I had my TWF out for a ride today. Top up. Though, the weather is finally starting to feel like spring is coming. It is the kind of weather that makes you remember that owning a convertible is about the best thing ever.

While out for the ride, I remembered that today, March 10, is a day that I usually fail to remember. It is the anniversary of the build day of my car. March 10, 1993. It is now 19 years old. Wow.

I purchased it in April 2002. So, this year marks a milestone for that – 10 years of ownership for my car. In some ways, that’s also hard to believe. In other ways, I can’t remember what life was like before owning it. Actually, it is much like thinking back to the time before you had children. You remember that time existed but are sure that you wouldn’t want to go back.

To commemorate the event, I dug up pictures from the original for sale listing for my car.

I just completed some updates to the 1992 and 1993 feature Mustang auction history pages. The request to add a search by sequence number was a feature that seemed too reasonable not to have. I too had experienced the need to look for auctions by this criteria while researching a car.

I also added some other things -

• Thumbnails for auction listings that are not on ebay anymore (>90 days old). I have been storing the main photo of every auction since mid 2005. For new auctions, I now generate thumbnail versions of each image to be used when the thumbnail is no longer in Ebay’s image cache. I also generated thumbnails for the historical auctions for which I have images.
• As part of the auction details, added the main photo for all auctions where it has been captured (again, back to mid 2005).
• Some database connection fixes that will hopefully result in even greater stability. The move to the new web host in July 2011 left behind most of the site stability problems. That change can be mostly attributed to the availability of more resources on the web server. The bug I just fixed just took longer to show itself on the new server but still caused an occasional crash. It was only in the code involved in adding auctions and was a problem with not releasing the database connection.

In handing these updates, I also improved the development environment that I use. I first developed the auction history in 2003 on a Windows 2000 desktop. My next machine was Windows XP where I had problem running natively the development tools that I needed to use so I ended up creating a VMWare virtual machine from the old Windows 2000 desktop that I then used to do subsequent work through the years. Fast forward to my current Windows 7 machine and that old Windows 2000 virtual machine still runs but getting it networked was an issue.

So, to do this round of auction history changes, instead of spending the time to fix the networking issue, I invested time in getting to an updated development environment much closer to the production triplewhitefox.com site. I am now using the BitNami Tomcat stack. I went with the one that configures Tomcat 6.0.35-0 running on Ubuntu 10.10. Instead of using VMWare I have switched to Virtual Box to run this on my Windows 7 host machine.

Using a pre-built VM made this pretty easy to get running. My next step, of course, will need to be to get PHP running on the VM in order to fully simulate the TWF site.

Link: 1992 Auction Results
Link: 1993 Auction Results

Mike G. just emailed me to provide pictures of his scale replica of his 1992 Feature car. We’ve seen one before for the 1993 Mustang but this is a nice set of pics of an outstanding effort. I asked Mike for some details on the build and he was glad to provide them -

I used a combination of three kits to build this.  The main kit being a Monogram ’91 Mustang GT convertible.  The engine, chassis, interior and main body parts came from this kit.  I bought a resin body kit for an LX coupe back in the mid-1990′s that was made to fit the Monogram kit’s chassis and I used the nose, rocker panels and rear valence from that to convert the GT body into an LX.  With the body mods completed, I used a Monogram ’93 Cobra kit for several of the finishing details such as the airbag steering wheel, exhaust with straight tips, tail lights and rear spoiler.  The spoiler required some modifications but it was a good starting point.  I can’t remember the maker/seller of the resin body but I ordered it online and recall paying somewhere in the $30.00-$40.00 range for it.

This reminded me that there was an article in the June 1992 edition of Scale Auto Enthusiast that can provide more inspiration for a project such as this. I have mentioned it but never included many details of it on this site. So, I have posted some details on it in the 1992 and 1993 “Scale Replicas” sections of this site. Also, I have given Mike’s car a permanent home on its own page with more, and larger pictures.

