I have a triple head setup with three graphics cards. It has been working well for me for years, though it was a bit tricky to set up. About halfway through the Lenny release cycle, an upgrade hosed my multi head setup.
The culprit was xrandr replacing xinerama. The new code can handle multiple outputs on a single card but cannot yet use more than a single card.
The xrandr code is a definite improvement. No more screwing around with xorg.conf is great. The ability to change screen arrangements and resolutions dynamically is a major win for laptop users. Dropping multiple card support however, is a major regression.
At this point it is looking like I will need new hardware by the time this is fixed. I suppose I can throw a bunch of money at a graphics card with three or more outputs. I got the three cards I'm using now at swap meet prices, I don't relish the thought of shelling out big bucks for a fancy card, I'm just looking at a bunch of xterms anyway.
For now, I'm stuck with an increasingly obsolescent operating system because the X developers didn't thing it was a big deal to remove functionality.
Oh, and don't forget that you could only run the compressor during the day, when you probably will want to use the car. If you're going to store the power in a bank of batteries, why not put the batteries in the car?
No, you store the energy as compressed air, in a big tank. Charge (or change) the car's tank later when you get home.
It is still a bad idea, and I suspect your shop compressor is way too small to run a car. Think more along the lines of the diesel powered rigs that come in little trailers you see attached to jackhammers. With one of those trailers behind your air car, you could have unlimited range, (diesel is available everywhere), burn more fuel than a regular car, have worse performance and have to tow an awkward trailer around. The upside is that you can claim to have a hybrid vehicle, and everyone knows that those are good.
The nickel mine you are thinking about is probably Inco's mine in Sudbury Ontario. There is indeed a dead zone, but it is not a strip mine, the mine is underground. The dead zone is the result of acid fallout from the smelter. After killing off the area, and facing criticism, Inco built what was then the world's largest smokestack in the early seventies. The smelter still belches sulfur compounds, but now they are dispersed over a much larger area.
I expect the "free A/C" is a result of the compressed air cooling as it expands. It would work on the same principle that makes the outside of your barbecue tank frosty sometimes.
Why does the snow turn black at the side of the road?
Why do the wheels on my road bike stain my hands black when I change a tire?
Modern cars are cleaner, sure, sometimes you can even taste it when an old beater drives by, but all hydrocarbon based vehicles are certainly contaminating our environment.
Then again I could just take my $2000 plasma cutter, $500 generator and $6000 hilux and head up into the mountains and take down three or four high voltage towers and kill power to about 8 million people for a week or more and be home before nightfall.
Dude, a $1000 4x4 pickup and $400 bucks for an oxy-acetylene torch rig would do the trick.
Heck, you can get tanks small enough to pack around on a mountain bike or in a backpack.
Or just use a rifle on the insulators.
There is nothing complicated about it, fortunately, few, almost none at all, people wish to create this kind of havoc. If terrorists were as common as portrayed, I'd not be able to to post this.
Please do secure the computer systems that control the power grid anyways -- please. I need power for my computers.
Groundwater certainly is distributed laterally in many cases, though not always. There are underground streams with coherent channels as well.
I once spent a morning with an electronic pipe detector and a vacuum truck (for digging narrow, vertical holes without damaging buried pipe) trying to find a water main beneath a street. We dug several holes but had no luck finding the pipe.
My boss showed up that afternoon and asked how we were doing. When we explained we were having no luck, he grabbed a couple of welding rods, knocked the flux off of them and bent the ends over just more than 90 degrees. He walked around over the street for a couple of minutes and then said "dig here". Sure enough, there was the pipe, centered in the roughly twelve inch diameter hole we dug, about ten feet down.
It turned out that several people in the company, (drillers mostly) had some amount of dowsing skill. Apparently, anything that flows can be found that way, including natural gas.
While my boss had 30 years of experience digging holes and laying pipe, and certainly has a good understanding of where pipes tend to be put, pinpointing a water main *exactly* in four lanes of street is pretty unlikely.
Interestingly, while most in the construction industry and many lay people accept the story without surprise, or even relate a similar experience, people with a scientific background usually refuse to consider it, you can almost hear their minds snap shut.
I'm not sure why the devices in the article cost $16,500 and up, fifty cents worth of welding rod seems to do the trick.
TDI increases fuel efficiency by redifining how diesil engines work (turbo charged, fuel injected, etc).
Uh, every diesel engine ever built is fuel injected. TDIs don't use a premix chamber (The DI is for Direct Injection), but that's not a particularly new innovation.
Turbos have also long been popular on diesels as they don't have to maintain a precise fuel/air mixture so can cram as much air as possible into the cylinder all the time. Turbos are much simpler without a wastegate and work better without a throttle in their air path.
Heh,
I recently rode my road bike (700x23 slick tires) down a forest trail pulling a trailer with my and my two companion's camping gear for about a kilometer on a recent tour.
