Wow.. one after another.. Sport Compact Car has now joined the ranks of Turbo & Hi-Tech Performance Magazine. Poof, just like that.. 115 people laid off by Source Interlink. I guess with a stock price of $0.17, everyone should’ve known it was coming.

I still have one of the original issues of Sport Compact Car, before it was bought by who ever bought them back in the early 90s. Back then, it featured a lot of So Cal local cars that frequented the street races.. three that come to mind are Shoreline Racing’s (local street racing crew) 1985 Mugen Honda CRX (complete with Mugen widebody), Sammy Ho’s 1986 or 87 Honda CRX Si with 16″ SSR Neos and the legendary 1988 Toyota twin-charged MR2 (I want to say his name was Dean, but I dont think that’s right..). Around 1993, I was personally on-hand to witness the twin-charged MR2 smoke the crap out of a motorcycle (of course, the motorcycle gave the MR2 a “flying 10 car” start). I’ll have to dig it up sometime and scan some pages for old time’s sake. I never really read SCC after they were bought out (the first time).. so I can’t say I’ll miss it.

In any case, now the import automotive performance community is left with Super Street, Modified Magazine, and of course, our favorite, DSPORT Magazine.

Cars, General | No Comments »

We’ve had our 2003 Honda Pilot since it was new. We bought it December or 2002 from Gardena Honda (which sucks, by the way). I really wanted an Acura MDX, but since they were essentially overpriced Honda Pilots, I couldnt bring myself to part with the money. Instead, we opted for a fully-loaded Honda Pilot. It was our first experience with GPS navigation.

I find that I love to use it. Even if I don’t need it, I have to hit the ‘OK’ button and when I get a chance, I often find myself watching the little red arrow navigate around the line drawings of the map. I’m always looking for opportunities to use it. Call me a geek, but for $2500 or whatever it costs, I’m going to use it as much as possible.

Anyhow, through the years, our maps on the navi DVD have gotten old. If you live in an older, more developed part of the country, its probably fine and you could probably continue using the same map from 5 years ago. However, since I live in Orange County, CA (closer to the southern end), new roads and housing developments were popping up every year. Its actually pretty frustrating to look for a non-existant address, knowing you paid $2500 for a GPS based navigation system that you can’t use.

I had often looked into purchasing the DVD from Alpine/Acura/Honda, but couldnt bring myself to part with the cash. Each time I’d convince myself that I didn’t really need it. In more recent times, I convinced myself that it would be OK to even use my portable GPS in the car in those times when I knew we would be heading to “uncharted” territory.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend bought the new navi DVD for his Nissan Armada. I didnt think it was worth it since his navi DVD was only 2 years old. But to my surprise, it had maps for many areas that always bothered me about my 5 year old navigation DVD maps. Not only that, but the points-of-interests (POIs) were all updated too. Now you could actually find stores, resturants, etc that were built in the past few years. So I finally broke down and did it. I bought the Acura/Honda Navigation DVD v2.50 (my original DVD was v2.05b). This is the infamous BLACK DVD. Honda thought it would be cool to color code their DVDs.. so there’s Orange, Blue, and White. Unfortuantely for me, the black navigation DVD was only used over a span of about 4 years, starting in 2002 in some Acuras and ending in 2005 in the Honda Pilot (I think the Odessey even got the Blue DVD in 2005).

If you’re looking for a comprehensive review or to find out if the street you live on in Kansas is in this update, I’m sorry for making you read this far before telling you that it ain’t gonna happen. What I will tell you, however, is that the maps are much more detailed. At the normal zoom level (2nd from the closest zoom), there are more street names that appear on the screen. I think at that zoom level, you also see more street level detail. I also noticed you see much more “green”. Large roads are more detailed in that it shows the left side and right side of the street (show as 2 parallel lines). The navigation unit also responds much faster. Let me say that again THE NAVIGATION UNIT RESPONDS MUCH FASTER. If you don’t need the maps, thats great, but everyone needs the damn firmware update. Too bad Alpine/Acura/Honda makes you spend $180+shipping to get it.

All in all, I find it to be a worthwhile upgrade. In fact, after using it this evening, I couldnt help but to wonder why I didnt buy it sooner. If Acura/Honda were better about explaining the differences, I probably would have.

You “computer types” will also be happy to know that upon receiving my new Acura/Honda Navigation DVD v2.50, the first thing I did was to make a backup. I have my original stored in a safe place and the back-up DVD is working fine in my navigation unit. If you need help backing-up your Acura/Honda Navigation DVD, drop me a comment here with your email (email addresses aren’t shown to the public) and I’ll get back to you. If you have specific questions related to the Acura/Honda Navigation DVD v2.50 (Black), then drop me a comment and I’ll try to test it out for you.

I’m doing this because I couldnt find the damn info myself and I know how much that sucks.

General | 2 Comments »

I had been using the same theme for.. oh, I dunno.. 4 years? So as Wordpress has been updated, my theme has worked, but it was missing some of the added functionality that newer versions of Wordpress offered.. so I’m updating my theme.. I went to Wordpress Themes and picked out a few I liked (mainly 3 column layouts).. I played with a couple which didnt really work, then I tried to modify my AdSense and I think I screwed something up.. so although I’m working on it now.. if its not fixed by the time you read this.. you know why..

Update: Its usable.. I still have some edits to make, but for the most part, it looks OK.. I dont really follow Wordpress development.. but with the release of v2.3 or maybe v2.2, Wordpress will notify you via your admin screen when you’re due for an update.. so on the rare occassion I sit down and update Wordpress, I’m always amazed at the Wordpress community and all the plug-ins and widgets that people create.. this theme is based on WuCoco designed by Mike Lococo. Thanks, Mike.

General | No Comments »