A current requirement of any headlight I buy (and I buy quite a few, both for me and for some of my friends) is that they have a red light LED setting. The reasons for this are pretty simple, and I will present three or four, depending on how you count them.
The first red light doesn't kill night vision. This is the real reason the military has provided red lenses on their flashlights for more years than I can remember. (I will expose a myth later) The red light, while not ideal for seeing things, is adequate for identifying location and shape of objects, which is the primary purpose of using a light.
Red LED's are more efficient. Simply stated, red LED's, to produce the same amount of light, require only about half (maybe less) of the power of white LED's. This is because the white LED's use produce one color of light, and use that light to excite phosphorous to create the rest of the spectrum.
Combined, the above effects allow for for less than one fourth of the battery drain, and your batteries can be drained further. The ultimate result is a usable battery life nearly eight times what you would get with white light. This will give you a great deal of leverage to reduce the number of AAA and even AA batteries you need to keep on hand. Even better if you have one of the few LED lanterns that have a red LED setting and use D batteries (D batteries provide a lot more energy for your dollar).
Last but not least.
The last advantage I will cover is red light doesn't attract mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, and most other insects are attracted to blue light (think: bug zapper). White light contains blue light, so mosquitoes are attracted to it. The yellow porch lights don't give off much blue light, so bugs pretty much ignore them (as an aside, I once painted a CFL half yellow and half red, and the result was a little light that gave nearly normal color vision but didn't attract insects and didn't blind people)
Now, on to the myth.
As with anything the Army does, some mythology grows up around it. What red light doesn't do is make you unseen by others. Think about it. Towers have red lights on them so they can be seen by aircraft. In fact red light can be seen a long ways away. Blue light is harder to see at a long distance, but in fact, any light can be seen much further than the average person would expect. And I don't recommend blue light because of it's attraction to mosquitoes.
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Friday, January 17, 2014
Monday, January 30, 2012
Passwords Hacking and Encryption
I studied encryption in the late 90's and some into the 21st century. I haven't made much mention of it here, despite the word "crypt" showing up in the title of this blog.
But with the recent hacking of the Zappos section of Amazon, I thought I would put a few comments about passwords and encryption in here. This is the first of about 4 to 6 articles I plan to write on the subject.
I would have thought the handling of passwords in the commercial world would improve over time, but alas, there is no profit incentive for things to improve. And, in fact, there is some cost involved, so it seems that most passwords today are handled in much the same way they were 10 years ago.
A little bit of history.
The first encrypted password storage system that I am aware of was crypt3. This system, while merely designed to prevent the local unassisted hacker from gaining access to passwords on a system, was very advanced for its day. The password was salted, that is, a random number was added to the end of the password. Then it was put through a fairly complex encryption formula and the result was stored, along with the salt. When you logged in, the salt was read and added to what you typed and then it was encrypted and compared with the stored value. In addition to a fairly complex encryption formula that ate up some time to compute, the salt insured (at the time) no one would build a dictionary of words and their stored values.
Earlier versions of network long on systems used a simpler formula and no salt, leaving them more vulnerable. To counter that, system administrators began insisting their users use more complex passwords.
Ideas were put forth on how to make the passwords stronger by using very sophisticated salting techniques (called stretching and strengthening), and I have seen systems that use such techniques.
I haven't studied, in detail, the current state of the systems that are in use, but I can tell you that the system of stretching and strengthening passwords that I studied 10 years ago is still considered good. And I can tell you it is not widely used. This is a sad commentary on how commerce will use a quick and dirty system rather than a good one.
So, how does this impact us today?
When a website gets hacked, the hackers often try to get a copy of the password database. This was one of the things done when Zappos website was hacked. Then they will proceed to try every conceivable password (and today, this will include foreign languages and such things as "LEET" alphabets) in an attempt at gaining access to the accounts where they may order products, change addresses, or create some other chaos.
With the current system, weak passwords will fall very quickly (even instantly) and even those with modest strength can be cracked very quickly. To resist this attack, a password must be extraordinarily long and complex. Current guidelines to government computer users who don't have "smart card" access is 14 characters, with lots of things like numbers and punctuation included. And don't use the same password for any two systems. And they want to change them every few months. This, of course, leads to writing down passwords or other such things the system administrators don't like.
In the past passwords could be tried at a rate of millions per day. Today, but using cloud computing to imitate a supercomputer, that has become billions per day.
In the past, I told people to use a secret word and either a word or some letters related to the website they are logging into. This is still good enough for things like leaving comments on product reviews or newspaper forums, but with some hackers using cloud computing to imitate a supercomputer, the threat has become much greater when there is money involved.
What can the common user do?
Well, for those of us unfortunate to not have "smart card" access, but fortunate enough not to have to deal with government administrators (or those who were trained by government), those of us who live in the real world, there is hope.
Two things provide hope for real world passwords. First is the reality that the hackers will not expend a huge amount of resources to crack every last password from a database they acquired. This isn't about national secrets, and the particular hackers we are worried about aren't in this for much more than either a quick thrill or money. So, the effort to crack passwords will be practical.
They will attack the easiest ones, and probably crack most of them. But if there are a few that stand up to that attack, they don't know if a sustained attack will yield any further results. So, at some practical point, they will give up. The bad news for people in general, is that the attack is likely to yield more than 98% of the passwords, as most will not take that much effort. But the good news for us is that it is not too hard to be in the other 2%.
In reality, most people will have to defend against two separate threats. Those threats are "shoulder surfing" and hackers. The shoulder surfer is the person who, simply observes you typing in your password and writes it down. In reality, the more common threat is they find where you wrote it down, and copy it. The hackers most of us have to contend with are very remote from us. Nigeria, China and Russia are the places that come to mind, though in reality, they are in every country in the world. But, chances are, they don't have access to your physical area. On the other hand, commercial hackers, driven by greed, have vast computer resources at their disposal.
To defend against two threats, I suggest a three step approach. To contend with the vast computational resources, create a sting of numbers and letters. These can be too long to memorize, but you can write them down (preferably were your web cam cannot clearly see them, just in case one of your videos goes "viral"). An example would be "7tPwa5" which is 6 characters long and includes upper case, lower case, and numbers. I don't include punctuation, since some sites don't allow that.
Next, you need to take care of the requirement to use a different password for each web site. I suggest, for each website, use a couple letters or a letter and number that you can easily associate with the site. For Zappos, for instance "Zs" (first and last letters) or for Amazon, you could use A6 (there are six letters in Amazon). Keep this pretty consistent, so you will remember what the method is.
Finally create a secret word. This is the only part of your password that will change from time to time, and is your primary defense against the shoulder surfer.
To put them together, use your two letter site designator, followed by the random string of numbers and letters. This would make Amazon "A67Pwa5" for the first 8 characters. Then follow that with your secret word. If "Grinch" is your secret word, that would make the result in a password of "A67Pwa5Grinch" which is 14 characters long.
You may want to change that last part from time to time, if you think someone has figured out what your secret word is, but there is generally no reason to change the rest of the process, unless you know a complete copy of one or more of your passwords has been compromised and is available to hackers.
Caviots
The methodology here may not work on many networks as many log-on programs in use defeat their own security by keeping a copy (theoretically encrypted) of your older passwords, and on the periodically required password change, will flag that you are reusing some part of your old password. While this keeping of old passwords is self defeating, it provides a lot of self aggrandizement for network administrators who think they are doing more than the next guy.
Also, some government network log-on's will flag portions of the password that appear to be a dictionary word. Fortunately, most of these networks already use smart card log-on so none of this article applies.
Links and further information.
hacking of the Zappos
http://www.techspot.com/news/47060-amazon-owned-zappos-hacked-24-million-accounts-compromised.html
http://securityxploded.com/passwordsecrets.php
In today's Internet driven world, all of us use one or other applications starting from browsers, mail clients to instant messengers. Most of these applications store the sensitive information such as user name, password in their private location using proprietary methods. This prevents hassle of entering the credentials every time during the authentication.
However it is important to know that this secret information if landed in other person's hands either accidentally or by destiny then it can easily put your privacy at risk. Some applications take utmost care to secure these sensitive information from prying eyes. But most applications use simple methods or rather obscure methods to store the credentials which can easily put your privacy in jeopardy as any spyware on your system can easily uncover these secrets. Also it is equally true with any one who has access to your system.
. . .
Here are the highlights of top features of ThunderbirdPassDecryptor which makes it stand apart from other similar tools including commercial ones.
Instantly decrypt and recover the stored encrypted mail account passwords from 'Thunderbird Password Store'
Supports recovery of passwords from local system as well as remote system. User can specify Thunderbird profile location from the remote system to recover the passwords.
It can recover passwords from 'Thunderbird Password Store' even when it is protected with master password. In such case user have to enter the correct master password to successfully decrypt the mail account passwords.
If you have set the master password for your Thunderbird, then you need to enter the same in the 'master password box'.
Passwords with simple character substitution are weak
http://optimwise.com/passwords-with-simple-character-substitution-are-weak/
and this includes hackerspeak like LEET
The fact that cloud computing can be used is found in many articles, as below, but the conclusions of most of the articles are completely wrong.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/hacker-uses-cloud-computing-to-crack-passwords-10021067/
"I think that cloud cracking can be useful in the future because of its massive parallel nature. You can start a 100 node cracking cluster with just a few clicks," Roth told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
Next time: smart cards and biometrics
But with the recent hacking of the Zappos section of Amazon, I thought I would put a few comments about passwords and encryption in here. This is the first of about 4 to 6 articles I plan to write on the subject.
I would have thought the handling of passwords in the commercial world would improve over time, but alas, there is no profit incentive for things to improve. And, in fact, there is some cost involved, so it seems that most passwords today are handled in much the same way they were 10 years ago.
A little bit of history.
