Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category
All of today’s reading and posting will be done via Google’s new Chrome browser.
At first glance, it appears a bit sluggish (okay, a lot sluggish), but I mostly want to verify that my sites display and function correctly. In the early going, all appears fine.
UPDATE: Hmmm. It appears that each tab you open is actually a separate process with its own discrete resources. Makes each tab its own little island, but memory usage grows quickly that way. Ouch.
UPDATE 2: End of experiment. Performance was a 1 out of 10. Until the first production release is out, I will not try Chrome again other than to check my site design for compatibility.
Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits
When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
Secret? It’s a secret that the electric power transmission system is at its limit and moving electricity to where it’s needed is a major problem? That’s a secret to exactly who?
This isn’t a problem limited to alternative energy generation either, though you can (sort of) put a coal, gas, or nuclear plant wherever you want while the wind, water, and sun-based generation has to be built in the correct environment.
Heh:
Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.
Meanwhile, Tigerhawk has some thoughts on the issue.
Olympics Opening Ceremony Fireworks ‘Faked’ on TV
The Telegraph picked up a story in the Chinese newspaper the Beijing Times which explained that filming the 29 firework “footprints” from the air would have been impossible. So visual effects artists spent a year creating a computer-graphic simulation — inserted precisely at the same time the real fireworks went off — to bedazzle home viewers as if they were at the actual ceremony. The fireworks themselves were real enough, but if you were watching on TV, what you saw was a CG simulation of that reality, happening in real-time.
Also: Olympic opening uses girl’s voice, not face
A 7-year-old Chinese girl was not good-looking enough for the Olympics opening ceremony, so another little girl with a pixie smile lip-synched “Ode to the Motherland,” a ceremony official said–the latest example of the lengths Beijing took for a perfect start to the Summer Games.
A member of China’s Politburo asked for the last-minute change to match one girl’s face with another’s voice, the ceremony’s chief music director, Chen Qigang, said in an interview with Beijing Radio.
At this point, assume everything was faked.
UPDATE: Oh, and don’t forget the landlocked aircraft carrier, either.
All aboard! Amtrak ridership in GR way up
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The high cost of gas is pushing many travelers between Michigan and Chicago to passenger trains.
The Detroit News reports that the numbers of riders on several Amtrak train routes had risen between October and July.
Amtrak officials tell the newspaper that the number of people riding Pontiac-Detroit-Ann Arbor-Jackson-Chicago lines was up 5.9 percent over that period. The Port Huron-East Lansing-Chicago line has seen a 6.5 percent jump in riders, while the Grand Rapids-St. Joseph-Chicago line was up 7.2 percent.
Now, if Murdoc is running a few minutes late for work in the morning, he sees the Grand Rapids-St. Joe-Chicago train. As he runs late at least once a week (slacker) he often waI’ve been watching to see it the passenger load is up.
It might be up 7.2 percent like the article says, but it’s probably something like up to 32 passengers per day from 30. Seriously. The train usually has three cars (and often a second engine) and each car usually appears to be nearly totally empty. Now, Murdoc could be wrong and the actual numbers may be closer to up to 64 passengers per day from 60, but I’d be surprised.
Another thing to consider is that it’s likely more people get on the train for Chicago at St. Joseph than get off at St. Joseph from Grand Rapids, so maybe the number of passengers riding into the Windy City is 100 or more. Again, I’m completely guessing based off of what I see where the tracks cross my road to work, so maybe I’m way off base.
Are Amtrak ridership numbers publicly available?
The GR to Chicago ride is $47 and takes 3:55. By road, this is a 177 mile trip and Google Maps says it should take 2:55. At $4 a gallon, that works out to about $23 in gas, but there’s no way you make that trip in three hours on the highway, at least not at that time of day.
Regardless, I’d be shocked if the amount of energy it takes to move an engine and three cars (plus quite often a second engine) to Chicago is in any way good for anyone.
UPDATE: Missed this bit:
The increases would have been greater if tickets, especially for weekend trips, were not selling out.
Again, I’m sure that all three cars look to be 90% empty during the week. Something isn’t making sense.
Not a lot of time, but there’s a good post up at Instapundit on Obama’s call for 1,000,000 plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015.
FWIW, I support the plug-in hybrid car in theory. I’d buy one for my commute car today if they were ready for prime time and I could afford it. I think a lot of people would.
I’ll keep my gasoline-powered minivan for my family vehicle, though.
As for the electrical energy required to make plug-ins worth it, go nuclear, baby.
One thing the Instapundit post touches on that is usually ignored is the transmission of electrical power rather than the generation. Though many systems are pushed too close to the limit, it’s usually the actual transport system for energy that is at fault for major problems. Not to mention the amount lost over long distances.
