mikeferrari.com

I have been digging through tons of raw data at work, thousands and thousands of lines of raw uncategorized mess. I also have been playing with a bunch of XML and SVG. Man i love SVG, makes me have all kinds of cool ideas.. real sweet stuff. Wish i had the time.

Anyway, this is what my mind was thinking today, as created by graphviz.

The “Dot” file which is the data for the above image…

ideas.dot

The coolest thig is that you can represent data as a graphic.. and with SVG you can link parts of the graphic with a web site or a file or another graphic.. the possibilities are endless for automating the visualization of large large piles of crappy data.
You know, Humanize it a bit.

Mike

I have been collecting up flathead blocks for a couple years now, finally got around to stripping them down and bringing them to the machine shop. The got solvent washed and scrubbed to the point where all the 50 year old oil and grease was all gone. What a difference. We magna-fluxed them to find out which ones had cracks.

I brought in 4 blocks, 3 8ba (a 52 truck, a 50 truck, and a 50 car) and one 59-A (47 truck). After doing 3 of the 4 so far i have one bad 8ba block (52 truck) with cracks in both the cylinder wall and the valve area, and one good 8ba block (50 car) which has a water jacket crack, between a head bolt hole and a water passage, this is the most common and totally usable. The 59-A (47 truck) motor is also good with no cracks at all! The third 8ba will be done soon but i am extatic about the two good ones.

The 59-A block will go in my model A project and the 8ba will go in my 50 ford shoebox project… which means i can use the flat 6 which was in the shoebox, in a roadster pickup. YAY!

I am building an old panhead.

I picked up a ‘59 panhead motor on a trade.. got a 4 speed kicker and a used paugcho springer front end too. A short while later i picked up a stock OEM frame that had been butchered, another 4 speed kicker and a whole truckload of parts.. couple tanks, seats, hydro forks etc etc from my buddy Craig. Craig passed away about 6 months later in a bike wreck on a bridge. I am going to dedicate this bike to his memory, try to do it justice.

Here are some pics.

http://picasaweb.google.com/mikeferrari8/59Panhead

Gumstix linux devices.. runs busybox linux out of the box .. lots of expansion boards.. wireless 802.11 b/g .. bluetooth .. 10/100 ethernet … LCD… what else would you ever need?

I think i am getting one for christmas…

I am a big fan of open source software, and i am a network guy by trade… this helps considerably.

You can get it as straigt software.. or download the live cd and turn any box into a router.. or even download the VM and use it as part of your virtualization solution.