You know what I'd love to see? Some kind of utility that would show me the kWh power usage of my appliances in real-time. You've all seen the output of "top" -- something like this (numbers picked randomly, so don't pay any attention to them):
load average (kWh): 270, 220, 230 Appliances: 149 total
This can be done -- today, easily and cheaply. Here's how:
Have a simple device that sits on a circuit and measures the power consumption. Kind of like the Kill-a-watt, except without the readout screen and the buttons. These devices can probably be easily built-in into outlets and power bars.
The sensor has a unique identifier (similar to a mac address). This identifier is clearly labelled on the outlet.
Every N seconds/minutes the sensor broadcasts the consumption data along the power line (just like "smart meters" do). Something like "00:0b:db:79:4e:45#120W" to indicate that the sensor with a unique id "00:0b:db:79:4e:45" is currently reporting 120 watts.
A listener device plugs in to the power grid in your home and collects the reports, which it then either presents on a readout screen, or makes available to the network via, say, an SNMP service.
You have some fairly simple software on your computer that connects to the listener device and shows you real-time power usage using nice graphs. You can give human-friendly labels to the sensors to identify them for your own use (e.g. you locate the outlet labelled "00:0b:db:79:4e:45" and know that it's where your fridge is plugged in, so you label that sensor as "Fridge" in your software).
The software can even present the graphs in real money instead of kWh -- this way you'll know that the lights you left on in the bedroom are currently costing you 2 cents per hour, and the 1000W heater you leave on in your garage just in case you have to go down there runs up a nice $2.00 a day.
I'm not an electrical engineer, but I'm pretty sure this is very easy to implement. The sensor shouldn't cost very much, as it's really just a simple watt sensor and a non-programmable broadcaster. The listener device would be a bit more, but should cost about as much as an off-the-shelf wireless router, or less (and can probably be made to fit into breaker panels, providing just a network jack out).
Judging from how much us geeks are obsessed about things like network graphs and memory graphs, I'd say that a system like this would prove pretty popular. Does someone care to take it and run with it? :)
(I have no idea if this has occurred to anyone else before, or if similar systems are already available out there. I didn't find anything from superficial googling, so I assume that no).
This discussion on Reddit (yes-yes, it's my vice), reminded me of my earlier blog post that I wrote back in January of 2007. Reproducing it here, since my LJ blog is now defunct:
Ubuntu is the new Gentoo
2007-01-29 13:40:00
Have you noticed that there have been a lot fewer Gentoo fanboys around since, say, mid-last year? I am fairly positive that's because they have all moved on to the "new hot" distribution -- namely, Ubuntu. I guess compiling everything with "-O 99 --funroll-loops" is out, and "brown gradients" is in, I don't honestly know.
Now, the situation is slightly different in the sense that as opposed to Gentoo, which was entirely grassroots, Ubuntu has enough money coming from the "bdfl" to pay the developers and keep the PR machine well-oiled. When the fanboys move on to some other distro that is newer and shinier, I don't think the drop in popularity would be quite as drastic, but I do believe it will still be very pronounced. When the "newness factor" dies down, I expect that most developers not actually paid by Ubuntu will move back to Debian [...], and Ubuntu will take its earned slot in the distro line-up -- hopefully the company makes enough money by then to break even. Free OS market is a very tough place to compete with the likes of Red Hat and SUSENovellMicrosoft (okay, now I'm just being mean :)).
In case some people think this post is anti-Ubuntu -- it is not. [...] I simply suspect that current popularity of Ubuntu is mostly due to the "crowd" factor, and not due to its (many) merits. If anything, this is an attempt at predicting that in another year's time we'll see another project emerge (um...) that will attract many of the current Ubuntu "rabid fans" the way Gentoo and Mandrake have done in the past.
Judging from a few comments in the Reddit thread, it seems that Arch Linux is shaping up to become the new "distro for the cool." We probably won't see as much of an exodus from Ubuntu as we saw from Gentoo -- precisely because Ubuntu has a large bank account propping it up, as opposed to poor 'ole Gentoo -- but there will probably be a very pronounced dip. It seems to me (again, from that Reddit discussion) that some of the true fans of Ubuntu will be quite happy if this event takes place and takes some of the "ubuntards" out of their pool.
Fedora, on the other hand, will probably never be a "cool" distro to use -- mostly because Red Hat is seen by many "fanboys" as a big evil corp that's too mainstream to ever consider. There's probably a good reason to be happy with that state of things. :)
New subs release: Kievnauchfilm's "Treasure Island." Only first part so far, but it's a long-ish cartoon, so it's taking me a while. :) See my subs blog for more info: subs.mricon.com.
The Comedy Central network is guilty of breaking the Internet. They are not the only ones, of course (Hulu comes to mind), but they are one of the more visible offenders. Here's how it happens:
Someone links to a video clip on comedycentral.com and posts it on their blog (or on an aggregator such as Reddit)
Someone like me, who is NOT in the US, clicks on the link only to be presented with a terse note that "In Canada, the Comedy Central videos are available on the Comedy Network":
Even though "The Comedy Network" is a link, it goes to the front page on the Canadian site and NOT to the location with the video. I guess I'm then supposed to spend the next 5 minutes trying to locate it on my own.
