Thursday, April 26, 2012
Moving
In my continuing effort to rationalise everything to do with my online presence... blog is moving to THMooreBlog.BlogSpot.com. This can also be accessible via www.thmoore.org.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Energy Innovation
The ideas of energy innovation have been a hot topic over the last number of years. There are many reasons for the concerns. Coal power is about as dirty an energy source as there is. Even if you don't believe in the effects of climate change there is no arguing the about of radioactive waste that get pushed directly up into the air as a result of burning coal. This waste is estimated to be toughly 100 times the amount of radioactive material that is contained in a nuclear reactor, and goes up into the air and gets blown around. Oil as we know has issues with supply and refinement, issues with drilling and potential oil spill sand the horrible environmental effects of these disasters.
Alternative energy sources exist, but in reality are only feasible at this point, in small uses. Solar panels, wind turbines, bio files, etc all have had there spills in popularity, however they have never truly been feasible for the mass production of power on the grand scale.
Then we come to Nuclear Power. Nuclear power is one of those issues that inevitably invokes passionate arguments around the issue. Now you would shave had to live under a rock, or in a shed in a forrest in Montana not to have heard the name "Fukushima" over the past year and a half.
The story goes that Japan had an earthquake, which caused a tsunami, which caused mass devastation in the area of a nuclear power plant, which sparked a chain of events which led to the latest nuclear disaster.
So what was the final death toll attributed to the disaster? An estimated 20,000 people. Clearly Nuklear power is horrible because of that death toll right? Well, not really. The loss of human life is terrible, no matter the cause. However of those 200,000 lives that were lost, the vast majority were lost due to the effects of the earthquake, and the tsunami, not the nuclear disaster that followed up.
According to Asian Correspondant the final death toll for the nuclear portion of the incident were 5. Of those:
* one man who became trapped in the console of a crane during the earthquake,
* two who were swept away by the tsunami
* a clean up worker who suffered from a heart attack.
And another man reportedly died suddenly in October. Although the company is not revealing the cause of death, they say it was not related to radiation.
Now the conspiracy theorists could surmise that the final death was in fact a coverup of radiation poisoning or a cover up of some sort, but the fact remains that the death toll was Thankfully very small during this disaster.
The article goes on to state that there are expected to be no deaths from radiation at all.
By compare, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people as a direct result of the incident. The Pike River coal mine explosion killed 29 people. These incidents aren't isolated, but that are considered almost an acceptable loss for the industry. Now don't get me wrong I don't think there is any such thing as an 'acceptable loss' however if we were to operate industries along the line of 0 acceptable losses, nothing would ever happen.
So the question arrises as to why we continue to use power sources like coal and natural bass, despite the higher death toll. The answer was outlined in a bit of an off handed comment, however one can't shake the reality. These types of power kill vasty more people, however they do it in lower concentrations. Politicians prefer this because it means they show up at a funeral, publish a press release and the next day they can get "back on message." Where as with a nuclear disaster they have to monitor the solution for ages because everyone is sitting on the edge of there seats waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Inevitably the sceptics of Nuclear power end up going back to the Chernobyl incident and the death toll from that incident as justification for not using nuclear power. My answer to that response is typically "Banning nuclear power based on Chernobyl is like
banning driving based on the Ford Pinto, with no breaks, no seat belts, and no headlights while driving at highway speeds in the middle of the night."
The reality is we need energy innovation. Traditional means of power production simply aren't feasible. Many people suggest that by increasing domestic supply of oil we can avoid the expense and risk of spending money on advances in technology. First and foremost, increasing supply will not impact the issues that we currently face. The idea of Supply and Demand, thus increasing supply results in lower cost is an overly simple economic model. For this to work we would have to assume that the demand for power consumption remain constant, that there are no other outside factors, and ignore the idea that oil is traded as a global commodity. Additionally we would have to assume that domestic production is sufficient to have a dramatic impact on the overall supply, and rely on there being no other supply limiting factors. The only way to dramatically affect the price of energy is to dramatically reduce the demand. Demand will be reduced in only two ways, new technologies that increase efficiencies, or new technologies that allow alternate energy sources to meet our needs. Guess what, both mean innovation.
Energy innovation also isn't about addressing the demands of today. We have something that, depending on your perspective, meets our current needs, so why are we going to waste time investing in future technologies? Imagine if we stopped making medical advances because there wasn't any pressing need right now at this moment... imaging if we stopped searching for ways to make our cars safer or more efficient... imaging if we stopped driving advances in computing back in 1985 because the computing power we had then met our needs.
