I can kind of dig this list:
what happens in a real crisis, the kind where the world stops working, the electricity stops working and (gasp) the internet stops working? Every New Year’s Eve, some wacko predicts the End of Days. What might you need? Consulting my huge back catalog of post-apocalyptic science fiction, I came up with the following list of true essentials [From Gadget Lab @ Wired.com]
A pretty interesting conclusion – wind power wins out.
“To place electricity and liquid fuel options on an equal footing, twelve combinations of energy sources and vehicle type were considered. The overall rankings of the combinations (from highest to lowest) were (1) wind-powered battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), (2) wind-powered hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, (3) concentrated-solar-powered-BEVs, (4) geothermal-powered-BEVs, (5) tidal-powered-BEVs, (6) solar-photovoltaic-powered-BEVs, (7) wave-powered-BEVs, (8) hydroelectric-powered-BEVs, (9-tie) nuclear-powered-BEVs, (9-tie) coal-with-carbon-capture-powered-BEVs, (11) corn-E85 vehicles, and (12) cellulosic-E85 vehicles. The relative ranking of each electricity option for powering vehicles also applies to the electricity source providing general electricity. Because sufficient clean natural resources (e.g., wind, sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, etc.) exist to power the world for the foreseeable future, the results suggest that the diversion to less-efficient (nuclear, coal with carbon capture) or non-efficient (corn- and cellulosic E85) options represents an opportunity cost that will delay solutions to global warming and air pollution mortality.” Journal of Energy and Environmental Engineering
I’ve got a couple of small gripes:
So, in the last couple of days, I’ve been getting a TON of spam on the yahoo account I still keep through ATT. Cannot figure out if it’s because they changed their anti-spam software, or what – there’s still a filter that I can check on mail.yahoo.com, but man, does it stink.
(Courtesy of Wired Science)
Not that I’d turn my back on Uncle, but how cool is it to have this to use for recruiting?
The UK Ministry of Defence says it is keen to hear from “budding Qs who think they could supply the armed forces of the future with high-tech gadgets and gizmos”. To that end, the MoD has organised an “innovation day” at Glasgow University. [From MoD seeks ‘budding Qs’ in SME engagement push • The Register]
I’ve also got to plug one of the best shows you’ve never seen – MI-5 or Spooks
PPS – I also realize that there’s a world of difference between MI-5 and the world of Bond. It’s FICTION, people…
So, I’m trying out a new thought as far as blogging goes. A PowerBook180 – RAM measured in K and hard drive measured in MBs – has fallen into my use. So, I’ve got a platform on which I can, well, just WRITE. The only question that I have is one of how to move files off of the platform. The only easily accessible storage is good old fashioned 3.5″ floppy disks, which are “MAC” formatted. Very interested to see if they come off.
Although, I suppose I could find an ancient dot-matrix printer to plug into the serial port… Wow, that would be a cool, cool thing to do, wouldn’t it?
Running been berry, berry good to me lately. Saturday’s long run was both wonderful and miserable at the same time. I started off with about 4 miles of hills, and then headed down to River Road (have I posted pictures recently? I’m still stunned by how sweet of a ride it is) for a quick loop to finish off the 12 on the schedule.
I was a bit bushed – I’d run Thursday and Friday, as I’d missed my run on Wednesday and wanted to make it up – but I ended up gutting it out. The initial bit (before the obligatory stop at the coffee shop for hydration) was 9 consecutive miles, which is the longest I’d run without stopping in a good, long while.
At the coffee shop, I ran into my pastor and a bunch of his cycling buddies. Kind of cool to see people you know in a new and different setting. A little bit of hydration and glucose later, and I was on my way back home.
The last three miles up River Road were at once the best three miles of my life and the worst. There was an odd combination of feeling good and not so good while I ran – extremely tough to explain, but I wanted to curl up in the green grass on the side of the road and keep running forever all at the same time.
Cannot wait for New Haven. I think I’m ready this year.
Why are we failing at math and science? Because it isn’t fun any more. When you put safety on the highest altar, what do you give up? When fear of lawsuits — not to mention fear of technolog [From Why We’re Failing in Math and Science – O’Reilly Radar]
Amen, brothers and sisters. I think I’m giving the boys soldering irons for Christmas.
So, I’m all excited about being able to post via the iPod touch. Things I dig:
– good interface
– easy to add multiple blogs
– Much easier to lug an iPod Touch or iPhone than a MacBook
Things that need work:
– cut and paste
– a “blog this” bookmark for Safari
– a way to put in hyperlinks other than spelling them out, such as http://sandbox.jankowskis.net
– bold, italics, other formatting
Most of the stuff about which I’ve got gripes is probably somewhere in the docmentation, but I’m too lazy to read it right now.
Links: iphone.wordpress.org
NB: I went in through the web interface to make a couple of corrections, such as adding f’n hyperlinks.
OMG. Tweets from space.
I can die happy.
While I was looking for info on if the iPod SDK (Software Developer’s Kit) was going to get me Nike+ on my shiny new Touch, I unearthed iPod Fitness Center, which has a pretty cool interface for pulling Nike+ data over the iPod touch.
My personal thought is that Apple’s not going to support Nike+ on the Touch. First, the entire Nike+ site is built in Flash, which isn’t supported on the iPhone/Touch. Second, Apple’s been pretty conservative in the iPods that they’ve openly endorsed running with – pretty much just the Nano. I think that this is a risk management thing for them. By using the smallest, ruggedest iPod with a display for their high impact activities, they’re minimizing their exposure to 1) consumer rage after an iPod gets dropped or broken during a workout; and 2) false repair claims for folks who are willing to say “Yeah, it was just sitting there and the display broke”.
I’d love to see Nike+ supported on the Touch/iPhone. The hardware’s phenomenal, and with built-in WiFi on the devices, there’s the possibility of posting workouts directly to Nike.
So, folks out there in Cupertino and Beaverton, if you need folks to beta test Nike+ for the Touch, I’ve got the hardware, I’m a relatively consistent runner, and I would give my left nut to get in on the deal.
Thanks for your time.