tingilinde

another nixie tube watch

Currently in production and desirable - even at $400.

great comic widget

Wimic is a neat little comic widget for OS X 10.4.

If you are adding other comics (it has about 30), the trick is to grab the image address and rename a 4 digit year as %Y, 2 digit year as %y, month is %m and date is %d... this should work for most strips.

gas prices

Many make the argument that current gas prices won't change behavior. The arguments are generally that people only respond to a fairly quick change and that people have no choice - they must drive.

I generally agree with these arguments. That said it is interesting to look at the real cost to a family budget. The average family drives about 22,000 miles a year. Much of this is short distance and stop and go driving where economy is much lower than what manufacturer claims.

So for 22,000 miles of driving and $3.00/gallon gas:

        $6600 10 mpg
        $3300 20 mpg
        $2200 30 mpg
        $1650 40 mpg
        $1320 50 mpg

A surprising number of SUVs get around 10 mpg in average use.

Even for a family that makes $100k a year the lower mileage numbers are a significant hit. Combine this with heating bills that could be twice that of last year and you have political dynamite. People probably won't conserve, but they'll be furious.

For a very small segment of the population the rationalization to buy a nice human powered vehicle is much better. The same goes for those looking to move to human powered transportation friendly communities.

oil and gas bounceback

One wonders how production is ramping in the Gulf of Mexico .. this recent Yahoo article suggests perhaps not as well as we are being told.

The government's Minerals Management Service site is probably as authoritative as it gets. The post for yesterday doesn't sound particularly encouraging.

Today’s shut-in oil production is 1,467,577 BOPD. This shut-in oil production is equivalent to 97.83% of the daily oil production in the GOM, which is currently approximately 1.5 million BOPD.

Today’s shut-in gas production is 7.941BCFPD. This shut-in gas production is equivalent to 79.41% of the daily gas production in the GOM, which is currently approximately 10 BCFPD.

The cumulative shut-in oil production for the period 8/26/05-9/30/05 is 40,828,134 bbls, which is equivalent to 7.457 % of the yearly production of oil in the GOM (approximately 547.5 million barrels).

The cumulative shut-in gas production 8/26/05-9/30/05 is 196.481 BCF, which is equivalent to 5.383% of the yearly production of gas in the GOM (approximately 3.65 TCF).

john mcphee - the coal train

John McPhee has the first of a new two installment piece in the October 3^rd issue of The New Yorker.

I love his writing and recommend it to everyone.

The online site has a background piece.

if the universe is expanding ...

do we expand too?

A very neat paper by a friend from the past - what a delightful surprise! A 2nd or 3rd year physics undergrad should be able to easily follow it.

The expansion of the universe is often viewed as a uniform stretching of space that would affect compact objects, atoms and stars, as well as the separation of galaxies. One usually hears that bound systems do not take part in the general expansion, but a much more subtle question is whether bound systems expand partially. In this paper, a very definitive answer is given for a very simple system: a classical ``atom'' bound by electrical attraction. With a mathemical description appropriate for undergraduate physics majors, we show that this bound system either completely follows the cosmological expansion, or -- after initial transients -- completely ignores it. This ``all or nothing'' behavior can be understood with techniques of junior-level mechanics. Lastly, the simple description is shown to be a justifiable approximation of the relativistically correct formulation of the problem.

live from mashatu!

A webcam in the Mashatu preserve in Botswana - part of a National Geographic project (thanks for the link Neil and Sukie!).

note - the camera looses focus when it moves, so stay with it if all you see is a blur

cassette adapters for your mp3 player

Getting your iPod connected to your car stereo can be frustrating. A direct wire connection - either a wiring harness specifically for the job on some newer cars, or a stereo jack into on the car stereo will give good results. A couple of steps down are FM links and cassette adapters.

iLounge has a review of cassette adapters...

Cars are awful environments for reasonable audio. It is quite possible to build a $200 living room stereo that will outclass a $10,000 car stereo when the car is in motion. A cassette adapter might be just the ticket.

google over sf

hmmmm

I'm all for it. There isn't any competition in this country to first order - a duopoly of one telco and one cable company just doesn't cut it. It is humorous to see SBC suggest widespread broadband is available in the area.

now on fema dismanetllng

The September 30^th Now on PBS focuses on FEMA and what has taken place in the past few years.

Great stuff.

Watch it. Repeats are on Sundays in most areas and the video should be available in a week.

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