Eddy's occasional random thoughts

Eddy's occasional random thoughts

An occasional blog recording useful URLs, observations or other random thoughts I may have from time to time...

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Linkblog

Observation

• A periodic table made of wood..

  Network World just pointed me towards an intriguing Wooden Periodic Table of the Elements.

  It's really very nicely done - check it out.

  
• Not taking any sh$t...

  I ordered a few bits and pieces from Big Pockets last week -- a bunch of blank DVD cases, some blank printable Ritek DVD-Rs, and a set of replacement colour inkjet cartridges.

  They arrived at the office on Wednesday, packaged in a large cardboard box which originally housed a B&Q white toilet bowl. I can say this with confidence, because large pictures of the toilet were printed on the side of the box.

  Since I was out of the office Wednesday & Thursday, everyone else had two days to ponder what I might have been up to that required urgent replacement of a toilet bowl...

  Nice to see Big Pockets are recyling where possible!

  
• Optimising the morning commute

  In my continuing search for ways to improve traffic flow (rather ironic, since I'm working from home these days), I came across this analysis of how small variations in departure time for the morning commute could lead to significant time savings.

  Friends who commute from North Wicklow to Dublin city centre had told me that there was a narrow window in the morning when you could get a clean run into the city without too much delay - about 10 minutes after the early morning rush has subsided but before the school runs kick in. This article appears to support that theory (albeit on a different continent!)

  (Of course, there are the usual Slashdot comments on the article also...)

  Maybe one day, I'll actually get to put all this theory to use...

  
• XP: Profiad cyfrifiadurol gwell i siaradwyr Cymraeg

  You have to hand it to Microsoft - when they localise something, they don't do it by halves. I just came across a pointer to the Welsh version of Windows XP.

  

Technology

• Affordable broadband at last

  The big news this week was that Smart Telecom (the largest independent Irish telecomms company) announced a new residential DSL product with some very attractive features:

  • 2 Mb/s download (128 Kb/s upload)
  • No download limit
  • No fixed contention ratio - bandwidth will be increased to match demand
  • Free line rental to the first 100,000 subscribers (the total installed base of broadband in Ireland at the moment is about 100K users)
  • Voice service included (free calls to other Smart Telecom users, cheaper rates than Eircom to elsewhere).

  As usual, there has been plenty of discussion at boards.ie about this. Most people are impressed by the high bandwidth / low cost ratio, but concerned about the miserly 128 Kb/s upstream bandwidth.

  Still, at €35, I expect they'll make a killing. It will be interesting to see if and how the other ISPs beef up their offerings to make them more competitive.

  
• Another cool Google Maps hack

  People continue to find new ways to explore Google Map's public API. Today, I came across this site:

  http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/

  It lets you measure the walking (or cycling) distance between any two points in the city, simply by double-clicking all the significant direction changes along the router. Simple, but effective.

  
• Asimov's world beckons...

  New Scientist has an interesting article about a new robot with a knack for finding its feet.

  While there have previously been some impressive demonstration videos of robots from Toyota, Honda and Sony, this is the first robot I've seen that actually mimicked human like movement patterns.

  You can download the 13 MB demo video here; it's rather unsettling to watch.

  I just hope they have a good team working on the software...

  
• CES 2007

  I’ve just returned from the Consumer Electronics Show, which ran from January 8-11 in Las Vegas. This was my first time attending the largest trade show in America (2700 exhibitors, 150,000 attendees) and it was quite an experience. Over the next few days, I'll post entries about some of the more interesting products and companies I saw.

  I was travelling with some colleagues, and we had four days to cover the exhibition – just as well, since it covers ten large convention halls, and conference space in several nearby hotels.

  The scale of CES is hard to grasp – by lunchtime on the first day, we had cleared half of one hall and felt we were doing well – until we realised we had only cleared half of one corner of one hall!

  It was time for a more aggressive approach. By planning ahead, and stepping up the pace substantially, we managed to cover about 90% of the exhibits during the first three days! This left Thursday morning for some final follow-up visits to stands, and we were all done by lunchtime, leaving the afternoon for some R&R.

  The conference was well organised, with courtesy coaches between the different venues, free Internet access available in the halls (supplied by DivX), and even free international phone calls courtesy of Vonage, who had installed VoIP kiosks in the lobbies. Complimentary magazines from just about every consumer and electronics publisher you've ever heard of were also available outside the conference entrance, along with the six show guides and product directories.

