Cheerful Curmudgeon » Recommendations

First Workbench

Art Zemon — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 22:48:46 +0000

Today was workbench day at the Zemon’s. I built the first of two 2′ x 5′ workbenches that I will use for my BD-4C construction. Believe it or not, this is the first real work table that I have ever had.

This is a relatively small table but should be just right for my space, half of a two car garage. If I need something larger, I will clamp the two tables together in ether a 4′ x 5′ or a 2′ x 10′ configuration. I intend to start with one table as a primary work surface and use the other for the sander, band saw, vice, and a place to spread out the plans.

2' x 5' workbench

Here is a link to the plans for the EAA Chapter 1000 Standardized Work Table. As promised in the plans, it is very study. Materials cost for two tables was about $230.

Do You Ctrl-F?

Art Zemon — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 12:14:38 +0000

Do you get an F, er, do you get a Ctrl-F? To be more precise, do you know how to use Ctrl-F to find a word on a web page or within a document? It seems that the vast majority of people do not. According to Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google,

90 percent of the US Internet population does not know that. This is on a sample size of thousands I do these field studies and I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve sat in somebody’s house as they’ve read through a long document trying to find the result they’re looking for. At the end I’ll say to them, ‘Let me show one little trick here,’ and very often people will say, ‘I can’t believe I’ve been wasting my life!’

I am amazed that this problem still exists. I bumped into in in 1998 with the staff at a major university. I was presenting some new software to them and the workers wanted a special web page that would let them find one item in a long list. I suggested that they simply type Ctrl-F to find it and that was not acceptable; they did not know how to use it. Now, 13 years later, it seems that nothing has changed.

If this is all Greek to you, try this:

Make sure that you are actually reading this article on my CheerfulCurmudgeon.com web site. If you are reading this on Facebook or in an RSS reader, click the link so that you are actually on my web site.
Type Ctrl-F and then “software” (without the quotation marks). Your browser will jump down to the first occurrence of the word “software” on the page.

Simple, eh?

Thanks to The Atlantic for bringing this to my attention.

Delightful Dialog

Art Zemon — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:18:28 +0000

This article is hard to write not because of any uncertainty about what I want to say but simply because I want to gently suggest an idea to you. I do not want to come across as a know-it-all and raise your defenses. Maybe I worry too much. I am quite sure that you are open to considering new points of view; why else would you read posts like this? But still, I fret.

TV excites. The news makes our blood boil. It cranks us up, inflames our passions, gets the adrenaline pumping.

Talk radio excites. We tune in to shows that align with our own beliefs and listen to the callers who are most fired up, most opinionated.

It is all too easy to carry this excitement into our conversations. I have played scenes like this all too frequently:

I meet up with you and we start talking about the news of the day. I heard some great story on the radio and it confirmed my opinions. I know what should be done so I tell you all about it. You know what should be done, too, and you tell me about your ideas. Trouble is, we do not agree. Since time is short, I cut to the chase to convince you that my ideas are right. I struggle to find the words that will change your mind. Eventually, we part ways. I am wired and whipped. The conversation was hard work, frustratingly so because I could not convince you. If only you would see it my way!

Sound familiar? I know that I can easily drop into that mode. I know that I have done so when I leave a conversation feeling somewhere between mildly annoyed and thoroughly angered because yet again I failed to convince. When we do that, we get caught between exhaustion and urgency. We tire of trying yet we cannot abandon the effort because so much is at stake.

I have found another way to converse which inevitably leaves me feeling good about my interactions. It is a little more work at the front-end of a dialog because I often tend toward my convince-you mode and I need to catch myself and change my pattern. Here is the trick: When I start a conversation with you, I consciously ask myself, How can I delight you today? That simple question changes my focus from me to you. Though I may enter the dialog with an idea in mind, an idea that I want to convey, I open myself to what you want to take away from our conversation. Maybe you have something that you need to get off your chest. Maybe you need to vent before you can hear my idea. Maybe you are so consumed with something else that my concerns pale in comparison. Maybe your mind is made up and we can agree to disagree before moving on to a more rewarding topic. Whatever it is, if I can delight you in our conversation then I will always leave the conversation invigorated and cheered rather than battle weary. Smiles are infectious. One of the best ways that I know to make myself smile is to see a smile on your face.

