Mozy Backups

After years of using external hard drives and all sorts of other backup schemes for my computers I took the plunge and decided to give Mozy a try. This site is a good summary of the service. I gave up thinking I could be a reliable support service for my own computers. First I switched to using Google Mail when it first came out. I admit that much of the decision was based on the functionality I saw in their calendar and the way it integrated with email. So, we have used Gmail and Google Calendar for years now and have been extremely happy with it. I won't go into all of the reasons because this post is about Mozy. You can read the excellent review of the service at this site. I'll post more about my use of this service as time goes on. Our two computers, a Mac and a PC, are in the initial backup stage right now. That is a bit time consuming but once the first backup is completed all others are incremental so that they should take only a short time. I was satisfied with the security and privacy protections at Mozy. Thanks Nick Barardi for an excellent overview and review of Mozy.

Energy Panel Discussion

This is an insight into what the future holds for energy management and monitoring.

They sail on pink oil, the strangest sailing club in the world.

Sail World - Powerboat-world: Sail and sailing, cruising, boating news

I found this article to be fascinating from a sailing viewpoint and from a geographical viewpoint.  I might also add that anyone with an interest in water management would find the story about this transient lake in Australia intriguing as well.  Sailors are indeed some of the most interesting people in the world.

My Favorite Firefox Addons

These are the Firefox add on applications that I have installed.  Extensive testing and evaluation have demonstrated that these are most useful for every day web browsing and file manipulation. 

Greem Tax Credits In New Stimulus Bill

How You Can Green Your Home and Cash in on Stimulus Money | Environment | AlterNet

Hampton Falls, N.H. -- Energy-saving systems for the attic, basement, and in between have effectively gone on sale, courtesy of the United States Congress.

The Mothership Media Center

This is the media center in the Mothership, my Iphone in Ipod mode with a Belkin FM transmitter that sends the music to the FM radio. This puts our huge library of music into a very small package with a great graphical search interface. This makes owning the Iphone worthwhile if none of the other amazing functions and applications were available. The music quality is better than the speakers we have in the Mothership. We can listen to hours and hours of our favorite music this way. A real plus is that the power consumption is extremely low.

Google Maps or Mapquest? Vote here.

Reader Poll: Google Maps or MapQuest?

Here at Lifehacker, most of us made the switch to Google Maps in its early days—back before MapQuest had added any of the AJAX map scrolling and zooming that made Google Maps stand out. Still, when it comes to getting directions, I'm always surprised when I hear people use MapQuest as a verb the same way they use Google (i.e., "I'll just MapQuest it."). So we're curious to hear which you're using for your mapping and directions needs:

LED, CFL or Incandescent? Ask Pablo

LED lights | Salon Life

A 10W CFL, available online for $6.90, has an expected median lifetime of 10,000 hours. While this is about 10 times longer than the life expectancy of an incandescent bulb, it is only one-fifth the expected life of the LED. So LEDs have the potential of cutting down on ladder time by a factor of 50 over incandescent bulbs! At about 25 cents apiece, the incandescent has by far the lowest upfront cost, which is why many people still use them. If we normalize the cost of all the bulbs over a 50,000-hour period, the incandescent bulbs cost $12.50, while CFL bulbs cost $34.50, and the LED bulb costs $59.95. But, as you may already know, the upfront cost of a bulb is by far the cheapest part. It's the electricity required to operate the bulb that adds up.

Over a period of 50,000 hours, a 40W incandescent bulb will use 2,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). At 15 cents per kWh, this will put $300 in the pocket of your local utility, bringing the total cost of the incandescent bulb, over 50,000 hours, up to $312.50. The CFL bulb only uses 500kWh over the same time period, or $75, totaling $109.50. Finally, the LED bulb will use 350kWh for $52.50, with a total cost of $112.45. So, in this example, the LED light does cost a few dollars more but the difference is negligible. Think of the time you will save by not running to the store to buy bulbs and climbing the ladder to change them.

Buy a Prius or a used car?

Prius Envy | Mother Jones

So how are we nonengineers supposed to know when to junk our old car without guilt? By Päster's numbers, building an average midsize car in 2007 emitted 18,000 pounds of CO2—about the same as burning 900 gallons of gas. He won't commit to exact numbers, but he does have a rule of thumb: If your jalopy is moderately efficient (i.e., gets better than 25 mpg) and you don't drive it much, keeping it is better than buying a new car. "But if you have an old car with pretty lousy fuel economy," he says, "then you're better off getting a new car because the emissions from making a new car are really not that big compared to the emissions from using the car."

