Monthly Archives: August 2007

mobile phone charger

A friend of mine from UCSD, Derek Lomas, and some other folks who have migrated to India for the time being have put together this sewing machine mobile phone charger. Since a lot of folks have sewing machines, but many don’t have electricity, they hacked together this device that charges your mobile phone to about [...]

phd comics strikes a chord

This couldn’t reflect any better how I’m feeling right now! (a link to this comic and others) Hoping for a low p(in my pants) value…

“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” — Bill Gates, 1981

With my poster session looming, I haven’t had time to write a real blog entry in a while. Hopefully this will do for now:
Whether or not these quotes are true, they are quite interesting (and entertaining)! Yes, it is difficult to recognize a good idea, especially one ahead of its time.
—————————————————
“Man will never reach the [...]

environmental impact of the internet

Second Life has a non-negligible environmental impact! This article from Treehugger reports that the average Second Life avatar consumes as much electricity as the average Brazilian! Daily energy requirements for Second Life’s 4000 servers, hosting ~12,500 avatars at any one time, total 60,000 kilowatt-hours, or 4.8kWh per avatar. Annualized, avatars consume 1,752 kWh, which is [...]

ads in exchange for free ink cartridges

PARC is exploring a new business idea.
The basic premise is that through a free, downloaded printer driver, you earn credits towards free ink cartridges in exchange for printing small coupons, discounts, and ads in the margin of your printed documents. Each time you print, the printer driver will give you the option to print using free ink (and thus [...]