The Verdant Path

PACE Financing - Everyone Wins!

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:07:15 GMT

PACE - Property Assessed Clean Energy financing for home weatherization is like a magic trick. It's one of those situations where everyone wins, as far as I can tell. Is there any downside to this? Any hidden gotchas I'm not seeing?

The only real downside I can see if that it doesn't do anything for renters. I mean, you could try to negotiate with the landlord and try to convince them to take on the increased property tax and recoup it in increased rent, which you can afford becuase your energy costs are lower; but the annual energy cost isn't generally a big selling point for renters. Maybe it should be or could be, but that's an extra layer of risk for the property owner.

I'm really happy to see this program spread. I read about it a year ago when it started in Berkeley, Calif.

So here's how it works. The city issues a bond to raise capital. The capital is used to make loans to property owners for weatherization improvements. The property owners repay the city and bondholders via an increased property tax lien, amortized over 15-20 years. The annual savings from decreased energy consumption are greater than the annual property tax increase. The property tax increase stays with the property and not the owner.

Bond-holders win because the property taxes are senior even to mortgage debt and are thus very secure. The city wins because the program modernizes their housing stock and generates jobs in the community. The property owner wins because he actually saves money on an annualized basis, including the first year. I really can't find a downside for anyone in that picture.

Guinea Pig for CS Educators

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:34:22 GMT

I'm tired of being a guinea pig for Computer Science educators. This is now the second introductory Computer Science class I've taken, and it's the second one to have incomplete or brand new course materials.

The first class was CSCI 111 at Ole Miss. Dr. Lawhead used us as guinea pigs to test teaching introductory programming skills with Lego Mindstorms robots. It was pretty cool, but also frustrating from time to time. Shenanigans with the robots themselves, such as differences between individual designs, quirks of the robot JVM, differing behavior based on battery state, and even the weird keyboards on the Sun workstations all added up to a big headache.

I think there may have been intentional pedagogy behind some of the frustration, based on a somewhat tongue-in-cheek explanation of why MIT uses Python now to teach introductory programming instead of Scheme.

Nowadays you muck around with incomprehensible or nonexistent man pages for software you don’t know who wrote. You have to do basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts.

Now I'm in CS 5010 at Northeastern, often referred to as "Boot Camp for Masters Students". It's a rigorous grounding in the fundamentals of designing structured programs with the maximum possible unit test coverage. It's a very different, and I think superior, approach than the typical introductory CS course using Java. I've actually learned a fair bit from it, and I think it's made me a better programmer. I think I was pretty good to start with, but in this business there's always room for improvement.

Unfortunately, the class itself is not as well structured. Two of the three main texts are pre-production, unpublished materials: How to Design Classes, which I'm waiting on the Northeastern Reprographics Center to actually print and bind a copy for me; and How to Design Programs, 2nd Edition, which is at least available online even if it's not in print yet. The fun part is that we're largely using the first edition of HtDP, but we're using the 2nd edition examples and software. They don't always agree.

Ah well, at least I can brag that I've been on the cutting edge of Computer Science pedagogy; even if it's the receiving end (ouch!).

New Laptop Shenanigans

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:07:57 GMT

I've been having an interesting experience with my laptop.

I recently sold my 2007 Macbook Pro for an Asus UL-30A. Overall I think it was a good trade, but there are definitely some tradeoffs.

First, the good parts: 2.5lb lighter, 4x battery life (1.5 hours to 6 hours, actual heavy usage), all the hardware actually works in Windows 7 (bluetooth on the Macbook never worked right), a sane keyboard, a right button on the trackpad (wtf is up with that, Apple?), and an extra $150 in my pocket (Macbook Pro sold for $900, UL-30A was $750 w/ accessories). Also, as a personal aside, the UL-30 is actually prettier. It also has a spring-loaded lid with no silly little button to press to unlock it.

Now the cons. I took a big performance hit. I went from having a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo to a 1.4 GHz, from discrete graphics chip (nVidia 8600M) to the integrated Intel 4500XHD, and from a 7200 RPM hard drive to a 5400 RPM hard drive. I've been keeping a close eye on the Windows 7 resource monitor (nice little enhancement to the performance tab in the task manager), and the only thing that gets maxed out is the hard drive. It was the same with the MBP, and it's worse now, because this 5400 RPM drive is the same I had in my old Dell laptop from 2003. In fact, my real system performance has really only gone down over time. I used to have a RAID 0 (two drives working in parallel) setup with 10,000 RPM Raptor hard drives. That was the biggest boost to real system performance I ever noticed.

