The Hopp Stop

• A blogger installed a SSD hard drive in his 2009 13″ MacBook Pro. This is exactly what I did (replacing the optical drive so that I now have a 100GB SSD for the OS and a 1TB regular hard drive for my files), and it’s easily the best computer upgrade I have ever done, well worth the money. My computer is so much more responsive, it’s almost unbelievable. Moving to an SSD really opens your eyes to how much the storage system serves as a bottleneck in today’s computers. I went with an OWC SSD, as the reviews were all glowing.
• This week’s NY Times Magazine has a long article on Oregon’s high-speed football offense.
• Burrito Justice is up to his usual cool work in San Francisco, putting together some resources on the Cone of Invisibility for Mission/Bernal residents, in which the BoA building blocks the Transamerica Pyramid. One note from the end of the post: there used to be a quarry on top of Bernal, evident in one of the photos.
• The NY Times has an article about increasing use of rabbit ears to get HDTV. I’ve actually been using a $40 HDTV antenna (complete with rabbit ears for VHF frequences, as well as quasi-futuristic ray gun part for UHF frequencies–or perhaps it is the other way around) for a month now, and it works quite well, especially since I can connect it to my TiVo for DVR usage. There is some susceptibility to interference if you move the antenna or sit by it when watching, but it’s tough to complain given the monthly price ($0). We’ve also been using Netflix streaming and Hulu Plus to get our TV fill, and have purchased some shows via iTunes (e.g., Mad Men). The only thing missing is live sports, which would be covered if Cablevision was an ESPN3 partner–then I could watch live sports on my Xbox 360.
• Road trains in Europe? Sounds pretty good to me, as it means more efficient utilization of roads without road infrastructure investments. I expect that automated driving will involve a mesh network between cars, not communication with the roads, given the cost of building out a smart road infrastructure combined with challenges of keeping it current.

Every year my dad and I (and, recently, Blake and his dad) go to the Monterey Peninsula in mid-August for car lover heaven. Classic cars from all eras in immaculate condition, old racing cars being driven flat out around the Laguna Seca race track, so many Ferraris in one place that you laugh out loud. But within all of this aesthetic and aural delight, there are the stinkers. This year I decided to take photos of whatever stinkers I saw; they are now up at Flickr (complete with my informative captions). In addition, you can see the slide show below. The group with the highest concentration of, ahem, “winners” was the BMW M5 group at the Concorso Italiano (yes, it is an Italian car show, but they have an area set up for non-Italian cars).

Check out the sweet Regal that I’ve seen a couple times near my apartment.