Carroll Shelby Dead: Age 89

It is a sad time indeed. The legendary Carroll Shelby has passed at age 89 of pneumonia.


A true innovator and pioneer, he lives on in his cars and as an inspiration to many.


Over the years this mighty giant went from racing in to production. After a heart problem he was born with stripped him of his track suit, he decided he would design cars others could use. Among his mighty and beautiful creations were the Shelby Cobra, the Viper, as well as the GT40.

When Ford and Ferrari were working on a car together and Ferrari pulled out, Shelby stepped in to help finish the revolutionary race car, the Ford GT40, which would go on to steal the Le Mans title away from Ferrari - for four consecutive years.




Rest in peace, Texas' Giant.







For an even better telling of this great Hero's story go to: http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/carroll-shelby-2012-05-04

College Engineering Advice

First thing to know is: I'm studying Mechanical Engineering. Currently a sophomore I've had a bit of experience and so I compiled a small list of ideas for future students. (Also, I'm an ASME Officer, jus' sayin')

Some high school students ask me questions about classes and there are a few select rules that I've ended up telling most of them, so here goes:

1. Screw AP

     Dual Enrollment is much more worthwhile. You are guaranteed the credit, you can build your GPA early on and DE classes are generally easier than AP.

2. Take AP

     I know, I know, I'm contradicting myself. But listen, Dual Enroll in classes that don't matter to your major. So say you're doing engineering, too. Dual enroll English and social studies, and arts or humanities studies as well. Things like calculus, chemistry, physics, statistics, etc... you should AP. The reason is even if you don't pass the AP you'll at least learn a lot more in AP for when you take classes in college, plus it serves as good practice. So mess up as much as you want and your college GPA isn't sacrificed for your mistakes.

3. Learn to Study

     I mean this one. Some people study differently; flashcards, basic notes, practice problems, hell some people don't need to study. Learn where to study, some people can do it around friends in their room, some people need the quiet solitude of library stacks. If you're like me, you prefer to be outside in the sun by water. It's nice. Point is, get comfortable, and get studied!

4. Accept Advice and Criticism

     Learn to accept that sometimes a separate point of view can be right. Sometimes you'll spend an hour on a single problem and get no where near right, a friend can offer a simple concept or idea that will instantly get it right. If you're too prideful to accept help, get over it. You'll never work alone as an engineer, and if you can't accept help from a friend, you'll be doomed for the rest of your career.

I hope this helps a bit, and no worries, I'll be offering more tips and advice through my semesters as an engineering student alongside my assessment of cars.

See ya guys!

6 Hrs of Spa

On Board Telemetry of the e-tron from Spa

This past week Audi returned triumphant from their WEC race at Spa. The 6 hour long venture ended in a 1-2-3-4 place win for Team Joest, lead by one of their new super weapons, the R18 e-tron quattro.
This new car uses a hybrid system to recover energy from the brakes while slowing through corners, and then pushes that power to electric motors for cornering through, and out once power is applied at the apex. This gives the car more grip and a higher linear velocity when coming out.

In all this new fangled car should be ripe by Le Mans; a lot of data was taken and experience learned for tweaks on the new cars. Afterall, the Delta Wing and TS030 are waiting to challenge Audi's authority.

Here's a video from onboard the car with it's telemetry at Spa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OREUhlcK28


See you all around the corner!

Truth in 24 II

It is no secret that I'm an Audi fanatic. My blog is mostly going to be about German cars, I          drive a Volkswagen, and I'm even taking German 101 this coming fall.


It is also no secret that Audi dominates at 24 Hours of Le Mans, and has so for the last ten years. This year will be no different, in fact it'll be easier. Their main competition, Peugeot, has dropped out of the race. They have also left manufacturer racing entirely because they can no longer afford the venture.


So who will be left to stand between Audi and the title? This year it will be Nissan with the Delta Wing and Toyota with the TS030. Not to mention that Audi themselves have a brand new weapon, the R18 e-tron.

These two cars thrown in against Audi will make for an exciting race, invariably worthy of a movie no doubt?