The first encrypted password storage system that I am aware of was crypt3. This system, while merely designed to prevent the local unassisted hacker from gaining access to passwords on a system, was very advanced for its day. The password was salted, that is, a random number was added to the end of the password. Then it was put through a fairly complex encryption formula and the result was stored, along with the salt. When you logged in, the salt was read and added to what you typed and then it was encrypted and compared with the stored value. In addition to a fairly complex encryption formula that ate up some time to compute, the salt insured (at the time) no one would build a dictionary of words and their stored values.
Earlier versions of network long on systems used a simpler formula and no salt, leaving them more vulnerable. To counter that, system administrators began insisting their users use more complex passwords.
Ideas were put forth on how to make the passwords stronger by using very sophisticated salting techniques (called stretching and strengthening), and I have seen systems that use such techniques.
I haven't studied, in detail, the current state of the systems that are in use, but I can tell you that the system of stretching and strengthening passwords that I studied 10 years ago is still considered good. And I can tell you it is not widely used. This is a sad commentary on how commerce will use a quick and dirty system rather than a good one.
So, how does this impact us today?
When a website gets hacked, the hackers often try to get a copy of the password database. This was one of the things done when Zappos website was hacked. Then they will proceed to try every conceivable password (and today, this will include foreign languages and such things as "LEET" alphabets) in an attempt at gaining access to the accounts where they may order products, change addresses, or create some other chaos.
With the current system, weak passwords will fall very quickly (even instantly) and even those with modest strength can be cracked very quickly. To resist this attack, a password must be extraordinarily long and complex. Current guidelines to government computer users who don't have "smart card" access is 14 characters, with lots of things like numbers and punctuation included. And don't use the same password for any two systems. And they want to change them every few months. This, of course, leads to writing down passwords or other such things the system administrators don't like.
In the past passwords could be tried at a rate of millions per day. Today, but using cloud computing to imitate a supercomputer, that has become billions per day.
In the past, I told people to use a secret word and either a word or some letters related to the website they are logging into. This is still good enough for things like leaving comments on product reviews or newspaper forums, but with some hackers using cloud computing to imitate a supercomputer, the threat has become much greater when there is money involved.
What can the common user do?
Well, for those of us unfortunate to not have "smart card" access, but fortunate enough not to have to deal with government administrators (or those who were trained by government), those of us who live in the real world, there is hope.
Two things provide hope for real world passwords. First is the reality that the hackers will not expend a huge amount of resources to crack every last password from a database they acquired. This isn't about national secrets, and the particular hackers we are worried about aren't in this for much more than either a quick thrill or money. So, the effort to crack passwords will be practical.
They will attack the easiest ones, and probably crack most of them. But if there are a few that stand up to that attack, they don't know if a sustained attack will yield any further results. So, at some practical point, they will give up. The bad news for people in general, is that the attack is likely to yield more than 98% of the passwords, as most will not take that much effort. But the good news for us is that it is not too hard to be in the other 2%.
In reality, most people will have to defend against two separate threats. Those threats are "shoulder surfing" and hackers. The shoulder surfer is the person who, simply observes you typing in your password and writes it down. In reality, the more common threat is they find where you wrote it down, and copy it. The hackers most of us have to contend with are very remote from us. Nigeria, China and Russia are the places that come to mind, though in reality, they are in every country in the world. But, chances are, they don't have access to your physical area. On the other hand, commercial hackers, driven by greed, have vast computer resources at their disposal.
To defend against two threats, I suggest a three step approach. To contend with the vast computational resources, create a sting of numbers and letters. These can be too long to memorize, but you can write them down (preferably were your web cam cannot clearly see them, just in case one of your videos goes "viral"). An example would be "7tPwa5" which is 6 characters long and includes upper case, lower case, and numbers. I don't include punctuation, since some sites don't allow that.
Next, you need to take care of the requirement to use a different password for each web site. I suggest, for each website, use a couple letters or a letter and number that you can easily associate with the site. For Zappos, for instance "Zs" (first and last letters) or for Amazon, you could use A6 (there are six letters in Amazon). Keep this pretty consistent, so you will remember what the method is.
Finally create a secret word. This is the only part of your password that will change from time to time, and is your primary defense against the shoulder surfer.
To put them together, use your two letter site designator, followed by the random string of numbers and letters. This would make Amazon "A67Pwa5" for the first 8 characters. Then follow that with your secret word. If "Grinch" is your secret word, that would make the result in a password of "A67Pwa5Grinch" which is 14 characters long.
You may want to change that last part from time to time, if you think someone has figured out what your secret word is, but there is generally no reason to change the rest of the process, unless you know a complete copy of one or more of your passwords has been compromised and is available to hackers.
Caviots
The methodology here may not work on many networks as many log-on programs in use defeat their own security by keeping a copy (theoretically encrypted) of your older passwords, and on the periodically required password change, will flag that you are reusing some part of your old password. While this keeping of old passwords is self defeating, it provides a lot of self aggrandizement for network administrators who think they are doing more than the next guy.
Also, some government network log-on's will flag portions of the password that appear to be a dictionary word. Fortunately, most of these networks already use smart card log-on so none of this article applies.
Links and further information.
hacking of the Zappos
http://www.techspot.com/news/47060-amazon-owned-zappos-hacked-24-million-accounts-compromised.html
http://securityxploded.com/passwordsecrets.php
In today's Internet driven world, all of us use one or other applications starting from browsers, mail clients to instant messengers. Most of these applications store the sensitive information such as user name, password in their private location using proprietary methods. This prevents hassle of entering the credentials every time during the authentication.
However it is important to know that this secret information if landed in other person's hands either accidentally or by destiny then it can easily put your privacy at risk. Some applications take utmost care to secure these sensitive information from prying eyes. But most applications use simple methods or rather obscure methods to store the credentials which can easily put your privacy in jeopardy as any spyware on your system can easily uncover these secrets. Also it is equally true with any one who has access to your system.
. . .
Here are the highlights of top features of ThunderbirdPassDecryptor which makes it stand apart from other similar tools including commercial ones.
Instantly decrypt and recover the stored encrypted mail account passwords from 'Thunderbird Password Store'
Supports recovery of passwords from local system as well as remote system. User can specify Thunderbird profile location from the remote system to recover the passwords.
It can recover passwords from 'Thunderbird Password Store' even when it is protected with master password. In such case user have to enter the correct master password to successfully decrypt the mail account passwords.
If you have set the master password for your Thunderbird, then you need to enter the same in the 'master password box'.
Passwords with simple character substitution are weak
http://optimwise.com/passwords-with-simple-character-substitution-are-weak/
and this includes hackerspeak like LEET
The fact that cloud computing can be used is found in many articles, as below, but the conclusions of most of the articles are completely wrong.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/mapping-babel-10017967/hacker-uses-cloud-computing-to-crack-passwords-10021067/
"I think that cloud cracking can be useful in the future because of its massive parallel nature. You can start a 100 node cracking cluster with just a few clicks," Roth told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
Next time: smart cards and biometrics
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Successful LED Lights
I intended to post this several months ago, as my last post on this subject said: "It will probably be next week before I post about my current assortment of lights, mostly made by Ray-O-Vac"
I have owned quite a few LED lights over the last 5 years. There has been much improvement in the quality of white light LED's over that time. The main improvement has been in the quality of white light. White LED's in 2001 were of such poor quality someone wrote an article titled "White LED's Suck" and they were fairly correct. Today's LED's are much better.
The flashlights around my house in the 90's and early into this century were the ordinary 2 D-Cell kind with fairly good bulbs and were decent quality. However, in the last several years, I have set out to replace each and every one of them with LED lights. And for mainly this reason: The cost of batteries is soon greater than the cost of the flashlight, if you use it very much. Also, while I have never had an LED flashlight bulb burn out or just quit, regular bulbs used to quit on me from time to time in the past.
The best LED replacement I have found for the most common house and car flashlight is the Ray-O-Vac "Brilliant Solutions" variety. These can be had at Wal-Mart, and are fairly inexpensive. Oddly, they are available on the Net for about double the price.
Naming convention for most of the Ray-O-Vac flashlights is fairly straightforwards. If you see 2AA in the name, it takes 2 AA batteries. If you see 3AAA in the name, it takes 3 AAA batteries.
Brilliant Solutions also includes a $1 conventional flashlight that takes 2 AA batteries, and might be useful somewhere you hope to never need a flashlight, but must keep one for safety reasons.
I believe I have written in the past about the headlamp I use at work, and I still think the Ray-O-Vac 3-in-1 LED Headlamp is the best headlamp on the market for under $30 apiece. I don't know if it is still in production, but it is still intermittently available from Amazon for about $13 (but you have to buy them in the 2 pack for $26).
For an extra bright flashlight, I recently bought Ray-O-Vac Sportsman 3W 2AA DC-DC Regulated Flashlight that is rated 80 Lumens. That model may not be available, but similar models are. Expect to pay between $20 and $35 each. They are water and impact resistant, and use a twist bottom switch with push button momentary. I don't particularly like that type of switch, but it is the most trouble free and longest lasting type of switch around.
The 5 LED basic headlamp I used to get on line for about $6.50 is now available at Wal-Mart near the checkout for $5.75 and will probably show up at places like Family Dollar stores soon. This is a very generic headlamp that shows up from time to time and place to place with inconsistent model and UPC numbers.
I waited for some time for Ray-O-Vac to make a caplight that I liked, but Energizer beat them to it. They make a caplight and a headlight that are virtually the same, for around $15. Has two red LED's and three white LED's. Runs on 2 AAA batteries.
I have owned quite a few LED lights over the last 5 years. There has been much improvement in the quality of white light LED's over that time. The main improvement has been in the quality of white light. White LED's in 2001 were of such poor quality someone wrote an article titled "White LED's Suck" and they were fairly correct. Today's LED's are much better.
