As a resident of San Francisco, I can say how much I hate tow trucks since they towed my car without warning. It just happens that tow trucks “wait” around parking lots to tow cars.

Okay, that said, here’s a cool DIY air suspension system made for tow trucks, I hope it doesn’t make it to the market, I really don’t like technology improvements for tow trucks. I think people in tow trucks are one of the “lowest” grade jobs out there along with parking meter people. Don’t get me wrong, tow trucks are just really “bad” in San Francisco.  If they start doing things more “legally”, I’d have to change my mind though, but that’s not going to happen in this bad economy-era.

Gadget Freak James Kinney was looking for a way to take the pressure off the back end of a tow truck when it’s carrying a heavy load. If you can equalize the pressure of the truck bed so all the weight is not on the back end, there will be less stress to the truck’s suspension system. Kinney developed the air suspension system, called the Mechatronic Microcontroller, in his mechatronics’ class at Colorado State University. The gadget uses a resistive touchscreen from an electronic Sudoku game to select the ride height of the tow truck’s bed to make it level, thus spreading the stress of the towing weight evenly across the truck’s suspension.

via make

Do you have a home with lots of birds?  Well, you can refer to this DIY on how to make a birdie food shack so you can watch your birds close-up and help them eat nutritious foods.

we’ve been wanting to get a bird feeder to hang outside our living room window for some time now. (hopefully it won’t drive our cats nuts!) this little feeder was inexpensive and easy to make, and we were able to customize it with paint to look like a little snack stand at an amusement park!

via designspongeonline

Here’s a cool DIY showing you how to use ceiling medallions as wall art, great idea for your home.

The lightweight urethane medallions were simply painted in subtly varying shades of yellow and easily mounted on the wall of this living room. The medallions are affordable, around $20 to $30, so it’s quite an attainable way to bring “art” into your home. Another thought? Pick up a medallion with a circular opening in the center, and have a glass cutter make you a round mirror to size, and you’ll have an ornate mirror at a fractional price.

via casasugar

Ghostbusters Cadillac Ecto is for sale on eBay.  Current bid is at $45,000 but I think it will go well over $100,000 for this authentic Hollywood classic.

In August of 2006 I purchased the original Universal Studios Ecto-1. The car was stripped of all the Ghost busting equipment and sold as an ambulance and with a little negotiation I was able to get all of the roof rack parts and the original light bars. This car was used at the park for over fifteen years for the Ghostbusters Experience, parades and display inside the Florida park. This car is one of three Sony/MGM authorized Ghostbusters 1959 Cadillac Miller Meteor Ecto-1. There are the two original cars used in the films and this one built exclusively for the Universal Studios Theme parks. This car has a rich history and thousands of fans have been photographed with this car. The only major change made to this car was the roof rack. We modified the roof rack to resemble the screen used Sony Ecto-1 original car. Other upgrades are cosmetic and mechanically it’s very sound.

via neatorama, ebay

I’ve read books of 2 of the most unique creators of operating systems, that is Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, and Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft Windows.

Of course, I did get the feeling that Bill Gates was a money-hungry, arrogant, geek-vampire from his book while I got the feeling that Linus Torvalds had bigger things in mind like creating open-source operating system platform and spread of free knowledge.  I think when I was growing up, Linus Torvalds was one of my heroes while Bill Gates too, but Bill kept making bad operating systems for money.

If it wasn’t for Linus, I don’t think we would have Firefox, Google Chrome, and pretty much open source software in general.  (or at least they won’t be as popular)  This is that one guy who made the best open-source operating system and boosted the open-source community by gazillion miles.

Well, to cap it off, here’s an interview with Linux Torvalds on his thoughts with Linux as of lately:

I’ve used different distributions over the years. Right now I happen to use Fedora 9 on most of the computers I have, which really boils down to the fact that Fedora had fairly good support for PowerPC back when I used that, so I grew used to it. But I actually don’t care too much about the distribution, as long as it makes it easy to install and keep reasonably up-to-date. I care about the kernel and a few programs, and the set of programs I really care about is actually fairly small.

And when it comes to distributions, ease of installation has actually been one of my main issues - I’m a technical person, but I have a very specific area of interest, and I don’t want to fight the rest. So the only distributions I have actively avoided are the ones that are known to be “overly technical” - like the ones that encourage you to compile your own programs etc.

Yeah, I can do it, but it kind of defeats the whole point of a distribution for me. So I like the ones that have a name of being easy to use. I’ve never used plain Debian, for example, but I like Ubuntu. And before Debian people attack me - yeah, I know, I know, it’s supposedly much simpler and easier to install these days. But it certainly didn’t use to be, so I never had any reason to go for it.

via oreilly

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Here’s a cool wireless E-book from Amazon, the Amazon Kindle.  The Amazon Kindle allows you to access the Amazon store via its EDVO connection (meaning you don’t have to connect to WiFi) and buy books that will get downloaded to your Kindle.

I think you can say this new Kindle is more like the iPod for books.  Of course, I really like it except the fact that the Kindle is still in black and white.  But if you are a book-fanatic and you have thousands of books in collection, you might want to consider this E-book that can hold almost 200 books.

Aside from buying books, you can also read blogs, access Wikipedia, all this paid for by Amazon. (the EDVO connection)

Well, if you like it, knock youself out and get one at Amazon here.

Acer has just launched the very first laptops in the U.S. that are WiMAX-enabled.  Of course, people in Asia have been getting WiMAX laptops for the last year or so but hey, let’s just celebrate the fact that WiMAX is beginning its 4G speeds in the U.S.  This is just the start folks, you will begin to see people use WiMAX over all that other AT&T 3G crap.

SAN JOSE, Calif. and BALTIMORE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Acer America, part of the world’s third largest PC company (source: Gartner data, 2Q 2008), today unveiled its first WiMAX-enabled notebooks – Aspire 4930-6862 and Aspire 6930-6771 – in support of the nation’s first U.S. WiMAX wireless broadband network launched by XOHM in Baltimore. Demonstrating the company’s focus on delivering innovative technology solutions, the Aspire 4930-6862 and Aspire 6930-6771 are WiMAX-enabled Intel® Centrino 2-based notebooks with the first-ever combined WiMAX/Wi-Fi module, previously codenamed “Echo Peak,” part of the Intel WiMAX/Wi-Fi Link 5050 Series.

via engadget, Press Release

Check out this cool Halloween DIY on how to make a pumpkin wreath.  It’s not Christmas but no one said you can’t make a wreath on a special American holiday.

Here’s a great use for those miniature pumpkins that you see in grocery stores and at produce stands this time of year. For a Halloween decoration that will bring seasonal color to your front door, attach some miniature pumpkins to a plastic foam wreath. It’s easy to do: Just wire the tiny pumpkins to the wreath form, and use sheet moss to fill in the spaces between them. Then cap the wreath with a big black bow, and hang it on the front door.

via akincaroll, DIY Page

I’ve always been fond of using red peppers for my homemade salads but here’s a cool food DIY on how to make “roasted” red peppers so you can get even better taste.  This is something I will definitely have to try as I didn’t know you could roast red peppers.

Adjust the top oven rack and place it 4 inches from the broiler. Turn on the broiler.

Place washed and dried red bell peppers on a greased baking sheet.

Broil the peppers for 10 minutes, or until skin is mostly blackened. Rotate pepper 1/4 turn and broil for an additional 10 minutes. Turn the peppers until the entire pepper is blackened. (Don’t be afraid to burn ‘em!) Remove from the oven.

via joshuaandshawnda