IntTech

Chrome Feature

2010-07-14T00:01:00.001-04:00

Just learned about the chrome://plugins/ feature for chrome browser. Works on Mac too!

Windows 7 Undock and Hibernate

2010-06-26T07:01:00.001-04:00

New job has me using Windows 7 on a laptop. It seems less stable than Windows 2000. It has an undock feature on the "shutdown" menu. The problem is that 90% of the time I undock, I also want the laptop to hibernate. The other 10% of the time I want to undock to carry my laptop to a meeting. There is no "undock and hibernate" option separate from the plan undock on the menu. To do it properly you would have to undock, pop open the laptop and select hibernate. A real pain...

So thinking like a unix user, I figured there must be a way to do this on the command line. And here we go a short bat file to undock and hibernate. Copy the following lines and put them in a file. I called it gohome.bat.


: This Undocks
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32 cfgmgr32.dll,CM_Request_Eject_PC
:: Then we Hibernate
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0

Hibernation has to be enabled for the last line to hibernate. Now I just double click the bat file on my desk top, and I'm off.

Compressing or Removing Old Logs

2010-03-26T15:05:00.002-04:00

The following is useful for compressing or removing files based on name.

 find $path -name "$LogFileRegEx" -exec $compress_rm {} \; &

And this works for removing files based on age.

find $path -mtime $DaysToOld -exec rm {} \;

And they can be combined if needed.

Make Eclipse faster on Mac OS X

2010-02-16T11:41:00.001-05:00

Copied from my other blog: pwbrewer.blogspot.com
Taken from this page on eclipse.dzone.com.

After you downloaded the Eclipse package, decompress it. Locate your Eclipse.app.
Right-click it and select Show Package Contents.
Under Contents/MacOS, locate the eclipse.ini file. Open it with a text editor.
At the end of the file, add two lines:
-XX:+UseParallelGC
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
Save and close the file.

To that I would add the server option to the same file:

-server

And I suggest changing the following settings:

--launcher.XXMaxPermSize
256m
-XX:MaxPermSize=256m
-Xms64m
-Xmx512m

WHERE IN - MySQL

2009-12-01T12:18:00.003-05:00

My attemps to confirm this in the MySQL documentation turned up no hits. However the following does work in MySQL.
mysql> delete from vendors where key IN (13, 2);

Scrum Video

2009-10-05T17:22:00.003-04:00

I found this video on Scrum very interesting. If you aren't experienced or only marginally experienced with Scrum you should invest the hour of time and watch it. It is a recording of a presentation at Google, hosted on YouTube and titled "Scrum et al."

Browsing MySQL from Command Line

2009-09-14T11:35:00.004-04:00

To view a MySQL schema from the command line, use the commands show databases;, show tables; , and describe . See the following example:


mysql> show databases;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema | 
| email              | 
| elggDB             |
| wikiDB             | 
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)


mysql> show tables
    -> ;
+------------------+
| Tables_in_email  |
+------------------+
| access_sender    | 
| alias            | 
| transport        | 
| user2domains     | 
+------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> describe alias 
    -> ;
+----------+------------------+------+-----+
| Field    | Type             | Null | Key | 
+----------+------------------+------+-----+
| id       | int(11) unsigned | NO   | PRI | 
| username | varchar(128)     | NO   |     |
| domain   | varchar(128)     | YES  |     | 
| enabled  | enum('Y','N')    | NO   |     |
| goto     | varchar(128)     | NO   |     |
| notes    | varchar(255)     | YES  |     |
| updated  | timestamp        | NO   |     |
+----------+------------------+------+-----+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Google Solar?

2009-09-10T23:29:00.002-04:00

Google is investing in solar energy. (Google actually invests in many things, they have to with as much cash as they are bringing in each year.) Google has some of its own engineers looking specifically at producing cheap mirrors for solar thermal power plants. A Reuters article covers the concept.

Weihl said Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four."

"Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money."

Migrating Subversion Repositories

2009-08-10T09:14:00.001-04:00

I needed to migrate a small subversion repository from one machine to one in a more reliable location (a data center). After reading a few pages I realized that in practice this is pretty easy and here is the basic to do steps for performing the migration on unix systems.

svnadmin dump repository | gzip > Repository.dump.gz
Transfer file to new location if needed.
Create the new repository:
svnadmin create /path/to/repository
gunzip -c Repository.dump.gz | svnadmin load /path/to/repository

Of interest is this note from the svn documentation.

If the migration process made your repository accessible at a different URL (e.g. moved to a different computer, or is being accessed via a different schema), then you'll probably want to tell your users to run svn switch --relocate on their existing working copies. See svn switch.

However for me it was easier to have the small group of developers just checkout new working directories.

Creating MySQL users

2009-06-05T15:30:00.004-04:00

Neither I or my MySQL using friends know of a nice easy way to create users in MySQL. But 3 commands are all that is needed in the basic case.
Log into mysql as administrator (mysql -u root -p) and enter the following:

CREATE USER 'userName'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'userPassword';
grant all on DBName.* to 'userName'@'localhost';
flush privileges;

There is a convention for web apps is that the database and user that accesses it have the same name. This is not required but is a general practice. In the above example userName would be the same as DBName.

Dropping a database: drop database DBName;
Notice that you do not put any type of quotes around the data base name DBName.

Fun Calc 1.1

2009-05-28T02:23:00.002-04:00

The iPhone application mentioned in a previous post has been up dated to version 1.1. It now speaks the numbers and arithmetic operators. This expands its appeal past that of parents wanting to entertain toddlers, to include those whose children are learning basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. More can be learned at the friedricehouse page, and at the app's page on the iPhone app store.

Strange Xcode Error

2009-05-19T21:16:00.004-04:00

I was helping someone that was getting a bizarre error message from XCode. The message was Error: Cannot use object as a parameter to a method. The line with the error:

- (NSString)formatPrice:(NSNumber *)priceNumber

This was some what misleading since you first look at the parameter for the method "priceNumber", but the error really referred to what was being returned from the method. The problem was the leading (NSString), which was a typo that should have been (NSString *). Easy to over look that with attention directed to the "parameter." Once that change was made, the code compiled and ran correctly.

Biohacking - Hacking DNA

2009-05-12T20:13:00.002-04:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article today on biohacking.

In Massachusetts, a young woman makes genetically modified E. coli in a closet she converted into a home lab. A part-time DJ in Berkeley, Calif., works in his attic to cultivate viruses extracted from sewage. In Seattle, a grad-school dropout wants to breed algae in a personal biology lab.

These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes. Some of them buy DNA online, then fiddle with it in hopes of curing diseases or finding new biofuels.

Because of cheap access to used equipment on eBay it is possible to perform sophisticated experiments at home. Some see this as the biotech equivalent of the 1970's and 80's when work in a garage could lead to Apple or Dell. Others see it as a threat to national security or even the security of the human race.

If you want to learn more after reading this link:
Video of Craig Venter on creating synthetic Life.
The Futures in Biotech podcast.
Ginkgo BioWorks
Interview with Ginkgo BioWorks founder

Inspiring video - X Prize Founder

2009-05-12T14:56:00.005-04:00

This TED video is duel purpose. On the one hand it is an impassioned explanation of why people should continue to reach into space. (I could spend all day talking about why I agree with him, but its probably best if you just watch the video.) On the other hand the video also teaches a lesson about how to use prizes to motivate people into action.

FiBs

2009-05-08T22:07:00.003-04:00

I recently had the time to listen to a number of back episodes of Futures in Biotech.

A few of them have to do with research on how to extend life expectancy; for example, the episode with Dr. Cynthia Kenyon. Dr. Kenyon's research seems to offer an explanation for why calorie restriction could extend life and slow aging. She is looking at genetics of aging.

An other interesting episode is the one with guest Aubrey de Grey speaking on the Thousand Year Lifespan. While de Gray's over all proposal sounds outrageous, his description of individual problems to be solved sounds quiet logical. I think it is definitely worth a listen.

On a different topic the interview with Michio Kaku, FiB 31, is very interesting for any real science nerd. Kaku is a co-founder of String Field Theory and discusses one of this books, Physics of the Impossible.

Headsets

2009-04-20T21:47:00.002-04:00

A few months ago I bought a wired headset for use in the home office. The Plantronics M110 headset has a standard 2.5 mm plug and fits most home wireless phones and many cell phones. This headset will not win you any style awards, but it will make sure the person on the other end hears you. Plantronics has a number of options for those requiring a bluetooth headset. I suspect the "boom mic" on my headset helps with the sound quality.

