In fact, as the game has progressed, it has become more graphically awkward. To solve this, I have started writing a game development library that I can use for any games I design in JavaScript. As I update the library, all of my games will be updated too.

Here’s a link to the progress page: Game Development Library for JavaScript

The idea is that the library will incorporate sprite management, scrolling, keyboard and mouse input, audio and anything else that goes with a game. Needless to say, there’s a lot of work to do, but I already have a working game! My tree is quickly growing fruit.

Sometimes, we go through things that we can’t talk to any of our real-life friends about. Sometimes, it’s just too hard to explain. This is where an online diary community comes in handy, because you can connect to people you don’t know that are going through similar experiences to you. This way, you can build a support network.

How to make an Online Diary at BloopDiary:

1. Go to Bloop at www.bloopdiary.com
2. Look on the right hand side beneath the login form, click the link that says ‘start an online diary‘.
3. Complete and submit the form.
4. Click ‘new entry’ on the side menu.
5. Write an entry introducing yourself to the community.
6. Check back in 30 minutes and you’ll see that some members have welcomed you to the community.

And that’s the beginning of new friendships that’ll last a life time.

It is important to note that if your solenoid pack is bad, this test will fail. Here’s how my testing went:

Notes: I jacked up the van and put the front end on jack stands. I stuck bricks either side of the rear wheels and pushed on the emergency brake. I actually cut the solenoid connector end of the harness and wired my wires directly through that. I did resistance tests between wires 4-5, 4-6, 4-7 and 4-8 to make sure that I had connectivity with the solenoid pack.

I started the engine, and put the van into drive. It engaged nice and quickly, so I gave the engine a rev. My van shook like crazy. When looking beneath the van, I noticed I have a slightly bent drive shaft! But that’s a problem for another time, when I have the transmission repaired…

With the transmission now running, I started my test. First I engaged solenoids 7 and 8 – this should engage the clutch for the 1st gear. It didn’t. I had 1st gear before I started this test, so I was a little confused.

(I left it for a little at this point, and went and played with my old solenoid pack. I dismantled it and actually removed the four individual solenoids. I found that the solenoids made no noise (or basically did nothing) when I applied voltage to them directly. Interesting for sure.)

I went back to the vehicle and decided that I’d try to engage 4th gear. I engaged solenoids 5 and 6 as documented in the previous entry. The strangest thing happened, the vehicle started to slip and lost all speed. When I released the solenoids, it jumped back into 2nd gear.

Testing of these solenoids individually showed than solenoid 5 directly caused this and solenoid 6 actually did nothing. At this point, I’m starting to wonder whether THIS solenoid pack is actually any good. I bought it for $60 on eBay from a dealer that supposedly refurbishes and tests them.

I took the solenoid pack off the vehicle, and dismantled it. Solenoid 5 engages. Solenoid 6 and 7 make noise when you shake them up and down, but they don’t engage. Solenoid 8 is stuck and makes no noise when you shake it up and down.

I conclude from this that I have a bad ‘guaranteed working’ solenoid pack.

Friday will be the next day I can actually do anything. I’m going to go to the scrap yard and find myself another solenoid pack to test.

To note, when you don’t change your fluid it starts to gum up and this can cause solenoids to get plugged up. Therefore, this places even more importance on changing your fluid!

I have a hunch that the transmission is mechanically okay, given my lack of working solenoid packs. But only time and testing will tell. I am glad to say thought that my method of testing as shown in the previous entry officially works!

Since then I’ve been fiddling with the van to try to figure out what is wrong. Dodge vans are notorious for electrical problems. Frankly, I’m tired of wasting my time, I need to work out if the issue is mechanical or electrical, to do this I need to be able to engage the solenoids manually which in turn will allow me to change gears manually.

This will involve creating a custom wiring harness for the solenoid pack. This bypasses the TCM completely.

Disclaimer: This is by no means a permanent fix. I DO NOT recommend driving the van this way, as the clutch engagement will be very rough. With the van on jack stands, there will be barely any load on the clutches. This is ONLY for testing purposes.

Additional note: This test will FAIL if the solenoid pack does not work properly. If the test does fail, I recommend testing the solenoid pack outside of the vehicle. Check that you can hear or feel each solenoid engage.