The flashlights around my house in the 90's and early into this century were the ordinary 2 D-Cell kind with fairly good bulbs and were decent quality. However, in the last several years, I have set out to replace each and every one of them with LED lights. And for mainly this reason: The cost of batteries is soon greater than the cost of the flashlight, if you use it very much. Also, while I have never had an LED flashlight bulb burn out or just quit, regular bulbs used to quit on me from time to time in the past.
The best LED replacement I have found for the most common house and car flashlight is the Ray-O-Vac "Brilliant Solutions" variety. These can be had at Wal-Mart, and are fairly inexpensive. Oddly, they are available on the Net for about double the price.
Naming convention for most of the Ray-O-Vac flashlights is fairly straightforwards. If you see 2AA in the name, it takes 2 AA batteries. If you see 3AAA in the name, it takes 3 AAA batteries.
Brilliant Solutions also includes a $1 conventional flashlight that takes 2 AA batteries, and might be useful somewhere you hope to never need a flashlight, but must keep one for safety reasons.
I believe I have written in the past about the headlamp I use at work, and I still think the Ray-O-Vac 3-in-1 LED Headlamp is the best headlamp on the market for under $30 apiece. I don't know if it is still in production, but it is still intermittently available from Amazon for about $13 (but you have to buy them in the 2 pack for $26).
For an extra bright flashlight, I recently bought Ray-O-Vac Sportsman 3W 2AA DC-DC Regulated Flashlight that is rated 80 Lumens. That model may not be available, but similar models are. Expect to pay between $20 and $35 each. They are water and impact resistant, and use a twist bottom switch with push button momentary. I don't particularly like that type of switch, but it is the most trouble free and longest lasting type of switch around.
The 5 LED basic headlamp I used to get on line for about $6.50 is now available at Wal-Mart near the checkout for $5.75 and will probably show up at places like Family Dollar stores soon. This is a very generic headlamp that shows up from time to time and place to place with inconsistent model and UPC numbers.
I waited for some time for Ray-O-Vac to make a caplight that I liked, but Energizer beat them to it. They make a caplight and a headlight that are virtually the same, for around $15. Has two red LED's and three white LED's. Runs on 2 AAA batteries.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
FreeWare program of the month - KeyNote
I have been searching for a replacement for an old DOS (before Windows) editor that I use to keep my journal. Since I keep several kinds of information in it, and some of it is sensitive, this has been a daunting task. I need a tool which can keep multiple kinds of data, some in fairly massive amounts, can keep it private, and keep it "bookmarked" for easy access.
I think I found it in KeyNote
KeyNote is basically like having Wordpad that opens up to a complete set of files in a tree of folders. And it can stay minimized in your desktop (system) tray. Each time it opens, it can open to the last place you edited a specific file, making it useful as a log or journal.
In addition to begin able to import and export text and rich text files, you can edit rich text files from inside Keynote by using a link to that file (called a virtual node). Switching from one note to another or one file of notes to another is much faster than opening a new window (or new copy) of Wordpad, and again, they open to the last place you edited them.
Keynote provides for the (strong) Encryption of the entire file of notes, and also can do ROT13 (a quick substitution of the alphabet) on any particular text inside the file (to prevent someone from inadvertently reading it), making the word "particular look like "cnegvphyne". It can also reverse any text you highlight, making the word "particular" look like "ralucitrap." This means you can keep your notes, as a whole, safe from prying eyes, and if there is anything particularly sensitive in one or more of them, you can use ROT13 to keep it from being inadvertently read if someone walks up behind you while you are working.
I haven't found the spell check, thesaurus, or glossary yet, but there are program add-on's available (plug-in's) for those and other functions. I just haven't had time to explore those things yet. Also this tool is mainly for those of us still using WindowsXP or Win2K (it also works in Linux Wine), one of the current development projects is to port it to dotNET for Windows7, but that has not happened yet. Some people have been using it in Windows7, and some have reported problems with it in Windows7. Porting it to dotNET will fix Windows7, but it may kill it for Linux users.
This is not the ultimate fix for my search for the Perfect Journal Keeping Tool, but it looks like it is far better than any other I have looked at.
I think I found it in KeyNote
KeyNote is basically like having Wordpad that opens up to a complete set of files in a tree of folders. And it can stay minimized in your desktop (system) tray. Each time it opens, it can open to the last place you edited a specific file, making it useful as a log or journal.
In addition to begin able to import and export text and rich text files, you can edit rich text files from inside Keynote by using a link to that file (called a virtual node). Switching from one note to another or one file of notes to another is much faster than opening a new window (or new copy) of Wordpad, and again, they open to the last place you edited them.
Keynote provides for the (strong) Encryption of the entire file of notes, and also can do ROT13 (a quick substitution of the alphabet) on any particular text inside the file (to prevent someone from inadvertently reading it), making the word "particular look like "cnegvphyne". It can also reverse any text you highlight, making the word "particular" look like "ralucitrap." This means you can keep your notes, as a whole, safe from prying eyes, and if there is anything particularly sensitive in one or more of them, you can use ROT13 to keep it from being inadvertently read if someone walks up behind you while you are working.
I haven't found the spell check, thesaurus, or glossary yet, but there are program add-on's available (plug-in's) for those and other functions. I just haven't had time to explore those things yet. Also this tool is mainly for those of us still using WindowsXP or Win2K (it also works in Linux Wine), one of the current development projects is to port it to dotNET for Windows7, but that has not happened yet. Some people have been using it in Windows7, and some have reported problems with it in Windows7. Porting it to dotNET will fix Windows7, but it may kill it for Linux users.
This is not the ultimate fix for my search for the Perfect Journal Keeping Tool, but it looks like it is far better than any other I have looked at.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
FreeWare program of the month
Process Explorer
I have had some problems in the last few weeks with my PC getting choked on some kind of rogue programs. After running AntiVirus and SpyBot programs to insure it wasn't some kind of infection, I started looking for the circumstances under which it chokes.
Using task manager, I was able to determine some instances of it choking on certain web sites, but I always had to remember to start task manager each time I started working, and if I closed it for any reason (I have a habit of closing all of my windows, in rapid succession when I get a choke condition), I lost any history it had.
There is a really excellent utility to replace Task Manager (for Win2k and WinXP) that provides a lot of flexibility that Task Manager does not make convenient, such as starting up as soon as you log on, and when you hit close, it simply shrinks to a tray icon (you can actually close it from there if you wish).
Freeware program, the author does not ask for anything in return for its use. "Sysinternals," the author's website was acquired by Microsoft, but still seems to function as an independent resource, and has a lot of neat utilities.
Used with another program (Autorun) from the same sight, I found a couple of things loading at startup that I didn't know about, but in the long run, I am not enough of a whiz at computers to fix whatever is choking my PC. I did learn, from the author's blog, that I am not the only one that is having this problem, and it seems to be some poorly written programming, possibly in Java, for displaying web pages.
One caviot, Process Explorer has been "Upgraded" from the edition I am using, to work on Vista and Windows7. There may or may not be some bugs with the new release (there have been complaints). I would wait another month before trying the new edition, just in case.
I have had some problems in the last few weeks with my PC getting choked on some kind of rogue programs. After running AntiVirus and SpyBot programs to insure it wasn't some kind of infection, I started looking for the circumstances under which it chokes.
Using task manager, I was able to determine some instances of it choking on certain web sites, but I always had to remember to start task manager each time I started working, and if I closed it for any reason (I have a habit of closing all of my windows, in rapid succession when I get a choke condition), I lost any history it had.
There is a really excellent utility to replace Task Manager (for Win2k and WinXP) that provides a lot of flexibility that Task Manager does not make convenient, such as starting up as soon as you log on, and when you hit close, it simply shrinks to a tray icon (you can actually close it from there if you wish).
Freeware program, the author does not ask for anything in return for its use. "Sysinternals," the author's website was acquired by Microsoft, but still seems to function as an independent resource, and has a lot of neat utilities.
Used with another program (Autorun) from the same sight, I found a couple of things loading at startup that I didn't know about, but in the long run, I am not enough of a whiz at computers to fix whatever is choking my PC. I did learn, from the author's blog, that I am not the only one that is having this problem, and it seems to be some poorly written programming, possibly in Java, for displaying web pages.
One caviot, Process Explorer has been "Upgraded" from the edition I am using, to work on Vista and Windows7. There may or may not be some bugs with the new release (there have been complaints). I would wait another month before trying the new edition, just in case.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Successful LED Lights
This article is mostly historical, as I give some thoughts on most of the LED Flashlights I have owned in the past. Eventually every light must be replaced. Especially working in a somewhat harsh environment, like I do. If God is willing, I will write an article on my current lights and post it in a few days.
One of the first Headlamps I owned was a "Kids Adventure" headlamp, that I can't find any more. It would run for a night or two on 2xAA batteries. I replaced it with a cheap headlamp I got from a supply house that used 3AAA batteries and had 5 LED's. It would run for several nights and gave off more light. Around the same time I bought a 14 LED flashlight that also took 3AAA batteries, and it did a pretty good job, but the color spectrum was decidedly deficiant, so I would also carry a little krypton bulb flashlight to check colors when I needed to do that.
This was back around 2005, and about that time a serious cave explorer near Boston published an article that said White LED's Suck. Naturally, that slowed down my desire to buy a good LED flashlight, even after the rough treatment and harsh environment killed off my 14 LED flashlight.
However, around that time, I got a 3 LED Mag-Light conversion kit, and while it wasn't perfect (no focusing), it did create more light for much longer battery life. And the light color out of it was pretty good.
Also, by chance I ran across a TaskForce 1W LED flashlight that bragged: "Super High intensity LED flashlight" (it used to be available at many department stores and hardware stores for about $20 but not available any more). It was marked half price, so I snatched it up and it was the best flashlight I owned for a couple of years. It ran on 3 AA batteries, had pretty good water tightness (better than the one above). It was brighter than the 14 LED flashlight above, and the better focus provided far more reach. The body of the flashlight had a couple of weak points, but those were fixed with electrical tape and I used it for about 4 years, until the switch wore out.
