July 15, 2010

Newbuntu

It has come to the point where Domestic Services laptop cannot run Microsoft XP anymore. A Turion 64, 512MB Compaq Presario V2000 that used to run XP lickety split, now falls on its nose loading a single web page in one instance of a browser while running nothing else beyond the operating system and Microsofts Security Essentials. Out of memory and swapping to disk. A couple months ago I opened the bios and reduced the allocated graphics memory to a minimal 32MB thus freeing up more for the system which lasted for that many months worth of updates and patches. As recently found, the laptop is simply not usable.

But really, the laptop wasn't all so much usable even when it ran well, for the Microsoft OS is too damn confusing for novice users and computer illiterates. A group of people that just so happen to make up the vast majority of owner operators. And it's not that they can't figure out which buttons to click to make the infernal machine do what they want for they can, it's that the operating system and most all of the programs are incessantly pitching obtuse warnings and confusing demands for updates unknown like God only knows along with delays on startup and shutdown when not asking to reboot in the middle of use and all the rest.

Older hands take these matters in grumbling stride but everyone else gets thrown for a loop. Worse, the suffering of anxiety attacks for needing to do, or not do something, which if done wrong can and often does lead to expensive repairs. Once burned, twice shy and all that, but the not knowing in the face of these dilemmas is torture. In all these years Microsoft has done next to nothing beyond reshuffling the deck chairs of their user interface, while piling on features and the latest fads. The average user knows nearly nothing of this nor wants to. They simply want the machine to properly function for whatever common task they ask of it, free from aggravation, interference, obstruction or any need for arcane computer knowledge.

So I set out to make something simple. I wasn't sure if the latest Ubuntu Linux (version 10.4 at the moment) would run well in 512MB since that is denoted as a minimum these days but it turns out to be fine for typical web and email duty. (I'm writing this on an older version 512 machine with 28 browser tabs open, the file manager open, an email program running while working on the above image in the Gimp graphics editor and all is well.) Above is a screen grab of the Gnome interface after I put it on a diet.

There used to be two menu bars, now there is one which has been pared down to essentials like Wifi and Volume control. Nothing is missing from the menus but any distracting clutter is gone. Her two main programs are icons on the desktop. The terminal icon is mine and will be removed after setup, replaced with a "My Documents" equivalent perhaps and that's about it. There is no need for an anti-virus program and all update notifications have been turned off as there is no overriding need for those either. The goal is to create a machine more dedicated to lesser complexity than lesser capability basically. A first attempt.

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July 17, 2010

Sometimes you have to laugh, other times not.

A fellow gives a lecture at a university denouncing many questionable findings regarding anthropological global warming, to then be denounced in rebuttal by a competing university. Allow me to reproduce one of the points of contention.

Person(A) says CO2 as a percentage of atmospheric volume was .03% in 1750, rising to 04% by 2009, an insignificant .01% change. Person(B) says atmospheric CO2 was 280 parts per million in 1750, increasing to 390 ppm by 2009, a horrifying 39% increase.

Both are representations of the same values, only the scales and units of measure differ. Neither is more or less correct than the other... but the emotional impact? Which is rather the point I'm making here. Scientists should not be advocates of interpretation based on emotion any more than they should be emotional manipulators of said data. We can see both at work here and it does nothing to further understanding of climate change as they play on emotion to garner consensual inertia for their predetermined outcome based science, which isn't science at all, but more an ideological popularity contest driven by fear. True skeptics are labeled "deniers" by environmental hypochondriacs as the whole charade plays out in several acts.

If this was theater it would be comedy but it's not. The end game is doing something when it is not at all clear what, if anything, needs doing as we assign empirical weights to untestable hypothesis under the rubric of scientific proof. Academic until actionable, then it all gets Jack Savage serious. If the consensus is wrong as it has been in scientific circles historically often, then we kill ourselves trying to engineer something - like global environmental modification - having erroneously convinced ourselves that we know what we're doing.

From: Record Collapse of Earth's Upper Atmosphere Puzzles Scientists

An upper layer of Earth's atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction, the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads, NASA announced Thursday. The layer of gas - called the thermosphere - is now rebounding again. This type of collapse is not rare, but its magnitude shocked scientists.

"This is the biggest contraction of the thermosphere in at least 43 years," said John Emmert of the Naval Research Lab, lead author of a paper announcing the finding in the June 19 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. "It's a Space Age record."

The collapse occurred during a period of relative solar inactivity - called a solar minimum from 2008 to 2009. These minimums are known to cool and contract the thermosphere, however, the recent collapse was two to three times greater than low solar activity could explain.

"Something is going on that we do not understand," Emmert said.

