“Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.” George Carlin

Recent gas prices have had me paying more attention to my gas mileage than ever had before. I had a general idea about what I was getting but frankly I never knew if anything I was doing was helping me to save gas and cash. Fuelfrog is your personal mileage log. All you do is start an account and fill in the data like price per gallon, mileage, and how many gallons you purchased. It does all the calculation. Now I could do the math with paper and pencil but it would only be numbers. Fuelfrog, after the second entry, creates a graph making it easy to visualize how you are doing. I like this sort of web application that is done well and is very easy to use. If you are a gearhead or just want to watch the gas numbers like a hawk then Fuelfrog is for you. Give it a try.

Note: George Carlin portrayed Fillmore in the animated movie Cars.

“We all get heavier as we get older because there's a lot more information in our heads” Vlade Divac

I have written here before of the Internet Movie Database. The ender of all movie related arguments, OK most of them anyway. Well two similar sites have emerged and both do equally a good job in the information they have compiled. The first one is the IBDB or the Internet Broadway Database. Just like IMDB they have compiled a searchable database for everything Broadway. Essentially you can choose an actor and see everything they have ever done. Also you can see any awards or nominations they have received throughout their career. They also have histories and information on every show. The other is the IADB or the Internet Automotive Database. This is a searchable database of all the cars that were in movies or TV shows. This struck me as so strange but I remember my step father making sounds of pain every time, in his opinion, a beautiful car got crunched. This allows you to choose a make and model and not only see a list of movies or shows it was in but in many cases to see a still image of the car in the movie. Also for all the motorheads out there is a page of unidentifiables. Image after image of cars in the backgrounds of movies that you can help identify. This looked kind of fun if I knew a thing about vehicles. To end I should say I recommend both of these sites but I really do not use them not being a Broadway or automotive guy. However I can appreciate a good source of information no matter what it contains. Give it a try.

Ahhh! so that is where the gas goes

OK, not too long ago I tried to fix the wiper motor on my wife’s truck and it did not go especially well. It took my brain a while to kick in and remember that Providence Public Library has a great resource called the Automotive Repair Reference Center. It shows a complete set of information about cars and repair for models from 1945 to 2006, sorry model Ts. Another part of the site I find more fun is AutoIQ. If you have ever had someone explain how a car works and your brain turned to goo then use this feature. Complete, fun, well explained videos, and text that is simple to us and understand. If you teach car repair this one is helpful. I looked up the truck and found where I had gone wrong but as usual it was too late and I broke the piece, but please learn from my mistake and give it a try!