APR Creates New Opportunities for Distributors, Dealers and Customers Worldwide (PRWEB Jul 21, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.emediawire.com/releases/Tacoma/X-Runner/prweb1122314.htm

The American Road Shop, a motorcycle shop in Waterford, Michigan, was recently featured in the Detroit News for preparing for the motorcycle buying surge that's being caused by high gas prices. (PRWEB Jul 2, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2008/07/prweb1066614.htm

My dream bike is now here. I still can’t believe I am the owner of a Goldwing ! 2005 ABS, 30 year anniv edition, bone stock with 23k miles. A dream of 7 years is now a reality. I didn’t get the color of my choice but it was a great deal and it is the ride that finally matters anyway. And most importantly, Priti will be a very happy pillion from now on.

Never before has an entry level road bike been offered with these features under $400. The Durus is an attractive Road Bike ready to take riders anywhere they want to go. The Durus is perfect for long tours, or for local fitness cycling. This versatile and inexpensive bike will provide years of enjoyment. (PRWEB Jul 1, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.emediawire.com/releases/gavin-durus/road-bike/prweb1064774.htm

Nostalgia rushes in when I look back 6 long years to my 350cc Enfield days. Wanted a radio on the bike somehow, bought a small FM radio and 2 speakers for a total of 400 rupees ($10) and installed it inside my weird looking windshield using cardboard from packing boxes. Sweet labor of love, worked like a charm till I rode 70 kms of bumpy mountain roads on a trip (Mangalore-Madikeri-Kannur).

And now, after going through a 600, a 1000 and a 1300 cc motorcycle, I am back to my style of riding. Lots of creature comforts, but still nothing beats the fun I had out of that radio installation, and the looks from people at traffic lights.

The guy on left is our famous Adman, who still rides his A350 machismo (same as my bike) and also owns an RD350 Yamaha twin. The guy is a born racer and rider who keeps riding no matter how many times he crashes.

The guy on the right is Vaibhav, who owned an Enfield Lightening 535 full of issues. Today he flies a Cessna skyhawk single propellar aircraft. Sometimes dreams do come true.

While I was getting confused on what to code on the quarterly hack day, our senior manager brought a Lego Mindstorm NXT programmable robotics kit for some fun. The moment I saw his mail, I ran to his cube to grab it. This was my one chance to enjoy some building and coding fun together in the name of hack.

So I spent the whole Saturday figuring what to make, and suddenly this idea struck me. In this age of social networking mania on the web, why not make an intelligent picture taker which can roam among people in a room and take some cool shots.

This is by far the best toy I ever handled. I always wanted to make toys with servo motors, and the kit has 3 of them. So 2 of them went to the wheel and the last one became a concoction to trip the shutter. Give the right amout of power and it will press just like a human finger. Woot.

Other than the motors, there are 4 sensors - ultrasonic (to “see” like bats), sound (mic), touch and light. Am having a ball of time to develop code in NXC on my Mac. A major part of the fun is in multithreaded event programming, using mutex and semaphores. Downloaded a very convenient compiler from Bricxcc and it is a breeze to compile and send the binary program to the robot over bluetooth. Here are the commands:

$ nbc prog.nxc -O=prog.rxe
$ nxtcom -v -S=/dev/tty.NXT-DevB-1 prog.rxe

To generate the tty for the bluetooth, I followed the instructions here:
http://juju.org/articles/2006/10/22/bluetooth-serial-port-to-nxt-in-osx

I am targetting to have these features for demo on Monday:
1. Front bumper hits something => move back a bit and take a picture.
2. Some obstacle comes in front and stays there for a few seconds => take a picture.
3. Explore the room intelligently.

More photos here.