Gainesville, Florida Passes First Feed-in Tarriff in US

Florida City Passes First Solar Feed-in Tariff in US : Red, Green, and Blue

Place Names

Tranquility Cove and Tranquility Cove (in Clarendon County, SC)

Found these references to Tranquility Cove on the Internet. Interesting that the name is referenced in many places that are part of the internet. It would have been impossible for my grandfather to have imagined this when he stood here before the lake was flooded and named it. The name "Tranquility Cove" appears in many places now including all of the US Geological Survey maps. Every place name has a history. The one that I remember most vividly is "Cape Canaveral." When I was stationed there in the Navy back in the 1960's, Congress tried to change the name of the town as well as the base to "Cape Kennedy." A great furor erupted in the town and the protest resulted in the name remaining the original "Cape Canaveral." How many fascinating place names based on a real story have been wiped clean by some well meaning city council, state government, or congress to honor some contemporary person or event. This is shameful in my opinion because original place names should be protected along with their history and meaning.

Mac Mini as Web Kiosk

I live 500 miles away from my mom and dad. My dad has been a Webtv/MSNTV user now for over a decade. It has served him well giving us communications that we would never had had without it. He knows it well and is quite comfortable using it. Over the last year I have become concerned about the device's limited ability to keep up as web site evolve rapidly to contain more and more features based on Flash and other programming that challenge the device's capabilities. Simply playing a YouTube video from beginning to end has become an impossibility.

Without being overly critical and detailing the limitations of Webtv/MSNTV I want to document the solution I came up with as a backup with the goal of migrating completely to in time. I decided that a Mac Mini was the best solution. It is very small in size, not much larger physically than a thick paperback book yet it has surprising capabilities.

I chose the display first and sense dad's tv was an old Sony CRT it was time to migrate to a more modern unit. Based on a combination of price, capability, and positive reviews on the internet we purchased a 48 inch Sharp Aquos LCD TV that had an HDMI input. The 1020 x 740 progressive display capability essentially gave us a 48 inch computer monitor combined with a beautiful TV display. This particular TV gave us enough signal input options that we could also incorporate the Webtv/MSNTV unit into the mix by simply using one of the RCA inputs. Of course we hooked up his DirecTivo satellite receiver to another of the inputs.

Next we added the Mac Mini to the mix by using a DVI to HDMI cable which we had ordered at the same time we ordered the Mac Mini. It is important to order this so that it is available when you hook up the Mac Mini as they can be a bit hard to find if you live in a rural area. There is quite a bit of debate on the net as to the relative merits of HDMI as opposed to composite input but we decided on the DVI to HDMI as a good compromise.

We ran into a bit of a challenge with the upscaling of the signal from the Mac Mini to the Aquos TV. It is not a show stopper but does require a bit of twiddling with the TV settings. The signal from the Mac is 1024 by 7??? and the TV is a 1080 P display. ???? There are settings on the TV that allow one to matchup the two.

Once the hardware is setup and configured properly you end up with a really nice 48 inch display for internet browsing and email. A bonus is that the Mac Mini also functions as a nice DVD player when properly configured thereby eliminating one unit in the home theatre setup. The system is functional at this point but when migrating a Webtv/MSNTV user to a PC/Mac windowed desktop environment there are a number of tweaks that are necessary to insure a seamless and easy to use system. There is nothing particularly difficult about this tweaking but it did require a lot of research to find everything to make it work with minimal user effort.

I chose to use the Firefox Browser because of its wealth of add ons and plugins that ease the fine tuning for ease of used and the new large display. Webtv uses Hotmail, now Windows Live Mail I think. It was necessary to migrate that into the Firefox Browser too.

Firefox has many options available as far as appearance goes by using various themes. After much trial and error we settled on the xxxxx theme which gives large icons which match up nicely with the display. We also changed the minimum font size to 18 to give good readability from a lounger chair distance from the TV.

Hotmail or Windows Live Mail is the same web based email used by the Webtv/MSNTV so choosing it saves all mail and addresses used on the MSNTV unit. This can be a hard concept for some Webtv users. It is difficult for them to understand that their email can be accessed and managed using any internet capable computer. It might require some effort to explain this so that the Webtv user has confidence that they do not have to return to the old unit to manage their email.

