Eschew Obfuscation

Altairnano Batteries - 25,000 Cycles

Max Dunn — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:45:00 -0700

The electricity to power an electric vehicle costs very little – usually around 3c per mile. A bigger cost is the wear-and-tear on the batteries, which will cost 8c a mile or more.

For instance, if an electric car has a range of 75 miles with a 25kWh lithium-ion battery pack that has a life of 2,000 cycles, then the car could go 150,000 miles on the battery pack. If the batteries cost $25,000, this adds about 17c per mile to the cost of operating the car in addition to the electricity.

But what if the batteries lasted longer – much longer? Then the total cost per mile would be a lot lower.

For instance, lets say that instead of 2,000 cycles you could get 25,000 cycles out of the batteries. Maybe these batteries cost twice as much, but this would still bring the cost per mile down to about 3c per mile.

Well it appears that Altairnano might have done this. In their recently released 2007 annual report, it states that in January 2007 they completed 25,000 deep charge/discharge cycles of their batteries and they still retained over 80% of their original charge capacity.

The batteries are not cheap – it appears they are selling them for about $2,000 per kWh, about twice what other lithium-ion batteries sell for. But if they can really go 25,000 cycles in the field, it will be an exciting breakthrough!

Hydrogen 13 Times More Expensive Than Electricity

Max Dunn — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:59:00 -0700

Here is another illustration of how expensive hydrogen is. Popular Mechanics looked at how much it would cost to drive across the country in vehicles using different types of fuel. As a baseline, a car getting 33 MPG would cost $213 (with fuel at $2.34/gallon). A hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle would cost $804, while a battery electric vehicle would cost only $60!

Popular Mechanics: Fuel of the Future

Slippery Slope: Cantarell Leading the Way?

Max Dunn — Thu, 01 May 2008 10:10:00 -0700

Once everyeone realizes that oil production has peaked, the main factor on whether the world can make an orderly transition to renewable energy depends mainly on how fast production falls. If oil production falls slowly, we will be able to build up our alternative energy infrastructure with only major inconveniences. However, if it falls rapidly, dire consequences could result including recession, famine and war.

The best way to tell whether the decline will be fast or slow is to look at existing large oil fields that are in decline. If we base this on Cantarell, the news is not good.

Cantarell was the second largest producing oil field in the world. It peaked in 2004 and production fell 31% in the following 3 years. This year, it will likely decline by 18%. At this rate, production from Cantarell will drop by 80% in just 5 years.

Let’s hope that Cantarell is not indicative of the other super-giant oil fields, or the world would be in for severe trouble.

Friedman: Our Political Brownout on Energy Policy

Max Dunn — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:40:00 -0700

Thomas Friedman, author of ‘The World is Flat just wrote a very intelligent op-ed piece for the New York Times titled: ‘Dumb as We Wanna Be’. Here are some edited excerpts:

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy – this is money laundering. The idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away.
Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

NanoSolar: The Company That Might Save the World

Max Dunn — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:44:00 -0700

Yesterday, I shook the hand of the man whose company might just save the world.

He is Martin Roscheisen, CEO of NanoSolar. He alluded that they are producing solar panels at about $1 per watt with a complete system cost of $2 watt when installed in municipal scale of 1MW to 50MW. This is about the same cost as a coal-fired power plant!

Furthermore, their panels can be installed at the rate of 1MW per day, and need 5 acres per MW, which means a municipal sized system of 50MW can be installed in about two months. This contrasts with coal-fired plants that can take 4 years or more to build.

Drawbacks? Their German plant is producing only about 420 MW of solar capacity per year and their San Jose plant which will open in 2009 will produce about the same. While this is very high by normal PV standards, it would help the world greatly if this went up by several orders of magnitude.

Just think – instead of building more coal plants we can start building clean solar power systems at about the same cost!

Feed-in Tariffs

Max Dunn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:27:00 -0700

Wind power can now produce energy as cheaply as coal, about 5c per kilowatt hour (kWh). Solar power is almost to the point where it can produce energy at the marginal electrical rate of about 10c kWh. So with oil prices over $100 barrel, natural gas prices doubling, and all the concern about CO2 and other noxious emissions from coal plants, why aren’t more wind and solar projects being built?

GreenVolts Seminar

Max Dunn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:59:00 -0700

Last night I attended a seminar put on by the Going Green! meetup group and the speaker was Craig Lewis who is VP Government Relations with GreenVolts. GreenVolt’s goal is to “deliver power to utility companies at fossil fuel costs”.

Craig talked a little about the GreenVolts product, which is a concentrating solar collector system with advanced tracking and is designed to be interconnected at the 12kv distribution level in sizes ranging from 1 to 20 mega-watts (MW). However, his main topic was “Accelerating the Transition to Smart Energy.” His conclusion was that to make alternative energy sources take off, the government needs to shift the subsidies paid to oil companies into long-term feed-in tariffs, i.e. requiring the electric companies to buy power at a set price for the next 10 to 15 years. This would allow alternative energy projects to have a guaranteed return and thus enable them to get long-term financing.

