Using the OS X Audio Check application, I was able to play various frequencies at different volumes. I determined that I am able to hear up to 18,200Khz at 0dbv (approximately 100db). The normal human hearing range is is 20hz – 20,000khz for perfect ears. Considering that I’m 35 and have been in noisy orchestra pits for my whole career, and that I use my ears in my job all the time, not to mention that I have noisy hobbies like woodworking and flying small aircraft, I’m very happy with this performance. Maybe I should do an informal recheck every year?
Note: if you decide to use this software to check your hearing, make sure your speakers are up to the task. My cheap little Harman/Kardon computer speakers can’t reproduce anything above 16,000Khz. My professional JBL studio monitors handle everything up to 20,000Khz.
More about hearing here.
November 20, 2004
Hearing Check
Phones
Erin and I have decided to drop AT&T as our cellphone carrier. We’re looking at upgrading phones and downgrading plans. Currently, we spend $100/month for both phones. We each have 400 minutes anytime, and free nights/weekends (starting at 8pm). Basic Nokia phones.
T-Mobile is offering a “family plan” where we will share 400 anytime minutes with free nights/weekends/holidays, but any calls to each other or to any other T-mobile customer are free. As 80% of my cell calls are to her, we think this will be fine. The phones are much better too. We’re each getting one of these. They take pictures, vibrate, color screen, limited internet, mp3 ringtones, etc, etc, etc, etc. The phones cost $50 after rebate and the plan only costs $49. I’ll be dropping my home office number and porting it over to the cellphone, so even though the phone purchases and account activations are costing us $170, we’re saving $70 per month.
Oh, and once this is all squared away, we’ll probably switch our normal home phone to Vonage. We should see a $20/month or so in savings. All told, we’ll be saving over a thousand dollars per year, and getting better service and better phones. Take that AT&T.
Talking with the T-mobile guy at Fry’s, he said that he doesn’t even have a home phone and the legacy POTS companies are running scared.
iTunes
Weird. I bought $9 of music through iTunes four days ago, and am just now getting the invoice via email. You’d think there would be less of a lag time between buy and invoice. Wonder why?
Time Enough
“The UK National Physical Laboratory has a new atomic clock potentially 1000 times more accurate than current cesium clocks: to within 1 second in about 30 billion years! This could lead quite soon to a new definition of the second, and in a while to improved resolution in GPS successor systems. More interestingly, there are theories that some of the universe’s fundamental dimensionless constants may have changed by a parts in a million over the last 10 billion years or so. These clocks are so accurate that they should be able to detect these changes over a year.”
Mouse in the House!
Talking with Erin today in the kitchen. Movement out of the corner of my eye. A mouse about 6″ long (not including tail). He got into our birdseed and hid behind the fridge. Got the traps out. Erin’s not too happy with inhumane traps, but likes the thought of a mouse chewing on her toes even less. 
November 19, 2004
November 18, 2004
One Point Twenty One Gigawatts!!!!
Not really, but Seagate has shipped something almost as big. The new 400GB hard drive (story here). I get a kick watching the size of hard drives go up. It’s a monthly reminder that we’re living on the steepening part of Moore’s curve.
My first computer had a 40 meg hard drive. I remember when my college roommate talked about getting a “gig for a grand”, then I paid an extra $500 for an added 4.5 gig hard drive (UWSCSI, of course). My current computer cost me just over $1300 and has 250 gb spread over three hard drives. Last week the largest single-unit hard drive was 250 gig. With the introduction of this 400 gig monster, we’ve increased in capacity, in one generation, by the first, oh 40 years of drive capacity combined. That’s cool.
So what’s the average drivel going to be like in five years? 1 terabyte? 2? 5? What about 10 years? Will storage become so cheap and easy as to be essentially limitless? Or will we move off the end of the charts to a paradigm that renders the current concept of local storage obsolete? The future’s fun to speculate about.
Okay, I’ll make some quick off the cuff predictions in 5 and 10 year increments.
5 years:
Largest consumer hard drive size: 4tb
Average (installed) computer consumer HD size: 2tb
Average installed RAM: 6GB
Average screen size: 24″. CRT’s will still be around, but almost none will be sold with new machines
Average chip speed: 8ghz. yup, only 8, although the process of multicoreing will increase the apparent speed, I’ll bet that 8Ghz is as high as it gets… not much higher than the current 4ghz. We’ll see 2, then 4 chips put on high-performance machines, but the state of technology will keep chip speeds close to where they are now. Why do I say this? Talking with some folks in the industry, I’ve discovered that we’re almost at the mhz speed limit now, and engineers are going to start looking other places for speed improvements.
