Gray Watson's Blog -- September 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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September 24, 2009

So a bunch of friends at work have been getting into World Of Warcraft lately -- some for the first time and some are coming back. I gave it a try and it is an amazingly complete and extensive world. I can sense the addiction. Here's an interesting article behind the scenes at WOW. Very, very cool virtual reality backed by cool technology.
The design department, some 37 members strong, came up next. Class designers, profession designers, itemization designers, level designers, event designers, encounter and lead designers are all grouped here. Brack points out the multi-disciplinary nature of the level creation team. They use WoWEdit to incorporate art assets and create the zones in the game. The events team is responsible for not only holidays like Hallow's End, but also static world components like the city of Dalaran and the new and popular Argent Tournament. Over the years, the team has created some 70,000 spells and some 40,000 NPCs.

The Blizzard Online Network services group is Pearce's next focus. A huge group, they have data centers from Texas to Seoul, and monitor over 13,250 server blades, 75,000 cpu cores, and 112.5 terabytes of blade RAM. He points out the picture of the GNOC in their slideshow, a data core that even has televisions tuned to the weather stations. They use those to ensure that conditions of the data center are up to their standards; with only a staff of 68 people they ensure connectivity across the globe for the numerous WoW servers.

September 22, 2009

Amazingly cool bunch of amateurs collected from Youtube covering various Michael Jackson tracks. I really like the Jazz trio covering "Smile", the drummer doing "Beat It", and a minimalist performance of "She's Out of My Life" on a ukelele. Very, very cool stuff.
Our tribute to Michael Jackson, ironically, consists of a list of the best covers we've found on youtube by average, acoustic artists who decided to cover Michael Jackson as a tribute to his death. In our opinion, most of these renditions are notable not for their synthesizer content, but for the fact that when you lay most of Michael Jacksons' songs bare, down to something as simple as a voice and a guitar, you are left with the original songwriting that really he should be remembered for – pure, simple and brilliant, even at a very young age. Synthesizers simply became a tool to help bring that talent to the forefront, with such well written songs. Without further ado – here's our list of best Michael Jackson Covers on Youtube today.

September 21, 2009

Decent article over the weekend by Friedman about how our government should impost a gas tax -- that we are not taking the necessary tough road. We're being wimps -- "real cheese-eating surrender monkeys" he calls our politicians. I can't agree more.
However, where Thomas and I disagree is what to do with the money. Increasing taxes is the 3rd rail I always try to avoid -- regardless of the good intentions -- so I would rather drop the income tax. Have the income tax indexed to the gas tax -- the more money we raise in gas tax, the less we pay in income taxes that year. If we raise the gas tax we are going to affect the economics of much of the country and we need to compensate. Food is going to be more expensive, commuter communities are going to be pissed, etc..

Such a tax would make our economy healthier by reducing the deficit, by stimulating the renewable energy industry, by strengthening the dollar through shrinking oil imports and by helping to shift the burden of health care away from business to government so our companies can compete better globally. Such a tax would make our population healthier by expanding health care and reducing emissions. Such a tax would make our national-security healthier by shrinking our dependence on oil from countries that have drawn a bull's-eye on our backs and by increasing our leverage over petro-dictators, like those in Iran, Russia and Venezuela, through shrinking their oil incomes.

In sum, we would be physically healthier, economically healthier and strategically healthier. And yet, amazingly, even talking about such a tax is "off the table" in Washington. You can't mention it. But sending your neighbor's son or daughter to risk their lives in Afghanistan? No problem. Talk away. Pound your chest.

September 17, 2009

Very cool story and video about Nanosolar's solar cell mass production facility in Germany. Unfortunately they are privately funded otherwise I'd buy some stock. They have achieved 16% efficiency on solar cells (11-14% median) that are printed onto a metal foil (not silicon) with nanoparticle solar ink. They can supposedly produce solar cells that will generate 640 megawatts per year and have $4 billion of outstanding orders already.
What exciting about this is that they can produce an amazingly large number of cells with a very low material cost. They are concentrating on utility grade panels right now (which is exciting enough) but I can't believe that this is just the first step towards low cost, decent, panels for residential use. Their tagline from their company website is "Technology for Profitable Solar". Other sources: MIT Tech Review. Univ. of Texas has also developed a spray-on solar cell production process.

At 16.4% efficiency, our foil cells represent two world records in one: It's the most efficient printed solar cell of any kind (all semiconductor and device technologies) as well as the most efficient cell on a truly low-cost metal foil (with a material cost of only a cent or two per square foot and mil thickness).