After I ask, How can I delight you today?, my immediate task is to find the answer. I have to know the how. When I was growing up, I tuned my E.S.P. to help with my interpersonal interactions. You probably did this, too. Have you ever wanted something particular for Christmas but been banned from asking for it because asking just is not right? Have you ever wondered what to get someone for his birthday but not asked what he wants because asking is just plain wrong? Trouble is, try as I might, I never got very good at the E.S.P. thing. One bad example came in junior high school when I got my dad a really cool atlas for Father’s Day. He received it graciously but I do not think he ever opened the book. I was such a sensitive, loving son.

I have learned that the best way to answer, How can I delight you today? is to pay careful attention to what you say. When you are talking, I listen. Instead of trying to formulate my next sentence, instead of thinking about what I will say next, I pay attention to what you are saying. The downside is that there might be lulls in our conversation. After you stop speaking, there might be a little silence while I digest what I heard and come up with a reply. That’s OK; if it moves me from convincing-you mode to conversing-with-you mode, the lull is a small price to pay.

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion

Many of these ideas come from Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion by Marshall B. Rosenberg. His writing is kind of dry but his ideas are golden. When we talk or write with the goal of simply understanding each other we grow closer together and avoid violence. At least in my life, I have found him to be right. For instance, I found myself arguing less frequently with my sons after I switched from telling them stuff to consciously trying to delight them. That did not mean that I gave up parenting them, that I tried to always give them what they wanted instead of what I thought they needed. I just climbed down off my high horse.

At the beginning of this blog posting, I worried that I would put you off. I hope that, instead, I have brought a little delight into your day. Please let me know how I did.

Server Backups are Important

Art Zemon — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:32:52 +0000

I got a frantic email from a friend this week. One of his subcontractors went crazy and trashed several of my friend’s clients’ web sites as well as my friend’s own business site. The police have been involved but much damage has already been done. I wish I had been hosting my friend’s sites. Had I been, I could have recovered everything from backups. As it is, all I could do was sit by and fume, wishing that his hosting company had had something to offer him in the way of assistance.

I know my friend’s pain. In the 30 years that I have been doing system administration, there have been numerous times when my own bacon has been saved by backups. I have been struck by the dread BUOD error (Bad User On Device) in which a glitch sitting between the chair and the keyboard has made the computer do all kinds of hideous deeds. The worst, early in my career, idled a team of a dozen programmers for three days. Why three full days? You guessed it: no backups. At the other end of the spectrum, a member of my team recently trashed a critical configuration file on one of our servers. This, however, resulted in no downtime; we simply grabbed a copy from the backups and continued on our merry ways.

If you accidentally delete a file from your web site (or, in my friend’s case, all of the files), can you recover it? Does your hosting company provide backups and, if so, can you recover files from their backup? In many cases, hosting companies’ backups are only for their use in cases of disk drive failure.

My company offers one (excellent, in my opinion) solution, Nest Egg Backup for Web Servers. There are many other alternatives. Do choose and implement one. When you go comparison shopping, ask the key question: How long are the backups retained? If only for one night, that means that your window of opportunity is extremely limited. If you delete a file at 10:00pm and wait until 8:00am to try to get it back, you are out of luck. You should have at least three days of retention, preferably more, preferably a lot more. Thirty days can give you a nice warm, fuzzy feeling of safety and security.

Lesson of the day: Back up your hosting accounts! And be sure to include everything (email folders, MySQL databases, PHP config files, etc. etc. etc.) The day disaster strikes is a day too late to start backing stuff up.

Garmin & XM Radio: The Best & The Worst in Customer Service

Art Zemon — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:42:05 +0000

We have many opportunities to experience both good and bad customer service. Rarely, though, do we bump into extremes at both ends of the spectrum in the course of one technical support issue. Doing so makes both experiences all the more poignant.

I use a Garmin GPSmap 396 coupled with a hockey puck sized XM Radio receiver in my airplane. The combination gives me NEXRAD weather radar in near real-time, with my current position and course superimposed. It has proven invaluable in keeping me safe and well clear of thunderstorms. Recently, the weather got “flakey,” sometimes I would receive it and sometimes not. On an August flight back from Wisconsin, when I was flying along the front edge of a line of rain and thunderstorms, the NEXRAD radar vanished and I could not get it back. After experimenting on several follow-up flights, I determined that the problem was heat related: when the XM receiver had been on for 30-40 minutes and got hot, it stopped working.

