What is Worse, Energy-wise?
I've long wondered about the "real" energy cost of materials. For instance, a couple of years ago, my father bought a solar panel to power his RV while camping. According to the literature that came with the panel, it would have to be active for 4 straight years, given average daily sunlight, to recoup the cost of it's own production. Meaning, to replace the energy used to create the panel itself, it would take 4 years of constant use. This could be called "embodied energy" -- energy is emodied in the product because it was created using a certain amount of energy.
This panel has had nowhere near that use, and not only because it was obsolete about the time Dad bought it, but also because he was using it only for extended camping trips. Home panels surely get more use than that and are not replaced that fast. My mother & step-father have had panels on their roof for about 4 or 5 years now, so they've recouped production energy-costs, though they are taking a loss on the actual energy costs (they knew this; they bought to support renewables... truth is their home is highly efficient, despite being build 25 years ago.)
What about paper towels vs clothe?
When to comment code
If you are a developer, you don't speak one language, you speak at least two. If you already speak several spoken languages, like French, English, Spanish, Russian, or Canadian, then you add to it "programming".
What I'm saying is that you don't need to comment all of your code. Big concepts perhaps, variable names and describe the use for a function. But not everything little thing. You don't have to tell me
if ( $a == $b ) // does $a equal $b? { // echo the positive response echo "Certainly, $a IS equal to $b!"; } else { // $a is not equal to $b, so output a response // to tell the user that it was not the case. echo "Sadly, $a is not equal to $b. Wasn't that obvious?"; }
Why Alix Spiegel is the best NPR Voice
I've long loved the TAL tao. The flippant story-telling attitude on PRI's This American Life. It's infiltrating the rest of Public Radio. Thank you, God. Alix Spiegel is the best at it.
Here's a great example of what I'm talking about, a story Spiegel filed in 2009. You should go here and listen to the story if you want to hear this in action. Spiegel demonstrates a sly way of painting this Dr Wennberg as a very intelligent, artistic type. She didn't have to say that. She didn't just say, "Dr Wennberg is smart" and leave it at that. She showed us:
Ramblings Compiled #1
Compiled from my 2000-2002 "Ramblings" blog at goofiness.com:
Anyway, the other day my wife was telling me about a conversation she had on the phone with a client where she works. As she was saying goodbye, she had one of those brain locks that each of us has at some point. During the final stages of a normal phone call, one might say 'Goodbye' or 'Thank You' or 'See you soon'. My wife, who just helped the client with a problem, decided to interject a little variety but couldn't decide whether to say 'You're Welcome' or 'No Problem'. In the less-than-a-second she had to decide this, she had brain-lock and ended up with a concatenation of the two phrases, which unfortunately turned out to be: 'Your Problem'. Funny that it hasn't caught on like 'Goodbye', isn't it?
I could care less; in fact, I have to
We all hear a lot about micro-managers and control freaks. No one addresses why someone is a control freak or micro-manager, though.
I am a foster parent, I've had probably 20 kids in my house at some point or another. There was one child who lived with us for about 2 years with whom, I figured out after he moved out, I had a caring gap. It worked like this: If I cared more about something than he did, he didn't have to care. He took it to the extreme, and the more I tried to help him get it together, the less he tried. Then I realized this is the same thing as with my children -- the teenagers in particular -- co-workers, - heck, my wife and friends. People off-load caring. If you care more than them about something that they should care more about than you, then, whew!, they don't need to care anymore. You are doing it for them.
Whatever the problem is does need to be cared about, so if someone, anyone, is doing it, great.