Despite my best intentions for attempting a project like this, I’ve never started my own. Kudos to Mike for sticking with this project and producing an amazing result!

Alas, it’s winter and the Mustang is in storage. While many of you work on your cars in preparation for the next show season, I work on this web site. In the last week I have performed a couple web site changes you probably would never notice but, I feel, are important enough to bear mentioning. And, to let you know that, I’m still here, behind the scenes, keeping things working, trying to make things better and planning for the future.

Item #1: Installed ThinkUp in order to better manage TWF’s social presence

I  started first using Twitter to connect and then, in 2011, added a Facebook presence for TWF. Honestly, I am still trying how to figure out how best to use them relative to their strengths and weaknesses. When I have something to say it still feels like I have to think too hard about whether it should be a blog post, forum post, tweet or a Facebook entry. I hope that it starts to feel more natural soon.

Regardless of the avenue chosen, I really like to be in charge of my own data. Using Twitter and Facebook for the site has meant giving some of my data over to a 3rd party. It has been useful for building a following but I worry that I might lose it somehow, someday

I have been aware that there are tools to get the data out of these networks. I just never took action about it. I listen regularly to the TWiT series of Podcasts including This Week in Google so I often hear about a project called ThinkUp. It is a tool not only to take ownership of your social data but to get meaningful metrics back out about the effectiveness of your usage of the medium.

It is the kind of solution that most users of Facebook wouldn’t choose, though. You need your own server or at least to know someone who has one to share. It’s less service and more solution.

The TWiT network’s “Triangulation” series recently interviewed Gina Tripani, who is the brains behind ThinkUp. On the show, she conveyed that its architecture might limit ThinkUps adoption but it was, in fact, perfect for me. I have a server on which this site runs and, being a modern PHP/MySQL install, it met almost all of the requirements for ThinkUp!

The install process for ThinkUp verified the server setup and the only thing I needed to add was a package called cURL. The cURL install literally only required two command lines to be executed

apt-get install php5-curl
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart 

before I was up and running. And, I’m no Linux guru. Otherwise, it was as simple as any WordPress install I have done and much simpler than the Drupal install.

The only glitch I have with it is that I have two Facebook profiles under the name ‘John Jones’ (I know, I know, multiple profiles is a big no-no) . One is related to my TWF page and the other is my personal one for family. They are indistinguishable in ThinkUp.

And, it not just me that can’t tell them apart, ThinkUp can’t differentiate which one I want when I choose from the list and always directs me to the one related to this site rather than my personal one. I hope that gets straightened out in a future release. It is really a minor annoyance, though.

Bottom line, ThinkUp is now harvesting all of the social data from Twitter and Facebook into a database on my own server. I can feel confident that this data is still my own.

Item #2: Changed domain registrar from GoDaddy to Hover

I only mention this next one because it went so seamlessly. I was petrified that there would be a glitch during this process and my site would be down for some period of time. I had previously migrated foxfeaturecars.com over but that was easy – it is just a pointer to this site that no one really knows about.

For a little background, I had been using GoDaddy since 2003 back when they were just about the most affordable registrar. I had no problems with them really. A lot of what they are criticized for just didn’t impact me.

My main concern was domain privacy where my contact information was public. Sure, they offer privacy controls, but it costs an extra $10/year. With Hover, it’s included. The transfer went very smooth and I bet no one even noticed the brief time the transfer occurred and the site may have been unavailable.

I came across this in my news reader. It only looked marginally interesting at first. Insurance, yuck. But the numbers are interesting. The only fox body in the top 10 is the 1989.

Digging deeper into the article we find an Excel file with more details. In the date range, 2001 to 2011, we see that the 1993 Mustang ranks 14th with 1,484 stolen and 1992 ranks 20th with an unspecified number. Zero, perhaps, but definitely less that 293 – the last value given as the 18th spot. The classics aren’t even on the map.

