Vanity Plate for a Subaru

No, but I learn something new every day. Cool.

I think when I first got my Subie I checked into getting "PLEIADES," but it was already taken. M45 just doesn't have the same ring for me. :-) But it's great that you got it. I wonder how many of the other 109 objects have been put on license plates. Of course, the others wouldn't have such a close tie to the car's name. If you could find people who have them, you could have your own Messier marathon. :-)

The Pleiades are one of my favorite things in the sky, so I was thrilled when I found out what the Subaru name and logo were about. (Except...only six stars in the logo??? What were you thinking, Fuji folks??)

Are you having fun with the Forester?

Patty

It could have been worse - they could have used the Australian pronounciation and a matching logo: Suber-roo with a kangaroo version of Superman. ;-)

Davoud:

Patty Winter:

That wouldn't work in Maryland. Seven character limit, including spaces. The individual stars are sometimes called Pleiads, as in "Alcyone is a Pleiad."

Gotcha. This is definitely an insider thing, something for my two astronomy clubs. public star parties, and public events down the road at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. With NASA, the APL, and the Space Telescope Science Center, and other astrophysical plants nearby, there we be a higher percentage of people around me who will "get" M45 than in the heartland. And, above all, it's to entertain me. I like the conciseness of "M45," and it's the name by almost all astronomers refer to the Pleiades.

My '06 Prius (which has a superior navigation system and a superior back-up camera to those on the Forester) has my "local address" on the license plate: 39N 76W.

Well, you have your BMW a-holes with M-this and M-that on their plates.

"Subaru," I'm told, means "unity." They were likely thinking of the major companies in the Fuji Heavy Industries conglomerate. The Pleiades cluster has >1,000 stars. There is no agreement on the number of Pleiads visible to the unaided eye, because everyone sees a different number. Downtown LA? Mauna Kea? How old are you? It all matters! So I think that six is not an entirely unreasonable number.

My photo of M45 is at . Mouse over the image to see the names of the stars. Atlas and Pleione are the parents of the seven sisters.

Well, yeah. I didn't exactly buy it for fun, but it's a good drive. It's a competent hauler of people and cargo and it was good on the one trip of 700 miles I have made with it, when it was full to the roof with telescopes and associated gear. But for fun, the Great Goddess who created the Universe, then promptly departed for parts unknown, gave us the two-passenger, ragtop sports car. Got one of those, too. A 1992 Miata that I bought new and that has 45,000 miles on it. I lived in the Muddle East for over 10 years, where I am known to my friends as Daoud (pronounced da-wooed, or, sometimes, da-hooed). And DAOUD is the vanity plate on the Miata.

Oops, yes, same in California. Maybe I was going to shorten it.

Mine isn't a ragtop, but I've got a fun two-seater, also. But the Subie has its fun moments, too, like a recent trip off-roading in the northern Mojave Desert looking for geocaches.

Patty

Patty Winter:

Davoud:

Patty Winter:

We don't have a lot of desert in Maryland, but we have in the western part of the state and in West Virginia and Pennsylvania beautiful mountains covered in great deciduous forests and lots of rough dirt trails. I don't do geocaching, but I am a nature photographer who likes to visit more remote areas from time to time. The ability to carry a passel of cameras, tripods, lighting, and other gear over these roads will prove quite handy. I had a Nissan Titan pickup a some years back, but it was just too wide for some of the lesser-traveled trails. Please see and . That was quite a change!

The Prius looks like it has quite a bit of storage length when the back seats are down. How does that compare to the Forester?

BTW, the link to your PowerBook page is broken and is redirecting to some spam pages, one of which seems to be on your own site.

Patty

Davoud:

Patty Winter:

The Prius is great. Contrary to popular belief and/or appearances, this is not a compact car. The EPA calls it a mid-sized car. But the Forester cargo space is wider, higher, and a bit longer. The higher bit is important to me.

Thanks for letting me know that. I never saw that spam page before. That's a function of a redirect that lies with my web hosting service. I have just turned off the "allow ads on 404 not found pages."

More importantly, I have fixed the link and it now leads here .

Okay. I have some friends who are looking for a new car, and the husband needs a large cargo area for his bass. One of the options they're considering is a Forester.

Does your web service allow you to put up your own custom 404 page?

Nice!

Patty

Patty Winter:

He should measure and consider what other factors come into play! He won't be carrying his bass plus rear-seat passengers in either vehicle (maybe one rear-seater). There is a huge difference between the intended uses of the Prius and the Forester. We have become very comfortable with getting 45 to 48 mpg on regular-grade fuel with the Prius, so getting 26 mpg or so on premium fuel with the Forester was a bit of a shock at first, even though we went in knowing what to expect.

Davoud:

I remembered having a custom 404 page on one of my sites, so I went to my host's site management page. They don't provide the flexibility in formatting that they once did, but they allow one to compose one's own text. Problem is, I couldn't get their editor to work. Tried Safari. Zip. Tried Chrome. Zip. Tried Firefox. Bingo.

Davoud again:

Thanks!

Firefox is usually the best with troublesome websites on the Mac, but some websites still won't work. Some website are so obnoxious that they ONLY work with Internet Explorer on a Windows PC. One example is the online non-profit organisation funding application form of the New Zealand Government!! X-(

You might be able to have a custom 404 page by manually uploading a new one to the appropriate directory and filename on the website space.