Blue Eyes Designs

Any of you who know me, well, at all really. Have probably heard me ramble at some point or another about my favorite show, Battlestar Galatica. I owe RB the dubious honor of introducing me to the sci-fi crack that is the remake of the campy 70′s series. I pledge my allegiance to BSG because it, unlike much of the widely distributed sci-fi that’s out there these days, resides in the realm of the grey, the hazy, foggy regions where a character is not immediately identifiable as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and your opinion of them might change completely from one minute to the next. It’s the type of show where you can’t arm-chair quarterback, because honestly, you’re not sure what you would have done either. It’s the kind of show that appeals to my need for intellectual content wrapped in a narrative with characters that I don’t feel embarrassed to care about.

And it’s coming under fire.

I usually try not to respond to fan-blather about media that I find particularly tasteful, however this article denouncing Battlestar Galatica was in a higher profile place than a backwater fan-board and has raised my ire.

Tread not lightly into the extended entry. It’s about 1300 words. I kinda got long winded, but I think that’s OK. As E pointed out, it’s something that I’m passionate about and I don’t think I would mind one bit if BSG talk became a regular feature of LineNoise, as long as it keeps the fan-freakiness to a dull roar.
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So I’m reading along in last month’s Wired (what can I say, I’m a little behind…) and read these articles:

My Big Biofuels Bet
and
The Information Factories

The first is an in-depth look at ethanol technologies. The article discusses its use not only as a motorfuel, but also for producing other forms of energy. In the interest of full disclosure, the article was written by a venture capitalist invested in the technology. But one of the things that I appreciated most about the article, not the fact that he recognizes it as a viable option, but the fact that he raises it not as a destination toward energy independence, but as a stepping stone – something I’ve been saying for what feels like years.

The second article is about the rise of distributed computing as the M.O. of the large service providers such as Google. Among the many topics of this article is the demand that these giant processing centers make in energy. Both to run the machines and to cool the building from the heat they produce.

Now, if you’ve hung around me a lot, you’ve probably heard my rant about how our energy (i.e. power-in-the-wall) infrastructure SUCKS. We produce power at great cost at high voltages in a few locations only to pump it to transformers that downgrade the voltage and re-release all that energy as heat. Not to mention the difficulty of keeping a “grid” that large stable and safe from sabotage. (Anyone remember the big blackout in the Northeast a few years ago?)

Damn my liberal arts education, this all of course, started weaving together in my mind…

So we’re developing these new technologies to create greener power with significantly smaller footprints than the massive plants currently in operation. We have huge server farms going into remote locations along the fiber backbones of the internet that are starved for power. What if, instead of running lines out to these places, we take them off the grid for real? How great would it be to produce power in DC as the machines desire it, right where they want it, and reduce the waste extensively. Or even (since almost everything is designed to take in AC and then convert it) produce it in AC, but still right there where you need it most. So you take this fast growing landscape addition and making it cleaner from the get-go.

Companies like Google certainly have the capital to spend a bit more on their brick-and-mortor, and it would be yet another way for them to set a good example for the rest of world. Most importantly, it provides a real-world proving ground for these developing technologies without having to completely redo the existing system.

I just hope somebody’s listening.

Today I recieved a very distressing email forward from a relative of mine. For the past few years my life has been blissfully free of direct involvement with those inflammatory and ignorant folks whose myopic view of the world leads them to condemn an entire culture for the acts of extremist groups. Today that ended.
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The hub and spoke system really sucks when there’s no wheel to roll on… It took me nearly twice as long to get to Galesburg today by train than it would have had I drove, but yet, it was still more convienent because I could work along the way.

What Chicago really needs (and what is supposedly in the works) is a train line that connects the ends (or near ends) of the lines coming out of the city. So one could theoretically take a train from Elburn to Naperville without having to go all the way into downtown – a $10 ride… Add to thatsome more trains at some more convienent times (I have to leave two hours early today because Metra doesn’t run a train into the city during the lunch hour.

It’s one of the biggest catch-22s – you won’t attract the riders you need to justify your existance if you’re not as convienent as possible, but you can’t afford to do so without the riders. It sucks, that. I wish the transportation gods would just drop a bunch of money on mass transit. Or transporters. That would be OK too.

More personal updates when I’m not so tired.

Why is my checkbook off by 77 cents?

Why is it that as soon as my roommate gets in the shower, I have to use the bathroom?

Will they call today?

It’s ten degrees colder now than it was at 4am.

AIDS + shiny = vampires (Re: UltraViolet)

I didn’t use to think people just sat around on the couch an talked like they do in webcomics. Then I came to college.

Neufchatel is goat cheese, yet amazingly tasty. Who knew? I’d always associated “goat cheese” with “stinky cheese”.