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June 26, 2006
Change
Begging for change rule #2: Never ask for spare change while wearing a $CASINO t-shirt.
Begging for change rule #2 addendum: Especially while waiting at the bus terminal for $CASINO.
Posted by Dan at 12:01 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2006
Bicycle Gauges
Hey Dan, where'd the daily updates to the riding go? DId you quit?
No, no I didn't. On average I'm achieving about 10 miles daily, with one or two days hitting somewhere between 20-30 miles. I've discovered two major challenges to this riding task I've undertaken.
First, transportation. Since one of my routes takes me to work, the challenge has been to get my bike on the train. I used to do this a lot, back when I worked at Worldgate in Trevose. Mainly because I'd get up late, and it was significantly easier to rush down the Ben Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia on a bike then it was to walk fast. At that time, the train didn't always allow me on, basically because of how packed it was. It seemed to be some unwritten rule. Around here the city is significantly more bicycle friendly, sorry mis-speak there, it's significantly more bicycle oriented. It seems everyone rides... and very few people worry about theft (why lock your tires, or take your seat? no one will steal them!). The trains here have spots for bicycles all the time, ranging from 2-4 per car. Now that the warmer weather has shown up though 4 spots per car is, umm, limiting. Mix that with the recent cut back in scheduled service, and you get a very very packed train. Daily. On more than one occasion I've been asked to get my bike off the train and wait for the next train. Ugh.
Second) It seems that my office has an interesting layer of RF being sent about. Actually it seems even more in tune with my T42p laptop at work. My bike's odometer uses a wireless TX/RX which works well enough. It has an extremely short range to picking up and needs to be almost in direct line of sight. Placing the odometer anywhere near my laptop though you can begin to see the MPH increase. I've discovered my odometer can attain speeds of 70 mph without having actually travelled anywhere. This threw off my first few calculations as I hadn't marked where I was before entering the office. Oddly enough, thermal throttling the laptop doesn't seem to effect the overall speed the odometer picks up. It makes me wonder what else it could (yes WiFi and Bluetooth are disabled).
Posted by Dan at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2006
Burnin laptops
In what had to be one of the most interesting starts of conversation, a particpant on the darwin-dev mailing list sent out a request on how throttle back the CPU on his Intel Mac. What made the request so notable were two things.
First, the request was being made due to sensativity to the RF or possible EM being produced by the processor. This is something of an unknown area of science, one I find rather interesting. Dr. Howard Oakley responded with some fascinating research to counter the original author's claims.
Second, the response from an Apple employee. While it's obviously a little tounge-in-cheek reply, the impression it left me with was that there is little that can be done to reduce frequency speeds on the Intel macs.
I think it probably would have helped had Ethan simply stated that there is nothing stopping this user from programmatically adding in some means to control the cpu frequency speed, but there were no promises that OS X would abide by the values set from the program. It kind of sounds like he's suggesting the Intel CPUs don't do that, unlike the former PowerPC, and that was one of the main reasons quoted for moving to Intel architecture.
Oh well... it'd also have killed the humor in the response. Go figure.
Posted by Dan at 06:41 PM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2006
Less Than Perfect
News.com has a great little article on the doom and gloom predicted for Netflix. The crux of the article is that the technology currently exists to make Netflix obsolete. The real reason this hasn't happened is the corporate ignorance from the movie houses regarding licensing and distribution rights. They'd rather see the short term gains than a long term, or put another way, they'd rather stick with an old assured income model than try something new.
Milage: 6.51 miles
Posted by Dan at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
June 06, 2006
Corporate Speak #1818
The review has prompted rumors of layoffs. Intel spokesman Manetta said there is no specific plan yet for a particular number of job cutbacks. But he added, "We do expect to have fewer employees than now as a result of attrition, redeployment and changes to Intel's business." (emphesis mine)
What is re-deployment? What is re-deployment in a company with a publically stated goal becoming a leaner, more nimble company who has cut off any head count increases?
As Andrei put it to me yesterday, don't hide behind wordage, just admit what you've done wrong and fix it.
Posted by Dan at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)
Cycling Season 2006
It's here. Finally! Cycling season has officially started for me. I guess the true start of the season began many weeks ago, but really... who wants to go cycling in a constant downpour of rain?
I was thinking I'd try to keep a distance log within the blog sidelines, but my free time to do so has gone down. Not because of anything exciting except the longer rides at night.
Without further ado... Sat 16.74 miles, Sunday 8.20 miles, and Monday 23.33 miles.
Monday's ride was quite fun. Paul and I headed out along a fairly popular trail, which turned out to be really really empty. Given the rain we had Sunday morning (hence the 8 mile ride only) the trail had a good bit of mud on it. I convinced Paul to make the ride to the trailhead, which includes a rather long uphill portion. The grade isn't sooo bad, but it's not much fun either. My bike doesn't have the heavy grip rear tire on right now either, so I ran into a few cases of mud wipe-outs. It was fun.
Now to keep this momentum up for the rest of the season. I've started biking to work, somewhat. I take the train to the local station and ride the rest of the way. While a short trek, it's amazing what 10-15 minutes of exercise can do to you early in the morning. I had forgotten about that. Too bad work isn't quite ready for the influx of bikes. You can see the impact of gas prices by the flood of bicycles just laying around the bike lock areas. Instead of doing some quick extensions to these on the weekend, they're closing down selective bike stands for two days to expand them. I think it's silly.
Posted by Dan at 03:40 PM | Comments (0)