Gray Watson's Blog -- April 2009

Blogging is a useful way for me to record my thoughts and digital travels every so often. Hope you enjoy my digital stream of consciousness.

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April 29, 2009

Here's another interesting item from Thinkgeek -- a titanium spork.
When you walk onto the Enterprise to report for duty, you are handed a number of things: your room assignment, your phaser, your communicator, and your titanium spork. We kid you not. We've always told folks that the titanium spork was the utensil of the future, and now (after a freak transporter accident sent a few crates to our warehouse) we have the proof to um, well, prove it. The Star Trek Limited Edition Sporks are the official sporks of the USS Enterprise, and they have the laser engravings to prove it!

April 26, 2009

Oh man did this make me laugh. Some of these worst homemade Star Wars costumes are fabulously awful!!
Some people really love Star Wars. So, to show their love, they will go to great lengths to dress up as their favorite characters for nerd conventions, nerd parties and any other nerd-based gatherings. Here are some of the worst. (Although, that first Chewbacca picture might qualify as the best. I can't tell anymore.)
Terrifying article about how the largest container ships in the world emit more pollution than all of the world's cars. 1 ship can equal the pollution and harmful chemical output of 50 million cars. Other sources: treehugger.com.
Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars.

Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulfur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles.
Interesting piece about how researchers are experimenting with using duckweed to convert pip farm waste pools into biofuel at much higher densities per acre than corn based ethanol.
More than a decade ago, Cheng and fellow NC State forestry professor Anne-Marie Stomp wondered whether fast-growing duckweed, commonly seen in shallow ponds, might remediate animal waste. Excrement from the billions of animals raised every year in America's factory farms has fouled watersheds, especially in the South, and fed oxygen-gobbling algae blooms responsible for rapidly-spreading coastal dead zones.

Duckweed, they discovered, has an appetite for animal waste, quickly converting it to leafy starch that can then be converted into ethanol. The current source for most U.S. ethanol is industrial-scale corn farming, which requires large amounts of toxic pesticides and dead zone-feeding, fuel-intensive fertilizers. When the costs are added up, corn-based ethanol may prove little cleaner than gasoline.
Wild video about a turbine based fire suppression vehicle. It basically combines a set of gas turbines and water sprayers. Looks like they use these trunks/tanks to put out gas well fires.
Sad panoramic photo of a street in Detroit where 60 of the 66 houses have been abandoned. What a sad commentary of the housing disaster.
Last week I read in the morning paper about a street here where 60 out of 66 homes were vacant or abandoned on a single block. The reporter called it a "ghost street." Yesterday I found myself in the area. Other than an errant sofa, the street was completely empty, almost peaceful. I took a photo of every house on the north side of one block and then stitched them together. If you were to compare the current international housing crisis to a black hole sucking the equity out of our homes, this one-way street near the northern border of Detroit might just be the singularity: the point where the density of the problem defies anyone's ability to comprehend it. These homes started emptying in 2006.

April 3, 2009

Fascinating article about Google's server design and server farm configurations. They have customer motherboards, cases, racks, power systems, etc. and have achieved power efficiency ratings that are the envy of the industry. Very, very cool.
Google has an obsessive focus on energy efficiency and now is sharing more of its experience with the world. With the recession pressuring operations budgets, environmental concerns waxing, and energy prices and constraints increasing, the time is ripe for Google to do more efficiency evangelism, said Urs Hoelzle, Google's vice president of operations. "There wasn't much benefit in trying to preach if people weren't interested in it," said Hoelzle, but now attitudes have changed.

The company also focuses on data center issues such as power distribution, cooling, and ensuring hot and cool air don't intermingle, said Chris Malone, who's involved in the data center design and efficiency measurement. Google's data centers now have reached efficiency levels that the Environmental Protection Agency hopes will be attainable in 2011 using advanced technology.

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