I called Garmin and asked whether they wanted the XM receiver back with or without the GPS unit and how much it would cost to repair/replace it. The Garmin rep, for whom American English was clearly his primary language, asked what model antenna I had and I told him that it was the old, original GXM 30 and that it was almost four years old. He immediately offered to replace it with a new GXM 40 for free under warranty. (I looked it up later; the GXM 40 retails for $268.) I shipped my broken receiver to Garmin on Wednesday and had the replacement on my doorstep on Friday. That’s amazingly awesome service, Garmin. Thank you!

I just phoned XM Radio to have the old receiver removed from my account and replaced with the new receiver. I got a woman who spoke English with such a thick accent that I had trouble understanding her. She then informed me that this “service” would cost me $15. Excuse me? Garmin just replaced a very expensive piece of broken equipment at their expense and XM wants to charge me $15 to type an eight letter radio ID into their computer?!?! Talk about petty. Worse, she then tried to “up-sell” me to a lifetime music subscription for “only” $399.99. I was flabergasted but did manage to recover my voice and tell her how angry I am that, after paying them $75 per month for weather, XM has the gall to charge me an additional $6 for music. Truly apalling.

Garmin: I have had several of your products over the years. All have performed wonderfully. This is the first time that I have had to work with your customer service and I am thoroughly impressed. You’ve got a very, very happy customer who will certainly return to purchase more of your products.

XM Radio: The aviation weather “service” that I receive from you is overpriced and the additonal charge for music is insulting. I have had to make several calls to your customer service over the last four years and every one has been, without exception, infuriating. Were there any alternative source of cockpit weather data, I would drop you in an instant.

Reduce Risk – Stay Alive – Live Well

Art Zemon — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 13:10:40 +0000

I like to feel safe and I like to know that my family is safe. I would wager that you do, too. John Goekler has written a crystal clear piece in CounterPunch, The Most Dangerous Person in the World?, which highlights the risks to our lives. Some snippets:

A significant majority of Americans… list terrorism as one of their greatest fears. Like most of our media-inspired interests and worries, however, this one has little basis in reality. In actual fact, unless you’re serving in a war zone, the most dangerous person you’re ever likely to encounter – by several orders of magnitude – is the one you see in the mirror every morning.

and

The single greatest killer of Americans is the so-called “lifestyle disease”. Somewhere between half a million and a million of us get a short ride in a long hearse every year because of smoking, lousy diets, parking our bodies in front of the TV instead of operating them, and downing yet another six pack and / or tequila popper.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.

After the person in the mirror, the next most dangerous individual we’re ever likely to encounter is one in a white coat. Something like 200,000 of us will experience “cessation of life” due to medical errors – botched procedures, mis-prescribed drugs and “nosocomial infections”. (The really nasty ones you get from treatment in a hospital or healthcare service unit.)

Goekler’s article is a delight to read but if you are impatient or like numbers (like me), here are the Cliff’s notes:

Danger Source	Cause	Minimum	Maximum
Self
	Cigarettes	310,000	580,000
	Poor diet/lifestyle	260,000	470,000
	Alcohol	85,000	85,000
	Suicide	31,000	31,000
	Sexual behavior (AIDS, hepatitus C)	30,000	30,000
	Illicit drug use	20,000	20,000
	Overdose of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (acetaminophen or aspirin)	7,600	7,600
Medical professional
	Medical errors	200,000	200,000
Co-worker, doorknob, stair railing, etc.
	Microbial agents (flu, etc.)	75,000	75,000
Miscellaneous
	Toxic agents (asbestos, lead, drain cleaner, lawn chemicals, etc.)	55,000	55,000
	Foodborne agents	5,200	5,200
	Drowning	4,000	4,000
	Peanut allergies	50	100
Automobile driver
	Vehicle fatalities (more than half because people do not wear seat belts)	42,000	42,000
Murderer (usually a friend or relative)
	Murder	16,000	16,000
Workplace
	Occupational trauma	5,500	5,500
Terrorists (since 2002)
	Terrorism abroad	15	15
	Terrorism in USA	0	0

None of us want to die prematurely and all of us want to spend our money wisely. Given what you just read, how much sense does it make to walk though an airport in your socks?

