I have owned my 1973 BMW 2002 for 3 years now and put in countless hours of work and changed out nearly everything, except the drive line. Two weekends ago I went up to my friends shop to finally change it all out. I have been running the stock setup from the clutch back for too long. Also, the lack of a 5th overdrive gear is hurting my gas mileage.

The install went pretty smoothly and took only a day to accomplish. While we were putting in the new transmission and driveshaft we also threw out the stock open differential for a 3.9:1 limited slip. I have said this after numerous projects before, but wow it feels like a new car! The transmission is smooth and the shift throw is much shorter and tighter. In conjunction with the new differential gear ratio the gets off the line quicker. Also, since power is put down the wheels evenly it comes out of corners like a race car. Previously with my open differential the car ‘wiggled’ as it regained traction after a hard corner due to the fact that is sends power down unevenly.

To see pictures of the installation check out the Flickr set.

Open differential versus limited slip differential

I’m not going to go into great detail regarding all of the differences because that can easily be Googled. I just wanted to show the the main difference. On left we have my stock differential which is an ‘open differential’. On the right we have my new Limited Slip Differential (LSD) with a gear ratio of 3.9:1.

The major difference and also the major weak point of the open differential are the spider gears. This allows the wheels to spin independently. With the car in the air, I can spin one back wheel and the other one will spin in the opposite direction. The limited slip on the other hand doesnt have those gears. Not only can it handle more power it also makes locks the wheels together. Putting the car in the air and spinning one wheel will make the other spin in the same direction. More information can be found at howstuffworks.com.

Well, the victorian ages are finally over. The internal combustion gasoline engine has replaced the need for steam and coal. People have devices in their houses to talk to one another and we no longer burn oil to read at night. These were also the times when we understood electricity well enough where we could really start building the unimaginable. Although nixie tubes were created in the 1950’s, neon signs have been around since the early 1900’s. I have always had an interest in these interesting little tubes and decided to give them a period correct home, albeit strange.

This project started out from a kit from tubeclock.com. The only other thing I really needed was a proper clock case which eBay gladly provided for around 20 dollars. The only other things I needed were a few hand tools, clamps, and some wood scrap. As you can see from the picture to your left (click to enlarge), I cut two straps of wood and glued them to the inside of the clock. This served as the mounting point for the tubes. After that, it was a matter of lining everything up nice and plum before I drilled two mounting holes. To finish the project, I smoked the glass to give it a patina’d look.

All in all it was a pretty simple and fun project to bring some nixie tubes into my home. In total the project was less than 200 dollars with most of it being spend on the tube kit. More pictures can be found in this flickr album.

What is a nixie tube?

As you can see from the picture, its a metal apparatus that sits inside a glass tube (removed in this photo) that is filled with neon gas. When an electrical charge is applied to one of the ten digits, cathodes, they glow. They come in many different shapes and sizes and can be controlled in a number of ways. In this case, they are used to display the time. To read more about how they work and where they have been used check out the nixie tube wikipedia article. Thanks to the evil mad scientists for the photo.

Its been a long time since I last tuned the car ever since I started on the new M3 motor. Just as I was getting back into practice and tuning for efficiency given the high gas prices, a friend gave me his fuel map for a similar car also with Individual Throttle Bodies (ITB’s). After about 30 minutes of tuning the car ran superbly!

It had taken me quite a long time to get where I was and from the looks of the map above it would have taken me several more outings. One of my main trouble points was coming back off overrun and right off idle. The latter is a common problem with ITB’s that normal cars dont have with one throttle body. When the throttles quickly open the pressure drops to near full atmosphere and therefore we are getting much better volumetric efficiency requiring more gas.

So far everything is performing wonderfully. The hesitation off idle is gone and the power band is strong all the way up. Also, overrun back onto wide-open throttle is amazing. The fuel efficiency appears to have improved as well. This may not make sense to some but hopefully this is useful to somebody out there (click on the picture above to see a larger image).

I’ve waited too long to take the plunge and start the tool collection I have always wanted. For years I have had an assortment of tools scattered between my various toolboxes, my car, and the friends who like to ‘borrow’ them. Now they finally have a place to call home.

Although I have never owned a chest like this before I feel good knowing they are Craftsman and guaranteed for life. Having used them in other shops and hearing only good things from all my friends I know they are going to last. The price wasnt too bad either. I also opted to stuff the drawers even more with a new set of 150 piece metric and assorted SAE sockets and wrenches. Now if only I had a real shop to put these in. For now, my front stoop and back yard will have to do.

I posted this over at SEOmoz’s YOUmoz blog, their user generated blog. If you happen to be a member and like the article please vote for it so it will get promoted on their main blog.

From SEO and the Semantic Web on YOUmoz:

With the proliferation of the Semantic Web, all of our data will be structured and organized so perfectly that search engines will know exactly what we are looking for, all of the time. Even the newest of newbies will be able to create the most well-structured site that would take tens of thousands of dollars today. Everyone’s information will be so precise and semantically correct there will be no need for Search Engine Optimization anymore!

The fact of the matter is, this is never going to happen. Being a long-time SEO practitioner myself, I am very interested in the ramifications of the Semantic Web on today’s search, especially because I am tasked with optimizing Twine when it first becomes publicly readable this summer.

Before we dive too deep, let’s first look at what SEO experts and professionals do today. In a nutshell, we research, study, and test hypotheses learned by watching the heuristics of a search algorithm. We implement by writing clean and semantically correct HTML in certain combinations in order to allow robots to easier asses the meaning of a page. We use CSS to abstract the presentation layer, we follow good linking structures, add proper metadata, and write concise paragraphs. We organize our information in a meaningful way to show bots clean parse-able HTML. In some sense we are information architects, in another we are marketers.

But what would happen if a search engine company published their algorithm? Although that probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon, what if they would tell us exactly what they were looking for? That’s what the Semantic Web is going to do to search. Just the other day Yahoo announced SearchMonkey for just this purpose. It is only going to get bigger. Being told how to mark up your information certainly takes a lot of the guesswork out of it. But in terms of the role of the SEO expert or professional, I don’t think we can retire just yet.

The Semantic Web is organized by people just like the Web of today. The only difference is that now we are going to organize around better standards. Just as people have a hard time organizing their closets, attics, and garages, people have a hard time organizing their websites. Although the Semantic Web will add structure to the Internet, make it easier for novice users to create structured content, and change the way we search, there is still a need for experienced help.

Enter SEO. Some of our roles may have changed, but for the near future there will be still be a lot of similarities. The need to study and analyze robot behaviors to better tune information isn’t going away. They will still have to be on top of the emerging trends, search technologies, and organic ways to drive traffic. The fact of the matter is, nothing is going to change drastically for a while. In the near term, I am mostly worried about how to integrate Twine into the Web of today.

Not very semantic, huh? Well, that’s not say we aren’t going to integrate with microformats, display RDF in our pages, and publish our ontology. All of this is extremely important as the Semantic Web emerges; however, in a world where search is run by Google we have to cater to them. There are a growing number of semantic search engines and document indices out there, which are definitely raising awareness to the mainstream. Yahoo just jumped on the semantic bandwagon publicly and you know Google can’t be too far behind.

In conclusion, there’s nothing to worry about anytime soon. The SEO expert’s salary isn’t going back into the company budget. We still have to tune our pages to the beat of Google’s drum for the time being. When things do take a drastic turn, we will adapt and overcome as we always have. That’s what good SEO does. As for me, I will tune Twine just as I used to tune pages over at CNET, following the teachings of Sir Matthew Cutts et al.