As I used it, though, I noticed the LED got progressively dimmer over the years, unitl at the end, it was about half the brightness of when I got it. I found out that this is normal, although it happened a little quicker than normal. LED's don't usually burn out, but they grow progressively dimmer after hundreds of hours of use.
In the mean time, I bought a cheap 3W LED flashlight that did no better than the 1W TaskForce light and did not last long at all. One of the problems with this light is that it ran on 2AA batteries, and without a regulator (an expensive add on, at that time) it could not achieve full brightness, nor would it stay bright very long. The beating it took riding around with me on the job soon broke the parts loose inside and it died.
One other nice thing I bought a few years back was a 12 LED lantern. Runs on 4 D cells, the light is blueish and not very bright. But it does the job I got it for. It gives me an area light, brighter than candles and will run for days during power outages.
It will probably be next week before I post
about my current assortment of lights,
mostly made by Ray-O-Vac
One of the first Headlamps I owned was a "Kids Adventure" headlamp, that I can't find any more. It would run for a night or two on 2xAA batteries. I replaced it with a cheap headlamp I got from a supply house that used 3AAA batteries and had 5 LED's. It would run for several nights and gave off more light. Around the same time I bought a 14 LED flashlight that also took 3AAA batteries, and it did a pretty good job, but the color spectrum was decidedly deficiant, so I would also carry a little krypton bulb flashlight to check colors when I needed to do that.
This was back around 2005, and about that time a serious cave explorer near Boston published an article that said White LED's Suck. Naturally, that slowed down my desire to buy a good LED flashlight, even after the rough treatment and harsh environment killed off my 14 LED flashlight.
However, around that time, I got a 3 LED Mag-Light conversion kit, and while it wasn't perfect (no focusing), it did create more light for much longer battery life. And the light color out of it was pretty good.
Also, by chance I ran across a TaskForce 1W LED flashlight that bragged: "Super High intensity LED flashlight" (it used to be available at many department stores and hardware stores for about $20 but not available any more). It was marked half price, so I snatched it up and it was the best flashlight I owned for a couple of years. It ran on 3 AA batteries, had pretty good water tightness (better than the one above). It was brighter than the 14 LED flashlight above, and the better focus provided far more reach. The body of the flashlight had a couple of weak points, but those were fixed with electrical tape and I used it for about 4 years, until the switch wore out.
As I used it, though, I noticed the LED got progressively dimmer over the years, unitl at the end, it was about half the brightness of when I got it. I found out that this is normal, although it happened a little quicker than normal. LED's don't usually burn out, but they grow progressively dimmer after hundreds of hours of use.
In the mean time, I bought a cheap 3W LED flashlight that did no better than the 1W TaskForce light and did not last long at all. One of the problems with this light is that it ran on 2AA batteries, and without a regulator (an expensive add on, at that time) it could not achieve full brightness, nor would it stay bright very long. The beating it took riding around with me on the job soon broke the parts loose inside and it died.
One other nice thing I bought a few years back was a 12 LED lantern. Runs on 4 D cells, the light is blueish and not very bright. But it does the job I got it for. It gives me an area light, brighter than candles and will run for days during power outages.
It will probably be next week before I post
about my current assortment of lights,
mostly made by Ray-O-Vac
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Todays LED Lights
While the hype of Green House Gases and Global Warming has been shown to be a complete hoax, there have been some good technologies that came out of the push for being greener than green. One of those better technologies is the vast improvments in LED's
While white LED's have been around since before the year 2000, the quality of light was very poor. One article, written several years back was actually titled "Why White LED's Suck," The author had a point. The brightness available from the early "bright white" LED that he tried was lacking, and the color rendition was horible.
I did some previous research and
posted three articles on LED's back
in December 2006 on this blog.
Even more resently, a couple of new LED's have emerged. The Seoul SSC P4 and the Cree XR-E. Both produce more light and can be used for 1W to maybe 5W lights. These show great promise for brighter lights and longer lasting batteries, but are just out of reach for my budget right now. There are even more advanced LED's, but these get progressively more expensive, putting them out of my reach.
As LED lights have improved, they have rapidly gained a well earned acceptance as the light of choice for almost all battery powered applications. This is because of the high cost of electricity from almost all battery (and some generator) sources. I touched on the cost of batteries and generators for power back in October 2008 in this blog. Suffice it to say that power from rechagable batteries or a generator will cost you 20 or more times what it costs coming out of an outlet, and power from non rechargable batteries will cost you about 10 times as much as rechargable batteries (over the long run).
Still, with limited exceptions, like the under $3 LED night lights and some Christmas lights, LED's are not really a good deal for household lighting. The difference in efficiancy between them and flourescent lights isn't enough to reccommend their use.
Sources for more information. Nearly all of the information in this article comes from discussions on the CandlePower Forum and from the Flashlight Reviews website. At these websites, you can find people who can only be described as addicted to lights of all kinds, especially flashlights. Some even modify or manufacture their own devices. (Actually, I suspect some of those who post there are flashlight or other tool manufactures.)
I expect to post on some specific flashlights I use, sometime in the next couple of weeks.
While white LED's have been around since before the year 2000, the quality of light was very poor. One article, written several years back was actually titled "Why White LED's Suck," The author had a point. The brightness available from the early "bright white" LED that he tried was lacking, and the color rendition was horible.
I did some previous research and
posted three articles on LED's back
in December 2006 on this blog.
Geek Alert: the following discussions repeatedly refer to 1W, 3W, 5W and 7W. The W is short for Watt. These are power consumption ratings of various lights, and generally just mean we are using more power from the batteries, getting more light, producing more heat, running the batteries down faster, and in some cases (like 5 and 7W LED's) running risk of damaging the LED's.But things have gotten better. The light from 1W LED's is somewhat brighter, but much more importantly, the color of the light has improved. And over past several years, not only have manufactures learned to coax more power through the LED's for even brighter light (hence 3W LED's and even a few 5W and 7W LED's) from essentially the same 1 W Luxeon
Even more resently, a couple of new LED's have emerged. The Seoul SSC P4 and the Cree XR-E. Both produce more light and can be used for 1W to maybe 5W lights. These show great promise for brighter lights and longer lasting batteries, but are just out of reach for my budget right now. There are even more advanced LED's, but these get progressively more expensive, putting them out of my reach.
As LED lights have improved, they have rapidly gained a well earned acceptance as the light of choice for almost all battery powered applications. This is because of the high cost of electricity from almost all battery (and some generator) sources. I touched on the cost of batteries and generators for power back in October 2008 in this blog. Suffice it to say that power from rechagable batteries or a generator will cost you 20 or more times what it costs coming out of an outlet, and power from non rechargable batteries will cost you about 10 times as much as rechargable batteries (over the long run).
Still, with limited exceptions, like the under $3 LED night lights and some Christmas lights, LED's are not really a good deal for household lighting. The difference in efficiancy between them and flourescent lights isn't enough to reccommend their use.
Sources for more information. Nearly all of the information in this article comes from discussions on the CandlePower Forum and from the Flashlight Reviews website. At these websites, you can find people who can only be described as addicted to lights of all kinds, especially flashlights. Some even modify or manufacture their own devices. (Actually, I suspect some of those who post there are flashlight or other tool manufactures.)
I expect to post on some specific flashlights I use, sometime in the next couple of weeks.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
MicroSoft Does Something Right?
I have, these past few weeks, been taking a look at Windows 7. Maybe it is the competition from Linux (highly likely, since a lot of the "new" features in Win7 were already available in Linux), or maybe it is just how badly they screwed up some things in XP and Vista. But either way, it looks like they have done something good with Win7.
I normally wait a full year before looking into any new product from MicroSoft, but between the way they screwed up with Vista and some favorable reviews I saw this year on Win7, I thought I would take a look at it before the year was up. Plus, I got my wife a netbook, and the only thing I could find was either Vista or Win7. After doing about a week of research, it was an easy choice.
From the fact that all of the programing loads from a single disc - no matter which version you are buying (and there are about 5 versions) - to the way it handles hibernation and switching users, it looks like they have done a better job than any previous editions.
That is not to say I will be totally enamored with it. First, it costs over $100 a copy. Although you can get a family pack of 3 copies for less than the single copy price, a feature only useful to businesses in the past.
I still think, ultimately, Linux will be the way to go. But Win7 ain't bad.
I normally wait a full year before looking into any new product from MicroSoft, but between the way they screwed up with Vista and some favorable reviews I saw this year on Win7, I thought I would take a look at it before the year was up. Plus, I got my wife a netbook, and the only thing I could find was either Vista or Win7. After doing about a week of research, it was an easy choice.
From the fact that all of the programing loads from a single disc - no matter which version you are buying (and there are about 5 versions) - to the way it handles hibernation and switching users, it looks like they have done a better job than any previous editions.
That is not to say I will be totally enamored with it. First, it costs over $100 a copy. Although you can get a family pack of 3 copies for less than the single copy price, a feature only useful to businesses in the past.
I still think, ultimately, Linux will be the way to go. But Win7 ain't bad.
Friday, March 27, 2009
A search for software (pt2)
See also, part one of this series.
GEEK ALERT: Despite being written for a general audiance this article is quite technicle in nature. If you are a non-geek, simply ignore the terms you don't understand, and you will still get three quarters of it.
I have been looking for replacements for some of the old DOS programs I built years ago, and this is a discussion about my quest to find a Personal Information Manager. I found three free PIM's that seemed, at first, to fill most of my requirements.
TreePad Lite is probably the easiest to find on the Net, but it turned out to be too limited - it seems to be mostly designed to wet your appatite for the business version. The business version seems to be quite good, and if you need a business PIM, you might want to check it out. There are actually four or five versions, and if you find it too your liking, I would reccommend paying for, and using the premium business version, if you use a Windows based computer in your business.