I strongly suspect there being a lot we don't understand but for bits and pieces, including the mechanisms of global climate interactions as a driver of environmental change over time.

From the same debate, Northern Hemispheric temperature data is charted to an implied one hundredth of a degree precision within a range of variance -1 to +.5°C across the span of a thousand years. Of course we have no directly measured Northern Hemispheric data going back that far let alone to such precision but nevertheless, data interpolated from tree rings, ice cores, corals and what is available in the latter historical record has been massaged into charts and graphs as such. Now that we can measure temperatures with greater accuracy over wide areas we are finding that Northern Hemispheric temperatures are running .2°C higher than the calculated upper limit of interpolated data error going back a thousand years.

Anyone who has ever tried to accurately measure the temperature of anything, let alone geographically wide areas, knows well how difficult it is to assign values to 1 degree precision with best available instrumentation outside controlled laboratory conditions or specific point sources, yet here we are being asked to believe in the credibility of tenth degree variances (or less) of an entire Northern Hemisphere over the span of a thousand years as interpolated from tree rings, ice cores and corals. To ask such a thing is not acquiescing to science but rather some cult like quasi religious belief in the name of it.

Data indicate that temperatures now, are indeed much warmer than during medieval times. Evidence for anthropological causes for this modern warm comes from the fact that climate models can only reproduce modern warmth by including anthropogenic forcings.

Here we are back at the data again. Warmer? How much warmer? Two tenths of a degree C? And I won't argue that some climate model cannot reproduce such warmth without forcing an anthropogenic cause into the solution. Or infer one for that matter. Perhaps the data isn't all it's made out to be, perhaps the model is wrong, but from this we are asked to derive certainty in consensus? Unadulterated science would never ask such a thing, leaving us to deal with alternatives like screaming Environmental Hypochondriacs and the perpetual terror that only exists between their ears. A distraction at best. Worst being scientists so afflicted and malleable in their methods, unswervingly righteous in published results as a matter of facts in belief.

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July 18, 2010

Another AT&T story

Closing out old browser tabs but leaving up anything even mildly interesting and/or informative, I come across this story which I'll paraphrase to protect the innocent. Anyway it goes like this:

This guy in Los Angeles buys a cell phone from AT&T which works well anytime he's not at home. Him, living in the suburbs just doesn't get much for signal but there is a couple rooms in the house he can use the phone if he stands in the right spot and holds his head just right on a good day. This, in spite of AT&T promises over the years that new cell towers will be going up real soon now. Then he heard about at gadget that AT&T offers called a microcell.

Now a microcell is just what the name might imply, being a miniature cell tower in a box that any AT&T cell phone can connect to, that in turn connects to AT&T through the users broadband connection. Can support up to five phones simultaneously. No more dead spots, whole house coverage. Now the kicker is this: Here's a guy who pays through the nose for a cell phone and plan that doesn't work very well in his house if at all. In other words, AT&T sold a cell phone they don't support very well. Woe to the buyer, AT&T still collects full coin every month. Nice.

Anyway, since the guy already has broadband internet, he lays out $150 less a $100 rebate for a microcell and connects it up. Five bars in every room, four all the way out on the patio where signal was never found before. He's happy and having fun actually using the phone as intended when bought and every mont thereafter bill paid. And he fixed it himself. AT&T be damned, he bought his own cell tower which can support up to five simultaneous phones/calls, performs all maintenance himself, covers the cost of needed electricity and provides his own back haul via his broadband internet connection which AT&T graciously relays onto it's switched network and for which AT&T still docks him for minutes used or data transfered. Like i said, nice.

End of story, but moving on the whole microcell concept is half bad when you get down to it. Ok, not much of a bargain in the above instance but make the microcell a little bigger, call it a mini-cell maybe, something strong enough that say the entire neighborhood could use and we've just expanded coverage in a meaningful way without needing to erect expensive and difficult to approve cell towers of the fuller blown variety. Kinda sweet when you think about it and just about anybody can get in the provisioning game. Cell operators just need to make it cost effective for the provisioner. Better coverage and less stress on the system overall meaning more phone and more data can be pumped over existing frequencies since each mini-cell covers a geographically small area.

Conceptually, the same thinking was involved with WiFi which has died on the vine for lack of legal protection for people providing the service. Most people would run open routers for the benefit of all and a convenience for themselves if not for the liability of what some might do over the connection provided. For the record it's not clear if microcell operators are covered from liability either. Really it's all more the pity for we could be doing some really neat thing with existing infrastructure and little capital outlay beyond what people are willing to do themselves. All for the need to track down those who listen to music and movies illegally we are not indemnified I suppose. A costly choice in juxtaposition me thinks, as FedGov decided to back the desires of entertainment industries over those of the people.