The default on the Mac is to go use the built in Mail client for any mailto links or for sending web page URLS through the file/send/link option in Firefox. After a lot of research we found that installing a small application called Webmailer solved the problem. Get webmailer here. The Firefox preferences might have to be changed to use Webmailer for all email links. Webmailer essentially adds an option pane in Mac OS X so that one can choose various webmail options such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and many others.

The chat function was important for my dad and I and at first this seemed a difficult challenge. There seemed at first glance no easy way to adapt Ichat to use the old MS Instant Messenger that my dad was used to. I tried Meebo, a nice web based chat solution based on Ajax. I like it but my dad did not. Finally we settled on a free solution called Adium that can be dowloaded and installed easily. It is a nice chat solution that has many options and can handle all web chat systems including MS Instant Messenger, Yahoo, AOL, and a multitude of others.

I wanted to be able to manage the setup remotely so I investigated the remote desktop management solutions. The simplist seemed to be to turn on sharing with a password and the installation of the Vine Server to allow VNC access remotely. This works just fine but requires a bit of fiddling with the Cayman router/modem to send port 5900 to the internal IP of the Mac Mini. Once this is setup one can use any VNC client to remotely control the Mac Mini. With a good broadband connection this gives complete control over the unit allowing me to do maintenance and repairs from anywhere.

One of our goals was to add an audio/video chat capability which was impossible on the Webtv/MSNTV unit. We installed a Logitech 9000 Pro webcam on the system. This is simply a USB plugin. The Mac recognized it instantly and it required no configuration. Gotta love the Macs for their capability to recognize hardware with no twiddling or loading of software.

We then installed Skype, a free software package that gives video chat capability. On the Mac it also recognized the Logitech Webcam and we were able to video chat with our my son and his children 500 miles away. This works very well uses technology just as it should be used to bring people together over any geographic distance. The fact that it is all free is a wonderful thing for families.

Once the system hardware and software were setup for ease of use I created a home page on my server to provide a familiar and easy start page that I could edit and manage from my home office location. I added links for the sites that my mom and dad like to visit on a regular basis, the local weather, and the most common search sites such as Google, Wikipedia, and Snopes for checking out those wonderful Internet Myths that circulate by email

There are a lot of training issues in migrating from a Webt/MSNTV to a real computer system that allows multi tasking and windowing. I won't go into those at this time but they are real and require a LOT of patience and training. The benefits are great though and well worth the effort. I am impressed with the result, a nice computer/home theatre setup that is easy to use and powerful enough to handle almost any website.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/apple/use-your-mac-mini-as-a-media-server-part-1/


VNC on the Mac
http://www.dssw.co.uk/blog/2007/05/14/a-vnc-server-is-included-in-mac-os-x-104/
http://www.freemacblog.com/mac-server-series-setting-up-vnc-on-your-mac/

Other nice addons:

http://www.malarkeysoftware.com/projects_PhotoGrabbr.html Photo Grabbr

Just want to share with you my experience with the Acer Aspire One in the solid state Linux configuration. The little netbook is a perfect Internet appliance. You are not going to be doing heavy duty image processing or video editing on it but I have found it can do it if you want to I loaded GIMP, the open source version of Photoshop on it and it works fine.

Mine, the Linux version, comes with a 16 gb solid state drive but has a slot for expansion via an SD card. I bought an 8 gb card for it for $12.95 from supermediastore. Today I see they have a 16 gb card for $24.95. This still leaves a slot for the SD card from your camera or other device free. I am 100 percent happy with the solid state version and would not buy a Windows XP version for this little machine.

It connects automatically to any available WiFi access point with no problem. It boots and runs very fast and gives me two hours of battery life with no special settings. I personally would not spend the extra $150 plus to get a Windows version with a rotating hard drive in it since that is pushing the little machine beyond the Internet appliance usage I intended it for. I just thought that this might be useful information for anyone considering buying one for this purpose. I paid $250 for mine and I love it.

Here is a great video review of the machine from the Tiger Direct Laptop Lounge. The one reviewed is the Windows XP one which is great if you are more comfortable with that OS but you are going to spend more and I don't really think that is necessary. Also, I just don't like the idea of a spinning drive in a machine like this. It is going to be with you all the time. In the car, on the bus, everywhere. I just think the solid state one is going to be more durable in the long run. Plus, you can bet that the kids are going to be playing with it when you are not using it.