Bandwidth: same as now. Even though it’s technologically possible, I don’t see ISP’s decreasing prices or upping bandwidth without a sufficiently motivating economic force. I.E. the jerks will keep overcharging us for pitifully slow speeds, while countries like S. Korea put faster and faster pipes into consumers’ homes for next to nothing.
10 years:
largest consumer HD size: 15tb
average installed hd size: 8tb
average installled RAM: 10gb
average screen size: 24″ still, and no crt’s available, unless you REALLY want one (hey, you can still buy vinyl records). I think two feet is about the biggest that the average person will want, due to physical desk sizes and user interface considerations. We don’t all want repetitive stress injuries from moving the mouse across a forty foot screen now, do we?
Chip speed: in 10 years, I’ll guess that chip speeds will top out around 12ghz… that’s only three times what the fastest are currently. I know, I know, think outside the box, Jason! What about Moore’s law? I still maintain that engineers will hit a wall sooner than we think. Computers will continue to get faster, but it’ll be through putting more cores on one chip.
bandwidth: in ten years, twenty bucks will buy you 10 megabit download and one megabit up.
I don’t predict that drives will get much bigger as the average consumer won’t be able to fill the capacity unless HDTIVO’s get built into all our computers. Then maybe 15tb might seem small. As it is, I’ve currently got the biggest music collection of all my friends (over 10,000 songs), ripped at the highest MP3 quality levels, and it only takes up 80 gig. Heck, I do audio recording for a living and don’t throw anything away and I still have 40 gig free. I’d love to see the killer app that will require the average drive to be more than 15,000 gigabytes (that’s fifteen TRILLION bytes Giles! 
, but I just can’t think of it.
Oh, and cellphones will have 100 gig of storage, prompting some really interesting capabilities. Like what if your cellphone stayed connected to your home computer via high speed wireless all the time and used the computing resources of your home machine to do its tasks? Cool things could happen.
Other predictions: interfaces won’t be substantially different. The vast majority of users will still use some minor variation of desktop/folder/drive navigation that’s been with us since 1984 (twenty years now!).
Handheld computers will be as powerful in 10 years as the average desktop is today. Some sort of portable color display, whether projection or worn (like these glasses) will be common, but the screen will be embedded in the glass and the signal will be wireless. Joy! Being able to read anywhere is a dream of mine. Full-time high speed wireless connectivity anywhere you can currently get a cell signal. Lower speed wireless in rural areas.
Scientists will continue making progress in computer/brain control, though these products will remain in the domain of medical research and for those with true disabilities. Voluntary augmentation won’t start until 2020 or so.
So there’s my predictions. Very conservative on the speed/capacity fronts, a bit more speculative on bandwidth and portability. Most people overestimate what can be done in the short term and underestimate what can be done long-term. As I see it, it’s impossible to tell where “short-term” ends and “long-term” begins, so I tend to be a bit of a pessimist. At least I live in a state of constant technological surprise.
So what are your predictions?
One Hit Wonders
I was talking with Erin about so called “One-Hit Wonders”- bands that were popular for a very short period of time based on the success of a single song. We were trying to name a few and couldn’t come up with many, so I wanted to post to the blog here and see if readers could remember any. Comments, please?
Marine Story
Via Powerline:
This is one story of many that people normally don’t hear, and one that everyone does.
This is one most don’t hear:
A young Marine and his cover man cautiously enter a room just recently filled with insurgents armed with Ak-47′s and RPG’s. There are three dead, another wailing in pain. The insurgent can be heard saying, “Mister, mister! Diktoor, diktoor(doctor)!” He is badly wounded, lying in a pool of his own blood. The Marine and his cover man slowly walk toward the injured man, scanning to make sure no enemies come from behind. In a split second, the pressure in the room greatly exceeds that of the outside, and the concussion seems to be felt before the blast is heard. Marines outside rush to the room, and look in horror as the dust gradually settles. The result is a room filled with the barely recognizable remains of the deceased, caused by an insurgent setting off several pounds of explosives.
The Marines’ remains are gathered by teary eyed comrades, brothers in arms, and shipped home in a box. The families can only mourn over a casket and a picture of their loved one, a life cut short by someone who hid behind a white flag.
But no one hears these stories, except those who have lived to carry remains of a friend, and the families who loved the dead. No one hears this, so no one cares.
This is the story everyone hears:
A young Marine and his fire team cautiously enter a room just recently filled with insurgents armed with AK-47′s and RPG’s. There are three dead, another wailing in pain. The insugent can be heard saying, “Mister, mister! Diktoor, diktoor(doctor)!” He is badly wounded. Suddenly, he pulls from under his bloody clothes a grenade, without the pin. The explosion rocks the room, killing one Marine, wounding the others. The young Marine catches shrapnel in the face.
