Corey Gouker's Machine Inside the Mind

What can I say? Gore describing ways of giving the US a kick in the ass aligns to exactly how I feel right now as far as energy goes. Where's the $25K Tesla and the subsidized solar for homes? :)

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels. In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of “solutions summits” with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf. What if we could use fuels that are not expensive, don’t cause pollution and are abundantly available right here at home? We have such fuels. Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world’s energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses. And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand. Geothermal energy, similarly, is capable of providing enormous supplies of electricity for America. The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses. But to make this exciting potential a reality, and truly solve our nation’s problems, we need a new start. That’s why I’m proposing today a strategic initiative designed to free us from the crises that are holding us down and to regain control of our own destiny. It’s not the only thing we need to do. But this strategic challenge is the lynchpin of a bold new strategy needed to re-power America. Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years. This goal is achievable, affordable and transformative. It represents a challenge to all Americans — in every walk of life: to our political leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, engineers, and to every citizen. A few years ago, it would not have been possible to issue such a challenge. But here’s what’s changed: the sharp cost reductions now beginning to take place in solar, wind, and geothermal power — coupled with the recent dramatic price increases for oil and coal — have radically changed the economics of energy. When I first went to Congress 32 years ago, I listened to experts testify that if oil ever got to $35 a barrel, then renewable sources of energy would become competitive. Well, today, the price of oil is over $135 per barrel. And sure enough, billions of dollars of new investment are flowing into the development of concentrated solar thermal, photovoltaics, windmills, geothermal plants, and a variety of ingenious new ways to improve our efficiency and conserve presently wasted energy. And as the demand for renewable energy grows, the costs will continue to fall. Let me give you one revealing example: the price of the specialized silicon used to make solar cells was recently as high as $300 per kilogram. But the newest contracts have prices as low as $50 a kilogram. You know, the same thing happened with computer chips — also made out of silicon. The price paid for the same performance came down by 50 percent every 18 months — year after year, and that’s what’s happened for 40 years in a row.

I don't even care if it's alarmist or if the polar caps are going to be changing from a solid into a liquid in a few years. It doesn't even matter, it just seems to make sense to do go renewable.

Attention all would be terrorists. Feeling a bit thwarted by the added security? Well here's an idea... Just take all that liquid explosives you've got and toss it into one of the many filled trash cans. You won't exactly have the same affect physically flying planes into random buildings but you'll probably do as much psychologically by killing a bunch of innocent people.

With the queues so massive from the added security and confusion you're sure to get away with it and sure to do plenty of damage. Or better yet, forget the planes and start doing trains where there is no security to speak of.

Anyway, this is just ridiculous. This added stupidity with supposedly tighter security seriously won't stop anyone that's determined to do harm.

The other day I showed both the iRiver and Creative Portable Media Center to my cousin. Tried turning both on and both didn't work, figured the battery had died in both. Today I finally remembered to plug them in to charge to test them out. I noticed the Creative had this black spot in the top right corner of the screen and some weird dark thing going on. Tried powering it on while plugged in and nothing. Figured I should reset it. Tried opening the back but couldn't. Pressed down hard enough and finally got the case open. Sure enough the battery exploded. It damaged the screen and everything else. The entire unit plus the battery will need to be replaced. It's been sitting on my desk in the same spot for over 6 months now. It's not been hot and it's not been cold so who knows.

Here's the important information about the battery for reference:
Model Number:   PMA-BA0001
Date Code:      SMMJDHBC
Part Number:    BA20603R79913

Oh and here are four pictures for your viewing pleasure. While stating that the battery "exploded" would be pushing it, the battery definitely expanded. Note the curve in the plastic:
Photo 1 - shows battery standing
Photo 2 - shows battery lying down
Photo 3 - shows pmc screen distorted in bottom left
Photo 4 - shows pmc screen with spot in top right

So while the Creative PMC may have the best battery life of the PMC's be warned that it's physical life may be short lived.

Sean refers to a News.com (press) (cough) blog (cough) about how Microsoft is apparently not happy about the entire "podcasting" naming and thinks "blogcasting" is so much better. Obviously because Microsoft just totally hates the iPod and how the term podcasting conjures up images of white headphones etc. Get real, white headphones aren't just for the iPod anymore. Look at the PSP and Creative products. Almost any product that can get away with white headphones will try to.

