| Hydrogen != Fuel |
[Jun. 18th, 2008|11:35 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  irritated | ] |
Haven't posted in quite a while, but here's a rant.
Hydrogen is not a fuel! Hydrogen is an energy storage medium! It may or may not be "green", it may or may not be expensive, and it may or may not be practical. In any case, the only long-term solution for producing hydrogen is solar power, and if you're producing electricity from photovoltaics, you might as well just use a battery. It's cheaper than a fuel cell, and the distribution system is already in place.
And another thing - why the confusion over energy sources? There's only 3. There have only ever been 3 (I'm ignoring tides and fusion).
Solar - also wind and anything biomass related include fossil fuels
Nuclear - fission, at the moment, or in a few spacecraft, radiothermal
Geothermal - works great in Iceland
That's it. Fossil fuels are banked solar. Nuclear comes in and out of fashion and in any case can't scale rapidly enough to meet global demands. Geothermal is probably most practical in much of the world if utilized as part of a ground loop heat pump.
Folks - solar's it. That's all there is. The only long term energy solution is solar. Massive solar. If we don't spend like it's the Apollo program all over again to build a solar array in the desert southwest and a DC transmission backbone, we're screwed.
Or not, if we don't mind runaway global warming - there's quite a bit of coal still around. |
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| Online magic |
[Jan. 15th, 2008|10:31 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  impressed | ] |
Yes, this trick has roots back to the dawn of math, but this version is particularly well done. You'll probably get it eventually, but it had me amazed for a good five minutes. Amazement in exchange for a mouse click.... worth the click.
http://www.mikesuper.com/interact/online/magic.htm
And of course, the always entertaining 20Q:
http://www.20q.net/ |
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| Fanboy |
[Jan. 4th, 2008|12:21 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
The Prius is a curious car. Not so much as a car, necessarily, but as a focal point for discussion and an ever growing OCD. "How's the Prius doing?" I'm asked at least twice a day, and of course I've been thinking about it, so I have a longer-than-one-sentence reply. It's a gadget, no doubt, but Toyota has sold too many of them for it to really be a novelty anymore. I suppose "new to me" is still a valid reason for distraction.
In any case, I really like it. It might be simpler to say what I don't like, which includes:
a) A few squeaks and rattles in very cold weather.
b) The auto dimming rearview mirror doesn't sense headlights particularly well.
c) Gumball spare tire, despite having adequate space for a full-size spare.
d) Whip rather than in-window stereo antenna.
I also don't know that my current level of obsession is particularly healthy, and the Prius community online certainly does nothing to discourage fanatical analysis of every bump, squeak, minor quibble, and so forth. This is completely unlike my ownership experience with my Subaru, where the car and I had a tacit understanding that I would beat the living hell out of it, and that was that. Load the car with 500 lbs. of bagged manure? Don't mind if I do!
I've never actually owned a new car before, and Necia says that my current... behavior... will mellow somewhat over time. But, there's a distinct possibility that I'm just a Prius fanboy, smug emissions and all. |
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| Mulled wine |
[Nov. 9th, 2007|11:09 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  thoughtful | ] |
6 cups red wine (preferably box wine, you are mulling it after all)
2 cups cranberry juice or apple cider
2/3 cup triple sec
1 1/2 tablespoons mulling spices (cloves, orange peel, cinnamon)
Heat to a low simmer, but not boiling, for 1 hour. Serves 8. |
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| A revelation at breakfast |
[Jul. 25th, 2007|09:53 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  nervous | ] |
"I was killing in my sleep again."
"With an axe this time."
"It was a stranger."
"The details are a little fuzzy now."
"Was it a stranger?" |
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| Medical History |
[Jul. 18th, 2007|03:09 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
My left ear has been plugged up for the past two weeks, from allergies, as it turns out. I went to the doctor yesterday to get it looked at, and since I haven't gone anywhere except the health center for the past 6 years, they wanted to do a complete medical history.
Doctor: Smoke?
Me: No.
Doctor: Do you use marijuana or cocaine?
Me: No.
Doctor: Are you sure?
Me. Yes.
Doctor: You know, you can tell me.
What I should have said: Geeeezz, I dunno. Last night I was so baked, I really don't remember.
What I actually said: I'm sure. I do drink a lot of coffee.
N says I fit the demographic. I thought it was a little odd. I've never pictured myself as fitting into the cokehead crowd.
Patient presents with allergic rhinitis and serous otis media. Suspect: too much blow. |
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| Cars |
[Jun. 29th, 2007|10:00 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | thoughtful | ] |
The Forester isn't totaled; the repair estimate came in at $3800, but the blue book value on it is still up around $6500. Now I get to decide whether to try selling it after it's fixed, or simply run it into the ground... |
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| Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. |
[Jun. 26th, 2007|01:25 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | thoughtful | ] |
Best article on food, foodways, the government, and the media E-V-E-R.
"I would submit that the ideology of nutritionism deserves as much of the blame as the carbohydrates themselves do — that and human nature. By framing dietary advice in terms of good and bad nutrients, and by burying the recommendation that we should eat less of any particular food, it was easy for the take-home message of the 1977 and 1982 dietary guidelines to be simplified as follows: Eat more low-fat foods. And that is what we did. We’re always happy to receive a dispensation to eat more of something (with the possible exception of oat bran), and one of the things nutritionism reliably gives us is some such dispensation: low-fat cookies then, low-carb beer now. It’s hard to imagine the low-fat craze taking off as it did if McGovern’s original food-based recommendations had stood: eat fewer meat and dairy products. For how do you get from that stark counsel to the idea that another case of Snackwell’s is just what the doctor ordered?"