Perhaps the best news is that overall thefts of all Mustangs, regardless of model year, are down. 4,347 in 2011. This is compared to 18,325 in 1993 and a peak of 23,893 in 1975. Still, drive safe, and keep that insurance premium paid up.

Link: Property Casualty 360 – The Ford Mustang: Theft of an American Icon

Tomorrow marks two full weeks without cable TV. This is a status report of how it is going.

Prime Time Viewing

With the holidays here there are not a lot of new episodes of the shows that we like to watch. And, with time off from work, we have more time to watch TV later into the night. Last year at this time we really got into Dexter on Netflix. This year, there are still plenty of good serial shows from the last few years of cable and broadcast TV that we never saw. So, I think we will be looking into those to fill the gap. I am pretty excited about this because our old cable TV standby at night was to watch HGTV. That became kind of a rut.

Last night we looked for a show that we watched a few episodes of on Netflix sometime earlier this year – Pushing Daisies. Unfortunately, it is no longer available there. But, having the Mac Mini attached to the TV finally realized its value. Season 1 of Pushing Daisies is available online on TheWB.com. The only apparent drawbacks to this were two. First, the commercials pretty much alternated between the same two from HP. At each ‘commercial break’ there were two commercials. Often the two were the same commercial repeated twice. They could have at least played one of each commercial. I don’t know if advertisers realize it but by making your commercials repeat annoyingly might go against any benefit from having people view them at all.

The second, and most problematic drawback was that the first episode that we watched twice ended abruptly and the player went to the next episode before the one we were watching completed. This seems to be a bug in the player.

ESPN

The Monday night game this week 16 of NFL football was the Falcons vs. the Saints. Neither one is my team so, technically, I would have been OK if I had missed it. But, I was looking forward to watching Drew Brees attempt to break Dan Marino”s passing record. I was aware of the availability of streams for watching this that are not so ‘on the up and up’. My wife actually enticed me to find one suggesting that I should be savvy enough. I took it as a challenge. In about 15 minutes I was able to find a way to view it. The quality was viewable but poor. The picture was less than Standard Definition but a solid enough stream that it was up for the entire game. It was difficult to follow the action on passing plays but, heck, it was good enough to count as having watched this important game.

Kids Shows

I caught my son trying to change the TV to the channel that used to be the Cartoon Network while it was on the antenna. At 7, he still doesn’t quite understand what not having cable means. The kids still enjoy Netflix content but were missing their Scooby Doo. A couple weeks ago, I had purchased a couple of episodes; one from iTunes and one from Amazon Video on Demand (VOD) to see how they worked. I settled on Amazon VOD as the choice going forward. Even though I like to have the content I buy locally on my computer instead of in the cloud, since DRM is used for both I saw little advantage for the iTunes way of downloading it. It just makes my iTunes library larger and impacts backup sizes.

So, today we purchased a season of Scooby Doo. It’s the classic one that I grew up watching in the 1970′s. It was $16.99 for 16 episodes. My plan is to buy one season of something for them each month.

We have considered dropping cable at times over the last couple of years especially after we established a Netflix account last year at this time. The 11 days we spent without cable due to the October 2011 snow storm was pretty much enough to convince us that we could live without it.

Well, we finally did it! I dropped off the cable equipment at the Comcast office this morning. But, it wasn’t before putting some measures in place to insure that we have content to keep our kids and us happy.

The old way (with the cord)

We were paying $82 per month for cable TV which amounts to $984 annually. We had a pretty standard package with the addition of HD programming and an HD DVR. No premium channels. Like most, we only watched a fraction of the channels we had access to. And, a lot of it was time-shifted. The kids usually watched recorded shows from the DVR, Netflix or the free shows from Comcast’s On Demand. My wife and I watched the networks usually through recorded shows on the DVR, some cable news and HGTV.

