Supermileage Team from Mater Dei High School, Indiana takes 1st Place in Shell Eco-Marathon Competition with 2,843 MPG!

A high school team from Evansville, Indiana has taken top honors in this years 2008 Shell Eco-marathon Americas.  Students from Mater Dei High School wracked up an impressive 2,843.4 mpg with their "6th Gen." racer – winning the $10,000 grand prize in the Combustion Engine competition.  Penn State – University Park took first in the Fuel Cell/Hydrogen category (1,668.3 mpg) and the Purdue Solar Racing team from West Lafayette took first in the solar category with 2,861.8mpg.

A PDF with the final results for all categories can be found here.  Video of the participants follows…

Suddenly a Prius doesn’t sound so special anymore.  This brings to light something that all of us have known for quite some time…we’re not doing squat when it comes to engineering efficient cars!  I just have to scratch my head when I see Honda or Toyota rolling another hybrid out and the sales guys jumping up and down about "how much horsepower this baby’s got".  When you look at the gas mileage, it’s usually at or below the non-hybrid version of the same car!  Come on guys, let’s get with it and start using this technology to create useful and EFFICIENT cars…not sports cars.  With some 90+ percent of our time behind the wheel being spent getting to and from work, it’s efficiency we need.

I’m waiting with baited breath {does baited breath smell kinda fishy? } for the PHEV’s (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles) to start coming out so I can get one to do my morning commute.  If everything works out as I expect it will, I’ll use about a tank of gas a MONTH as I should be able to run on battery power 90% of the time.  The gas engine should only kick on when I head out on the highway.

Come on auto industry…you can do it!

Doug White

Silverlight Developer Center – Yahoo! Developer Network

Now I’m not one for startin’ rumors about the possible Microsoft/Yahoo! merger…but if you’re looking for a good resource on how to get started with Silverlight, head on over to the Yahoo! Developer Network.  {Hmmm…coincidence?}

Lots of useful links to developer resources and tutorials.  Not to mention downloadable posters of the Silverlight 1.0 Class Diagrams. 

I’d download one and put it on the wall, but then I’d have to take down my vintage Charlies Angels poster to make room and that ain’t gonna happen.

While you’re over there, make sure and scope out the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI) – a free collection of javascript library utilities that you can use in your own web projects.

Doug White

TonyPratt.com is an awesome photo site

I am quite grateful to Tony Pratt for taking time to share his photos online at his TonyPratt.com site.  The photos that he is able to capture and share with us are a wondrous reminder of the natural beauty right here in lower Delaware. 

Who knew that we had flying squirrels just outside the door? 

Or that Piping Plovers were real and not just an elaborate plot by park rangers to keep us out of certain areas of Cape Henlopen State Park? 

And that the " albino deer" in the park was real and not just a story that I made up? (See son, I wasn’t making it up!)

Tony’s site is definitely worth a look-see.  Take your time and explore the many links or just browse back chronologically…you’re sure to find some amazing pictures.

Doug White

Direct Note Access from celemony_

Pretty awesome technology that allows you to "identify and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material".  This will be quite the game changer when it comes to using note samples and the like and adjusting them to exactly suit your needs.  Definitely worth a look see.

Click the picture above or here to scope out a video demoing the magic.

Thanks to G. Andrew Duthie for the blog entry that introduced me to it.

Doug White

2008 Rube Goldberg Machine Winner – Purdue

The Purdue Society of Professional Engineers won the 21st annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest last weekend.  This years task – assemble a hamburger.

A YouTube video of their winning system is embedded below.  Texas A&M University took second place and the University of Buffalo took third.

Time for lunch!

Doug White

Chickens in Kauai

We’re finally back from a family vacation in Kauai (one of the Hawaiian islands).  This was our first time there and the climate, views and beaches were fantastic!  We pretty much tried to do it all…ziplines, geocaching in the interior and coastal areas, helicopter tours…the works.  We had a blast!

One interesting thing that we didn’t plan on were the chickens.  Living in lower Delaware (part of the DelMarVa chicken capital of the world), we’re no stranger to chickens…but we don’t usually see them running loose.  We saw them at the beaches, heard them going to town from 4:00-6:00am every morning, and played "chicken" with them as we drove around the island.  Since the condos around those parts are pretty much designed for a free-flow exchange of air all the time, with nothing but screens and adjustable slats between us and the outdoors, we were serenaded on a daily (morningly) basis.

The word from the locals is that when Hurricane Iniki slammed Kauai back in 1992, it released all of the chickens that the Polynesians and Europeans introduced as well as the Filipino fighting cocks that were caged in the islands interior.  They all started intermingling and voila – chicken central.

Other than the early morning awakenings, they were pretty innocuous.  Going about their business and not giving us much thought.  One nice benefit of having them around, though, is that they are a pesticide-free way to keep the insect populations under control.  We did a tour of the Steelgrass Chocolate Farms while we were there and they now see them as a positive influence for their efforts to introduce cacao trees on the island.  If you go to Kauai, definitely take the kids down for the chocolate tour.  You’ll get about an hour and a half of fascinating education on the various plants on the farm, get to taste about 10 different delicacies from sugar cane to exotic tropical fruits, and the finale is a demonstration on how cacao beans are transformed into chocolate and a taste testing of some of the worlds finest chocolates!  We had a bunch of kids with us and they all enjoyed the hike around the farm and the tasty treats.

Doug White