September 16, 2009

NuScale Power company is working on small ~45 megawatt reactors that can be put together as modules to built gigawatt power plants. Each reactor uses the latest technology with passive cooling systems which provide significant safety and cost savings.
The nuclear reactor and steam generator, also known as the Nuclear Steam Supply System (NSSS), is a self-contained assembly of reactor core and steam generator tube bundles within a single pressure vessel. Throughout the design, every effort was made to employ existing off-the-shelf technologies to minimize, and in many cases eliminate, the need for additional research and development. The primary coolant (water) is moved by natural circulation, eliminating the need for primary coolant pumps and external power. The NSSS and the passive safety heat removal systems are housed within the compact steel containment.

The NuScale reactor operates using the principles of natural circulation. No pumps are needed to circulate water through the reactor Instead, the system uses a convection process. Water is heated as it passes over the fuel or core.

Water in the reactor system and the Steam Generator system are kept separate. As the hot water in the reactor system passes over the hundreds of tubes in the Steam Generators, heat is transferred through the tube walls. Water inside the tubes turns to steam. The steam turns turbines (7) which are attached by a single shaft to the electrical generator.
Here's a great piece by Dan Gilmor about what he'd do if he ran a news organization. Excellent stuff. Couldn't agree more.
#3 Transparency would be a core element of our journalism. One example of many: Every print article would have an accompanying box called "Things We Don't Know" -- a list of questions our journalists couldn't answer in their reporting. TV and radio stories would mention the key unknowns. Whatever the medium, the organization's website would include an invitation to the audience to help fill in the holes, which exist in every story.

#6 We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.
American audiences may be unable to see movie "Creation" because it is about Charles Darwin and the theory of Evolution. Even though the people who have actually seen the movie call it even-handed and wise, the explosive topic will most likely mean that it will never get a wide audience. We are the only first world country in the planet that has these problems with evolution. How sad.
The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia. However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.
Wow. The Internet Archive project also has archived TV footage. They have 3 days of 3 networks' coverage of 9/11 -- what an amazing historical record. Here's ABC's coverage from 0831 - 0912 on 9/11. They find out about Flight 11 at 19:50 of the movie and they watch Flight 175 flight into the South Tower at 31:30. Horrifying.
Here's a good compilation of the footage from 9/11 on Youtube. Boing Boing also has an excellent compilation of blog entries and some prophetic words from Dan Gillmor and John Perry Barlow.
Interesting vertical axis, magnetically levitated, wind turbine from Enviro Energies in Ontario, Canada. I don't see a whole bunch of information about output but it is certainly a different model.
Rated output of 2.5 kW and maximum output of 4.3 kW. Various sail assembly sizes available ranging from 4'h x 8'd to 6'h x 12'd. Can be utilized in most wind conditions. Power generation in as low as 4 mph of wind. 3.6 kW inverter system. Ideal for eliminating peak usage in homes, hybrid installations, back-up power, remote power, or installed in arrays along roof lines for a great architectural presence.
In yet another sign of the future of the automobile market, EVs (electric vehicles) dominated the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show. People are talking about 5-20% market penetration of EVs by 2020.
Most automakers displayed concept or production vehicles demonstrating their advances in electric-car technology, which has emerged as one of the dominant themes of the show. Volkswagen revealed an e-Up electric show car along with new sporty cars loaded with horsepower, and PSA Peugeot Citroen showed an electric car based on Mitsubishi Motors Corp.'s i-MiEV, already on sale in Japan.

... Renault, along with its Japanese affiliate Nissan Motor Co., has outlined plans for the most aggressive rollout of electric cars. Carlos Ghosn, chief executive of both Renault and Nissan, said Renault's electric cars would be priced so that the cost of ownership would be similar to or less than the cost of owning a diesel-powered car in Europe today. Diesels cost slightly more than gas-powered cars, but provide much better fuel economy.

September 15, 2009

Fascinating research about the importance of unconditional love as opposed to withdrawing love when our demands are not met. I need to work on my behavior with my son for sure.
It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a "strong internal pressure" than to "a real sense of choice." Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.

In practice, according to an impressive collection of data by Dr. Deci and others, unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by "autonomy support": explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child's point of view.