More smaller plants would help this, but then you lose some of the power of scale.
Where’s Mr. Fusion when you need him?
I JUST SIGNED UP FOR MLB.COM’S PREMIUM INTERNET TV SERVICE. It took me about two minutes to decide to cancel.
Even though I checked the ZIP codes of home and work and both showed ‘okay,’ it tells me I’m blacked out for all home Tigers games. What someone is calling the “official MLB blackout map’ indicates that all of Michigan is blacked out for Tigers home games. I’m not sure that it’s an accurate map or that MLB.TV uses the same map, but if that’s the case MLB.TV’s ZIP Code checker needs to be fixed.
I also tried entering an Arizona zip code into my account to see if that would make a difference. Predictably, it doesn’t.
I called customer service and waited on hold for a while, then was told I’d be called back “probably within half an hour.” We’ll see. I’ve already sent an email directing them to cancel my service.
I tried to check out another game just to see what the quality was, but I’m getting error pages for all games now. Whether or not this has to do with my pending cancellation (or my zip code trickery) I don’t know.
According to the map I linked to, the entire state of Iowa is blacked out for home games for the Chicago Cubs, the Chicago White Sox, the Kansas City Royals, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Minnesota Twins, and the St. Louis Cardinals. Blacked out for six teams despite not having a single one in the entire state.
Honestly, this isn’t 1981 any more. Major League Baseball is going to have to rework the way blackouts work if they want to enter the world of 21st century media.
I’m sure they’ll get right on that.
This will be a surprise to no one, but I’ve been suffering from some rather major technical difficulties over the past several months. I’m not sure where the blame lies, but I suspect that it’s split equally between my software platform Movable Type and my host JaguarPC.
Movable Type has been quite good to Murdoc, but the move from version 3.x to 4.x has been a near total disaster.
JaguarPC worked nearly flawlessly for about a year after a number of hops between various hosts, and I thought that I had finally found what Murdoc Online needed. Then, on May 13-14, everything went to hell. When I ask what happened on May 13-14, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs. When I tell them that the same problems started on the same day on two different installations on two different domains that have been moved to two different boxes, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs. When I tell them that I’ve upgraded one of my installations to a newer version and still have the same problems, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs. When I tell them that no one I can find seems to be suffering from the same issues that I am and will someone please tell me if anything changed on May 13-14, I’m told to check with my software vendor for bugs.
Yesterday they decided to hose my nameserver settings. When I contacted tech support and told them all of my sites were down, they fixed one and told me “everything is fine now.” Except that they only fixed one of my domains. Once I spelled out to them which domains were on my account, they fixed them too and “everything is fine now.”
So I’ve got a couple of questions for the blogging/technically inclined:
- Does anyone else use MT on JaguarPC and have you had any issues?
- Does anyone have any experience rolling MT 4 sites back to MT 3?
- Is setting up my own server and ditching hosting worth the trouble?
I’m removing all the remaining JaguarPC links from my sites. First, they weren’t making me any cash. Secondly, and more importantly, I cannot possibly recommend them to anyone any longer.
It’s too bad. Three months ago I was planning to upgrade to JaguarPC’s next level of hosting. Today I’m considering running my own server.
Finally, I apologize once again for all of the technical difficulties you have been encountering here. Believe me, it isn’t for a lack of effort on my part. I don’t claim to be any sort of tech-head, but I’m not completely unskilled in this stuff. Regardless, I’ve been barely able to keep the site online and have been spending more time working on problems than I have been writing. I’ve got a number of big non-blog project deadlines coming up, and I’m not going to be able to do much in the way of overhauls for the next month or so, so hang in there.
That should be a no-brainer, but apparently not: Marine expelled over YouTube puppy video
The Marine Corps said Wednesday it was expelling one Marine and disciplining another for their roles in a video showing a Marine throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq…
“The actions seen in the Internet video are contrary to the high standards we expect of every Marine and will not be tolerated,” Marine Corps Base Hawaii said in a news release. “The vast majority of Marines conduct their duties with honor and compassion that makes American people proud.”
I expect that some might question whether ridding the Corps of a trained Marine over a puppy is the best decision in a time of war, but this was just so retarded it’s tough to argue against it, in Murdoc’s mind.
First, in today’s world you’ve got to realize that anything you do might show up on YouTube. Secondly, the puppy tossing is only being filmed because cameras are cheap and small. Third, the film only gets seen because of the internet. Finally, does the Marine even toss the puppy in a world with no YouTube?
What has been caught on camera in Chicago. As Say Uncle would say, it appears to be an unpossible situation.
Go check it out and comment at Uncle’s. His comments are still working.
So, like, what’s with this Twitter thing?
Murdoc’s onboard at http://twitter.com/murdoconline.
Is there a point?