The M110 headset has gotten a number of comments from people I talk to while using it. It easily outperforms my previous headset with a similarly street price. Sometimes in a wireless world, a wired option is better.

The Conficker Eye Chart

2009-04-15T06:16:00.003-04:00

The Conficker Eye Chart is a brilliantly simple test to see if malware is blocking your access to three security sites.

Seeing this image is not enough, click the link to see the real test!

LED Lights

2009-04-13T21:18:00.006-04:00

LED based light bulbs for the home have historically been rather pricey, around $40 a bulb in 2005.

But last time I was in Sam's Club they had reasonably priced LED lights in among the CFLs. For example: Flood Lights and Accent Lights. These are priced where similar CFL's were 4 or 5 years ago, and use considerably less power.

Doing a quick search at Amazon turns up a few options for less than $20 a bulb: 2 watt PAR20 Blue LED Flood Light and 3-Watt G19 LED Bulb.

Perhaps LED home lighting is with in reach of mere mortals.

Pre-schooler iPhone Apps

2009-04-09T09:11:00.003-04:00

What do you think, is there a market for pre-schooler iPhone apps?

The iPhone and iPod touch are both expensive, but as can be seen in the video above very young children can master the user interface. If you watch the over the shoulder view, you will notice she gets out of the Fun Calc app, into the calendar, decides that isn't what she wants, closes the calendar, and relaunches the Fun Calc application.

Ink or Laser

2009-04-07T13:22:00.004-04:00

I had a conversation over lunch about ink-jet vs. laser printers for the home office.

A quick look at Amazon reveals that a color laser printer can be had for less than $250. Examples:
HP Color LaserJet CP1210 Printer

Print accurate 600 x 600 dpi documents at speeds of up to 12 pages per minute (ppm) in black and white and 8 ppm in full-color. The 264 MHz processor and 16 MB of on-board memory help to keep the LaserJet CP1210 performing at its best over the long haul, and with a maximum monthly duty cycle of 25,000 pages, this printer can handle large-capacity jobs with ease. The large capacity 150-sheet paper tray ensures less time refilling paper.

Samsung CLP-315W Color Laser Printer

Vibrant, professional color is now within your reach with the compact, wireless Samsung CLP-315W color laser printer. This easy-to-use workgroup printer fits easily into an office network and look good while working quickly and quietly. This stylish printer also features a black control panel and delivers full-color printing at 4 pages per minute (ppm) and sharp monochrome laser text at 17 ppm. Along with its great design and compact size (just a 15.3 x 12.3-inch footprint), it's network-ready via both Ethernet and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) as well as able to connect to a PC using USB.

There are even Color Laser all-in-one printers in the $300 price range:
Konica Magicolor 1680MF Color Laser All-In-One Printer

Meet the Magicolor 1680MF Konica Minolta's newest and smallest color laser all in one. With a height of only 14.8", this compact multi-tasker features professional-quality printing, copying and scanning all in one small package. Don't let its size fool you, this desktop dynamo delivers 20 ppm B&W and 5 ppm color. It also features 1200 x 600 dpi resolution and Simitri HD Polymerized toner for bold graphics and crisp text page after page.

This is just what I found quickly on Amazon, there are probably many more options at other sites, and plenty of multifunction options around the $500 price range. Worth checking out, as I hate the economics of the ink-jet printers.

Best Apple Shirt Ad

2009-04-06T23:41:00.000-04:00

Don't know where it originally came from, but this one is an eye grabber.

Develop 4 iPhone or Nintendo?

2009-04-05T22:08:00.001-04:00

Apple recently announced that they have sold 30 million iPhones and iPod Touch's. That makes the iPhone a sizable market for development. This blog post explores the option of developing for the iPhone or the Wii if you are a recently unemployed game developer.

The whole idea of capitalism is that central planning doesn't work. Opening up a fair market maximizes creativity. With the new game controls, the Wii could inspire amazing creativity that Nintendo never envisioned.

Nintendo SDHC Support

2009-03-26T08:36:00.002-04:00

If you have a networked Wii, check your mail today. Nintendo has just released an update that supports SDHC cards in various parts of the Wii Menu and applications.

Amazon has SDHC cards ranging from 4GB to 32GB.

This should come as welcome news to those that have been worried about the lack of storage on the Wii. The support for these cards and ability to play downloaded games off the card will expand the market for downloadable Wii Games. How ever it appears there is a limit in that you need to have free space on the internal Memory.

(Note that when launching games or channels from an SD card, an equivalent amount of internal Wii memory is required. To clear space from the internal memory, users can transfer games or channels from the Wii Menu to the SD card).

Here is the Nintendo press release.

Subversion Repository Script on Mac OS

2009-03-19T10:34:00.005-04:00

Following the instructions from Apple Developer Center in this document about Subversion with Xcode 3. I wrote the following shell script to simplify my steps in creating a repository. I caution you that is does MINIMAL error checking.
#!/bin/sh # Check if SVN_REPOSITORY is set if [ "$SVN_REPOSITORY-X" == "-X" ]; then SVN_REPOSITORY="/Library/subversion/repository" fi if [ -r /tmp/$1 ]; then echo "/tmp/$1 exists - exiting"; exit; fi echo "Creating repository for $1" svnadmin create $SVN_REPOSITORY/$1 mkdir -p /tmp/$1/trunk /tmp/$1/branches /tmp/$1/tags svn import /tmp/$1 file:///$SVN_REPOSITORY/$1 -m "Project Create" echo "Created $1 - cleaning up" rm -rf /tmp/$1 chown -R www:admin $SVN_REPOSITORY chmod -R ug+rwX,o= $SVN_REPOSITORY
I placed in in /usr/local/bin/, so that it would be in my path on the Mac command line. You can set the environment variable SVN_REPOSITORY to your repository location or it assumes the spot I used, /Library/subversion/repository.

Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh

2009-03-19T07:20:00.002-04:00

This Dell Mini 9 Hackintosh video from Andy Ihnatko on Vimeo is really cool. If you have 9.5 minutes to spend looking at cool technology today, it should be spent watching this video. I just wish the Mini 9 had at least 40GB of storage. Maybe with a SD SDHC card I could could have the space I need for my purposes.

Memory options for New Mini

2009-03-12T17:50:00.006-04:00

I got the following from the support folks at OWC today. I have yet to get my hands on the new mini to try it out. But this should help with those thinking of upgrading the memory themselves.

If you have one 1GB RAM module pre-existing in your mini, you could install a 2GB module in order for the machine to recognize 3GBs. However, the mini MUST be a Core 2 Duo. If not, the mini will only recognize 2GB. On a side note, if you have a Core 2 Duo mini, you may install 4GB (2GBx2) to take advantage of the dual channel architecture (promoting faster data thorough put and increased machine speed and efficiency).

OWC has their memory pricing page. Amazon also sells memory for these systems.

Coding and Sys Admin Posts

2009-03-11T21:23:00.008-04:00

This post is here to capture the list of coding tricks or Sys-Admin approaches that have been posted to this blog in the past.

Larry Brilliant in Forbes

2009-03-06T10:33:00.003-05:00

Forbes has an article about Larry Brilliant and Google.org. Larry has appeared in a few TEDTalks, which is apparently how he got the job at Google. He has quiet a history and the article covers just what you do after ridding the world of smallpox. That is a tuff act to top in his future endeavors, but he might have the plan to beat a bird flu pandemic using search engines, news paper crawlers, and social networks.

Making money from fools gold in Solar?

2009-03-01T16:42:00.002-05:00

Popular Mechanics has an article about photovoltaic solar panel prices dropping below $1 Watt. While good news they look at the raw materials required to manufacture the panels and conclude that looking for less efficient, but more abundant and easier to process materials is the key to success.

... Wadia and his colleagues found that iron pyrite—better known as fool's gold—was several orders of magnitude better than any of the alternatives, based on both cost and abundance. Copper sulfide and copper oxide were also attractive candidates. The problem with these materials is that they're less efficient in converting the sun's rays to electricity, and as a result have been the focus of considerably less research.

I personally take the view that photovoltaic is a solution for small private installations. Larger solar power production efforts will probably succeed on concentrating solar thermal approaches. Popular Mechanics also has an article on solar thermal technology.

On a crisp morning this past January, Andraka and his colleagues fired up Dish No. 3. The temperature was around freezing, and the sky was 8 percent brighter than average—the contrast between the cold air and the hot sun helps the engine run more efficiently. When power began to flow from the 25-kilowatt system, it did so with the highest conversion efficiency ever recorded in a commercial solar device: 31.25 percent of the energy shining onto the giant dish flowed into the grid.

For more information visit Wikipedia.

