Monthly Archives: January 2008

1992 Feature Car Canadian Exports

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In my mind it has never been clear exactly how many 1992 Feature Cars were built in total and, from those, how many were exported. I have seen a couple of numbers reported for the actual number built as described in my 1992 feature car FAQ. As mentioned there, the only number of exports that I have heard is 163. A Canadian 1992 feature car owner sent me this scan of the 1992 Hot Sheet distributed to Canadian dealers.

1992 Canadian

I previously had this document only in French but now, with this version, I can actually read it. The newest piece of information for me is the mention of 75 exports to the Canadian market.

Like so many Mustang models and series before it, the Special Edition Mustang LX 5.0L Convertible is destined to attract the attention of automobile collectors everywhere. But, they’ll have to act fast. Only 75 Special Edition models will be available for the entire Canadian market, making them even more special!

Of course, this is marketing information likely written before the actual cars were produced. So, even with this important piece of information, the question remains; just how many were there?

My new phone – Sony Ericsson w580i

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My wife has been after me to get her a new phone since last summer. We have had our current Samsung SGH-s307 flip phones for almost three years. They have been great phones; I like the small size and, if something works, why replace it? I pushed back until we got into our Christmas wish lists last month. She still wanted a new phone. I really like that we use the same phone as it allows us to share accessories. So, I gave in and got her (and me) a new phone. The Sony Ericsson w580i.

Sony Ericsson w580i

I ordered a white one and a gray one. Originally, I intended the white for myself (you know the whole white fox thing). But, my wife liked the white much better than the gray and, being it was her Christmas present and all, I gave in and traded.

The best feature it has that I didn’t know about before I purchased it is video playback. Going in I knew the phone supported streaming video but that was not a feature I intended to use because I don’t want to pay for Internet access on a device which is not very good at browsing the Web. I did not know it played video files directly from the memory card.

Once I had it, I found through the included sample files that it played MPEG-4 movies. I decided it would be great to have some video on the phone for times when I was stuck with nothing to do (in a waiting room, on an airplane, etc). I previously had some experience recording TV from my Motorola set top box/DVR. This time I extracted some sitcom episodes that I had recorded. I configured and connected my laptop to the DVR via Firewire. I used the guide here. The article describes how to use a program called CapDVHS to live capture the video.

As the article then describes, I used HDTVtoMPEG2 to edit out the commercials and convert it to MPEG-2. Finally, I used MediaCoder to convert it to MPEG-4. MediaCoder can convert from/to many other formats and it is very nice. At first I tried using SUPER which is also pretty nice but I ultimately ran into some video/audio sync issues. If I didn’t want to edit out the commercials I could have used MediaCoder directly on the output of CapDVHS.

The end result is that I have about six TV episodes now on my phone with plenty of room left for MP3s. The picture is small but, for this particular show which I have seen over and over in reruns, it is not important that I see every detail.