DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Borrowed Time Studios, v. 3.0, just went back into its box. I’ll post a list of the v3 upgrades in a day or 27; for now I just wanted to capture the before and after pictures to commemorate a summer of drumming.

Monday afternoon

Wednesday evening

Last year I lamented that I’d spent the summer tracking just six songs. This summer, I only tracked two. But I wrote them both, and I over-composed some of the drum parts, so the tracking expanded to fill the time allowed. Had I written threee more tunes, I would have recorded them too — Parkinson’s Law was in full effect. But it was fun, and I got some good tracks (and many many discards, natch).

Bim forwarded a link to this great Wikihow article about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming:
Reduce Your Greenhouse Gas Emissions

It’s a great complement to my earlier (but much smaller) list of ideas for slowing global warming.

The Wikihow has so many ideas, it’s easy to pick one or two per week to get started. I think all conservation initiatives have been stifled by the perception that the problem is too big for any one individual to solve. It’s true, of course, but ironically if millions of individuals do take action, then we make significant progress. So, start small: change a light bulb. See a movie. Read the Wikihow article and forward it to friends.

We’re already following, or have followed 17 of the 44 tips listed on the page. It’s good to know there’s more we could do.

I especially like the idea of getting an “energy audit” from the local utility. PG&E used to offer such a program, I think; I remember ads offering a free CF light bulb to entice ratepayers to sign up. That program seems to have gone the way of the electric car, just in time for, erm, an unprecedented ecological disaster.

The PG&E site does offer a checklist of ideas for reducing energy usage around the home, with estimated savings rates, e.g. save 2% off your monthly bill by turning off lights when they’re not in use.

Chank’s font sale is back.

I haven’t done any visual design in three years, which I consider a gift to consumers of media everywhere. But even so, I have a dozen Chank fonts in my collection, including a couple that have since been renamed to be safe for corporate America. (e.g. Dickwhipped Lincoln).

Update: I just realized that Chank & Co. are changing font prices daily. Reload for the latest and lowest.

See previous Chank.com pimpage.

New photovoltaic users in California look forward to their first “trueup” bill from PG&E, as its 12 pages are dense with tables and graphs showing energy usage and fees for the month. It promises to reveal in fascinating detail the PV system’s production and the household’s demand, culminating in the month’s balance — charge or credit — which ultimately, at the end of the year, will ideally be $0 for a well-sized PV array.

But a month later, photovoltaic users simply file the monthly trueup bill without a glance, because 11 of those 12 pages are utterly incomprehensible.

I used to read the cover page, because as noted above it shows the running total dollar amount, which is both interesting and easily understood. Most of the time.

My numbers for the first quarter:

In other words, according to the trueup bill, in February we generated about 30,000 kWh of surplus power, which if my math is right would actually require 500 days of pure sunshine, with no clouds, and 70°F ambient temperatures so the panels don’t get too hot. Oh, and those would have to be 24-hour days. And the sun would have to be perfectly overhead the entire time.

Considering that we get somewhat less than 24 hours of perfect direct sunshine every day, and we occasionally see a cloud, it would actually take more than 500 days to generate 30,000 kWh of power. Our array was turned up in January, 2004, and to date we’ve only generated about 9850 kWh… so we’ll need something like 7.7 years to hit 30,000 kWh. A bit more than 28 days, anyway.

Then in March, according to the trueup bill, we burned over 30,000 kWh, which I guess would be possible if I accidentally left the oven on for, say, 8 months. In February.

So the dumb thing is that there’s no bounds checking in PG&E’s bill calculation. It ought to seem unlikely that a household could spike its solar electric generation by a factor of 100 within a month’s time, especially considering that the last time a private citizen tried to put a 30kW PV system on the grid, it took 14 months of negotiations and a lawsuit before PG&E turned it up.

The other dumb thing is that the correction one month later was also incorrect. My unbilled charges for March should be $100 or less, not $544. But nobody caught this either. Had I not called to complain, I’m sure my year-end bill would have been ~$400 too high.

Fortunately, PG&E was relatively quick with the explanation (a mis-read meter) and a corrected trueup bill.

Unfortunately, our generation for 2006 is low by about 12% as compared to 2005. I’ve contacted our vendor to investigate possible problems. It’s possible the weather this year is to blame; our vendor can compare our generation to other installations in the area.

See also our running total electric charges for the year — we appear to have recently squandered a savings of ~20% off our 2005 fees. This week’s heat wave sure isn’t helping anything, either.