Moore's Law has never applied to hard disks, and that's the big bottleneck in PC performance now. The answer is a solid state hard drive, which would drastically improve my laptop. It might even end up faster in real terms than the old one, despite the CPU and graphics chip downgrade. SSDs are a generational leap in performance (0.1-1ms seek time compared to 9-11ms, and improved bandwidth too), lighter, take less power, run cooler, and are quieter. There aren't any real barriers to using the latest generation of SSDs for daily personal use left except one. Price per gigabyte. The SSD I've been eyeing is about 1/2 the cost of the entire laptop. I'll probably suck it up and get it anyway eventually.

Someday, if CPU and graphics chip performance matter to me, I can build a badass gaming desktop for about $500 or so, and VNC or remote desktop in to do the heavy lifting at home instead of on my laptop. In the meantime, I'm carrying this thing to school almost every day, and spending a lot of time working not at home.

My other issue is one other people have run into with this particular model. The internal wifi card has only a single antenna attached, which is run along the bottom of the laptop. Usually the cards in laptops have two antennas and they run through the screen bezel, which gives great signal. Not so in the UL-30A, probably because the screen is so thin. Anyway, folks have figured out that attaching a second antenna to the empty antenna jack on the card and running it either outside the laptop or keeping it in the bay dramatically improves the signal. It's cheap and easy, so I'll probably do that soon.

My wifi actually works great... until I close the lid. I like to hook it up to my full-size peripherals at home (monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, printer/scanner, external HD) and slide it under the monitor stand. It's like using a real computer. Anyway, my wifi bandwidth drops by about a factor of 10 when I close the lid and slide it under the monitor. To download stuff or stream videos, I have to put my keyboard in my lap, slide the laptop out, and open the lid partway. I was thinking of getting an external USB wifi adapter to use at home, but it would be a PITA to have two wireless adapters installed, only one of which is plugged in all the time. A second cable will do nicely.

Electric vehicle eco-topia... in a Florida retirement town?

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:41:56 GMT

I never would have thought to look for an EV-designed community in a Florida retirement town. Maybe I shouldn't be; it sounds like a pristine Disney-style Tomorrowland. It does remind me a little of Kim Robinson's utopian California in Pacific Edge. Just add in a bunch of healthy young loons zooming on the windy paths on bicycles among the old folks and families in their NEVs, and there you have it. Well, from a transportation perspective anyway.

Tricked-Out Golf Carts Swarm Florida Communities

A lot of the same principles could easily apply to a bicycle-designed community, too. I'd also feel safer sharing the road with NEVs and golf carts than with full-size cars and trucks. It takes a certain amount of intestinal fortitude to bike on some of the main streets around here in Boston, and to know I'm within my rights and just forge ahead while keeping a wary eye out.

I wonder if I would actually be safer, though. As long as the carts and NEVs are speed-limited to 20 mph or so, there's no problem. On flat ground I easily go 15 mph or so on my bike. It's the "overclocked" EVs that go up to 40 mph that make me wonder. A rear-end collision at that speed would do some serious damage to a bicyclist (and maybe the EV occupants too!). It's tough to hear them coming, too.

Then again, overtaking crashes are very rare for accidents involving a bicycle. Almost all of them involve either a static object (i.e. - the cyclist ran into a pole or parked car), or happen at intersections (e.g. - cars pull out in front of or turn in front of bicycles that they don't or can't see.)

Alternate Plan as Health Option Muddies Debate - NYTimes.com

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:07:16 GMT

Alternate Plan as Health Option Muddies Debate - NYTimes.com

This is a news article about the "health care cooperatives" under discussion as an alternative to the government-run public plan. I think the whole thing is stupid. We already have co-ops. Most of the Blue Cross Blue Shield plans are non-profit co-ops. All of them started that way, but some have since been bought by private companies or gone public on the stock market. They're practically an arm of the government anyway; they provide Medicare benefits, administer the federal employees' health plan, and most union health plans.

In the article I linked, Rep. Pomeroy, D-ND is quoted as saying “The market here is uncompetitive,” said Mr. Pomeroy, a former state insurance commissioner. “A cooperative could provide an alternative source of insurance and some interesting competition for premium dollars. A co-op could operate at lower costs, in part because it would not need to pay its executives so generously as the local Blue Cross Blue Shield plan.”

