2_1 – ABC
2_1 – RetroTV
5_1 – Fox
8_2 – GPB Kids
8_3 – GPB Know
11_1 – NBC
11_2 – NBC Plus (weather)
12_1 – GPB
17_1 – Peachtree TV
30_1 – PBS
34_2 – TeleFutura (Spanish)
36_1 – MyATL
43_1 – The CW
46_1 – CBS
48_0 – Univision (Spanish)
63_1 – TBN
63_2 – Church Channel
63_3 – JCTV
63_4 – Enalce
63_5 – Smile
Our MythTV entertainment system uses a decent amount of electricity. While watching TV, the television, DVD/Amplifier and computer (plus misc other items) use 335 watts of power. However, as we only average an hour or two of TV a day, this isn’t as large as the continuous power draw from the system when it is not in use. Even though we turn the TV and DVD/Amplifier off when not in use, the computer, HD Tuner, external HD, antenna preamplifier, printer, etc take up 141 watts when idle, and around 160 when recording, trans-coding, or detecting commercials in a television show. As the MythTV computer runs 24/7, this adds up to just over $10 a month of electricity (101 kW/h).
In an effort to save power, I have configured the MythTV system to shut itself off when idle, and wake up automatically five minutes before the next television show it is scheduled to record. This saves power, but has the major downside that the computer is not running and instantly ready whenever we want to watch TV. If the MythTV box isn’t already awake recording a show, you have to manually push the power button and then wait for two minutes while it boots up and gets itself ready. We are no longer able to press the TV-Power button and start watching TV five seconds later. However, this saves about 105 watts whenever the system is off (about 20-22 hours a day), or about $75-$84 a year.
We still have a constant drain of 36 watts, even when the system is turned off due to various peripherals and parasitic power drains.
With the exception of the 10 watts from the UPS/Computer, the other power draws could be eliminated by using a “master-controlled” power-strip (such as the APC P7GT), which automatically turns off the controlled outlets when the computer (plugged into the master outlet) is turned off. This would save 26 watts whenever the computer was turned off, and would save about $20 worth of electricity in a year, paying for the fancy power saving power-strip in less than two years. Also, if I replaced the UPS with a “green” version, it would take less than 10 watts to keep the battery topped-up, but that cost savings would take longer to pay for itself.
We recently replaced most of our incandescent bulbs with instant-on CF light-bulbs. I cheated by upgrading our light output (using 100 watt equivalent bulbs to replace 60 watt incandescent bulbs) but each bulb should still save 34 watts.
I loosely estimated our daily light usage (over weekdays and weekends) on the newly CF fixtures as the following:
Bedroom (1 bulb): 1 hour
Bathroom (3 bulbs): 2 hours
Hallway (2 bulbs): 6 hours
Sewing Room (2 bulbs): 1.5 hour
Living Room (5 bulbs): 7 hours
We are saving (57 bulb hours * 34 watts) 1938 watts a day, approximately 2 KWh a day, or 60 KWh a month, or $6 a month (at $0.10 a KWh). We should pay for the CF light bulbs in seven months.
I bought a six pack of GE “General Purpose” (as opposed to “Cool natural light”) compact florescent light bulbs [item number: 71285, bulb model number FLE 26HT3/2/SW 26watt, equivalent to 100watt incandescent light bulbs] at Wallmart and was pleasantly surprised. In addition to having a warm color temperature (no harsh blue-white light here!) the bulbs turned on practically instantly! No more waiting for a half second for the CF bulb to flicker while “charging up”.
I needed a few more, so I bought a two pack of “General Purpose” GE bulbs [item number 72877] at Wallmart a week later. Unfortunately, these bulbs were slightly different, and did not have the immediate “instant-on” ability of the bulbs that came in the six-pack. The “slow startup” bulbs had the following serial/model number: Helical 26 W 102VAC 60Hz 400mA FLE 26HT2/2/XL/SW
Physically, their helical glass coil is just slightly smaller than the “instant-on” versions.
Both types of GE 100 watt bulbs are slightly too large for some fixtures. I have found an alternative 23W (75W equivalent) CF bulb by Sylvania (the CF23EL/Micromini 3000K) that also has very nice “instant-on” behavior, and is a good inch shorter than the GE 26W bulbs. (As it’s a 3000K color temp, it is also very “normal” looking.)
At Kroger I found a rare 3-way CF bulb (50/100/150 equivalent) from GE with model number “FLE32HLX/2/D/SW”. Unfortunately, it had a full second delay before it produced any light at all.