Removing Shared Memory Segments on Solaris

2009-02-24T22:23:00.001-05:00

If you have an application that uses shared memory and crashes without cleaning up the shared memory, then releasing the shared memory can be painful. There are two commands you need to know to clean the shared memory ipcs and ipcrm. (These examples are on Solaris 9.)

Use the ipcs command to identify shared memory ID's and and semaphores that need freeing. Once you identify the ones that need removing you can use the ipcrm command to remove them.

ipcrm -m for the share memory.

ipcrm -s for the semaphores.

The trick of course is being able to identify what memory or semaphores (or message queues) that were in use by your application. Hopefully you can do that by user ID. If all else fails you might have to reboot the server.

Rows Returned with JDBC

2009-02-05T06:41:00.012-05:00

There are two ways to influence the number of rows returned when getting data from a database using JDBC. One is the setFetchSize method, and the other is the setMaxRows method. Both of these methods appear as part of the statement and resultset classes. If set at the statement level it effects all resultsets that result from execution of the statement.

There are three main reasons to want to change these from the driver default setting:

To conserve memory in the Java application by reducing the memory required to store data returned from the database.
Reduction of wait time for obtaining the resultset when retrieving large amounts of data.
If the application is experiencing performance problems because the jdbc driver is getting a small amount of data with each fetch.

One obvious situation where it makes sense to change this value is an application that displays data on the web with X rows per page. If X is 25, it would make sense to set the fetchsize to 25 with a call similar to stmnt.setFetchSize(25);. Of course it is better to use a variable, instead of hard coding the value.

According to Oracle their JDBC driver default fetchsize is 10. That may be an appropriate setting on modern systems if the rows contain large amounts of data, for example in BLOBs. If the rows are small (name and address) a fetchsize of several hundred or several thousand might be more appropriate.

It is also important when using these calls to do some performance testing to make sure the performance is being improved, not made worse. For reference see links to pages at Sun and Oracle. Those pages offer definitions of both the setFetchSize and setMaxRows methods. For more information the following are worth reading: Stackoverflow.com forum discussion, a page on JDBC performance suggestions, and Chapter 16 on JDBC Tuning (PDF).

Very Common Coding Flaw

2009-02-04T20:48:00.001-05:00

In a past life I worked as a Unix application developer in C and C++. Back in the days before there was a readily available library to do most things for you, I might add. More recently I have been working in corporate web environments tuning the performance of web applications and squashing bugs.

In this web world, I see the same coding error repeated over and over again all through complex systems. I've seen it cascade through four or more levels of servers and application layers – in the application code and in the web application server designs themselves. This common error is not setting a time-out for network communications. When an application is dependent on an other application (web app server, web service, database, etc.) the developer needs to take care to gracefully handle the situation when the back end service "locks up." I have seen such errors permeate through layers of hosting infrastructure and take down whole farms of servers with all resources tied up waiting on a service that accepts connections but never returns.

So for the love of all that is good, set a time-out value on all of your network communications. Your users and customers will be happier as a result.

Twitter Fame in USA Today

2009-02-03T21:20:00.001-05:00

Over recent months I have been trying to explain to my more luddite friends (meaning folks who spend 50 hours a week in front of a monitor for the last twenty years, but have yet to join twitter) the pros and cons of Twitter.

Yes you can get lots of really cool information from twitter. Yes you can also waste countless hours reading about people's breakfast menus, or telling them about yours. But an article in USA Today sums up how the corporate and social worlds collide on twitter and why it matters for companies.

Tablet Hotels utilizes its Twitter account similarly to JetBlue, keeping an eye on what customers are saying and what they can do improve their experience. "We had one of our TabletPlus members Twitter from the front desk when the hotel was giving her a hard time," Michael Davis, co-founder of Tablet Hotels, said. "We caught it within 30 seconds of posting and our customer service called the hotel to resolve."

"Customer problems can no longer be kept 'quiet' with the emergence of the Web," Davis said. The Marriott hotel group agrees, which is why they have not one, but two Twitter accounts. One serves as public relations and customer service vehicle, while the other focuses on Marriott's efforts to go green.

IBM Rochester building 20 petaflop supercomputer

2009-02-03T11:55:00.003-05:00

Good news for employees in Rochester, MN in this depressed economy. IBM's Rochester facility is working on building the most powerful supercomputer for the US government. The "Sequoia" supercomputer is targeted to achieve 20 petaflops which is more powerful than all of the current computers combined on the Top500 supercomputer list. The computer will be used by the US Department of Energy and will reside at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

This should mean plenty of work for the people there – and since IBM Rochester is one of the largest local employers it also means the other companies that provide services to those employees should be able to breathe a sigh of relief that many others are not.

Silver Lining for Solar

2009-01-15T18:02:00.000-05:00

There is a report in USA Today that prices for roof top solar PV systems in CA could drop 50% in cost. The drop comes from a combination of falling prices due to weaker demand for raw materials and for solar in Europe, plus new tax breaks from the Obama plan. So if you have the cash and want to go solar, 2009 might be the year to take the plunge.

Added 1/15/09:
Looking at the longer term, recent break throughs in polymer solar cell technology could reduce prices more. Read about self-assembled solar cells and increases in polymer cell efficiency.

Samsung SyncMaster 2233sw mini Review

2008-12-30T10:30:00.005-05:00

This line of monitors was released just over a month ago in Japan. However, I bought one today at my local Sam's Club. I'll say up front that I am not a graphics artist or professional video editor although I do a bit of amateur video editing.

The monitor does require a little assembly. See photo 1 below. The stand and base have to be screwed together. Fortunately this is designed so that you can tighten it by hand without need of a screwdriver. But you can use a screwdriver if assembling a large number of monitors.
Once the little stand is built you have to press it into a rubber-lined pocket on the bottom of the display, with the arrow symbol facing out as you look at the display. I mention these steps because it isn't in the directions, though simple to figure out.

The picture below gives a reference on size of this "22 inch class" (21.5 inch) monitor. The smaller monitor is a 15-inch model that is similar in size to what comes on most PC notebooks.

I am happy with the Samsung. I have no dead pixels, and it works with the Mac Mini wonderfully. I did not even have to restart the Mac. The 2233sw came with a DVI cable (and VGA cable) that I plugged into the Mac and by the time I turned on the Samsung and the screen had come on, the Mac had readjusted the display settings and I had a glorious new and WIDE desktop. My only minor complaint is because of the curved case there is no place to set my old iSight camera. You can see from the picture below that it was bright enough out of the box to cause my camera's auto setting to decide it didn't need a flash in my dark cave of a room.

I recommend using the Calibrate function of the Mac OS displays setting to tune the monitor. (All of the settings on the monitor are disabled when the DVI input is used.)

Also this is the first monitor in this class I have seen with true 1080P display. Most of the others are 1440x900 or 1680x1050. This one is a full 1920x1080, which makes me feel that for $200 its a steal or a sign we will be seeing much better monitors at reasonable price points in the near future.

Cheap Solar Reflectors

2008-12-03T18:48:00.000-05:00

Yet another interesting article in the November 17th issues of Forbes. This one on an innovative idea to use ballons as solar collectors. The company behind this technology is Cool Earth Solar.

The idea seems very cool, and if they hit their target cost per watt then it could be a solar power break through. There isn't a mention of the cost of the balloon system. One concern from the description is the complexity of the balloons, with water cooling and a system to modulate internal pressure as needed. An interesting question is would less complex balloons that are as efficient at the square cm of solar cell level, be more efficient at the price per watt level? One would expect they started there, if not someone will hopefully following in their footsteps.

Using cronolog with mod_jk

2008-12-01T06:50:00.011-05:00

The trick to rotating mod_jk logs using cronolog is an old unix file system feature called a named pipe.

Create a pipe in a good location.
> mkfifo mod_jk.pipe

Specify this pipe as log location using JkLogFile directive.
JkLogFile path-to/mod_jk.pipe

The next part is tricky. You have to get cronolog to read from the pipe and the timing can be a challenge. Each side will block until something is both writing and reading from the pipe. So you need cronolog reading from the pipe before you start apache.

Interestingly, on my latest project mod_jk did something at start up that caused cronolog to exit as soon as apache started. To get things to work I had to start cronolog after apache. The solution was to have the following steps in the apache start up script.

1. Start cronolog
2. Start apache
3. Start cronolog again.

Using the file name examples above, starting cronolog looks like this:
cronolog path-to/mod_jk.log < path-to/mod_jk.pipe

Sci-Fi and Real Science Collide - Cybermen

2008-11-30T08:02:00.007-05:00

I enjoy reading about new scientific discoveries. These days it seems like the science facts are colliding with science fiction. For example, read this article about "cybernetics" in Forbes.

