Lightning Storm over Buffalo, NY

Awesome thunderstorm over Buffalo, NY tonight. I saw some of the brightest lightning I’ve seen in quite some time, with some serious groundstrikes. This stuff was loud enough that people were sending me messages along the lines of “HOLY SHIT DID YOU HEAR THAT?!” Flash! BANG! Cue car alarms and fire trucks. Oh how I love a good storm!

So, I did what any sane person would do: grabbed my camera, and stood out in the storm to chase the lightning’s tail! Luckily the lightning didn’t kiss me tonight… maybe next time

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Costs of Natural Gas vs. Electric Heat

Today, I did some calculations to find out the cost differences between natural gas and electricity for home heating. A few friends and I were debating the details, to figure out which was cheaper. Here are my results:

In a nutshell, natural gas is from 2 to 4 times less expensive than electric per unit energy, based on December 2010 rates in Buffalo, NY. The data also make it simple to find out how much it costs to run a lightbulb or other appliance. For example, running a server that draws 3 amps, or about 360 watts, 24×7, would cost over $30 a month! Good things to know.

You can view the full Google Spreadsheet here.

HPX170 Speed: USB vs FireWire 1394

Panasonic AG-HPX170 Camcorder

Today I had to transfer a lot of DVCPRO HD footage from a Panasonic AG-HPX170 camera. I discovered that the USB 2.0 port transferred easily twice as fast, if not faster, as the 1394 FireWire port, when connected to a Macbook Pro. This was a surprising result! I suppose the FireWire port is more useful for direct video capture and monitoring than it is for transferring video from the P2 media cards. Adobe OnLocation plus a laptop with a high-resolution screen makes for a great field monitor, with scopes and annotation tools included!

And praise to Panasonic for releasing an update to P2CMS that now works with Snow Leopard!

What’s with all the Sucralose?

Sucralose - glucose with three evil green chlorine atoms!

Why does it seem that sucralose, an artificial sweetener made by chlorinating glucose, is appearing in more and more products where it doesn’t make sense? I don’t understand why beverages that are already full of sugars (typically, high-fructose corn syrup, nasty stuff that makes us fat) need to also include sucralose. These products are not marketed as low-calorie or low-carb. High-fructose corn syrup is already inexpensive and readily available, so I don’t see a cost benefit. What’s the deal? Is it some Giant Evil Conspiracy™ to poison people? Some economic benefit that I don’t know about? High-pressure marketing from the sucralose manufacturers?

I don’t want this crap in my food, drink, body, or environment. Stop putting it in everything! And, if anyone knows why this stuff is appearing with ever-increasing prevalence, please enlighten me!

MacBook Pro & Ableton – variable audio latency

Today I was attempting to determine the hardware audio latency of a MacBook Pro (late-2009 model, 2.8GHz dual-core 17″). This was to plug in to the Driver Error Compensation setting under Preferences > Audio in Ableton Live 8. I was following the Driver Error Compensation tutorial that ships with Live, and hooked the headphone output to the line input on the side of the MacBook. I used a straight-through 1/8″ TRS cable – two of them, in fact, which I also verified for correct wiring with a meter, after discovering a few disturbing facts.

MacBook Pro audio latency, tested with Ableton Live

First, something is out of phase, either the input or the output. When the output waveform zigs up, the recorded waveform zags down. That could be troublesome in certain circumstances.

Significantly longer latency, after disconnect/reconnect!

Second, the actual latency changes every time you disconnect and reconnect the cable plugged in to the headphone jack. Apparently, the Mac is reconfiguring its drivers, so that it knows what’s connected where, or something. But when it does this, the latency changes! A lot! While the cable is connected, it doesn’t seem to vary, but since the connector is so delicate (and over-engineered, sigh..) it is easy to accidentally dislodge the cable a tiny bit, which is enough to trigger this problem.

Each of the two screenshots above show the playback waveform (top) and the recorded waveform (bottom). You can see the phase difference, and I included two examples that were on the more extreme ends of the range of latency. The time scale along the bottom is in fractions of seconds. You can see that the latency has changed from approximately 0.0025s to 0.0225s – that’s a 20ms difference! Why the heck does it do this?

Moral of the story: buy a professional audio interface for any serious recording work.

Magento: Beginner’s Guide – Book Review

I must be doing more Magento work than I realized, as Packt Publishing has asked me to review their new book Magento: Beginner’s Guide for them.
I’ve just received my review copy and I’ll be delving into it in the coming days as I have time.

My first impression is of a good quality softcover book. It’s an on-demand printing, and obviously they are doing it correctly. The book itself is targeted at the store’s operator, and not a theme designer or Magento coder. If you want to set up your own Magento store, having a book like this to explain exactly what everything does, even just in the Admin panel, is a great help.

Stay tuned for the full review!