More than the Average Number of Legs

New Battery Part The Second

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:12:34 GMT

I'd like to correct something in my earlier post about my new e-Bike battery. I realized that I chose the correct capacity battery, based on my motor (500W) and the PingBattery.com web site which says, "Suitable Wattage of Motor: up to 600 Watt, 450 Watt suggested".

After I bought the new battery, one of my brake levers broke, and the noodle bracket on my front brake broke. So I purchased replacements for both. The brake lever was slightly troublesome because I had to figure out how to wire it for the controller, but in the end it turned out to be pretty simple.

Recently, my charger stopped charging the battery. Li Ping who sold the battery helped me diagnose a bad charger, so I bought a new one (the cheaper 2.5V volt charger this time) and all is good in the world again.

I've been riding to work a couple of time a week, about 34 miles roundtrip before I recharge the battery. So I know the 36V 15Ah battery is good for at least 34 miles, at least with me pedaling.

I hope to commute 4,000 miles by eBike this year.

New Battery

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 22:27:03 GMT

Since my last post, I moved farther away from work (18 miles by the bicycle route I take, or 20 miles by the car route I take, or 15 miles by the most direct but hilliest route). I tried to bike to work on an unpowered bike, but wasn't able to bike more than 2 days a week. I would always need a day or two to recover.

So on December 13th, I ordered a new battery, this time a 36V 15Ah LiFePO4 battery (a relatively stable but heavy type of Lithium Ion chemistry) from PingBattery.com. (My old battery was a 36V 9Ah NiMH.) The total cost was $514, including shipping and the 5A charger instead of the free 2.5A charger. The battery arrived this week Monday, January 3rd. I put on some Anderson PowerPole connectors, charged it up, and put it into a trunk bag on my bicycle's rear rack. (I should also salvage the fuse from the old battery and attach that as well.) It weighs less than the NiMH battery, so the trunk bag seems adequate.

I took it out for a short ride today to help break in the battery. It feels good to be riding the electric bike again! I was debating whether to order the 20Ah battery or the 15Ah battery. Today, a hilly 3.6 miles out, the watt meter showed that I had used only 1.500 Ah. So that gives me a 36 mile range! Now I wonder if I should have ordered the 10Ah battery instead! It would have saved me $100.

I'm still using the Crystalyte 20A controller. The battery is rated for 15A continuous draw, which means I should probably switch to a 15A controller, but I think I'll be fine, especially if I take it easy going up hills. I bought a watt meter so I can monitor my current draw. It turns out I use about 10A on the flats, maybe 12A going up slight hills, 15-20A starting from a dead stop, and the full 20A going up steeper hills. It would probably be better to get a Cycle Analyst and a controller that can take it, and use the Cycle Analyst to limit the current draw and the speed. Even better, switch to 48V so I can go up hills faster.

Review: Mac of All Trades

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 03:30:51 GMT

My brother was looking for a Macbook but didn't want to pay full price, so I found a used, "reconditioned" one at Mac of All Trades. Unfortunately, we neglected to research the company first. That was my fault, I knew better. (If you click the "research" link above, you'll see mixed reviews about the company.)

When the Macbook arrived and my brother booted up, it still showed the old users. Lesson 1: Apparently, "reconditioned" doesn't mean reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling OSX from scratch. Lesson 2: If selling your old computer to Mac of All Trades, be sure to reinstall OSX from scratch if you think you might have any personal data on it you don't wish to fall into enemy hands.

I told my brother he needs to do the full system restore. It didn't come with any OSX CDs, so I suggested he borrow the CDs from his girlfriend, who also has a Mac. Unfortunately, the DVD-ROM drive didn't work, so he couldn't do the restore. Lesson 3: Apparently, "reconditioned" also doesn't mean fully testing the system.

So my brother contacted Mac of All Trades, and they offered to reinstall OSX for him for a fee (I think it may have been $100). Way to treat the symptom without curing the problem!

Dad and I told him he should just return it while it's still within the return period. So he did, and they refunded him his money. So, all's well that ends well. Unfortunately, the experience gave him and my dad a bad taste about Macs.

In the end, I can't recommend Mac of All Trades to anyone who isn't really good with computers. For someone who is, the prices are pretty good, and they have some great older Macs. For everyone else, I've always had really good luck with factory refurbished electronics, so for a good deal on a Mac, wait for one to show up in the Special Deals section of the Apple Store.

