Entries from May 2008 ↓

Just saw a couple clips of Google’s Android Phone OS.  There are some things that are cool and improved (like the unlock pattern code). But I’m a bit baffled by this feature:

So if you are standing on a street, what exactly is the point of being able to pan around and see what is right in front of you on your phone?  Now maybe around the corner is cool - but the compass part of that would only confuse you I think.

This video is pretty amazing animation in its own right, the fact that it takes place across buildings and walls makes it that much more amazing. If the artist wasn’t inspired by the animations of Bill Plimpton, I would be very surprised. Plimpton was a pioneer of this style of freakish random animation.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

NPR had a story this morning about recycling energy.  This is such a better area to be investing some research into over biofuels.  It demonstrates a fundamental understanding of what constitutes waste heat and thermodynamics.  One processes waste can be another’s source.  One of the examples they used, was if I recall 10 years old and it was simply placing a boiler over the ovens that make coal-coke (part of making steel).  This requires very high temps, and the electricity generated by this was 100MW.  To put that in perspective, most wind turbines out there are only 1-3 MW - so this one boiler was like a whole windfarm, and it was using energy that was considered waste product from another process.  Now this isn’t free energy, the original energy input into the coal-coke oven is HUGE, but at least you try to harness as much as possible.  Taking this a step further, you could take the waste steam out from the boiler/turbine system and heat oil which, if there were an infrastructure for it in the surrounding community, could be used to heat every house in the area.  The coal-coke oven is thousands of degrees, the boiler runs at hundreds of degrees, easy enough to get heated oil at 90-100 degrees to then heat housing with.  This is the energy equivalent of an eskimo eating every part of the seal and letting nothing go to waste, instead we are killing the elephant for the tusk.

NPR had a bit this morning on carbon offsets. IMHO these are a pretty poor way to address the problem of carbon output. Most of these credits go towards things like wind and solar power and often claim to help you be “carbon neutral”. These may reduce growth of carbon output, but they don’t actually help remove any of the carbon you spewed in the activity you took part in (and for which you are buying credits). Its mainly a guilt alleviator, and really just serves to enable people to not improve or better their behavior or lifestyle.

Think of it this way, would you support a murder offset credit, that let you kill someone, but then donate money to help starving children somewhere (who otherwise would die). In the end you may be “life neutral”, but you still did bad thing, and you can’t right it by paying someone to make you feel better. Extreme comparison for sure, but I think it is apt.

I’m sure this is going to circulate far and wide in the Mac blogging world, but it is worth giving it one more airing.  I can’t imagine how long this must have taken to get all the timing right:

This one on how the economy woes are tied to what people expect in terms of lifestyle.  And for things to get better, people will have to change their lifestyle - not something most Americans want to do - hence, I think the economic problems will last longer.

A new NPR collaboration between All Things Considered and This American Life sounds promising. Their first program looks at the root origins of the subprime mess. Something I wish I had acted on earlier because I was one of the ones in 2004-5 predicting a train wreck (from the sidelines).

They had a teaser version of the show during the ATC show and the full length show is today.