"Eager scientists in the field say it's inevitable that we will one day be able to transmit thoughts to one another as electrical signals, bringing a new level of meaning to 'collective consciousness.'"

The article is mostly about the work of Kevin Warwick. Read these links and see if it reminds you of this Cybermen episode of the new Dr. Who series on BBC.

This research can have fantastic benefits for people suffering from a wide range of conditions and perhaps limb loss. However reading about how the research is performed could lead to nightmares or at least the plots of a few sci-fi horror movies! "Attack of the Cyber-Robot-Rats" anyone?

Shai Agassi in the Bay Area City

2008-11-24T17:39:00.000-05:00

A while back I had a short reference to Shai Agassi and his Better Place company. His plan for electric cars has been compared to the cell phone model. Now, they seem to have gotten a foot hold on the US main land.

It might seem odd to make that huge investment in electric cars with gasoline dropping below $2 a gallon in some parts of the country. However once the economy turns around oil will jump back up to the $60 to $80 a barrel range, and gas prices will follow.

Thinking Machines

2008-11-21T13:59:00.007-05:00

In a previous post I reference the idea of the technical singularity. Based on the news item below, it appears we might be one step closer to Sky-Net, Cylons, the Matrix, Machine Crusade of Dune, etc. etc.

Research Triangle Park, N.C. -- IBM, the computing giant with major operations in North Carolina, said that it will team with five universities to create computing systems capable of simulating and emulating the human brain. The IBM team -- which includes researchers from Stanford University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University Medical Center and the University of California-Merced -- has been awarded $4.9 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first phase of the project, known as Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE). The goal is to create computers that can integrate information from a variety of sources, deal with ambiguity, learn over time and carry out pattern recognition to solve difficult problems. "We believe that our cognitive computing initiative will help shape the future of computing in a significant way, bringing to bear new technologies that we haven’t even begun to imagine," said Josephine Cheng, the vice president of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose. IBM said that its long-term goal is to build low-power, compact computers that approach mammalian-scale intelligence.
http://www.ibm.com/research
http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/26123.wss

Garbage Collection Logging Options for Java

2008-11-16T22:22:00.007-05:00

It is very hard to find all of the options for garbage collection options for Java. One of the best pages I have found is this one at Sun. But even it isn't complete. So here are the basic options I have learned about listed all in one location.

First you probably want the GC logs to go to its own file instead of mixed in with other things going to standard out, using the -Xloggc: option. Then you can use the following options to define the details logged.

-Xloggc:<file>	log GC status to a file
-XX:+PrintGC	Print messages at garbage collection.
-XX:+PrintGCDetails	Print more details at garbage collection. (Introduced in 1.4.0.)
-XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps	Print timestamps at garbage collection. (Introduced in 1.4.0.)
-XX:+PrintGCApplicationConcurrentTime	The amount of time the applications runs between collection pauses
-XX:+PrintGCApplicationStoppedTime	Amount of time in collection pauses
-XX:+PrintHeapAtGC	Print Heap at GC

TED Wii Hacks and Ocean Exploration

2008-10-07T20:18:00.002-04:00

I have been a fan of TED Talks since I discovered it. Tonight I watched two presentations that reminded me why I find the TED presentations so fascinating.

Wii Hacks by Johnny Lee - This guy really knows how to think outside of the box. He shows new uses for the Wii remote that make its $40 price seem seriously cheap.

Exploring the Oceans - Robert Ballard discusses boldly going where no one has gone before. He makes a very strong case for why we should put more effort on exploring the oceans.

Apple Wishlist 08

2008-09-14T21:57:00.001-04:00

While I do believe that Apple has a lot to teach both the computer and consumer electronics worlds about elegance and user interface design, there are a few things I would like to see that they have not done. So here is my wish list for Apple products and features.

Cooler AppleTV - The AppleTV runs HOT. This could be as simple as a software update. The AppleTV should power down the harddrive when ever possible. When its not doing anything it should either go completely to sleep in some sort of wake on lan mode (or wireless polling mode). Failing a sleep mode, it could run the CPU at the minimum clock rate. Given its foot print, it is probably using a laptop chip set and CPU, so advance power saving modes should be possible in the hardware. It runs hot enough that I worry about harddrive life, and concerned about its 24/7 power consumption.
Podcast Playlists - I want Podcast play lists that work just like music playlists. I want to create a smart playlist of all business podcasts, and be able to just play the whole list with each podcast leading into the next. This used to work on the older iPods, and is a feature I miss terribly. (This appears to be fixed in the latest iTunes, if you don't have random play turned on. However it still doesn't work on the iPod.)
Apple Cube TNG - I'm not the only person who thinks this way. Everyone of my close friends who have macs have expressed interest in a product like this. Take the Mac Mini foot print and grow it vertically. Add either dual dual-core CPUs, or a single quad-core (which ever is cheaper/easier); support at least 4GB of RAM; and possibly support larger harddrives. (Support of for firewire external harddrives makes the larger harddrive issue less important.)

Interesting Reading - Cars, Solar, Spheres

2008-08-29T09:56:00.000-04:00

I have been reading a wide variety of items in the last week. Some of the more interesting topics:

Wired review of Hot, Flat, and Crowded
Jay Leno, Car guy, on Advice to Detroit.
Carbon Fiber reinforced Plastic (CFP)
The Dyson Sphere - popular in Sci-Fi stories
Solar Power
SEGS - Solar Power Generation in Mojave- Largest solar power installation in the world.
Shai Agassi - Sell the electric car like its a cell phone.

Singularity? Yes or No

2008-08-28T14:20:00.006-04:00

For years I have dismissed the idea of the singularity. I am beginning to accept that it is possible.

A recent discussion about good sci-fi books brought me to read the Vernor Vinge page on wikipedia. (I recommend his books.) That in turn led to reading the wiki page on the technical singularity.

Other items that have affected my growing acceptance include:

Listening to Futures in Biotech podcast, in particular #17.
An old Wired article by Bill Joy.
Listening to Ray Kurzweil on Science Friday.

In terms of "thinking machines" I believe we will have the hardware soon. It is the software side of things where I'm not sure things will advance fast enough to have conscience AI's with in the next generation. (After all I'm still hoping for a patch to keep my Apple TV from rebooting at random, which is a small improvement over the BSOD.)

I would like to have Kurzweil's optimism, but at times I think Joy's fear may be more realistic. (Which makes one wonder if the Terminator show/movies only has the date of Judgement Day off by about 20 years.)

Sweet Light HeadPhones

2008-07-20T16:51:00.002-04:00

This is not a new product, but one I feel a need to share with anyone who appreciates detailed music. I got a set of the
Sennheiser PX 100 headphones for Christmas. They have been most enjoyable. I generally use them for listening to the iPod while in the office.

Personally I do not like in-ear bud-type earphones. These are the best sounding light weight alternatives to the the bud-type earphones I can find. Since they are currently on sale at amazon in both the black and white (to match the iPod) colors they are well with-in reach of any one who can afford an iPod, MP3 player, or portable CD/DVD player.

Literally 4 out 5 friends I have demoed them too have loved them. And of the 4 that think they are great for on the go listening, 3 of those are Audiophiles who think nothing of spending several grand on a pair of stereo speakers. I'm not going to say they are the best headphones of all time, but for less than $50 they are a steal. And when you consider you can use them at the gym, on the bus, train, or plane; and that they fold up for compact and safe storage, these are a great option for music lovers.

MacRumors Buyers Guide

2008-07-08T07:31:00.001-04:00

The MacRumors Buyers Guide is important for those in the market for new Apple hardware. It helps make that do I buy it now or wait decision.

Mini Nuclear Reactors

2008-06-18T22:45:00.001-04:00

Toshiba is trying to donate a small nuclear reactor to a Alaska town powered by diesel generators.

DOE lists capacity as 10 to 50 MWe.

They have a smaller one that is a 200KW model.

Apparently the neutron reflector design is how they get a sub-critical mass to produce energy. Hence their ability to scale DOWN the size and power production of a nuclear power plant. See Wikipedia entry.

Links:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/analysis/nucenviss2.html
http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_reflector

Checking Network Port Settings on Solaris

2008-06-06T16:54:00.001-04:00

Another item of Solaris system administration I can't easily find documented is how to check on Network port settings. At my company and from what I hear other major companies there is a port negotiation problem between Solaris and Cisco equipment. So being able to verify port sets are correct is a very useful piece of knowledge.

This needs to be done as root to get correct results.
Step 1

user@Mach # ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=1000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
dmfe0: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.68.79.xx netmask ffffffe0 broadcast 192.68.79.xx

To get the device name dmfe0.