In similar vein I don't know how much longer libraries will get to continue their criminality. You know what they do there right? Buy one book and let just about anybody read it for free. Yeah, just pass it around. Do you know how much money that is in lost sales? Well do ya? And not just books, but magazines, newspapers, music and movies too. Something that's not simply criminal, but criminal enterprise marauding under the auspices of a taxpayer supported public service! Must be stopped! And do ya know who profits from this? That's right, librarians! You think those little old ladies are innocent? They work in ciphers and codes like the Dewey Decimal System. That makes it organized crime!

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July 19, 2010

An invasion of flies

Irritating little bastards by the dozens, where they came from I do not know but my trusty flyswatter once found beat down the first wave before being overrun by the second. It became too time consuming to bother with purely physical means for I have work to do. Reminded of the twelve stool soda fountain, grocery, butcher shop at the Five Points of my youth where the flies drifted past the screen door with the customers and the long yellow strips of sticky flypaper that hung between Hunter ceiling fans loaded with unclean carcasses, dead and dying. So simple, yet effective. With apologies to H.P. Lovecraft.

So i beat feet to the local Walgreens down the street in search of this wondrous product which I found in four packs, remarkably enough. They are dying as we speak. Nearly a hundred of them so far, where they come from I do not know but it is odd. Then again perhaps not given the left over food bits in the trash can behind me that didn't get emptied last week. An oversight. And the problem seems to be localized to this corner in the basement where I dwell in this dwelling when not dwelling in other dwellings or elsewhere dwelling when not dwelling in dwellings at all. With apologies to Cory Doctrow, which I'll get to in a minute. Bare with me, if not on your own accord.

A few flies have managed to find their way upstairs which is an assumption since there is an order of magnitude more flies down here than up there so an assumption that would be reasonably assumable then. I split the package of four in two taking two and leaving two upstairs as I hung one downstairs and saved one as Domestic Services upstairs hung one too and saved one upstairs also. With apologies to James Joyce.

Anyway, she hung one of her two upstairs in a rather remote location where flies are ought not to dwell in the dwelling which I took upon my self to relocate to an area less remote but in the process fumbled the thumbtack included thus falling to the floor in this remote location in the dwelling a tack not seen nor easily found and so remarked in a remark of remarks that there is a tack on the floor of the dwelling over here as I searched for a better location less remote to rehang the one of her two and a tack.

A tack she produced while looking for the original tack but of the original tack she was looking for did she remark in a remark of remarks a question in query over how might be reasonably expected to find a tack in this remote corner of the dwelling having not seen it fall and small. "With your foot of course", I replied. It was of course a likely and easily assumable eventuality if not otherwise found dwelling in due course which is also likely. With apologies to Raymond Chandler.

All of whom I'm told I write in the style of by this bloody website having analyzed samples of my writing. The first two samples submitted were the most recent two blog posts which is essentially just free form "stuff" of varying quality from semi-inspired to horrible, only to be told in both cases the writing matches most closely with Cory Doctorow style. Which is kinda like being compared to diaper sqeezings isn't it?

Doctorow is simply not mentionable in league with meritorious writers historically, being rather more notable of character and therefore recognized in much the same self promotional vein that allows Paris Hilton to be famous for being famous. Simply stated, Doctorow has not earned the kind of accolades for placement in the comparative company he's keeping and while style does not equate to quality, I find the corollary insulting.

Then again perhaps it is the sloppiness of blogospherical style that intimates Doctorow-esque comparison. Not insulting per'se, just recognition in achievement that one has fallen to the lowest common denomination of literary currency and thereby earns one Doctorow. Something akin to a penny per thought with invitations pressed upon authors to adjourn both.

Nevertheless insulted and alarmed I pulled three examples from what I consider better work and submitted those for analysis which resulted in comparison to Raymond Chandler, James Joyce and H.P. Lovecraft. Not sure how I feel about that either, but at least the effort gets me a nominal nickels distance from Cory flipping Doctorow. And therein a slight derivation from the usual conflagration of self styled prose found above, which by the way also earned a credibility stretching minimum.

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July 20, 2010

Remarks on the utility bill

This was the first month we seen tangible results from efforts to reduce electricity usage. Regular readers may remember the start of that several months ago when I acquired a watt meter and began checking usage primarily in the computer room. From the results of that, a few changes were made that I calculated would save about twenty dollars a month but we never clearly seen it reflected in the billing until now. Being that it was less than normal, next month will show greater use of the air conditioning making comparative small improvements harder to spot. The difference between then and now is the power company installing new meters that accurately report usage month to month by elliminating the use of averaging. It will take at least a years worth of comparative data to judge and at that, far from accurate due changes in everything from habits to weather but better nevertheless.

