Category Archives: technology

City of Seattle – Home heating fuel costs

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City of Seattle – Fuel Costs

Notice the oil and electrical resistance heating systems. Even with a newer 80% efficient oil furnace, the cost of fuel is still more than double the cost of an older natural gas furnace. If I had a house with oil or resistance heat, buying a new gas furnace would be a no brainer. When paying $1,000 extra per year, it doesn’t take long to pay for a more efficient heating system.

But look at that high efficiency heat pump! It costs only $350/yr to heat the house. Because it’s a heat pump, it’s also an air conditioner. By switching to a heat pump,  A/C is included.

Using a heat pump is also the best choice for our environment. Here in Seattle, the vast majority (91% - http://www.seattle.gov/light/FuelMix/) of our electricity is generated from hydro. An electrical powered solution burns almost no fossil fuels and contributes almost zero pollutants to the environment.

If that still isn’t enough reason to choose a heat pump, consider the rapidly declining costs of solar power generation. The installed costs declined from 2009 to 2010 by 17%.  Costs have further declined by 11% in the first half of 2011. Solar now costs less than $6/W installed. Germany and Japan are further ahead, and installed costs there are under $4/W. In a few more years, residential solar will be the cheapest way to purchase energy. Having all electric appliances is preparation for that future.

Twitt

HDR arrives for the masses

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Dynamic range has been a limitation of photography since its inception. Film and digital photographers have used a number of techniques over the years (merging film negatives, dodging and burning of film, bracketing on digital cameras) to enhance the range of their photos. The historical problem of achieving High Dynamic Range (HDR) has always been the amount of time spent post-processing the images. With film, the process could take days. With digital photos, it was reduced to hours. With the introduction of HDR on the iPhone, the process takes two seconds.

Apple added HDR functionality to the iPhone with the recently released iOS 4.1 update. With a single tap of the shutter, the camera takes three photos and merges them. When shooting a stationary subject with a steady hand, the results are excellent. Otherwise, the results are mixed. I’m certainly glad the camera I have with me has it as an option.

Twitt

It’s not just backhoes

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From, Mother Earth Mother Board

In 1870, a new cable was laid between England and France, and Napoleon III used it to send a congratulatory message to Queen Victoria. Hours later, a French fisherman hauled the cable up into his boat, identified it as either the tail of a sea monster or a new species of gold-bearing seaweed, and cut off a chunk to take home.

When written well, history is fascinating, and often hilarious.

Twitt

iPhone 4 early impressions

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The good:

  • FaceTime. It works. It is easy. Video quality is surprisingly good. Audio quality is excellent. The audio quality I’ve experienced is better than an iPhone call, Skype, or iChat AV.
  • The video camera does remarkably well in changing lighting conditions. I can walk around the house while on a FaceTime call and my image remains clear and well exposed as the lighting change. It’s far more fun to FaceTime my sleeping babies to a friend with an iPhone than a laptop.
  • Phone voice quality is improved. Callers sound better and they report that I sound better too. My buddy Mike, 2,000 miles away in Michigan, reported that the quality was as if I was standing next to him.
  • The Retina Display is amazing. After getting the iPad, I had reduced my  reading on the iPhone to those times when I didn’t have a computer or iPad. I still prefer reading on the iPad, but I find myself reading more on the 4. While the iPad is in arms reach. I am continually surprised at the rendering and legibility of teeny tiny type.
  • Speed. The 3GS was a huge performance boost over the 3G. While the 3GS was no slouch, I still saw occasional pauses and delays in responsiveness. I have yet to see any lags or pauses on the iPhone 4.
  • Reception. My experience has been entirely positive. I was able to drive all the way home from work while holding a call. For the first time. I explained the reception issue to a friend, “Imagine you have an AT&T phone with poor reception (nearly all of them, including iPhones) and suddenly you get one with very good reception. Except when you have poor coverage and hold the phone wrong. Would you be disappointed?”
  • Battery life is greatly improved. I’ve had my 4 for a week and have charged it three times. Every previous iPhone had to be charged nightly. I suspect that when the novelty wears off and I’ve beaten all the levels in Angry Birds, I may get 3 days of ‘normal’ usage from a charge.

The Bad

  • I love how pocketable the 3G is. I carried the 3G and 3GS in my front pants pocket, vertically, with the glass against my leg and the curved plastic back facing out. The curved back nearly matched the profile of my leg, and that position protected the glass screen. I rarely noticed its presence. Being narrower, the 4 likes to  slide down and ride sideways. That produces a larger and less comfortable bulge, which I regularly correct. While the 4 is thinner, it often feels thicker while pocketed.
  • The 4 is glass on both sides. When I heard Apple describe the glass as 20 times stiffer and 30 times stronger than plastic, warning bells went off. While working in mechanical engineering departments, I enjoyed spending time in the prototype labs. Especially when that time ended by filling out forms with the words, “consumed in testing.” Whether plastic, metal, or glass, harder materials are more brittle. I do believe the 4 will be more scratch resistant. And possibly more impact resistant. But it’s still glass. If I’m out rock climbing and drop it while taking a picture, I believe the 4 is more likely to be significantly damaged. This will be the first iPhone I buy a case for.

To Be Determined

  • I was able to get 8 hours of backcountry GPS use out of the iPhone 3GS. That’s with the 3G, WiFi, and Bluetooth disabled and occasional use of the camera. For comparison, my buddy has an Android phone that lasts 3 hours while using GPS. I’ll be trying out the 4 soon with the recently updated Motion GPS, updated for background use in iOS 4. It would be great if I can get a weekend of use from a single charge.
Twitt

BSD, how I love thee

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Gordon called this morning. I always like hearing from Gordon, and today was no exception. Even when “the pooh has struck the rotary oscillator,” Gordon is polite and amiable. Since Gordon manages a slew of networks, the best way to keep in touch with him is to break one of his servers.

To make sure he doesn’t forget about me, I wrote a program to do this automatically. I’m quite clever about it. The breakages coincides with power outages, lightning strikes, and other such events so my tracks are always covered. Gordon has to call me at least once every year or two.

After a manual fsck, his server back came back online but wasn’t working. We figured out that he’d changed the default gateway of the network since the machine was last rebooted. We updated the routing table on the machine and all was well. Since it had been 14 months since the box was last touched, we decided I should do some updates.

Partway though, I filled up /var. Oh, the partition is only 256MB. That’s a tad on the small side, I thought. Then I looked at the disk size: 16GB. RAID 5. Seriously? 9GB disks. And 256MB of RAM. The Pentium III processor dates the machine to circa 1999. And I just upgraded the OS to current. Amazing.

Twitt