Sunday, 27 September, 2009. Tagged with: links, environment
Three New York Times articles suggest a very pragmatic direction to improve energy efficiency, reduce need for new power plants - or, allow for less efficient plants to be retired - and thereby reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses emitted.
Solar Power, Without All Those Panels
…companies are now offering alternatives to these fixed installations, in the less conspicuous form of shingles, tiles and other building materials that have photovoltaic cells sealed within them.
”The new materials are part of the building itself, not an addition, and they are taking photovoltaics to the next level — an aesthetic one,” said Alfonso Velosa III, a research director at Gartner and co-author of a coming report on the market for the new field, called building-integrated photovoltaics.
By giving a home or building the capacity to satisfy some of its own power requirements, the grid itself gets a bit of an infrastructural buffer. Think fewer brownouts during high demand, or the ability to keep the fridge running if a transformer down the street blows up.
Build a Better Bulb for a $10 Million Prize
The ubiquitous but highly inefficient 60-watt light bulb badly needs a makeover. And it could be worth millions in government prize money — and more in government contracts — to the first company that figures out how to do it.
…
The L Prize has garnered significant attention in the lighting industry because 60-watt incandescent lamps represent 50 percent of all the lighting in the United States, with 425 million sold each year. The Energy Department says that if all those lamps were LED equivalents, enough power would be saved to light 17.4 million American households and cut carbon emissions by 5.6 million metric tons annually.
The article talks about Phillips’ entry for the L Prize, but I’d keep my eye on Morrisville-based Cree.
It’s Easy Being Green
Paul Krugman:
It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.
How do we know this? First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now. That is, we’re burning large amounts of coal, oil and gas in ways that don’t actually enhance our standard of living — a phenomenon known in the research literature as the “energy-efficiency gap.” The existence of this gap suggests that policies promoting energy conservation could, up to a point, actually make consumers richer.
I’d settle for staying even.
Saturday, 29 August, 2009. Tagged with: apple, mac-os-x
While waiting for his own review of Snow Leopard to go live on Ars Technica, John Siracusa reminded his Twitter followers of his back catalog of authoritative examinations of previous Mac OS X versions.
They go back all the way to Mac OS X Developer Preview 2 from December of 1999.
Release-to-release, there’s always a lot more to ask for, and from 10.0 through 10.4, there was a whole lot of refinement needed. Heck, 10.2 was really the first version I gave an unabashed recommendation for to people who weren’t interested in being developers.
What’s nice about Siracusa’s reviews, release-to-release, is his consistent thoroughness. Part of that is revisiting past (and continued) frustrations.
From his 10.2 review:
By the time version 10.1 was released, I was ready for some salvation. Version 10.1 held the promise of being the “mainstream release”–something good enough for everyone to use, not just the brave early adopters that sweated out the public beta and the 10.0 release. Version 10.1 certainly was a vast improvement over 10.0. The previous statement can be read as praise for 10.1 or as a condemnation of 10.0, but it is undeniable.
In the end, I wanted more than something that was simply “better than 10.0.” As I wrote in my 10.1 review:
I want to believe that [Mac OS X] will replace Mac OS 9 in a way that improves upon every aspect of the classic Mac OS user experience. Unfortunately, although this may still come to pass, Mac OS X 10.1 is not that version of Mac OS.
It seemed that even Apple itself didn’t fully believe in its new OS, as it continued to ship hardware that booted into Mac OS 9 by default.
I’m reminded of several of my own frustrations with early Mac OS X. While I’m looking forward to Snow Leopard’s refinements and enhancements, I can’t think of an overarching complaint I have about the OS itself now. It’s come a long way in eight years or so of public release.
For instance, I remember purchasing the Public Beta and installing it on the PowerMac G3 I had at home and, somewhat ill-advisedly, my work machine. The Public Beta was interesting, but looking back, there were some nasty bugs and decisions I’m glad Apple rectified. Consider, the Apple Menu didn’t exist, but there was an Apple logo that sat dead center in the title bar. Then there was the train-wreck of differing user interfaces. Oh, and pinstripes. Lots of pinstripes.
Siracusa has the enthusiasm for the platform, but having the clear-eyed vision to identify its shortcomings and disappointments. That’s a valuable critique.
The past will inform the present. Here’s the list (with one addition) from Siracusa:
Saturday, 15 August, 2009. Tagged with: barcamprdu, presentation
Last week at BarCampRDU, I presented “Productivity of a Submariner.” At my day job, I wrote and presented “Maintainable Perl”. Both presentations went well. But, I wanted to dig through notes I made over the course of the week to help my future presentations, polish them a bit and share them.
Rehearse
I did two run-throughs of my BarCampRDU presentation with my wife. I found it awkward to actually start speaking. I had a mental block to starting. Thankfully, I didn’t have that issue in either of the live presentations, largely because I was aware of the potential. I got the ball rolling by engaging in small talk and went right into the presentation.
I also needed to recognize each slide and how to successfully transition between slides and points without skipping around the presentation. I suffered the issue in the “Submariner” rehearsals, but was satisfactorily minimized it going live.
The main lesson (re)learned is speaking is different than reading. I need to giving myself a run-through to hear myself speaking and identify what needs emphasis or a softer touch.
Put any links to online material in the first few slides
I planned my “Submariner” presentation poorly. With questions and discussions, I barely got though half of my material. But that’s OK. I learned from it, and I got great feedback on where people were having difficulty and concern in applying my idea to their own situations.
At the risk of sending people scurrying to download my slides and follow along, I’ll add a link to where my slides are earlier in the presentation. If time runs tight, people already know where additional resources are located. I’d repeat this at the end, too.
