Mexico's oil fields are in steep decline. In 2005, Mexico's Cantarell Field used to be their top producing oil field, but starting in 2006 it began experiencing double-digit production declines. Their #2 site Ku-Maloob-Zaap has become #1 in production since then, at a fraction of what Cantarell once produced. Canada is driven mostly by oil sands extraction which is difficult and yields a much lower ERoEI than offshore rigs and traditional land wells. So while things may seem peachy now, keep in mind that eventually all of these fields and offshore rigs will have the same fate as other oilfields that are closed. For some it won't happen when they run dry, it will happen when the amount of energy invested to extract the resource is greater than the amount of energy returned. There are a number of great documentaries on the subject, including Crude Awakening, Escape from Suburbia, and End of Suburbia.
As populations grow, oil exporting nations will be pressured to internalize those resources to keep their own people well-fed and mobile. When that happens, what price do we pay for oil?
That's great that you were able to work with Optibike to get more functionality out of your bike! Does it use Bluetooth for reporting battery health / charging status / etc.?
The bike paths here do clear out quite a bit during the winter, but there are some dedicated die-hards... I biked to work all last winter and the most intense weather was biking in -14 degrees F on hard-pack snow. When I got to work both my hands were completely numb. That reminds me, I need to get some heat packs or something for this winter...;^)
I visited Austin in 2003 but I don't recall seeing places where bikes were safe to get around. Maybe my memories were overpowered by visions of MOPAC and I-35 though... are there bike lanes on less crowded streets, and/or dedicated bike paths?
When most of that 12.3% is only vaguely aware of the manufacturer of their bicycle ("um, it's red?") Boulder will be nearer somewhere like Amsterdam:-).
I should explain: I don't know what brand my shoes are, just like most people who own shoes. Athletes probably know, and choose based on the technology, and of course some people choose a particular brand for fashion. At the moment, in a lot of American and British cities many of the cyclists seem to be nearer to athletes than "normal people".
Haha, very good point. We certainly do have a lot of spandex-clad athletes here, but we also have a good mixture of folks who ride whatever kind of bike they can find. Fort Collins, north of us by a bit, has a much more down-to-earth bike culture with folks riding cruisers and other nameless bikes. In Boulder the prevailing phrase is "my bike costs more than my car" (if they even have a car).
Seemingly everyone in the U.S. seems to know what brand of shoe they are wearing (as it may be the only brand that fits!), so it might just be a culture difference. As for people knowing their bike brands here, I would guess that it probably falls along the lines of athletes vs. casual riders as you mentioned.
Absolutely. Hopefully the politicians implement things that are useful for normal people, rather than athletes (normal people want a route that's separated from cars wherever possible, direct, etc. Athletes don't mind keeping up with the traffic or powering through a busy junction, etc.)
Thankfully we have a pretty extensive network of bike paths here that don't require interacting with traffic much, which is great for riding at a slower pace. Then there are bike lanes on nearly all of the roads for anyone who wants them, although in areas outside the college campus they are mostly used by athletes.
Do you live in Amsterdam? I'd like to visit sometime to experience the bike culture there!
Wooooo doggy! It's a real life Ricky Bobby. I hope they picked up after themselves. I'd hate to be riding at 200 MPH on the salt and run over a golf ball.
Hello fellow 3-digit UID bike enthusiast. I'm in Boulder and we have a similarly enlightened bike culture here. According to a recent study, 12.3% of Boulder citizens bike to work, more than any other city in the country. It's not quite Amsterdam but we're certainly trying. I currently alternate between a Trek 5500 and a Gary Fisher Tassajara, depending on the weather and my prevailing mood ("do I want to go to work on the road or off road today?"). I've also been involved with doing bike moves, where we move the contents of an apartment / condo / etc. entirely via bikes with trailers. I'll be doing my fourth bike move in a year this weekend. You are right, having the infrastructure in place to allow these sorts of things is relatively easy technically but it takes dedicated people willing to push politically to see it enacted.
