I knew the world was moving toward more digital reality, but I didn’t know how fast. Wow. This is spellbinding!
Taken from Stargate Studios, this is a collage of some of their virtual work. It appears that almost every outdoor scene you see on TV is actually shot with a green screen for later enhancement and embellishment.
It’s a grandiose title to this post, but I can’t imagine any other way to think about it. Google has more impact in my day-to-day life than my local government. And I trust Google a whole lot more (witness the Obama vs. House Republicans encounter here - hilarious – until you realize these people rule us).
This is a report of the briefing Google gave at Davos on Friday, made by the author of “What Would Google Do?”. While I have my quibbles about the intellectual depth of the book – once you read the title, do you need to read anything more? – I’m completely behind the treatise of the book, and it makes Jeff Jarvis the perfect person to report this.
Yesterday, Apple unveiled it’s latest creation, the iPad. I am less interested in the technology than in the backroom politics of digital media here. The iPad is essentially a giant iPhone without the two year contract. The new A4 processor does not allow multitasking, the apps will run like the iPhone apps, etc. It’s just bigger and brighter.
My point of interest is if this will really be a book reading machine like the Kindle, with 100’s of thousands of titles available to purchase, download and read immediately. It looks like it might be. The next question is if the files set up for the iPad are also readable by the iPhone. I have no problem reading on my phone, as I’ve mentioned before. And I’d be more than happy to read them on my handy, always-by-my-side cellphone.
About two weeks ago, our fair server (home to steussy.com, Chris’ IB History Topics, Helen’s new blog, my business websites, etc.) shut down for no apparent reason at 4am. Panic!
I spend the day combing through log files, searching for hints of an intruder. The shutdown scrambled several log files, so I decided to rebuild the system from scratch. Right in the middle of doing so and, coincidentally at 4pm, the computer shut down again. Argh!
Again, assuming a South Korean hacker was coming for my lovely family photos and insightful rhetoric, I downgraded the software to a slightly earlier version, assuming that the bugs would be ironed out of that. Installing the earlier Linux operating system solved the problem. For two days. Then another 4am shutdown.
I got the bright idea that the computer might be overheating. There are sensors already in place inside most computer equipment these days to measure temperature and shutdown if it gets too high. Accessing the sensors is easy with the MacOS, but a bit more complicated with Linux. I installed lm-sensors (a data extraction tool) and sensorsd (a separate tool to query lm-sensors and provide a log). The CPU is showing 67º Celsius (152º for you Fahrenheit people). Is that high? Querying Google, I find an engineering doc from Intel that rates the Celeron processor in the server at a maximum temperature of 67º. Hmm.
I take the casing off the computer. I move the server down to the garage. Winter in Temecula means outside temperatures between 34º and 65º Farenheit, so the garage location should cool it down a bit. I also blow some compressed air around the insides of the computer and particularly around the fan connected to the CPU.
Temperatures go down for awhile – 57º, 59º, 65º, 57º – but then spike again after a few days – 65º, 67º, 69º, 67º. What’s going on? Do I need to get a new computer?
Last night, about 9pm I return home from taking Daniel to his periodic ultrasound exam. He fell asleep in the back of the Toyota before we got back. I check the server. 72º C, right at the edge of shutdown. I go to the garage with a can of compressed air and a flashlight. I tilt the computer over 45º and shine the flashlight directly into the spinning fan that sits on the CPU. What do my eyes behold but a solid mass of lint, plugging every single cooling vent on the heatsink, packing it with dust and lint. The dust and lint were completely invisible when the fan wasn’t running, but under the flashlight with the running fan, they stand out like dog poop on a red carpet entrance. I take five minutes cleaning with compressed air and some tape to remove the larger particles.
This morning, after running for 12 hours, all temperatures are at 38º, with a 4am spike of 56º. Our server is safe again …
I will personally attest to the Xbox problem. My 1.5 year old Xbox is now out of warranty. While Microsoft will offer service after that period for some failures, it won’t for what I have (DVD drive failure). Further, rather than make the DVD drives easily replaceable, there is an absurdly complicated system of DVD drive identity matching. I’ve worked for three weeks now to replace or repair the drive on mine with no luck at all.
I received a copy of Dragon Age: Origins for Christmas. It is now the 15th of January, and I haven’t played a minute of it because of the Xbox. Every other digital piece in my house (and there are a lot of them) has been kept up-to-date either with warranty repairs or my personal service. Not the crappy Microsoft Xbox 360. I’ll keep that in mind when I look for a replacement.
Full copy of the poster this comes from is available at my professional blog, here.
Our Server
Our server was up and down over the past two days. I’ve solved the problem (for the moment) by completely rebuilding the software from the ground up.
If you see something that isn’t functioning as it should, please let me know. I’ll spend the next couple of days fine tuning the new server.
This is so cool. The first video is a professional ad video that looks cool. The second video is from CES in Las Vegas and is actually cooler, since it shows the real capabilities and plans for it.
In Costco on Sunday, I go to the eyeglasses section to order new contacts. I’d worn my trial pair for three weeks, liked them well enough to order a full set.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Steussy, but on Sundays the optometrist’s office is closed. Unless you have the written prescription in your pocket, we can’t order the contacts for you.”
Light bulb goes off. “Why, I do have my prescription in my pocket! Just a moment.” I take out my iPhone and two minutes later have an image of my contact lens prescription.
OK – there are two questions that need to be answered: How did I do that? And why did I do that?
Two years ago, I set out to run a paperless life. Every receipt or document is scanned or photographed, then filed electronically in my computers along with all my other images. My electronic environment (all computers, server, etc.) is religiously backed up, including off-site copies, so these images are virtually impossible to lose. For legal and tax purposes, the images are completely acceptable.
Why did I have that image with me? All images from every camera/scanner go to iPhoto. In iPhoto, there is a pre-set folder marked “Last 12 months”. Going to iTunes, I set my iPhone to copy that folder whenever I plug into my computer. Voila, I have a year’s worth of all images, including receipts.
Usually this comes in handy when showing a six month old photo of someone’s son or daughter to a visiting aunt. This is the first time a scanned document has proven useful.
Google has announced that it is releasing an Open Source operating system soon. True geek stuff below. (more…)
We’d been planning for awhile to swap out our standard incandescent lights for the compact florescent lights, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Low and behold, one day six weeks ago we bump into a sale at Costco. Not a sale, a give-away. 10 florescent bulbs for $2. That’s $0.20 each. We couldn’t pass it up.
We’ve replaced nearly all of the bulbs in the house. That’s not the only change since last year – all of the computers in the house are now laptops, except for the free-standing server that hosts this webpage. All of our cathode ray screens have been replaced by flat panels in the last year.
Time to check the results. It’s hard to tell, but going back to other October/November billings we’re seeing a 20% drop in energy usage. That means a 40% drop in our electric bill. Our blackmailer utility, Southern California Edison, charges a more-or-less normal national rate for a very, very small amount of electricity, then ramps it up to one of the highest charges anywhere in the world if you go beyond that minimum (see comparison chart here). The energy we saved was all being charged at $0.30 per kilowatt/hr.
In the summertime, just looking at an air conditioner requires taking out a second mortgage.
Ramona, CA