Worm Bin Update

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:13:20 GMT

Thursday will mark the 1-year anniversary of the startup of my worm bin. I still haven't finished filling up the second tier, and that's not for lack of effort!

The first tier was filled mostly by the coconut coir sent with the worm bin. I added some scraps on top of that, but mostly I've been putting food into the second tier. The stuff really compacts down and releases a lot of water, it's amazing. It looks like it will take another couple of months to fill up that second tier, and there's still one tier to go before I need to empty the first tier.

Adventures in Yogurt Making

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:13:26 GMT

Years ago, my mother used to have a yogurt maker which would make perfect yogurt. In order to get more calcium into my diet and start making smoothies at home, I decided to buy a Cuisipro Donvier yogurt maker (I think my mom's was also a Cuisipro) and make my own yogurt again. Reading that it would work with powdered milk, I decided to try making yogurt out of Swiss Whey D'Lite, a whey-based milk alternative similar to Morning Moos. I used a known good yogurt culture rather than try to find some yogurt at the store with active cultures.

After 10 hours of incubating, the yogurt came out runny. It's much thicker than milk, but thinner than yogurt. It's probably what you would get if you mixed equal parts milk and yogurt in a blender.

The taste and texture were otherwise fine. With a little sweetener, it makes a good yogurt drink.

I found this page which says whey-based milk substitutes "can be used in recipes that call for fluid milk except puddings, ice cream and yogurt (note: Morning Moos milk contains less fat than whole milk and will not set up in products that need fat as a thickener)."

Next time I'll try regular milk or true powdered milk.

Garmin Map Update Saga

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:50:30 GMT

Last night I downloaded the 2010 map update and tried to install it on my Nuvi 260. Part of the way through, it failed. I wasn't using the computer at the time, but I think it got at least halfway through the update. But now when I try to update it again, it says, "There is not enough free space available on your GPS for the map region you have selected, please select a different map region." It does this for all the available regions.

To free up space, Garmin's knowledge base says to delete any voice files you aren't using. So I did that, and now I have 32 MB available on the GPS unit, 1.18GB used, 1.21 GB capacity. It still won't update.

If I try to use the GPS now, it says "No detailed maps found that support routing. The nuvi cannot be used without them." If I dismiss that message and go to "Tools - Settings - Map", the "Map Info" button is grayed out.

I tried calling Garmin this morning, but the announcement said the wait was going to be at least half an hour. I tried the online e-mail support system, but when I try to submit the web form, it gives an error, something about "can't open this page".

So I've just paid $120 to brick my navigation unit, Garmin's web site doesn't work, and the telephone wait time is atrocious.

Update 2009-04-14: I gave them a call this morning. After waiting on hold for half an hour, a technician had me copy two different copies of gmmapprom.uml to the nuvi, which didn't help. So he transferred me to the software help line. After another 20 minutes on hold, the technician, upon discovering that I'm on a Mac, had to transfer me to the Mac queue (the first technician neglected to ask what operating system I was using), another 20 minute wait away. After a few minutes on hold, I decided I needed to be at work, so I hung up. Total time on the phone: 79 minutes. I'll try again tomorrow.

I'm wondering if the map update somehow corrupted the file system on my nuvi and it's now underreporting the amount of memory it has? We'll see.

Update 2009-04-16: Yesterday an e-mail arrived in response to my online e-mail support submission, so I guess that works after all, despite the DNS errors. The e-mail basically said my nuvi is probably corrupted, and give Garmin support a call. I'll do that tomorrow when I have a day off anyway. I can look forward to 30 minutes on hold waiting to ask for someone to transfer me to the Mac queue which will take another 20 minutes on hold to reach. Joy...

Update 2009-04-17: I gave Garmin a call, waited on hold 30 minutes, asked for the Mac queue, waited another 50 minutes, and the technician had me try the map update again. It didn't give the "not enough free space" error this time. It does a little "checking for updates" thing each time I run this, so maybe they fixed something on their side. Or maybe copying the .uml file triggered something that allowed the update to proceed. In any case, the technician had me plug the unit directly into the computer, bypassing the hub, just in case. This is going to take an hour or two while it updates, so I'll let it go. Also, I've disabled all the energy saving features on this computer, just in case, because last time the error occurred when the display had gone to sleep.

Update, 11:14am: Success!

New Office Part 2

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:56:59 GMT

No, not the television series.

I just noticed that I like sitting on my seiza bench so much that I will often sit here at the computer just for the sake of sitting here, and easily run out of things to do on the computer. Is that bad?

