As an owner of a car, I find myself becoming educated on the subject of automotive wiring. Since I am just about the last person who should be playing with anything that has electrical current running through it, I was hesitant to attempt to tackle the issue of automotive wiring.However my vehicle decided otherwise when it started to randomly select electrical systems that it wanted to me tamper with. When the electric seat belts started to slide back and forth without reason as I drove down the highway, I decided I better figure out how to tamper with the electric systems, considering the exuberant rate of automotive repair.I found myself with a decision to either, break down and spend $100 an hour for a so-called expert to look at it and try to repair it, or I could learn how the electrical system of my car worked. Considering my level of ignorance I probably was going to try to conquer the impossible. After all the only thing I knew about electrical systems is that AC/DC was a rock band and that dummies and wiring usually did not get along.However despite my reluctance, I set out to learn what I could about automotive wiring. I quickly learned that there is a huge supply of information available on the subject of automotive wiring. A quick search on Google provided me with an array of information. There are many different levels of sites offering information.Some sites provided a basic overview of the average electrical system of most cars. A company named Long Island Customs offered some great basic information. They stated that their information was simply for a basic understanding and not for a detailed explanation of particular models. However they actually provide some thorough information on basic systems such as AC and lighting. They also provide some great trouble shooting information.Another site for general information on electrical systems is TBud.com. This educational website offered general programs on electrical systems in their integrated publishing section.AllDetailDIY.com considers itself the leading source of professional diagnostic information. They offer full diagnostic flow charts of automotive electrical systems. Their charts offer both system and component perspectives.I found a great site for individual systems that covered all American made cars from 1985 to 2009.Wiringdiagram.com breaks it down by system, such as headlights, computer data lines and AC systems. Their individualized charts start at $5.99. They also offer information on 1960-1984 models starting at $6.99. They print the information into an Adobe PDF document and offer rushed service guaranteed to provide you with the diagrams for your particular car in less than 24 hours.Bulldog.com offers a basic explanation of electrical information in an MS Word document; however they do not supply charts or schematics.Two other sites that I found to offer great information were Freeauto.com and 12voltresource.com. Freeauto.com provides complete color diagnostics for most makes and models. What I found interesting(?) is freeauto will provide you these color automotive electrical charts and all the other information on their informative website for $11.99. They also assist you with basic electrical theory, electrical harnesses and test equipment.12voltresource.com offers a CD-ROM that contains wiring systems for every car from 1979 to 2009, for only $17.98. They also offer CD-ROMs and instant downloads for specific models of cars. They only charge $14.98 for this information.I also decided to look around to see if I could find manufacturers’ manuals that offer automotive electrical diagrams for particular makes and models. What I found was that Haynes Auto Repair Manuals offer a repair manual for just about every major make and model of car. These thorough repair manuals explain every system on particular models in an easy to understand format. I found that these manuals offer electrical charts for their models. I found Haynes manuals available at several sources including their own website for $24.95 and Barnes and Nobles for $22.95 with a membership. The best deal I found on these manuals was Books-A-Million, who offers most Haynes manuals for only $16.45.So whether you are like me and you don’t know the first thing about automotive electrical systems or even if you are educated in electrical systems you will find these sources to be of great help. If you still desire additional information you may want to contact your local car dealer or mechanic.
Health and Fitness Software, What Should Be In It? Part 2
A good health and fitness program needs to focus on factors that prevent us from becoming unhealthy. One factor that has definitely a correlation with unhealthiness is obesity. The health consequences for being overweight or obese are vast and may include high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea and some cancers to name a few.Losing weight and becoming healthy for obese and overweight people is imperative and well designed fitness software can support this. One way it can be helpful is to calculate a person’s calorie balance and correlate these numbers to their body measurements and vital signs. It is very encouraging and motivating to see yourself lose weight and in the same instance your blood pressure and cholesterol levels go down.Weight loss all boils down to your calorie balance. If your intake is higher then you spend, you gain weight. In part 1, we talked about the calorie intake side of the calorie balance equation. Part 2 describes the requirements for the calories spent module.Let’s start out with the assumption that the calories spent will significantly vary between people and can not be generalized between high, medium and low activity level. We need a more precise method than that. If we look just plainly at the factors that influence our energy spending, we can conclude the following:Larger people will spend more energy than small people. It makes sense that when you move more weight it costs more energy. Younger people will spend more than older people. Males will spend more than females. Tall thin people will spend more energy than short stocky with the same weight. The tall thin person has more body surface and loses more heat. Lean muscled people spend more energy than the average or overweight person with the same weight. Muscles use more energy than fat cells. Active people will spend more energy than sedative people.During a day we execute many activities all with a different length of time and intensity level. Between activities there can be huge differences in intensity level. For instance fishing is way less intense than rowing a boat. Also within the same activity different intensity levels exist. For instance 30 minutes running will cost more energy then 30 minutes jogging or walking. Executing an activity with a high intensity level will spend more energy per unit of time.When calculating the calorie balance, the fitness software should take all the above factors into its formula and adjust the variables automatically. For instance if somebody loses weight, this should be immediately reflected in the outcome. Let’s say I weigh in on Monday and the system calculates 2500 calories spent and two weeks later I weigh again and provided my daily activities were exactly the same but I lost two pounds, the system should automatically calculate the new calories burned taking the 2 pounds lost into account.You should have the ability to create multiple activity plans in the system, individualized per person. Most people repeat their daily activities on a weekly basis, if today is Tuesday, next Tuesday my activities will be pretty much the same. From Monday till Friday the activities may be similar, but they can differ significantly from weekend to weekend.In order to calculate the calories spent during the day precisely, you will need to record all activities, the length of time for each activity and the intensity level it was executed. Doing so could mean a lot of time behind the computer entering all this data. To circumvent this problem, the software should allow you to create a plan that is repeated on a weekly basis with default values. Now you need to only to copy this plan and update the differences from what actually occurred. The actual activities with their time length are noted on an activity worksheet that can be printed on a daily basis. This way your data can be recorded within 30 seconds.Next we need to be able to compare our calories spent with our calorie intake. This can be done in the form of a chart that displays the calorie balance per person over time. See the following example: calorie analysis. This chart makes abundantly clear what your calorie balance is and consequently shows the reason why you lose weight or not lose weight.In the next article I will talk about body measurement and vital sign readings and how they correlate to your work outs, supplement intake etcetera.