There wasn't anything more technical than a few roots and some sharp turns but it handled it like a champ. I love my steel frame.
Mine is a traditional road bike, but you should check out this thing called cyclocross.
Give me a jackhammer and a shovel and tell me to dig up that alley until I find a buried telephone line and I'll be happy all day.
I've been paid to write code, I'd rather do it just for fun. Follow the other posters advice, find something you like and do it. When it gets dull, do something else.
The Cat 966D I was operating for a while in the winter was equiped with an angel food cake pan shaped chamber on the intake before the filter. The air whirled around in the pan and all the large particulates fell to the bottom of the pan. It works just like that bagless vacuum cleaner the "vortex" or whatever.
It's a pretty simple solution with no moving parts. Take the lid off every morning and tap out the dust and sand.
I don't know about an M1 Abrams though, don't those things run turbines?
That is a legitimate use for a truck. I fully realize the need for commercial vehicles.
I understand your situation requires a vehicle, but many others don't; it's a convenience (or inconvenience if you consider the time wasted by single occupants of huge vehicles idling away parked on the highway trying to get themselves their briefcase and cup of coffee to work).
I don't have a problem with driving, fill your boots, I just think it's silly. When my coworkers bitch about traffic or paying ten bucks for parking I try not to laugh out loud.
My point is merely that it is possible to live car free and still enjoy a full and meaningful life, just maybe not quite the same life as others.
Pickup trucks are for construction workers. There is a reason they get commercial plates. You don't see the FedEx guy hauling his packages around on the subway do you?
I often take public transit to construction sites. If the company wants me to haul around sheetrock, or drill steel, or a pallet of grout or whatever, they can set me up in a company truck. I don't have a problem packing my belt on the bus and I haven't had a problem getting to sites within a thirty Km radius of home by 7:00am on public transit. This ability is one of the reasons I choose to live in Vancouver, a city with no highways at all within its city limits.
Owning a motor vehicle is a choice, not a requirement of modern life. There is, of course, an opportunity cost to every decision. I make choices that don't force me to drive. My main mode of transportation is two feet and a heartbeat.
If you can escape or avoid the mindset of car culture it all starts to look pretty silly.
Not to mention that construction work can be fun. I've got a Caterpillar key on my ring. I know how to blow shit up, weld and cut steel, rig things to cranes and run big machines. I always have a nice tan and a trim strong body. I make a good union wage and have ample opportunities to solve interesting problems. My inteligence is appreciated and I'm polite and well mannered when required, but I speak like a sailor when that's appropriate.
To each their own, I suppose. Enjoy your flourescent lit cubes, I'm enjoying it here at WeDigHoles.
Freeform concrete work is slow and takes skilled carpenters to do, but most concrete structures are built with pre-fab formwork that is quickly stripped and swung into place with cranes.
Vancouver Hi-rises go up at a rate of a floor a week or so, just about as fast as the concrete cures. Like a previous poster mentioned regarding stick homes, it takes longer to dig the hole or fit out than put up the structure.
Concrete, at least in BC, is still more expensive than sticks. The finished product is way better, all things being equal. Wooden structures, particularly on the coast, are temporary. They are only good for 50-100 years. The wood-frame building I live in is 30 years old and already creaks and moans and the floors have heaves.
I know this conversation is about detatched homes and not hi-rise, but if you are making cookie-cutter homes the same pre-fab form techniques apply. It's kind of a shame, freeform is way more fun to build and, if done well, makes for nicer buildings. I am of the opinion that buildings should be built to last and designed thoughtfuly, unfortunatly that's no way to make money these days.
There is a tire shop ad running in these parts featuring a Porsche race car towing a small trailer with pit crew supplies. This is, apparently, a successfully campaigned system for racing under limited resources.
I grew up in restaurants and learned to interact with people and be charming for a living.
Learning to deal with unpleasant human interaction and boredom is worth far more than minimum wage.
Refering to restaurant work as a dangerous waste is missing the opportunities for learning inherent in the situation. Math, science and computers are not the only things worth knowing about. Some of the most valuable lessons I've learned came about through some of the most menial work I've done.
big trucks often have air brakes, so I know they can do breaks despite a compressable transfer medium.
While it is true that truck brakes use compression, it is provided by a large preloaded spring. The spring holds the brakes on and air pressure is used to overcome the spring preload and disengage the brakes. If you blow an airline the brakes lock hard.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple can confirm the identity of any iPad user, so long as they have not purchased the device used.
Very interesting.
Well, Alberta is the Texas of Canada.
My desktop is frozen at Debian Etch.
I have a triple head setup with three graphics cards. It has been working well for me for years, though it was a bit tricky to set up. About halfway through the Lenny release cycle, an upgrade hosed my multi head setup.
