The next big thing(s)

Intersting article over at Popular Mechanics: 10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007. Here's my take on them.

1. Bendable Concrete: Not that revolutionary. In the same arena, I'd be more inclined to expect that "Composite Bridge Decks" (see this company website for an example) will have more impact. With the surge of bridges built 50-80 years ago, many of them are due for upgrades. Bendable concrete is cool, but unless you're building a sky-scraper on the Rim-of-Fire, it's not pertinent.

2. PRAM: I'd never heard of this before, but from what the article says about it, this could be a big leap for portable electronics. PRAM=Phase-Change Random Access Memory, and is set to replace Flash memory as the standard of choice for electronic data storage (ie. iPODs, USB drives, etc.). I'm curious to see what the gains in access time will lead to in new technologies.

3. Printed Solar Cells: It's funny... solar power has been around for decades. It's one of the cleanest alternative fuels (if not the cleanest). There's no shortage of sun-light. There's next to no impact on the environment. Yet, so much of the time the "alternative energy" sector seems to be striving to find options besides solar power. Two of the main motivations for finding other alternative energies are: i) The poor efficiency of solar cells and ii) slow production. The efficiency barrier was recently cracked, making solar cells comparable to other energy conversion processes. Now a company in California has tackled issue number ii) by designing an efficient production process.

4. Passport Hacking: I think this will be just one part of a bigger issue RFID HACKING. The primary concern with passports are that foreign agencies can harvest information from you. If you want to learn more about the dangers of RFID chips containing identifiable information, check out Bruce Schneir's blog and scan through his posts.

5. Vehicle Infrastructure Integration: Sounds interesting, but I've heard so many promises of "smarter vehicles" over the years that I don't see it happening quickly. The idea of providing information to drivers to let them make choices is a good one. But we'll see how fast this technology rolls out... most cars currently on the road don't even have an "On-star" type system.

6. Body Area Network: Never heard about this kind of stuff, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

7. Plasma Arc Gasification: This has been around for awhile, and a plant has been operating in Japan for several years. Essentially it is a technology that allows waste (or any material for that matter) to be used for fuel. Fundamentally, nearly all material that we use in our everyday lives contains atoms/molecules that can be used for fuel (think of all the Hydrogens present in polymers/plastics). The hard part is getting them in a form where they can be used to produce energy. That's what Plasma Arc Gasification does. Let's hope the plant in Florida can overcome the problems plaguing the one in Japan. We certainly aren't going to run out of garbage for awhile.

8. VoN: Video on the Net. Never mind u-tube, or Google video. Keep your eyes on Bittorrent's recent moves to bring High-Definition video over the net. It wouldn't surprise me to see Google try something along the same lines. Until you can get High-Def video over the net, this won't be big news. But it is poised to start becoming reality in 2007.

9. Smart Pills: Little sensors that you swallow and report what's going on in your body. No probes required. Why has this taken so long to appear?

10. Data Cloud: This technology could be big step towards liberating ourselves of the personal computer. Imagine computers being replaced by terminals. You go to a cafe and log into a virtual operating system. All of your personal files, music, videos are automatically downloaded from the internet. You make a new play-list, work a bit on a report, post on your blog, and update your personal calendar. You save your files, log off, and then head home. No need to worry about emailing yourself the updated files. They're all stored online. Glorious!

New micro power source

No, it's not fuel cells. Nor is it cold fusion.

It's a tiny combustion engine built on a silicon chip (story here). My oh my... to see the look on Henry Ford's face had he been told that one day his combustion engine could power an iPod for 10 times longer than a lithium-ion battery.

I wonder where you would re-fill them? I think the pumps at the local Esso may not work well.

worthwhile

Reviewing my last few posts I see that I've gone awry. Ever since that u-haul post I've been bitching on my blog, whereas my original intentions were to put up something worth reading.

I shall attempt to get back on course.

counting

-12 years of public education.
-4 years post-secondary education.
-2 years post-graduate education.

And what do I do now? I count things. Granted abstract objects in high-dimensions. But I count things.

If you had of told me this at my high-school graduation I might have re-thought my choices :-)

Awesome trip story

Last summer my friend Riley came to town to visit some other friends. It was a short visit, but f**kin awesome to see the guy again. He did a cross-continent trip to check out some bands down in Maryland.

His vacation summary is kick-ass. If you've got a few minutes to kill and want to see some serious pose-downs, check it out:

http://www.severetiredamage.net/features/86/page1.shtml

Also, for those of you who now know the infamous Jimmi Jammz... this is the story of his beginning.

rugged

pics are online

I've finally set up an online photo gallery.

Flickr has a bandwidth limitation per month, so it may take a little while to upload all of the photos I want. For now, you can check out a camping trip to NY state, Marathon running in Ottawa with Kenny, and Val's swim banquet.

There's a link to the gallery from my website: firstlastname.ca or you can search Flickr for me.

rugged.

The Toshiba A60 Satellite

My laptop bit the dust this week. 9 months after the 1yr warranty expired. Bloody hell.

It had been acting very peculiar as of recently, so I naturally assumed it was something to do with Windows (I run XP SP2). I had been toying with the idea of switching permanently to Linux (I work on desktop PC that runs Fedora Core 3), so I decided to take the plunge and throw Ubuntu on my laptop. After testing the Live CD to ensure all my devices worked (which they did) I tried to install Ubuntu.

I had an extremely hard time getting it installed... the disk partioning portion of the install kept freezing on me. After finally getting it installed, the OS then kept freezing on me. At this point my suspicions of a hardware problem with the laptop seemed to be confirmed. After googling for the symptoms I was seeing (it was also refusing to turn on sometimes) it seemed that the problem was a faulty memory module. I grabbed memtest off the web, and sure enough, the laptop failed one of the tests designed to stress test your RAM.