What I intend to do is this:

1. Wire a 12V feed to the solenoid pack on pin 4.
2. Connect switches to pins 5, 6, 7 and 8.
3. Connect the other end of all switches to ground.

With the van on jack stands, the engine running and the transmission in drive, I will test the solenoid as follows:

1. To begin with, no switches will be engaged. The transmission will be in 2nd gear.
2. Pressing switches 7 & 8 should engage 1st gear.
3. Pressing switches 6 & 8 should engage 3rd gear.
4. Pressing switches 5 & 6 should engage 4th gear.

If all gears engage successfully, I will assume the problem is electrical. Otherwise, my transmission is probably due a rebuild. (assuming of course that the solenoid pack is good)

Is it cheaper to leave air conditioning on?

In short, no. If you’re still not convinced, read on.

An air conditioning unit uses the same amount of energy to reduce a house from 99 to 98 degrees as it does from 79 to 78. Your house basically ‘leaks’ heat either inwards or outwards. Without any kind of temperature control, your house will begin to match the temperature outside. When the temperature changes, your air conditioning unit kicks in to cool the house again.

If you turn the air conditioning off when you leave the house, your house will reach the outside temperature. Suppose at this point the air conditioning is turned on again while you’re not home, then when the house gets to 70 degrees again the air conditioning is turned off. The house will reach the outside temperature again. All the energy used to cool the house while you weren’t there was wasted.

This is what you’re doing with an air conditioning unit all the time, except that it does it in smaller cycles.

You will consume less or the same amount of energy turning your air conditioning off when you’re not at home, as you would maintaining the overall temperature. PERIOD.

Even if you’re only leaving for 30 minutes, you will not consume more energy. The work the air conditioning unit does cooling the house down is work it would have done just in smaller doses. In fact, an air conditioning running at full speed is more energy efficient than an air conditioning that turns on and off every 5 minutes.

You can test this yourself: Buy an electric energy meter, and plug your air conditioning unit into it. One day when you leave the house, reset the meter and turn the air conditioning unit off. When you get home turn it on. When the house is at the right temperature, read how much energy you used. Do the same for the air conditioning unit being left on, just remember to reset the unit before you leave. The energy used will be the same or less in favour of turning it off in EVERY CASE.

When I bought the Plymouth Voyager, I thought to myself – at last, a decent vehicle. And then everyone told me that a Plymouth is in fact a Dodge, and that Dodge has a reputation for its unreliable transmissions. Strange, no one ever speaks up before I sign up.

It wasn’t long before the power steering pump exploded, and I spent more than $150 replacing components only to find the rack and pinion also leaks and will need replacing – but not before the mighty transmission problem is solved!

Yes, the Saturn has sent its sister to ruin my life. On a trip home from a gig one night, I came off the highway to a stop sign. I was on the phone with my wife at the time, I pulled out and started accelerating… 1st… 2nd… neutral — wait, that’s not right? CLUNK! And we’re back in 2nd, and apparently 2nd is the only gear my transmission has now.

After much research, it has become apparent that when this transmission is stuck in 2nd gear, it generally means it is in limp mode – or limp home mode as some people have dubbed it. Limp home mode is meant to give you just enough power to push the van over the side of a cliff with yourself in it.

On comes the diagnostics. Like a fool, I bought a solenoid pack without really diagnosing things properly. Replacing the solenoid pack made no difference. The truth is, although I tested the original relay pack, I did the test with an analog multimeter which incorrectly lead me to believe that the solenoid circuits had shorted out when in fact they hadn’t, they just have naturally low resistance. So, now I have two working solenoid packs.

I decided to re-start with a circuit diagram, with the helpful aid of a skilled electrical technician over at geometroforum.com (thanks mwebb). I found that the ground wire on the input sensor had no continuity, and of course this means that the input sensor circuit is broken. I repaired this – and suddenly the van would rev up in 1st gear and clunk into 2nd. Previously it would go from 1st to 2nd to neutral and then clunk into 2nd. PROGRESS! I’m not sure if I’ve progressed forwards or backwards at this point.

Anyway, I picked myself up a pair of sensors (both the input and output sensors) from a junk yard. I plugged these in, and the same problem persists.