Also, if my monitor weren't so deep (it's a 17" CRT), and perhaps a little taller, I might not need the keyboard tray at all. If I were to adjust the lowest shelf high enough so my knees wouldn't hit it, perhaps a foot off the ground, I could sit closer to the shelving unit.

New Office

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:17:36 GMT

Until recently, my desk was a banquet table for my monitor, printer, and computer; a box on which sat my keyboard; and a zabuton on which sat me. But this wasn't very ergonomic--the monitor was too high, the keyboard too low, and even on a zabuton I can only kneel for so long before my ankles ache and my feet fall asleep. I wanted something better, but still simple, inexpensive, and easy to pack up and move.

My solution: a Metro-compatible shelving unit with a Metro keyboard tray as a desk, and a seiza bench on top of the zabuton for a chair. This setup has much more storage than the banquet table did and the shelving unit is not as deep, so it takes up less floor space. I've adjusted the shelves that holds the keyboard tray and monitor to their optimum heights for ergonomics.

For the most part, this is working out pretty well. I like how my neck balances on my head effortlessly, and the fact that my back is straight without support. It's a lot like sitting on a kneeling chair. At the moment, the muscles that stabilize my back are weak, so I can feel them getting a workout.

It isn't perfect. After an hour or so, my butt starts to fall asleep. I may just be sitting wrong on the seiza bench. And I may go back and get the cushion for it.

Or, I might configure the desk to use the computer while standing a là Ernest Hemingway. In which case I wouldn't need the keyboard tray, at least after I've replaced the deep 17" CRT monitor with an LCD monitor.

Composting Update

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 01:22:21 GMT

I filled up my Bokashi bucket and started on my second. For the second bucket, I decided to go the cheap route with a pair of nested 5-gallon buckets with some drain holes drilled in the bottom of the inner bucket and a lid on top.

Now I'm feeding the contents of the first bucket to the worms. They seem to be loving it. The food I put into the bokashi bucket still looks like what I put in, but the orange peels for example now have a mushy consistency, so it appears that the bokashi process breaks down the tough fibers. I don't know yet how well it works on wood.

I still have a little of the original bokashi bran left from the first batch. To replace it, I think I'll try this stuff, because it has enough for two 5-gallon containers instead of one, and the packing itself is compostable.

Crystalyte Battery Life

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 06:52:24 GMT

I've had my electric bike for 13 months now. I've taken it 3,300 miles and charged it over 300 times. (Click the "bicycle" tag at the bottom for more details.) At this point, the battery no longer wants to accept a full charge. Sometimes it will charge completely the first try, other times it quits after a few seconds and I have to retry a few times before it will take a full charge.

I posted a thread here and the reply was that I'm going to need to analyze and condition the battery cells individually, replacing the permanently bad ones with good ones. It will take some time to test them all, so I think I'll order a new battery pack and keep the old one around for parts. When the new battery develops the same problem, I'll pick the best battery cells from the two and create a frankenbattery.

A new battery pack is $400. This equates to about 12 cents per mile. Once I've salvaged the good cells into a frankenbattery, this may drop to 8 cents per mile. Considering that the 2009 IRS mileage reimbursement rate is currently 55 cents per mile, I feel like I've saved some money.

More importantly, I've gotten into shape. I can now bike through the hills without dry heaving after only a mile and my thighs have some nice muscle tone. My cholesterol is excellent, but my weight hasn't changed--instead, I've dropped from 19.2% body fat down to 11.7%, according to my inexpensive Accu-Measure body fat caliper. I only wish my blood pressure had improved. It's still in the prehypertension range.

Miles traveled in 2008: bicycle versus car

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:21:31 GMT

Here are the totals, based on the odometer on my bike computer and in my car. My goal was to bike more than I drove.

Bicycle: 2,762.5 miles
Car: 2,892 miles

I didn't start biking to work until the middle of February, so I had a late start. Weather was also a factor. I'm thinking of getting a rain cape and helmet cover so I can bike in the rain without being too uncomfortable.

Letter to Arizona governor Jan Brewer

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:18:20 GMT

Dear Governor Brewer,

I read that Arizona abolished its weight-mile tax on truckers in 1993. As a result of this, truckers aren't paying for the damage they do to Arizona's roads, which is probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. One semi truck causes as much damage as 9,600 cars. The market distortion caused by subsidizing the trucking industry prevents freight from being moved by less damaging means such as rail. As a result, Arizona businesses and residents are paying more in taxes than they should have to.

