Back in February I decided to re-learn PHP. My programming language of choice had always been ASP and I never really got into PHP. There were certain aspects of ASP that became increasingly more frustrating as projects became more complex and I decided it was time to re-learn PHP. I find the best way to learn something new is make a project out of it. Need to learn woodworking, make a spice rack. Need to learn PHP, make blog software. So that's what I did.

Over the past six months or so I've been pecking away at building Soapbox, a friendly, easy to use blogging platform. While it's not as powerful or robust as other blog software like Wordpress or Movable Type, it's much more friendly and easy to use.

Soapbox is currently powering this blog as well as Thirdcircle's blog The Infinite Loop. There is still a little more work to be done before Soapbox is released to the public, but you will be able to get a copy of soapbox from the official Soapbox website.

We've all seen Volkswagen's cars driving around, and you have to hand it to the Germans for their automotive works of art. Remember when the new Beetle first came out, it looked like it was straight out of the future, and it was. I'm not saying that I'm drooling over VW's designs or anything, but they make a nice looking car.

What I didn't know was that they also know how to make one kick ass factory to build those purty cars in. Words cant explain it, so look at the pics:

Look at how clean that Assembly line is!, Most dealer showrooms aren't that nice, or clean. I wish I could find pictures of the GM assembly line for comparison, I'm sure it's like night and day. I'm sure it would be a much more enjoyable enviroment to work in as well.

VW has an amusementpark / museum of sorts called Autostadt. One of the highlights Autostadt is the 20 story Car Tower. This isn't your traditional parking garage, it's a state of the art automated car delivery system. When you purchase a vehicle here you watch as the tower picks your car out of it's cubicle and lowers it to the ground where you then receive the keys and drive off in your new VW.

The Car Tower sounds like it would be quite exciting, and it would make purchasing that $30,000 Jetta that much sweeter.

My hats off to VW for their innovation here. It makes me want to plan a trip to Germany just to visit their facilities.

More Pics and Info:
VW Vortex Forums
Wikipedia
Autostadt Official Site

So I found this commercial from 1982 for Ayds. Seems like a miracle drug if you ask me, but you judge for yourself.

So my precious 1993 Dodge Spirit has had rough history. When my mom owned the car it was stolen once, and broken into once. After I took ownership of the car in my last year of college, the car was broken into 3 times in one year.

This morning I was greeted by two police officers at my door informing me that the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) had asked them to come by. My initial thought was that someone had been injured or killed. That thought quickly changed as soon as they asked if I owned a White Dodge Spirit. The officers told me that the OPP found the car in Picton Ontario, which is about an hour and a half away from where I live. As you can imagine, this news was not what I wanted to hear first thing on a Friday morning.

What makes the whole situation even worse is the fact that I just had my brakes fixed 2 days ago. Before then the car had problems getting over 40 km/h because the brake caliper was ceased shut. Had the dirtbags stolen the car before we fixed the brakes, they would've had a cool 40 km/h getaway. I'm sure they wouldn't have gotten very far before they gave up. Now I have to drive down to Picton to pickup my busted car that isn't even worth fixing.

The car is 13 years old and quite simply isn't worth spending any more money on to get it fixed. So now I'm faced with the decision of whether or not to enter my baby into a demolition derby.

Lately I've been watching the TV Show "American Inventor" mainly to see the retarded inventions some people come up with and spend years of their life developing. A couple weeks ago there was a couple on the show presenting their invention called "Car Armour". This is the strangest pair of people I've seen in a while.

I don't know what's funnier:

• the fact he uses her cane to clobber peice of sheet metal
• the incredibly awkward and creepy smile on his girlfriend
• spending $5 at the casino and then watching the sunset and then falling down a 40 foot cliff
  
• the fact she looks like garth from waynes world
  
• "she said she was a truck driver, and I said no you're not, and she said yes I am, and I said no you're not, and she said yes I am, and I said show me your truck."