Of course, I just give up and feel hatred towards both the Comedy Central in the US, and the Comedy Network in Canada.
The Internet is built around the concept of "Universal Resource Locators." Stress on the word "Universal." What we have in this case is the "American Resource Locator," and it's a horrible practice that needs to die an equally horrible death.
I solemnly swear that I'm going to be going outside a lot more than I did all through the winter. Having a tiny baby that didn't tolerate cold very well didn't help, of course, but now that the temperatures are *gasp* reaching above +5°C, I don't really have an excuse.
Need to remember to take more pictures, too. I used to do it lots more. :)
Oh, by the way, we bought a house in Cedar Park. Never thought we could afford anything in that area, but the housing market was playing massively to our advantage. It's a pretty small bungalow, but it suits our needs perfectly, and has a fairly nice yard for a bit of gardening. We take possession at the end of April, so don't expect pictures until then. :)
Looks like doing fansubs for old Russian movies and cartoons is going to be something that I'll do fairly frequently, since I enjoy it quite a bit. To make it easier for people to follow my work, I've branched off subs.mricon.com, which is a separate blog just for Russian fansubs.
I just did my first full-length movie -- a kid's classic called "Welcome, or No Trespassing." Here's an excerpt:
It's not quite as bad as "a GUI in Visual Basic to track an IP," but it's still a significant inaccuracy. I understand that it can be confusing: Chinese, Simplified, Traditional, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese -- but it's really quite simple.
The written language is called "Chinese." It uses characters to express meaning, and most of these characters are only vaguely phonetic. There used to be one "official" way of writing Chinese, until 1950s, when the Mainland China introduced the "simplified character set" in an attempt to combat illiteracy and make the characters easier to write. For example, the character for the dragon, "龍" (16 strokes) was simplified to "龙" (5 strokes). These days there are two recognized character sets -- Traditional Chinese, which is still used in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and Simplified Chinese, which is used in Mainland China and in a few other places. To draw parallels to English, writing "gaoler," "cheque," and "jewellery" would be "Traditional English," while "jailer," "check," and "jewelry" would be "Simplified English."
Now, on to spoken Chinese. Because, as I said, the characters are only vaguely phonetic, there is a lot of local variation between dialects. People who live in Beijing speak very differently from people who live in Shanghai. People who live in Taiwan speak differently from those who live in Hong Kong. In some cases the differences are dramatic enough to consider them to be two different languages, while in others mild enough to consider them to be merely dialects (and there's no uniform agreement among linguists about this, either). Really, it's just like with English -- Australians, Americans, Brits, and Irish all speak very distinct versions of English. Sometimes the accent can even be heavy enough to be completely incomprehensible (Cockney, or Newfie accents spring to mind). However, if you are from Mississippi and you correspond with someone in Newfoundland, you'll be writing in mutually intelligible English, despite the fact that one will spell it "cheque," and the other "check." You won't be writing in "Southern" (despite probably throwing in a few "y'alls".)
What we call "Mandarin" in the West is known in China as "普通话" -- "common speech." Think of it as "the Queen's English" of Mainland China. It's an attempt to make sure that when delegates from Shanghai and delegates from Guangzhou meet in Beijing, that everyone can understand each-other well enough to do some government work. It's pretty much a milder version of "how they speak in Beijing" -- just as "the Queen's English" is a milder version of "how they speak in London." In reality, "Mandarin" makes about as much sense as calling a language "Brit-like." You can sort of claim that Canadians, Australians, and Irish speak "Brit-like," but they themselves would balk at being lumped together, as they are clearly very distinct. Just the same, claiming that people in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Taiwan all speak "Mandarin" would be inaccurate. In fact, it's pretty much only done for the benefit of cookie-cutter Language courses, where it's common practice to pretend that there's only "Mandarin" and "Cantonese." If you learn "Mandarin" and go to Shanghai, you'd probably not understand a single word of what a street vendor tells you.
So, let's get back to the clip that prompted this diatribe. Morpheus Ray Langston reads the writing on the barrel ("Mr. Hu's Mandarin Kitchen") and says that "he speaks Mandarin because most of the researchers he used to work with 'were Mandarin.'" As you see, it makes about as much sense as claiming that you can read what's written on a bucket of "Kentucky Fried Chicken" because you have once conversed with a bunch of people from Kentucky and are thus good at reading Kentuckian.
So, repeat after me: if it's written, it's Chinese. It can either be "Traditional Chinese" or it can be "Simplified Chinese." If it's spoken, then it's okay to say that someone speaks "Mandarin" (but only insofar as saying that they aren't speaking Cantonese.) Moreover, you can't really say which spoken dialect of Chinese it is by just looking at the writing -- especially not if it's a restaurant sign, and if you're a laowai from Las Vegas (and I say this fully realizing the irony of the fact that I'm a laowai from Montreal.) :)
Oh, and the writing doesn't say "Mr. Hu's Mandarin Kitchen" -- it says "胡先生的喜相逢..." or "Mr. Hu's Happy Encounters..." (Diner? Cafe?). But I was going to let this slide.
