Firsts

Acura was the first Japanese luxury automotive brand with the introduction of the 1986 Acura Legend and the 1986 Acura Integra. Over the years they have released many vehicles consisting of a number of firsts in the automotive industry including:

• First Variable Valve Timing system (VTEC®)
• First Drive-By-Wire™ (DBW) throttle system
• First 4-channel ABS system
• First all-aluminum bodied production vehicle
• First production use of titanium connecting rods
• First in-dash navigation system
• First import luxury brand to design, engineer & assemble vehicles in the US
• First dual-stage driver and passenger side airbags
• First XM® Satellite Radio as standard equipment
• First Bluetooth® HandsFreeLink® technology as standard equipment
• First Advanced Compatibility Engineering (ACE™)
• First satellite-linked real-time traffic system
• First torque-vectoring all-wheel-drive system (SH-AWD®)
• First NHTSA 5-star safety rated line-up
• First IIHS Top Safety Pick rated line-up
• First in-vehicle real-time weather tracking system
• First 3-row luxury SUV

These firsts have led to the production of some remarkable vehicles that are on the want-lists of many enthusiasts long after their production has ceased like the Acura Integra Type-R and the Acura NSX. Only time will tell what next great edition of sports car we enthusiasts will be drooling over.

Honda Museum Tour

A kid in a candy store is how I would describe visiting the Honda Museum. I was very honored to be allowed to view and photograph the vehicles stored in the Museum, many of which I had only seen on TV or in photographs in car magazines, but here I was standing inches away from vehicles that garnished observant stares from car enthusiasts at many a car show. I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking…

Ride & Drive

The ride and drive was a fun and reassuring way to end the anniversary celebration. Many enthusiasts are on the edge of their seat waiting for the next exhilarating sports car to adorn the Acura moniker, but that isn’t to say that Acura’s current lineup isn’t worthy of recognition and accolade. Acura has and continues to refine vehicles like the TL and TSX into vehicles that bridge the gap between economy and über luxury by providing consumers with vehicles that offer luxury features at an affordable price without sacrificing reliability and the prestige that comes along with owning a luxury car.

Of all the vehicles I drove at the event, two captured my attention. The first being the Acura TSX consisting of a 2.4-liter 4-cylinder matted to a 6-speed manual. My love for the Integra GS-R Sedan, which was only available with a manual transmission, was probably why I felt so at home in this configuration of a TSX. At the lower end of the Acura lineup, the TSX offers luxury features while still performing as a nimble and sporty family sedan. The second vehicle I was happy with was the TSX Sport Wagon that also consisted of the 2.4-liter motor, but instead is matted to a 5-speed automatic with paddle-shifters.

Simple and classy in appearance, yet advanced in its features, the TSX is a great entry level luxury vehicle consisting of features you would expect in a luxury vehicle like leather seating, Bluetooth, iPod Integration, navigation, real-time traffic and weather information, and memory seats. Another top concern at Acura is safety that is met with features like HID headlights, Tire Pressure Monitoring, a six-airbag system consisting of sensors in the front passenger seat that can detect the type of occupant seated to avoid injury due to air bag inflation among many other safety enhancements to protect occupants. If I were to buy an Acura vehicle today, it would be either of these two, now if only the TSX Sport Wagon was offered with a manual transmission.

If you haven’t gone out and test-driven an Acura TSX, I highly recommend you do so.

Here is a short video describing the event…

Would you want a TV that had speakers in the back of it, facing away from you? – Probably not.
Would you want a car that had speakers facing outwards instead of towards the interior cabin? – Uhhhh, No.
Would you wear headphones that pointed away from your ear? – Is this a joke?

So what compelled the design team at Apple to place the speaker for the second generation iPad on the back of it so that it faces away from the person using the device? Makes you wonder if they thought that through. Maybe there is some compelling reason, but from a usability standpoint, makes no sense to me. Thank you Apple for yet another brilliant design.

I’ll post a more thorough review of the iPad2 soon…

At the time of this post, these instructions, and other information about this topic, could be found on Matt’s Mac OS X Tips Website, but just in case a black hole were to ever absorb the site, I’ve included the instructions to create a keyboard shortcut using Automator below, but credit is due to Matt for his helpful post.

STATUS=`defaults read com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles`
if [ $STATUS == YES ];
then
    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO
else
    defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
fi
killall Finder

Thanks Matt!

[Sat Apr 30 20:21:46 2011] [error] [client XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX] PHP Warning:  file_get_contents() [<a href='function.file-get-contents'>function.file-get-contents</a>]: SSL: fatal protocol error in /PATH/TO/SCRIPT/PRODUCING/ERROR on line 3

So after taking a look at the code, I found that the problem was the URL being passed to the file_get_contents function. An HTTPS URL was being passed to the function. So the first thing I did was check the URL. Using Firefox I visited the URL using the HTTPS and the HTTP protocol, both of which worked. So I tried the function call again and the HTTPS URL would consistently fail, but the HTTP URL worked just fine.

After doing some research, I found that others were also having the same problem with the HTTPS protocol when used with the function. Some stated the issue is that OPENSSL is not configured on your hosting platform. So, I contacted my hosting provider to check if that was the case, which it was not, so scratch that off the list.

However, my hosting provider did share with me a very helpful link that I had also come across during my initial research that outlined a helpful script to get around the issue. The poster of that script was having the same issue as I was with an HTTPS call using file_get_contents. However, I didn’t want to implement the fix just yet because I was still unclear as to why the HTTPS call was failing and I wanted to get to the root of the issue first. So I visited the documentation page for the function and learned something interesting.

An important note on the documentation page for file_get_contents:

Jackpot! So there are two things that could be happening:

• It’s entirely possible that the URL I was using was being served by a Microsoft IIS Server. This was the only explanation I could derive from the issue I was experiencing since I had no information regarding the server itself. And from what I can tell, the reason others were claiming HTTPS calls with file_get_contents worked is that they may have been making calls to a non MS IIS Server, but without further information from those individuals it is hard to say.
• There is also the chance that the server I visiting to pull the feed information could be handling requests differently based on the user agent information in the headers of the request.

In any case, using the script I eluded to earlier, I think I can fix the issue very easily. The script, written by Dharmavirsinh Jhala, uses a call using CURL to get the contents of the file. After reworking the RSS subscriber information on my site to make use of this script, I can confidently say that it gets around the issue while still being able to utilize an HTTPS call, and to be honest, is a good way to avoid having to deal with the issue in the first place.