03.24.07
Posted in General, Tech
at 7 am
Since a gas, when it’s put under pressure heats up, it logically follows that a gas that is released from high pressure cools off.
How about putting *more* carbonation into sodas and other drinks, providing a bleed-off release, and thereby let the soda be delivered in a self-cooling package? Image the amount of electricity that could be saved: these drinks would no longer have to be kept refrigerated!
Of course, the extra pressue might cause the cans to become modified pipe-bombs, but I’m sure there are ways around that…
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03.18.07
Posted in Tech, Transport
at 9 am
Peak Moment Television – Conversation 52:
Otmar Ebenhoech has worked with electric vehicles for decades, watching as popular commercial EVs were developed, then recalled when their legal mandate was overturned. He sees improved battery technologies as the catalyst to enable widespread acceptance of EV’s. Peek under the hood and watch a test drive of his hot electric Porsche race car conversion (0-60 in less than 5 seconds!).
Otmar gives a GREAT interview to a Peak Oil information site and we get to see an excellent interview that provides a solid introduction to EVs. Watch it!
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03.04.07
Posted in Apple, Tech
at 11 pm
So, I’ve been trundling down the road towards NASville for our Mac-infested home. NAS, Network Attached Storage, is enticing for a couple of reasons:
Low energy requirements: This is something I’m trying to stay conscious of with all of my new technology purchases. At this point, Amy and I have been using laptops for all of our computing needs. The last desktop tower I bought was my Blue and White G3 in 1999. That machine is on full time as a file server, iTunes server, and general storage and back up system. However, It sucks down quite a bit of electricity, at least compared to NAS devices out there.
Quite quiet: The fan noise of the G3 is muffled, sitting under a desk and we could move it to the spare room, but only if there was some spare room in the spare room. We actually keep the apartment pretty quiet so the TiVo and the G3 are really the the only thing that’s making noise as long as the refrigerator isn’t running.
Unlimited Storage: Well, not quite, but the G3 is limited to just 128 GB per the two drives that you can drop in there with the stock hardware. With an NAS I can continue to add more and more storage, depending on the device.
However, there are a number of roadblocks on the was to NASville. Mostly, of course, these are Mac-specific. Let me details the major issues:
Let me break it down like this: If you’re not using AFP (Apple Filing Protocol), you’re going to have problems. AFP is by far the most Mac-like of the network file systems that are available. Unfortunately, AFP is also one of the least commonly supported. It falls behind NFS, FTP and way, way, way behind SMB, aka Samba, aka CIFS. SMB is the mayor of NASville. The biggest problem with SMB from the Mac perspective is the restricted characters in filenames. Mac users are accustomed to naming files with abandon using virtually any character they can type on their keyboards (with one exception: ‘:’ the colon.) However thru SMB, files can’t use the following characters: ” / \ [ ] : + | < > = ; , * ? and space, and the period ‘.’ can only be used once. (This is only GENERALLY true. Later implementations that Microsoft has released have overcome most of these limits, but they have either not released the specifications, or Apple has not upgraded SMB support in the OS to the later versions.)
So what’s the problem? Well, Mac users with archives of files that they’ve named on their own machines will occasionally have some of those restricted characters. That means moving files over to the new NAS drive will require renaming the files which might be a minor issue or a huge consideration. One major issue is applications: Mac OS X applications are ‘bundles’ of files. Those internal files cannot be renamed, or else the app will be corrupted.
The other protocols have issues as well, mostly on the Mac side. NFS seems to have a number of configuration issues that you have to deal with when trying to browse to the drive and getting it to auto-mount. FTP is okay except that the Finder mounts FTP connections as read-only, so you have to use an FTP client to connect to it. (Other options: MacFUSE or Dave.)
- AFP: Best
- NFS: Tricky to set up, Mac-like to use
- SMB: Windows-native, filename restrictions.
Issue 2: File Systems and Mac Compatibility
Once the files have gone over the network to the NAS, it’s time to save the files to the drive. This involves the file structure of the hard drive that’s actually storing the file. There are a few options, but the most popular are FAT32 and NTFS. Of course there are problems with each. FAT32 was the last version of FAT that Microsoft published the spec for, but they’ve been trying to deprecate it in favor of NTFS. One of the ways they’ve done that is by not allowing recent version of Windows to create FAT32 partitions that are larger than a now measly 2GB. The problem with NTFS is that it’s so proprietary that only read access is available from the open source crowd. Apple hasn’t licensed the NTFS format from MS so Mac OS can’t do any more than read from it (if that in some cases).
Other file systems such as HFS+ (Mac’s own) or ext2 (from the Linux camp) are far less common among consumer products. The first would work great. I’m not sure about what might be usable for ext2 file systems.
- HFS+: Best
- FAT32: usable, but filenames are restricted, causing issues for applications
- NTFS: unusable, read-only
- ext2: ??
The summary
The longest single article I’ve found about NAS and Mac compatibility comes from Macintouch (no surprise). The real options from those reports and the ones I found are below. I’ve listed them in order of my preference.