Generously? It says right there in the same article that BCBS of North Dakota is already a non-profit member-owned co-op. Their chief exec, Paul von Ebers, is paid $500,000, with the potential for a $250,000 bonus. That might seem like a lot of money, but it's peanuts for executive pay. If he get the bonus, is 15 times what I'm paid. Still, if you consider that the ratio of CEO to average worker pay was 262 to 1 in 2006*, then 15 to 1 seems very reasonable. If Ebers donated his salary back to the company and distributed it to BCBS-ND members, everybody would get $1.75. I don't think his compensation is a problem.

I'd rather see a single-payer system, maybe phased in gradually through expanding Medicare eligibility. Insurance works by pooling risk, and it's tough to get a bigger risk pool than everyone in the country. An organization that size would have even more leverage over providers and drug/equipment companies. Congress and the President would have a strong incentive to keep satisfaction with the system high, or we vote their butts out. I can't possibly imagine it could be more bureaucratic and unwieldy than our current system.

*In the interest of fairness, here's an article with a different perspective on that ratio number.

Editorial - Intel’s Human Rights - NYTimes.com

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:45:47 GMT

Editorial - Intel’s Human Rights - NYTimes.com

I find it bitterly amusing that a huge company like Intel is claiming to have "human rights". However, the antitrust proceedings are basically worthless because Intel is on its way out anyway. The huge growth market right now is mobile devices, including smartphones, where Intel has very little penetration. Almost all smart phones use ARM, TI, or Qualcomm processors; very few manufacturers use Intel chipsets in mobile devices.

The rapid pace of innovation in the tech market is what will kill Intel, not antitrust judgements. The court and regulatory system is just too slow to keep up with tech markets.

Anywhere Internets

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:35:57 GMT

I have some things I'd like to give away or sell. First-come, first-served. Leave a comment if anything interests you. We can figure out shipping and all that jazz later.

HP Laserjet 1100 - black and white laser printer, parallel-port only. It's discontinued, but Windows Vista includes drivers for it. It could use a new roller and toner cartridge, but works like a charm otherwise.

Option GT Ultra Expresscard with AT&T contract. This is a laptop cellular modem for high-speed wide area wireless access. Works great; I just can't really afford it. The contract is through November, 2010. I'd rather transfer the account to someone for $11 than cancel it for $175 and be stuck with the hardware. The plans range from $30 (10 MiB/mo.) to $60 (5 GiB/mo.). I don't see the $30 plan listed, but it's what I currently have.

WD2000JS 200 GB SATA hard drive

D-Link DWL-G510 PCI card wireless-G adapter for desktops

Asus WL-107G Wireless LAN Cardbus Adapter. This is a WiFi card for a laptop with a PCMCIA or Cardbus slot. I got it for trying to fix Renee's old laptop, but came to find out the Cardbus slot on her laptop was broken, not the WiFi card.

2x 1 GiB 200-pin SO-DIMM DDR2 laptop memory, came with my Macbook Pro and was replaced (Samsung M470T2953EZ3-CE6)

~~Box full of Star Wars books.~~ 18.5" x 11.5" x 10" and packed full of paperbacks, so it's quite heavy. I can open it up and list them if you want, but it's an all-or-nothing deal.

...more to come?

What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09 | Beyond The Beyond

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:36:39 GMT

What Bruce Sterling Actually Said About Web 2.0 at Webstock 09 | Beyond The Beyond

I love this essay. I've read it before and I just read it again because it's so great. Here's a few excellent excerpts:

"You can’t build a “platform” on a “cloud!” That is a wildly mixed metaphor! A cloud is insubstantial, while a platform is a solid foundation! The platform falls through the cloud and is smashed to earth like a plummeting stock price!"

...

"The World Wide Web sits on top of a turtle, and then below that is an older turtle, and that sits on the older turtle. You don’t have to feel fretful about that situation — because it’s turtles all the way down."

...

"What I have to wonder is: how much of Javascript’s great power is based on an attitude that Javascript is up to the job? Duct-taping the turtles all the way down."