To summarize, the following model number CF bulbs turn on instantly:
Sylvania 23 watt: CF23EL/Micromini 3000K
GE 26 watt: FLE 26HT3/2/SW
And if you want an instant-on experience, you should avoid the following:
GE: FLE 26HT2/2/XL/SW
GE: FLE 32HLX/2/D/SW
Our Canon S410 camera recently exhibited some strange behavior. When using the LCD display on the back as a viewfinder, it would display a shimmering curtain of pink and purple pixels instead of the correct view. The problem was not with the image sensor, because pictures could be taken normally, and it was not with the display, because when in playback mode the camera would display photos correctly. My best guess is that the camera CPU was using the wrong mode when moving the data from the image sensor to the LCD display when in viewfinder mode. (Icons would correctly display overlayed on top of the purple curtain). This error survied through multiple on/off cycles and removing the battery. Finally, I tried to shoot a video using the camera (which resulted in a video of the purple curtain that you see here), but when I switched away from video mode and back to video mode a second time the viewfinder started to work correctly! I’m not sure if it was specifically the video mode switch that caused it to fix itself, or just a large amount of mode shifts, but it’s working correctly again.
A reader has reported that he purchased a Motofone F3 from “Monster-Cellular-Store” on ebay that came with a Cingular branded pleather case and it is set up to work correctly with the AT&T voicemail indicator system. The one I purchased however is still not working, so it appears that some setting or configuration is needed to make them work on the AT&T system. A picture of Neil’s phone and Cingular branded case is below:
Motofone F3 with Cingular branded case
I would love to know if some type of user configuration can be done with the keypad to make the voicemail work with AT&T.
Within the last few months I have been making use of the two RedBox “automated retail systems” within the lobby of a nearby Wall-Mart. (And mostly being successful in resisting the urge to venture into Wall-Mart on each visit and get trapped behind a lady talking on her cell phone while trying to write a check to pay for 26 items in the 20 items or less checkout lane…you know the famous Wall-Mart shopping experience, and it’s not fun.)
While the selection at a RedBox DVD vending machine isn’t as good as Netflix, the average cost per DVD is lower, especially if you have intermittent viewing habits. I have taken advantage of my wife’s absence to sample most of the movies she would veto in favor of a better selection if she was with me (you know the ones that you’ve always wanted to see but the wife veto’s in favor of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2…..things like Hellboy II, Get Smart, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Forgetting Sarah Marshal, Speed Racer, Wanted, Zohan, Tropic Thunder, Doomsday, Drillbit Taylor, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Sukiyaki Western Django, etc). I watched the movies in the above list, and take it from me, you don’t want to. Well, actually, the first few on the list aren’t too bad. If you like comic-book or sci-fi movies Hellboy II is reasonably good, and Get Smart was funny. But definitely avoid Sukiyaki Western Django. Trust me on that one.
There are also several less well known movies that are excellent. Having watched a lot of RedBox movies, here is my list of suggestions that you may not have heard of before:
Of course, you can usually count on the major release motion pictures to be worth renting, and I also approve the following list (ordered by enjoyment):
Searching and replacing a bit of text in a lot of files is a very common problem. Lots of tools exist to get it done. On unix systems, awk is one favorite, and I found this webpage with a simple search and replace example.
Unfortunately, I wanted to search for \prob and replace it with %\prob. The difficulty is that the backslash character is “special”, so you have to escape it with other backslashes.
Here is my updated example command to run in each directory:
awk ‘{gsub(/\\prob/,”%\\prob”, $0); print > FILENAME}’ *.tex
It does a global substitution for the regex \\prob with string %\prob in the
whole input file ($0) for every file that ends in .tex
I like UPS/FedEx tracking. It’s nice to know when a shipment is going to arrive. Every so often I get an exception notification that delays a package by a day because someone put it on the wrong UPS truck, or it got dropped behind something and didn’t leave a sorting facility until the next day. The exceptions usually bump the scheduled delivery forward by a day and life goes on.
Yesterday I got an Exception notice from UPS that was slightly more ominous. The “Exception Reason: TRAIN DERAILMENT” line made me sit up and take notice, and the fact that the “Scheduled Delivery” entry was completely missing made me worry a bit about the fate of my shipment.
Luckily, it appears that UPS was able to quickly recover, as today my scheduled delivery date is back and my tracking data is as follows:
UPS tracking data from a derailed train
I use Kodak Easy Share Gallery (formerly Ofoto.com, before Kodak realized they needed an online photo printing service to complete their digital transformation) to produce prints of any photos I want to display. [It’s cheaper and easier than buying and feeding a high-quality photo printer, and although it takes a few days to receive the prints, I generally don’t need instant physical copies, especially as you can tell it to send parts of an order to another address.]
One thing you have to keep in mind about the prints from the Easy Share Gallery is that they are all automatically re-touched by a computer running the “Kodak Perfect Touch” algorithm. This process tries to remove red-eye, saturates color, and does a brightness level correction. All in all, it generally improves most consumer snapshots. However, if you are printing an already perfect photo (either taken by luck, or already re-touched by an expert) the KPT system will noticeably over saturate colors.
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