When ever we start talking about energy innovation, inevitably attention turns to "Green Energy." and initiatives there. Green energy is great, on the small scale. I can put solar panels on the roof of my house, as I have done, and I can off set some of the power that I consume personally. My investment takes about 7 years to pay it self off, and I get some level of protection against raising energy costs. However it's also dependant on me hang access to the funds up front to actually install the solar panels. On the large scale this falls down however, as you would have to cover pretty much all of Nevada and Arazona with solar panels to power the US demand for energy, and that doesn't account for the loss of energy in transporting from one side of the country to another! Wind farms cause environmental disruption, noise pollution and disrupt the local environment. Bio-Fules like ethanol, from my limited knowledge, consume more energy to produce then they replace, which really boils down to them being a farm subsidy rather than an energy plan.
Fukushima's first reactor went online 40 years ago. Imagine if the forty subsequent years had been spent undertaking innovation.
Alternative energy sources exist, but in reality are only feasible at this point, in small uses. Solar panels, wind turbines, bio files, etc all have had there spills in popularity, however they have never truly been feasible for the mass production of power on the grand scale.
Then we come to Nuclear Power. Nuclear power is one of those issues that inevitably invokes passionate arguments around the issue. Now you would shave had to live under a rock, or in a shed in a forrest in Montana not to have heard the name "Fukushima" over the past year and a half.
The story goes that Japan had an earthquake, which caused a tsunami, which caused mass devastation in the area of a nuclear power plant, which sparked a chain of events which led to the latest nuclear disaster.
So what was the final death toll attributed to the disaster? An estimated 20,000 people. Clearly Nuklear power is horrible because of that death toll right? Well, not really. The loss of human life is terrible, no matter the cause. However of those 200,000 lives that were lost, the vast majority were lost due to the effects of the earthquake, and the tsunami, not the nuclear disaster that followed up.
According to Asian Correspondant the final death toll for the nuclear portion of the incident were 5. Of those:
* one man who became trapped in the console of a crane during the earthquake,
* two who were swept away by the tsunami
* a clean up worker who suffered from a heart attack.
And another man reportedly died suddenly in October. Although the company is not revealing the cause of death, they say it was not related to radiation.
Now the conspiracy theorists could surmise that the final death was in fact a coverup of radiation poisoning or a cover up of some sort, but the fact remains that the death toll was Thankfully very small during this disaster.
The article goes on to state that there are expected to be no deaths from radiation at all.
By compare, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people as a direct result of the incident. The Pike River coal mine explosion killed 29 people. These incidents aren't isolated, but that are considered almost an acceptable loss for the industry. Now don't get me wrong I don't think there is any such thing as an 'acceptable loss' however if we were to operate industries along the line of 0 acceptable losses, nothing would ever happen.
So the question arrises as to why we continue to use power sources like coal and natural bass, despite the higher death toll. The answer was outlined in a bit of an off handed comment, however one can't shake the reality. These types of power kill vasty more people, however they do it in lower concentrations. Politicians prefer this because it means they show up at a funeral, publish a press release and the next day they can get "back on message." Where as with a nuclear disaster they have to monitor the solution for ages because everyone is sitting on the edge of there seats waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Inevitably the sceptics of Nuclear power end up going back to the Chernobyl incident and the death toll from that incident as justification for not using nuclear power. My answer to that response is typically "Banning nuclear power based on Chernobyl is like
banning driving based on the Ford Pinto, with no breaks, no seat belts, and no headlights while driving at highway speeds in the middle of the night."
The reality is we need energy innovation. Traditional means of power production simply aren't feasible. Many people suggest that by increasing domestic supply of oil we can avoid the expense and risk of spending money on advances in technology. First and foremost, increasing supply will not impact the issues that we currently face. The idea of Supply and Demand, thus increasing supply results in lower cost is an overly simple economic model. For this to work we would have to assume that the demand for power consumption remain constant, that there are no other outside factors, and ignore the idea that oil is traded as a global commodity. Additionally we would have to assume that domestic production is sufficient to have a dramatic impact on the overall supply, and rely on there being no other supply limiting factors. The only way to dramatically affect the price of energy is to dramatically reduce the demand. Demand will be reduced in only two ways, new technologies that increase efficiencies, or new technologies that allow alternate energy sources to meet our needs. Guess what, both mean innovation.
Energy innovation also isn't about addressing the demands of today. We have something that, depending on your perspective, meets our current needs, so why are we going to waste time investing in future technologies? Imagine if we stopped making medical advances because there wasn't any pressing need right now at this moment... imaging if we stopped searching for ways to make our cars safer or more efficient... imaging if we stopped driving advances in computing back in 1985 because the computing power we had then met our needs.