This is yet another example of the press just faffing about and not doing a good job of reporting facts without the opinion. There's another post from the gents at The Inquirer. What's wrong with it you ask? Well loads, but that's nothing new since this is coming from The Inquirer. But then there's this:

"You also need MS Media Center Edition 2006 (MCE 2006)."

Who ever said anything about MCE 2006? I've not heard of such a thing and couldn't say either way if that's what it would actually be called. Point is, Microsoft hasn't made any official announcements as far as I'm aware so obviously a better way of putting it would've been. "You'd also need an update to the OS in order for you to take advantage of these new features."

I'm glad Sean points to what's considered a trusted News source such as News.com. Because it just shows that so many times these sources just aren't as good as they could or should be.

I don't normally link to The Register but definitely feel the need to link to this one. Apparently Dell are turning off some of their web based forums specifically the Customer Care forums. Forget the reasoning, this is just plain stupid. Dell forums are probably the only reason why I've continued to buy Dell products. Often times information regarding weird quirks, quick fixes, updates, etc can be found really quickly. Whereas trying to call for the same information is useless. If it weren't for their ridiculously cheap LCD's I think I could just drop them altogether from this point forward. Hopefully Dell will bring them all back online else dealing with Dell systems will soon become a major pain.

Gramps told me the other day that my second (or is it third) cousin Andrew, a marine, was being sent to Iraq. Not that big of a surprise since the marines are usually cannon fodder for any given military movement. But it’s kind of weird that it’s my cousin being sent and not some other unfortunate soul who I’ve never heard of. My gramps that was in WWII has never supported the war in Iraq and has always been pretty liberal. My first cousin, Casey, has been in the Navy for a while now. He was originally stationed in Okinawa, Japan but is now on some god forsaken island off of the San Diego coast. He’ll probably get out of the navy without ever seeing battle, definitely a good thing in my humble opinion since he’s been brainwashed enough as it is.

Anyway, Gramps was saying that it was ironic that our family has two grandsons in the military right now. The one that supports the war has his grandson on the front lines with the marines in Iraq fighting the war that has been long over for some times. Gramps who hates Bush and doesn’t support the war has his grandson home (seemingly) safe at home on a homeland naval base.

Odd?

Well, I don’t know, I guess I agree. But for me, it’s stranger when I think about my cousin (who I’ve only spent time with once) being in Iraq. Now when I see the MSNBC .NET Alerts pop up in Messenger about US soldiers being killed I notice them more. I notice them when they say 5 marines killed in bombing. I’ve looked at the growing list of names, I haven’t seen my cousins yet, but 4 more years, a lot can happen.

Despite the fact I really don’t have any close ties to Andrew I can’t help but feel terribly sorry for him and every other soldier over there fighting for nothing. They serve no purpose at all except to possibly secure a few more barrels of oil which are oh so precious as the planet starts to finally run out. There’s no freedom in Iraq and there certainly won’t be any in the next 4 years. We certainly aren’t any more secure than we used to be by being in Iraq either, the only real thing to come out of Iraq will be further hatred for America and what that other half stands for. Americans are dead wrong if they think we’re somehow safer from “terrorism” than we used to be. Heck, I’m sure we’ve probably got a few more radical liberal terrorists even more pissed off since the election on Tuesday. I can only imagine the headlines when a few of them got together and decided to drive a pickup truck filled with liquid explosives to the Reagan Center while Bush and Cheney were giving their 4 more years speeches. That’s terrorism, it’s all around you, it’s not the fear of some Iraqis catching a flight from Fallujah and taking a bomb to the next football game. The only way to start the explosion of terrorism is to stop pissing other people off around the planet and promoting peace. Till then this country is screwed and any halfway insane American can just decide to make a few good pipe bombs and start blowing stuff up. Anyway, I’m getting away from what this post was about...

I really hope I get a chance to speak with Andrew once he comes back, not about what it was like over there, but if he truly believes it really mattered. Till then, good luck.