- TrendNet TS-I300W (Enclosure only, supports NFS, 2 USB ports.)
- Synology DS-101j (Enclosure only, is EXT2, supports AppleTalk (hopefully AFP-like), Web server built-in. )
- Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station, with 802.11n (Connect drive via USB, supports AFP/HFS)
- SimpleTech SimpleShare (Not available without a built-in drive)
- Infrant ReadyNAS: Pricey and (some say) noisy, but full featured and multiple bays.
I’m probably going to pick up the TS-I300W in the next few days to drop the 300GB drive that I bought recently at Fry’s. The Synology was the other option of where to start and it was a 50/50 chance that I would pick one of them. The TrendNet product has ended up as the first one I’ll try. If it doens’t work out, I have high hopes for the DS-101j. The AirPort Extreme Base Station is another option and will likely be in the future of our network (once we’ve got Macs that support 802.11n).
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02.24.07
Posted in Life, People
at 11 pm
Richard Dawkins’ jaw-dropping talk on our bizarre universe (TEDTalks) – Google Video
” Richard Dawkins is Oxford University’s “Professor for the Public Understanding of Science.” Author of the landmark 1976 book, The Selfish … all » Gene, he’s a brilliant (and trenchant) evangelist for Darwin’s ideas. In this talk, titled, “Queerer Than We Suppose: The strangeness of science,” he suggests that the true nature of the universe eludes us, because the human mind evolved only to understand the “middle-sized” world we can observe. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:42) “
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02.17.07
Posted in Media
at 2 am
No no no, you want to see the full length video for “O Valencia” from the Decemberists….
http://pitchforkmedia.com/…
The Portland references in the titles is worth the video alone.
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02.08.07
Posted in Transport
at 11 pm
I just posted to YouTube: 2007 Portland Auto Show in two and a half minutes. Which was midly interesting… but only just. The show was pretty quiet and the companies don’t bring out the really advanced concepts.
The video is taken from about a 12-foot tall view of the main hall from the Oregon Convention Center. New cars and trucks on display. The film is really jerky, but it’s a fun ride. Any suggestion for a soundtrack?
Read the rest of this entry »
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01.25.07
Posted in Apple, Media, Tech
at 8 pm
After an aborted Xmas purchase of the RadioShark because ClubMac didn’t cancel the order when they ran out of stock, I ordered one of the new, black, sleek Sharks direct from Griffin and have installed it and have been listening to my favorite station (KNRK). There’s not much to it, 5 pieces to note: 1) The Black Fin is metal and really feels solid, 2) the base is mirror-polished and looks great, 3) the blue lights that show it’s powered on give off that whole ‘we’re so cool we use Blue LEDs in our device, which is a bit over played, 4) a longish permanently affixed USB cord and 5) an antenna-cum-headphone jack seems as simple as I expected. It has a little loop at the end that I’m sure would make it easier to pin to the wall, but we’ll see. Right now it just limply hangs behind the rest of the entertainment center.
(Seven Nation Army, White Stripes on KRNK – Go Timbers!)
Looking around the web, some people have been having huge cows over the interface, but really it’s not that bad. But not having dealt with 1.0, perhaps that’s the difference. It’s not the best UI, in fact I wish it would just fall straight in line with iTunes. (Not because iTunes is the height of UI design, but because it’s the most familiar music player for anyone who likes to listen to MP3s.)
It will be interesting to see how it deals with the DST issue, that does seem like a no-brainer bug that should have been fixed.
I really wish I could set up the RadioShark to be a stream that iTunes could pick up. It would mostly bypass the RS software during live broadcasts, only leaving out the ability to rewind.
(I Feel You, Depeche Mode now.)
I wonder…has anyone used their RS to try and win radio station contests? If there are somewhat predictable times for ‘winner announcements’ or ‘secret word’ broadcasts, then the Shark could be a big boon.
I do hope that support for RDS might come along at some point, which would enable a huge number of really cool applications.
Anyway, as of day 1, I’m quite happy with the purchase (even in spite of the horrible plastic blister packaging), and look forward to many hours of listening.
(Sure Shot, Beastie Boys.)
The Home Entertainment Project: Connecting All Transmissions (HEP:CAT) has almost come to completion. The last bit is an NAS hard drive that can handle gigs and gigs of music and video. Look for an overview article coming out about it some time this summer perhaps.
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01.21.07
Posted in Media
at 9 pm
An interesting look at the production quality of Mode’s most recent studio album. Alan, where are you…?
Depeche Mode – Playing The Angel – Another victim of the loudness race
The vinyl recording was normalized to maximum peak value. Comparing the two waveforms, it’s abundantly clear how much sound detail was sacrificed (on the CD edition) for the sake of MAXIMUM LOUDNESS. Is that progress?! I did actually listen to the CD and vinyl versions (at matched volume levels) for the sake of comparison, and my personal opinion was that the subtle details on the vinyl edition were indeed more…errr, subtle! Unlike the CD version, which is the musical equivalent of being shouted at.
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