Steve’s Blog

A quick snippet of the derivation of Einstein’s Mass-energy equivalence equation. This is always good for some good late night reading.

….

In the particle’s rest frame, the momentum is (mc,0) and so for the force four-vector to be orthogonal, its time component must be zero in the rest frame as well, so F = (0,F). Applying a Lorentz transformation to an arbitrary frame, we find

Thus the time component of the relativistic version of Newton’s second law is

Recalling the definition of work done by the applied force as

and since the change in energy is given by the work done, we have

and so finally we see that, up to an additive constant,

from Wikipedia

Stephen :: Apr.27.2007 :: Interesting :: No Comments »

So you’re getting ready to (or just did) reinstall windows. Here are some tools you should know about.

First, if you can help it, before you reinstall make sure you back up your drivers. I’ve used Driver Magician (~$30, useable demo available) and Driver Max (free). Here are some similar programs I’ve read about:

Windows only: Freeware tool Driver Collector finds the currently installed drivers for hardware currently installed on your PC, then copies the files to a pre-defined folder.

If you’ve re-installed Windows before, you know how handy a tool like Driver Collector could be - whether you’ve long since lost your driver disks or you just don’t want to go through the hassle of searching through all your install disks for the correct drivers. With tools like InstallPad for automating your software installations and Driver Collector for taking care of your hardware, re-installing Windows on your computer gets easier by the day. - Adam Pash

Driver Collector 1.2 [Major Geeks via Technibble]

From Lifehacker

DriverGrabber helps copy all third party drivers from your system into a "Drivers" subfolder where the EXE is located. This comes in useful if you need to reinstall Windows but have misplaced the original driver discs.

From The Portable Freeware Collection

Now you have a clean install of windows. How should you fill it up. Well first, head to Windows Update and/or try:

Windows only: AutoPatcher is a freeware Windows Update alternative that gives you more control over how you update your PC.

Rather than requiring an internet connection every time you need to update a PC, AutoPatcher can be burned to a CD and used on any computer - which comes as a godsend for any resident PC-geek of the family, especially when you’ve updated a PC over a 56k modem. The great part about AutoPatcher is that not only does it dole out the regular updates, but it also automates installation of several tools not generally included by Windows Update, like Windows PowerToys.

The only downside to AutoPatcher is that you can’t automate future updates, meaning that you would have to check back monthly to get the "Update" releases. If you’re fine with that, then go with AutoPatcher all the way. If you don’t want to worry about checking back with AutoPatcher for updates, the regular Windows Update tool should remain turned on and updating. However, you should still keep AutoPatcher in mind any time you’ve re-installed Windows, as it provides a much easier and arguably secure way to update a freshly installed, unpatched version of Windows. Thanks Steve, Nemo, and m_s! - Adam Pash

From Lifehacker

Then start installing programs. InstallPad is a great choice You can also try:

Windows and Mac only: Software for Starving Students has released a 2007 edition of its collection of freeware and open-source software.

The collection includes well-known gems like 7-Zip, Audacity, Blender, and OpenOffice.org–all stuff you can easily get yourself, but here the legwork is done for you. Plus, it comes with an easy-to-use installer. The idea behind the project is to give students (or anyone else) a single CD containing all the software they’ll need to be productive.

Just one caveat: The download is a disc image file (DMG for Mac users, ISO for Windows), so you need to know how to burn that image to a CD. It’s pretty much a drag-and-drop affair for Mac users, but Windows users will need a program like Nero or Active ISO Burner, which is freeware. Software for Starving Students 2007.01 is free; it’s available for Windows and Mac. - Rick Broida

Software for Starving Students 2007.01 [SoftwareFor.org]

From Lifehacker

Stephen :: Apr.26.2007 :: Computer Related, Software :: No Comments »

This bicycle lift from some Norway may be old hat for them, but totally blew our minds when we saw it earlier today. Picture a guided train track railing that you stick your foot on while you ride your bike that will guide you up a hill.