Step 2

user@Mach # /usr/sbin/ndd -get /dev/dmfe0 link_speed
100
user@Mach #  /usr/sbin/ndd -get /dev/dmfe0 link_mode
1

The link_speed of 100 translates to 100Mbit. And the link_mode of 1 means Full Duplex. If the link_mode had returned 0 it would be half duplex. So this setting is 100Mbit Full Duplex.

3D HDTV

2008-04-25T10:33:00.002-04:00

The 3D HDTV Age

For those of you who have just dropped a load of money on your 1080P HDTV's. Samsung is out to make that "state of the art" TV obsolete. They are now selling 3D Plasma HDTV's just when the theaters are looking at 3D as a way to get people out of their living rooms and back in line to pay $32 to take a family of four to see a movie (snacks and drinks extra).

IP Address Changes on Red Hat Linux

2008-03-28T15:59:00.005-04:00

To change your IP edit the file /etc/systconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 where eth0 represents the port you wish to change. The ports are numbered starting at 0, so if you only have one port it should be eth0.

After editing that file restart networking by running /etc/init.d/network restart. You may also need to start other services that depend on networking.

Sun's Java Archive

2008-03-28T14:49:00.004-04:00

I have found the Sun Archive of old Java versions very useful when working with legacy java code in a corporate environment.

Vi search and replace

2008-03-26T21:12:00.003-04:00

After 20 years of working on UNIX I am just now finding the need to learn more than the basics of VI. (Yes I have been a emacs person for many many years.) Here is how to do a global search and replace in vi.

 1,$s/oldstring/newstring/g

The 1 means the first line of the file (obvious) and $ means the last line of the file (less obvious).

Linux Devices

2008-01-20T20:46:00.000-05:00

I just found the Linux Devices page while doing a search for something else. Thought it was cool enough to "bookmark" here.

Finding Installed Memory on Solaris 10

2007-11-08T10:49:00.002-05:00

Even after 20 minutes of google searches I couldn't find a command to give the amount of installed memory on a Solaris machine. So I'm posting the solution here for safe keeping. Generally you need to be root to get the answer instead of an error message.

Use the command:

 /usr/sbin/prtdiag | head

It should give output that looks like this:

# /usr/sbin/prtdiag | head
System Configuration: Sun Microsystems  sun4u Sun Fire V240
System clock frequency: 167 MHZ
Memory size: 2GB

There are still lines for the Wii

2007-06-29T21:48:00.000-04:00

Article on Yahoo about how hard it is to get a Wii.

"You see it and you want it. Kind of like the iPhone," said Robert Marcus, waiting to buy a Wii with his wife and three young sons.

That quote makes you wonder if an iPhone will be the same way.

Wii still Rare in the Wild

2007-06-11T22:23:00.001-04:00

It is still not possible to find Wii on the shelves of a store in my general area. This must be a great embarrassment to the likes of Sony and Microsoft when I walk by stacks of PS3's and XBox 360's in the same stores. I had previously thought that shortly after Christmas 2006 I could walk into a store and buy a Wii without waiting in line. Here it is 6 months past Christmas and they are still rare in the wild. The guys at the local GameStop said they heard Nintendo won't be able to meet demand until sometime in 2008.

On another note, this Model of Rome is pretty cool. Although at times it has the feel of a Sid Meier's Civilization game.

The Mini Option

2006-08-14T08:22:00.000-04:00

My friend (lets call him "Chip" to protect the nearly innocent and save me on typing) wanted a stylish way to play movies off a hard drive. The prime motivation was the damage his small children were causing their collection of children's DVDs. With that as the main goal he also wanted to be able to access his mp3 library in the family room.

Going for small, attractive, and quiet I told him it would be hard to beat the Mac mini. As I told him I now realize how loud my IBM Thinkpad was when sitting next to a mac mini. Before getting the mini I had thought of laptops as quiet.

I told Chip that he could use (in a legal gray area) Handbrake or similar software to compress DVD movies onto the hard drive as MPEG4 or H.264 encoded video that his wife and kids could play from FrontRow.

Chip was happy to hear he could share his iTunes music from his PC to the mini for play back in the family room. He also wanted to be able to play the music through his whole house system powered by an amp in the basement. The obvious solution to that is Apple's AirTunes device.

His worst case would be using the mini as a MythTV front end to a Myth server on an extra machine in his home office. But all in all I thought he could get what he wanted from standard Apple software and hardware with-out the need for MythTV. If he did need to result to Myth it was unlikely he could find or build as elegant a host computer for less than the Mac Mini's $600 price tag.

So after these discusions Chip bought a dual core Intel based Mac Mini and an AirPort Express to connect to his whole house music system. High quality computer speakers connected directly to the Mac Mini provide music and sound for movies in the family room.

In my next post I will start to cover issues, that Chip has encountered, and their solutions.

Mini Media Center

2006-07-14T18:06:00.000-04:00

I have a friend who was recently looking for a system to easily allow his wife and young children to access videos and music in the living room. Over several weeks during breaks at work we discussed the various options: Microsoft media center, MythTV, and Apple's FrontRow.

His goals were relatively simple and did not require full DVR capabilities. He wanted to be able to play his music collection stored in iTunes on a windows PC in another part of the house through his whole house sound system powered by an amp in the basement. Most of the music was from his large CD collection, but recently he had taken to buying music from the iTunes store since his purchase of an ipod. Also on the list was the desire to watch home video's taken with the family's digital camera, which like most camera's output mpeg video. Finally, given the kids' (ages 4 and 2.5) ability to damage DVDs he wanted to be able to store movies on the hard drive and watch them on TV.

After much discussion and a trip to the local Apple store to check out front row first hand he decided to buy a new Intel based Mac Mini. I have gotten a steady stream of questions about how to do this or that. In the coming weeks I will attempt to capture the issues and their solutions in these pages.

MiniStack Review2

2006-03-21T09:22:00.000-05:00

Last month I reviewed my recently built MiniStack. Having lived with it for a month, I have further comments to make. First, I do like it. It matches the Mac Mini well. Even thought the ministack is a plastic case, it looks enough like aluminum to more than hold its own visually under the Mac Mini.

However there lies the one problem. I found that the mini generates enough heat that the MiniStack's fan would cut on to cool it off even when the hard drive wasn't spinning. It took me a while to figure that out, but eventually I did when I heard the fan running and decided to unmount the drive and cut it off so it could cool down. When I ejected it, I heard the drive spin up!

What I do now is set the MiniStack on top of the Mac Mini with some extra rubber feet I picked up at the hardware store to give more space for cooling between the two devices. Since the aluminum heat sink is on the bottom of the MiniStack I think the extra space is very important. The extra feet (really cabinet bumpers) can be seen in the image below.

youtube

2006-03-02T22:02:00.000-05:00

If you haven't wasted time at youtube.com, its time to check it out. Here are a few of my favorites after an afternoon surfing around the tube.

Hey Clip this is pretty slick. An allowing for the compression it is professional quality.

Mrs. Ronald McDonald different, very different. I am entranced.

Whale of a Tale, talk about the one that got away.

NOTE: Now that we are in 2007 and "youtube video" is almost a house hold term up there with "Xerox Copy" this posting seems a bit lame. But remember this was written weeks after youtube began too spread like a wild fire.

Making a Ministack

2006-02-26T10:49:00.000-05:00

Back in October '05, I wrote an entry on Mac Mini expanders. These are basically USB/Firewire hubs and/or external hard drives. I finally reached the capacity of my internal 80GB hard drive and decided to buy a firewire drive.

Feeling I was suffering from a lack of ports, I opted for the Ministack which combines USB & Firewire hubs into the enclosure. I decided to buy the empty enclosure and add a hard drive myself in order to save about $40. Here is my story (honestly it will take me much longer to write this blog entry that it took to assemble the parts).

I ordered the Ministack from other world computing. I got the Ministack version 1, not version 2. I see little advantage to having ports on the side, the only difference I could see between v1 and v2. As I write this, they have dropped the price $5 since I bought it last week. I also picked out a 200GB drive from Newegg. Both enclosure and hard drive arrived on the same UPS truck.

The Ministack is nicely designed, not to the A+ level of Apple products but much better than most PC products. I would give it an A-, for design and quality.

The first thing to do was to to remove the aluminum mounting bracket/heat sink from the Ministack and mount the hard drive in it. This requires a very small philips head screwdriver, from my collection of marketing swag.

Samsung hard drive mounted in the heat sink bracket.