Please reinstitute the weight-mile tax to save Arizona businesses and residents money and help balance the budget.

California Shuttle Bus Review

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:15:12 GMT

A week ago, I had the opportunity to try the California Shuttle Bus (via the Chinatown bus reservation system at GotoBus.com) from Los Angeles to San Francisco. CAShuttleBus picks up a route that MegaBus dropped when they left California.

I purchased my ticket the night before departure. The cost was $45, which is about the same as a Greyhound ticket. If you reserve earlier in advance, you can get a better deal.

The bus stop in Los Angeles is located at the Denny's across the street from Los Angeles Union Station. There is no sign at the stop like MegaBus had. The bus arrived on time, but it was painted with the name of America Bus Lines.

A couple of stops later, an assistant checked our tickets, and then we were on our way to San Francisco. The bus was about 1/3 or 1/2 full, so there were plenty of available seats. Like Megabus, the clientele of CAShuttleBus is much less scary than the Greyhound.

We made a rest stop at a Burger King halfway to San Francisco. The bus driver said we had 30 minutes and that there would be a change of bus drivers. After we reboarded, the new driver counted the passengers, and we ended up leaving 5 minutes early (25 minutes after we stopped instead of 30).

25 miles from Burger King, we turned around. Apparently we had left a couple of passengers behind. Somehow there had been two miscommunications: the new bus driver thought that it was supposed to be only a 20 minute rest stop, and that there were two fewer passengers than there really were. Those two passengers were understandably pissed.

So we ended up pulling into San Francisco over an hour late. Since the only connection I needed to make was a Caltrain ride, this wasn't a problem for me.

Unfortunately, because the bus leaves so late from San Francisco and I need to make some connections to get home to San Diego from Los Angeles, I couldn't take the bus home. I'm told there are overnight bus rides, but I can't figure out from either GotoBus.com or CAShuttleBus.com how to find out when they run.

Overall, I feel that it was worth $45 to avoid the shady clientele of Greyhound and travel more fuel efficiently than by air, but I'd like to see CAShuttleBus do a better job with communication between bus drivers.

Edit 2009-02-20: Last weekend, I took the California Shuttle Bus again. Again, Caltrain was the last stop on the peninsula instead of the first. (I e-mailed GotoBus.com about this, and they said they will change the arrival times.) This time it was a different, newer bus marked "Charter". I had an opportunity to try the bathroom on the bus. The door wouldn't lock and there was no toilet paper or wet naps, so bring your own.

Edit 2010-01-05: I recently had an opportunity again to ride the California Shuttle Bus. The big change was that the bus was mostly full this time. There were a number of foreign students, from England and Australia, judging by their accents.

The lock on the bathroom door still doesn't work (bus #5003). The reading lights don't work. The web site says free WiFi, but my laptop could find no WiFi networks in range, it couldn't even find one on bus #5001 when we parked next to it at the rest stop.

On this trip, there was an older Chinese gentleman who explained, as we approached San Jose (the first dropoff point), which stops to get off for which destinations. He even came down the aisle and made sure we all knew how to get to where we needed to go. That was a nice touch.

As usual, the bus picked us up at L.A. Union Station about 20 minutes late, and dropped us off in San Jose about 20 minutes late.

VMWare Purchasing Saga

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 18:16:38 GMT

I have an expired evaluation installation of VMWare Fusion that I'm trying to purchase with their current 25% discount promotion. Since I don't know my VMWare password (if I ever had one), I used the Forgot Password? utility to have it mailed to me. Then I copied and pasted the password from the e-mail into the Login section of the billing page, but it says: Invalid E-mail Address or Password

So I e-mailed customer service last Wednesday about the problem. (Today is Sunday.) So far they haven't responded.

I tried it again today. Mysteriously, I received a different password than the one I received last Wednesday, but today's password didn't work, either.

Also, there's a "Feedback" link at the bottom of every page, but that doesn't do anything in Firefox 3.0.5 on a Mac.

How can a company so good at virtualization be so incompetent at maintaining their own web site?

Maybe I should be buying Parallels Desktop anyway. It's the same price as VMWare Fusion's regular price, and it does OpenGL (see the comparison), but it has less support for Linux, and VMWare is supposed to be faster overall, and I already have it installed and running. Neither supports Firewire.

How can I do my part to support the economy if companies refuse my money?

Update 2008-12-22: After sending an e-mail to fusionsales@vmware.com, they squared me away. Apparently there's a bug that required them to clear out my account profile.

Composting leather?