IE6: Get Over It

Art Zemon — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:47:13 +0000

I am fed up with wasting clients’ dollars “fixing” web sites so that they look good in Internet Explorer 6. IE7 has been out for 2 1/2 years. IE8 is available as a free beta. There are lots of other browsers available for free. All of these browsers work better than IE6. If you still use IE6, it’s time to get over it and move on. Upgrade for free to something better.

This web site, and the others for which I am responsible, now display a warning similar to this when visited with IE6:

Sample IE6 warning message

For more information, see Moving Past Internet Explorer 6.

Dr. Lester Start, Ph.D.

Art Zemon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 01:59:27 +0000

I very much enjoyed the time that I got to spend with my father-in-law, Lester Start. Sadly, he was taken from this world much too soon.

My wife and her siblings have created a web site as a publishing platform for his sermons and talks. Please visit Lester Start’s Works.

Cross Browser Testing

Art Zemon — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:12:53 +0000

Cross browser testing is always a pain to coordinate but at least it just got a lot less expensive. Amazon Web Services just released AMIs running Windows which means that you can now get Windows virtual machines for as little as $0.125 per hour. These beasties make great platforms for doing cross browser testing. The only hassle was that the default AMI only had IE7 installed on it.

I said “was” because I have created a new, public AMI with six browsers installed on it: IE7, IE6, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera 9, Safari 3.1, and Google Chrome 0.3. You are welcome to use it for free (well… you do have to pay Amazon their whopping 12.5 cents per hour). I hope it makes your web site testing life a bit easier.

Details at my Hen’s Teeth Network web site.

Steal This Comic or Song

Art Zemon — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:33:08 +0000

I buy a lot of music on-line and it breaks down like this:

1,268 completely unlocked MP3 files, easily playable on any computer or device, all purchased from eMusic.com. (Here’s a link to get 25 FREE iPod® compatible downloads from eMusic! Choose from over 2.8 Million songs! )
0 DRM-locked files from iTunes, Audible.com, etc.

Google Chrome to Replace Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX, and Linux

Art Zemon — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:26:18 +0000

Google released Chrome today and you will see “Google Chrome is a browser” if you visit the Chrome web page. Do not be deceived, though. Chrome is not designed to replace Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari. Chrome is designed to replace your operating system and virtually all of the software that you use every day. Chrome is the key to letting you do all of your computer stuff on the web instead of on one computer.

Think of the advantages. If you edit your grocery list on your home computer and want to print it at work, you are stuck. You cannot print that grocery list until you get home again. But if you edit your grocery list on the web, you can get to the same document and print it from any computer anywhere in the world. Similarly, if your hard disk dies, you can still get to your stuff if it is on the web. All you have to do is switch to another computer and keep on working. I could wax rhapsodic about the possibilities for way more paragraphs than you want to read but I’ll spare you.

Google wants to make this transition so easy for you that you will wonder why you did not make the switch yesterday. Chrome will take over your whole computer and hide all of the confusing gunk of Windows or OSX or Linux so you do not have to worry about it any more. You will be able to simply do your work or read your email or stare at your videos or whatever strikes your fancy. And if you are on a Mac today and on a PC tomorrow, it will not matter one bit because everything will look exactly the same.

Does this seem a bit far fetched? Take a look at how your computer appears if you use Internet Explorer to read the news. (Click on the picture to see it larger.)

That looks pretty normal. You can see that you are running IE because there is lots of IE stuff on the top and bottom of the screen and the news is in the middle. Now here is the same web page in Firefox.

That is pretty much the same experience. You can see that you are running Firefox instead of IE because the stuff at the top and bottom is different but the browser stuff is still there and the news is in the middle.

Now look at the same page in Google Chrome:

Now that looks different. Where did the browser go? It vanished in much the same way that your operating system vanishes into the background. As you are reading the article, are you really aware of whether you are using Linux or Windows or OSX? Of course not. But you see Firefox or IE or Safari all the time because it intrudes on your life so boldly.

Chrome is not a web browser. It is the platform on which your application software runs. Reuters picked this up when it reported,

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Chrome was designed to address the shift to using software from within a Web browser rather than as locally installed computer applications running inside Microsoft Windows or some other operating system.