The entire idea is so brilliant that we’re now demanding that it be installed all over San Francisco in order to ease congestion (took us nearly an hour to get from one part to another thanks to the Cherry Blossom Festival). Check out the gallery to see all 130 meters of it in action. - Jason Chen

Bicycle Lift [Fresh99 - Thanks Tomhut]

Stephen :: Apr.23.2007 :: Funny Stuff :: No Comments »

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.

William Safire
US columnist & speechwriter (1929 - )

From The Quotations Page

Stephen :: Apr.22.2007 :: Interesting :: No Comments »

From a private point of view, only one:

In comparing identical twins, Kohler found that mothers with one child are about 20 percent happier than their childless counterparts; and while fathers’ happiness gains are smaller, men enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness boost from a firstborn son than from a firstborn daughter [TC: remember the result that fathers with sons are less likely to leave?]. The first child’s sex doesn’t matter to mothers, perhaps because women are better than men at enjoying the company of both girls and boys, Kohler speculates.

Interestingly, second and third children don’t add to parents’ happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child-though still happier than women with no children.

"If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child," concludes Kohler, adding that people probably have additional children either for the benefit of the firstborn or because they reason that if the first child made them happy, the second one will, too.

Here is the longer story. See this paper. Here is the researcher’s home page.

I am hardly an expert in this area, but I find the logic appealing. One kid is quite able to fill your time and thoughts. I call this the "parent as empty vessel" model. The argument for more than one kid, in this view, would rest on risk-aversion and the chance that one kid might die or not work out so well.

Note the contrast between Kohler with Bryan Caplan’s theory that you should have more kids now than you want, so you may enjoy them when you are old. At that point in time, no single kid "fills the empty vessel" and so more of them are needed.

I believe that men enjoy children more than women do, as they are less stressed by worry. Whether men want children more is a different question [this last sentence has been altered from a previous version.]

The pointer is from the still totally awesome www.politicaltheory.info.

From Marginal Revolution

Stephen :: Apr.22.2007 :: Interesting :: No Comments »

Apple Insider got an "inside" look at Apple’s NAB setup. They reported that Apple’s server included 3/4 Petabytes of storage space, 3 miles of fiber optic cable, 4 M2 Gb networks, 90 Xserves and 40 Xserve RAIDs. Pardon me while I change my pants.

An interesting point was brought up on MacSlash:

There are systems on the list of the Top 500 Supercomputers with fewer and/or slower processors and slower network connections. Who knows? With a little reconfiguration and optimization for the LINPACK benchmark, maybe, just maybe… Just a little something for you to ruminate on while you marvel at the report’s pretty pictures.

Hit the jump for more pictures of Apple’s ubersetup.

Just how important is the professional video market to Apple? You tell me. - Mark Wilson

High Quality Photos of Apple at NAB 2007 [via MacSlash]

From Gizmodo

Stephen :: Apr.20.2007 :: Interesting :: No Comments »

Yet another place to roam around on Google Earth. The “fantastically eerie photo set” is also worth checking out.

Hashima Island, 15 kilometres from Nagasaki, Japan, was once the densest human development on Earth, and today stands completely empty and abandoned.

Mitsubishi bought the island in 1890¹ and began using it as a coal mining facility. When space for the workers began to run out, they built Japan’s first large scale reinforced concrete apartment block on the island in 1916. More concrete tower blocks followed, and by 1959 the population of Hashima reached its peak of 5,259 - an astonishing 1,391 people per 10,000 square metres within the residential district - which is said to be the highest population density ever recorded in the world.

When petroleum began to replace coal here in the 1960s, coal production at Hashima began to decline, and Mitsubishi officially announced the closure of the mine in 1974. Today there is nobody left at all. Protected by a high sea wall, and completely off-limits to the public, the island is now an empty, rotting and collapsing ghost town, as clearly demonstrated in this fantastically eerie photo set².

