Daniel’s Technology Blog

As the economy has been going down and gas prices go up, I have seen about five articles in the past week about methods of saving on gas. These methods tend to be miniscule by themselves, but add up collectively. Some prime examples are keeping the windows up, the ac off, driving slower, keeping down excess weight, and pumping up your tires. I’m not trying to put this down in any way, because it certainly does help some. My only problem with this is that one is still paying out big money to the mammoth oil companies. What I am proposing is that more people look into do it yourself alternative fuels. Many argue that we don’t have enough to supply everyone, but that’s not what I’m aiming at. I would like to see more people who have the willpower to do some work on the side(if it can even be called work!) save some money.

The prime methods for alternative fuels these days seem to be waste vegetable oil, biodiesel, electricity, natural gas, ethanol, and hydrogen. All of these have their pros and cons, but we have chosen waste vegetable oil, because it doesn’t cost us hardly anything and was easy for us to obtain. I will do a quick overview of the different fuels here:

Waste Vegetable Oil(Diesel only $0-$2/gal): Free to low cost, car has to be converted($500-$4,000 one time cost), doesn’t use any extra chemicals

Biodiesel(Diesel only $1-$3/gal): Low to medium cost, car usually doesn’t have to be converted, involves mixing poisonus chemicals

Electricity: Car has to be highly modified, battery packs must be replaced every few years($2000 every 3-5 years or so), medium cost, very limited distance

Natural Gas: Car has to be converted, hard to obtain cheaply

Propane: Car has to be converted, hard to obtain cheaply

Ethanol(Gas/Ethanol cars): Takes a lot of energy to make, car should be converted if one wants it to last very long, can be run in gas cars with conversion

Hydrogen: Not developed enough to be efficient

Fossil fuel($3-$5/gal & increasing): Outrageous cost, enough said

For our cars, we chose to use waste vegetable oil. One may ask why we chose vegetable oil? Sure, the car has to be converted, but it is the cheapest in the long run. Upkeep is minimal on the cars, and it’s quite easy to obtain, process, and store. To process it, all we do is pour it through a 1 micron filter into a 55 gallon barrel before we pump it into the car. The conversion to the car isn’t because diesels can’t run vegetable oil. Technically, any diesel can run vegetable oil, but it is very hard for it to do so without a conversion. The problem is that the vegetable oil is so much thicker than diesel, the vegetable oil has to be heated first. When the vegetable oil is heated up, it gets much thinner, which makes this less of a problem. The main ways of heating the vegetable oil is with coolant from the car and a heat-exchanger or electric heaters.

At our house, we are running two cars on waste vegetable oil. I get 33 gallons a week for free from a local mom and pop restaurant. We get the oil straight from the fryer’s rather than a collection barrel so there isn’t any water in it from the rain outside.

Car #1: 2001 VW Beetle TDI (Diesel), Been running on vegetable oil for about a year, two-tank system, starts/stops on diesel, runs on vegetable oil when warmed up, very low fuel cost. Converted with Frybrid kit (http://www.frybrid.com). Conversion cost: ~$2,000.

Car #2: 1981 Mercedes-Benz 240D (Diesel), one-tank system, runs ONLY on vegetable oil so no fuel costs are incurred whatsoever, homebrew conversion using two electric heaters, one coolant heat-exchanger, one auxillary fuel pump, and one extra filter. Conversion cost: ~$500.

Car #3: 2004 Dodge Ram Cummins (Diesel), Awaiting kit purchased fromr Rover Hybrids (http://www.roverhybrids.com) for two-tank system. Will pull RV. Conversion Cost: ~$3,500.

Around where we live, diesel is $4.50/gal at Wal-Mart, which is where it is the cheapest. That means we are saving approximately $650/month at the current moment by running our vehicles on vegetable oil. That’s almost $8,000 a year(will probably be more as gas/diesel prices continue to rise through the roof).

I have been asked before if I would trust taking my veggie powered car on a long trip. To answer that question with an example, we are driving to the beach this summer. We will be driving the truck pulling an RV and the VW Beetle 600 miles to Florida. The two conversions have been running tip-top and we expect the truck to do the same thing. We have been stocking up on vegetable oil in 55 gallons drums and will bring it in clean 4.7 gallon cubies we have been obtaining from the restaraunt for free as well(they used to throw them away). If you are unsure if your diesel car or truck can run on vegetable oil, do a quick search for your car model and year about running on wvo. Chances are, you will run into someone who has already tried it. If not, you may need to research your specific engine to find out if you will run into troubles.

