Satya's blog

I recently posted this on Usenet:

ObHarebrainedIdea: Why not use sunlight focussed through huge magnifying glasses to raise steam for power generation? Or at least help in raising boiler temperature?

Someone responded with a BBC article about a solar thermal power plant near Seville, Spain, which uses mirrors.

To which I said:

Same principle: rather than cover the whole planet in solar cells (sails?) in an effort to capture more energy, concentrate it in a smaller region.

If only I could figure out how to harness the temperature difference betwen outside air and the inside my parked car. I know about Stirling engines, but I need a device that:

a) I can buy at Walmart or equivalent
b) I can plug into an outlet in the house and it will provide power, the rest being made up by the grid. Or, put it between wall outlet and consumer device at least.
c) Other end of device can draw power from solar, Stirling engine, hydroelectric source (rain tank atop roof, e.g.), stationary bicycle, etc.

Today I made a baked egg casserole based on recipes I found on the internet. We need this sort of thing for the every-two-months team meetings.

From the other recipes, I found that a ratio of about 1 cup milk to 5 eggs works, and that's the basic idea of baking eggs. That the quantity I used, which feeds 2 or 3, but you can multiply that for more people.

You need cheese. Sliced or shredded will do. I used kraft cheese slices, torn into strips. A baking pan large enough to hold all the ingredients to a depth of about 2 inches is required. I used one that's about 5 by 9 by 2.5. Inches, because this is cooking. If it were chemistry I'd be using more precise quantities in SI units.

You can throw in whatever else you have. I used 2 slices of turkey (torn into small pieces), a pile of green peas, and a veggie burger patty (again, torn into pieces). Cook all this stuff separately before starting anything else. This is the "filling".

Spray pan with cooking spray (or butter, whatever it takes to keep stuff from sticking).

Add about half the cheese, maybe enough to cover about three-quarters of the bottom surface, if you're using slices. Pour in the filling, and put another layer of cheese. If using shredded cheese, sprinkle it in about the same quantity (estimate! this is cooking, not chemistry -- the difference being the precision of measurement, and you can eat the result if done right).

Now mix the eggs with the milk (or vice-versa) and blend. We're looking for uniformity more than anything else. Pour into the pan.

Put pan on baking sheet (I used aluminium foil). Don't bother covering, or cover it if you prefer. I don't know what that does. Bake at 300F for about 1 and a quarter hour (cooking times vary with oven and size of the pan). Make sure it's solidified. Cool it a little, and eat.

I swear the Sci-Fi channel is tracking my Netflix queue. Today I watched A Sound of Thunder (2004), based on a Ray Bradbury book. After the movie, I flipped through the TV channels and ... there it was, on Sci-Fi. Not the first time, but this seems an unlikely movie (not well-known, and starring a bunch of unknowns, aside from Ben Kingsley).

I was watching an episode of ... something yesterday, and that same expisode was on Sci-Fi channel later that night.

If Discovery or anyone shows a movie/mini-series called The Triangle (Sam Neill, Catherine Bell, and other slightly-known people), I'm going to suspect something.

I have an external HDD which connects by USB. Ubuntu Hardy will usually automount such devices when they're connected. Today it would not mount at all, and of course I don't know the device names to mount it manually (turns out it shows up as /dev/sdc, which I tried, which didn't work). dmesg and /var/log/syslog showed that the USB system was doing something, but it wasn't recognizing the physical device, let alone enough to give me a mountable device node.

After much googling, I did "rmmod ehci_usb". 'ehci_usb' was mentioned in syslog as new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address (number). After re-plugging the drive, it detected and automounted. (I had previously installed the usbmount package. I don't know if that affected anything.)

This post is Google-bait for anyone with similar problems, including me. I've had USB flash drives refuse to automount before.

Motivational poster based on many others. Original image from wikimedia commons which attributes it to http://flickr.com/photos/sfllaw/507933411/ under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License (cc-by-sa-2.0). This poster is under the same license.

(Please do not link directly.)

Last updated: Jun 06 2008 11:45

Okay, user interface designers, when your transaxle fluid is various shades of red (not at the same time!), do you make the dip-stick:

1. a dull silver color, like the oil dipstick OR
2. a highly polished shiny black so the red blends right in

What idiot thought the latter would be a good idea?

Last updated: May 19 2008 18:01

I dislike those who think that just because something it a) animated/drawn, or b) science fiction/fantasy, it is for children. Or they think it's silly. Or they think it's beneath them.

I don't care if they don't *like* that sort of thing. That's different. You're free to not like anything, but don't tell me what to do about it. Don't tell me I'm silly for liking it. Thinking something is silly or childish just because of a) and b) above, however, *is* silly. If you do, I'm going to call your pet fantasy (or your fantasy pet, if you have one) silly.

Let me quote portion of Dr. Isaac Asimov's rant (italics his):

...and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.

It's just science fiction so it's allowed to be silly, and childish, and stupid. It's just science fiction, so it doesn't have to make sense. It's just science fiction, so you must ask nothing more of it than loud noises and flashing lights.

He's being sarcastic, if you don't get it.

Went to Atlanta. Stayed at Hotel Hilton near the airport. Room had small roaches, had to move rooms. Hotwire says, 4 star hotels at 2 star prices. True, also get 3-star rooms. Was nothing special. Good view, the kid enjoyed watching aircraft. Hotel lobby etc were bling, rooms were ordinary. Shrug.

Indian restaurants were a waste. "Chat Patti" was way, way too spicy. Liked the Ikea store. Freeways were big, busy. Shrug. Saw tornado damage on tall downtown buildings. Ate at original Chick-fil-a in Hapeville. Parking in downtown is a pain. Driving anywhere is a pain, either freeways or lots of red lights.

Atlantic Station is a crazy place -- two levels of underground parking with a small-town-wannabe area above. In the middle of downtown.

Whatever else we say about Microsoft, the MS USB Intellimouse mice are VERY rugged. I thought I had totally destroyed mine, but after random jiggling with a flat-blade screwdriver, the wheel got unstuck and it seems to be fine.

The Questionable Content webcomic showed me a dinosaur comic today. No explanations. (Dinosaur comics is a different webcomic). I figured the comic authors were doing an exchange or guest strip or something, but there was no explanation on the page.

When I went to play Kingdom of Loathing, all the images had been replaced by what looked like fish heads in a basket, but turned out to be salad -- and there were lots of salad references. I pondered for a while, then realised what today is. I hate this day.

I'm not sure how long this BBC web page containing an article about Indian Finance Minister P Chidambaram's comments on biofuels will be around (do they publish permanently to the web? who knows), but I'm linking to it anyway. I ask, what does the second picture, the one with a bullock cart full of people, have to do with the article? Other than the usual "oh look at the poor backwards country with its huge population on carts" angle, of course. Should I start including irrelevant images with my blog posts?

Many Indians are leet coders. Bullock cart technology helps.