When ever we start talking about energy innovation, inevitably attention turns to "Green Energy." and initiatives there. Green energy is great, on the small scale. I can put solar panels on the roof of my house, as I have done, and I can off set some of the power that I consume personally. My investment takes about 7 years to pay it self off, and I get some level of protection against raising energy costs. However it's also dependant on me hang access to the funds up front to actually install the solar panels. On the large scale this falls down however, as you would have to cover pretty much all of Nevada and Arazona with solar panels to power the US demand for energy, and that doesn't account for the loss of energy in transporting from one side of the country to another! Wind farms cause environmental disruption, noise pollution and disrupt the local environment. Bio-Fules like ethanol, from my limited knowledge, consume more energy to produce then they replace, which really boils down to them being a farm subsidy rather than an energy plan.
Fukushima's first reactor went online 40 years ago. Imagine if the forty subsequent years had been spent undertaking innovation.
Friday, March 9, 2012
SQLite.NET
SQLite.NET is an ORM that works under MONO. If you are asking yourself what any of those terms are then you should probably stop reading now. ;-)
So when I started working on my current iPad project I went looking or an ORM. The idea of focusing effort on SQL based inserts, updates, etc makes me shudder. In any event being on the iPad the availability of these libraries is fairly limited. SQLite.NET fit the bill, but I soon ran into some glaring omissions that I've only now, a year later gotten around to fixing.
Things that no ORM should be without:
The ability to specify the table for a class.
The idea that a class should have a table named directly after the class assumes that your business logic, and your database logic are one-for-one is fundamentally flawed. Additionally the ability to create multiple models for one set of data is important as well. One model, which is cut down for displaying a list of items, one that is fully fleshed out for retrieval of an entity.
The ability to store and retrieve GUIDs
I tend to use GUID's for ID's for logic. It's convenient and ensures that ID's are unique no matter where they are generated. It was a fairly simple task to encode a GUID, which SQLite doens't support as a string, and then pull the data back in.
That was the two improvements I have made to date. More will come as I work on some more updates.
So when I started working on my current iPad project I went looking or an ORM. The idea of focusing effort on SQL based inserts, updates, etc makes me shudder. In any event being on the iPad the availability of these libraries is fairly limited. SQLite.NET fit the bill, but I soon ran into some glaring omissions that I've only now, a year later gotten around to fixing.
Things that no ORM should be without:
The ability to specify the table for a class.
The idea that a class should have a table named directly after the class assumes that your business logic, and your database logic are one-for-one is fundamentally flawed. Additionally the ability to create multiple models for one set of data is important as well. One model, which is cut down for displaying a list of items, one that is fully fleshed out for retrieval of an entity.
The ability to store and retrieve GUIDs
I tend to use GUID's for ID's for logic. It's convenient and ensures that ID's are unique no matter where they are generated. It was a fairly simple task to encode a GUID, which SQLite doens't support as a string, and then pull the data back in.
That was the two improvements I have made to date. More will come as I work on some more updates.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Another facelift
Well, I'm not happy overall with the look of the web page, so I am looking into replacing the web page with something else. iWeb is pretty easy to use, but overall I'm not happy with the web layout. More to follow when I finish downloading everything for Web Matrix.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Looks can be deceiving
So looking back at the Blog it looks pretty slim for a blog that has been running, in one for or another, for the past 10 years. Of course clearing out the old posts and moving it back and forth doesn't help. I should see about getting my photo of the day images to post here.
Alive
Yes I am alive. The blog has been quite neglected over the past year with the trip back to the use, and coming back up to speed with work.
In the time away I have updated my laptop, my iPad and my iPhone.
The new Laptop is a Macbook Air. Current top of the line model. I can honestly say this is the best laptop that I have owned. WIth a bit of caution I can manage to get the battery to last a full working day. Being a Macbook Air it's also feather light, which is a major point in it's favor as being a consultant I live out of a backpack. The i7 processor generally has grunt to spare, and the 4 gig of RAM is sufficient for the normal taks that I do from day to day. Generally speaking major development tasks are done on a client desktop of virtual server so the moderate specks aren't a major hindrance for me. Storage wise I have 250 gig flash drive, which makes swapping out to disk nearly as fast as reading from memory. I'm able to run Windows 7 in a VM and in most cases don't notice any slow down from when it's running natively. Also I have been able to successfully run WIndows Server 2008 with SQL Server, CRM, and SharePoint. THe major pain point is running it off of a USB connected hard disk, which isn't the best experience...
The iPhone is currently the 4S. While the specks are better, and the camera is quite good, there really isn't honestly a compelling reason to upgrade at this stage. Don't get me wrong, the phone is great, but the added features probably aren't worth the reduced battery life at this stage. I get at max about a day and a half, however I have absolutely everything turned on. Location Services, WiFi, 3G, FindMyPhone, iCLoud, iCLoud Backup. About the only thing I don't run is BluTooth.
