Solar Power order placed

I signed up with http://www.solarcity.com for 4.5Kw of thin film panels (60 of them). Their web site is slick, walks you through the install process, they have online monitoring of the output of the solar array and I also added the option of monitoring the house's consumption of electricity, which is integrated into the same web based monitoring and graphing package. They visit later this week to do the engineering assessment, then I get plans (provided online) and planning approval etc. follows. Should be all done in 2-3 months.

Thin film is better in partial light, and high temperatures, and it can be mounted closer to the roof tiles since it doesn't need an air gap underneath to cool it. We have a hot microclimate with no shade, at 2400ft altitude, above the morning mist most of the time, so the longer power delivery period per day should compensate for the slight reduction in peak efficiency compared to silicon. Solarcity offered both at the same price. There is a combination of a rebate and a tax credit at the moment. The tax credit is about 30% of the cost, and was added recently by Obama's stimulus package.

As it progresses I will post pictures and updates.

FLOW - a homebrew Android gumstix phone (finally)

See more here.

A few years ago the Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club (SVHMPC) formed out of frustration with the closed market for phones, and set out to build something we could program in our pocket. We made some progress but the prototype Gumstix Goliath board never made it into production, and along came the iPhone, which gave some of us the application platform we were looking for to customize. The OpenMoko project is also limping along, and Google Android is finally out there in volume. The FLOW project is open hardware running Android with a Gumstix CPU module. Nice combination for making custom devices.

Memcached 500K ops/s on Niagara T2

This is some nice work, scalability analysis to fix lock contention in memcached, then running on an out of the box Solaris T2 gets 500K ops/s or 9.6Gbits/s depending on payload size. The Niagara 2 based T2 has built-in 10Gbit network, and 8 cores with 8 threads in one chip. Sub-millisecond response.

http://blogs.sun.com/zoran/entry/scaling_memcached_500_000_ops

Netflix App Gallery

The Netflix API now has an App Gallery http://www.netflix.com/AppGallery which features my Instant Queue Add for Netflix iPhone app.

Usenix 09 - San Diego in June

I'm presenting again next month, at Usenix 09 in San Diego. I'm giving an all day workshop/tutorial on Tuesday June 16th. I have just updated my slides, combining the talks I have been developing over the years into Solaris/Linux Performance Tools and Tuning, which includes the Capacity Planning with Free Tools material that Mario Jauvin and I developed for CMG.



I have also posted the slides to http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco
.

Please come along, I look forward to seeing you in San Diego.

Cheers Adrian

What I did for earth day...

Update: the electric mower works well, cuts better than my old gas mower, and the drive option works very well. Since the batteries make it heavier than a gas mower, the power drive makes a big difference. Hacking through very long grass, the batteries last about half an hour, keeping previously cut grass trimmed short I think it would last a lot longer. Its enough for me]

Actually, what really happened was that I tried to mow the grass last weekend and decided that my old gas lawnmower wasn't up to the job, so I did some research and bought an electric one. Its quiet, doesn't need gas, the throttle and air intake don't need cleaning out and just starts when I want it to.

I ordered it from Amazon.com on Sunday evening, as usual, with the free 5-7 day shipping option, and it arrived on Tuesday. I guess Amazon had nothing better to do than ship stuff... but it was nice to save $67 for shipping a 100 lb package and still get it very fast.

I got the latest biggest electric I could find, the Epic EP21H 24Volt cordless self propelled 21 inch. The rear wheels are belt driven from the main motor via a gearbox. It has a high efficiency brushless motor that drives the blade directly and two 12V lead acid batteries and should run for 40-50 minutes per charge. This is plenty of time for me to get fed up with mowing and charge it overnight. Its a bit bigger and more rugged than my old 4HP 20inch gas mower, and has a side discharge option so won't get clogged trying to mulch tall grass. I'll try it out after work.

I've also been looking forward to getting solar power installed on my roof, and I'm finalizing plans to make a commitment to get it done this year. I will blog my way through the process as it happens...

Fractal iPhone app source code

I have posted the source to Fractal's iPhone app to google code. I'm hoping that other bands can replace the artwork and URLs and quickly get their own promotional apps out there. If we end up with bug-fixes and improvements, then everyone gains....

iPhone apps that don't work on 3.0beta2

Both dictionary.com and PocketFlix fail immediately after they launch with iPhone os 3.0beta2

Most other apps seem to be working, and beta2 is faster and more stable.

