Heel-toe downshift

Learning how to drive a car with manual transmission isn’t all that difficult. A few hours in an empty parking lot, assuming you already know how to drive, is all it takes to master the art of shifting gears on your own. That’s precisely how I learned it way back when.

However, the advance stick-shift technique of heel-toe downshifting is proving to be more troublesome. I’d thought myself so uncoordinated that for the first almost decade of driving a manual, I didn’t even bother learning the technique. It wasn’t until I bought the Mazda MX-5 two years ago that I determined to learn the skill once and for life, to complete the repertoire.  

13,000 driven miles later, my heel-toe downshifts are still highly inconsistent. 

Perhaps I was over optimistic at the amount of time necessary to learn it well. Also I tend to switch up shoes everyday - with differing sole thickness - which surely throws my foot’s muscle memory for a loop. It certainly isn’t fault of the car, because the pedal set-up, clutch effort, and gearbox feel in the ND Miata is absolutely sublime. There’s hardly a better car on the market to learn heel-toe with, except a rental car with a stick. 

The challenge continues, then. I don’t care what sort of extra pain/early death I’m inflicting on the clutch, the goal remains to be able to get into the car wearing any shoe and heel-toe downshift with the same consistency as normal rev-matching without braking. 

Wish me luck.  

iPhone X!

This year’s crop of new iPhones got announced today, and of course I shall upgrade my current iPhone 7 Plus to the new iPhone X. I’m going to go ahead and pronounce the ‘X’ as ’ex’, and not ‘ten’ like Apple does it. 

However, my god did the new iPhone get really expensive. For sure there’s the incrementally new iPhone 8 at a more palatable $699, but anybody technology-obsessed like me isn’t going for that model. The bezel-free OLED screened iPhone X starts at an eye-blink inducing $999, but us techies aren’t likely going for that model either. The one I want is the iPhone X with 256GB of storage ringing in at $1,149 - this is premium laptop levels of expensive. 

Indeed, top smartphones of this era are getting to be as powerful as the full-on laptop computers. I read somewhere on twitter the A10X fusion chip in the latest iPads are already faster than the best Mac Mini available for purchase. Every day the iPhone 7 amazes me with its agility at chewing through complex tasks with liquid smoothness. It can handle my camera’s 42 megapixel images with the same alacrity as the iMac: real-time adjustments, effects and all. One of the chief reasons I dump money into the ocean and upgrade the phone every year is because of the revolutionary leaps in computing power each iteration presents. 

And right, the camera, too. 

With Samsung’s top phone the Note 8 hovering in the low $900 starting price mark, it seems paying four-figures for flagship smartphones is the new reality. Even adjusted for inflation, the very first iPhone’s $599 ($725) is still some $274 off the iPhone X. The price of progress for the incredible power and functionality of modern smartphones is steep indeed. 

On 9/11

The previous summer I was fortunate enough to travel to New York City for the first time, and I made it a priority to visit the 9/11 memorial. It was as surreal as I anticipated: I was standing on the same plot of land the World Trace Center twin towers stood on that fateful day as I watched it crumbled down into ashes on television. I’ve only started 7th grade.

The memorial itself is incredibly somber yet astonishingly beautiful. Those two vast disappearing pools of water representing the innocence lost that day, alongside it the new One World Trade Center, the gleaming tower of strength and American resolve. It is a hallowed ground that lures you into deep thought and reflection of that calamitous event, and the sacrifices of those that came immediate and long after September 11, 2011. 

I was lost in a mixture of pure sadness and infinite gratitude. 

I hope everyone gets a chance to visit the memorial to pay their respects. For me, it was an honor and privilege. 

Duolingo finally offers Korean

Language learning app Duolingo finally released today the highly anticipated lessons in Korean. Even though my Korean fluency is decent enough, Curiosity got the best of me and I downloaded the app to have a look. The interface is supremely slick, and while I can’t immediately judge the effectiveness of it’s teaching methods, I like the fact it’s got actual pronunciation of words and sentences. That is an advantage it’s got in spades over the traditional textbook. 

And it was with textbooks indeed that I started learning Korean a year and a half ago, the good old-fashion way. During that time Duolingo already announced plans to offer Korean, but it was stuck in incubation until today. Honestly I really could have utilized such an app back when I was just starting out - I think Duolingo makes a great companion tool for the traditional textbook. Plus, the app resides in a smartphone so it’s highly portable and convenient.

I intend to go through the Duolingo Korean lessons to see if the later parts offer something more commensurate to my level. 