See three years ago, when Peugeot had a car that was significantly faster than the old R15, a documentary of Audi's race season was made, "Truth in 24", and this year they will be making another one of these documentaries.


If you are a fan of Audi, racing, Le Mans, or any sort of combinations of the three, I suggest you watch it. It is 90 minutes of pure adrenaline, watching one of the best teams and one of the best cars attack Sebring, Monza, and Le Mans.


Remember, Le Mans is on June 16th, so stay tuned to hear more about the race and Audi!


Go Team Joest!




Audi USA: http://progress.audiusa.com/
Audi Sport: http://www.audiusa.com/us/brand/en/exp/motorsport.html?csref=inid_motorsport
Le Mans: http://www.lemans.org/en/
Peugeot: http://www.peugeot.com/en.aspx
Nissan Delta Wing: http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/nissan-deltawing-launch-le-mans-2012-03-13
Toyota: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_TS030_Hybrid

Working on Blog HTML and CSS

Finals and Such

Sorry I haven't been posting as much of late all, I have finals this week so I've been studying a ton. I get home Friday [moving out of my dorm :( ] and the posts will get regular. I'm also planning on fixing up the look of the blog, right now it's just sort of standard and default.


More posts will come! I promise!






For now here's a dog doing science.

Call of Duty: MW3

Now I know, MW3 has been out for around 6 months, so this review is a bit late, but it's relevant for me, sort of.

See I played all of the Modern Warfare series, COD4 and MW2 were spectacular, and MW3's campaign did NOT disappoint! Not. One. Bit. The campaign was epic and fun with the world's greats ending thus proving that Price is the ultimate bad ass.

Screamed while crying, "Nearly Everyone I Love Dies!"

Once finishing the campaign I moved to online multiplayer: and boy was I surprised. It's not fun. And I don't mean that in a way that says it sucks, it doesn't, in fact with the exception of the spawning system, it, too, is spectacular. What I mean is historically I have no problem maintaining 2.5+ KDRs in Call of Duty, but in MW3, the best I can get is about 1.3

The reason? The multiplayer is fair. It's a lot more balanced than any other COD ever made, and if you are a true COD fan I suggest you get this game. In the next post I'll be discussing the future of COD and what it could possibly mean, and trust me, it's not what you think it will be.

Take if from someone who has wasted a lot of college nights playing FPS games, this one is a real doosie.

RabbiReview's Decision: MW3 is worth the money, but if you're like me online play will become boring very quickly.

COD Site: http://callofduty.com/

Parallax Boads vs. Arduino

Today was my EGN 1007 competition: The Great Naval Orange Race

The point is to design an autonomous boat, with it's own on-board propulsion system not containing any sort of combustion, and get it to go all the way around the reflecting pond at my school, whilst carrying a naval orange.

Orange + Pond = Engineering

One of the problems is that the pond is a perfect semi-circle, and steering is difficult work. One solution was to use our Parallax boards from last semester, utilizing Arduino programing in conjunction with an IR sensor to "see" the wall of the pond and follow it. Here's the problem: parallax sucks. The boards fry, the sensors are iffy, the servos twitch. After working on a Parallax robot for a semester I can say first hand that they hardware is terrible and can't follow its software very well. A single change in the frequency output, by a mere .001% for the IR sensor, will literally send your robot spiraling off of a 3 foot high table and in to a million pieces at 9.8 m/s^2.

Arduino. Ahhhhhhh, Arudino, My true love. You are the original, the mighty, the beautifully simple. The programing was written by Arduino (thus the name?) and their hardware, while about 10% more expensive than Parallax, actually works. If my robot doesn't go in to kamikaze mode while I'm testing a program to get it to see black lines, it's worth it.

RabbiReview's Decision: Spend the extra for Arduino, when you don't buy three of every fried, broken part, you'll be thankful.

(Here are videos of some past races, I took a lot of footage of my boat (Placed 13th out of 270) and I'll be uploading it once finals are over next week. Enjoy!)

Videos of Past Races: http://tinyurl.com/7xmpj89

Arduino: http://www.arduino.cc/

Parallax: http://www.parallax.com/