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:45:11 GMT

So my leather belt finally bit the dust. I purchased it in late 1992 or early 1993, so it's held out for 16 years. Since it's organic (made of cow), it should break down.

The metal parts are easily removed. Composting is supposed to break down any hazardous chromium compounds found in leather into safe compounds.

I expect the leather to take a while to compost. It may take a through trips through the compost bin to break it all down.

Composting Update

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 21:23:44 GMT

I definitely see more worms in my bin now, although it's hard to tell if it's because they moved up from the bottom level or if they've actually multiplied. The worm bin had an infestation of fruit flies (vinegar flies), so I stopped feeding the worms for a couple of weeks and put up some flypaper, and the flies are completely gone now. (BTW, the flies predated the worm bin.)

While the worms love canteloupe, they will leave the paper-thin outer skin. I think they'll get around to eating it eventually.

The bokashi bin is around half-full now. Besides the stuff the worms won't eat (onions, etc.), I also put in food scraps I accumulate between worm feedings in order to avoid overfeeding them.

Nothing smells, except the bokashi juice whenever I drain it. I saw one worm scampering away along the carpet after a feeding, so I put him back. Another worm appears to have escaped and died on the carpet. For the most part, the Can-O-Worms appears to have been designed pretty well to prevent worms from escaping.

Tabs for Indenting, Spaces for Aligning

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:38:08 GMT

To summarize the old tabs versus spaces holy war, the advantage of using spaces exclusively is that the code looks the same no matter how many spaces you have your tabs set to, while the disadvantage is that nobody can edit your code properly without setting their tab spaces to match yours.

Elastic tabstops solve the problem by more or less doing away with assigning a certain number of spaces per tab. While they allow the use of proportional fonts, they also require new text editors.

I propose another solution: use tabs for indenting and spaces for aligning. In some cases you may have both tabs and spaces on the same line. Yes, it requires the programmer to actually think. (If that is a problem, then we're truly lost.)

Here's an example. All tabs are denoted by <tab>:



  1 namespace plugh
  2 {
  3 <tab>void Foo( int bar,  // arg1
  4 <tab>          int baz ) // arg2
  5 <tab>{
  6 <tab><tab>for( int i = bar; i != baz, ++i ) {
  7 <tab><tab><tab>xyzzy( i );
  8 <tab><tab>}
  9 <tab>}
 10 };

So no matter how many spaces a tab is set to, the above code will be aligned correctly. Notice that line 4 uses a tab and some spaces. The tab is to line up the start of the spaces with the line above (because it also contains a tab) and then spaces are used to align the "int" with the line above.

Redworm

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 06:56:27 GMT

Redworm
Originally uploaded by Traal42

Here's a picture of one of the worms. Or part of one. I'm not sure which end. I think the little white/yellow grains are cornmeal.

Composting update

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 06:06:15 GMT

So it's been about 2 weeks since I started up the Bokashi bin. Currently it contains banana peels, canteloupe rinds, and now some onion, carrot, and chicken breast scraps. Until the onion and chicken, it had a nice, sweet, pleasant smell, but now it has a slightly stronger smell. Not too strong, though. And the bin is pretty much airtight, so unless it's open you can't smell anything.

Recently it has also started producing bokashi juice.

After the first week, I noticed that the air inside the bin is warmer than the air outside. I guess that happens when you ferment stuff.

There's a small amount of white mold growth, which I'm told is beneficial for the breakdown process.

The worm bin is doing well. It still has that pleasant, earthy smell. The worms really seem to like canteloupe rinds, paper, and potato peels. Today I started adding some cornmeal which is supposed to encourage growth and breeding.

The worms don't seem to take to banana peels as readily as the other stuff, so I'm bokashifying those for now. Maybe they'll taste better pickled.

I ordered a close-up lens for photographing the worms. It should be here tomorrow.

Bike progress

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:36:41 GMT

This morning, my e-bike's battery suddenly and unexpectedly died. It turns out that the culprit was the power switch on the battery. I think it's related to the spill the battery took a few months ago. Anyway, the switch really isn't needed anyway, so I bypassed it. Tools needed: a small flat screwdriver to dig out the rubber screw covers on the battery pack, a 3mm allen wrench to disassemble the battery pack, a wire cutter to cut the wires from the switch, a wire stripper, and a screw-on wire connector to connect the two wires.