For more information on this incredible place, here’s a short documentary, an excellent in-depth story and a rather short Wikipedia page.

Thanks to George Mandis, Rob Alexandre and Eric.

---

1. Yes, Mitsubishi has been around that long, but it turns out that name actually refers to a large grouping of independently operated Japanese companies which share the Mitsubishi brand name. ?
2. For anyone thinking this place would make a great level for a computer game… it just happens somebody already did it. ?

From Google Sightseeing

Stephen :: Apr.15.2007 :: Google Earth :: No Comments »

This isn’t a bad idea. Now I have yet another gmail alias that I’ll probably never use!

Reader Dan writes:

Having heard my wife give out her email address to yet another soccer coach at the start of the season, it hit me. What if you used your phone number as a handout email address?

Instead of spelling some haphazard email address, she could tell them: ""It is our phone number — 5551234@gmail.com" and be done with it.

If you give this a try, you’ll find that some email apps, like Gmail, won’t allow you to include your entire phone number (area code and all) without adding a letter to the mix, but with Gmail, as long as you have fewer than 8 numbers, you’re okay. While you wouldn’t want to use this address for everything, it seems like a potentially perfect solution for situations like Dan described - you can hand out two pieces of contact info for the price of one. - Adam Pash

From Lifehacker

Stephen :: Apr.15.2007 :: Computer Related, Interesting :: No Comments »

You gotta love anything disposable, and now the research to back up what I always knew - anything that avoids doing the dishes has to be a good idea

Here’s a life-cycle energy analysis on reusable vs. disposable cups -another data set to look at would be from washing a cup in the sink (I have a dishwasher and never wash cups in it) but that said, a lot of people use a dishwasher for everything. There are other factors like soap production, transportation costs, etc too, but then it would be really confusing.

It’s interesting to note that a ceramic cup takes 1,000 uses to break even with foam cups. so, about 3 years if you use a cup every day - that’s not so bad — perhaps someone could make a line of coffee cups that say "use me for 3 years to recoup the energy costs" it would make the cup more important and more heirloom-like. People would try and save the cup for as many years as possible to be efficient. Maybe bight green cups with the date of creation on the bottom.

Someone tell treehugger.

This classic life-cycle energy analysis was performed by University of Victoria professor of chemistry Martin B. Hocking. Hocking compared three types of reusable drinking cups (ceramic, glass and reusable plastic) to two types of disposable cups (paper and polystyrene foam).

The energy of manufacture of reusable cups is vastly larger than the energy of manufacture of disposable cups (Table 1). In order for a reusable cup to be an improvement over a disposable one on an energy basis, you have to use it multiple times, in order to "cash in" on the energy investment you made in the cup. If a cup lasts only ten uses, then each use gets "charged’ for one-tenth of the manufacturing energy. If it lasts for a hundred uses, then each use gets charged for only one-hundredth of the manufacturing energy.

But in order to reuse a cup, it has to be washed. The efficiency of the dishwasher, and the efficiency of the energy system that powers it, determine how much energy is required for each wash.

Institute for Lifecycle Environmental Assessment, thanks Saul Link.

From MAKE Magazine

Stephen :: Apr.13.2007 :: Interesting :: No Comments »

Your data’s trapped on a dead computer. You lost your login password. You never wrote down the product key on a non-working Windows installation. Your Mac won’t start.

Don’t pay the extortionists at the computer repair shop 800 bucks to get your data back or start up your dead computer. Plenty of free tools can help you and are available for download right now. Today we’ve got our top 10 system recovery picks which span operating systems but all cost the same: exactly nothing.

Which one of these tools is right for you depends on your skill level, operating system and particular problem. Do yourself a favor and burn yourself a disc with a couple of these before the terrible day when you need ’em happens.

From Lifehacker

Stephen :: Apr.13.2007 :: Software :: No Comments »