Here are some news items about the Aspire One harvested by Google News:

Really, you’re going to buy it for me? ZDNet - USA He loves the Acer Aspire One and it has made it vastly easier for him to work, both in and out of class. This particular 9th-grader has Pervasive ... See all stories on this topic

The end of my love affair with Apple? ZDNet - USA As more teachers and students have a chance to play with the Acer Aspire One netbook that I’ve been floating around, most find, even if they don’t care for ... See all stories on this topic

Acer Aspire ONE now available at sub-Rs.15k VARIndia (press release) - New Delhi,India The icing on the cake being the fully loaded Windows XP Home version of the Aspire ONE now available for the very first time at an incredible price of under ... See all stories on this topic

The Mouse That Changed Computing

Closeup of mouse image - Photos: Engelbart's demo, 40 years later - CNET News

Fascinating article and photos of the first computer mouse.  It was indeed, "The Mouse that Changed Computing."

RechargeIT by Google

RechargeIT.org

This site shows the results of a controlled experiment by Google comparing a full range of vehicles from all internal combustion power to plug in hybrids.  The results are quite interesting.  As one would expect, the plug in hybrid did quite well but look at the Ford Escape plug in hybrid.  Pretty impressive for a small SUV.  I didn't  know a plug in version was available but I did know that the Ford Escape Hybrid won some awards for its innovative design. 

Congress moves on energy

There was big news in the solar industry as recent as last week. This, to me, is an example of how government can promote activity in an area without being heavy handed about it. For the last five years or so, I don't know the exact number, there has been a tax credit offered for anyone installing a solar electric system on their home or business. The tax credit is calculated as 30 percent of the cost of the installation. Remember, this is a tax credit not a deduction. But, the problem has been that the tax credit has been capped at $2,000. So, let's say I put in a $30,000 photovoltaic electrical generating system. I would get a 30 percent tax credit the year I put it in. The problem has been that the tax credit has been capped at $2,000. So, in my example, the $30,000 system would receive a tax credit of $2,000 instead of $10,000. This week the congress approved a new energy bill. It removed the cap on the tax credit for solar systems. That means that the example system costing $30,000 would net the owner a $10,000 tax credit. Now we have a real incentive in place. To carry our example farther, let's say the owner lives in Florida and has installed a 3,000 watt photovoltaic system on his house. Florida gives a $4 a watt rebate for installing a system. Now, the owner gets another $12,000 in cash for his system. The tax credit and the cash rebate total $22,000 leaving the owner with a net cost of $8,000 for a 3 kilowatt electrical generating system. The payoff assuming a benefit of $1,000 a year would be 8 years.



With the world having passed the peak of global oil production based on various calculations, it can be assumed that the price of energy obtained from petroleum is going to continue to climb over the coming years until oil becomes too expensive to extract from the earth. Various other sources of petroleum will enjoy some resurgence as the price of crude oil inexorably climbs due to reduced production all over the world. Sporadic forays into offshore drilling and exploitation of limited domestic sources will yield at best a few years reprieve. The industrialization of China and India will force demand higher in spite of any action the US takes to conserve. Americans are already feeling the pinch. The recent spike in gasoline prices has changed the automobile market at all levels affecting not only the manufacturers but also the dealers and most importantly the owners of gas consuming monsters that we have all been encouraged to buy over the last decade or so. If you own a large SUV and have gone in to trade for a new vehicle you have found that the value of your shiny Chevy Suburban that you cared for over the years has plummeted to near nothing. GM and Chrysler are in negotiations to form a single larger company in the throws of survival. Detroit has based its hopes on the Chevy Volt, an all electric vehicle that will cost over $30,000 and will not go into production until 2010. Meanwhile, Toyota dealers have up to a 10 month waiting list in some areas for the Prius, their much loved 50 mpg hybrid which has been in production for over 12 years. Detroit missed the boat completely.

With the present world wide economic crisis along with the future declining global oil supply, it is good that the USA has now elevated alternate energy production to a higher level of importance. Hydrogen is a very long way off in my opinion. T. Boone Pickens Plan which emphasises natural gas will require the installation of a nation wide refueling infrastructure. I spoke with a representative of our local public utility, the gas company, and asked him where the refueling stations were. He confirmed that there were none in Florida for private vehicles and that the only ones in place are for government vehicles. Florida under Governor Charlie Crist has put in place requirements that government agencies reduce their grid electrical consumption by a set amount by a certain date. One commonly sees Toyota Prius government vehicles in the area where I live.