Samaritans Walk

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:17:51 GMT

My darling lady love, Renee, volunteers for an organization called the Samaritans that runs a 24-7 suicide prevention helpline. This fall, she's participating in a fundraising run/walk for the organization and is asking for donations in honor of a friend of hers who committed suicide four years ago.

I can't wrap my mind around the idea of suicide, which I suppose is a good thing, but it makes it hard to empathize with people who might be feeling suicidal. I'm glad there are people in the world like Renee and the other folks at the Samaritans who can do what I can't, and reach out and offer emotional support to those in need.

If you're moved at all by her story about Carl, please give what you can, any amount helps. Thank you!

Pushing cucumber inside.

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:02:22 GMT

A piece of spam made it into my gmail inbox today, a rare occurrence and generally an annoyance. The subject of the message was "Pushing cucumber inside." Now, I know what you're thinking, and I thought the same thing too, but I clicked through out of morbid curiosity.

Instead of links to porn sites, though, the link was to anytimegrocery.com (which I'm not visiting or linking on purpose. Come to find out it's a grocery delivery service in India. I guess they're pushing cucumbers inside your front door?), and an oddly poignant little story. Here it is, for your enjoyment and puzzlement:

A new and sharper pang struck him; he felt for his wallet. He opened the door and listened.

He opened his eyes to look into the face of the Kaiark Rianlle. Gersen displayed the newspaper articles dealing with the event.

I intend that the facts will speak for themselves. She gave an embarrassed laugh.

The Internet Is Weird

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 18:19:40 GMT

Check out this amazing coincidence.

I subscribe to a blog called Cute Overload. Today they posted a video wherein a hacker took videos of cats "playing" piano and spliced it together to recreate a piece of "atonal music" called Drei Klavierstücke by a composer named Arnold Schoenberg.

I clicked through to the creator's site, where he explained that used a product called Comparisonics to compare the cat videos to the original recording.

One of the co-founders of Comparisonics is Dr. Steven Rice, a professor of mine at Ole Miss who wrote me a really nice recommendation letter for graduate school this year.

Cool, huh?

Google LatLong: Welcome to Boston: the MBTA on Google Maps

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:58:38 GMT

Google LatLong: Welcome to Boston: the MBTA on Google Maps

Yay, just in time! The MBTA has a good trip planner on their website, but Google Maps is way easier to use on my Android smart phone. I must have emailed them a half dozen times about this. Apparently there was also a sizable Facebook group dedicated to the cause.

People like to get high

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:21:42 GMT

I thought this was amusing:

"When it comes to cleverness, the drug czar has nothing on the drug market, as the latest cocaine price data show. People like to get high, and they’ll find a way to do it. Chop down all the pot plants, and the dealer will still have blow. Push them both down, and some guy will cook up something crazy with gasoline and Sudafed."
The Drug Czar's High Math: How phony statistics about cocaine prices hide the truth about the war on drugs - Reason Magazine

Imagine...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:05:51 GMT

When carpooling today, as we drove past the projects, our secretary said she doesn't understand how people are allowed to immigrate and then just end up being supported by the government. She's all for helping people, but we should help our people first.

I told her I don't really believe in countries. I think they're a bad idea. Then as we got out of the car and walked into the building, I sang a few snatches from "Imagine". I love the Perfect Circle cover.

Life is Strange

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:44:04 GMT

Life is so very, deeply strange. I get to feeling this way from time to time. Sometimes it's my life in particular that's so strange; other times it's life in some larger context (America, the 21st century, or just life period). Right now, I'm not sure. All of the above, maybe.

Treasure your close friends. They're rare and precious. I am filled with awe and joy to have known and cared for my oldest friend, since 1992, over 15 years.

I wish I could be closer to him, but I then thought to myself that as much as I wish that, I still have to live my life, not his. Then it occurred to me how that is a uniquely modern sentiment, enabled by incredibly easy mobility by historical standards.

In most of human existence, I would have most likely been born, lived, and died in a relatively small area.

How very, very strange it is, and how precious it makes the bonds of friendship that survive distance and change.

Why We Must Ration Health Care - NYTimes.com

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:30:10 GMT

Peter Singer is an interesting and provocative fellow:

Why We Must Ration Health Care - NYTimes.com

For myself, I dislike the idea of allocating health care using ability to pay, like we do now, more or less. You might be able to make a good economic case that those who are more productive members of society deserve better medical care, but I find that morally distasteful.