September 10, 2009

Anyone who texts while driving should watch this video. Just takes 7 minutes. True life story about Reggie Shaw who caused the death of two scientists on the way to work in Utah. Reggie's life is ruined. The lives of his victims and their families are as well of course. Scientists estimate that driving while texting is twice as bad as driving while drunk -- talking on the cell phone is equivalent to DUI. We can understand the risk factors but not enough are making changes to their behavior and the behavior of their loved ones. Here's a good piece by the NY Times about distracted drivers. Here's a scary piece showing a real crash caused by texting.
For those uber-geeks out there, here's a good Linux network tuning guide for those of us running high performance network applications. I suspect that just about any server would be improved with many of these settings with little penalty aside from system memory. Here's another good page from Jboss.
Another thing you can try that may help increase TCP throughput is to increase the size of the interface queue. To do this, do the following: ifconfig eth0 txqueuelen 1000

I've seen increases in bandwidth of up to 8x by doing this on some long, fast paths. This is only a good idea for Gigabit Ethernet connected hosts, and may have other side effects such as uneven sharing between multiple streams. Also, I've been told that for some network paths, using the Linux 'tc' (traffic control) system to pace traffic out of the host can help improve total throughput.

September 9, 2009

There is good evidence that Texas executed an innocent man in 2004. Cameron Todd Willingham was convicted of burning his 3 children although the only evidence was testimony from arson investigators that has since been completed refuted by more modern and knowledgeable experts. The New Yorker article is a must read.
In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez's approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What's more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.”

... Just before Willingham received the lethal injection, he was asked if he had any last words. He said, “The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for twelve years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return, so the Earth shall become my throne.”

September 3, 2009

IBM scientists in Zurich have been able to image a single molecule using an atomic force microscope (AFM). How cool is that! I always thought that the chemical diagrams showing the atomic bonds was just a representation. I'm surprised that molecules actually look like that.
The researchers focused on a single molecule of pentacene, which is commonly used in solar cells. The rectangular-shaped organic molecule is made up of 22 carbon atoms and 14 hydrogen atoms. In the image [on the right] the hexagonal shapes of the five carbon rings are clear and even the positions of the hydrogen atoms around the carbon rings can be seen.

To give some perspective, the space between the carbon rings is only 0.14 nanometers across, which is roughly one million times smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand.

September 1, 2009

Looks like competition (or cheap Chinese knock-offs) are pushing down the price of solar panels. Maybe time for those folks who had priced out PV panels before to look again and work the numbers.
For solar shoppers these days, the price is right. Panel prices have fallen about 40 percent since the middle of last year, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels, according to analysts at the investment bank Piper Jaffray.

The price drops — coupled with recently expanded federal incentives — could shrink the time it takes solar panels to pay for themselves to 16 years, from 22 years, in places with high electricity costs, according to Glenn Harris, chief executive of SunCentric, a solar consulting group. That calculation does not include state rebates, which can sometimes improve the economics considerably.
I'm not sure how I'd use it but it would be fun to have something like this 3D thermal scanner and printer. Jay Leno uses it to create parts for his old cars that are not available elsewhere. The movie is amazing to watch. Although I understand it, it still seems absolutely unbelievable that the unit can produce a working engine with no assembly.
So, rather than have a machinist try to copy the heater and then build it, we decided to redesign the original using our NextEngine 3D scanner and Dimension 3D printer. These incredible devices allow you to make the form you need to create almost any part. The scanner can measure about 50,000 points per second at a density of 160,000 dots per inch (dpi) to create a highly detailed digital model. The 3D printer makes an exact copy of a part in plastic, which we then send out to create a mold. Some machines can even make a replacement part in cobalt-chrome with the direct laser sintering process. Just feed a plastic wire—for a steel part you use metal wire—into the appropriate laser cutter.

Inside the printer, the print head goes back and forth, back and forth, putting on layer after layer of plastic to form a 3D part. If there are any irregularities in the originals, you can remove them using software. Once the model is finished, any excess support material between moving parts is dissolved in a water-based solution. Complexity doesn’t matter, but the size of the object does determine the length of the process. Making a little part might take 5 hours. The White’s feedwater heater required 33 hours.
Utah is passing the toughest penalties for those people who cause accidents while texting and driving. Utah now says that texting is "inherently reckless" and punish the driver as much as they punish drunk drivers who cause a crash. About time. Here's another terrible article about the dangers of driving while using a cell-phone.
Studies show that talking on a cellphone while driving is as risky as driving with a .08 blood alcohol level -- generally the standard for drunken driving -- and that the risk of driving while texting is at least twice that dangerous. Research also shows that many people are aware that the behavior is risky, but they assume others are the problem.

... Prosecutors and judges in other states already have the latitude to use more general reckless-driving laws to penalize multitasking drivers who cause injury and death. In California, for instance, where texting while driving is banned but the only deterrent is a $20 fine, a driver in April received a six-year prison sentence for gross vehicular manslaughter when, speeding and texting, she slammed into a line of cars waiting at a construction zone, killing another driver.

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