Renewable, now, goddamnit!

Although Australia’s electricity is amongst the dirtiest in the world,

[Richard Elkington] said there was genuine bipartisan support at state and federal level for the development of clean coal technology. “In the absence of nuclear, what is really the alternative?” he said.

What’s the alternative? Taking your hand off it for a start.

Wind. Tidal. Geothermal. Solar (not PV, that’s not economic). Coupled with hydro.

Sure, wind, tidal and solar are unsuitable for baseload generation. Geothermal would be fine for that, New Zealand has been running geothermal powerstations for more than thirty years -it’s a proven technology. Perhaps it’s too expensive to drill the necessary holes in Australia, we’re not on top of the ring of fire like NZ is.

There’s nothing stopping you pumping water back into a hydroelectric dam using the fluctuating power generated by wind, tidal and solar plants, and then using the potential energy of the water in that dam as an energy buffer to smooth out generation. For example, solar could pump water during the day, to run the dam at night. All proven, tested, real zero emission technolgies. Windmills have been around for hundreds of years, along with dams. Getting power out of them has been around for a hundred. We know how to do it, really efficiently.

No need for thirsty nuclear, or pixies-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden “clean” coal. “Clean” coal solutions require the rebuilding of power stations (at enormous cost) anyway, so why not build a windmill rather than a smokestack, if the environmental effect is going to be the same (note: “clean” coal still puts out CO₂).

It’s just a matter of the politicians pulling their fingers out and making it happen. Don’t expect that anytime soon.

How many people still use Mailwasher?

Does anybody still use Mailwasher?

“MailWasher retrieves information about all the emails on the server. With that information (some of which is also processed by MailWasher) you can decide what to do with each individual email – download, delete, or bounce back.

If you check your account with MailWasher first, you can delete or bounce the emails you do not want. Then, when you use your email program, it downloads only the remaining emails, those that you want to read.”

MailWasher’s been around for a while, and I know some people still use it. I tried it some time ago, and it just didn’t seem worth my time to review the headers and choose which items to delete/bounce, as a prelude to actually downloading and reading my email. I might feel differently if I was still on dialup, or perilously close to my download limit. But as it is, if any spam gets through to my mailbox, I’m happy enough deleting it from my email client.

And given the spammers use fake originating addresses and rarely seem to validate the lists they use (I know this because they’ve faked my address as an originator, so I’ve seen the bounces), I’m not convinced bouncing spam back does any good.

So Mailwasher was great in the olden days of dialup, but these days… I guess some people still use it, but I don’t see the need.

Some people have taken to passing their email through Gmail (forward from your email address to Gmail, then read via Gmail’s POP or IMAP access), to make use of Gmail’s spam filters. My ISP has spam filters which work fairly well, so I haven’t resorted to that yet.

Gmail gets faster / IMAP

So I tried IMAP for Gmail in Thunderbird. And to be honest, while it works, I’ve stopped using it because it’s too slow. Probably due to the sheer distance to the Gmail servers, it plods along compared to my other IMAP servers, and indeed compared to Gmail itself.

In fact, Gmail appears to have had a further upgrade in the last few days which makes the web site even more responsive. Actions such as Delete now appear to happen immediately, with little lag after clicking the button. I reckon they’re doing more processing behind the scenes — the give-away is that if you try and leave the Gmail page straight after doing something like deleting a message, it warns you that you may lose your changes.

They’ve tweaked the interface too, with a highlight > icon showing the current message, a nicer popup for email contacts, and you can Sign Out of chat if you don’t want it bothering you.

And the space available is still creeping up; mine reckons I’ve got almost 5Gb available: “You are currently using 373 MB (7%) of your 4731 MB.”

(I haven’t yet moved all my old Outlook mail to Thunderbird. Want to test out the Windows Desktop Search add-in for Thunderbird, so I know I’ll still be able to find stuff! Alternately I might switch to another search; preferably one that supports both Thunderbird and Gmail.)

The latest splogging method

A new example: http://sl-weekly.com/

Basically an excerpt from a blog, with a random introductory paragraph up-front to make it look human, presumably in the hope that the trackback will be accepted.

Random introductory paragraphs:

I’ve a passion for X and keep looking for good articles. Today, I checked if I could find more info by entering ‘Y’ in Google and found this
People are always asking me to blog more often, well here you go, I looked up some info on ’Y’.
Last night I used Technorati to find more info on ’Y’ so I could post it into ‘X’. And this is one of the many results I found
Today I was digging for some info on ’Y’ and came across the following section

Of course, it’s pretty obvious if you look at a few posts in a row. Less so if you’re getting the occasional trackback request.