The United States currently pays the most for health care by far compared to other industrialized nations. Subsidizing a wildly profligate system is not sustainable or wise in my opinion. Being that we are the most obese country in the world, we should cut the food subsidies that result in obesity first and only then may we find ourselves with an affordable and sustainable health care solution (with a nice benefit of a healthier population). Yes, I'm taking the statistical leap of faith and tying our obesity to our health care costs. I will continue to do so until I am shown otherwise.:^)
What I wonder is if "Universal Health Care" (which only provides for 94% of the country) would even be necessary if we didn't have corn subsidies which have made so many people obese and unhealthy. Seems like we are paying twice for a reality that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
I've been looking at ISO 12223 charts for Canon lenses for a while (that are published on The Digital Picture), and Canon certainly seems to be getting sharper with their newer lenses. The new TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II and the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II USM appear to be extremely sharp wide open. Don't know if you've had a chance to play with those but they look amazing. I agree that as megapixel counts go through the roof, we're going to start hitting diffraction limits that render the extra pixels worthless (more here for those who are interested).
P.S. Over the years I've seen many of your photos of the Bonneville Speed Week events, and really enjoy them. I've been meaning to get out there sometime to get some photos of my own.:^)
Definitely true. An engine can only retard timing so far. One must empirically find the octane that provides the highest efficiency per mile traveled while preventing the engine from knocking itself to death. Personally, I can run 85 octane fuel in my motorcycle that has a 10.8:1 compression ratio, and it runs great. As always, YMMV.
Yep. Also important to consider is that many cars have knock sensors and don't need higher octane fuel. Here's a good article that talks more about it.
Yes, I was going to recommend jhead as well. I haven't used it for deleting EXIF headers, but I have used it to get a list of what focal lengths I've used for all of my photos. It's a handy free utility, and I wish it worked on RAW photos as well.
You're not the only one who thinks this way. My 2009 HP "Elitebook" laptop at work lacks many of the features that my PowerBook G4 from 2001 had. The latches on the Elitebook suck, the screen quality is very poor, the keys feel like they are going to break off, the battery life is horrible (2.5 hours vs. 5 hours), etc. etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Bloomberg recently posted a 48 minute video of Apple's history here. A lot of Sculley's interview comments made it into this video as well.
Mexico's oil fields are in steep decline. In 2005, Mexico's Cantarell Field used to be their top producing oil field, but starting in 2006 it began experiencing double-digit production declines. Their #2 site Ku-Maloob-Zaap has become #1 in production since then, at a fraction of what Cantarell once produced. Canada is driven mostly by oil sands extraction which is difficult and yields a much lower ERoEI than offshore rigs and traditional land wells. So while things may seem peachy now, keep in mind that eventually all of these fields and offshore rigs will have the same fate as other oilfields that are closed. For some it won't happen when they run dry, it will happen when the amount of energy invested to extract the resource is greater than the amount of energy returned. There are a number of great documentaries on the subject, including Crude Awakening, Escape from Suburbia, and End of Suburbia.
As populations grow, oil exporting nations will be pressured to internalize those resources to keep their own people well-fed and mobile. When that happens, what price do we pay for oil?
If it's anything like this turbine-electric hybrid Hummer, it gets 60 MPG and can go from 0-60 in 5 seconds.
That's great that you were able to work with Optibike to get more functionality out of your bike! Does it use Bluetooth for reporting battery health / charging status / etc.?
The bike paths here do clear out quite a bit during the winter, but there are some dedicated die-hards... I biked to work all last winter and the most intense weather was biking in -14 degrees F on hard-pack snow. When I got to work both my hands were completely numb. That reminds me, I need to get some heat packs or something for this winter... ;^)
I visited Austin in 2003 but I don't recall seeing places where bikes were safe to get around. Maybe my memories were overpowered by visions of MOPAC and I-35 though... are there bike lanes on less crowded streets, and/or dedicated bike paths?
When most of that 12.3% is only vaguely aware of the manufacturer of their bicycle ("um, it's red?") Boulder will be nearer somewhere like Amsterdam :-).
I should explain: I don't know what brand my shoes are, just like most people who own shoes. Athletes probably know, and choose based on the technology, and of course some people choose a particular brand for fashion. At the moment, in a lot of American and British cities many of the cyclists seem to be nearer to athletes than "normal people".
Haha, very good point. We certainly do have a lot of spandex-clad athletes here, but we also have a good mixture of folks who ride whatever kind of bike they can find. Fort Collins, north of us by a bit, has a much more down-to-earth bike culture with folks riding cruisers and other nameless bikes. In Boulder the prevailing phrase is "my bike costs more than my car" (if they even have a car).
Seemingly everyone in the U.S. seems to know what brand of shoe they are wearing (as it may be the only brand that fits!), so it might just be a culture difference. As for people knowing their bike brands here, I would guess that it probably falls along the lines of athletes vs. casual riders as you mentioned.
