R/C Lawnmower

Reading gizmag this morning and ran across something that might make a cool project.
Evatech has come up with an R/C lawnmower that is powerful enough to drag a fertilzer spreader or plow snow! It uses a gas-electric hybrid drive system that gives it plenty of power.

I just happen to have a couple of those right-angled DC electric motors in the garage and a brand new 6.5 hp motor in the shed....

1922 Dodge

I found this 1922 Dodge while trolling the user images on hotrodder.com and fell in love with it.

Low, simple, raw, and slightly odd-ball. Dig those wide and skinny wires and the "three carbs on a six" power plant. Chopped windshield and rad shell and channeled body.

Something like this would be great for cruise nights and the odd trip to work.

Head on over to Hotrodders.com and check it out.

SharpZipLib

#ziplib (SharpZipLib, formerly NZipLib) is a Zip, GZip, Tar and BZip2 library written entirely in C# for the .NET platform. It is implemented as an assembly (installable in the GAC), and thus can easily be incorporated into other projects (in any .NET language). The creator of #ziplib put it this way: "I've ported the zip library over to C# because I needed gzip/zip compression and I didn't want to use libzip.dll or something like this. I want all in pure C#."

http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SharpZipLib/

Creating a Shortcut on the Start Menu

When you are using MS Developer Studio to create an install setup program, dev studio doesn't automatically create shortcuts for your application—you have to create these yourself.
Most applications create a shortcut in the Programs folder on the Start menu (or in a subfolder of the Project folder).

Open the Files view of your installer project. Click the Application Folder to view its contents. Right-click the Primary Output from your application item and choose Create Shortcut to Primary Output from 'your application name here'. Dev studio creates the shortcut item and places it in the Application Folder. Drag the shortcut to the User's Programs Menu item in the left pane.

Now, when the user installs your program, a shortcut will be placed in the Programs folder on the user's Start menu.

Garmin 330 Map Upgrade

I was excited to read about the City Navigator NT 2008 map upgrade for my Streetpilot 330.
We love our Garmin, but found that a lot of newer 'points of interest' are not in the original maps. I ordered it right away.

When the disk finally arrived, I dug out the laptop, the tiny USB cable, and the Garmin. Unfortunately, the update has so much data that I could not put all of north america on the internal memory. Crap. I aborted the install, and looked for a solution.

I like to drive. That's why we got the Garmin. We have driven to Florida a few times, and we have driven to Las Vegas. I don't want to be limited to just the northern states, or just the southern states.

The 330 has a secure digital slot in the side for extra maps, so I wondered if I could just pop a card in there and be able to load everything. GpsPasSion.com had the answer. Apparently, I could do this, but I could not use the autorun install from the NT 2008 maps DVD.

After popping the new 2gig SD card into the 330, I connected it to my laptop and fired everything up. I installed the newest Mapsource Version from the NT 2008 Update DVD in folder \Windows\MSI\CNNANT2008Update_ENU.msi.

Once this was installed, I could use the MapInstall application to install all of the north american maps directly to my 330, and I have space to spare.

http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=95792