In this perspective, the approval by congress and the president of the latest energy bill which reduces the cap on solar tax credits and contains a number of other beneficial requirements such as demanding an increase in overall automobile fuel efficiency will provide a boost to new alternate energy industries and has taken a baby step in reducing our bizarre dependency on oil as an energy source. Oil that we must buy from people who hate us but profit greatly from us. We are like drug addicts who pay money to the dealer because of our addiction. We hate the dealer but our addiction ties us to him in a strange pathological way.

I highly recommend James Howard Kunstler's book, "The Long Emergency," from which much of this information was obtained. I alse recommend going to Wikipedia and reading the entry for "Hubbert's Curve" or "Hubbert's Peak." The Kunstler book really puts the present day energy, economic, and political situation in perspective. We do face a "Long Emergency" in the coming years and the faster the US restructures itself to deal with it the better. It is important to understand this change in global politics to survive the coming years and to reposition our country militarily and energy-wise for us to survive as a nation. So, in my opinion and others, reducing our dependency on petroleum is a national defense emergency and the removal of the cap on tax credits for solar systems is on small step that will stimulate movement in the right direction. We are a nation unique in the world because of our creativity and resilience but we have become complacent in our sleepwalking through the last twenty years while under our oil addiction. We can wake up but we had better do it fast.

Free Office Suite

Screenshot Tour: A First Look at OpenOffice.org 3.0

Here is a free equivalent to the popular commercial office suite.  Why on earth would anyone pay hundreds of dollars for the unbelievably popular expensive one when one could use this one?   Why?  Because most people believe that they must buy the commercial product in order to be able to produce documents that are compatible with other sites.  Well, they do not.  I have used Open Office for years and it is totally compatible with all documents and spreadsheets and does not cost a penny.  Now version 3.0 will be available next week and it is certainly a mature product.  Get it and don't waste your money buying expensive commercial office suites.

WiseStamp an Email Signature that works for you!

Hey, this really works and works well.  If you use Firefox as your browser along with web based email such as Google mail this is a nice way to add a signature block to your mails.  I find it works effortlessly and can be configured to automatically add your signature to each email or you can use it as i do as an option at the end of typing an email.  So far I have no complaints and really like it.  The site even provides a few examples that you can capture and edit for your own use.  Mine looks like this:

Green Expo 08

I attended the Green Expo at the Palm Beach Community College
yesterday. It was a small but interesting collection of displays and
tables manned by representatives of various vendors and public
agencies. Some of the people there were former colleagues of mine at
the SFWMD and we had a nice visit with them. There was one solar
installer represented. They showed great interest in our home and in
the monitoring software. I now wish I had brought some of our
brochures for our monitoring software along to distribute to them.
They were really interested in our product so I gave them the website,
http://www.mysolarlog.com/ and am confident they will visit it.
Their website is http://www.abundantenergy.com/ .


One vendor had an interesting product that I may follow up on. It
is a clear acrylic addon for your windows that works like a storm
window. The product installs a clear acrylic pane in a magnetic frame
over the existing windows creating a double pane window at 70 percent
less cost than replacing the windows. I might look into it for certain
windows on my house that give the greatest heat load. Their website,
which I have not visited yet, is http://www.window-insulators.com/


We bought a couple of plants from the Native Plant Society table
where we also chatted for a bit with an old friend who is a member of
the society.

All in all it was a pleasant experience but I
was struck by the fact that it could have been much, much more than it
was. We did not attend the rain barrel workshop even though we have an
interest in that area. But there seemed to be little advertising of
the event in advance in the wider community. I had hoped that the
Florida electric car group could have exhibited there and that other
workshops and talks could have been available to the public. There was
great interest in our house and what our experience has been living
with PV. Perhaps we can have more participation in the next one. It
was a rainy day all day and that probably prevented more people from
coming.

Utility Trucks Head for Texas

My son travels a lot for his work.  Using his Iphone he sent me this photo this morning of Florida Power and Light trucks traveling west on I-10 west of Tallahassee headed for Texas for relief work.  As a resident of South Florida where we had four hurricanes in one year I can only say that it is amazing that we live in a country where the states can help each other out like this.  I know that they are reimbursed for the expenses incurred but even so the fact that a day or two after a major storm like Ike these trucks can be on the road and on their way to help is fantastic.