ChaosManager is a very simple and very compact PIM and organizer. While it is really, really, simple, the help pages and documentation are on its website and clicking on the help menues caused it to access its home URL. That is the main reason I didn't go with it. Beyond just not liking the fact that you have to go continually back to the web site to view documentaion, having the help menues access the web site means that if the web site goes under, so all of your help menues. I consider this a fatal error in the author's judgement.
I finally settled on EssentialPIM (for now) I used Micro$oft Outlook for e-mail many years ago, and this reminds me of that program. This program, the freeware edition, anyway, is so much like Micro$oft Outlook(without the e-mail), that I cannot really even define the differences in look and feel. Most of it revolves around a calandar and appointment book type of function. It also has a separate to-do list. The contact manager is very robust, even including a notepad and a place for a picture of the person.
There is a "Pro" (professional) version and it, just as much as treepad, has my reccomendation for those who need it for business.
Shortcomings
GEEK ALERT: Despite being written for a general audiance this article is quite technicle in nature. If you are a non-geek, simply ignore the terms you don't understand, and you will still get three quarters of it.
I have been looking for replacements for some of the old DOS programs I built years ago, and this is a discussion about my quest to find a Personal Information Manager. I found three free PIM's that seemed, at first, to fill most of my requirements.
TreePad Lite is probably the easiest to find on the Net, but it turned out to be too limited - it seems to be mostly designed to wet your appatite for the business version. The business version seems to be quite good, and if you need a business PIM, you might want to check it out. There are actually four or five versions, and if you find it too your liking, I would reccommend paying for, and using the premium business version, if you use a Windows based computer in your business.
ChaosManager is a very simple and very compact PIM and organizer. While it is really, really, simple, the help pages and documentation are on its website and clicking on the help menues caused it to access its home URL. That is the main reason I didn't go with it. Beyond just not liking the fact that you have to go continually back to the web site to view documentaion, having the help menues access the web site means that if the web site goes under, so all of your help menues. I consider this a fatal error in the author's judgement.
I finally settled on EssentialPIM (for now) I used Micro$oft Outlook for e-mail many years ago, and this reminds me of that program. This program, the freeware edition, anyway, is so much like Micro$oft Outlook(without the e-mail), that I cannot really even define the differences in look and feel. Most of it revolves around a calandar and appointment book type of function. It also has a separate to-do list. The contact manager is very robust, even including a notepad and a place for a picture of the person.
There is a "Pro" (professional) version and it, just as much as treepad, has my reccomendation for those who need it for business.
Shortcomings
- Help files are not very complete, and again, refer you to the author's website, where there is a forum for users of the product. This is, in my opinion, a huge drawback, and because of that, it took me a while to decide to use it anyway.
- There is no direct mechanism to move things automatically from calandar (schedule) to to-do list. You can make to-do list items repeat on a regular basis, but I would have prefered those items to be listed on the calandar and at a certain number of days before the due date, add themselves to the to-do list.
- Even though it shows you 6 weeks in the "monthly" planner, you can only print a calandar month, week or day.
The next program I need is a general purpose database, with some calculation capability. The primary, and first, purpose of this is to handle my checkbook register. I would also use it for my journal. There are some other things I would use it for, but these are the first.
I will cover this topic in a future "software search" article.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
A search for software (pt1)
GEEK ALERT: This article is quite technical in nature. Despite being written for a non-geek audience, there are just some technical things that can't be ignored and still keep the article complete and accurate. If you are a non-geek, simply ignore the terms you don't understand, and you will still get three quarters of it.
I have been looking for a replacement for the old DOS filing systems I have been using on an "off line" computer since the 90's. (Even in the 90's MS-DOS was slightly out of date, but at this point, I fear I will soon not have any hardware that it will even run on.) The biggest problem with this task: I custom built most of this over the years, and it has a lot of custom functions that are just the way I like them.
I had several requirements in mind for the replacement programs. First, I wanted freeware. I'm cheap, but also I wanted after I got my system up and running, to be able to duplicate it on others' systems, without incurring expenses. Second, since I and some of my friends run older systems, it has to be stingy on computer resources. This cuts out Open Office, as it is free, but it is a resource hog. Third, for both security and economic concerns, it has to run completely off line - never accessing the Web, except possibly for upgrades, and then only with the user's permission. Lastly, it needs to run on Win2k and WinXP, since those are my platforms of choice, at this time. (I may in a few years, switch to Ubuntu Linux, but I need something to bridge the gap)
The fist thing I found out is that most of these programs, even the older ones, balk at my old 800x600 monitor. Statistically in the technology department, I recently slipped into the bottom 10% of the Internet users, and bottom 20% of the country as a whole. The majority of the world is using either 1024x768 or 1280x800(widescreen) resolution.
I figured I would need at least two programs to replace the suit of programs I have built in DOS. First something to keep track of birthdays and other info about friends and family, with a reminder system for that and other tasks, a to-do list, and a general purpose notebook. Basically this describes something (in a big leather book) called a "Day-Runner" from the 1980's, and is known as a PIM today. The other would be a database, mainly for my checkbook.
PIM stands for Personal Information Manager, and it allows you to keep all you information in electronic form. All your appointments, tasks, to do lists, notes and contacts are stored in a graphical and easily accessible form.
In my search, I found many dead ends. Most of the download sites today are loaded with shareware, which the authors want paid for. (And rightly so, since they did the work to create those programs) And many of those "free download" sites charge for the right to browse and download freely.
I have been looking for a replacement for the old DOS filing systems I have been using on an "off line" computer since the 90's. (Even in the 90's MS-DOS was slightly out of date, but at this point, I fear I will soon not have any hardware that it will even run on.) The biggest problem with this task: I custom built most of this over the years, and it has a lot of custom functions that are just the way I like them.
I had several requirements in mind for the replacement programs. First, I wanted freeware. I'm cheap, but also I wanted after I got my system up and running, to be able to duplicate it on others' systems, without incurring expenses. Second, since I and some of my friends run older systems, it has to be stingy on computer resources. This cuts out Open Office, as it is free, but it is a resource hog. Third, for both security and economic concerns, it has to run completely off line - never accessing the Web, except possibly for upgrades, and then only with the user's permission. Lastly, it needs to run on Win2k and WinXP, since those are my platforms of choice, at this time. (I may in a few years, switch to Ubuntu Linux, but I need something to bridge the gap)
The fist thing I found out is that most of these programs, even the older ones, balk at my old 800x600 monitor. Statistically in the technology department, I recently slipped into the bottom 10% of the Internet users, and bottom 20% of the country as a whole. The majority of the world is using either 1024x768 or 1280x800(widescreen) resolution.
I figured I would need at least two programs to replace the suit of programs I have built in DOS. First something to keep track of birthdays and other info about friends and family, with a reminder system for that and other tasks, a to-do list, and a general purpose notebook. Basically this describes something (in a big leather book) called a "Day-Runner" from the 1980's, and is known as a PIM today. The other would be a database, mainly for my checkbook.
PIM stands for Personal Information Manager, and it allows you to keep all you information in electronic form. All your appointments, tasks, to do lists, notes and contacts are stored in a graphical and easily accessible form.
In my search, I found many dead ends. Most of the download sites today are loaded with shareware, which the authors want paid for. (And rightly so, since they did the work to create those programs) And many of those "free download" sites charge for the right to browse and download freely.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
death of newspapers
With the immanent bankruptcy of the tribune, some people, both outside and inside their industry have been discussing the financial in's and out's of the business. Seems no one inside the business has been willing to address the issue of bias, and how it may have played a role in their financial collapse.
Starting on Credit Slips, I traced commentary on the matter, to find out if they could be honest with each other. Beginning with the article, itself, the author (whom I know nothing about) says
I don't know if by "for better or worse," she is admitting right here that "truth" is not a reality in the newspaper business. As for the "forth branch of government" - the for profit news business of the MSM has become just a branch of the most liberal aspects of the Democratic Party. But will they get this?
I will say, right up front, that I read the local newspaper and watch the local news. It does two things that I can not yet get on line. I get local news, and I get an assortment of stories. On line, it tends to be national news, and I only get news that the sites I go to consider worthy. Of course, in the paper and on TV I get a lot of national news and only what the newspaper's editorial board feels is newsworthy, but it is a much wider variety.
The article mentions about investigative reporters and foreign bureaus. They are correct that blogging cannot replace these things. A new business model must emerge, where these people are paid a wage (or compensation) for their gathering of content. Someone must go out and gather content that corporations and governments don't want gathered, and support of those who do that is a must if we are not to slide into the Orwellian word of "1984"
Some other items in article and comments below it may be found incorrect in the future. The assembling of the news into a cohesive and eclectic (a paradox, I know) format can be done by blog editors, and even automation, just as well as an editorial board. There are already services that do this, such as The Memorandum and news.google, though at this time they still rely on the main stream news to provide the actual content. But this is an early phase.
Why no one seems to want to call them on the fact that one of the things MSM is killing itself with is their leftist views and political entanglements is beyond me. It may be that the Internet is killing the revenue stream for the newspapers, but it is their own lack of integrity that will assure their death. We can only hope that ultimately a day will come that a new version of news agency will emerge to fill the void.
Starting on Credit Slips, I traced commentary on the matter, to find out if they could be honest with each other. Beginning with the article, itself, the author (whom I know nothing about) says
Truth-seeking (for better or worse) has never been a for-profit
activity.. [and] If we as a country want to continue having a written representative in the “fourth branch” of government, we’re going to have to come up with another one.
I don't know if by "for better or worse," she is admitting right here that "truth" is not a reality in the newspaper business. As for the "forth branch of government" - the for profit news business of the MSM has become just a branch of the most liberal aspects of the Democratic Party. But will they get this?
I will say, right up front, that I read the local newspaper and watch the local news. It does two things that I can not yet get on line. I get local news, and I get an assortment of stories. On line, it tends to be national news, and I only get news that the sites I go to consider worthy. Of course, in the paper and on TV I get a lot of national news and only what the newspaper's editorial board feels is newsworthy, but it is a much wider variety.