We have three TVs used for most of our TV watching. One in the family room, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

The family room is where we had the HD DVR and where the kids do most of there TV watching. We already had a Playstation 3 there which was occasionally used for games but got good steady use for access to Netflix, playing DVDs and also to view video from our networked media server, an HP MediaVault 2120. The video on there has been acquired through various sources including content extracted from our DVR. It covers both kids and non-kids programming, tv shows and movies.

The second TV in the Living Room is mainly only used for NFL football using an existing HDTV antenna. It did have cable but not HD cable which I refused to watch because I find it hard to watch football without HD.

The TV in the bedroom is rarely watched. It is mostly used for watching the early morning news when getting ready for the day.

The new way (without the cord)

We had several viewing goals for our overall TV entertainment:

1. Keep the kids happy with their favorite shows (Scooby Doo, Johnny Test, Sponge Bob, etc.). The general profile for their viewing is to watch the same shows and movies over and over
2. Live sports – specifically NFL football
3. The ability to record live TV for later viewing and/or viewing network shows on our own schedule

Item 1.) was covered partly through our Netflix subscription but we added Amazon Instant Video which we get through a new Amazon Prime account and, although the kids content choices are slim, it also provides the ability to purchase movies and TV shows in the future. Amazon seems to be a good avenue for this even though we have become much more into iTunes as we have added more i-devices. When the kids get bored with Netflix we have the option of buying TV shows by the season for them.

To get Amazon Instant Video on the TV we added a Roku LT to the family room. Although, it is slightly redundant to the PS3 in terms of access to Netflix, we have found that it is much more usable for our 7 year old. We also added an HDTV antenna to the living room TV to get network over-the-air (OTA) programming.

Item 2.) is handled through the existing HDTV antenna in the living room.  This leaves out Monday Night Football which can only be watched via ESPN which is not possible without cable. We already could not see Thursday night games since our Comcast did not carry the NFL Network so no change there. So, the big loss here is MNF.

Item 3.) is addressed through the addition of a Home Theater PC (HTPC). My choice was a Mac Mini. I considered other solutions including building my own but the price point for other solutions all ended up in the $500-$600 range where the Mac Mini is. The Mini is currently attached to the living room TV which now will be used more regularly for standard TV watching. An Elgato EyeTV attached to the Mac Mini allows us to watch and record live TV and to schedule recordings. We can also view virtually any web content including standard Hulu. This allows us to avoid the monthly fee for Hulu Plus.

To make the Mac Mini more easy to use, a free software program Plex is used for a more friendly non-computer like interface. It integrates Netflix, Hulu and much of the web content available through web sites like ABC, NBC, HGTV and others. The Mac Mini also runs iTunes which gives us access to that content as well as another outlet for purchasing/renting TV and movies.

Our annual costs are for Netflix and Amazon Prime ($7.99*12 + $79.99 = $175.87). If I hadn’t become so addicted to 2 day shipping we probably could drop the Amazon Prime since we will probably use Amazon Instant Video mostly for purchase and rentals and not the free stuff. We were already paying for Netflix even with cable so it is somewhat unfair to count it now as a new non-cable annual expense.

To keep our costs at 50% of the old cable costs, even with the Netflix and Amazon Prime, we could still afford to spend $25/month on purchased and/or rented content.

And, then there’s the initial outlay for the new devices:

Mac Mini. $564.99
Apple wireless keyboard. $58.00 (black friday deal)
Apple Magic Trackpad. $58.00 (black friday deal)
Roku LT. $49.99
Elgato Eye TV. $55.24
Terk HDTVA antenna. $39.98
Wineguard FL-5000 antenna. $24.98
2 @ HDMI cables. $15.98

Total: $867.16

At least in the first year we won’t be saving any money but should roughly break even as long as we don’t spend on more content. I think the Mac Mini is a great addition to our household. It will get used by the kids. They are already familiar with Mac OS since they use it at school. It also feeds my gadget lust. I actually funded it through some money I keep aside just for such things.

I think we have it covered from all angles. And, then some. I’ll provide updates as our setup matures and we learn more about what works and doesn’t work.