As you can see from the following two photos the tolerances are very small for fitting the drive in the enclosure. NewerTechnology warns that certain Seagate hard drives will not fit. (A bummer for me since I like Seagate hard drives.)

enclosure image 1

enclosure image 2

What is really tight is the power connector for the hard drive. I was afraid at first that I had found another drive that wouldn't fit. A few minutes of calm concentration and gentle movements and I got the drive properly positioned in the enclosure.

Once I had everything in place and screwed down, I snapped on the top. I would highly recommend you do not do that until you have tested that it works. I'm not sure I can get the top off without damaging the enclosure of the ministack. Luckily for me, I got every thing right the first time. About 15 minutes after glancing over the instructions (which need some editing) I had a finished Ministack enclosure with 200GB of disk space. The enclosure does look really good sitting under the Mac Mini, as you can see if the photo below.

Add March 25th: If you got to this page directly you should read the follow up review.

Headphone Use

2006-01-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

Pete Townshend is warning people about the use of headphones. There has been a little coverage of the effects of using bud styled headphones in the news. But the real problem is the volume; Pete hurt his ears using studio headphones.

In college I had a room mate who was trying out some nice head phones ($200+ in 1990). He rejected some headphones because they would have distortion when he "turned them up". I wonder how his hearing is these days. I can't imagine wanting to listen to headphones loud enough to overload the earphones. You might not notice it at first but you are overloading your ears long before the headphones will give up.

So just a warning from Pete and myself to you. When listening to your iPod on the go, keep the volume down, and don't try to drown out outside loud noises.

Mpeg4 compatible DVD player

2005-12-27T12:47:00.000-05:00

I was thinking the other day that it would be cool if someone made a DvD player that would playback mpeg4 video (including H.264). Its not so much that I want one for myself, which would be cool, but I would like friends and family to have one. The idea being I could burn home video to CD-ROM or DVD-RW and take it to friends houses to show people on the TV, instead of having to crowd around the computer in the home office.

So a little googling and I get this list:

The JVC XV-NP1SL Plays DVDs, DVD-R, VCD, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, JPEG, WMA, MPEG4, SD Memory card reader.
Technosonic MP-101 supports MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX and XviD.
Samsung HD850 supports MP3/WMA/JPEG and MPEG4 Playback
GoVideo D2730 Networked DVD wireless and wired ethernet support for streaming "MP3 and WMA audio files, JPEG, Tiff, PSD, PICT, and Bitmap image files, and MPEG1, MPEG2 and MPEG4 video files from your PC to your Living Room."
AKAI DV-PX8000 supports DVD/ MPEG 4/ VCD/ SVCD/ CDR/ CD-RW/ MP3/ CD/ Photo CD (JPEG).

That GoVideo networked player looks pretty interesting. It doesn't say it will play mpeg4 off of burned disks, but the networked streaming support means that it could be the front end for a pretty cheap distributed home video server.

Notes from ApacheCon

2005-12-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

Last week I attended ApacheCon US. Now I have a little time to write about that experience. Earlier this week I found myself describing to a friend over lunch what I thought were the main points of Jaron Lanier's closing talk. I didn't agree with everything that Jaron said, but I do think he made some interesting points.

Game developers are not getting the performance they expected from multi-core processors. This is largely seen as a result of poor advancement in compiler technology. Jaron thinks this will only be an issue for people doing gaming work and working on realtime systems (he gave robotics as an example). That is where I disagree, as will probably anyone who has edited home movies on their PC. There is definately room for improvement in video and image editing software.

Back in the mid-1990's when I was in graduate school I kept thinking that parallel processing and compilers to support it would be the next big thing in Computer Science. By that I mean parallel systems moving into the main stream of computer use, instead of being for specialized scientific computing systems. Ten years later I think my prediction is about to come true. (So I was a decade early.)

Now I think we might need a new programming language that makes more parallel optimizations by the compiler possible. C and C++ don't allow compilers much room to perform optimizations because they are so low level you can't make assumptions about what the programmer intended.
Jaron thinks hard set protocols are limiting the advancement of software. He seems to prefer what I would call, for lack of a better term, fuzzy logic protocols. He indicated that fuzzy protocols are what is needed when computer systems interact with real world processes.
The other point that I thought was very interesting was that he believed open source software might be where the next break through happens, if there were to develop an open source gaming community. His thoughts are that open source game development would bring a wildly creative group of people into contact with the problems pushing the envelope of hardware performance. That creativity could lead to radically new ideas in how to develop complex high performance software projects.
After all serving up web pages is a function we would call trivially parallel. Projects like apache therefore in his eyes will not lead to news ways of developing software.

Here I agree with Jaron. I think open source software (OSS) projects free the developers to do what is right with out political management problems causing compromises that shouldn't be made. One of the keys of successful OSS projects is that they be cool enough to attract good developers. A hot game is probably about as cool or sexy as software can get. So who can start the killer OSS game?

Photo tour of the Transparent Factory

2005-12-21T09:37:00.000-05:00

VWvortex has a fascinating photo tour of the Transparent Factory in Dresden where Volkswagen assembles Phaetons. The factory is just beautiful. Both aesthetically and mechanically. I think if Steve Jobs were to ever see these pictures or tour the factory, he'd order a Phaeton right away.

Honda's solar ambitions

2005-12-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

Honda to produce Solar cells. For a company of Honda's size this is a small market (they only plan to sell between $40Million and $70Million US in solar cells per year). But it does show the interest that major companies are taking in alternative energy systems. You can see the markets interest by looking at a two year stock price graph for Evergreen Solar (thanks to Yahoo).

Disclaimer: I own shares of Honda, but only wish I had bought Evergreen two years ago when I started following their stock price.

Mac Mini DVR?

2005-11-29T11:06:00.000-05:00

Thinksecret has an article on the possible release of a dvr version of the mac mini. This has also be posted to slashdot where there is sure to be much discussion.

I'm interested to see if it includes 5.1 surround sound support, which would be key to being the center of a home entertainment center.

Catchup

2005-11-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

I suppose with it being the end of the year many inventions made this year are hitting the press now. So here is a quick list of items of interest from the last week.

Volkswagen's Twincharger a turbocharged and supercharged engine that delivers high mpg and high performance.
There has been much made recently of the One Laptop per Child project:
- MIT Media Lab News Page
- $100 Laptop description at worldchanging.
MIT has developed new Lithium Ion batteries that will be cheap and powerful. The first commercial use will be in power tools, but expect them in a hybrid car near you.

Laser etched PowerBook

2005-11-18T18:01:00.000-05:00

Perhaps laser etching images onto powerbooks and ipods is a new service Apple should offer. It certainly makes a unique statement. Sadly I can also see it lighting a image copyright fire where one shouldn't exist!

Technology applied to Home Heating

2005-11-14T14:46:00.000-05:00

Biodiesel has been in the news recently when people were dealing with $3 a gallon for fuel. Now that winter is around the bend it is again in the news as a replacement for home heating oil.

Paul Nazzaro, president of Massachusetts energy-consulting company Advanced Fuel Solutions, spearheaded the effort to win over the failing heating-oil industry to biodiesel. Adopting the alternative fuel was a way for the oil industry to change its image and win back market share from natural gas, explains Nazzaro.

"Consumer perception of oil heat was very low; they related it to prehistoric fossil fuels -- dinosaurville," he says. By convincing the heating oil industry to carry biodiesel, he figured the heating-oil market would get a much-needed boost, and biodiesel would become accepted into a mainstream commercial market.

In related news the surging cost of natural gas and coal has turned the tables on another renewable energy source. Around the nation people who used to pay more to have green electricity are now paying less than the regular customers. This article is a copy from the LA Times.

But starting next month, DeMoulin's conscience-driven decision will save him money. Because of skyrocketing natural gas and coal prices, Colorado's 29,000 wind-energy customers for the first time will pay less than Xcel Energy's 1.3 million customers who use conventionally generated power.

After the savings was announced Wednesday, Xcel signed up as many customers for its Windsource program in one day as it normally does in two months. The surge in interest is the latest example of rising energy costs making wind power increasingly attractive to consumers.

In Edmond, Okla., wind-power users now pay less than other customers. The wind program in Austin, Texas, known as GreenChoice, will cost less than conventional power beginning in January. Makers of wind turbines report being sold out until 2008.

Tech News: Dell-n-AMD and Sony Rootkit

2005-11-10T10:22:00.000-05:00

There are a few news items of interest today.

Dell is now selling AMD processors, but not yet selling computers using them. If you like I, own share of AMD this is good news. Although it is more symbolic than a material effect. I of course am waiting for Apple to announce that it will make systems using AMD processors along with Intel processors. It does make sense to have two competing vendors if for no other reason than price negotiations on volume orders. Of course I would like a 64-bit AMD powered Mac or iBook.