Sleepy, so sleepy…

Is sleep the cause of the modern world’s woes?

Outsourcing your toolshed

Making stuff is fun. But sometimes you need a 3D printer, and Bunnings are out of them – besides, they’re thousands of bucks. What to do?

There’s a place in the USA called TechShop which is a workshop fully fitted out with most imaginable tools, industrial grade. I lust after it. $30 for a day-pass, $100 for a month. Only problem is, cool ideas like this don’t seem to get financial traction. If something like this opens up in your area, make sure they’re going to hang around before you part with long-term payments.

Parallels have been drawn to the MIT FabLab, which is in a number of countries, but seems more focused on technology than materials.

Crysis Single Player Demo

The big gaming news this past weekend was the release of the Crysis demo by EA, Crysis has been the “next big thing” in PC gaming since it was first shown over a year ago. I was lucky enough to grab the single player demo, which weighed in as a hefty 1.7Gb, on Saturday afternoon. Sunday afternoon I installed the demo and spent an hour or so running through the jungle in the mission available.

I was very surprised to see after installation that Crysis is available in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions and whilst I’m sure the native 64 bit version does have benefits over the 32 bit version I don’t know what those benefits are at this time it’s just nice to have native 64 bit executable to run.

I really enjoyed playing Crysis, graphically its outstanding where BioShock was graphical champion for indoor and underwater action Crysis is going to be the outdoor champion. I only had my settings on medium but the whole environment looked fabulous.

One of the ‘cool features’ of Crysis is that the environment can be shot up and destroyed, not everything can but the trees can be shot and felled and buildings can be rammed with vehicles and fall apart as if they’re real, even bullet holes appear in walls when shot. Kudos to Crytek for the attention to detail that so many other games lack.

With the release of DirectX 10 a few months ago people have been wondering what difference it will make to gaming, BioShock did look a little better using DirectX 10 but Crysis appears almost lifelike running under DirectX 10.

Performance wise the game averaged 20 – 30 fps on medium settings for me. As my gaming system has dual 1900 series ATI graphics cards in CrossFire I would have expected better performance but I’m not even sure if CrossFire was working for Crysis and ATI haven’t released an updated driver for Crysis as of yet whereas Nvidia have in their 169.01 Beta drivers.

Overall I think Crysis is a very good game, I’m looking forward to buying the full version when it is released in a few weeks time….. which is just enough time to decide what upgrades I need in order to play the game at it’s maximum settings <evil grin>

Edit: A pair of Nvida 8800GTX’s will be running in SLI tonight, wife not going to be happy. But dangnamit, we need more power!

Windows Vista 64-bit Drivers

November 2006 was when Windows Vista was RTM’d and I’ve been a very happy user of it since then, with one exception: 64-bit Hardware Drivers. I’m not the only one who has had issues but the responses I’ve gotten from the various companies I needed drivers from hasn’t been as positive as I’d have expected.

I took the opportunity prior to getting Windows Vista to update my hardware by replacing my processor and motherboard and filling all of the memory sockets for a total of 4Gb. My PC was ready for Windows Vista but what version would I install, I was going to install Windows Vista Ultimate but in 32 bit or 64 bit or flavours? (What is the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit? Have a read of Paul Thurrott’s excellent overview of the differences)

I decided install the 64 bit version and spent a happy couple of hours installing Windows Vista. At the end of the install process I was amazed to find all but three pieces of my hardware had been installed. I had full network access, sound and screen drivers without having to install third party drivers. When it came time to install my HP 2510 PSC Printer in Windows Vista I found that I could finally throw away the useless HP Software that I used to have to wade through just to install the network drivers for my printer.

Whilst I had a functioning system I really wanted to install the proper keyboard and mouse drivers, graphics card drivers and I really did need access to my SC101 that held my backups. So off I went in search of 64 bit drivers for all my hardware.

Continue reading →

Car rental web sites again

(Previous rant)

Trying to hire a car in Adelaide for a single day, a Sunday. I’d really rather not have it overnight, so I don’t have to park it somewhere. As it turns out, it looks like none of the car rental places are open beyond 4pm on Sundays, but the problem with their web sites is how they tell you this:

Budget: “Your return time is after the location’s closing time.” — So what’s the location’s closing time? Surely you’re not going to make me guess? Wait, check the Locations page. OK, found the list of nearby branches. Click on the chosen one. No opening hours shown. … (sometime later) … Wait, if I mouse over the location on the map, it tells me the opening hours! Not that there’s any prompt to the user to say that’s how it works.