Here’s a link to a post that inspired me to go the Mac Mini route: Mac Mini HTPC Setup

…is the sincerest form of flattery.

I read Jalopnik pretty much daily. I usually don’t check out the “nice price or crack pipe” set of articles but the one on the 1987 ASC McLaren caught my eye enough that I clicked throughto ebay to see more about the car. You know I love my fox bodies. As I scrolled through the pictures, something jumped out as familiar. Way too familiar. The car show sign.

Pretty much a carbon copy of mine right down to the bullet points.

And, also this one that I did for another feature car owner.

Not that I’m complaining. It is actually cool to see my design accepted by others.

In a way it pains me to do this. This may seem like an anti-Lotus Notes thing but it is not. I think Lotus Notes is very valuable when used in the right situations.

For a long, long time I have Lotus Notes as my email client. I never liked Outlook and Lotus Notes is what I used at work and have always been involved with it from an application perspective. Last year, I changed from using the Lotus Notes client for my triplewhitefox.com address to GMail. It just made sense. By having my mail in Gmail, I could get better access to it via my phone.

That left me with my mail archive in Lotus. With the arrival of my new laptop, I began migrating all of existing Windows applications and data. So, it left me wondering if, at the same time, I should migrate my email off of Lotus Notes. Simultaneously, I am involved in work with helping someone do this exact move – Lotus to Gmail.

Of course, there are commercial programs to do this. But, for doing it once this seems overkill and an unnecessary expense. In researching this I came across some good articles that helped me get it done.

The first was an article from the site Sales IT Tech entitled Transfer Lotus Notes Email to Gmail and Unleash That Captured Information. It provided the basis for my transfer procedure.

1. Connect Lotus to Gmail via IMAP
2. Create a label structure in Gmail to parallel the Lotus folder structure
3. Copy email within Lotus to the mapped IMAP account folder by folder

The problem I found was that, once in Gmail, the time/date stamps of the email messages were that of the time/date of the upload, not the original time/date of the email message. That led me to the next useful article on fixing the problem: Import messages through IMAP – message date wrong in Inbox

Basically this added several more steps:

1. Install Mozilla Thunderbird
2. Link Thunderbird to Gmail
3. Create a local folder structure in Thunderbird to mirror the Gmail structure
4. Using Thurderbird, copy mail from Gmail to local folders
5. Delete the mail in Gmail
6. Empty the trash in Gmail
7. Using Thurderbird, copy the mail from local folders back to the Gmail folders

This fixes the time stamp issue.

For me, the biggest challenge was the time involvde in moving my 7,000 messages that resided across over 80 folders. I have mail going back to 1998. At first, I was doing this on my old laptop running Windows XP and Lotus Notes 8.5.1. I experienced many IMAP timeouts in both Notes (an error message resulted) and Thunderbird (it just stopped responding). I settled into doing it in batches of about 100 documents at a time.

I later moved to doing it on my new laptop running Windows 7  Home Premium 64 bit again with 8.5.1 and had nearly no IMAP connection problems and was able to do hundreds of documents at a time. I still split up large collection of documents.

At the latest show that I attended I happened to glance in the trunk of a fellow fox body owner. With the show being at Mustangs Unlimited it is not uncommon for attendees to use the trip to pick up some parts. Though, the parts purchase in this trunk caught my interest. The owner of this 1989 Mustang GT with really nice turbine wheels had purchased Kleen Wheels Dust Shields.

I was previously unfamiliar with the product but I understand how hard those turbine wheels are to keep nice. What struck me was the picture of the wheel on the package.

I wondered whether they would put the picture of the exact wheel each Kleen Wheels Dust Shield fit on every package or if this was the standard packaging regardless of wheel fitment.

Well, it turns out that Kleen Wheels does use the same packaging across their entire line of dust shields and they have settled on using an image of our favorite wheel to hate because of upkeep. I can imagine that there might be harder wheels to clean but this is a great choice for them.