From what was done months ago, a few additional efforts have been made and more improvements are planned. Almost all of it small stuff where it doesn't cost much to get payback. Probably the easiest is changing habits to shut things down when not in use. Televisions running in the background with nobody watching, lights left on, computers left powered up for no good reason, etc. A bit of forethought can deflect most inconvenience. At the moment I'm taking advantage of the 1.5W LED bulbs that Menards has discounted. Not much light output but then a matter of how much needed. We used to leave a higher wattage CFL on in the kitchen to save shins and toes at night. The LED is perfect for that and we save a dozen watts or more without plunging the house in total darkness. Same in the garage. I put two out there and only need to turn on the bright lights when actually working.

For me the big item remains computers and other electronic equipment. One example being a year and a half running a stereo receiver (no speakers) for a local radio source to stream onto the internet. A power draw of 23W to tune a local radio station by simply being "on" essentially. I haven't replaced it yet having shut it down instead but could for about two watts. Another is the power draw of old technology computers. My home server is actually fairly conservative in power consumption for old tech, pulling 35W continuous, up to 55 or 60W when working hard which is seldom. A single core Atom based system is about three times more computationally powerful yet idles at 7W, ramping up to 15W when pushed. My router is in the same league and I'm willing to give up neither so upgrades might be in order for both. That said, it doesn't make much economic sense to spend a dollar to save fifty cents lifetime so one needs to weigh cost versus savings in relation to expected time frames.

Eighteen months ago (last I calculated) local electricity cost was 86 cents per watt per year. A hundred watt incandescent light bulb left on continuously would cost 86 dollars a year, or just over 7 dollars per month. A hundred watt equivalent CFL will use about 25 watts and pay for itself in two months of continuous use. A hundred watt equivalent LED (not yet widely available) will use about 8 watts and when prices fall below $15 we can kiss CFL goodbye as operational costs drop below 7 dollars per year.

Yes, I'm quite high on LED tech and not just what is around the corner but near term possibilities. For example LED lighting affords simpler digital interface and control since each bulb is made of many identical elements. It may take a hundred elements to make a hundred watt incandescent equivalent (rough guess) but each element can be turned on or off easily with maximum efficiency. Moreover, with minimal additional self contained components, we have the opportunity for screw in "Smart Bulbs" that can be easily and cheaply controlled remotely by everything from smart switches to programmable whole house controllers, maximizing flexibility while reducing component count and interconnection wiring. Beyond even that is the design ability of the bulbs to change color. By incorporating the primary elements of red, green, and blue, programmability allows an entire spectrum of color to be produced along with varying output levels. One bulb could thus serve a multitude of purposes from decorative ambiance to high security and everything in between. The potential for maximizing utility while saving installation costs and energy should be profound.

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July 24, 2010

The Monsoon is Over

I don't know exactly how much rain we received over the course of two and a half days but my rain gauge overflowed at six inches. We needed the moisture. If it wasn't raining, it was humid and hot so I mostly had to play inside, by myself since Domestic Services and Lucky Dog absconded for the North country a few days ago. Not sure if I've previously mentioned Lucky Dog but if not, yes, we have one of some terrier variety now and is indeed as lucky as most critters who manage to make a home here.

So a cat and a dog then.

Me, left with the cat trapped under the concrete front steps but for the rising water, found at midnight in the monsoon with flashlight in hand coaxing kitty to swim through the raging torrent of rising water to safety. Ok, maybe coax is the wrong word depending on your interpretation of "Listen, you can come out and we both go back in the house, or you can stay there and drown, I don't care." Anyway just as I was leaving a water cannon like shot of wet cat blew through the hole to land about three yards downrange. Meow!

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July 25, 2010

She's Back and I'm Screwed

Domestic Services returned from the North country this evening. It was almost a whole week of peaceful, relaxing vacation from each other that now comes to a close. Yes, all good things come to an end was I reminded as she came through the door bearing gifts for all and sundry including myself the result of an impromptu rummage sale which featured in part, man things for paltry sums. I'm now the proud recipient of ten pounds worth of 30d Ring Shank Pole Barn Nails, two boxes of 6d coated sinkers and a triple lifetime supply of 4d coated sinkers to go with two boxes of 2 inch and one box of 2 1/2 inch Phillips head construction screws. I'm reasonably sure the two used tape measures, a sixteen and a twelve footer, was thrown in to sweeten this already incredible deal. Five bucks.

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