  While most of the halls were in the gargantuan Las Vegas Convention Center, one hall was in the Sands Expo Centre, about a mile away. (The Adult Entertainment Expo was taking place in an adjacent hall during the week, which led to an interesting mix of attendees in the areas outside the hall.)

  General Trends

  Two products were in evidence just about everywhere this year – large high-definition LCD televisions, and digital photo frames. Even manufacturers who didn't sell photo frames were using them to display information sheets for their actual products.

  There was a wide and varied selection of Windows Media Centre PC cases from assorted vendors – perhaps the most impressive (if not the most practical) were the Diamond Media Centre range from Moneual, which featured a jewel-encrusted fascia panel and control knobs at prices ranging from $30,000 to $1,000,000, they are for elite purchasers only.

  

  While most of the larger vendors had extravagant stands with large floor areas, there were plenty of smaller stands there as well. The entry level cost for a stand is in the region of $6000-$8000 depending on location (about 2 metres x 3 metres) which is within reach for even small startups.

  There were surprisingly few freebies on offer. Other than the ubiquitous carrier bags, and a few trinkets like LCD pocket torches, watch batteries, and T-shirts, pickings were slim.

  Apple steal some thunder

  One of the biggest announcements didn’t even happen at the show. Apple were running MacWorld in San Francisco during the same week, and launched their new and long-awaited iPhone, though it won't be available until June. While the industry was impressed with the product, there was plenty of scepticism about Apple's ability to break into the highly competitive cellphone market, especially with a product that costs $600! Time will tell...

  
• CNET's Next Big Thing

  Alongside the main CES convention, there were numerous seminars and panel sessions to discuss issues of interest to the consumer electronics industry. Most of these cost money to attend, but some were open to all CES participants.

  The first session we attended (on Monday afternoon) was CNET's Next Big Thing, a discussion about three hot areas of debate in the industry at the moment:

  • Whether there is a genuine market for displaying video on mobile phones and other small-screen devices
  • Whether streamed online content will lead to the death of the DVD
  • How Digital Rights Management for movies & music can evolve into something less customer hostile.

  Several industry panelists (including a CNET reader flown in from the UK to represent the consumer) discussed these items at length; the audience then voted electronically on how they thought things would develop in the future.

  

  Mobile video

  On mobile video, the verdict was: yes, there is a new and growing market for media playback on mobile devices, but access needs to become far less restrictive (both in price, and range of media available) before it will take off. Mobile video will supplement existing markets rather than replacing them.

  Dynamic content like news clips, music videos, and short length TV programs are more suited to these devices than feature length movies. One panelist predicted that the production style of programs will change to match the constraints of the mobile devices – more talking heads, fewer panoramic landscapes, etc.

  All reasonable points. However, the most important point was only briefly mentioned: mobile video need not be streamed. People use it to fill time when they would otherwise be bored (standing in a queue, waiting for something to complete), and it suffices to have pre-loaded content available on their mobile device; it's not a big deal if it's several days old.

  With modern video codecs and ever-increasing flash capacities, it's quite feasible to store multiple movies or (more likely) TV programs on your portable device. I think this trend is just beginning to gather stream.

  The death of DVD?

  The panel were (eventually) united in their view that DVD wouldn’t be going away anytime soon – certainly not by 2010, as had been suggested. The tangible nature of a DVD, which makes it collectable, suitable for gifts, easy to use and distribute, etc. all combine to make it unlikely to disappear.

  However, the panel did did agree that online streaming media will gain significant following as well. (No surprises there.)

  I'm broadly in agreement with this view. It takes a long time for a given technology to die out; after all, there are still plenty of VHS tapes around, even though it is now difficult to buy a VHS recorder.

  I also doubt we'll see broad acceptance of streamed video until most households have a fast broadband connection (where 'fast' means 10 MBps or higher, with no contention).

  Digital Rights Management

  Digital Rights Management (DRM) was the most contenious discussion, with representation from the legal profession, movie industries, and consumers, as well as several industry observers. Everyone agreed that some sort of rights management was essential, but making it transparent enough so that consumers were not unduly restricted when they tried to use media they believed they owned was judged difficult.

  Apple's ITunes was given as an example of how to make DRM straightforward, so that customers are not always even aware that any special restrictions apply.

  The biggest hinderance to existing DRM technology is that it goes against the grain of what consumers are used to. If you buy a CD, you can take it to a friend's house to share with them or loan to them. You can play the same CD in your living room, your bedroom, your car, on your laptop, and anywhere else that has a CD player.

