Comments on: More on pouring away gas

By: Mark Foecking

Mark Foecking — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 08:45:01 +0000

It is true that on a calorie equivalent basis, that a bicycle gets about 600 mpg. However, since the average American diet takes 10 calories of fossil energy to make 1 calorie of food, cycling get more like 60 mpg. Of course, one would still eat whatever your form of transport, so the advantage is still o the bicycle. I’m just pointing out that bicycle eficiency hinges heavily on the energy inputs of one’s food.

By: JohnM

JohnM — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:56:59 +0000

Regarding biking to work, check out How to Ride Your Bike to Work.

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/08/29/how-to-ride-your-bike-to-work/

By: Eli

Eli — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:33:46 +0000

Keesa; Biking on this road is probably quite doable. You just need to learn the rules and get comfortable following them. It is scary and counterintuitive at first but it really works. I recommend reading “Effective Cycling” by John Forester. It was a major revelation for me.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 14 May 2007 05:59:22 +0000

Thanks for the article. That is very interesting data. Of course, you must realize, that while a bulk of the population of the United States lives in urban areas, many times people can be in the suburbs and the jobs in the downtown area. Not every city has a subway/viable public transportation for bicyclists. Also, let’s not forget that there are many people who live in rural areas, and the road conditions can be all but favorable for bicyclists. I have not been very big into cycling, but recently I’ve had “duh” moments when I realized that bikes can provide so much (fun, efficiency, exercise, et cetera). Thanks again for the post.

By: GeekTieGuy

GeekTieGuy — Sat, 12 May 2007 17:50:40 +0000

Keesa,

I’m not sure how you would do that exactly, but maybe going to city hall and raising the issue would be a first step?

By: Keesa

Keesa — Thu, 10 May 2007 22:23:10 +0000

Maybe you have some advice for me…where I live, it’s about 6 miles to the grocery store, one way. That’s NOT a huge distance for me to bike. But the only road is a heavily-traveled highway (speed limit 55, not that anyone follows it) with no bike paths. Not safe.

How can I go about making that road bike-able? Surely it’s not a lost cause?

By: Leila

Leila — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 10:28:16 +0000

Hear, hear!
Now to convince drivers that we bicyclists actually belong on the road, not the sidewalk.
*runs off to ride bike downtown*

By: Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 05:23:29 +0000

Well, that was just a flamebait. I just wanted to make some conversation. I too bike to work and work with Microsoft .NET everyday. Just that Windows Vista has not worked for me. I have tried it on three different machines, and everytime has been a miserable failure. My Dell laptop ran like a dog after Vista. On my Sony Vaio UMPC (UX-280p), the CPU fan was always on after I installed Vista. And don’t get me started with the painful 4 hour installation process. Anyway … glad it works for you

By: GeekTieGuy

GeekTieGuy — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 03:30:01 +0000

Thanks for the comment! At the risk of emarrassing myself (and my future self): I’m excited to have someone actually comment on one of these non-tech posts.

Your thoughts sound interesting. Have you actually compared running Linux or OS X versus running Vista? Some data would make a nice case.

I’m not sure that Vista is really all that much more demanding on your processor than previous Windows versions. I have several computers that are over three years old that run Vista just fine. However, one thing I know for a fact is that Vista will use a 3D graphics card much more than its predecessors, simply because the core screen rendering engine is written to take advantage of the GPU on the card if one is found. This is very obvious on laptops that have a Vista Aero compatible graphics card. They tend to have shorter battery life. I’d like to see some numbers on that, though. Do you have any information to refer me to?

A trend that’s going on in the PC industry is more focus on “performance per watt”, in other words making processors more capable while lowering the power consumption. This should benefit all computer users over time.

I personally like Vista quite a bit (indirectly, it puts food on my table, since I write software for it), but I’m using Linux on a server that runs as my gateway/firewall, so I’m certainly not against the idea of using alternative operating systems. At some point I want to give Ubuntu a try. Maybe this would be a good kickoff for doing that.

If you want to get really into the heart of it, we should all just stop using computers completely. They are among the most problematic hazardous substances to get rid of, and they become obsolete so fast it’s really quite a shame. But we all know that’s probably not going to happen.

By: Pearl Jam

Pearl Jam — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:40:21 +0000

How about the amount of energy wasted by running Windows Vista on computers? With the higher CPU requirements, higher power consumption, I think we are better off using Linux / Mac OS X, anything basically that is not Windows Vista