I think everyone should at least learn a second language. Trilingual would be even better. Plaudits to Duolingo for creating a fun and easily accessible way for folks to learn. 

Air-con and missing my old WRX STI

In chatting with people today about the Labor Day weekend heat, many have offered anecdotes to support my premise that the reason San Franciscans so loathe the heat is due to the fact our buildings haven’t got air conditioning. The keyword here is respite, and when the temperature is blazing, San Franciscans can’t get any.

Colleagues who hail from southern California all said it felt weird for the weather to be this hot yet when they entered buildings there weren’t any climate control. As I’ve stated in the previous blog post, 100 degree heat is indeed bearable if one is able to avoid prolonged exposure by seeking shelter in air-conditioned buildings. 

Don’t suppose it does the environment any good to sit inside a car for hours with the engine on and AC cranked high. 

With Hurricane Harvey doing damage to the oil refineries (among other destructive behaviors), I guess we should prepare for higher gasoline prices soon. It’s been awhile since I’ve paid over four dollars for a gallon of premium, but with San Francisco being San Francisco and 91 octane already currently sitting at the mid 3′s, I would not be surprised to a see a 4 in front of the decimal point in the coming weeks. 

It’s during gas price surges where I don’t miss my old Subaru WRX STI; averaging 18 miles to a gallon was an absolute pain to the wallet in good times, much less during heightened prices. These days I can romp on the Mazda MX-5 to heart’s content and still manage MPG in the high 20′s. Do I miss the power of the STI, though? Of course, all the time. I don’t miss the 90′s era turbo lag, but once the tach needle is past the number 4, the surge from the EJ257 motor is amazing. 

Cheap horsepower was once the province of WRX STIs and Lancer Evolutions, but if I were to buy today I’d take a serious look at a V8 Mustang or Camaro with their respective performance packs. 400+ horsepower for mid-$30,000 is a mega bargain. 

Record heat in San Francisco

The classic San Franciscan tradition of complaining whenever temperatures goes above 80 is one I disagree with because as I’ve said before, it does the body good to have some variations in the weather. This past Labor Day weekend however, was beyond anything we’ve seen before.

For two consecutive days, the temperature for much of the daytime was in the 100s, and in the night hours the scale never dropped below 80. San Francisco simply doesn’t experience Fahrenheit in the triple digits, and the infrastructure is not built for it, namely the utter lack of central air-conditioning in homes. I’ve live in hot climes before, and it’s eminently bearable if the home is air-conditioned because that limits the amount of exposure to only the hours people are outside. Lacking conditioned air whist the mercury is in the 100s, we were basically hot and sweating for the entire day, right through to bedtime. 

I can’t remember the last time it felt too sweltering to fall asleep, but now sadly I’ve got a fresh place-marker in my memory. 

Thankfully, this recent bout of high heat occurred during the weekend (it’s significantly cooler today), which afforded me to leisurely do absolutely nothing but watch automotive videos on Youtube - as planned. I watched it all on the tablet, of course, cause it was indeed best to avoid turning on the iMac lest adding to the already sauna-like room temperature. Thanks to the heat, I was able/forced to to properly honor the spirit of Labor Day. 

If San Francisco is to see more and more of these 100 degree day weather - climate change or whatever - I think it prudent to finally invest in that portable per-room air conditioning machine. Perhaps soon, since San Francisco haven’t even got to its traditional ‘Indian Summer’ of late September and early October.

I shall gladly and unashamedly complain about 100 degree temperatures.  

Labor Day plans

For those of us working in education, Labor Day is quite possibly the most welcomed public holiday on the calendar. The fall semester has just started, and everything is a mess, hectic, with about a millions things on the to-do list. The first few weeks of a new semester is the busiest time of the year, and Labor Day provides the perfect respite, even if only for a little while. This year the holiday arrives on the third week of classes - next Monday - and I’m beyond ready to shut off the mind for the long weekend. 

And I do mean shutting off the mind. In recent years I’ve been so caught up with productivity and being productive that I’ve essentially given up most of life’s frivolous (to me) pursuits. For example, I don’t play video games nor watch television shows anymore (Mondays are awkward when everyone’s discussing Game of Thrones). Abstaining from both have given me the time to study Korean and read a solid book/novel every two weeks. It’s wonderful, don’t get me wrong, and I’m not about to go backwards, but I think it does the mental state lots of good to schedule back some mindless fun into the mix. 

So here’s what I’m going to do all Labor Day weekend: belatedly watch all the saved automotive related videos on Youtube. 

Well, maybe not entirely: perhaps on Saturday I’ll still get in some photo-editing work. Can’t help it.