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| The Subaru is dead, long live the Subaru |
[Jun. 25th, 2007|05:44 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
A woman fell asleep while driving on my street this morning and took out 4 cars, including mine. Waiting to see what the damage estimate comes back as; it looks like the floor of the trunk is buckled across the midline of the car, so I suspect it's totaled. |
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| Prius |
[Apr. 8th, 2007|01:08 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
It looks like the startup company will probably be located in Gibsonia, which is either 18 mi / 38 minutes from me on Route 8 or 30 mi/ 36 minutes if I backtrack to Monroeville and take the Turnpike. Neither way is particularly subject to rush-hour traffic, but Route 8 can be stop-and-go simply due to the traffic lights, and I don't relish the idea of paying a toll each direction.
I've been kicking around the idea of getting a new car, because the manual transmission on the Forester is not a huge amount a fun on slow roads, and its gas mileage (21 city / 30 highway) is not awesome. On the other hand, I do own it, which counts for something. To try and make some sense of the different options I made a spreadsheet comparing the 3-year monthly operating cost (car loan+gas+mainentance) of the Forester, a Corolla, a Prius, and a Mazda3.
( Cut for rambling ) |
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| Mike Slackernary |
[Mar. 24th, 2007|11:03 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
The latest plot thread in PhD has been the graduation of Mike Slackernary. The most recent comic has him about to turn in his dissertation. I'll be a little freaked out if Mike and I graduate on the same day. |
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| Dog weirdness |
[Mar. 17th, 2007|10:47 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
Zoe likes collard greens. I made some last night and she followed me around the kitchen until one fell on the floor. She snarfed it down, then spent a couple minutes licking the floor. While we were eating, she sat and stared at our plates. I eventually gave her a small bowl of them, which she finished, and then a second (maybe 1/2 cup total). When we went downstairs this morning she immediately ran over to her bowl and started licking it again until I put it in the sink.
Strange creature. |
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| Bs |
[Mar. 8th, 2007|11:23 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  working | ] |
My LaTeX code has a number of macros that define boldface versions of various letters I use frequently in equations. One of these is \Bs. It would be much cooler if \Bs were a macro that automatically filled in several pages of technical sounding ramblings. Instead it just prints s.
Sigh. |
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| Defense |
[Mar. 8th, 2007|11:15 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | working | ] |
Wed. 3/28, 1:30 pm in NSH 1109 |
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| Thesis writing |
[Feb. 21st, 2007|06:11 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | working | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | The Legionnaire's Lament - The Decemberists | ] |
Some random notes about LaTeX and Excel, which might be useful to you. LaTeX and I have a love hate relationship. You might already know these suggestions if you're cooler than I am.
Importing tabular data from Excel
Cutting and pasting of course won't work. On my Mac, cutting and pasting results in tab delimited rows containing the raw Excel data. There are a couple of problems with this; first, there are too many decimal places. Second, my data is mean +/- standard deviation, stored separately as a mean table and stdev table in Excel. In LaTeX I want this to be printed as "mean +/- stdev" in each cell.
The way around this is to use Excel's text processing functions to create a block of cells that contain the LaTeX code ("concatenate" and "fixed" are the applicable functions). A single cell looks like:
=CONCATENATE("$",FIXED(B72,1)," \pm ", FIXED(G72,1),"$ &")
Where B72 contains a mean value and G72 contains a stdev value. The final column formula does not contain the trailing & symbol.
Importing graphs from Excel
This would only work on a Mac, when using TeXShop or another TeX distribution based on PDFTeX. In Excel, insert all charts as a new worksheet. Print each worksheet to a PDF using default margin options. The following header line appropriately trims the chart:
\includegraphics[width=5in, trim=1in 1.25in 1in 1.25in]{/path/to/pdf} |
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| Headline news |
[Feb. 20th, 2007|12:51 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
Headlines from the past few weeks. Some of the mental images they evoke are... curious.
------
Gallery: Old man winter dumps on Cupid (CNN)
God, Darwin clash again in Kansas (Reuters)
"I know I'm going to die", says man in icy pond (CNN)
Dolphins saving the world one fin at a time (CNN) |
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| The ultimate soaking experience |
[Feb. 17th, 2007|01:32 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | thoughtful | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | No Brakes - The Bravery | ] |
Gender and relationship norms pop up in strange places sometimes. For instance, the Kohler Overflowing Bath. The idea itself is a little strange - it's a tub within a tub, where the inner tub overflows into the outer. The tub does recirculate the water, but this isn't exactly an environmentalist's dream. First, the tub is huge. Really huge. 275 gallons huge.
Second, the heat loss created by what amounts to a 20 foot wide waterfall is enormous. So enormous, that two inline 2 kilowatt heaters are required to keep the thing warm. That'd make your electric meter spin in a hurry. I'm pretty sure that my entire house very rarely pulls 4 kilowatts, unless every air conditioner is on. Want some additional numbers? Assuming the water entering your house starts at 10 deg C and you want the tub at 45 deg C, raising 275 gallons of water to that temp requires 140 cubic feet of natural gas (assuming a 100% efficient water heater, whereas most are only around 60%).
So, the gender norms.... the video advertises that the bath is specifically designed for "one man and one woman". What exactly does that mean? What happens if two dudes hop in the tub together? |
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| HD |
[Feb. 11th, 2007|11:38 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
Those of you who watched Superman in HD at my place, what did you think? Personally, I'm less wowed by HD than I thought I would be. It definitely looked better, no question, but I didn't find myself getting excited about the image quality. I liked Superman fairly well, and I can't imagine I would have liked it less on DVD.
I'm now a bit curious what home theater technology will have to offer that's actually both new and perceivable in 10 years. We're already pretty much at the fundamental limit of human hearing with audio equipment, and as Superman shows, getting pretty close with visuals. Sure, you can always improve things in the abstract numerical sense, but will anyone notice or care? |
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