Well for me it's been a long two months, I've been steadily busy at the studio which I manage. I must have printed at least 20,000 photos in the past two months and have seen countless school kid faces from all the school event pictures of taken. I've given two businesses and an artist a corporate identity. Plus the artist's ad (Regimbal) will be in Southwest Art so in a way my work will be in there as well, kinda neat. But all in all it's been really hectic. To get out the fall school photos there were more than a few late nights. Including one massive one from 8AM all the way till 2AM with only a break for lunch preparing the massive amounts of ink and paper. I'm friends with the owner at this studio and the current arrangement is that I open the place up in the morning and am here till the end. I would say I'm the manager but there's no one else here to manage. Since the current deal is that I'm paid 40% of whatever the studio makes, in many ways I've got a personal stake in the business. It's all a bit weird really because I just fell into it. Yes I'm in love with photography just as much as computers and all things holy to geeks. But I really like taking photos and I'm not producing as much crap out of Photoshop as I was before, so that must mean something. The scary thing is... since I've got close to 7 years experience with Photoshop and seem to know more about photography than the owner here, I'm really doing 80% of the work for the business. Sometimes I worry that I'm being relied on a tad too much and when I leave she'll not be able to function. Oh yes and one last thing... If you ever ever use a Wagner Power Sprayer and decide to paint a 1600 sq. ft. room (including 5 walls and the entire ceiling) totally and completely black, place plastic over everything. I made a plastic wall and taped off the entire area but everything still got covered with paint dust and dried and everything has this black layer of yuck.

Anyway, in other news, I'm no longer a college student left behind. After weeks of thinking I wasn't accepted to any Cal State colleges because of my lower division transfer status; out of the blue I get an acceptance letter for SJSU. To be completely honest, I was really disheartened by the entire experience with Cal Poly Pomona and totally forgot all about college after what I was told. Besides, the studio was doing really well and as long as I was making 40% it was looking really really up. At any rate, I had to complete a very abrupt 180° and make plans to move to San Jose to start college as a freshman (completely losing the entire year I spent in England doing CS). Right now I've done all the financial aid crap which I honestly don't understand because of how complex things are made to be. I'm desperately looking for an apartment or room mate so I can move up there as on campus housing isn't an option apparently. I've got to head up there for a two day orientation and registration thingy in July. That'll really be the only time I have to check out the area and check out a few potential places to live. I'll most likely be moving up mid August time frame, I haven't quite decided if I'm just going to make a full on move or if I'll be leaving stuff at my Mom's place. But my gut is telling me the best thing for me would be to just find a place to live for the next 4 years and move everything all in one go. We're really only talking a bedroom of stuff and 5 computers, LOL. As for the entire freshman thing... I'm more than a little ticked off by the fact that I'm not getting credit where credit is due. I spent a huge load of cash to attend UMIST for that one year and it sure as hell is going to count for something. So my current plan is to just get in there and see an adviser after a month or so to see about getting proper credit transferred. The entire thing is a mess really because apparently Cal State rules are basically made up so that lower division transfers aren't considered at all when applying. Which, I guess, is the reason why someone just decided to consider me as a freshman. Who knows. It's all a mystery to me. The only real bonus I can see coming of this is the fact I'll be 21 and all the chicks, will be 19ish. As if I'll have any luck even with that to my advantage! LMAO. On the other hand I feel a bit weird starting all over again as a freshman at 21. Something just seems a bit odd about it all. I'll of course be applying for various internships during the summer, if not at the northern campus then at the nearby bay area campus . All other summer job offers welcome.

Because of all the real work from the studio, and the fact that I really only have around 2 - 3 hours every night to get anything done, I haven't actually gotten anything done in the past two months. The new Windows Media / Digital Media site I've been working on for a while now has just sat there collecting dust. I've got all the designs done, I just need to start work on the ASPX and CSS. Plus I'm beginning to think that I'll never get this stupid blog redone so it doesn't look so bad. Not to mention the rest of my personal site. I'll probably start bringing my laptop into the studio soon. I've also got to find a replacement for me here. I think once that happens I'll cut back and start working more on my stuff and do it from home. It would be really nice to just do that from June on-wards so I can concentrate on getting that stuff done before I head up to San Jose. It's all a bit up in the air at the moment.

But with that I get to the TechEd bits... I'll be heading up to stay with my grandma in Oceanside tomorrow and will be popping down to San Diego every morning for TechEd. I'll be there as a MVP helping out in the Community Lounge area. I'm really looking forward to the event as it'll be my first TechEd and the DVDs I received from last years event were awesome. I'm sort of wondering how this event will turn out compared to PDC. I know there isn't going to be a huge Longhorn announcement like there was at PDC (heck I'm not even going to do a countdown for TechEd, lol). But at least there'll be plenty of news about Whidbey and my most favourite product of all...! Once I get back from TechEd it'll be life after, I'll talk a little about my experience there. And most definitely get back into blogging more regularly, even if I'm doing it from the studio. Yes, I promise Jon, I'll create something to compete with your Imagery sooner rather than later (hopefully).

Anyway, with that, the Epson 7600 just finished printing another 40' of photos... Time to start cutting again .

