A new project

Crucial — Wed, 24 May 2006 03:19:02 +0000

This weekend I began a new project I am really looking forward to. Not the type of project I typically post about, but one that will get me away from the computer a bit more I hope. The project is a 1975 Ironhead Sportster. Last year my Dad and I finished up my current motorcycle, a 2003 Chopper and I love it.

As a kid I can always remember myÂ Dad having several bikes in the garageÂ and guys coming by all the time with cool rides. Growing up I never took advantage of the wealth of knowledge my Dad had to offer with motorcycles, but instead chose to put my efforts into seeing how loud I could get my stereo and how low I could get my car. I'm a bit older now and regretting the missed opportunities. My Chopper was builtÂ in California in my Dads garage, and since I live in Texas I couldn't be as involved as much as I would have liked. It was my vision, no doubt about that but the actual work to bring life to the machine was my Dads doing.Â Â

Since I don't have as much knowledge as I would like regarding motorcycles,Â I have chosen to rebuild/chop a bike as opposed to starting from scratch. This one will be all me. I plan to make it a very clean 'Bobber' style bike, much like the rides built by SuckerPunch Sallys. I'll post my progress here as well as keeping the gallery updated.

Just curious how many other web guys/gals out there ride? wrench?

Getting on the Yahoo! Maps bandwagon

Crucial — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 17:29:49 +0000

With all the buzz these days surrounding the release of the Yahoo! Maps beta, it seems like there's a new example popping up on every other blog. Everybody seems to be talking about how easy it was, so I had to find out for myself. I must say it was almost too easy. Yahoo! has made this extremely easy to get a map up and running in no time at all. So to honor the completion of my chopper I just finished (just in time to completely miss all of the Texas riding season ), I decided to map some of the shops I gathered inspiration and/or parts from during the 2 year build of the bike. Granted, my example is not all that customized, but was still far more easy than I expected. In fact I spent the batter part of this 45 minute project jacking with the Combo box and the background image, as I was connected and pulling a map from Yahoo! in minutes.

I haven't played with the zoom widget, or skinning of the map itself (although I hope to free some more time up to tweak ), the fla examples Yahoo! provides were the most helpful. My only gripe is that I think I may be a bit spoiled by the API documentation provided by Laco for his tweening classes, or the code examples provided Geoff Stearns for using his FlashObject; I'd like to see more code examples in the actual Reference Manual for the Yahoo! Maps Flash APIs. However to be fair, this gripe probably has more to do with my lack of programming prowess than any deficiencies in Yahoos documentation.

********* UPDATE 11.24.05 **********
Okay so while I waiting for the Turkey dinner to settle, I decided to play around with my map a bit more. I was able to get the Pan and Navigator widget implemented. I also tooled around and rotated, moved, and styled (to a small degree) the navigator widget. There is actually quite a bit of tweaking that can be done to this UI, however it took a lot of for loops, trace actions, and experimenting to track down most of it. Hopefully after this app comes out of Beta the API documentation will be enhanced as well. I think once that happens we'll see a lot more customized usage of this cool tool!

Just Another Rant » Motorcycles

A new project

Getting on the Yahoo! Maps bandwagon