Whatever the case, you can still buy a diesel car, convert it, and still save money. The Mercedes 240D we have we purchased for $2,500. To keep it in tip-top shape, we have spent under $500. The conversion only cost $500 as well. This means we only have $3,500 in this car, and it can be done cheaper than this. If you spend $4,000 buying and converting a car like this, it should easily pay for itself after you drive 25,000-30,000 miles.

 If one is interested in any of these technologies, all they have to do is a quick search on google. A search for “wvo” will turn up tons of search results of running waste vegetable oil in your car. One may also run searches for any of the other technologies with the words “conversion” or “how to” and run into tons of help.

Here are some websites have kits, parts, or information to convert your car to run on waste vegetable oil:

http://www.frybrid.com

http://www.plantdrive.com

http://www.roverhybrids.com

http://www.greasecar.com

http://www.fattywagons.com

http://www.goodgrease.com

http://biodiesel.infopop.cc

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_oil_used_as_fuel

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html

The only thing I recommend before converting any of your cars to run on alternate fuels, is to do plenty of research on all of the technologies available so you can decide which one is best for you. Waste vegetable oil was best for me, so that is why I am quite biased towards it and have provided most of my information about it.

If one would like to get more information on some of the other alternate fuel technologies available but do not know where to start or what to search for, the US Government has a website put up on various alternate fuels here:

http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/

Well, I’ve been writing 1-3 articles per day on my technology bog, but sadly that will end soon. Why, you may ask? I initially started this blog for ad revenue, but Google AdSense just doesn’t cut it. I will still write articles on this blog for fun, just not nearly as many. Why is Google AdSense so bad for blogs? You can’t suggest keywords for it to use. It gets the most random irrelevant information sometimes. Anyways, I’ll be spending my time developing a PHP/MySQL based website.

I believe on Digg, the time of day that you post affects how many Diggs you get. If you post in the off-hours, it’s unlikely to get very many diggs. When you post during prime time, you will get more than any other time.

Why is it that this happens? Is it a problem with the way Digg is coded? Nah… Digg has no preference on the time of day. It’s all about the users.

So what does this mean? Simply put, everyone should stay awake and rummage through Digg 24/7! Just kidding, that’d be crazy. Coding something to control how many impressions each article gets before it’s Dugg or Buried would probably use way too much computing power and cause costs to rise. That’s what everything is about these days though, making money.. right? Nothing about what the users would like.

It seems every other time I go to Digg(http://www.digg.com), I get logged out! It’s really annoying. I had Windows remember my password, so it would be easier and quicker to login, but it still gets annoying. I tick the “Remember Me!” box every time, but it still constantly logs me out and I have to log in almost every time I do something like post an article or post a comment. Is it just me, or does everyone have this problem? I’m running Windows Vista with IE. Maybe I should switch to Firefox again.

Digg is a great place to see all the upcoming technology products and news. It keeps me well informed about things I should know about since I’ll be in the IT profession soon. Now it’d just be nice if I didn’t have to log back into it 3 times a day.

Most people think because Facebook is becoming so popular, that it has a great potential for profit. Sure, this may be true if you are a corporation looking for a way to attract teenage customers, but let’s face it… Facebook isn’t the best way to earn money.

To develop with Facebook, you have to host your application on your own server. You also have to use their API which can take a while to set up sometimes. Some API’s are “unofficial” because they were developed by third-parties. The cost of the webserver is usually only a few dollars a month, but it’s even hard to earn that on Facebook.

Most college students don’t have any money to give donations to the developer of an application. You also can’t use Google AdSense on Facebook, because they don’t allow JavaScript. You are allowed to put ads on your application, but many ad corporations use JavaScript, severely limiting what you can use. Even if you do get ads on there, the chances are slim that a college student will click on it. If they have to sign up for something for you to get paid, that makes the chances even slimmer. But then if they have to buy something, you better not even try.

It’s also likely that Facebook will be a “fad,” limiting the time available for you to earn money. So even if you do find a way to make some money off of Facebook, don’t count on it to replace your day job.

