krin_o_o_

from yabazuba's photostream


Akemi poses with the biggest bottle of hand sanitizer we'd ever seen. This was the registration area for Anthrocon. You'd simply type all your info into the computer terminal and then pay a guy who gave you your badge. Impressively high-tech and efficient.

Ever have one of those trips.
No No... not one of those but the other kind.

( You know... )

- krin

Current Location: At a hotel that claims to be the westin
Current Mood: sleepy

I spent a week in class learning FLEX 3.

Well... the class was learning FLEX 3 and I was following along with half an ear while playing mad scientist with one of the tutorial demos that drew a line between two dragable boxes...

I figured "A line is child's play... let's kick it up a notch and do ... CONIC SECTIONS!"

I showed it to the instructor when I finished after class and he sniffed and said "yeah, but there are graphic libraries to already do that."

SCOFF ALL YOU WANT HEATHEN!
BWAAAHHAAHHAHAH! IT LIVES! IT LIVES!

The following is a pure geek toy for drawing a ellipse with dragable foci and a outer bounding measure.

The two red lines represent the major and minor axis and the short black line is the ecentricity value. Dragging the boxes inside the elipse will change the foci and dragging the one on the ellipse will change the ecentricity. I purposefully made the ellipse render from the center to the first point and then around to the last point and back to the center in order to show that the rendering path was based on the foci orientation. No draw surface rotations were used in this code. The code germ for drawing the ellipse comes from a piece of java script on the wikipedia page for ellipses.

- krin

Current Location: Anthrocon

seems there is a tie in between Swine Flu and a accidental release of a previously "Extinct" strain of Flu by scientists researcing it.

Gods, this sounds like a really BAD SciFi Channel Special Event Movie...

Only reason I know this today is that it make the top banner headlines in 1 inch type on a newspaper in a McDonalds I stopped in while driving up to Anthrocon.

PITT STUDY: Accidental release blamed in swine flu outbreak

By Allison M. Heinrichs
PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sick pigs at the 1918 Cedar Rapids Swine Show in Iowa and scientists' accidental release of an "extinct" flu virus in 1977 played key roles in creating a strain that has swept the globe and sparked fear of a more deadly flu season this winter.

read more ...

Current Mood: crazy

First the beef outbreak and now... CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH!

Story Highlights
- Bacteria found at Nestle USA plant in Danville, Virginia, FDA researchers say
- Researchers tested bacteria for link to illness outbreak in 29 states
- Nestle spokeswoman said company's baking division was informed of finding
- All infected persons confirmed as having strain of E. coli 0157:H7

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal investigators at the Nestle USA plant in Danville, Virginia, have found evidence of E. coli bacteria in an unopened package of raw chocolate chip cookie dough, two sources at the Food and Drug Administration told CNN Monday.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/29/cookie.dough.e.coli/index.html

* Sniffle * no more Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Tar-Tar. *Sniffle*
- krin

Current Mood: alarmist

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http://xkcd.com/

And know you know why there are no female Transformers.

- krin

http://xkcd.com/

http://xkcd.com/

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Dammit... Sleep where be thy solace.


- krin

As stated earlier...

Yearly electrical usage in the United States?
> 3.892 trillion kilowatt hours per year (2007 estimate)

Current state of the art Wind power production:
> 100,000,000 kWh per year / 21 turbines = 4.762 million kWh per year / tubine (2008 tech)
(this estimate appears to assume at least 2400 hours (100 days) of wind a year)

Total number of wind turbines needed to meet power production needs:
> 817,304 turbines

Again, no information on the costs to build any of this. >_<

But... I did find a Wind Farm Area Calculator.
This calculation assumes 50,400 kW and 21 turbines each requiring an area of 0.38 acres:
> 7.98 acres.
(This value represents the area taken out of production on a farm.
The area within the perimeter of the wind farm will be larger due to spacing
of the turbines, but is still useable by the farm.)

And back to the land use per year for production by a single turbine
> 1.253x10^7 kWh / acre (kilowatt hours per acre)

Land area needed to be dedicated to wind farming to meet power production needs:
> 310,600 acres
> 1257 km^2 (square kilometers)

It appears to be about 1/40 the area needed for photovoltaic.
But there are a LOT of assumptions tied into the calculations.
The biggest of which is sustained winds needed to drive the wind farm.

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It could be worse...

Icon tells the story.

Trailer looks good, let's hope the movie doesn't become ploddingly bogged down as an anti-establishmental morality play.

- krin

Yearly electrical usage in the United States?
> 3.892 trillion kilowatt hours per year (2007 estimate)

Current state-of-the-art Photovoltaic farm production:
> 1,700,000 kWh / 5 acres = 340,000 kWh / acres (2009 tech)

Land area needed to be dedicated to photovoltaic farming to meet power production needs:
> 1.145x10^7 acres
> = 46,325 square kilometers (17,886 square miles)
> = A circle with a radius of 121.4 km (75.434 miles)
> = 17 x area of Rhode Island
> = 1.4 x area of Maryland
> = 16% of the area of Nevada
> = 0.5058 % of the land area of the United States
> = 20.2 x United States - Total area equipped for irrigation (22905.60 kHa)
> = 25 x Eglin Air Force Base (463,128 acres) [picked for largest]
> = 38 x size of Edwards Air Force Base (301,000 acres) [picked for largest with best sun conditions]
> = 2,289,411.76 x above referenced photovoltaic farm (unfortunately built by a private company that has not released the costs to build it)


Conclusion:
So... to go totally Solar with current photovoltaic technology, we would have to build and support a infrastructure about 20 times the size of all the irrigation systems in use for agriculture in the US today.

-----------
I did mix 2009 production capabilities with 2007 demand.
(2007 production is illustrated here: Nellis Air Force base: 14.2 megawatts on 140 acres (but they don't give the kWh so it's not directly comparable because megawatts=power and kWh=energy.

edit: changed wording to make it clear that only the irrigation systems used as comparison are those that are for agriculture.

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Question: "how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?"
Result: "a woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood (according to the tongue-twister)"

Question: "how many roads must a man walk down?"
Interpretation: "how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? (etc.)"
Result: "the answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind (according to Bob Dylan)"

Question: "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
Result: "Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited, so that they have location in space, but not extension. Therefore, an infinity of angels can be located on the head of a pin. (according to Dorothy Sayers (who also maintains that the question is simply a debating exercise))"


I am Really impressed with this one!
Question: "how long does it take to fly from nyc to chicago?"
Interpretation: "New York to Chicago,Illinois by Plane"
Result(s):