The culprit was xrandr replacing xinerama. The new code can handle multiple outputs on a single card but cannot yet use more than a single card.
The xrandr code is a definite improvement. No more screwing around with xorg.conf is great. The ability to change screen arrangements and resolutions dynamically is a major win for laptop users. Dropping multiple card support however, is a major regression.
At this point it is looking like I will need new hardware by the time this is fixed. I suppose I can throw a bunch of money at a graphics card with three or more outputs. I got the three cards I'm using now at swap meet prices, I don't relish the thought of shelling out big bucks for a fancy card, I'm just looking at a bunch of xterms anyway.
For now, I'm stuck with an increasingly obsolescent operating system because the X developers didn't thing it was a big deal to remove functionality.
Discount sushi is a false economy.
That said, the very finest sushi place I've been to is not expensive.
Oh, and don't forget that you could only run the compressor during the day, when you probably will want to use the car. If you're going to store the power in a bank of batteries, why not put the batteries in the car?
No, you store the energy as compressed air, in a big tank. Charge (or change) the car's tank later when you get home.
It is still a bad idea, and I suspect your shop compressor is way too small to run a car. Think more along the lines of the diesel powered rigs that come in little trailers you see attached to jackhammers. With one of those trailers behind your air car, you could have unlimited range, (diesel is available everywhere), burn more fuel than a regular car, have worse performance and have to tow an awkward trailer around. The upside is that you can claim to have a hybrid vehicle, and everyone knows that those are good.
The nickel mine you are thinking about is probably Inco's mine in Sudbury Ontario. There is indeed a dead zone, but it is not a strip mine, the mine is underground. The dead zone is the result of acid fallout from the smelter. After killing off the area, and facing criticism, Inco built what was then the world's largest smokestack in the early seventies. The smelter still belches sulfur compounds, but now they are dispersed over a much larger area.
Much of the area still looks like a moonscape.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inco_Superstack
I expect the "free A/C" is a result of the compressed air cooling as it expands. It would work on the same principle that makes the outside of your barbecue tank frosty sometimes.
What soot?
Why does the snow turn black at the side of the road?
Why do the wheels on my road bike stain my hands black when I change a tire?
Modern cars are cleaner, sure, sometimes you can even taste it when an old beater drives by, but all hydrocarbon based vehicles are certainly contaminating our environment.
Then again I could just take my $2000 plasma cutter, $500 generator and $6000 hilux and head up into the mountains and take down three or four high voltage towers and kill power to about 8 million people for a week or more and be home before nightfall.
Dude, a $1000 4x4 pickup and $400 bucks for an oxy-acetylene torch rig would do the trick.
Heck, you can get tanks small enough to pack around on a mountain bike or in a backpack.
Or just use a rifle on the insulators.
There is nothing complicated about it, fortunately, few, almost none at all, people wish to create this kind of havoc. If terrorists were as common as portrayed, I'd not be able to to post this.
Please do secure the computer systems that control the power grid anyways -- please. I need power for my computers.
I expect sampling as close to continually as possible would make for a tighter defense, 30 seconds is pretty coarse to predict a spot speed.
Groundwater certainly is distributed laterally in many cases,
though not always. There are underground streams with coherent
channels as well.
I once spent a morning with an electronic pipe detector and a
vacuum truck (for digging narrow, vertical holes without damaging
buried pipe) trying to find a water main beneath a street. We dug
several holes but had no luck finding the pipe.
My boss showed up that afternoon and asked how we were doing.
When we explained we were having no luck, he grabbed a couple of
welding rods, knocked the flux off of them and bent the ends over
just more than 90 degrees. He walked around over the street for a
couple of minutes and then said "dig here". Sure enough, there
was the pipe, centered in the roughly twelve inch diameter hole
we dug, about ten feet down.
It turned out that several people in the company, (drillers
mostly) had some amount of dowsing skill. Apparently, anything
that flows can be found that way, including natural gas.
While my boss had 30 years of experience digging holes and laying
pipe, and certainly has a good understanding of where pipes tend
to be put, pinpointing a water main *exactly* in four lanes of
street is pretty unlikely.
Interestingly, while most in the construction industry and many
lay people accept the story without surprise, or even relate a
similar experience, people with a scientific background usually
refuse to consider it, you can almost hear their minds snap shut.
I'm not sure why the devices in the article cost $16,500 and up,
fifty cents worth of welding rod seems to do the trick.
TDI increases fuel efficiency by redifining how diesil engines work (turbo charged, fuel injected, etc).
Uh, every diesel engine ever built is fuel injected. TDIs don't use a premix chamber (The DI is for Direct Injection), but that's not a particularly new innovation.
Turbos have also long been popular on diesels as they don't have to maintain a precise fuel/air mixture so can cram as much air as possible into the cylinder all the time. Turbos are much simpler without a wastegate and work better without a throttle in their air path.
