The Wanderer

We've now converted every incandescent light bulb we could (around 40-50 of 'em) to a compact fluorescent (CFL).  Since incandescent bulbs are only about 2% efficient and CFLs are around 8%, it seems like a no-brainer.  CFLs also last about 8 to 15 times as long as the incandescent cousins.  After buying and trying a few different brands (and reading some reviews online) we picked up a whole slew of N:Vision bulbs at our local Home Depot.  I've read that lighting accounts for 9% of the energy in a typical home.  If CFLs use about 20% what a comparable incandescent uses, I figure I could reduce by energy usage by ~7%.  We'll see if reality reflects my math.

You know it and you love it for searching the web, but have you tried using Google as a crib sheet?

• 60 miles per hour in kilometers per hour
• 1 gallon in teaspoons
• 500 megabytes over 1.5 megabit per second
• 200 gallons in hogsheads

I couldn't resist the $400 TiVo Series3 deal, although I got mine from store.tivocommunity.com, the store attached to a TiVo enthusiast message board (for $399 instead of about $430 at Amazon).  As a former lifetime-subscription owner, I was bummed that TiVo discontinued their lifetime-subscription transfer deal a few months ago.  Based on several message board posts I read, I asked TiVO customer service if, under certain circumstances, they would still give out the aforementioned lifetime transfer deal.  For some reason unknown to me, that's all it took to convince them to go for it.  That means for $200 extra (on top of the $400 box), I won't ever have to pay a TiVo monthly subscription again...for years to come, I hope.

Update: I'll keep you posted on how it goes hooking things up to Comcast this weekend

This Wired article (non-subscribers: Wired is not one of those mags that usually writes breathlessly about flying cars and cyborgs...you're thinking of Popular Science/Mechanics) talks about an Irish company, Steorn, that claims to have stumbled onto a true "perpectual motion" machine--a machine that produces more energy than it uses.  They are currently accepting scientist volunteers to validate their claims.  Count me very skeptical but interested...

Steorn: http://www.steorn.net/frontpage/default.aspx
Video Mirror: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1784833525509845733

Gizmodo has an amazing video taken from YouTube of a technology developed at Microsoft called TouchLight.  The video shows engineers playing around with some simple applications of this cousin-to-touchscreen technology.  The precogs that run the system can't quite be made out in the video, though.  Now if only we can figure out how to print onto wooden balls instead of paper...

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/microsoft/microsoft-touchlight-touch-screen-technology-with-a-twist-194560.php

Frontline: The Age of AIDS (Full video available online) - The topic of this "look-back" special is likely to be the defining issue of our generation, and yet it's amazing to see how far we've come in the past 20 years. It wasn't that long ago that the President went on TV and failed to assure the public that HIV wasn't spread through casual contact--not because that information wasn't known to science, just because ignorance was that wide-spread. I highly recommend this refresher on the history of the HIV/AIDS emergency.

I just upgraded to the Motorola v3 (AKA, razr phone) from the i95cl (AKA, brick phone).  I know it's bad to be a one-issue voter, but is it bad to be a one-issue cellphone shopper?  I'll let you know, but so far it's working out quite nicely for me.

Before	After

 

TiVo fans living in Comcast's cable kingdom will soon be able to get cable tuners with TiVo built in:

http://www.tivo.com/5.3.1.1.asp?article=246