The iPad update took me to the new iPad 2, top of the line model 3G/WiFi model. This was a really good upgrade. While the iPad 1 was a great device, the added grunt, additional storage, etc are really nice. I also love the fact that it's thinner then the original.
Work these days is predominantly Microsoft CRM 2011 focused. More on this later.
Yes, I make my money on Microsoft products and I use Apple hardware. In fact I spend most of my time in OSX. This doesn't make me an Apple Fanboi. Use what fits the task best.
In the time away I have updated my laptop, my iPad and my iPhone.
The new Laptop is a Macbook Air. Current top of the line model. I can honestly say this is the best laptop that I have owned. WIth a bit of caution I can manage to get the battery to last a full working day. Being a Macbook Air it's also feather light, which is a major point in it's favor as being a consultant I live out of a backpack. The i7 processor generally has grunt to spare, and the 4 gig of RAM is sufficient for the normal taks that I do from day to day. Generally speaking major development tasks are done on a client desktop of virtual server so the moderate specks aren't a major hindrance for me. Storage wise I have 250 gig flash drive, which makes swapping out to disk nearly as fast as reading from memory. I'm able to run Windows 7 in a VM and in most cases don't notice any slow down from when it's running natively. Also I have been able to successfully run WIndows Server 2008 with SQL Server, CRM, and SharePoint. THe major pain point is running it off of a USB connected hard disk, which isn't the best experience...
The iPhone is currently the 4S. While the specks are better, and the camera is quite good, there really isn't honestly a compelling reason to upgrade at this stage. Don't get me wrong, the phone is great, but the added features probably aren't worth the reduced battery life at this stage. I get at max about a day and a half, however I have absolutely everything turned on. Location Services, WiFi, 3G, FindMyPhone, iCLoud, iCLoud Backup. About the only thing I don't run is BluTooth.
The iPad update took me to the new iPad 2, top of the line model 3G/WiFi model. This was a really good upgrade. While the iPad 1 was a great device, the added grunt, additional storage, etc are really nice. I also love the fact that it's thinner then the original.
Work these days is predominantly Microsoft CRM 2011 focused. More on this later.
Yes, I make my money on Microsoft products and I use Apple hardware. In fact I spend most of my time in OSX. This doesn't make me an Apple Fanboi. Use what fits the task best.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
iPhoto / iPhone madness
Yesterday Ange needed some help to get some photo's for a project that she was working on in iMovie. Simple I said... just shoot what you want on my iPhone and I'll suck them in. I figured since were talking all Apple hardware and software the whole proces would take ten minutes and she's be ready to go.
Wrong...
It appears that somewhere along the line apple has done a number of updates to some combination of IOS (Which being a developer I keep fully up to date.) iMovie, OSX and / or some bit in between. Now at the time I connected the iPhone iTunes helpfully informed me that there was a new IOS update. I had just performed the last update a week or so ago to IOS 4.3.2 and considering we had people arriving at out house I didn't have time to get everything done.
So I skipped the IOS update and plugged my Phone into the PC, Started iPhoto to pull down the photos, and... nothing. The iPhone didn't appear as a device and had no option to connect to iPhoto. Did a search on the internet and apparently a lot of people have had that issue as well. I ended up doing things the round-a-bout way of sending the photo's and video's to Mobile Me and then syncing them down to iPhoto.
As it turns out after downloading updates for all of my IOS devices, iPhone, IPad, iPod, and updating my iMac, I was finally able to pull the rest of the photos and video's over to my iMac via the USB connection cable.
Wrong...
It appears that somewhere along the line apple has done a number of updates to some combination of IOS (Which being a developer I keep fully up to date.) iMovie, OSX and / or some bit in between. Now at the time I connected the iPhone iTunes helpfully informed me that there was a new IOS update. I had just performed the last update a week or so ago to IOS 4.3.2 and considering we had people arriving at out house I didn't have time to get everything done.
So I skipped the IOS update and plugged my Phone into the PC, Started iPhoto to pull down the photos, and... nothing. The iPhone didn't appear as a device and had no option to connect to iPhoto. Did a search on the internet and apparently a lot of people have had that issue as well. I ended up doing things the round-a-bout way of sending the photo's and video's to Mobile Me and then syncing them down to iPhoto.
As it turns out after downloading updates for all of my IOS devices, iPhone, IPad, iPod, and updating my iMac, I was finally able to pull the rest of the photos and video's over to my iMac via the USB connection cable.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)