The article mentions about investigative reporters and foreign bureaus. They are correct that blogging cannot replace these things. A new business model must emerge, where these people are paid a wage (or compensation) for their gathering of content. Someone must go out and gather content that corporations and governments don't want gathered, and support of those who do that is a must if we are not to slide into the Orwellian word of "1984"
Some other items in article and comments below it may be found incorrect in the future. The assembling of the news into a cohesive and eclectic (a paradox, I know) format can be done by blog editors, and even automation, just as well as an editorial board. There are already services that do this, such as The Memorandum and news.google, though at this time they still rely on the main stream news to provide the actual content. But this is an early phase.
Why no one seems to want to call them on the fact that one of the things MSM is killing itself with is their leftist views and political entanglements is beyond me. It may be that the Internet is killing the revenue stream for the newspapers, but it is their own lack of integrity that will assure their death. We can only hope that ultimately a day will come that a new version of news agency will emerge to fill the void.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
after the election
As the dust settles on this election, I have been thinking on what I should write next. Certainly, things will not be as bad as we fear. Or will they? Only God knows.
There are some things I do like about President (elect) Obama's platform, though I was reluctant to speak of them during the race. There are some things about corporations that turn my stomach, and there is a (remote) chance that he will work to fix those. He believes in compulsory volunteering, and that is something I have come to embrace. (although the devil is in the details, and the programs could cause as much harm as good, if not done right)
I don't think he is a Christian. No, I don't think he is trying to decieve us, but rather that he does not have an understanding of what it means to be a Christian (which in my writings, would make him a christian).
There were many breakdowns in the polling equipment, but overall, it does not appear on the surface to be catastrophic. Of course, that is on the surface. In many places, paper ballots are no longer used (and in some, they have not been used for years), making it impossible to know how people really voted. Fortunately, my own districts allow the use of paper. Unfortunately, my own district also allows the use of unverifiable electronic voting.
The possibility exists that Al-Qaeda (or other wahhabists) may use the next few months to launch attacks, believing (an probably correctly) that we will be quite chaotic and indecisive in our response. I wrote about this a few days ago.
I will likely be looking for a different party affiliation in the next few years, unless much changes in the republican party. If the libertarians and constitutionalists could get their act together - and if they would understand that corporations are just another form of government - I might join up with them. Born-Again Democrats hold some promise, but I havent looked into their organization much yet. As always, the devil is in the details. I guess I might become a true independant.
Much remains to be thought out.
Much remains to be seen.
In the end, God is in charge.
In the mean time,
I feel I must try to make sense of it all.
There are some things I do like about President (elect) Obama's platform, though I was reluctant to speak of them during the race. There are some things about corporations that turn my stomach, and there is a (remote) chance that he will work to fix those. He believes in compulsory volunteering, and that is something I have come to embrace. (although the devil is in the details, and the programs could cause as much harm as good, if not done right)
I don't think he is a Christian. No, I don't think he is trying to decieve us, but rather that he does not have an understanding of what it means to be a Christian (which in my writings, would make him a christian).
There were many breakdowns in the polling equipment, but overall, it does not appear on the surface to be catastrophic. Of course, that is on the surface. In many places, paper ballots are no longer used (and in some, they have not been used for years), making it impossible to know how people really voted. Fortunately, my own districts allow the use of paper. Unfortunately, my own district also allows the use of unverifiable electronic voting.
The possibility exists that Al-Qaeda (or other wahhabists) may use the next few months to launch attacks, believing (an probably correctly) that we will be quite chaotic and indecisive in our response. I wrote about this a few days ago.
I will likely be looking for a different party affiliation in the next few years, unless much changes in the republican party. If the libertarians and constitutionalists could get their act together - and if they would understand that corporations are just another form of government - I might join up with them. Born-Again Democrats hold some promise, but I havent looked into their organization much yet. As always, the devil is in the details. I guess I might become a true independant.
Much remains to be thought out.
Much remains to be seen.
In the end, God is in charge.
In the mean time,
I feel I must try to make sense of it all.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Cost of Electricity - Batt and Gen
There is simply no way to discuss energy, whether alternative sources of energy or ways to conserve it, without an understanding of what energy costs. The cost varies dramatically, depending on what kind of energy, where it is coming from, and what it is being used for. This is why I advocate for LED's for flashlights, but not for my living room light.
There is also no way for an individual to predict the exact costs of their energy use, but reasonable calculations can be made. Here I will make some reasonable calculations for different kinds of electric power sources that might be available during power outages, camping, working outdoors, or other times when the commercial power is not easily available. (As we shall see, commercial electricity is one of the most cost effective sources of energy available to the individual.)
To make this survey more readable, I will make calculations for all costs in US$ per Kilo Watt Hour (KWH), just to limit the use of very small numbers. (So I will say commercial power is $.15 per KWH, rather than $.00015 per watt hour)
One of the most expensive sources of electricity is the common, throw away battery. Using a reasonable cost per battery of $.35 for AA and $.80 for D cells, and a reasonable power yield of 2 watt hours for AA alkaline Batteries and 15 watt hours for D-Cell alkaline Batteries will automagically provide:
$175 per KWH for AA cells
$53.33 per KWH for D cells
(You don't even want to think of the cost for the coin shaped cells used in watches and hearing aids, which I have also seen in headlamps that fit on the bill of a cap)
The most common small rechargeable batteries today are NiMH based. AA sized batteries of this type can reasonably put out 1.5 watt hours for each of over 667 recharge and discharge cycles. It typically takes 50% more electricity to charge them than you get back each time, so these numbers add up to 1 KWH for ($.23 in electricity and the $2.27 cost of the battery) $2.50. This of course ignores the cost of the battery charger, but that might not be too much of a factor if you are using several batteries. This is not really the ideal for this kind of battery, so really judicious use of rechargeable batteries, or use of larger ones could make the cost much less. It does require a commitment, however, to use the batteries throughout their (typically two year) life span.
A 3kw Honda generator set, providing 2KW continuous, uses about one gallon of gasoline every 3 hours, and requires 1/2 maintenance ($15, including oil and spark plug) every 50 hours. After 900 hours this would be $135 for maint and $1200 for gas (at $4/gal) = $1335.
Generator cost about $2000, and after 900 hours could be worth $1000
1800KWH for $2335 = $1.3 per KWH
This is an almost ideal usage pattern for a generator set, and normal use would be intermittent and variable loads. True cost per KWH for a small gasoline powered generator would likely be two or more times as much.
Summery:
Typical throw away flashlight batteries . . . $50 to $175 per KWH
Typical gasoline generator electric power. . . $1.30 or more per KWH
Typical rechargeable batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . $2 to $3 per KWH (or less)
Typical household electric power . . . . . . . . $0.15 per KWH
Now, knowing somewhat, the cost of energy, it is possible to begin discussing ways to reduce energy costs and return on investment for various energy saving or energy producing products.
There is also no way for an individual to predict the exact costs of their energy use, but reasonable calculations can be made. Here I will make some reasonable calculations for different kinds of electric power sources that might be available during power outages, camping, working outdoors, or other times when the commercial power is not easily available. (As we shall see, commercial electricity is one of the most cost effective sources of energy available to the individual.)
To make this survey more readable, I will make calculations for all costs in US$ per Kilo Watt Hour (KWH), just to limit the use of very small numbers. (So I will say commercial power is $.15 per KWH, rather than $.00015 per watt hour)
One of the most expensive sources of electricity is the common, throw away battery. Using a reasonable cost per battery of $.35 for AA and $.80 for D cells, and a reasonable power yield of 2 watt hours for AA alkaline Batteries and 15 watt hours for D-Cell alkaline Batteries will automagically provide:
$175 per KWH for AA cells
$53.33 per KWH for D cells
(You don't even want to think of the cost for the coin shaped cells used in watches and hearing aids, which I have also seen in headlamps that fit on the bill of a cap)
The most common small rechargeable batteries today are NiMH based. AA sized batteries of this type can reasonably put out 1.5 watt hours for each of over 667 recharge and discharge cycles. It typically takes 50% more electricity to charge them than you get back each time, so these numbers add up to 1 KWH for ($.23 in electricity and the $2.27 cost of the battery) $2.50. This of course ignores the cost of the battery charger, but that might not be too much of a factor if you are using several batteries. This is not really the ideal for this kind of battery, so really judicious use of rechargeable batteries, or use of larger ones could make the cost much less. It does require a commitment, however, to use the batteries throughout their (typically two year) life span.
A 3kw Honda generator set, providing 2KW continuous, uses about one gallon of gasoline every 3 hours, and requires 1/2 maintenance ($15, including oil and spark plug) every 50 hours. After 900 hours this would be $135 for maint and $1200 for gas (at $4/gal) = $1335.
Generator cost about $2000, and after 900 hours could be worth $1000
1800KWH for $2335 = $1.3 per KWH
This is an almost ideal usage pattern for a generator set, and normal use would be intermittent and variable loads. True cost per KWH for a small gasoline powered generator would likely be two or more times as much.
Summery:
Typical throw away flashlight batteries . . . $50 to $175 per KWH
Typical gasoline generator electric power. . . $1.30 or more per KWH
Typical rechargeable batteries . . . . . . . . . . . . $2 to $3 per KWH (or less)
Typical household electric power . . . . . . . . $0.15 per KWH
Now, knowing somewhat, the cost of energy, it is possible to begin discussing ways to reduce energy costs and return on investment for various energy saving or energy producing products.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Efficient lighting pt 3
In the first two articles, I promoted the virtues of the newer CFL's. But, while they have come a long way, they are still not perfect. After much searching and measuring of CFL's, I am still not satisfied with the state of the art.