Sony is being sued on at least one front for its use of a windows root-kit for copy protection purposes. Coming on the heals of this lawsuit is news of viruses designed to take advantage of the Sony rootkit which could make the lawsuits turn real ugly. If someone is victimized because of a virus using the Sony rootkit then that should make Sony the equivalent of being an accomplice in breaking and entering.

I leave you with my favorite image of the day.

The other NATO

2005-11-06T10:20:00.000-05:00

With the release of Chicken Little Hollywood is rolling out Digital Theaters.

Theater owners, however, have refused to pay the roughly $100,000 per screen to digitize if the only content is the same old movie. They want new 3-D flicks, live music concerts and sports events to lure more patrons.

John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO), likens Disney's effort to a "first experiment" for digital cinema, but cautions that many tests lie ahead before a wide digital deployment to the roughly 36,000 movies screens in the United States takes place.

Maybe people will pay to see good 3-D flicks (not the old campy 3-D Horror/Sci-Fi flicks), or to see major sporting events in something higher def. than HD TV. Otherwise I think theaters that don't have a catch (like retro drive-in, or beer and chips) will have a hard time drawing in enough people to turn a profit.

In other news Sony is getting slammed on Amazon for selling CD's with a windows root-kit on it.

For those with a collection of iPods

2005-11-05T13:18:00.000-05:00

Market growing for refurbished, used iPods

Small Dog Electronics, for instance, is an established Apple reseller that has for years sold refurbished Macintosh computers and other accessories. The company now sells around 500 used and refurbished iPods per month from its Web-based store at significant discounts. A refurbished third-generation, 30GB iPod that cost $400 in 2003 now runs for about $210, for example.

The resale value of Apple products constantly amazes me.

Bridging the Digital Divide

2005-11-02T08:45:00.000-05:00

AMD & Wyse are working with Inveneo to bridge the digital divide.

As part of the teaming, Wyse, with its Digital Inclusion program, joins forces with AMD in the 50x15 initiative to empower 50 percent of the world's population with affordable Internet access and computing capability by the year 2015.

The announcement seems to mean corporate buy in on a project by Inveneo to put solar powered, networked computers in places off the electric grid. Inveneo's project was mentioned here in a previous posting.

Accident leads to cheap LED white lights

2005-10-22T21:41:00.000-04:00

LED's have long held promise of efficient long lasting light sources. News of a recent accidental breakthrough could make that a reality.

Bad news for Blackberry Users

2005-10-21T17:45:00.000-04:00

There are two bits of bad news for people who use their blackberry all the time:

To much typing can lead to a repetitive stress injury of the thumb.
Of course a court injunction forcing Blackberry to shut down in the US might prevent Americans from getting Blackberry thumb in the future.

Front Row

2005-10-20T08:32:00.000-04:00

Last week Apple introduced the video iPod, and something called Front Row. Because of months, if not years, of speculation that there would be a video iPod the press was all over that. I still haven't seen much about Front Row in the news.

The presentation of Front Row blew me away for a few reasons. First by the perfection of the user interface. Also by the potential for this to be the unification between the PC and the entertainment system people have been talking about for years. But lastly because in its current form Front Row is completely useless to me.

I am not about to trade in my 30+ inch TV's for 20 inch iMacs. I'm also not about to set an iMac in the living room just to be the hub of the entertainment center. For this product to appeal to people who don't live in dorm rooms, it needs to work on a Mac Mini with 5.1 audio out (or SPDIF digital out). Front Row could solidify Apple's consumer product dominance for years if it also could act as a Tivo, or MythTV type device. At that point a Mac Mini or something like it could replace my DVD Player, CD Player, VCR, Tivo, etc., and have an elegant interface to boot.

So let me say I am intrigued, but will wait for Front Row 2.0. Like minded people can sign the Front Row Petition.

Apple Releases Itunes 6

2005-10-12T23:48:00.000-04:00

Well, that didn't last long at all. Apple released Itunes 5 just five weeks ago. And now they've released Itunes 6! I figured this is a good time to talk about the new features in Itunes. I'll get to the new stuff in Itunes 6, but first I'd like to go over what I think are the real gems that Apple gave us in Itunes 5. And, unfortunately, gapless playback wasn't added in either of the recent updates.

Five

Apple released Itunes 5 to coincide with the Motorola ROKR Itunes phone and the Ipod Nano. But, the features added for those two products aren't what I would consider the highlights of that event. There's more there once you scratch the surface (no pun intended).

Here we are inside of Itunes' preferences. This is sort of a new feature in Itunes 5. When Itunes began support for podcasts and the podcast directory, Apple added a podcast preset for the AAC encoder. Itunes 5 has renamed this to Spoken Podcast to reflect the fact that it is using optimizations for encoding voices and not music.

Apple moved the preferences for displaying the Podcasts and Music Store sources from the General tab to the Parental tab. The Parental tab is totally new to Itunes 5 and also has checkboxes for sharing music and hiding explicit content from the Music Store. On Macintoshes, you can lock all of the preferences on the Parental tab by clicking the lock icon and authenticating as an administrative user.

Smart Shuffle was one of the features that Steve Jobs touted at the Apple special event where he announced Itunes 5. As Steve said, Smart Shuffle was created to make shuffling your music less random. The human mind is programmed to seek patterns — even where there are none. We anthropomorphize random shuffling and think that Itunes is picking music we like. Well, Smart Shuffling gets rid of that. It makes it less likely that songs by the same artist or from the same album will play next to each other.

Another shuffling improvement is the ability to shuffle by grouping. Grouping is a field that people use for classical music and I don't know much about. I'm sure many people are very happy about this, though.

Here's yet another feature that diehard Itunes fans have been waiting for. The ability to encoded AAC files (.m4a) with a variable bit-rate. This lets the encoder decided whether more bits are needed for complex sections of a particular song instead of encoding the entire song — even silence &em; at the same bit-rate. Now if only the Pioneer head unit in my new Scion XA would play back AAC files instead of just MP3 and WMA! (Scion, what were you thinking?)

The MP3 encoder is also improved. Use this opportunity to explore Itunes' preferences for yourself if you haven't already.

You can get to this window by selecting a song, and choosing Get Info from the File menu. The Options tab is where the real jewels of the Itunes 5 update are in my opinion. Something everyone has been longing for is an easy way to make any file bookmarkable. There have been many AppleScripts created to solve this dilemma and I've always had varying results of success using them. My Ipod wouldn't wake from sleep what seemed like about half of the time when it went to sleep while playing one the files I made bookmarkable with AppleScript. The checkbox on this screen that allows you to do this is new in Itunes 5, and I haven't had any problems that required me to reset my Ipod in the many weeks I've been using this feature.

Another new feature here is to mark a file as one that should be skipped when shuffling. This is a great feature for any spoken word file you have in your library that you wouldn't want to come up while you're rocking out to a shuffling of songs. I use it for audiobooks that I have ripped myself.

Both of these checkboxes are checked for podcasts that are downloaded through Itunes. Because of this, podcasts have been removed from the podcast ghetto they were in in prior versions of Itunes and now show up in other areas of Itunes such as Smart Playlists.

Speak of the devil… This is how you can identify podcasts in Smart Playlists. They've added a boolean field to files that is true for podcasts that have been downloaded via Itunes. This is a good way to get podcasts onto your Shuffle.

Six

Shortly after Itunes 5, the Nano, and the ROKR were released, Steve Jobs scheduled another special event to discuss One more thing… That one more thing turned out to be three. Steve also announced the new Imac (Act I) and Ipod (Act II). But, I'm only here to talk about Itunes 6.

At the beginning of what he called "Act III," Steve told his audience that Apple has now distributed over 200,000,000 copies of Itunes; and those are just the copies they know about. He also mentioned that Apple has been able to grab 84% of the US market for music purchased via downloads. Where 5's new features were mainly behind the scenes, 6's are all out front — assuming you spend time in the Music Store.

The ability to purchase items from the Itunes Music Store, is the first new feature mentioned in the event. You can give an individual song, an album, or even a custom playlist just for your friend. This brings those embarrassing romantic mix-tapes into the 21^st century.

Apple has also enabled customer reviews. If you've been waiting to write a scathing review of Pretty Vegas or a glowing one of Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, now is your chance. And in their wisdom, Apple has seen fit to include customer reviews reviews. You can let Apple know if you find a review particularly helpful or not after clicking through to the more detailed reviews page. Maybe we should all let Apple know what we think of Luke's lovely comment.