“I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world,” Brin told a group of reporters after the news conference at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters.

in Google sees new browser displacing desktop software.

Does this sound familiar? Pick your poison:

Microsoft Windows + Microsoft Outlook + Microsoft Exchange + Microsoft Office
Google Chrome + Google GMail + Google Calendar + Google Docs

Is this good or bad? That is the $64 question, of course. Google’s web-based applications carry no license fees and ought to be highly reliable. But they come with advertisements and the implicit agreement that you trust Google to manage your data properly. Naturally, Chrome will also run other applications, just like Microsoft Windows runs applications which were not written by Microsoft. But by providing one platform which runs identically across all computers, and which is written and maintained by the same Google which provides all of those whiz-bang applications, you can bet that Google is assuring a first-class user experience if you settle comfortably into the Google environment whole heartedly.

Which do you want on your computer? Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX or Linux… or Google Chrome?

Caching Free LibraryThing Book Covers

Art Zemon — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 02:39:12 +0000

LibraryThing did something amazing last Thursday: it made images of the covers of a million books available for anyone to use for free. This is way better than using Amazon.com’s book covers because you can display them without linking to Amazon. If you are a library or an independent book store, having links on your web site which can draw your patrons or customers to Amazon is not a particularly good thing. It is obviously better than a commercial book cover service because, well, it’s free.

Here is an example. I own a copy of 100 Great Fantasy Short, Short Stories. Since I am using a LibraryThing cover, I can legally link the image to the LibraryThing description (which I have done) or I could have linked it to my own LibraryThing catalog or to anything else I choose.

There are a couple of small potential problems and these prompted me to write a little caching script for the LibraryThing covers. First, you need to use your own developer key to obtain the covers from LibraryThing and there is a slight chance that you could exceed the maximum number of covers per day that LT is willing to provide to you. Second, since I am quite sure that this service will be very popular, LT’s servers could get a bit overburdened if everybody hits them for images.

The solution? Install my little LTcovers PHP script on your own web server. It is just a single file and needs a single directory in which it can store copies of the book cover images that you need. As your patrons/customers/users display covers on your web site, LTcovers will grab the images from LibraryThing and keep a local copy. Once configured, it needs no maintenance.

What do you need?

The ltcovers.zip script. Right-click on that link and “Save As” ltcovers.zip on your own web server. Unzip the file to extract ltcovers.php
Your own LibraryThing developer key. It’s free and you need to have your own.
You might want a 1×1 pixel transparent GIF image as a default image, in case you request a cover which LibraryThing does not have. You can download one from here. (Use “Save As” again.)

My LTcovers script is available for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The images from LibraryThing are available under these terms, “You also agree to some very limited terms: You do not make LibraryThing cover images available to others in bulk. But you may cache bulk quantities of covers. Use does not involve or promote a LibraryThing competitor. If covers are fetched through an automatic process (eg., not by people hitting a web page), you may not fetch more than one cover per second.”

I hope that between LibraryThing and this script, you can save a few dollars (if you are now paying for a commercial book cover service) and provide a better experience for your web site visitors (if you are now linking to Amazon).

Shameless commercial plug: If you want to use LTcovers but cannot install it on your own web server, Hen’s Teeth Network will be glad to provide you with a small hosting account quite suitable for running it. We will even install LTcovers for free if you sign up for one of our hosting accounts.

Performance Bonuses for Politicians

Art Zemon — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:25:44 +0000

The local mayor wants a raise. That got me thinking: he’s been in office only about a year and we really don’t know how well the stuff his is doing will pan out. Isn’t it a little premature to give him a raise? On the other hand, if he does a great job, shouldn’t he be properly rewarded for his contributions to the city?

Give a listen to my second podcast in which I propose a new mechanism for compensating our elected officials.

[display_podcast]

Acting My Age

Art Zemon — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:13:48 +0000

Thanks Archie.

For Whom Do We Mourn?

Art Zemon — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:46:05 +0000

Tragedy struck on Monday when 33 people died at Virginia Tech. Flags fly at half mast as we grope through feelings of hurt, anger, helplessness, and grief. President Bush was so moved that he offered personal condolences,

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.

Why are these deaths so painful for us?