The next day, same Marine, same type of situation, a different story. The young Marine and his cover man enter a room with two wounded insurgents. One lies on the floor in puddle of blood, another against the wall. A reporter and his camera survey the wreckage inside, and in the background can be heard the voice of a Marine, “He’s moving, he’s moving!”
The pop of a rifle is heard, and the insurgent against the wall is now dead. Minutes, hours later, the scene is aired on national television, and the Marine is being held for commiting a war crime. Unlawful killing.
And now, another Marine has the possibility of being burned at the stake for protecting the life of his brethren. His family now wrings their hands in grief, tears streaming down their face. Brother, should I have been in your boots, i too would have done the same.
For those of you who don’t know, we Marines, Band of Brothers, Jarheads, Leathernecks, etc., do not fight because we think it is right, or think
it is wrong. We are here for the man to our left, and the man to our right. We choose to give our lives so that the man or woman next to us can go home and see their husbands, wives, children, friends and families.
For those of you who sit on your couches in front of your television, and choose to condemn this man’s actions, I have but one thing to say to you. Get out of your recliner, lace up my boots, pick up a rifle, leave your family behind and join me. See what I’ve seen, walk where I have walked. To those of you who support us, my sincerest gratitude. You keep us alive.
I am a Marine currently doing his second tour in Iraq. These are my opinions and mine alone. They do not represent those of the Marine Corps or of the US military, or any other
______
I have a tremendous amount of respect for our soldiers fighting overseas. I think that most Americans, regardless of political persuasion, feel much the same as I do, so it distresses me to see what has been going on in the media these last few days. Armed terrorists who cut off the heads of innocents are proclaimed “minutemen” and “freedom fighters” by some of our own citizens. Then these same citizens demand that these terrorists receive the utmost legal protection and innocent-until-proven-guilty consideration under our own laws. But when a US soldier fails to render all possible aid at all possible times, when the bullets are flying and hidden bombs are almost certain, these soldiers are dragged through the media mud and decried as killers. It’s disgraceful.
You Though You Had It Bad
According to news.interactive.com (link here), Bill Gates is the world’s most spammed man. You can bet that only a very, very small proportion of the 4 million emails he receives every day are legit. Hmm… I wonder how many are offers for him to save money by refinancing?
Of course, he has a whole department to filter his emails, so what does he care? I also wonder what his super-secret email address is? (richguy@microsoft.com?)
Fool Me Not
Check out this recent ebay auction. Look like a good deal? Now look at the last line of the description.
November 17, 2004
Rolf
My friend Rolf has some good thoughts on corporate America, tolerance, and red/blue state hysteria here.
Farewell Tivo, We Hardly Knew Ye
No, our personal Tivo is working just fine, thanks, but if this article is correct, some of the joy of using Tivo will soon be diminished. To wit:
By March, TiVo viewers will see “billboards,” or small logos, popping up over TV commercials as they fast-forward through them, offering contest entries, giveaways or links to other ads. If a viewer “opts in” to the ad, their contact information will be downloaded to that advertiser — exclusively and by permission only — so even more direct marketing can take place.
And before certain people defend this practice as innocent because it’s opt-in and entirely voluntary, consider this:
Perhaps even more significant is TiVo’s new role in market research. As viewers watch, TiVo records their collective habits — second by second — and sells that information to advertisers and networks.
So where do I go to tell Tivo to lay off selling our viewing habits? Can’t? Oh.
TV-free life is getting closer all the time.
N. Korea
Something weird is going down in North Korea. Hey Patrick, I wonder if Kevin knows what’s going on?
November 16, 2004
FatBurger
I looked with horror at Krystal’s B.A. Burger over on Pat’s site. Then I saw the Monster Thickburger from Hardees. 1420 calories and 107 grams of fat.
At least with the Krystal B.A. Burger (“big @ss?”) there’s truth in advertising. Is that what you get after you eat a few? Of course, Hardees may be trying to communicate the idea of a Monster Coronary.
November 15, 2004
Shop Talk
I needed a quick and cheap project for the shop and settled on building a cabinet for the wall above the table saw. One piece of Ash plywood and some walnut and maple scraps was all it took to make the 2x4x1 cabinet. I even got to experiment with a new door technique (floating panel in cope/stick doorframe). I learned a lot and got the whole thing built in 10 hours. Now it’s on to the finishing stage. I’m using the old familiar Tried and True danish oil finish. It’s a great finish, but takes loads of elbow grease when you apply it to thirsty plywood like ash.
I’ll post pics when it’s up.
I’ve Been (almost) Everywhere
So where have you been?
create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide