Web Standards, Accessibility & More » Ford

Mustang, motorcyle and kids

Dennis — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 23:19:57 +0000

So I traded in my beautiful “legend lime” colored Ford Mustang a few weeks ago for a 2-door Ford Focus. It was quite a bummer, but quite necessary financially now that I have two kids, and oh, I recently purchased a new Honda Rebel motorcycle! I get an incredible 70 MPG with that little bike which will save a considerable amount of gas. I commute almost 30 miles to work and the gas bill in the Mustang was hurtin’. No worries now when I drive either the Rebel or the Focus. The Focus gets almost 35 MPG highway when I’m not stuck in a traffic jam.

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Podcast Bandwidth Hogging

Dennis — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:40:07 +0000

Podcasts are great. Hard drives are large. But for non-music podcasts, why waste bandwidth, download time, and disk storage with an MP3 encoded at anything more than 32kbps 22khz? Just so the intro song comes in stereo? I say no!

I have an iPod Nano, and it’s “only” 2 Gigs of storage. To some it may seem like a lot of space, and to some it may seem very limited. Either way, I like to squeeze as much music onto it as possible. When I put several 45-minute non-music podcasts that are encoded at a high rate (such as 64kbps 44khz), it sure starts to take a lot of room. The non-music podcasts are usually technical podcasts with just dialog, and a real high quality is just not needed. It’s like driving a Ford Shelby GT 25MPH to the corner store–what a waste! And using smaller MP3 files also saves on internet bandwidth.

The Web Axe podcast is a technical podcast that I run, and it is mostly dialog. I encode at 32kbps 22khz, and each podcast files runs about 3-7MB each. At this rate, the download is very fast, and you can store all 44 episodes one on flash drive! So it ain’t the greatest quality, but I think it’s manageable and user-friendly.

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Detroit Auto Show (Jan 07)

Dennis — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 18:04:26 +0000

Went to the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, Michigan, last Friday. There sure were some really cool cars. I especially liked the concept Ford Mustang, concept Ford Airstream, Lexus LF-A, and the Chevrolet Volt. The MINI exhibit was the coolest; it had games, live DJ, and great cars. My two-year-old son Carson had a great time too!

Flickr pics of North American International Auto Show

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Almost Moved for Job, Twice

Dennis — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:03:27 +0000

In the last year, I came pretty close to moving out of state for a new day job, to Cleveland then Chicago. The first time was last spring for a long-term contract position in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The contracting company had me all set to go, until they pulled the plug in the last minute because the position suddenly wouldn’t officially be open for a few more weeks. My wife and I had already gone to Cleveland for a weekend to check it out. It’s a pretty cool town, so I’m glad we went anyway.

The second time was more recently as an e-trading company in downtown Chicago telephoned interviewed me, then asked me to come into town to visit. They paid for two hotels nights right in “the loop” which was way cool. Turns out they put the position on hold, which is fine since it would have meant a cost-of-living increase, increase in medical expenses, and moving my family, yikes!

It turns out that I landed a great position in Dearborn, Michigan, which is my hometown. It’s a graphic/web designer position in a department heavy on usability (contract at Ford). Very cool.

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