News Cars, Old Cars, and Robots

It’s well past time that I get something new posted here! When I left off last I was explaining my list of possible new car choices and describing the test drives. I did finally get the new car and it did turn out to be the Acura RSX Type-S. I expect to get some photos of it up shortly. Actually, not just photos of my new car but my old ones as well.

When I was a youngster in high school and just beginning to drive, an older friend of mine used to talk about the strong emotional ties one can develop with a car. He said what he’d really like would be to keep all the cars he ever owned and just park them in a garage somewhere so he could look at them. Not having owned even one car at the time, this didn’t mean much to me. Now I understand his feelings a bit better and, while it’s still not practical to keep every car, it’s certainly possible to take some photos and build a web page. I’m trying scrounge up photos right now and will be sure to post a warning when my web shrine to great autos of the past goes online.

What else have I been up to you may ask? Well, I continue to make incremental progress in developing the robots.net site. It’s accumulated over 600 users in a very short time and continues to grow by 5 or 6 new users per day. On a related subject, Jim Brown and I have embarked on a crazy new robot project of our own. Jim’s daughter suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and each year Jim participates in Great Strides, the CFF 10k walk to help raise money for CF research. Our plan is to enter not Jim but a biped robot, named CF Walker, in the next walk which occurs in May of 2002. We hope to get companies and indivduals to sponser the robot and raise a nice pile of money for the CF Foundation. We are also happy to accept donations of hardware for the construction of the robot itself (hint, hint). We’ve already received some experimental solar panels developed by TI. Can we really build a large, biped robot in less than one year? Will it be able to walk 10km? Are we insane? Stay tuned.

Movies and Car Shopping

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my news lately. Most of July went by in a flash. We were very busy at NCC. I’ve gotten email from a couple of loyal readers asking what’s new, so I better try catch up on news for July.

One of our projects at NCC during July was building a new web site for Frames Per Second, a local video post facility. The web site update was planned to coincide with an open house event they were having. Susan and I attended and got to see quite few friends and acquaintances from the video world that we hadn’t seen since Susan got out of the business. After the open house we went with some friends to hear a Celtic band at The Tipperary Inn.

We also saw a couple of movies during July including AI, which was an unfortunate combination of the worst aspects of Spielberg and Kubrick with none of the good. After AI we saw Atlantis, an animated Disney film copied (surely not plagiarized?) from a 1990 anime series called Nadia: Secret of Blue Water. It was an okay film and much more anime-like than most Disney stuff. It also fulfilled the important role of making us forget about AI.

You may recall that I’ve been planning on getting a new car and to that end have been doing test drives of cars that made my short list based on acceptable mileage (they had to get at least 30mpg), good looks (obviously a subjective measurement), and reliability. I already posted my feelings on the test drive of the Honda Insight back in January (basically it’s really cool but I don’t want to buy one until the second generation comes out – maybe this will be Susan’s next car). During June and July, I test drove the remaining cars on my list, including the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Volkswagon Jetta, and the new Acura RSX. So anyway, here are the reviews:

The newest Mitsubishi Eclipse is a big improvement over prior versions but still not good enough for serious consideration. Like previous versions of the Eclipse, it’s a bit cramped inside. The radio had an overly complex system of soft-keys and up/down buttons rather than straighforward knobs, making it much too time consuming to use. It does look nice but doesn’t seem to rate as well for reliability as the other cars on my list. So, while possibly a fun car to drive, it’s off the list.

The Volkswagon Jetta was next. (I almost bought a Volkswagon GTI back in the early 1980’s but opted for a Honda CRX instead. I’ve never regretted that choice and that first CRX was my favorite of all the cars I’ve owned.) The new Jetta was one of the few cars that meets my gas mileage requirements but only in the 4 cylinder model. After a test drive, it became clear that the 4 cyclinder Jetta was too underpowered. I did a second test drive in the 6 cylinder Jetta and it, on the other hand, had plenty of power but got crummy gas mileage. The power/mileage dilemma was really my only serious complaint with the Jetta but was important enough that I couldn’t make this my first choice. I decided the V6 Jetta would be the runner-up if I couldn’t find anything better.

The 2002 Acura RSX was the last car to test drive. Like the Jetta this was really two test drives – one for the RSX and one for the RSX Type-S. The RSX Type-S was first and it was immediately apparent that this was likely to be the number one choice. The 4 cylinder engine got just over 30 mpg while still putting out 200hp, it looked good, had all the latest safety features like side airbags, and was definitely fun to drive. The regular RSX was almost as nice and got a few more miles per gallon at the cost of a few hp but had one serious flaw. The regular RSX doesn’t handle as well as the Type-S; particularly on curves at higher speeds.

So in the end I decided on the RSX. Problem is, it may be hard to get one. The RSX is both very new and highly anticipated so there’s a waiting list.