  This is almost never true for media protected with DRM, especially where that media has been downloaded rather than delivered in some sort of physical packaging. While providers are entitled to protect their content, they need to find a less onerous way to do so than has currently been attempted.

  I have no doubt that this problem will be solved; until then though, consumers will continue to be highly suspicious of anything resembling DRM.

  
• CNTs are coming

  CNTs are Carbon Nanotubes, a new technology that allows flatpanel screens to be constructed from what is essentially an array of thousands of tiny CRTs, each CRT representing a pixel or so.

  A friend (thanks Mike) pointed me towards this company which has been experimenting in the area. Click on Demonstrations on the left to see a nifty little animated demo of their current prototype (and be sure to read the caveats as well as to why the quality isn't wonderful yet).

  Why is this stuff of interest? Primarily because the potential exists to make absolutely massive screens using this technology. Plasma and LCD screens are limited in size, because they rely on a single sheet of semiconductors to make the whole screen - the technology to seamlessly stitch together multiple panels to make a bigger screen doesn't exist.

  For those screen types, cost increases rapidly as the size gets larger, because it becomes more difficult to get screens with an acceptably high number of working pixels.

  With CNTs, this is no longer an issue - you simply manufacture buckets of tiny screens (say 4" x 5") and stitch them together to make as big a display as you like. Tiny screens means much higher yield which in turn translates to lower prices. Plus, as a bonus, you get all the benefits of a normal CRT (bright picture, fast refresh, etc.) without the drawbacks of massive weight and depth.

  Probably another year or two to go before these hit your local electronics superstore, but it can only be a matter of time.

  (On the other hand, whatever happened to bubble memory?)

  Eddy

  
• Dart + Google = Cool app

  A friend referred me to this website today:

  http://www.mackers.com/projects/dartmaps/

  It's a very cool Google Maps hack that scrapes realtime DART position info from Irish Rail's website and plots it on a Google Map of Dublin.

  Be sure to zoom in - you can actually see the trains moving in realtime. Click on a train to find out its destination.

  Amazing what you can do with a bit of XML, scripting and some ingenuity...

  
• DVD list update

  For those of you who use it, my DVD list now sports a handy search field ... enjoy.

  
• Google Earth + Sketch Up

  Time for yet another mapping link:

  SketchUp is a rather cool plug-in for Google Earth that allows you to add real 3D buildings to the Google Earth city view.

  Check it out...

  
• Google Suggests

  I hadn't been paying much attention to this AJAX thing, until I saw an article about it in Dr Dobbs Journal (Feb 2006).

  AJAX is Asynchronous Javascript And XML, essentially a collective name for a group of technologies that together allow web pages to asynchronously interact with a remote server without losing the page context. This leads to the ability to design significantly more interactive interfaces.

  The best example I've seen is the one cited in the Dr Dobbs article: Google Suggests. As you type in search keywords, a realtime display appears below showing you suggested matches for what you're typing. All the words retrieved are fetched from Google's server in realtime as you type, without you even noticing. Very cool...

  
• HAL 2000 smart home technology

  Steve pointed me towards an interesting demo video showing off the capabilities of the HAL 2000 home automation system. It lets you control your home using speech commands from any room - quite impressive.

  The author has an extensive discussion of the technology involved (speakers, distribution amps, microphones, etc.) along with some comments on the limitations of the system.

  Startrek's onboard computer suddenly doesn't seem quite so far away...

  
• Hard drive woes

  Shortly before Christmas, one of my media drives (a 300 GB Maxtor) started to give warning signs that it was about to die -- a number of files mysteriously developed CRC errors for no apparent reason.

  I downloaded Maxtor's PowerMax utility which gives the drive a once-over. PowerMax can run a 90 second test to give a quick estimate of the drive's condition, or a more thorough test that lasts several hours. In the event, it took only 10 seconds to figure out my drive was quite sick and should be sent back to Maxtor for replacement. (The drive was just over 12 months old, but to my relief, it turned out to have a three year warranty. Exactly the same drive sold in the USA comes with only a one year warranty. Go figure.)

  I bought a replacement 300 GB drive to back up the data (luckily, I only lost a few files), and then kicked off Maxtor's RMA process. Conveniently, if you give them your credit card number, they will ship you the replacement drive first -- you can then use that drive's Maxtor-approved packaging to return the defective unit.