Sweet! I thought. RAM would be easy to replace (I had worried it was the hard-drive or system board). After opening the memory access compartment on the laptop I found a single empty slot. Puzzled, I consulted my owner's manual and discovered that the base 512MB of RAM that comes with the laptop is mounted directly on the system board.

Not panicking yet, I phoned up Toshiba and asked them if I managed to dis-assemble the laptop, would I be able to remove the memory? NO. The tech person did not offer specifics, but the memory is somehow inherently part of the system board and you can not remove it. SH#T !

So, instead of paying $100 for a new piece of RAM, I need to buy a whole new system board for $500+. Absolutely ridiculous! Who thought it would be a good idea to make the RAM non-removeable?!

I've attempted to find a way to somehow disable the faulty memory module (via the BIOS) so that I could just put a new piece in the available slot but I haven't had any luck. When our tech person gets back from holidays I'm going to see if he/she can somehow remove the faulty module. Otherwise I may have an expensive paper weight on my desk.

u-haul experience (subtitle: The most frustrating 48hrs of my life)

I moved from Ottawa to Montreal over the Canada day weekend. After doing some price comparisons, u-haul emerged as the leader for a 1-way move. I sure do wish I had of spent some time using google to see what kind of reviews u-haul got. Here's mine, and hopefully it will save someone from going through what I did.

On the 1st of June I arranged to have a 14ft truck for a one-way move from Ottawa to Montreal at the end of the month. I phoned a local rental center directly, and found the person very pleasant and helpful. I was informed that someone from the regional office would contact me the day before my rental with the details of my pickup location and time, which I had requested would be 6pm (approximately) on the 30th of June.

At 3:45pm on the 29th, I was contacted by a representative of U-haul, and informed that do to some unforseen cirumstances, I would need to pick-up my truck that same day by 5pm. I was not familiar with the location, and after asking the representative if it was near my current location (I specified that I had no vehicle) I was informed that it was. I got the contact information for the location I would be going to, said thank you and hung up. Proceeding to look up online where the location was, I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that it was 30km from where I currently was, necessitating an expensive taxi ride to get there. Realizing that I would need to leave almost immediately to get there by 5pm, I phoned the location. Their answering machine informed me that they were closed today, and would be closed until July 3. Frustrated, I phoned the U-haul 1-800 number and choosing the only option to speak with someone about my rental, proceeded to wait on hold for 40 MINUTES before giving up. After arriving at home, I phoned U-haul again, and after 30 MINUTES on hold I spoke with an actual person. After explaining my distress at being told to go to an office that was closed, it turned out that there was someone at that location, but that they were not answering their phone. The initial representative I spoke to had failed to mention that I would not be able to contact anyone at the office. I was then informed that arrangements would be made later that evening, and they would contact me tomorrow with a solution.

At 7am on the morning of June 30, I woke up and found in my email box a message stating that I was to pick up my truck by 8am that same day at the same location as the day before. This was not near the 6pm pick-up time I had specified in my original booking, so I phoned the 1-800 number at 7am, and despite the automatic message indicating that their business hours were 7am to 7pm on Friday, it was not until 7:20am that my call was put through, at which point I was put on hold for 20 MINUTES before I spoke with someone. After explaining that I worked from 8-5, the representative assured me that arrangements would be made, and that I would be contacted by 9am with a pickup location.

At 9am I received an email indicating that I was to travel to a location that was 25km away from my place of work, to pick up the truck. I was also told to call the location directly to arrange a time for pick-up of the truck. Upon calling the location I spoke with someone (without being on hold) and they kindly informed me that the regional office had made a mistake. There were no trucks available for a one-way move. I was told that I would have to phone the 1-800 number again to speak with someone in order to correct the problem. After 45 MINUTES on hold I informed the representative that the location had no vehicles. They assured me that they did indeed have a vehicle for me, and that the location must have made a mistake. It was at this point that they informed me that the location closed at 5pm. I informed them that I would be unable to travel that far to be there by 5pm. The person I spoke with then put me on hold while they tried to find a solution. After a mercifully short 5 minutes on hold, I was told I could pick up a 26ft truck at a location near my work at 6:30pm. I then asked them to phone the location and confirm that the truck would be there while I waited, so I would not have to endure another hour of wasted time on hold. The representative put me on hold for 5 minutes, and then informed me that everything was arranged.

I proceeded to phone the location and to my horror was told that no truck was available for me. Furthermore, no-one had been contacted by someone from the regional office. At this point I almost lost it. The person at the pick-up location was very helpful, but could find no record of my reservation, nor anyone that had spoken with someone from the regional office. I phoned the 1-800 number and after 65 MINUTES on hold spoke with the same person that had "helped" me previously. He assured me that it must be some mistake, and phoned the location again. According to him, they were just super busy and there must have been a mis-communication. After hanging up (and praying that it would be the last time I had to phone that damn 1-800 number) I called the pick-up location and YES! they had a truck there for me. It took 2hrs for me to actually get the truck (the location was very busy) but the people there were quite pleasant.

In my mind, the U-haul people need to seriously improve how they handle customers over the phone. Every person (pick-up and drop-off) that I actually spoke with was very pleasant and professional. The regional office people were not very helpful, did not take my requests seriously, and in all honesty seemed to just want to get me off the phone as quickly as possible. I can understand that they likely had very irrate people to deal with... who wouldn't be irrate after an hour on hold?

In the future, I'd only deal with U-haul if I can by-pass the regional office and deal with a specific location.

soon...

First part of my Part A comprehensive complete. Did alright. The second 4hr exam is this Monday, after which I am free to begin blogging again.

soon...