the director. [ mike centola's blog ]

11Jan/110

New Review: Lumintop L1C Tactical Flashlight

Just finished up a review on a new flashlight that I picked up at the gun show this past weekend from my friends over at VRI Tactical. It's a great little piece.

Lumintop L1C Flashlight

Check out my review: REVIEW :: Lumintop L1C Tactical Flashlight

6Jan/110

Sweet. MBP. 8GB RAM.

Recently decided to purchase some RAM upgrades for my laptop. It's not that it wasn't that fast with 4GB, but when using a 2GB RAM windows 7 VM (VMware Fusion), things started to slow down. I still need to use windows in a VM for software applications like QuickBooks, and to access the KVM switch we have out in Buffalo. I purchased the upgrade from Other World Computing, aka macsales.com, where it was only about $130 for the upgrade. It was slightly higher than newegg, but OWC had the video card upgrade for my Mac Pro (A whole different fiasco). Anyways, the laptop is running lightning fast :)

RAM Upgrade Screenshot

24Dec/100

Much Needed Updates Coming Soon!

It's been over a year since I've updated my blog, and I definitely need to update it!

For 2011, I am going to redo a custom theme for the site, and start to add updates for my various business/projects that I have going on!

Stay tuned!

Filed under: Main No Comments
26Nov/090

ihatestickers.com is having a ridiculous black friday sale

ihatestickers.com black friday sale

That's right! Good from Friday through Sunday.... 50% OFF TRACK MAPS, 25% OFF MOTORSPORTS, 50% OFF SMILIES, 25% OFF RANDOM, 50% OFF FIREARMS, 25% OFF GRABBAGS, 50% OFF NERDY!!!! This is our BEST SALE YET. We will have over 15 new products up for you on Friday. FREE T-SHIRT with $30 orders. As always, orders over $20 include FREE SHIPPING, and just for this weekend, get DOUBLE REWARD POINTS on $20+ orders!!!

BLACK FRIDAY EXTRAVAGANZA! | ihatestickers.com blog

30Aug/091

AMS GTR :: Mike Lipani’s Nissan GT-R

Just wrote and posted this article to rspeed.org

Filed under: Main 1 Comment
12Jul/090

Blender 3D Animation for Patriot Glass

My company, Technotic Media, is working on a new website for Patriot Glass. As such, I have been working on an intro for their website, as requested by PGM. Check out this YouTube video of the animation, which is 99% completed (Just had to add a couple things at the request of PGM). Thanks and enjoy!

Once their new site is done, this will be up there as the intro!

8Jul/091

Latest project twoforty updates…

So there hasn't been much to update with the project as of late. Since my last update we worked on getting the entire interior stripped, including all of the sound deadening. If we are going to reach our goal of 2500lbs with driver, then every little bit is going to count.

240sx Stripping

240sx Stripping

240sx Stripping

240sx Stripping

Once we finished stripping the car, it went over to Reactive Chassis Co. who is building the roll cage for me. Once we get the car back with the cage in it, we can fit the dash back in and then have it made in Carbon Fiber. Also we can then work on getting the seats mounted and braced in the car.

Along the way here, we have been receiving some great parts....

5Jul/090

Couple more pics from the last Mini Track Day

Thought I'd post a couple more pics that Ian took of the Mini when we were out at Dunnville Autodrome last weekend. Check them out!

Mini Cooper at Dunnville

Mini Cooper running at dunnville

Mini Cooper running at Dunnville Autodrome

:)

5Jul/090

Mini Cooper @ Dunnville Autodrome

Here's a couple of videos of our mini cooper s out at Dunnville Autodrome in Dunnville, Ontario, Canada. The camera set up we used was from ChaseCam, and we'll be writing a full review on their products soon. For now here is a couple samples of the video.

Filed under: Motorsports No Comments
14Jun/090

Some new stickers over on ihatestickers.com

ihatestickers.com just added a bunch of great new products. You should all check it out!

http://www.ihatestickers.com/blog/2009/06/moar-stickerz/

31May/0930

Saving state with the jQuery Accordion Menu

I have been working on the new True Negative website pretty much non-stop lately and I'm using several differernt things from the jQuery JavaScript library. One of these is the jQuery Accordion Menu, from their User Interface library. It's a great simple menu that can be implemented with very little javascript code.

