I no longer believe in the idea of the New Year’s Resolution. Since 1994, I have been using the Franklin Planner, which is kind of like a New Year’s resolution that won’t leave you alone. In the Franklin Planner, you can put a checkmark by a task, which means: I got that shit done, yo.. An “X” means you’ve given up on that. No, I’m no longer interested in buying refills for the fountain pen I lost a month ago. A dot (“*”) means it’s in progress. I wrote fifty of the required three thousand words today. Give that bitch a dot.. An arrow pointing to the right means “moved into the future for consideration”. Every day I draw between two and twenty of those. Turns out I didn’t have time to write and record an original song between 6:05 and 6:20PM. I am the master of the right arrow.
It’s possible that the primary failing of the Franklin Planner is that it doesn’t expose you to ridicule every time you right-arrow something. So with that in mind, I’ll post some resolutions that range in likelihood from “certain” to “contravenes the laws of physics” in the hope that having done so publicly will be an additional incentive.
- Complete Operation Rescue TTAC and hand it over to the next generation. It was widely speculated that my temporary stewardship of TheTruthAboutCars would be similar to Robert Mugabe’s “emergency” appointment as President of Zimbabwe. The people who said that will have to chew on their own words this year. What will I do with all my spare time? Probably write for TTAC , still — but although I made a solid wartime consigliere, the bulk of the readers will be better served by someone with a more practical bent.
- Go NASA Racing again. The Neon hasn’t seen a flag in four long years thanks to a remarkably stupid decision to try to rebuild it as a double-cam car as cheaply and lazily as possible. This has been rectified, there’s a motor in place, the belts have been recertified, it’s not running well at the moment but it’s running and I have about 105 days to take care of some little things.
- Get well soon. I’ve been sick in one form or another since July. So this year I’m going to immediately focus on getting well so I can get everything else done.
- Get our LeMons team up to speed. I haven’t written too much about it, but I’m part of an ambitious project to field two very reliable and quick cars for the 2014 LeMons and ChumpCar seasons. We have the cars and work is underway at two separate garages to get them ready for competition. It’s a complicated operation and there were certainly be glitches but I’m enthusiastic about it.
- Commit to the things I can do, and do the things to which I’ve committed. This one is pretty self-explanatory. I hate to lose opportunities and at times I’ve stacked my plate a little high, so I’m going to be more careful about that.
- Deliver one major creative project in 2014. This could be a book, it could be an album, it could be some horrifyingly ego-tastic combination of both (cf. Natalie’s “Leave Your Sleep”) it could be a work of sculpture. Well, it won’t be that. But some time in the next 365 days I will deliver a creative project on a larger scale than 3,000 words or just a couple of songs.
That’s enough for now. I hope!
One thing you wrote last year keeps bouncing around in my head, and it falls under the project column of your Franklin planner.
You wrote about automotive entertainment technologies when an old colleague asked you why can’t a Bluetooth enabled car just take your phone’s Google Map or Navigation screen and throw it up on the car’s dash, and have it give you turn-by-turn directions through the car’s audio system?
It was a Duh moment for me. Yeah, why the heck not?
Of course, we know the car companies want you to spring for $1,000+ Navi options when you buy the car, so there’s that. But for cars already on the road not so equipped, why the heck is there not a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that program which beams up Siri to your center stack?
I mean, growing up, the aftermarket provided us with cassette players when the 8-tracks joined the scrap heap of history. Then came the CD players. And after-market dash screens and rear seat infotainment soon followed that.
And I know why this certain project isn’t a why-didn’t-I project for me: I gots no technology chops, English major yo.
But for a guy with a basic understanding of computers, programming, and lots of auto connections, this is multi-million dollar idea/app. So stop making arrows on the Franklin. Make a checkmark by this one. Bank some Benjamins.
AFAIK Bluetooth doesn’t have the bandwidth to transfer video at any reasonable speed. I have seen some concepts of proposed smartphone apps/APIs which would output a “car specific” user interface over USB or MHL. basically when connected you’d get something like the “Car Panel” on some Android phones, where you can only access certain things such as maps, music, etc. all with a user interface more suited for car use.
One thing that is a serious DO NOT WANT at least for me is a “Balkanization” of car-mobile device interfaces. Do it in a reasonably standard way or don’t do it at all. I’d hate to buy a car with one of these systems only to find it’s really only full-featured when paired with an iPhone.
over at TTAC they said 2014 is not off to a great start for Jack, hope every thing is ok.