  Three weeks later, Maxtor Support emailed me to say that it would be February before an exact replacement for my unit would be available, but that they'd be happy to ship me one of their new DiamondMax 10 6B300R0 models instead if that was acceptable. While RAID users might have preferred an exact replacement, I just wanted a new drive (and this one was better specced) so I told them to go ahead.

  The new drive duly arrived about two weeks ago, and I decided to install it as the boot drive in my main PC; I partitioned it as a 30 GB C drive for Windows with the remaining 250 GB for my D: drive. (Yep, that's only 280 GB, but that works out as 300,647,710,720 bytes -- got to hand it to those hard drive marketing guys...)

  After installation, it slowly became apparent that something wasn't quite right with my system. Simple file copies from one partition to another (and especially from firewire drives to my D: drive) seemed much slower than they should be. Worse, while this was going on, Windows would slow to a crawl - in some cases, I could see individual window elements rendering a few pixels at a time.

  It took me a while to figure out the drive was the issue - for normal use, things worked fast enough. I checked the DMA settings on the drive (Windows XP has a tendency to disable DMA without telling you, if it detects errors) but it was fine. Eventually though, I noticed that HDTach 3 showed rather erratic performance - instead of the usual smooth graph, it was very choppy.

  That got me thinking, and I finally decided that the culprit might be the removable drive caddies that I use in all my systems. These are only rated to ATA66, yet the new Maxtor is an ATA133 drive. A few minutes later, I'd whipped out the caddy and connected the drive directly and -- everything back to normal! I also replace my ATA66 cable with a newer ATA133 cable, which improved the HDTach results by another 10% or so.

  I can only presume Windows must have been retrying like crazy before, hence the heavy CPU usage -- or possibly switching briefly to PIO mode to recover from a corrupt DMA transfer? In any case, it's good to have a system at 100% again!

  Lesson learnt: adding any new hardware to a working system should always be done very carefully!

  
• How big is that hard disk?

  Seagate had a cute visual exhibit at CES 2007 - a typical laptop hard disk, represented as an equivalent number of CDs (assuming you only store MP3s, of course.)

  

  Seagate's point, of course, is that you might want to think about backing up that hard disk ... and naturally, they had a product designed to do exactly that.

  
• iPod Volume Control

  2004 was definitely the year of the iPod. I bought one, my brother bought one, my sister brought one, and even my Dad bought one.

  Unfortunately, though, iPods sold in Europe have their maximum volume capped compared to similar US models - in fact, the maximum level is about 30% lower on the EU models.

  This is apparently to comply with EU legislation. Unfortunately, because it affects line-level output as well as headphone output, it causes all sorts of problems when you use something like an iTrip or connect the iPod to your hi-fi or car radio's line-in - the iPod volume is significantly lower than that of the other equipment, so you spend a lot of time adjusting volume as you switch between your iPod and radio or CD.

  There have been several hacks that attempt to overcome this by tweaking a volume compensation tag in each MP3 file you download to your iPod. However, these are not ideal - you have to remember to do it whenever you update your play list.

  I finally found a utility that did what I really wanted: just remove the cap entirely. The utility is goPod and it simply adjusts a field in the firmware to indicate that capping is no longer required.

  It works really well. If you have an iPod in Europe, you need this.

  
• Lego Difference Machine

  From the Useless But Cool dept: Andrew Carol (no relation) has built a Lego Difference Engine in the fashion of Charles Babbage's original.

  Due to structural limitations of Lego (plastic bricks and gears can't handle the same stresses as metal), it's a cut down version but still functional. Very cool.

  And on the subject of Lego, if you've been playing with Lego Mindstorms (Lego's robotic kits), Lego have just announced Mindstorms NXT, the next generation - with a 32-bit RISC processor and a number of other significant improvements. My second childhood should be due any day now, and I'm looking forward to playing with this...

  
• Linux RAID problems

  I came across this article about RAID systems under Linux, and some of the problems that can occur.

  It's interesting reading, especially the explanation as to why a single drive failure in a Linux RAID system is often also followed by a second failure before the array has had a chance to rebuild ... rather concerning, since that can effectively negate the redundancy benefit of having a RAID in the first place.

  Let's hope my MegaRaid SATA150-6 controller doesn't suffer from similar problems...

  Also of interest: drive manufacturers appear to be routinely making minor adjustments to the size of discs, even when the model number remains the same - this can cause problems when swapping out a dead drive, if the replacement is slightly smaller. Might be an idea to stockpile a few spare drives to have on hand which are from the same batch as your original set.

  

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