As of Sunday, September 26th 2010 I am no longer moderating, nor will I be contributing to honda-tech.com in any way.
This is a big change for me, and I would like to take some time to address why I made this decision. However in doing so, I feel that I should provide a little background information as to how I became so involved with the site. So, for those who do care to know, get comfortable, as this may be lengthy. I wish to not leave any stones unturned, nor leave any unanswered questions.
When I was in high school I became fascinated with computers. Very fascinated, in fact
almost obsessed with them. I wanted to learn as much as I possibly could. One thing led to another, and then another, and so forth. Eventually it was gnu/linux that
really captured my attention. To those that are unfamiliar with the gnu/linux project, the gnu project is an open-source project, whose goal is to develop free software that is not governed by a corporation. It is written by the people, for the people. The software 'blueprints' if you will, are posted online.
These 'blueprints' being programming source code. For most closed-source software companies (apple, microsoft, adobe, autodesk, etc.) the software source code is closely guarded. Only the company that owns the code, can view the code, or modify it. Linux is an open-source computer operating system that has been written by thousands of volunteers all around the world. It started off as a project by some hobbyist, nobody expected it to ever get as big as it has.
When I was in high school, my good friend Chris went to programming classes, while I went to welding and automotive-tech classes. Chris was learning a skill that allowed him to extensively modify open-source applications, and even contribute back to the open-source community. I wanted to contribute to the project as well but my training was with welding and metal fabrication. Keep in mind that all contributions to the open-source community are free contributions. We didn't care about money at that age, and why should we have? All we cared about was candy, skateboarding, computers, and obviously not school. We didn't care about making money. We were perfectly content with looking like bums, driving POS cars, being average C students, not studying for highschool classes we didn't care about. We were having too much fun making our computers awesome.
Sooner or later I started getting to the point where I was bored with it. I didn't know how to write computer code, so after learning how most of it all worked, I wasn't able to write code to contribute to the project. Thus I started looking elsewhere for a new obsession. Chris eventually ended up in a chemistry program, and as you can imagine, I wound up becoming interested in fast cars.
I started reading more and more, and began to learn that cars shared a lot of things in common with computers. They could be modified, upgraded, optimized, tweaked, all in the similar ways that I had done with my computer. I became fascinated.
When I was in high school me and another welding student (who was also taking auto-tech like me) were assigned to fabricate frame rails for some camaro. I remember doing this, and not really thinking about what it was that I was doing. I was probably thinking about computers, as I would often read linux books in auto-tech class while the other students in the class were out in the parking lot rolling tires back and forth while the teacher was yelling about something. Anyways, moving on.
As you can imagine, auto-tuning captured my attention. Eventually I got a civic and was looking for ways that I could modify it. Honda-tech at the time was in it's prime, and I was fascinated with how others were making writeups with how they modified their cars. It reminded me of the open-source philosophy with the gnu/linux project, and I wanted to join.
You can see where this is leading to, eventually I was at the point where I was doing crazy modifications to my car. The welding courses that I had taken taught me that many metal structures, brackets, framing, etc. could be modified and redesigned. The automotive-tech course that I took taught me a few basics to get started. The experience that I had with researching computers taught me how to research online, and work with computers. These three things put me in a great position to attack many projects.
And I did. I took on many many projects. I had downloaded a PDF manual for my car and began reading it. I started modifying transmissions, playing with the numbers. I did this mainly because I was bored, and I found it fascinating. I would research how to do things on honda-tech, and get frustrated that nobody else had bothered to compile all the information together. I would find half-written threads where people had done modifications that I wanted to do, but they stopped posting in their thread once they figured out what to do. I was the one that would message them and found out how they overcame certain obstacles with their projects.
I kept doing this, and eventually I got pretty good at it. I would post my findings, and I enjoyed doing it. I didn't care about money, just like a few years prior in my computer phase. I did it simply because I genuinely enjoyed doing so. Others could see that I wasn't out to make money off of them, and they realized that I was contributing. They respected me for it. (People tend to respect those that contribute valuable information when expecting nothing in return).
I gained a lot of attention and the site made me a moderator. I now had the ability to modify threads and clean things up more. I did this for a while. Eventually I got to the point where I was wanting to take on projects that were over my head. I was picking up books that had answers to the questions that I had, however these books were written for readers that had a four year degree in engineering. I stepped away from the car projects just as Internet Brands (IB) bought out honda-tech.com from it's original owner.
Honda-tech sold out. I had been too busy with school to really pay attention to what was going on with honda-tech. I figured that it was time for me to do some learning, so that I may return and do more extensive and eloquent writeups to contribute to the site.
I'm now towards the end of my BS in mechanical engineering (where we start looking at applications and less theoretical subjects.) So I began visiting the site more frequently. Much had changed. There were TONS of ads. Yes, I know how to block ads so they do not appear. But the principle really bothered me. Here I was becoming a valuable resource for information that I was volunteering, and the site was becoming plagued with ads.
Internet Brands (IB) was trying to milk the site for every dime it could get. IB simply doesn't know what they are doing. Moderators that have been there for years agree on this. My actual breaking point was when I posted an image, an image that was hosted elsewhere (not on honda-tech) and that image received an advertisement overlay.
My education has not come cheap, I have put a lot of work and a lot of effort to learn this material. If anyone is going to receive a payment for the work that I have contributed, it's going to be me. If I do not receive a payment, nobody else should either. I am not talking about a few meager advertisements that serve the purpose of keeping the site running. I'm talking about the type of excessive advertisements that the site owners profit heavily off of.
I've seen many moderators quit, and try to start a competing web forum. I have no desire to create a competing honda forum. I am fascinated with too many different things right now to put them all into one category.
In the future, when I have a bit writeup that I would like to contribute I will more than likely host it on my own webpage. I will make it so that it is free to view, print, and share. But it cannot be taken and made money off of by some other party. It will be modeled much similarly to the
GPL
Honda-tuning was just one of the many hobbies that I enjoy. I have a big to-do list of things that I would like to do, most have nothing to do with honda-tuning. Right now I want to build a network load-balancing linux server, and take a dishwasher apart.