Marina helped me get our vegetable garden beds ready for spring this past weekend. There were lots and lots of critters living in there, but she was really taken with this slug (”Sluggy — she’s hungry!”). So after a night of captivity, I took some photos and a video…

20090301 Sluggy Has Dinner from Zack Steinkamp on Vimeo.

A few weeks back, I was doing a project where I needed to display a table of information with many columns on a web page. The value in each cell was a short word, but the labels for each column could be long.

With typical HTML, this would mean the data table would stretch too wide (horizontal scrolling), or I’d need to use a very small (illegible?) type size on the column headers.

If I could make the column headers vertical, then the space issue would be resolved. The only browser that can rotate text on the fly is Safari 3, so the only other typical choice would be to render the text as an image in Photoshop or similar software.

Poking through the PHP GD library manual pages, I found my answer — I could render text using PHP/GD on the fly, and deliver it to the client in <img> tags. I implemented a solution for my app, but then decided that I could make this more widely available. So vtext.info was born.

Here is that same data table, but with vertical text generated on the fly by vtext.info:

Server 1	BAD	OK	OK	BAD	OK
Server 2	OK	BAD	OK	OK	OK

So now anyone can programatically generate rotated text in any color, and choosing from a set of basic fonts. The image tag above looks like this:

<img src="http://vtext.info/img?string=Something+Number+Five&color=000000&bgcolor=FFFFFF&face=Sans" alt="Something Number Five" >

So it should be easy to see how to programmatically change the text, color, or font face.

The system has a built-in caching layer, so I don’t get squeamish if someone decides to use the img tag format above.

Please let me know what you think of this! Maybe someone else will find it useful.

She’s been working on this for a couple of weeks now…

Naomi Rolls (5 Jan 2009) from Zack Steinkamp on Vimeo.

Derek and I drove up to Thunderhill on Sunday morning for a free test day there.  Anyone with an SCCA racing license and a race-ready car could just show up and enjoy a full day of driving, err I mean testing.  This was also going to be the first time we tried out doing the “arrive and drive” thing with Evil Genius Racing.  We pay them to house, transport, and prep the car, and we just get to show up and get in!

Fish and Justin of Evil Genius had the car all set for us when we arrived a bit after 9am.  Engine warmed up, tire pressures set, wheels torqued.  This was nice!

It had been almost 6 months since I had been on track, so my first session was just shaking off the cobwebs.  It was tons of fun.  The car felt great — I was pushing it hard by the 3rd lap once the tires and brakes were warm (it was a COLD morning).

Derek had a good next session.  Thunderhill is the least familiar of the three local tracks to him, so we had a good chalk talk session after he came in with his video + the track map in front of us.

My next session started off good.  The car was more warm, and my brain was warm too.  On my second lap, I came up on a blue MG (or was it a Triumph?) on his out lap.  He let me by in T2, and he was taking it pretty easy through T3-4-5-6.  I guess he decided that was enough warming up, since he caught me in T7.  I lifted and pointed him by (it was a test day after all!) and he passed me without incident going into T8.  He was quite a ways ahead in T9.  After I came over the hill in T9, I could see that he caught up with two Miatas and was going for a passing move into T10.  It was a very, ahem, “optimistic” move, since they looked to be three abreast going into the turn.  

The little blue car either had a problem with his brakes or dropped a tire off the inside, because he spun 90 degrees and had all tires locked up.  The moment he started spinning, I was at my braking reference for T10.  I had only a few tenths of a second to decide what to do.  My decisions were to either go left and have sure car-to-car contact (he was blocking my view of the apex of the turn), or go right and have a wild ride in the dirt.  I chose the latter.

His car starting moving to the outside of the turn (right into my path), and I steered hard to the right to try to avoid him.  Well, I did avoid hitting him with the nose of my car, but his movement carried him into the driver’s side of my car.  Here’s the video:

2009 Jan 04 Thunderhill Test Day Crash from Zack Steinkamp on Vimeo.
In the slo-mo version, you can see him come off the brakes (or even get on the gas?!?!?) just as I’m about to pass.  Bummer.

Damage was: front left fender smushed, left door crunched, left rear wheel broken, left rear lower control arm bolt bent, and maybe a slight front subframe bend.

Fish from Evil Genius got right in to fixing the car.  With the help of a spare rear suspension assembly borrowed from Larry Oka, we were back on track in just a bit more than an hour.  Awesome!  The car felt just fine in that next session, and thankfully we didn’t have any more drama during the remainder of the day.

We’re going to have the whole car painted now (Derek had a similar incident at the end of last year, and the whole right side of the car is “new”), and likely do a Dipity theme to it.