Archive for January, 2007
Update 2008-02-18: It seems like this post is getting a lot of hits, which is kind of odd to me. I suspect it might be because there’s a mention of the phrase “key sticker” in here, so that makes people think I’m publishing my activation key. I’m not. The key is digitally erased with a bunch of black pixels. There’s no key here.
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Call me a fanboy all you want. I went out to a local Best Buy this morning and got myself a copy of the Vista Ultimate Signature Edition. I figure Vista put bread on my table, so I need to give back a little. And no way am I going to do that without getting something a little out of the ordinary.
I got to Best Buy a little after ten and checked the shelves. No Signature Editions to be found. Luckily I went to the service desk to ask, and just as I was doing so, they brought out the four boxes they had at that store. Two got put aside by (for?) the employees, and I grabbed one of the remaining two. Talk about good timing. I think I also picked a good store to go to. It’s fairly new and people don’t seem to know it’s there, so there was very little “competition”.
Here are some unboxing pictures for your viewing pleasure:
Box front
Open back
System requirements on the side
Feature comparison list on the back
Other side
Outside cardboard box and inside plastic box
Inside plastic box front
Inside plastic box back with Bill Gates comments
Plastic box side
Opened plastic box with DVD / media holder
Leaflets inside media holder
CD order information
Back of media holder with key sticker
More on pouring away gas
January 26, 2007 7:53 pmThis is something I’ve had stuck in my mind ever since I read the book “Stuff: The secret lives of everyday things” (or was it “Natural Capitalism”? I’ve lent out both books right now).
Take a wild guess at how much of the energy in the gas you put in your car actually goes towards transporting you. Don’t be afraid to lowball it. Write it down.
How did you go about it? Did you use the fact (which is fairly common knowledge) that car engines are about 30% efficient? Good. But 30% is not the answer. Did you pay attention to how the question is worded? “Towards transporting YOU”?
How about idling, energy lost in the driveline, energy lost on powering accessories in the car? With all that, about one-eighth (12.5 %) of the energy reaches the wheels. Around half of that heats the tires, road and air that the car pushes aside. That leaves about 6% or so applied to moving the car forward. When you figure in that your mass compared to the car’s mass is about 5%, that leaves less than one percent of the energy in the fuel for transporting YOU. Let’s be generous and say it’s actually one percent. Here’s a little visual of that number for you:
That’s a scary waste in my book.
Here’s more to make you think: A friend of mine, Stan King, did some calculations based on a discussion we had at a recent simplicity circle meeting at our house. I had wondered how bicycling compares to driving in terms of energy efficiency. He took on the task of figuring it out. When you convert the amount of energy needed to bike a mile and convert that to the car’s miles-per-gallon equivalent, riding a bicycle has a “miles-per-gallon” of about 650. That number makes hybrid cars pale in comparison.
When you consider that 99% of the energy in the gas is wasted on things other than transporting you, the passenger, riding a bicycle has a “miles-per-gallon” of over 6500.
Compared to that, hybrid cars seem almost like stone age technology.
This is the thinking behind our family’s decision to stick with one car, even though it creates some inconvenience. It’s also why I bike to work practically every day.
And just so you won’t think I pulled these numbers out of thin air, there’s a Wikipedia article that states a 653 mpg for bicycling, which matches Stan’s number well. The calculation on the efficiency of cars can be found in this article by Amory Lovins from July 2006. The journal this was published in can be downloaded here (3.17 MB PDF).
Doing some research for an illustration I wanted to post on this blog, I typed the following search terms into Google: aluminum can volume. What do you think a search like this would bring you? Try it out yourself. You’ll be as surprised as I was.
It’s this:
Almost every result talks about how much energy is wasted when you don’t recycle a soda can! It’s the equivalent of filling the can halfway with gas and pouring it out. If that idea won’t make you think more about recycling aluminum cans, maybe this calculation will:
Half a soda can is 6 oz. A gallon has 128 oz. So 21.333 empty cans thrown away equal a gallon of gas wasted. My car has a tank capacity of about 15 gallons (I think). So it would take 320 non-recycled cans for me to waste a tank full of gas. My car can travel about 300 miles on a tank of gas. I certainly don’t want to waste energy like that. Especially energy coming from our dwindling oil reserves. We’ll need that oil for lots of other things besides burning it for transportation. For example, most plastics are based on oil, and I wonder how many cool and wonderful gadgets and gizmos (needing plastic enclosures and parts) we won’t be able to produce in the future if we run out of oil. Pardon the digression.
Anyway, now I’ve used my illustration and even given it a little surprising Google story to go with it.
Debugging XBAP applications on Vista using Visual Studio 2005
January 23, 2007 5:35 pmRan into Dwight Silverman at Bloghaus
January 11, 2007 12:42 amPictures from CES and Bloghaus
January 9, 2007 7:41 pmThanks to the incredible bandwith that bloghaus has provided, Kristopher Tate from zooomr hooked us up with the Macworld keynote. He even got it up on the giant flatscreen TV.
The iPhone looks really exciting. I can’t wait for it to come out to play with it. It sounds a little pricey, but considering it’s a full iPod as well as a revolutionary phone, I guess it’s not too bad.
I’m really impressed with the bloghaus. There’s food, conversation, bandwith and tons of geeks. Thanks to Podtech, AMD and Seagate for sponsoring this thing!
I’ve been Scobleized in real-life!
January 8, 2007 12:42 amI don’t even know where to begin with this one. After the Bill Gates keynote, where the HP TouchSmart PC was unveiled officially in a video clip, an actual unit appeared in the suite, seemingly out of nowhere.
I was flabbergasted. When I first saw it, I blurted across the room to Karsten Januszewski “Hey, there’s one of the things I’ve worked on!” (during the development phase I had some good help from Karsten.) Turns out Microsoft and AMD had arranged for a unit to be unboxed at the BlogHaus after Bill’s mention of it.
Being the geek that I am, I mentioned to Scoble that I worked on one of the applications on it (yup, I work for HP). He says, “Does everyone here know about that?” I say, “No”. So he tells everyone, and next thing I know I have lights, cameras and microphones in my face and am awkwardly talking about the product and the program I was involved in. Scobleized!
There’s something about lights and cameras that makes you very uncomfortable when you’re caught off-guard like that. Still for some reason you agree to being interviewed and showing off the software you’ve worked on. I guess we’re all drawn in by whatever “fame” can come out of being on camera.
Anyway, I hobble through four or five of these nerve-wracking question-and-answer sessions feeling incredibly self-conscious and cotton-mouthed. By the last one I think I finally said something coherent, and I’m sure the guys who got me first are now regretting it.
I’m still all mixed up about this. Can’t sleep. Oh well, whatever happened happened. Can’t change it now. It’s on tape. I thought all that would happen this evening would be Bill Gates talking about the PC, and me getting a little conversation starter out of it. Oh boy was I wrong!
But it’s good to finally be able to write about this thing that I’ve been a little part of on since before PDC05.
So I’ll leave it at that for now. Let me know how much of a fool I made of myself once you see footage. I don’t even remember who all I talked to. I guess Google will be my friend.
Oh, and one more thing. I think this was the first time I’ve seen a “connector” in action. One loud sentence from Scoble into the room started it. And then he just slid back (and watched me make a fool of myself, I’m sure). That’s a connector for you.
Thanks for my 15 minutes of fame, Robert! Let’s see what happens next.