Yes the rumors are true, I know this because ever since the Microsoftrix video was released on my website I've been disseminating information, truth and lies surrounding the next release of Windows XP. I've used all of my Borg like abilities to assimilate information from all of my inside sources at Microsoft and slowly but surely used my ESP to tip Paul Thurrott off so he could write this article Windows XP Reloaded. I deliberated for ages over who deserved the exclusive more, Mary Joe Foley or Paul Thurrott. In the end I sent my telepathic messages to both of them so as to not break my NDA by revealing the information via normal forms of communication. Paul just received them quicker so obviously he got the exclusive. But now you know. It's all one big lie, there never was or will be a Reloaded, you have all been caught up in the Microsoftrix!

I was browsing for more info on iTunes when I just happened to click through to this nice site called Tune Recycler . While the aim of it is to discourage people from using iTunes to purchase music from RIAA labels, not from purchasing and downloading music in general. I found that like so many other online political movements of sorts, it gets its message across whether or not you think it's right or wrong. It informs and helps people make up their own minds by giving them both sides to the story. Be sure to watch all of the remixed and parody Pepsi iTunes ads. While at it, pop over to Downhill Battle and learn how you can support artists with talent.

At some point during the Super Bowl adverts I noticed that the “Linux Kid” most well known for appearing in the IBM adverts also appeared in Chevy's “Soap” advert. Here's a capture from IBM's and Chevy's ad to compare.

It looks like MSN now has an IE search toolbar in beta. Somehow I don't think Google is too worried. They look like twins really, it's almost uncanny. Just compare MSN's toolbar page to Google's toolbar page. Come on Microsoft, be original .

So I've compared the two for a little while now, Google's toolbar gets the nod plain and simple MSN's search is still just way too slow and doesn't provide results like Google does. The other thing that stinks about MSN's toolbar is that the pop-up blocker is limited to only 250 URL's in the allow list and unlike Google's toolbar it doesn't let you hold down CTRL to temporarily allow pop-ups for a site.

Things I do like about the MSN toolbar. The Hotmail, Messenger, and News buttons. Messenger crashes a lot, the icon for Messenger in IE is Windows Messenger not MSN, I use MSN, so it's nice to have that handy since I always have an IE window open. I log into Hotmail a lot as well so it's nice to have a link directly to the home page so I can log into multiple accounts quicker. News goes to MSNBC which I read as much as Google's News aggregate. The highlight feature is pretty cool too and seems to work well, only a few minor bugs so far. The last thing I like are the extra search options which let you search Encarta for definitions and check the encyclopedia, stocks and companies through MSN Money, shopping, movies, and the yellow and white pages.

Granted I use TweakUI to add in searches for this stuff directly into the address bar. I just type in “dic eschew” for a definition of eschew. Or “stck MSFT” for a stock quote on Microsoft. I've got all sorts of those set up, I can look up recipes, drinks, MSDN, acronyms, the list goes on and on.

So the end result. I like both toolbars, MSN's seems promising. Ideally I'd like to combine the two. Hopefully Longhorn's IE will work well enough to neither toolbar will be necessary.

Watching the news just now it suddenly dawned on me that this north eastern storm that's going on right now could last more than a couple days and that there's a slight chance it could even last through the 10th. I wonder if it's going to affect my Continental flight from LAX to EWR (flight 16) then from EWR to MAN (flight 20). So far, most flights in and out of EWR the past day seem to be okay according to the Continental website but almost all have been delayed. I've been through a thunderstorm on a flight, I wonder if I'll be going through a snow storm this time .

I guess I'll also just say that I'll be in Manchester, England till January 8th unless something comes up around CES and I end up coming back on the 7th instead. I'll probably be lite on the blogs while I'm away but I'm sure I'll get at least a few in here or there. Oh and my webcam will also most likely be off for the duration.

Just noticed this article about CAN-SPAM over at CNet (linking to Wired as well for another view). I seriously question how viable or worthwhile a bill like this is. I think most spammers will just turn around and say this bill says we “can spam” all we want, yay, my spoon is too big, yay! Sure it'll probably help for dealing with stupid spammers and finally make some of the spammers evil methods illegal but will it help curve spam? My opinion is no, all this will do is simply move spam sending off shore. Spammers from the states will just do business with people in China and Russia. Maybe this will raise the cost of doing business for these people but it won't help the underlying problem. The entire SMTP protocol just wasn't designed to handle trust with email messages.