Absolutely. Hopefully the politicians implement things that are useful for normal people, rather than athletes (normal people want a route that's separated from cars wherever possible, direct, etc. Athletes don't mind keeping up with the traffic or powering through a busy junction, etc.)
Thankfully we have a pretty extensive network of bike paths here that don't require interacting with traffic much, which is great for riding at a slower pace. Then there are bike lanes on nearly all of the roads for anyone who wants them, although in areas outside the college campus they are mostly used by athletes.
Do you live in Amsterdam? I'd like to visit sometime to experience the bike culture there!
Wooooo doggy! It's a real life Ricky Bobby. I hope they picked up after themselves. I'd hate to be riding at 200 MPH on the salt and run over a golf ball.
Hello fellow 3-digit UID bike enthusiast. I'm in Boulder and we have a similarly enlightened bike culture here. According to a recent study, 12.3% of Boulder citizens bike to work, more than any other city in the country. It's not quite Amsterdam but we're certainly trying. I currently alternate between a Trek 5500 and a Gary Fisher Tassajara, depending on the weather and my prevailing mood ("do I want to go to work on the road or off road today?"). I've also been involved with doing bike moves, where we move the contents of an apartment / condo / etc. entirely via bikes with trailers. I'll be doing my fourth bike move in a year this weekend. You are right, having the infrastructure in place to allow these sorts of things is relatively easy technically but it takes dedicated people willing to push politically to see it enacted.
Facebook Groups subscribe you!
Perhaps it isn't such a leap of faith after all...
The United States currently pays the most for health care by far compared to other industrialized nations. Subsidizing a wildly profligate system is not sustainable or wise in my opinion. Being that we are the most obese country in the world, we should cut the food subsidies that result in obesity first and only then may we find ourselves with an affordable and sustainable health care solution (with a nice benefit of a healthier population). Yes, I'm taking the statistical leap of faith and tying our obesity to our health care costs. I will continue to do so until I am shown otherwise. :^)
What I wonder is if "Universal Health Care" (which only provides for 94% of the country) would even be necessary if we didn't have corn subsidies which have made so many people obese and unhealthy. Seems like we are paying twice for a reality that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
HTC G2 (~4G HSPA+, OS v2.2) > HTC G1
It's an old slashdotism. You're too young to understand. Now get off my lawn.
Subject line says it all.
This begs for a "SCO is dying" post.
That weekend I'll be hosting some folks for the Great American Beer Fest... Perhaps next year I'll make it out there!
I've been looking at ISO 12223 charts for Canon lenses for a while (that are published on The Digital Picture), and Canon certainly seems to be getting sharper with their newer lenses. The new TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II and the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II USM appear to be extremely sharp wide open. Don't know if you've had a chance to play with those but they look amazing. I agree that as megapixel counts go through the roof, we're going to start hitting diffraction limits that render the extra pixels worthless (more here for those who are interested).
P.S. Over the years I've seen many of your photos of the Bonneville Speed Week events, and really enjoy them. I've been meaning to get out there sometime to get some photos of my own. :^)
So North Korea is publishing videos of their soldiers dancing on YouTube now. Seems to me like they are trying to compete with the Filipino prisoners who performed Thriller.
Definitely true. An engine can only retard timing so far. One must empirically find the octane that provides the highest efficiency per mile traveled while preventing the engine from knocking itself to death. Personally, I can run 85 octane fuel in my motorcycle that has a 10.8:1 compression ratio, and it runs great. As always, YMMV.
Yep. Also important to consider is that many cars have knock sensors and don't need higher octane fuel. Here's a good article that talks more about it.
Apt-get is magical. It has Super Cow Powers. ;^)
Yes, I was going to recommend jhead as well. I haven't used it for deleting EXIF headers, but I have used it to get a list of what focal lengths I've used for all of my photos. It's a handy free utility, and I wish it worked on RAW photos as well.
You're not the only one who thinks this way. My 2009 HP "Elitebook" laptop at work lacks many of the features that my PowerBook G4 from 2001 had. The latches on the Elitebook suck, the screen quality is very poor, the keys feel like they are going to break off, the battery life is horrible (2.5 hours vs. 5 hours), etc. etc.
The subject line may say it all, but it bears repeating: why isn't this a poll?
Let me guess, you have a goatee? :^P