In the end, all discussions like this come down to a menu of unpalatable choices. Singer wisely quoted Churchill towards the end:

"The is not a perfect measure of the good obtained by health care, but its defenders can support it in the same way that Winston Churchill defended democracy as a form of government: it is the worst method of allocating health care, except for all the others."

Partial Building Collapse Closes Huntington Ave. - wbztv.com

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 19:05:57 GMT

Partial Building Collapse Closes Huntington Ave. - wbztv.com

Freaky, I walked down that street when I visited Northeastern. Hope this isn't indicative of their facilities. O.O

Birthday So Far

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:57:33 GMT

I did have a nice walk this morning, all around the farm. My shoes got pretty wet from the dew, but I listened to the birds, ate some wild blackberries, and stopped to enjoy the sunbeams. It's a great place. I should take a photo tour before I go.

Afterwards, I went back inside and researched potential camping trips for this weekend (Mount Greylock if we're brave and like driving far and Mount Watatic if we want to stay a little closer to home.

Then I stopped off at Jamesville Beach county park and went for a nice 15 minute walk. I came across a whole nest of redwing blackbirds, which are probably my favorite bird in New York. Now I even know what they look like. I tried to take some pictures, but they weren't very cooperative.

I've been working since then, went to the gym, packed a lunch, all the usual stuff, except for some nice birthday wishes from my coworkers and a lovely bouquet and birthday balloon from Renee.

Now I'm working late and installing patches on our system, and then meeting my friends at the Blue Tusk for beers and dinner.

I'll probably go to bed early tonight, soon after getting home from dinner.

Pretty boring overall. Mostly I'm excited and hoping to get through the week so I can wake up in Boston Friday morning and then go camping and hiking that weekend with Renee and her friends.

Morning

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:09:55 GMT

Just watched the morning sun peek over the ridge and through the clouds. I stood and gloried in the early morning sunbeam before returning to my chores.

From Birthday 2009

Now I have coffee and two hours to myself. I think I'll take a walk on this chilly July morning.

Squeak!

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:27:11 GMT

Our kitty cat just brought me my first birthday present of the day: a live mouse. She dropped it twice while I watched, and then promptly ran after it to catch it again.

I'm going to let her have fun while I make coffee and watch the sun come up.

Beer budget?

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:54:38 GMT

What category do you put beer in your budget?

Is it groceries? You can certainly get beer at the grocery store and it has calories in it. Nobody calls beer part of a balanced breakfast except jokingly, though. You don't really need it to fuel your metabolism, though I would be sad to not have any.

Is it entertainment? Maybe. This might be the best category for it. You usually drink beer because you want to, because you enjoy it, and like the way it tastes and makes you feel.

Should it have its own category? Should I have a "beer budget"? That makes me feel like an alcoholic.

It's easy to split up into its own category when you get beer straight from the brewery, but what about when you get it at the grocery store or gas station?

I spent $55 on beer last month, not all of which I drank. I bought beer in California to drink with my friends and wound up leaving four of the six bottles there when I flew out. I brought three growlers (half-gallon jugs) of beer to Firefly this weekend. I drank a lot of it, but I also shared a lot of it too. Plus I was there to party. Is that an entertainment or a travel expense?

I should probably just stick with "entertainment" for beer and split up my grocery receipts. Count it in with movies, chocolate candy, music, and books.

Official Google Blog: Google Voice invites on their way

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:58:28 GMT

Official Google Blog: Google Voice invites on their way

Sweet! I hope I can get one of these for a local Boston number. I wish I had one now, given that I have three numbers and my cell doesn't work at home and it's flaky at work. I could set up a time schedule for ringing phones based on work days.

Still, it'll be nice if only for the online voicemail and transcriptions, even if my cell phone works everywhere. I want a local Boston number when I move anyways, so it might as well be a Google Voice number.

Video: Kittehs Vs. Cameras! « Lolcats ‘n’ Funny Pictures of Cats – I Can Has Cheezburger?

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:58:35 GMT

People injuring themselves in the pursuit of cute cat pictures to put stupid captions on...

Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds | Wired Science | Wired.com

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:45:14 GMT

Woah, apparently birds might be able to see magnetic fields. Freaky.

Reverse-Engineering the Quantum Compass of Birds | Wired Science | Wired.com

Stick Figure Science

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:51:45 GMT

These are cute. Behold, the irreducible complexity of the almond!