Eliminate Left Turns?

Over at Car Gurus, there is a post about a traffic flow design concept which eliminates left turns at intersections. Called a "superstreet", the design prevents cars from crossing a major street, and instead do what is known around here as a "Michigan Left".

From the NCSU study on the subject:

“The study shows a 20 percent overall reduction in travel time compared to similar intersections that use conventional traffic designs,” says Dr. Joe Hummer, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at NC State and one of the researchers who conducted the study. “We also found that superstreet intersections experience an average of 46 percent fewer reported automobile collisions – and 63 percent fewer collisions that result in personal injury.”

I like it.

Development tools

I think you should select the tool that supports the way you are working, not the other way around. This is one of the reasons I think tool discussions usually focus on the wrong thing. They tend to get very long-winded and troublesome since the underlying process is not clear or decided.
However if you are a small team, I think the following tools are of use to you regardless of what process you are using (the version control software are useful for any project size). Many of my students seem to use them when they are doing project work.

• Version One Team edition - A free tool that supports managing agile software development.
• Trac - An enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects.
• GIT - A free & open source, distributed version control system. I think it is a major upgrade compared to SVN, even if the initial learning curve is steep.
  If you run Windows I suggest you use TortoiseGIT as GIT client.
• Mercurial - A modern, open source, distributed version control system (sounds very similar to GIT?). I think the learning curve is not as steep as for GIT, and a transition from SVN is probably easier. TortoieseHG is a good client for Windows users and what I use myself.
  In this user-friendly, six-part tutorial, Joel Spolsky teaches you the key concepts.

If someone can comment with suggestions of free simple tools that supports testing/verification or integration I would be very grateful.

A Few Thoughts About 2011 COTY/TOTY

For 2011, as I am sure you have heard, the North American Car Of The Year award went to the Volt, and the Truck Of The Year went to the Explorer.

I thought both of these were worthy contenders, but I would only have voted for one of them.

The Volt is a solid piece of technology, but it isn't revolutionary--under the skin, its architecture is not all that unique from a Prius or a Fusion Hybrid. Despite what GM says, the Volt is in fact a plug-in hybrid, and it can even (under some conditions) send gasoline torque to the wheels. Like the other hybrids, it has a gasoline engine connected to a generator and traction motor through a planetary gear set. It has been tuned in software not to behave like a gasoline/electric hybrid. As neat as the Volt is, it is not quite the revolution that an all-electric car would be.

For the COTY I would have voted for the Hyundai Sonata. Here is a company which came from a legacy of pushing boring, cheapy cars using a long warranty and low prices. All of a sudden, they are building world class cars, with high quality and handsome design. And unlike the Leaf and Volt, the Sonata will sell in high volumes. Considering its market impact, the Sonata should have won.

For TOTY, I agree with the panel, and I would also have picked the Explorer. A uni-body, front wheel drive mid-size SUV is the way of the future. Most SUV owners don't need to go offroading, and don't tow anything either. Most of them really just want to sit high and look stylish.

The Chrysler trucks were strong contenders, and I actually thought one of them would win, as a pat on the back to Chrysler for not dying. The Grand Cherokee appears to be a solid product and much improved compared to the junky stuff Chrysler was selling previously.

Video: Car vs Bike Drift Battle

I'm not sure why you would want to have a drift contest between a motorcycle and a car on the same track simultaneously, in fact I'm not totally sure what the point is, other than perhaps to die in style. But the video is wicked.

Conference "Classifieds: RECIPES FOR SUCCESS"

Classifieds Conference "Classifieds: RECIPES FOR SUCCESS" will take place 27-30 April 2011 at Nice, France.

The conference programme will cover the four main "recipes" for success - money, content, technology and content.

ICMA members and delegates benefit from the sharing of invaluable information with the worldwide community of classified media professionals. Read more about the Conference.

Confused by Simulink

The most common modelling tool in the automotive domain is Simulink. It started as a Matlab-based tool to graphically model and simulate differential equations needed in control design. Now it has expanded way beyond that to enable generation of production code for embedded controllers.

For someone like me, with a background in software and systems engineering and only the mandatory control engineering course, Simulink is confusing. Not the model elements as such, since it basically is an executable time-discrete data flow model. But the terminology used in the Simulink community is really confusing since they are using terms very common in software development, but with different meanings. I am not even sure the explanations below are valid...

Some examples:

• A layer in Simulink is not what what one usually calls a layer in software. What is called a layer in Simulink I would personally call a view since it adresss a specific concern, see some defintion of the J-MAAB layers here. But I have also seen a layer as something found at a certain level in a functional hierarchy (boxes in boxes...). Maybe these two even are the same in the Simulink world?
  A software layer would rather be called a subsystem in Simulink, but that is a generous interpretation from my side. (See Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture by Buschmann et al. for a definiton of software layer).
• There are classes and objects in Simulink. Data objects are used to "specify values, data types, tunability, value ranges, and other key attributes of block outputs and parameters", where blocks are the basic entities that one build the simulink model from.
  The Simulink software uses objects called data classes to define the properties of specific types of data objects." So in a sense the class is a template for the objects. On the other hand the data object does not specify a behaviour or input-output relationship. But classes seem also to be a special type of objects in thelast quote above. Ouch!
  Contrast this to common OO design where the class is the template for the object, which is the main item encapsulating both a behaviour and associated data. A block in Simulink most closely resembles a function in a procedural language such as C or Pascal.

The Plural Of Prius is Priora

Toyota is asking "What is the plural of Prius?".  

Since Prius is a Latin word, if it is pluralized in Latin, they should probably be called "Prius"  or "Priora".  Apparently "Prii" is not correct.

There is a long explanation here (not mine).