Category: miscellaneous

One phenomenon that is extremely confusing for non-native English speakers is how the most generic words can be used to mean something sexual. Whenever I speak I’m a a state of second guessing what I’m saying.

• Do

As in “I did her”. Do you have any idea how prevalent “do” is? It took me years to master it; getting all of its nuances is a true test of English mastery. The last thing it needs is a sexual meaning that is so easy to let out in the most benign conversations.

• Have

As in  “I’ll have her”. This one is actually hard to confuse with other uses of “have” as you rarely talk about a person belonging to another in any other context. But that’s a crazy common word.

• Sleep with

As in “I slept with her”. Did you have sex or did you just sleep in the same bed? Better not sleep in the same room as family or the conversation will be filled with incestuous innuendos.

• Come

“Ben, we’re leaving!” “I’m coming!” Does this mean I’m arriving now or later? God only knows.

• Cock/Caulk

If you are a gun enthusiast handyman raising poultry, don’t even try, find synonyms. These guys are pretty context specific but there are multiples of which they fit and as a result, they tend to show up a lot.

Now to be fair, the only other language I’m intimate with (French) has some of the same sexual meanings associated with generic words, but they are fewer and formulated in a way that removes any ambiguity.

Did I miss any?

They made it into a 2000 Ford Focus, a 2005 Subaru Forester & a brand spanking new 2012 Suzuki SX4. They leave mouse shit everywhere, they literally take dumps non-stop. They even brought the poison I spread around the house into the cabin air filter these fucking little pricks.

It’s an all out war and I’m not taking prisoners.

First, I gave them back their poison, have fun not coagulating bitches.

Second, all of these cars have a path that allows a small rodents into the cabin. The Focus & the SX4 was through the cabin air intake. I still don’t know how they make it into the Subaru.

Here’s how to upgrade a 2012 Suzuki SX4 to have an armored air intake.

Pro-tip I didn’t know, most cars’ cabin air intake is somewhere right bellow the windshield on the passenger side. Usually you need to remove the piece of plastic that is between the windshield and the hood as pictured bellow.

A close up of the air intake and how completely unprotected it is.

Now with protection, it looks pretty bad but it has done the job so far.

Back in business

Here’s how to access the intake from the inside, it gives you access to the air filter. You just need to remove the glove box first, no screws need to be removed.

It’s pretty lame to post my dumb hack online but I’ve had an incredibly hard time finding any information about cabin air intakes for cars so I hope it’ll help someone.

2016-10-17 edit: Commenter André shares the picture of his setup. Ingenious use of self drilling roofing screws!

André: ”we added a few more screws after this was taken to mold the wire mesh tight against the opening”

My wife & I have just released our first children story! As an app for iOS devices. This is the achievement of what started innocently as a small project reading stories to mp3. Months of work, huge investment for the art, it feels great to have put this project behind us.

My only hope now is that the market gods will treat us well.

Here it is in all its glory:
English version: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id480065432
Hungarian version: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id480080998
French version: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id480175112

Here are the results of a small study to calculate the distance between words in english and other languages. The way the computation is done is by going through a list of basic english words, using the Google Translate API to get translations into other languages and finally computing a levenshtein between each English/translated pair of words. The final distance is an average.

This only looks at the spelling words, the next step is to look at their phonemes.

Feel free to use the datasets bellow and please let me know what you’re working on 🙂

[flv:http://ben.akrin.com//wp-content/uploads/2010/09/trip_of_doom-summary.flv 580 450]

A while back I heard a show about the rise of methamphetamine in rural America. I didn’t make much of it until this trip. Across all the little towns we visited, signs of meth problems were blatant. While in Salt Lake some advertisement campaigns target meth, they are sporadic and other drugs are also addressed. In rural Montana & Idaho, they’ll paint anti-meth murals on the main town buildings. Meth signs are omnipresent, so are meth users to the more observant eye (not me).

I have to say I was pretty shocked by all this, I did not expect such a widespread and sustained presence. Rural America still has its well known charm but it seems to be struggling against the depravity left behind a drug strained social fabric.

This trip wouldn’t have lived up to it’s reputation without rain, cold & technical difficulties. While I had hoped that the later would not prevent progress, we did have to bring a trailer pretty far north to get Brandon’s bike back to Salt Lake. Upon arriving in Idaho falls we were met by a severe thunderstorm, we decided to spend the night there but the hotel was such a crap hole we said “fuck it” and loaded the second bike on the trailer and drove back to Salt Lake. This is not the return I had expected but we had to get home. And Nicole rocks for bringing the trailer all the way to Idaho Falls and putting up with the major driving that ensued, I’m in serious debt.

The trip was awesome, being back home is amazing, I fell like we’ve been gone for 2 months. I’ve gotten exactly what I wanted to get out of it: a good break outside of my comfort zone and by that token there’s nothing like asphalt moving at 75 mph bellow your feet, wind in your face for hours, camping with wildlife & being far from home.

The grand total for the trip is 1534 miles (2469 kilometers), and we had to work for every mile.

On a side note, the pictures are lacking because of how hard it is to stop, unwrap & get the camera out every time we saw something noteworthy. Motorcycles aren’t great for photography and I now understand the use of helmet cams. So we mostly have shots of when we stopped for breaks. We have a few more pics on Brandon’s camera that I’ll upload later today.

It’s been a rough day, Brandon’s bike wouldn’t start so we tried to push
start it, jump start it and finally we replaced the battery. This only took
us to Beavertail Hill (which I first missread as Beverley Hills). A major
"oh shit" moment followed. The alternator is probably busted, and we needed
to figure out a way to get back home. Brandon hitch-hiked to Butte MT, I
rode to Idaho Falls ID where Nicole joined me with the trailer. We got back
to Beavertail Hill (many hours north of Idaho Falls and picked up the bike.
We’re now headed back south, I’ll pick up my bike and keep going, Brandon
will drive back. It’s been an exhausting past couple of days. Limits have
been tested.

And this is us trying to make it bac to the motorcycles in time…

Here’s a much better picture that we took with Brandon’s camera

In Montana they put crosses where road fatalities have occured. Their
density is higher in the Black Feet reservation.

We crossed the border into Canada! For a whole 2 minutes. The next town was
pretty far out and didn’t seem to have a nice little food joint judging by
the rather rude customs agent’s saying. I’ve always been told that it’s
easier crossing the border to Canada but the US customs guy was a lot
nicer. On the way back we ate at the 2 sisters cafe and that burger was
mighty good. The riding day was pretty crappy starting with rain and the
terrain became progressively moutainous. Some cattle also roams around
(roads included). We saw the same mix of nice and less nice little towns
with the same meth signs trying to keep youth away from it. We have
officialy started our descent.