I just about have the urination while riding thing down pat.
Heh,
I recently rode my road bike (700x23 slick tires) down a forest trail pulling a trailer with my and my two companion's camping gear for about a kilometer on a recent tour.
There wasn't anything more technical than a few roots and some sharp turns but it handled it like a champ. I love my steel frame.
Mine is a traditional road bike, but you should check out this thing called cyclocross.
It could be worse,
I get my news from Slashdot.
Yahoo filed my invite in my 'Bulk' folder. Made me laugh.
My union card says 'skilled labourer'.
Give me a jackhammer and a shovel and tell me to dig up that alley until I find a buried telephone line and I'll be happy all day.
I've been paid to write code, I'd rather do it just for fun.
Follow the other posters advice, find something you like and do it. When it gets dull, do something else.
The Cat 966D I was operating for a while in the winter was equiped with an angel food cake pan shaped chamber on the intake before the filter. The air whirled around in the pan and all the large particulates fell to the bottom of the pan. It works just like that bagless vacuum cleaner the "vortex" or whatever.
It's a pretty simple solution with no moving parts. Take the lid off every morning and tap out the dust and sand.
I don't know about an M1 Abrams though, don't those things run turbines?
The beer delivery staff is on strike in British Columbia,
you insensitive clod.
That is a legitimate use for a truck. I fully realize the need for commercial vehicles.
I understand your situation requires a vehicle, but many others don't; it's a convenience (or inconvenience if you consider the time wasted by single occupants of huge vehicles idling away parked on the highway trying to get themselves their briefcase and cup of coffee to work).
I don't have a problem with driving, fill your boots, I just think it's silly. When my coworkers bitch about traffic or paying ten bucks for parking I try not to laugh out loud.
My point is merely that it is possible to live car free and still enjoy a full and meaningful life, just maybe not quite the same life as others.
Pickup trucks are for construction workers. There is a reason they get commercial plates. You don't see the FedEx guy hauling his packages around on the subway do you?
I often take public transit to construction sites. If the company wants me to haul around sheetrock, or drill steel, or a pallet of grout or whatever, they can set me up in a company truck. I don't have a problem packing my belt on the bus and I haven't had a problem getting to sites within a thirty Km radius of home by 7:00am on public transit. This ability is one of the reasons I choose to live in Vancouver, a city with no highways at all within its city limits.
Owning a motor vehicle is a choice, not a requirement of modern life. There is, of course, an opportunity cost to every decision. I make choices that don't force me to drive. My main mode of transportation is two feet and a heartbeat.
If you can escape or avoid the mindset of car culture it all starts to look pretty silly.
Not to mention that construction work can be fun. I've got a Caterpillar key on my ring. I know how to blow shit up, weld and cut steel, rig things to cranes and run big machines. I always have a nice tan and a trim strong body. I make a good union wage and have ample opportunities to solve interesting problems. My inteligence is appreciated and I'm polite and well mannered when required, but I speak like a sailor when that's appropriate.
To each their own, I suppose.
Enjoy your flourescent lit cubes, I'm enjoying it here at WeDigHoles.
Freeform concrete work is slow and takes skilled carpenters to do, but most concrete structures are built with pre-fab formwork that is quickly stripped and swung into place with cranes.
Vancouver Hi-rises go up at a rate of a floor a week or so, just about as fast as the concrete cures. Like a previous poster mentioned regarding stick homes, it takes longer to dig the hole or fit out than put up the structure.
Concrete, at least in BC, is still more expensive than sticks. The finished product is way better, all things being equal. Wooden structures, particularly on the coast, are temporary. They are only good for 50-100 years. The wood-frame building I live in is 30 years old and already creaks and moans and the floors have heaves.
I know this conversation is about detatched homes and not hi-rise, but if you are making cookie-cutter homes the same pre-fab form techniques apply. It's kind of a shame, freeform is way more fun to build and, if done well, makes for nicer buildings. I am of the opinion that buildings should be built to last and designed thoughtfuly, unfortunatly that's no way to make money these days.
There is a tire shop ad running in these parts featuring a Porsche race car towing a small trailer with pit crew supplies. This is, apparently, a successfully campaigned system for racing under limited resources.
I grew up in restaurants and learned to interact with people and be charming for a living.
Learning to deal with unpleasant human interaction and boredom is worth far more than minimum wage.
Refering to restaurant work as a dangerous waste is missing the opportunities for learning inherent in the situation. Math, science and computers are not the only things worth knowing about. Some of the most valuable lessons I've learned came about through some of the most menial work I've done.
big trucks often have air brakes, so I know they can do breaks despite a compressable transfer medium.
While it is true that truck brakes use compression, it is provided by a large preloaded spring. The spring holds the brakes on and air pressure is used to overcome the spring preload and disengage the brakes. If you blow an airline the brakes lock hard.