[Posted with iBlogger]

Fractal - free iPhone app

App store link

It's finally ready for download.... Don't forget, Hotel Utah SF Sat April 18th is the next gig.

Using iPhone 3.0 beta

So far its working well, all the previously installed apps that I have tried work. I did a cut and paste from notes to Facebook, listened to some Pandora, downloaded a new app from the AppStore. I was a bit concerned about jumping on the release so early, but haven't found any downsides yet.

I have an older Mac that my first gen iPhone treats as its home machine, I upgraded that one to SDK3.0beta and also used it to do the full backup and restore and re-sync needed to get my iPhone running 3.0. I have a newer MacBook Air that is my work machine, and I have left that with SDK2.2.1, so I can work on current apps and make sure they run on 3.0.

What's on my iPhone: Basic Instructions

One of my favorite cartoons, a collection of them is bunded as an app. Its not a live feed, but its good to be able to show people "how to wash a cat"... There is also a book out.

What's on my iPhone: GoSkyWatch

Years ago when I had a Treo, a my friend Gred Oakes introduced me a to planetarium app, and I really liked being able to look up at night, and be able to identify the stars and planets. I live on top of a mountain, and have a great view of the night sky, and one of the first apps I paid for on my iPhone was GoSkyWatch. It has a cool feature that the accelerometer can tell you are holding it upside down snd it attempts to align its view with what you should be seeing. On a 2G iPhone with no GPS it doesn't know which way north is, so that doesn't work so well.

What's on my iPhone: Fring (Skype and IM's)

When I want to make an international call from my iPhone (or from my home phone) I use Skype. There is no native Skype application for the iPhone, so I use Fring,
although today's announcement of a deal with Nokia includes hints that they are working on more mobile platforms. They support Android already, so their main missing link at this point is the iPhone.

Fring is a decent substitute for now. I mostly use it to keep up with Skype and YIM chat sessions when I'm away from my laptop.

Bill Scott's Designing Web Interfaces book - and he's hiring...

Here is a (long) slideshare presentation of Bill's talk, there is a webcast of it as well. Bill is also hiring for his group of UI engineers at Netflix, so if you are the best of the best of the best and want to work with the master himself, go for it!

Designing Web Interfaces Book - O'Reilly Webcast

View more presentations from Bill Scott. (tags: rich ajax)

Fractal CD Sequitur now available from cdbaby.com

Fractal's new CD "Sequitur" is now available to review and buy on CD Baby at:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/fractal3

'Music to tap your brain to'. Progressive rockers Fractal return with an eclectic musical trip featuring complex rhythms, style-bending and -blending, and existential musical and lyrical outcries.

Fractal Zoom video with Ellipsis

Here is a collaboration between Eric Bigas, who makes Fractal Zoom videos and the band Fractal who have provided Ellipsis as the soundtrack to this video.

Fractal Performing Monkey's Paw at Hotel Utah

All the songs in Fractal's set in SF are now up on YouTube, I also recorded the Seattle and Portland gigs but had problems getting a good quality soundtrack to the video. The short and intense finale to their set is Monkey's Paw. Fractal and Headshear will be back at the Hotel Utah in SF on Saturday April 18th, put it in your calendar now!

What's on my iPhone: i.Wund.com

My favorite weather app is actually a lauchpad bookmarked web site rather than an appstore download. http://i.wund.com/ is an iPhone optimized version of the Weather Underground site www.wunderground.com that I upload to from the personal weather station at my house. The best features are a zoomable local weather radar view, and the option to show the detailed technical weather forecast in the form that meterologists use to talk to each other, rather than the dumbed down version everyone else sees.

What's on my iPhone: apps I don't use

Last.fm, VNC, Remote, Weatherbug. I installed these but never use them. I tend to listen to Pandora, don't need a remote console, find the Apple remote inconvenient to start up and prefer other weather apps.

[Posted with iBlogger]

What's on my iPhone: eBay and Amazon

Great for looking up how much stuff costs and how easy is it to find something rare.

[Posted with iBlogger]