This is not to say I don't think they are a good idea, I do think we should be heading that way, but we (as a society) are not there yet. The best "green" products should put "green" in our pockets. If they don't, we need to rethink them. CFL's put green in our pockets, but only when they fit in the sockets and when they get a lot of use (like my desk, stove, garage, and reading lamps). A quick count says I have about 10 CFL's and 10 regular light bulbs in use in my home. These numbers probably won't change much for a couple years.
LED lamps for household use are not really ready for prime time, yet, but there may be exceptions. Several kinds of Christmas lights (and I assume similar lights for other functions or holidays) use LED's. Also, a standard night light uses over $5 a year in electricity. I have found some LED night lights that cost less than $3 each (and use about $.25 a year in electricity) making them worthwhile if you just need something so you won't stub your toe in the dark. The problem I had with the reading lamp was the cost, which was in excess of $30, making even a single failure unacceptable.
I tackled efficient household lighting because it seems to be on every body's mind. Talked about in the press, and advertised on TV. But in reality, it is a pretty small part of the picture, dwarfed by the costs of air conditioning, construction, manufacturing, and transportation. This is one reason cost of the light bulbs is so important - it represents energy use in manufacturing and transporting the light bulbs to you. And if there is no payback on that, there is no payoff in energy conservation.
Some useful links:
usatoday 2008-02-28-light-bulb_N.htm
EnergyInvestmentStrategies dot com 2008 cfl-problems coming to light - good news for leds
energystar partners/downloads/meetings/Karney.pdf
Scientific American - the switch is on
stupidevilbastard-comments (the days of the incandescent light bulb in the US are numbered)
forums CNet message thread
BuildersSquare dot com Light Bulbs Buying Guide 45
This is not to say I don't think they are a good idea, I do think we should be heading that way, but we (as a society) are not there yet. The best "green" products should put "green" in our pockets. If they don't, we need to rethink them. CFL's put green in our pockets, but only when they fit in the sockets and when they get a lot of use (like my desk, stove, garage, and reading lamps). A quick count says I have about 10 CFL's and 10 regular light bulbs in use in my home. These numbers probably won't change much for a couple years.
LED lamps for household use are not really ready for prime time, yet, but there may be exceptions. Several kinds of Christmas lights (and I assume similar lights for other functions or holidays) use LED's. Also, a standard night light uses over $5 a year in electricity. I have found some LED night lights that cost less than $3 each (and use about $.25 a year in electricity) making them worthwhile if you just need something so you won't stub your toe in the dark. The problem I had with the reading lamp was the cost, which was in excess of $30, making even a single failure unacceptable.
I tackled efficient household lighting because it seems to be on every body's mind. Talked about in the press, and advertised on TV. But in reality, it is a pretty small part of the picture, dwarfed by the costs of air conditioning, construction, manufacturing, and transportation. This is one reason cost of the light bulbs is so important - it represents energy use in manufacturing and transporting the light bulbs to you. And if there is no payback on that, there is no payoff in energy conservation.
Some useful links:
usatoday 2008-02-28-light-bulb_N.htm
EnergyInvestmentStrategies dot com 2008 cfl-problems coming to light - good news for leds
energystar partners/downloads/meetings/Karney.pdf
Scientific American - the switch is on
stupidevilbastard-comments (the days of the incandescent light bulb in the US are numbered)
forums CNet message thread
BuildersSquare dot com Light Bulbs Buying Guide 45
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Efficient lighting pt 2
A few days ago, in the first part of this article I wrote that the advances in compact fluorescent lights(CFL's) and major reductions in price, have made it a lot better choice for lighting than even a few years ago. This doesn't mean that you should go out and buy CFL's for every light in the house, but it does mean it may be time to begin moving in that direction. I would start with replacing any light that tends to burn for several hours every day. (I started with my reading lamp in my office. It is on the same switch as everything else in my office, and so runs about 10-15 hours a day.)
Two particular improvements have made the biggest difference. The first one is the addition of "bright white" and "daylight" CFL's to the older "warm white" and "cool white" bulbs. (In incandescent bulbs there is also "soft white" but I haven't seen it in CFL's and don't really know if it refers to a "color," or just the fact that the frosting on the glass softens the glare.) OK, "daylight" fluorescent lights have been around for several years, but they were always too expensive to consider. The other improvement is somewhat smaller CFL's are now available.
Each of these "colors" refers to what colors of light are more pronounced in the spectrum. Warm white has extra red and orange. Cool white has extra green and blue. Daylight is supposed to have a spectrum similar to the actual spectrum of daylight. Bright white seems to be a compromise between daylight and cool white, and the price is a compromise too.
About cost. The newer "colors" are somewhat more expensive to buy, and also put out less lumens than the cool white's, but they are worth it. The old (two years ago) advice was to buy the cool white bulbs, and go up one size. That means you replace a 40 watt incandescent with a 60W equivalent CFL. With the new "bright white" CFL's, this may or may not be necessary.
Even going up one size with the old bulbs wasn't satisfactory because the light "color" made things look different. Many people (mostly but not always, women) didn't like the way it made them look. One person said it made them look jaundiced. Chefs also didn't like what it made their food look like. (Anyone heard of green eggs and ham - in US Army mess halls? Compliments of cool white bulbs over scrambled eggs)
The newer colors fix that. There is a problem though. With the bright white, if the light is too strong, some people are bothered by the excess brightness. I went up one size AND switched to bright whites in my living room and ran into this problem. Too bright.
The one my wife complains about being too bright are also just long enough to be directly visible. They stick out of their shade about 1/2 inch, which of course is another problem. CFL's will not fit in many fixtures. This is also the other improvement I mentioned in the second paragraph. There has been a steady improvement in making the CFL's closer to the size of standard light bulbs. This has all but been accomplished. I don't think it will be 100% for several more years, but they have come quite a ways. I think, eventually, LED lights will have to be used in the smallest of fixtures.
I also tried a DayLight bulb. Went up two sizes, to a 75W equivalent, and while it is decidedly whiter and brighter than the 60W equivalent bright white CFL's, I don't think I would recommend it, unless you are really have a critical need for color balance (And there is still no guarantee you will like the color balance).
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Efficient lighting pt 1
While some time ago, I began a discussion of LED lights, I think the time is here to begin discussion of efficient lighting in general. Part of the reason for this is that electricity (including batteries) went up about 40% in the last two years, with another 30% rise expected in the next two years.
I began experimenting with LED lights a couple years ago, and found that the technology had matured to the point where they were useful in flashlights, or other battery powered applications. In addition to flashlights I also bought headlamps, lanterns, puck lights, and a reading lamp. The only light to fail out of these was the reading lamp. It was also the only one to run on household electric power, instead of batteries.
For applications that run on household electric power, I recommend fluorescent lighting. The advances made in this field a couple of years ago, and now becoming economical are terrific. In addition, the cost factor in batteries (battery power tends to be about 2000 times the cost of household electric power) makes the economics for the two situations quite different.
None of the lights I have bought are cutting edge, and I don't recommend buying cutting edge technology (living on the cutting edge is a good way to bleed green). However, they are fairly new, and most of the time I bought stuff that had been on the market for only a year or two.
I will, of course, have to write more on this subject, but there is plenty of time. The cost of good lights is going down, and the cost of electricity shouldn't be going up for a few more months.
I began experimenting with LED lights a couple years ago, and found that the technology had matured to the point where they were useful in flashlights, or other battery powered applications. In addition to flashlights I also bought headlamps, lanterns, puck lights, and a reading lamp. The only light to fail out of these was the reading lamp. It was also the only one to run on household electric power, instead of batteries.
For applications that run on household electric power, I recommend fluorescent lighting. The advances made in this field a couple of years ago, and now becoming economical are terrific. In addition, the cost factor in batteries (battery power tends to be about 2000 times the cost of household electric power) makes the economics for the two situations quite different.
None of the lights I have bought are cutting edge, and I don't recommend buying cutting edge technology (living on the cutting edge is a good way to bleed green). However, they are fairly new, and most of the time I bought stuff that had been on the market for only a year or two.
I will, of course, have to write more on this subject, but there is plenty of time. The cost of good lights is going down, and the cost of electricity shouldn't be going up for a few more months.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
death of a printer
After only about 28 months of use, my printer has died. As a user I am not in the "low usage" category. Actually, I print so seldom, and so little, they don't seem to HAVE a category for me.
A couple years ago, when I got this printer, I wrote a short product review on it. At the time, I didn't know anything about the problems, other than there was such a thing as ink drying in the jets. I had no idea at all how big of a problem it could be.
The from what I have read, the manufacture intended this printer to have a life expectancy over 47000 pages. I guess they expected it to be printing about 24 pages a day, which would mean a life expectancy of about 6 years. Ink for that printing, however, would be quite expensive. Using the Epson ink, that would be over $100 a month. Even using the G&G ink from a discount supplier, it would be over $50 a month. Since the printer cost just over $100 originally, I don't think their view of economics is useful.
Because I use it so infrequently, every time I used it, I had to clean it. And I had to run the cleaning cycle twice each time. It would always warn me that this used extra ink. What it did not warn me about was filling the waste ink reservoir. After only about 2000 to 3000 pages, it gave me an indication that the waste ink reservoir was getting full. And then it just died. Not sure if it died from the reservoir overfilling or something else, but I just assume it was the reservoir. The local shop told me it is not worth fixing.
I plan to replace it with a color laser. I am currently looking at the HP 1600. Of course, the color laser costs about 3 times as much, but it doesn't have the problems with the ink drying out that the inkjet has.
In summery, I have to conclude that unless they can overcome the problems with ink dryout (perhaps putting it in an artificial environment, where the ink solvent is in the air?), there is actually NO reason to buy an injet.
A couple years ago, when I got this printer, I wrote a short product review on it. At the time, I didn't know anything about the problems, other than there was such a thing as ink drying in the jets. I had no idea at all how big of a problem it could be.
