of a road feel. Of course, since there was no road in that area 2 years ago, it’s all brand new asphalt that’s smooth as glass, so it’s kind of hard to judge road feel (especially at relatively low speeds). The side/rear visibility was decent, much better than I had been lead to be afraid of. However, I wasn’t happy with the forward visibility. I found the A-pillars were pretty thick, and the left one seemed to cut too far to the right for me. I was half tempted to lean over to drive with my head in the centre of the car. Of course, I got the same feeling from the Civic and the Buick Envoy I drove on PEI, so it may just be that all modern cars have blocky (safe?) A-pillars that drive me nuts from a visibility standpoint. I’d probably get used to it. (I hope). The very unique and minimal dashboard display up high near the road was a different implementation than the one in the Civic (which I really liked), but I have to say I liked this one almost as much. Just something about not having to track my eyes down as far to check my speed. Of course, the minimal display meant that everything else is run through the touch-screen, and I’m a little leery of having to use a touch-screen interface while driving, especially at night (I’d hate to have the bright screen ruin my night vision). There are steering wheel controls for most things though, so I may not be too bad off.

I went there with two specific questions nagging at me, and pretty much got them answered (though before buying I’ll probably rent one to take a longer test-drive on the highway). I was a little too focused though, and totally should have spent more time playing with the car and the buttons — it was pretty slow, and they weren’t pressuring me to get out of the car (just to park it), but I felt bad for taking their time and left. I didn’t even go to the consumption screen on the MFD to see what the fuel consumption was like under my real-life driving test! D’oh!

I didn’t drive the Camry Hybrid (I didn’t want to like it, since its trunk is just as tiny as the Civic Hybrid), but did sit in it just for a minute to have a peek. For the nearly the same price (in the demented Canadian market), you definitely get a lot more car with it. The interior was very plush with attractive plastics and steel/aluminum/metal-looking-plastic trim.

After all that excitement, I took my current car for gas and a routine tire pressure check… and one tire was down to <15 PSI. Damn.

This security light has caused us nothing but trouble. First, it was old and cycling a lot (they’re supposed to be changed every 3 years from the listed manufacturer’s lifetime rating — but they don’t burn out like incandescents, they just start cycling more, drawing more and more power, while providing less and less light), and alone was consuming about a third of our household’s electricity use. Then we had to wait months for a dry day to try to get on the roof (it was just one of those winters/springs where the roof was constantly covered in snow or rain) to change it out. When we finally borrowed a ladder (and a brave soul) to get up there, we found that the model of sodium lamp used had been discontinued. Fortunately, our landlord managed to find one for us, and we had intense orange light scaring away car thieves for about 3 days.

Now it’s dead, and I have no idea why.

The landlord took the old bulb, and I suspect she threw it out, so replacing it to see if it’s the bulb or the fixture probably isn’t going to be an option. Likewise, those high pressure sodium lamps cost over $30 (and I have no idea where she found one), so just picking up a second to test out isn’t on the table. I feel bad bugging the landlord, especially since if it’s not fixed in a week I’m going to be off in Ottawa… Ugh.

There was a big power outage last night, lasted for almost exactly an hour. I’m glad the webserver came back up — my main desktop computer was on the UPS, so I had lots of time to give it a graceful shutdown (and secretly wondered how long my old CRT would have lasted on battery power, chalking up another point for the LCD flatscreen), but the webserver was only plugged into the surge protector and went off instantly. I was afraid it would get mad at me and not automagically start Apache, but it looks like everything went off without a hitch. I didn’t even have to adjust the DNS forwarding :)

I had a dream last night that my car was stolen, again. It was exceptionally vivid and realistic. So realistic that I actually woke up believing it was true; the first thing I did when I woke up was start going through rental company listings to make sure I could get back to Toronto this weekend with my cat… then saw that my car was actually safe and sound in the parking lot. It’s a strange experience getting lost in a dreamworld like that, especially after polishing off another issue of the Sandman that week.

I really like Sunbird as an application and have been using it for over a year now. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a trouble-free year. The 0.29 version of the program made it very easy for me to accidentally overwrite my entire calendar with just the latest-entered event (technically user error, but it was definitely an enabler in that process). Then I had a bunch of problems with the server I was uploading my calendar to so I could sync up wherever I was. Not exactly Sunbird’s fault either, but the whole point of getting away from my desk calendar was so that I could check it wherever I was. For a while, it was pretty good living with the site (www.icalx.com): they provided free hosting for my calendar with no advertising, and it was running well for about a year, even including perks like letting non-Sunbird (or ical compatible) users view a HTML version of my public calendar. Pretty good considering it’s really tough to find a server that will take money to sync your calendar, let alone a free one. It’s been over two months and I still can’t use Sunbird with it. The site itself is still working — I can log in and check my account, but I can’t upload or download calendars, which makes the whole exercise rather pointless.