I've saved 100 gallons of gasoline so far this year, but I've used about 90 gallons flying to Chicago, San Francisco, and Phoenix. I wish I could take high speed rail around, because it's several times more fuel-efficient than flying. I hope Prop 1A passes a couple of weeks from now. That will get me from here in San Diego to San Francisco. And then Phoenix should build one to Los Angeles.

They've Arrived!

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:06:54 GMT

The worms and the bokashi bin arrived today. I've set the worms to work on their coir (coconut husk) bedding, and the bokashi on some banana peels. In a week I'll see if the worms are interested in some yummy fermented kitchen waste!

The bokashi has the consistency of light sawdust and smells like yeast. The worms are small and red and had a nice earthy smell.

I read online that earthworms produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, and using them to compost kitchen waste may create the same amount of greenhouse effect as methane from landfills. But since the end product is fertilizer which helps plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, I think that gives it a net benefit., even if the competing landfill captures that methane for use as a source of energy.

Thoughts on wormeries

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 06:08:51 GMT

Watching this video on vermicomposting, I realized that the wormery seen in the video, a Gusanito Worm Factory, is a little smaller and more portable than a Can-O-Worms (16" square versus 22" diameter round), not to mention cheaper. If I were to do it over again, I would probably get that model instead.

Can-O-Worms

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:16:52 GMT

Last weekend, before I wrote the previous entry on composting, I bid on and won a Can-O-Worms composter/worm condo/worm bin/wormery on eBay. Normally they go for around $125, sometimes as low as $110 plus shipping ($25-43) or as high as $185 plus shipping. All in all, you could pay anywhere between $135 and $220. I won the bid for $82 plus $20 shipping for a total of about $102. Be aware of extreme product and shipping markups!

Since the seller lives in Orange County and I in San Diego County, shipping was very quick.

The wormery is "made in Australia from 100% Recycled plastic". It is distributed in the USA by Triformis. My eBay seller was wdrproducts, who even threw in some books about composting, some pens and a keychain carabiner.

I don't have the worms yet, but there's a worm farm in Escondido about 12 miles from me that will sell them for $15 per pound (they usually go for $25 a pound) and I should just be able to pick them up and not pay for shipping. (There's also the cutely named Wamona Worm Wanch in Ramona, but they don't sell worms. Wankers.)

Anyway, I read the instructions and set up the Can-O-Worms. At this moment it's waiting for me to rehydrate the coconut husk bedding (which is also a source of food until the worms get established) that came with the Can-O-Worms and add the worms.

It takes about 3-4 months for the worm population to double, several months to produce a batch of worm castings (fertilizer/soil conditioner), and 12 or more months to full production (16,000 to 20,000 worms, or 16 to 20 pounds). Worms eat half their weight every day, and I don't have a whole lot of waste right now (mainly fruit peels and rinds and various paper products) but I'll try to prepare my own meals more often in order to cut down on plastic waste. That should provide more stuff to feed the little squirmies.

Composting

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:48:19 GMT

In order to cut down on my waste, I've decided to try composting. I'm going to do vermicomposting (composting using worms) because it doesn't take up much space or create much of a smell and it produces a fertilizer and soil conditioner (called worm castings) that can easily be used. Unfortunately, the worms don't like onions, garlic, meat, or citrus rinds, so I plan on pretreating those items with bokashi to make them more palatable. The reason I'm not just doing bokashi composting is that you have to bury the product, which doesn't work for me (I don't have a yard), or feed it to worms directly. Also it doesn't do anything for paper. So I think the combination of bokashi + vermicomposting will cut down on my waste. There's lots of community landscaping and unlandscaped bare land around where I can sprinkle the castings. Or maybe I'll find someone with a garden who could use it.

HDTV versus Anamorphic DVD

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:49:40 GMT

Titanic was on TV the other day, on an HDTV channel via Time Warner Road Runner, broadcasting at 1080i or 1080p. I decided to load up my anamorphic widescreen (16x9 enhanced) DVD to see if I could see a difference in picture quality between the two. This is on my 26" Sony Bravia LCD television with 1366x768 resolution using the component video input. Since an anamorphic DVD is 480 horizontal lines of resolution, I figured I was pretty close to the maximum resolution of my television and I would notice only a small difference. And as a result, Blu-Ray at 1080 lines of resolution wouldn't be much value to me.

Well, I was wrong. The HDTV picture was very noticeably more crisper. I could even tell a difference at a viewing distance of 8 feet.

But nice as HDTV is, I still haven't swapped out my Series 2 TiVo for an HD model. I'm waiting for the CableCard installation bugs to be worked out.