So I was on my laptop, and I tried to watch a video on Metacafe(http://www.metacafe.com/). It told me I did not have flash player installed. Well, the site used to work. I installed Adobe Flash Player again and it said it successfully installed it. I restarted my web browser and tried to view the video again and it said I needed to install Adobe Flash Player.. WTF? So Here’s how I fixed it:

1. Open C:/Windows/System32/Macromed/Flash

2. Right click on both Flash9c.ocx and FlashUtil9c.exe and click Properties

3. Click Security

4. Click Edit

5. Make sure the ’Full Control’ checkbox is ticked under the Allow column for ‘Everyone’ and ‘Users’

6. Click OK on both screens

7. Run FlashUtil9c.exe… It will update and install the flash media player

8. Restart Internet Explorer and try to go to a flash page, it should work now

On Digg(http://www.digg.com), I keep seeing posts about things like “Drinking may not be so bad, say scientists.” There have been many others concerning health that say things like drinking, smoking, drinking coffee, drinking tea aren’t so bad after all.

I highly disagree with those various scientists that conclude that. Sure, everything has it’s positive benefits. But sometimes, the bad just outweighs the good. The article about drinking tells you that it may not kill brain cells. Well, so what? It still kills your liver, and that’s proven. The coffee article has been all over the news before, and it said drinking coffee each day may help you. Drinking 1-2 cups a day is okay… no it’s not! Coffee can get so addicting with the caffeine and sugar. Most people add a good bit of sugar to it. And drinking tea may be good for you? Think of how much sugar you’re drinking! If you’re drinking unsweetened tea, I could understand.. but most people drink sweet tea. Unsweetened just doesn’t taste nearly as good.

The moral of the story is that although some of these “bad” things may have some good aspects for health, the bad just outweighs the good most of the time. Everyone needs to stop getting caught up in the little things and look at the big picture.

Well, I’ll be in the city a lot in the next few years, so I got something to protect me from all those thieves, muggers, ect… a stun gun. I got the highest one for this type, the 500,000 Volt model. They also had a 150,000 Model and a 300,000 Volt model, but for a few dollars more you might as well get the 500,000 so you can take down your attacker as soon as possible. Sure, there are 1,000,000 Volt stun guns, but this stun pen is so small and easy to carry, I wouldn’t want anything bigger.

I got the item for $32 off of eBay shipped with shipping insurance. That’s quite a deal if you ask me. As soon as I got it, I put two AAA batteries in it and flipped the switch on. As soon as I pressed the button, it made a crackling noise and a blue arc went in between the two blue prongs.

I have not had a chance to test this on anyone yet, and will only do so if attacked. This device is legal in my state.. you just have to be 18 or older to carry it.  It will confuse the attacker and be very painful. The longer you hold it on them, the worse the shock will be and it can possibly take them down for a while. This is good, because it’d give me a chance to hold them until the police get there to arrest them. If they are holding you and you shock them, it will not shock you back. The stun gun is small enough to fit in my pocket, but I would not recommend it. I usually keep my wallet in one pocket and my keys and phone in another. I put it in my pocket with my wallet. I went to the bank and when I was walking out, it started going off in my pocket! Somehow the switch got turned on and the button was being pressed by my wallet. It’s a good thing it had a safety cap, or I would have probably hit the thing with a hammer and thrown it away.

In the day when there’s always someone trying to steal your money, I’d recommend everyone within the legal age have some kind of self-defense mechanism. You never know what your attacker will have and when the time comes, it will be very helpful if you do have something. When someone does try to attack me, I’ll know I’m prepared. It has no permanent side-effects, so there’s not really anything they could try to sue you for.

Well, I posted the coolest bookcase. Now here’s the coolest picnic blanket:

Here’s the instructions on how to make one yourself: 

http://www.instructables.com/id/EHOCDAWF3KLNUFH/

Check it out and you’ll see why I posted it on my technology blog :).

I have been watching the website Woot(http://www.woot.com) for several months now. They offer one product every day at a low price. Sometimes they have “Woot Offs” with flashing lights on the website where they will sell one product until it runs out then sell another product until it runs out, ect… for a few days.

There have been maybe one or two things I saw on Woot that I actually might like, but I didn’t think it was that great of a deal. Most of the stuff they sell I don’t really need. I’d rather save my money and spend it on something fun. I’d say Woot is highly overrated by most of the technology savvy people. Yes, I do agree sometimes they have good deals, but most of the time.. I just don’t need it.