Hertz: “Return Date or Time – This location is closed at the time indicated. Please adjust your return or select an alternate location. [DE357]” — But at least there on the screen it’s showing me what the times are.

Thrifty: “Your rental details could not be processed because the return time is outside the opening hours for the return location. The return time has been changed to be the location closing time.” — Better, but why didn’t you tell me the opening hours when I was checking what your locations are?

Europcar: “Your Return Time could not be accepted because the operating hours for our Adelaide City Branch on 10/28/2007 7:00:00 PM are between the hours of 09:00 and 16:00.” Bravo!

Avis: tells as I click through where the branch is and what its hours are, but ignores it for another screen or two. But when it does notice, it eventually tells me everything I need to know in one message: “The Return Location selected is closed at the time requested. The Return Location operates from Sun 08:00AM-02:00PM; Mon-Fri 07:30AM-06:00PM; Sat 08:00AM-02:00PM. The Return Location Service may be available after hours. Please call this number (61) 08-84105727 to contact this location for further details.” — Bravo Avis, you win.

Of course, the aggregator sites like VroomVroomVroom don’t do too well out of this either. Oh well. SimilarlyDriveNow.

I ended up booking with Avis (closest to the hotel) via DriveNow (the best mix of good prices and nice web interface). And when I discovered (after placing the booking) that I’d entered the wrong dates, I went to avis.com and changed them. Neato.

Thunderbird with Gmail IMAP

Works as advertised. A little slower than my local ISP IMAP/SMTP servers, but not too bad, and because Thunderbird will happily wait for a server while you do other stuff, it's not painful at all.

Gmail's tags don't quite translate into IMAP folders, but it's probably close enough.

Conversations display as separate email messages in Thunderbird. You can use View / Threads to make it similar. Filing stuff in Thunderbird only does one message though, whereas in Gmail that'll do the whole conversation.

Deleting from Thunderbird moves it to a folder (eg gives it a Label) called [Imap]/Trash — which is how it appears over in GMail. Ideally it would move it to [Gmail]/Trash which seems to match the “real” Gmail Trash, but TB doesn't have that option.

Sent messages by default go into the TB folder Sent, but this can be changed to match Gmail's [Gmail]/Sent Mail in TB: Gmail account properties; Copies & Folders; When sending messages; Place a copy in: Other / Sent Mail on Gmail.

Moving messages to [Gmail]/All Mail appears to be the equivalent of pressing the Archive button in Gmail.

There's a bunch more help on comparing Gmail and IMAP actions.

All in all, works well.

(Reminder: Gmail IMAP is rolling out this week. If your Gmail preferences say “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” then you've got it. At present you'll need to switch to US English for it to be given to you.)

Thunderbird for IMAP

Thunderbird date column With GMail now offering IMAP (but it’ll take about a week, and you have to switch your Gmail account to US English) I can read all my email boxes from the comfort of the desktop when I’m at home, as long as I have a good IMAP client.

So I’ve tried Thunderbird. I’m quite impressed so far with it; it’s as smooth-as-silk on the IMAP account that Outlook 2007 seems to have so much trouble with. And overall it’s much more responsive (Outlook seems to periodically go out to lunch).

More critical will be the long-term storage of my mail. I’ve got a lot of old stuff in Outlook, and would need to ensure I could migrate it across and make it easily searchable (as easy as via Windows Desktop search) to get rid of Outlook entirely.

One thing about Thunderbird bugs me though: the sort by date column uses icons that seem to be backwards. What’s with that?

And why does the icon look like an envelope wearing a toupee?

The logo doesn’t make it secure

http://www.greatreads.com.au/the7deadlysins/competition1.htm

See the protocol on the front? On the page, net to the big verisign logo:

We guarantee that every transaction you make on our website will be safe. Our secure server software (SSL) is the best software available today for secure commerce transactions. It encrypts all of your personal information, including credit card number, name, and address, so that it cannot be read as the information travels over the Internet. When an order is received, SSL is again used to unscramble the message, check that it came from the correct sender, and verify that it has

Has what? It’s a mystery.

What is it with these half-baked web pages?