I intend to spend no more money on this transmission, instead I am going to start seriously testing it.

One thing I’m going to try before testing it – purely out of curiousity involving what I read somewhere – is splicing the +12v supply to the solenoids and providing power to it directly from the battery. Apparently, when the TCM (Transmission Control Module) activates limp mode, it de-activates the transmission by shutting off the relay that provides +12v to the solenoids. I read somewhere that splicing this wire and bypassing the relay will make the transmission work again. Although, obviously, if it does work I still haven’t solved the underlying electrical cause, but I would be able to at least confirm that my transmission mechanically functions!

My plan over the next few days:

1. Put the van on jack stands so I can accelerate but not have to chase the van down the road with a multimeter in one hand and my will in the other.
2. Test the input sensor’s voltage to make sure that it corresponds nicely to the engine speed.
3. Test the output sensor’s voltage to make sure that it corresponds nicely to the vehicle’s speed.
4. Test both sensors again, but while wiggling the connectors on the sensors to see if I lose connectivity.
5. Wire up test lights to all four solenoids on the solenoid pack, so I can see what (and/or) if the transmission is trying to engage.
6. Replace the ‘overdrive’ wire on the solenoid pack’s harness connector, as this is the single wire responsible for activating the solenoid that engages 3rd gear. I have already tested continuity on this wire, but it became apparent that the wire could still be damaged despite having continuity and therefore might not be capable of carrying the amps required to engage the solenoid.

Beyond this, I’ll have to come up with another course of action. This is a test that I’ll be taking pictures of, and posting more posts about.

If I can repair the transmission successfully, I’ll be removing and rebuilding the rack & pinion in another post.

I need to go see if I can get my transmission back, or if it has been melted down into its elements, I’ll have to go buy another – I found one for $150. I also need to rebuild the 3 cylinder engine or just find a replacement for that too. Then I need to alter the engine mounts on the 96. Then I need to get another wiring harness. Then I need to fix the rust. Then I need to lose weight.

Okay, there’s just so much I need to do. The only thing holding me back is money. I’ll probably get the motorbike done in the next couple months, as I hope to have a little money to play with – and I really want to ride.

I have considered getting rid of all the Metro parts I have and saving up for a working model… but I’m not sure about that at this point.

Yes, I want to monetise my blog. It looks ugly, but it is functional. And if you’re coming here for the content, that’s still here. Enjoy!

I also installed this theme to my computer help blog.

Lately he encountered a problem with QuickBooks freezing intermittently and sometimes reporting an error as follows:

The connection to Point of Sale company data “%s” has been lost. The Server Workstation is down or there

As is often the case with computer problems, reproducing this error seemed difficult at best. Luckily, it was only a matter of time before I encountered the error as I frequently look after the store for him when he has other things he needs to do.

Today I came in right in the middle of the intermittent bug. I noticed a couple things:

1. The pause experienced between transactions is not random, but instead a particular length which suggests it is actually a time out.
2. The credit card system was timing out (as visible by the message on screen). If I restarted the machine it’d start working again, even with the other problems persisting.

Knowing that a time out will only happen if the network connection is active, I disconnected the PC from the router. Instantly, QuickBooks was behaving itself, as though someone had just started the engine of a car you were pushing.

To skip the big mess in the middle, we eventually concluded that the modem was bad. If the modem was nudged it’d shut off completely – an intermittent piece of hardware causing an intermittent problem with software. Not far fetched, but probably not an obvious problem if your hardware isn’t clearly intermittent.

What I’d recommend to anyone experiencing this problem is this:

1. Check all your network cables to make sure they’re in good condition.
2. If you have a separate router and modem, try disconnecting the router completely and connecting the computer directly through the modem.
3. If possible, try a completely different set of hardware. IE: a friend’s router and modem.

Intuit have not documented any real solutions to this problem, so I really hope this post helps someone out. Don’t forget to leave a comment if this helped you.

I have since realised that timing plays a big part in success.

I have yet to release Space Allegiance to the application directory. But when I do, I want it to succeed. Releasing a semi complete game would therefore be a mistake, because social games spread virally when people enjoy playing them.

I will be submitting Space Allegiance to the application directory on the 31st of March.