I’ve switched over to Google Calendar now. I remember trying it a year or more ago before I settled on Sunbird, and wasn’t happy with it. What, exactly, I found displeasing I can no longer say: it’s a pretty full-featured calendar. Just about the only option lacking is a way to classify your events. There are a few other minor shortcomings, of course: it’s slightly slower than Sunbird because it’s not local: adding entries, etc, requires getting info from the server so there’ s a bit of latency. Fortunately, Google’s servers are pretty fast. And, since it’s entirely web-based, I don’t need to install it on every computer I might want to check my calendar on, just log in and go. It might even save a spot on my taskbar since I always have an open webbrowser anyway, but don’t always have (or need to have) Sunbird open.

Snarky letter-formatted post aside, I did enjoy Transformers. It was quite a bit different from “Canon”, but is, in its own way, a decent movie.

I did almost puke.

The GM sponsorship was pretty obvious, and I pointed it out to Wayfare:
“They made a deal with GM.”
“Makes sense. Think of how many kids of our generation wanted a Delorian after Back to the Future.”
“I still want a Delorian.”
“Exactly! If they still made them, they’d be the only thing on the road!”

Spoilers follow (skip to the previous post, which is below this one in the default view, which is pretty spoiler-free)
Some nits:

I was really glad they got the same voice for Optimus Prime, and was a little surprised to see the return of the sword/axe for Optimus and the ball & chain for Megatron: weaponry that I don’t think we saw in more than one or two episodes of the cartoon.

PS: IMDB has the stereo decepticon down as Frenzy rather than Soundwave. The old memory’s foggy, but I thought Frenzy was a cassette for Soundwave…

PPS: If you’re playing MOO2 and are trying to find the distance between two stars, the key you’re looking for is F9.

Dear Michael;

I recently saw your latest movie Transformers. I was a huge Transformers fan as a kid, and remain so to this day. I was really worried before the movie that you would turn this into an absolute travesty, a cheap mockery of my childhood memories all to make a quick buck. Those worries were magnified after I watched the teaser trailer, seeing how different your vision of the Transformers was, how the blocky bits of their transformed vehicle had given way to a very busy visual design full of movement and pointy bits. The last year of my life has been filled with dread over what you might do to this franchise.

I’m happy to see that you have done right by the franchise. Yes, you made a number of changes, and it is a different version of the Transformers from what I remember, but the recognizable elements are still there, and most importantly, it was good. There were of course a number of nits I could pick (excellent job on Optimus’ voice, but Megatron could have been better and Soundwave was just… well, what were you thinking? And Soundwave didn’t really need to hump the computer system, that’s just a no. The plot was, well, not expected to be there at all, and it wasn’t bad, but I think for our current times the first season’s plot of a world in an energy crisis and the fight to steal what readily available energy can be raped from our world might have worked better) but I won’t (except parenthetically).

However, I have to ask: are you hard up for cash? Or did you get your cousin (who might be a little slow or have a bad case of the ADHD) to do the camera work? If you need a tripod, ritalin, or a steady cam Michael, I’m here for you. Because this movie was really, really hurt by the insane camera movements and cuts. I play a lot of video games, so I’m usually ok with that sort of thing, even from the Blair Witch Project, but Michael, I nearly puked from your movie. That’s no exaggeration: I had to run out of the theatre and stand in the washrooms until a wave of nausea passed by me. There’s really no exuse for that sort of thing, either. In moderation, a touch of motion blur and a few rapid cuts can confer a sense of action and dynamic intensity. But, to distract myself from the urge to throw up, I started counting how long each cut ran, and for the last 25 minutes, there wasn’t a single cut that lasted more than 5 seconds. Not one solid, stable camera position lasted for more than 3 seconds (though there was one relatively stable and relatively motion blur free dolly shot that lasted 4). Like shadows that can’t exist without the light, the sense of action from those cheap camera and editing techniques is quickly lost when there’s no stability to compare them to. Furthermore, they’re passe, Michael. Blurring your CG and cutting rapidly around the scene is an old technique used to make CG seem more real; it’s a way to hide what’s going on so people don’t see how terrible it is. In your case though, you had very good CG. There were some very good still(ish) shots of the autobots near the middle, and they looked good. Don’t hide them; let them shine.

Of course, that’s what DVD re-edits are for. Work on that for the next few months Michael. Since I suspect most of that motion blur was added in post-processing, you shouldn’t have much work to do to take it out. If you do need to do a few reshoots, I’ll loan you a tripod.

You worked hard to make a Transformers movie we die-hard, old school fans could accept. Let us see it.