The from what I have read, the manufacture intended this printer to have a life expectancy over 47000 pages. I guess they expected it to be printing about 24 pages a day, which would mean a life expectancy of about 6 years. Ink for that printing, however, would be quite expensive. Using the Epson ink, that would be over $100 a month. Even using the G&G ink from a discount supplier, it would be over $50 a month. Since the printer cost just over $100 originally, I don't think their view of economics is useful.
Because I use it so infrequently, every time I used it, I had to clean it. And I had to run the cleaning cycle twice each time. It would always warn me that this used extra ink. What it did not warn me about was filling the waste ink reservoir. After only about 2000 to 3000 pages, it gave me an indication that the waste ink reservoir was getting full. And then it just died. Not sure if it died from the reservoir overfilling or something else, but I just assume it was the reservoir. The local shop told me it is not worth fixing.
I plan to replace it with a color laser. I am currently looking at the HP 1600. Of course, the color laser costs about 3 times as much, but it doesn't have the problems with the ink drying out that the inkjet has.
In summery, I have to conclude that unless they can overcome the problems with ink dryout (perhaps putting it in an artificial environment, where the ink solvent is in the air?), there is actually NO reason to buy an injet.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Ray-O-Vac
I began worrying about this company a few months ago. They have historically been known for providing batteries in larger quantities to those of us who use quite a few batteries. This means that as we began embracing LED's, and our use of batteries has dwindled, they might have a hard time staying around. This became more of a concern for me when the local Lowes hardware store stopped carrying Ray-O-Vac batteries (leaving me with virtually no reason to go there).
Should not have worried, though. If I had kept up with the technicle news, I would have known that they have diversified their product line. I discovered this when I needed a new flashlight for my wife's car (you will recall that I work outdoors, and often at night, so I have several lights for myself). As I browsed through the displays, I noticed a couple of new LED flashlights from Ray-O-Vac, and that got my curriosity going.
I have been lamenting that the technology for the headlamp I use at work is getting a bit dated, but it looks like they are creating an assortment of products that I may switch to in the future. This one that I use has been reliable far longer than the ones I used in the past. The switch is getting some wear, but still reliably turns on (the detents are worn almost smooth, however). The only part that seems to be wearing completely out is the elastic headband.
In case the engineers at Ray-O-Vac are listening, a bit less red light in the night vision setting and a 1-watt LED instead of the kripton lamp would be an improvement, and maybe market a replacement headband for when they wear out, would be nice. Otherwise keep up the good work.
For the rest of you, they have several methods for sales outlets, one of which is Rayovac Direct, and no, this isn't a paid post. I don't do that (yet), but I do think a visit to their website is worth the trip.
Should not have worried, though. If I had kept up with the technicle news, I would have known that they have diversified their product line. I discovered this when I needed a new flashlight for my wife's car (you will recall that I work outdoors, and often at night, so I have several lights for myself). As I browsed through the displays, I noticed a couple of new LED flashlights from Ray-O-Vac, and that got my curriosity going.
I have been lamenting that the technology for the headlamp I use at work is getting a bit dated, but it looks like they are creating an assortment of products that I may switch to in the future. This one that I use has been reliable far longer than the ones I used in the past. The switch is getting some wear, but still reliably turns on (the detents are worn almost smooth, however). The only part that seems to be wearing completely out is the elastic headband.
In case the engineers at Ray-O-Vac are listening, a bit less red light in the night vision setting and a 1-watt LED instead of the kripton lamp would be an improvement, and maybe market a replacement headband for when they wear out, would be nice. Otherwise keep up the good work.
For the rest of you, they have several methods for sales outlets, one of which is Rayovac Direct, and no, this isn't a paid post. I don't do that (yet), but I do think a visit to their website is worth the trip.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
low tech - Reading Glasses
If you are in your 30's you should be especially aware that in a few years if you are not already wearing glasses, you will be. It is just a fact of life that almost everybody, as they get into their early 40's, lose the ability to focus close up.
Now, what to do about it. While there are a number of reasons to visit an eye doctor, needing glasses to read is not one of them. If you have been to one in the last 5 years, you might want to save some money and stop by that little display at your grocery store and get a $10 pair of glasses. (yes, they vary from $3 to $30, but $10 is a reasonable price)
For a little more detail on the subject you can read about "readers" here (be aware, this site is indirectly involved in the eye ware trade and may have some conflict of interest), but there are some other things you might want to know. Like how to tell how strong to get your first pair.
The first few times I stopped by the display, I noticed there was a little blurb written to explain what strength glasses to get. The test they described didn't make sense the first time I read it and after reading it several times, then actually using reading glasses for a few months I realized it was nonsense.
If you didn't wear glasses when you were 35, and you have begun to notice you are having trouble with small print, you should begin with the weakest glasses you can find and concentrate on what style you want. I initially made the mistake of getting "moderate" strength, a pair of which I keep around in case I need to look at something really close up. As a general guide, if you can focus on print closer than one foot, they are plenty strong. Referring back to the article, you will need to decide whether you want them for general reading (newspapers and books) or if you need some that you can look over the top of when you need to see far away. I have a job that sometimes requires me to look at a list in my hand, then immediately look out the window at some equipment several hundred feet away. Half glasses are great for that, otherwise they are second best. On the other hand, after some practice, I learned in Sunday School to wear regular glasses and just ignore the fact that people across the room are a little blurry. (My Sunday School is like a round table classroom, with books and study guides and Bibles)
As time goes by, the average person's eyes get a little worse (see note 1) and after a year or two, you may find you need stronger glasses. Keep the old ones for tasks that don't require as much strength. My monitor is 30 inches from me, and I use some weak glasses while at my computer desk. (as opposed to this idea about computer glasses)
Of course, my life is ecletic - I almost never do the same thing for more than a couple of hours before I have to attend to a different task. If your job requires you to focus at one distance for hour after hour, you may need to spend the money and get something made just for you.
Also, if you have any other problems with your vision, like astigmatism, all of this may go out the window, since readers are not currently made to compensate for that. (See Note 2)
Well, here's to going through our 40's.
Keep reading.
TRex
1. Optometrists used to use this tendency to tell their patients "you have to wear these to keep your eyes from getting worse," and some people used to say don't watch TV in a dark room or your eyes will go bad. Nowadays, some charlatans use this tendancy to say that eyeglasses are a crutch that will cause your eyes to get weaker and you need to use our secret to see clearly without glasses. All three of these ideas are bull.
2. This is something I would love to see fixed. The vast majority of people could be served if only eight variations of asigmatic lenses were available. While this wouldn't work a the grocery level, it could be marketed through a web site. It could be boiled down to 8 astignatisms, times 12 primary strengths, times 12 styles - for a total of 1152 variations. With a customer base of thousands it wouldn't work, but with a customer base of millions it would.
Now, what to do about it. While there are a number of reasons to visit an eye doctor, needing glasses to read is not one of them. If you have been to one in the last 5 years, you might want to save some money and stop by that little display at your grocery store and get a $10 pair of glasses. (yes, they vary from $3 to $30, but $10 is a reasonable price)
For a little more detail on the subject you can read about "readers" here (be aware, this site is indirectly involved in the eye ware trade and may have some conflict of interest), but there are some other things you might want to know. Like how to tell how strong to get your first pair.
The first few times I stopped by the display, I noticed there was a little blurb written to explain what strength glasses to get. The test they described didn't make sense the first time I read it and after reading it several times, then actually using reading glasses for a few months I realized it was nonsense.
If you didn't wear glasses when you were 35, and you have begun to notice you are having trouble with small print, you should begin with the weakest glasses you can find and concentrate on what style you want. I initially made the mistake of getting "moderate" strength, a pair of which I keep around in case I need to look at something really close up. As a general guide, if you can focus on print closer than one foot, they are plenty strong. Referring back to the article, you will need to decide whether you want them for general reading (newspapers and books) or if you need some that you can look over the top of when you need to see far away. I have a job that sometimes requires me to look at a list in my hand, then immediately look out the window at some equipment several hundred feet away. Half glasses are great for that, otherwise they are second best. On the other hand, after some practice, I learned in Sunday School to wear regular glasses and just ignore the fact that people across the room are a little blurry. (My Sunday School is like a round table classroom, with books and study guides and Bibles)
As time goes by, the average person's eyes get a little worse (see note 1) and after a year or two, you may find you need stronger glasses. Keep the old ones for tasks that don't require as much strength. My monitor is 30 inches from me, and I use some weak glasses while at my computer desk. (as opposed to this idea about computer glasses)
Of course, my life is ecletic - I almost never do the same thing for more than a couple of hours before I have to attend to a different task. If your job requires you to focus at one distance for hour after hour, you may need to spend the money and get something made just for you.
Also, if you have any other problems with your vision, like astigmatism, all of this may go out the window, since readers are not currently made to compensate for that. (See Note 2)
Well, here's to going through our 40's.
Keep reading.
TRex
1. Optometrists used to use this tendency to tell their patients "you have to wear these to keep your eyes from getting worse," and some people used to say don't watch TV in a dark room or your eyes will go bad. Nowadays, some charlatans use this tendancy to say that eyeglasses are a crutch that will cause your eyes to get weaker and you need to use our secret to see clearly without glasses. All three of these ideas are bull.
2. This is something I would love to see fixed. The vast majority of people could be served if only eight variations of asigmatic lenses were available. While this wouldn't work a the grocery level, it could be marketed through a web site. It could be boiled down to 8 astignatisms, times 12 primary strengths, times 12 styles - for a total of 1152 variations. With a customer base of thousands it wouldn't work, but with a customer base of millions it would.
Saturday, September 08, 2007
Latest Spambots Attack Blogs
Just the latest varient in the ongoing spambot wars.
BBC Tech News
TRex
BBC Tech News
"The criminals responsible for this spam campaign are experts at exploiting social engineering to propagate their botnets," said Bradley Anstis from security firm Marshal.Just don't click on - errr, umm, interesting things - that don't belong in the blog.
The spam messages have been changed to capitalise on news events and the viral payload has been updated many times to fool anti-virus programs.
TRex
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