On the same day, about 116 people died in traffic related accidents. President Bush’s words fit here, too.

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates….

…but not a grieving nation. Why not?

One of those 33 victims at Virginia Tech took his own life. On that same day, about 83 other men and women did the same thing. Again, President Bush’s words apply.

It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they’re gone — and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates….

…but not a grieving nation. Again, why not?

Yesterday evening, a 19 year old young man in my congregation took his own life. It is impossible for me to make sense of his suffering. He did nothing to deserve his fate. He is simply gone and he leaves behind a grieving family and grieving classmates…

…but not a grieving nation.

Why do we publicly mourn 33 deaths at Virginia Tech while ignoring the other senseless deaths in our lives? Why do we order investigations and ask tough questions about one situation and not all of the others?

Here’s a suggestion: take your feelings about a recent death and channel it for good. The next time you are angry with a loved one or a friend, remember that you do not know if you will see them tomorrow. Make peace. Love them now. And, God willing, you can love them tomorrow, too.

Book Wish List and More

Art Zemon — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 11:29:53 +0000

I continue to find more uses for the wonderful (and $free) LibraryThing. Like so many of us, I have bunches of books that I have never had a good way to keep track of but now I do. Like…

My wish list — yes, I do accept donations
My to-be-read list. Most of these books are already at home, piled on bookshelves and waiting for me to remember (or rediscover) them and savor them.
Books which I find at the library and want to remember have a list of their own.
And then there are the not-owned books which I enjoyed but have given away.

These last few lists will keep growing as I recall old friends which no longer live with me. For now, I am still simply racing through the books which are still here.

Using LibraryThing

Art Zemon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:11:12 +0000

LibraryThing seemed so obviously good that I simply dived in head first and started cataloging all of the books in the house, even though I did not know what I would do with it beyond that initial step. I am even more convinced of LT’s utility because the first opportunity to actually use my on-line catalog surfaced so quickly.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend on the phone, mentoring her on collaboratively developing web sites using Dreamweaver. LibraryThing made it trivial for me to show her the Dreamweaver-related books that I find most helpful since, not surprisingly, they are the ones in my library.

I have begun to think of LibraryThing as del.icio.us for physical books.

LibraryThing

Art Zemon — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 04:59:33 +0000

I’m addicted to LibraryThing. It only took a few hours and I only have a start on cataloging my library. This is great stuff!

Must sleep… must sleep… must ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World?

Art Zemon — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 12:46:32 +0000

What if you could save money and do good by just changing a lightbulb? You can.

Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

That is from How Many Lightbulbs Does it Take to Change the World? One. And You’re Looking At It. on FastCompany.com.

We have several of these compact flourescent lightbulbs (CFL) in our house and they… well… they just work: no fuss, no muss. Honestly, sitting here in my chair and typing this, I cannot remember where we put them.

Next time you are at the store, buy one of these things. It’s a no brainer. The bulb will cost you less than $3 and the electricity savings will pay for it in about five months. Take it home and stick it in a light socket. Then forget about it for several years. The next time one of your regular lightbulbs burns out, try to remember where you put the CFL. Then consider whether you want to put an old-fashioned lightbulb back in, or switch another light to a CFL.

eMusic: Music Without DRM

Art Zemon — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:00:06 +0000

Are you sick and tired of being told that you cannot make legitimate copies of your own music? Did you buy a song for your iPod only to later discover that you could not play it on something else that you own? A “little” company, eMusic.com, has the answer: they sell good music for a fair price without DRM. You can make all the copies you that you want.

Ars Technica has a good article about them, Making money selling music without DRM: the rise of eMusic

They’re doing a lot of things right. The site works well, downloads are quick, and it has plenty of tools with which to discover new music. The music itself is high bit rate VBR MP3 files, and it sounds terrific. Still, you’ll need to have a musical taste at least slightly outside the mainstream for the site to interest you in the long term. We’ve talked mainly about indie rock, but eMusic also has massive jazz and classical sections (it recently acquired the entire Naxos catalog, for instance), and is also a good place to go for (of all things) comedy albums.

I have been an eMusic subscriber for over two years and I have found a bunch of good stuff. Give it a listen; I think you will be pleased. If you are interested in signing up, let me know; you will get 25 free downloads (and I will get 50, which I would sure appreciate )