Apple has also added recommendations to the Store. They look at your purchase history and suggest other albums and songs that they think you'll be interested in. From the screenshot that I took, you'd probably think that I have strange tastes. Please believe me when I say that I just haven't bought enough from Itunes for Apple to make good recommendations. No, I'm not listening to Christmas music in October.

Apple has released this feature in a beta state, and they're seeking feedback on how well it works.

This is the big one. Apple has started selling videos on the Store. They're selling for $1.99 a pop, which I think is $1 too high. But, it isn't an unexpected price considering the current goings-on.

Customers can choose from among 2,000 music videos, six Pixar short films, five different TV shows from ABC & Disney (Desperate Housewives and Lost among them), and innumerable video podcasts. The TV shows will be available for purchase through Itunes the day following their original air date. To be honest, though, I don't see the point of buying these videos when I can get them for free over broadcast TV or down the road when they come out on DVD. Maybe it is just because I don't subscribe to cable, but the only show I'd pay for is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. And I'd only pay 25¢ per episode for that. If Apple and Comedy Central are smart enough to offer this, I could watch yesterday's Daily Show on the bus ride in to work every morning for about $5 a month ($60 a year).

At any rate, the videos are 320x240 (the native resolution of the new Ipods) and encoded in H.264. They are protected with FairPlay DRM just like music purchased from the Itunes Music Store. However, the restrictions are slightly more aggressive: you can still play them on up to five computer and on unlimited Ipods, but there will be no burning to CDs or DVDs. Steve made it a point to say that there are no rental fees and the media never times out.

Even if you don't buy any videos from the Itunes Music Store (or have any included in albums you buy from it), you can still use some of the new Itunes Video functionality. There is now a Videos source that will display any videos that you have added to your Itunes library or have been received via podcast. Subscribe to Systm and check it out.

One more thing…

Itunes 6 has smoothly rounded corners! Itunes 5 had these horrible chopped off corners and it's good to see Apple fixed this bug in the past five weeks.

What is the big news?

2005-10-12T23:33:00.000-04:00

While the press is all talking about the video iPod, I think the coolest technology Steve Jobs introduced today might be Front Row.

Jobs Unveils IPod Video Player

2005-10-12T14:31:00.000-04:00

Jobs Unveils IPod Video Player

The new video iPod has a 2 1/2-inch color display and is an update of the classic white iPod, Jobs said at an event in San Jose, California, that the company had dubbed "One more thing" on its invitations.

Practical Use of Podcasts

2005-10-11T19:45:00.000-04:00

Now, here is a clever and practical use for podcasts. No need to ask "where is the revenue model?" for this one. Apple, the company that took podcasts mainstream, has created its own podcast to its investors. The link to their podcast is listed on Apple's Investor Relations page.

Winner of $2Million in robot race

2005-10-09T19:10:00.000-04:00

Stanford wins DARPA Prize The Grand Challenge Autonomous Robot race is over, and this time there is a winner.

A Stanford University team won a $2 million prize on Sunday for sending a modified Volkswagen across 132 miles of rugged desert, guided only by sensors and computers in a race the Pentagon hopes will lead to a technological breakthrough in warfare.

Flash Drives changing Personal Computing

2005-10-09T19:00:00.000-04:00

Yahoo has an interesting article about how USB flash drives are changing the face of personal computing.

Plug a Migo-enabled device into a computer and enter your password, and a secure session launches in which you can send and receive e-mail and work on documents, with the background desktop and icons from your own PC rather than the ones on the host computer.

When you're done and remove the drive, all traces of what you did are removed from that computer. The next time you plug the drive into your home computer, data on each are synchronized.

Update on Grand Challenge Robot Race

2005-10-09T11:55:00.000-04:00

Well the pre-trials are over and the DARPA Grand Challenge robot race is underway.

The so-called Grand Challenge race is part of the Pentagon's effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015.

The military currently has a small fleet of autonomous ground vehicles stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the machines are remotely controlled by a soldier who usually rides in the same convoy. The Pentagon wants to eliminate the human factor and use self-thinking robotic vehicles to ferry supplies in war zones.

Mac Mini Devices

2005-10-08T11:20:00.000-04:00

A list of Mac Mini "expanders."

Belkin USB and Firewire Hubs
LaCie Firewire 160GB Drive
MiniStack - combines the above products.
MiniMate - Like above, but fanless.
List of similar products at 123macmini.com.

More on Voom PC

2005-10-05T14:35:00.000-04:00

MINI-BOX is selling Voom PC kits. Click the link to add one to your shopping cart.

Kids and Robots

2005-10-04T18:47:00.000-04:00

Or sending the Robot to preschool
Wired has an article on research to make robots feel more human, or at least more alive. ("Five is alive.")

"As I was testing it, I kept moving, and this robot kept looking at me, and his eyes moved in a particular way, and I got close, and this robot kept looking at me. And then it hugged me. And it completely got me." Movellan was shocked by the strength of his own response. "I said, 'What's happening here? I know this thing is dead. I mean, it's not alive. But I would swear that this thing is alive.'"

Micro Memory Stick

2005-10-04T12:22:00.000-04:00

This news is a little old, but since I finally found a picture of it I thought it was worth posting.
Sony and SanDisk create Memory Stick Micro for mobile phones.

The 1.2-millimeter-thick removable flash storage card is one-quarter the size of the Memory Stick Pro Duo media used in devices such as digital cameras and game consoles. It has a theoretical maximum capacity of 32 gigabytes.

E ink Development Kit

2005-10-03T18:28:00.000-04:00

E-Ink has released a development kit for e-ink displays. A short description describes how e-ink works to present an image without power. Sounds great for phones, PDAs, Laptops, and picture frame digital picture viewers.

Get yours today.

Voom PC for Cars

2005-10-03T16:04:00.000-04:00

This is one for all of those linux fans. Via is promoting the Voom PC. More details are in this article at DigiTimes.

Broad Band Power

2005-09-30T07:19:00.000-04:00

Matsushita, parent of Panasonic, has developed a broadband over AC wiring product, with speeds of up to 170 megabits per second. I have heard about this technology for at least 15 years, and all I have ever seen from it is X10. So my one question: Will we really see any products developed from this?

Grand Challenge Robot Race

2005-09-29T20:35:00.000-04:00

The DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous robotic auto race is on in California. The teams are competing for a $2 million prize, and this year they hope to have a winner. Last year no robot completed the race, and no one won the $1 million prize. For more information visit the Grand Challenge website.

New PSP Hack

2005-09-28T08:40:00.000-04:00

Various people have coverage of the new hack to the PSP. The hack allows people to downgrade to software version 1.5 so that they can "launch unauthorized third-party applications - including homebrew games and programs, emulators, and pirated games - off their Memory Sticks."

Solar Car Video

2005-09-27T15:22:00.000-04:00

The BBC has video coverage of the Solar Car race currently underway in Austalia.

MIT Fab Labs

2005-09-27T12:30:00.000-04:00

Now this is very cool technology. MIT is developing fabricators, and setting them up in Fab Labs all over the world. The labs are being used by sheep herders in Norway to people working on cooking tools for the Ghanaian national dish.

This work is part of The Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT. Check out the FabLab website to learn how you can use a Fab Lab.

iHome Mini Review

2005-09-26T06:10:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the iHome, a small radio with iPod dock. I did get a chance to see & hear one at the local Apple store, where it sells for $99. While the Apple store is not the perfect listening environment, it did allow me to compare the iHome to the Bose SoundDock which sells for 3 times as much.
The iHome does not have the bass output of the SoundDock, but it does sound much better than the average alarm clock radio. If you want to put your iPod next to the bed or in a quiet study the iHome is worth a try. I have to say it is priced right. And for the $200 difference between it and a SoundDock, you might be able to figure out how to add a subwoofer.

Cool House

2005-09-24T16:32:00.000-04:00

Live Data feed for a Maryland house with a Geothermal Heating and cooling system. Their home page (http://www.ourcoolhouse.com/) tells the story of their home design.

Rather than building a traditional Energy-Hog home, or even a non-traditional Energy-Efficient home, our new home is a unique fusion of energy efficient techniques, and environmental sanity. Our goal was to create a home that uses the sun, earth and water to create a pleasant living environment where we can enjoy the wildlife, and which also reduces our demands on non-sustainable resources. I think we succeeded!

Solar Cars

2005-09-23T19:15:00.000-04:00

OK, so these cars aren't made for the run to the local grocery store, but it is an interesting approach. They also show what happens when you take efficiency to the extreme. The Panasonic World Solar Challenge is run over 1,800 miles in Australia and pulls in teams from MIT to Iran.