Isn't that a bit ogg?

I installed pulseaudio so that my wife could plug in USB speakers on her laptop and have the sound come out. Maybe you can do that with ALSA?

Hah, I actually did that. Maybe it was less than 50%-- the volume was so low it was really lame to equalize both to the lowest denominator. Not to mention when I'd plug in my headphones I'd have to go reset the balance because the physical defect didn't affect the headphone jack on the speaker.

Here's a tip: those speakers suck. I just tossed a pair because the left speaker was about half as loud as the right speaker. Don't believe me? http://www.google.com/search?q=logitech+speaker+left+not+working

I only mention this because I would think with a scientific experiment like this, speaker volume consistency would be VERY important...

When he rebooted and I heard the Mac Chime... a part of me laughed at the recognition, and my other part was sort-of annoyed at being distracted from the movie.

Bought JLab USB Laptop Speakers. Kinda bulky, but better than buying a new laptop. Also, they sound really good.

Let Debian do it's collectivist work in the shadows, and Canonical can provide the capitalist facade that keeps Them at bay. . . This arrangement might be its only hope for survival. Voluntary virtual-subjugation? Since data, unlike food, can be copied endlessly-- this might be a pretty good arrangement. Until it isn't, anyway.

A good guy too. His response to the Comcast/Level 3/Netflix thing was "The middlemen always get their cut". The netflix bits on the wire have a higher "value" or "profit potential" than other bits, and therefore the people carrying those bits should be entitled to a cut of that profit. I asked if shipping companies do the same thing regarding the content and value of the boxes they move around and he suggested they do. He was totally cool with the concept.

I guess this is basically the idea that businesses need to maximize profits using any means. This is actually really great-- instead of profits being tied to your own operations, i.e, shipping more packages at minimal cost-- now you can "piggy back" on the success of other companies. The more successful another company becomes, the bigger your cut can become!

I feel dirty now.

Did apple recently put up a robots.txt to block all robots including the internet archiver?
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://apple.com
It would be sad to miss out on their logos in the future.

To err is human. To really screw up, you need a computer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment_by_computer

Partition the usb drive into two. sdb1 is a tiny ntfs partition with some barney pics, and sdb2 is ext3 with all the awesome stuff on it. Windows won't even know how to access the 2nd partition AFAIK. Last time I checked Windows wouldn't even let you partition a usb thumbdrive w/ more than 1 partition.

You're right, it gets hot, but they use an evaporatively cooled heat exchanger to remove this heat. So it literally is a heat pump.

Make sure it is distilled and you'll probably want to clean it often anyway with acid. Calcium build up will destroy your unit pretty quick.

Did you also notice the graph was labeled "cooling" energy yet displayed a 12 month calendar. The evaporative cooler had nearly zero energy usage during the winter months, for some reason. /s

C'mon guys, this isn't rocket science. Keep it modular and keep it off-the-shelf, right?

First stage, convert a regular evaporative cooler to pump the dessicant solution instead of water. It just needs to be highly corrosive-resistant. Now your incoming 100F air at 40% RH is now like 120F at 10% humidity or something like that. Hotter, but drier.

Next, you need a heat exchanger to pull some of that energy out without adding humidity. Adobe Air makes a modular product to do this. Or, you can skip this piece and get a two-stage evap such as the OASys. Or just insert a Coolerado here.

Finally, to really get cool temperatures, we need to add water back in. If you inserted a two-stage unit above, you're done. Otherwise just use a regular-ole evaporative cooler here.

Since we actually want to make this feasible without vast quantities of free energy, we will recharge the dessicant in a more sustainable manner. Obtain two empty swimming pools. The first pool is for the dry dessicant, the 2nd pool for the wet dessicant. After the cooling season, use a small solar concentrating array to recharge the dessicant pool. It'll take all winter but that's fine.