Next week I’m going to buy either a high-end Macbook or a low-end Macbook Pro. They are very similar machines, with a couple key differences that may or may not justify the $700 price difference. Following is a feature-by-feature comparison, assembled to help me decide whether the Pro is worth the extra money.

Similarities
cpu:	2.0 GHz Duo	2.0 GHz Duo
disk rpm:	5400	5400
usb 2.0 ports:	2	2
firewire ports:	1 (400)	1 (400)
wifi interface:	802.11b/g	802.11b/g
optical drive:	DVD±RW, CD-RW	DVD±RW, CD-RW
ethernet:	gigabit	gigabit
Bluetooth:	yes	yes
iLife bundle:	yes	yes
optical digital audio i/o:	yes	yes
iSight camera:	yes	yes
Differences
RAM:	256MBx2	512MBx1
ExpressCard/34:	no	yes
video card:	Intel 950	Radeon X1600
dedicated VRAM:	no	yes
disk capacity:	60 gb	80 gb
backlit keyboard:	no	yes
weight:	5.2 lbs	5.6 lbs
screen size:	13.3''	15.4''
resolution:	1280x800	1440x900
max battery life:	6 hrs	4.5 hrs
case:	plastic (white)	aluminum alloy
Price:	$1299	$1999 ($1849 $1499 at Amazon)

Taking the differences in turn:

• I wouldn’t recommend keeping the default RAM configuration of 512 MB because there are few easier ways to make a computer slow down than running it with insufficient RAM. I’ll personally upgrade either machine to 1GB total, or possibly 2GB.
  Both machines realize a performance benefit from having a matched pair of DIMMs, e.g. 2x512 (1GB total) or 2x1024MB (2GB total).
  It’s worth noting that because the default Macbook configuration consists of 2x256MB, a future RAM upgrade is more expensive than it would be on the Pro, because both 256MB modules would have to be discarded to make room for higher-density DIMMs. Both models have only two available RAM slots.
• The Pro has a faster video subsystem; it has dedicated VRAM and an upgraded video card. For people planning to play games or do video processing (e.g. via iMovie) this would be valuable. If like me you spend most of your time typing text into terminal windows and web forms, this upgrade is less compelling.
• The Pro has an ExpressCard/34 slot, which allows the use of expansion cards, e.g. Firewire 800 interfaces, memory card readers, cellular wifi cards, etc.
  Initially I thought I’d be interested in the Firewire 800 interface, because I plan to use this computer to record 16 channels of 24-bit audio simultaneously — that’s a lot of data — but research indicates that any single hard drive is slower than the Macbook’s built-in Firewire 400 bus, making such an upgrade pointless.
  Still, having the possibility of future expansion is attractive, even if not immediately useful.
• The hard drive in the Pro is 20GB bigger — nice to have, although for me not relevant. I’ll probably upgrade to a 7200 RPM drive in a year anyway as that’s a performance boost one can feel, especially when rebooting or launching large applications.
• The Pro has a backlit keyboard. I really want this feature. I’m constantly squinting at the my Powerbook’s keyboard (which is ironic given that the QWERTY keycaps don’t match what I’m typing anyway). On the other hand, I could buy a $5 USB-powered LED lamp instead of a computer that costs $700 more.
• The Macbook is not quite a half-pound lighter. That’s a nontrivial difference for anyone who travels.
  I can always identify people who have been going to too many tech conferences; one shoulder hangs an inch lower than the other.
• The Pro has a bigger screen — 2.1 diagonal inches and 272,000 pixels. I’d miss this if I bought the small unit.
  Of course, the Macbook has a longer batter life, due in large part to the smaller screen. This isn’t a tough tradeoff for me, but if I spent more time on airplanes or at conferences where power is hard to find, the Macbook would be a better choice.
• The plastic case on the Macbook has the advantage of not interfering with wifi signals. My G4 Powerbook has terrible wifi performance due to the titanium case. I’ve read that Apple has relocated the antenna on its current models to address this problem, but I’m not sure how effective this fix is. I wouldn’t be surprised of the Macbook’s airport performance is superior to the Pro’s. My wife’s G4 iBook smokes my Powerbook in this regard.

So what would the extra $700 really buy me? A bigger screen, but shorter battery life… a backlit keyboard, but potentially inferior wifi performance.

Or, on the other hand, it could buy me a couple nice microphones!

Hmm, anybody want to buy a well-loved Powerbook for $550?