One mitigating factor; if it’s the first time I’m presenting, I can give the URL, but hold back the material itself until after the presentation.
Minimize failure points
“Submariner” was my first time using Keynote seriously. Of course, right after I bought iWork, I picked up the iPhone Keynote Remote app. It’s a swell idea. You see the slide on screen and the speaker’s notes. But, I discovered as BarCamp progressed, I had trouble connecting to the WiFi network in the room I was going to be presenting in. That rendered the Remote app useless since it only works via WiFi. I attempted to create an ad-hoc wireless network from my MacBookPro, but my iPhone had difficulty connecting to it.
While I would have liked to have used the Remote app, I should have packed the white Apple remote and paired it. It’s simple. It works.
All of this led to a mild panic before my presentation. I was hoping Keynote had functionality to display my speakers notes on the MacBookPro, but not on the projector. Sure enough, it has a speaker’s display, but under the gun isn’t the best time to hope the application can solve your problem.
Also, everyone says this, but be sure to bring a Mini DisplayPort to VGA or DVI connector. Projectors don’t have Mini DisplayPort cables that I’ve seen and hoping to find one at the conference is gambling. Of course, all of this can be rendered moot by not having slides at all and presenting naked.
Finally, bring water. It’s uncool to have your voice lock-up when your mouth is dry.
Know what time it is and how long you’ve been talking
Keynote’s speaker display has a clock and either a stopwatch or countdown timer. I go with the stopwatch. I want to know how long I’ve been speaking and a rough approximation of how much time I have left.
Know your pacing
Part of doing a presentation for the first time in a long time was correlating my slides to a total time to present them. I use slides as public guideposts for the presentation and the speakers notes as reminders for specific things I want to say. I didn’t know how long it was all going to take until I stopped writing and rehearsed. My initial inclination was to write more because I thought I’d fly through the material.
As previously stated, I ended up with roughly half (alright, two-fifths, really) of my “Submariner” slides untouched. Given the format of BarCamp, it’s natural people are going to ask questions. I didn’t allow for that.
Thursday, when I presented what I determined would be the first part of two or three of “Maintainable Perl,” I kept a rough eye on the clock. Overall, the presentation ended up at about two minutes per slide. That’s a great metric for me. When I write the next presentation, I know how much time I have, how much material I can cover and allow for questions and discussion.
Process
I had a vague recollection that OmniOutliner Pro could export as a Keynote file. Working over two presentations, I stopped writing incredibly detailed outlines and adding somewhat detailed notes. Top level items become slide titles. Each top-level items children become slide bullet points. By default, you get the presentation in a title/bullet master slide when there are sub-items and a title only master when there’s only the top level item. Notes on either a top level or a child element are treated as speakers notes.
It’s a bit different than how I typically use OmniOutliner Pro, but I find it a lot easier to manipulate the outline and make minor tweaks in Keynote.
For the themes I’ve used, I learned I need to keep the title of each slide short.
Another perspective
You may also be interested in Ignite Raleigh presenter Rafe Colburn’s series of posts on lessons he learned from presenting. They’re worth your time.
Sunday, 09 August, 2009. Tagged with: barcamprdu, productivity, presentation
I presented “Productivity of a Submariner” at BarCampRDU on August 8, 2009. My thanks to everyone who attended and asked thoughtful questions about how this might or might not work for them.
I’m OK with not making it through the entire presentation. I learned a lot from the questions, and next time, I know to know my environment and time things better. Regardless, I’ve posted the slides of the full, intended presentation as a PDF document.
I had to gloss over resources at the end, so here they are in link form:
I’d like to extend a very special thank you to my wife, @5x5 for her assistance in listening to the early run-throughs and offering advice in tuning my presentation. For what it’s worth, she warned me about letting the presentation run off the rails with questions.
Friday, 31 July, 2009. Tagged with: apple, iphone, government
The FCC is looking into Apple’s rejection of Google Voice from the App Store and post-release removal of other Google Voice apps.
Apple has iPhone developer trouble brewing and there are several reconsidering their commitment to iPhone application development. Mint and Fever developer Shaun Inman suggested an App Store reviewer was “practicing malicious compliance.”
Developers are pounding Apple from one side. User are on the other, with AT&T coverage in major cities getting worse. San Francisco sounds like iPhone utility is about nil on 3G, Austin’s AT&T coverage during SxSW fell apart. AT&T hasn’t announced tethering or MMS plans yet, roughly two months after WWDC.
Setting aside some of the truly moronic app denials and that any app accessing the Internet now has to be marked as 17+ in the App Store, what if Apple is done with AT&T’s exclusivity in the US? What if there was a non-trivial amount of time to run on the contract, but Apple can’t force AT&T into a better network upgrade timetable. What if instead of (or only) playing hardball in negotiating extensions to AT&T’s exclusivity, Apple decided to give AT&T exactly everything AT&T asked for with regard to preserving the network, as it is now.
If AT&T decides an app is potentially harmful – whether or not the same app runs on BlackBerries – it tells Apple to pull the app. Apple looks at the contract and says, “Fine, here you go.” That happens enough and sure enough the FCC starts asking questions. Apple points to the contract and says, “These are the terms and conditions we feel we need to stay in compliance with.”
I have two questions. Can the FCC void the contract or decree that Apple must also support the iPhone on another GSM carrier (T-Mobile)? Would Apple play this strategy in the hope that AT&T would request an app to be pulled that would trigger an inquiry?
I presume the FCC has some regulatory authority to cure a competitive deficit, and it looks like they’re interested in doing so. From all appearances, Apple’s pissed, but, if it is a strategy, it’s a gamble that it won’t backfire.