One thing that it doesn't inherently support is saving the state between webpages, which is something I had wanted since I'm using it as a menu, not just for content display. Functionally, I knew what had to be done in order to get it to save state. It was obvious that I needed to use cookies and some quick javascript to save what menu was open. I then came across the jQuery Cookie plugin, which really simplifies working with cookies in jQuery.

Setting a cookie with the plugin is as simple as follows:

$.cookie('cookiename', 'cookiecontents');

The accordion menu has an event change attribute, which can be set to a function or just inline code. Using both this feature and the cookie plugin, it was very simple to write the code that I needed in order to get the result I wanted. Here is the code and I will explain it below:

// accordion menu
$('#menu').accordion({
	header: 'h3',
	navigation: true,
	active: '.selected',
	autoHeight: false,
	clearStyle: true,
	collapsible: true,
	alwaysOpen: false,
	animated: 'slide',
	change: function(event,ui) {
		var hid = ui.newHeader.children('a').attr('id');
	if (hid === undefined) {
		$.cookie('menustate', null);
	} else {
		$.cookie('menustate', hid, { expires: 2 });
	}
}
});

// check cookie for accordion state
if($.cookie('menustate')) {
	$('#menu').accordion('option', 'animated', false);
	$('#menu').accordion('activate', $('#' + $.cookie('menustate')).parent('h3'));
	$('#menu').accordion('option', 'animated', 'slide');
}

The first section is pretty straightforward. It defines and applies the accordion menu to a div tag with an id of menu. All of the various options are laid out in the Accordion docs and I just set some of the standard ones in order to get the look and feel that I wanted. The important part is the change option:

change: function(event,ui) {
		var hid = ui.newHeader.children('a').attr('id');
	if (hid === undefined) {
		$.cookie('menustate', null);
	} else {
		$.cookie('menustate', hid, { expires: 2 });
	}

Here you can see that I check the value of the menu that is open to see if it is undefined, which would mean the menu is closed. If it is open, it will have a value in there, so I store that in a cookie called "menustate" for use when the page is reloaded.

// check cookie for accordion state
if($.cookie('menustate')) {
         $('#menu').accordion('option', 'animated', false);
         $('#menu').accordion('activate', $('#' + $.cookie('menustate')).parent('h3'));
         $('#menu').accordion('option', 'animated', 'slide');

Upon page reload I have it check the "menustate" cookie to see if it has been set or not. If it is, I first turn off the animation so the visitor does not see it open again, then I call the activate method to open the one with the id that is stored in the cookie. Lastly, I reenable the animation. It works great!

Unfortunately, I have no completed the True Negative site yet, so I do not have an example of this working. As soon as I finish the site, I'll update this blog post with a link to it. Hope this helps anyone trying to do this in a simple way. Thanks for reading!

25May/090

Track Day with the Mini!

This past saturday we were out at Dunnville Autodrome for a track day with Onyx Syndicate and NYSpeed.com. We brought my wife's Mini Cooper S and we filmed for rspeedTV, part of rspeed.org. It was a great time and we got to meet of a lot of good people. It definitely was interesting to get the Mini out there for some lapping and to see what we could do with the car. We'll definitely be going back for sure!

4May/090

The sr20 is out!

Yesterday, myself, CaviMike and Rick from BTF Racing, Inc. pulled the sr20 from our project twoforty. It took several hours with a couple of breaks in between, but it came out with pretty much no problems. This was the first motor I have ever pulled and with the right tools, it doesn't seem too difficult at all.

Rick is going to start working on tearing the motor down, and I'm going to send some of the engine oil to Blackstone Labs for analysis. I've trailered the car back with me so I can continue to strip the interior and sound deadening. It goes to Reactive Chassis soon for cage work.

27Apr/091

Project 240sx begins!

This past saturday, my friend Kevin and I deciding to start project twoforty and strip the interior of the 240sx that I bought from Ricky Chu. The strip went very easily and we had the interior out in just over an hour. We still need to scrape the sound deadening from the interior and pull out the dash. In just over a week it will be going to Reactive Chassis Co for the roll cage, so it needs to be ready for him.

Check out the pics:

Stripped 240sx

23Apr/090

So long s2000

Well it is time to say goodbye to my Honda s2000. It was probably the shortest time I have ever owned a car, being only 6 months, most of them with it stored for winter. Not a huge loss though, as even though I really enjoyed the look and entertainment of the car, it just wasn't exactly what I wanted. Also considering, we have another little one on the way, it was time to get something else.

I definitely had some good times with the car and I happy with the next owner's attitude with the vehicle. I'm sure he will enjoy it very much!