While Craig wouldn’t divulge the cost of their system, he did say it was about half of a typical flat-panel installation, so I am guessing that the cost is about $4 per watt, which would mean they could produce power at less than 9.5c per kilowatt, which is the rate they would be selling it to the utilities.

He also threw out some other interesting numbers:

Their system requires 3 acres per MW or 100 MW per square mile, which is a higher power density than other systems
Oil imports comprise more than half of the U.S. deficit
Oil companies received about $17 billion last year in subsidies while solar industry only got $200 million.

Here are the complete notes:

RAV4-EV 146,000 Miles and Still Going

Max Dunn — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:33:00 -0700

RAV4-EV owners have a very high level of satisfaction with their electric cars. In particular, they pleased that their RAV4-EV NiMH batteries are still going strong past 100,000 miles and are only showing signs of slowing down when they start approaching 150,000 miles. As Avi Shai reported on the RAV4-EV mailing list:

Mine is at 146,037 miles. It sure is showing signs of advanced age.
The maximum SOC I see, after full charging, is around 92%. The volt meter movement is almost directly coupled to the accelerator paddle. Even moderate acceleration causes the needle to deep precipitously close to the yellow range. Going uphill is a risky business and I try to stay in the right lane and go slow (60-65 mph) otherwise I get a visit from the turtle.
The car still fatefully does the job it was intended to, and it takes me through my 90+ miles daily commute with no problem (charging at both ends).

So even though Avi’s batteries are definitely worn down, they still get him to work and back, which is a commute of over 90 miles. And this is on battery technology that is over 10 years old. With real-world experience like this, who can still say that battery technology isn’t ready yet to support electric vehicles?

Cost of a Solar Nation

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:36:00 -0700

How much would it cost to build a solar nation? Here are some interesting numbers:

The IEA estimates that it will take a worldwide investment of $5.4 trillion dollars in oil exploration and development in order to meet the demand for oil in 2030, if oil usage continues to grow at its current rate. Since the U.S. uses about 25% of the worlds oil, our cost would be about $1.35 trillion.

Scientific American estimates that if we provide less than a third of this amount as a subsidy – $420 billion – then we can build a solar collection, storage and distribution system that would provide 69% of America’s electricity and 35% of it’s total energy by 2050.

So, can anyone say that building a solar nation is too expensive?

Solar Concentrators Below $1/watt

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:58:00 -0700

Today I went to an interesting Energy Seminar at Stanford. The speaker was Scott Elrod who works for Parc and studied Applied Physics at Stanford. He was talking about a product they are working on called the SolFocus which is a concentrating solar collector and their hope is to get this down to $1/watt. Here are the notes from the talk:

NOVA Car of the Future

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 08:29:00 -0700

Last night, NOVA broadcast an interesting and informative show about cars of the future. It includes segments on ethanol, biofuels, hydrogen, plug-in bybrids and electric cars. You can watch it online at:

NOVA – Car of the Future

China's CO2 Explosion

Max Dunn — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:02:00 -0700

China has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s biggest contributor to CO2 emissions, and a new study shows it growing much faster than expected.

Previously, experts put growth at 2.5% to 5% per year, but the real rate may be 11%, according to a new study. If this is the case, then between 2000 and 2010, the increase in China’s CO2 emissions will be more than 5 times greater than all the reductions that were expected under the Kyoto Protocol.

(From BusinessWeek, March 24, 2008)

Hydrogen Fueling Station: 10 Times Less Efficient

Max Dunn — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:21:00 -0700

A new $3.2 million hydrogen fueling station opened in Sacramento last week that has 80kW of solar PV panels are used to produce the hydrogen, so it won’t use any outside energy. Let’s take a look at how efficient this is:

SOLAR OUTPUT:

80 kW * 5hrs = 400 kWh per day

WITH FUEL CELL CARS:

400 kWh / 65 kWh per kG (Stuart Energy) = ~6 kG per day (AT 5000 PSI)
6 kG * 45 miles per kG = 270 miles per day
100,000 miles per year

WITH ELECTRIC CARS :

400 KWH * 3 miles per kWh (RAV4 EV) = 1200 EV miles per day
438,000 miles per year

Considering the solar array probably cost probably cost around $10/watt, or $800,000 out of $3,200,000, the hydrogen “refueling station” cost approximately $2,400,000.

If that money had been used to build $2,400,000 of solar installation plus $800,000 of EV chargers – about 240 kW of solar and 160 EV charger stations – enough for well over a million miles per year (80 cars worth) instead of just a hundred thousand hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle miles (8 cars worth). So the hydrogen fueling station is only 10% as efficient as building solar recharging stations for battery electric vehicles.

(From RAV4-EV Digest, Vol 58, Issue 12, comment by William Korthof of EESolar)

Cost Breakdown of a Gallon of Gas

Max Dunn — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:49:00 -0700

With gas prices spiking up, it is interesting to look at the breakdown of the cost of a gallon of gasoline.

A barrel of oil holds 42 gallons. So if oil is at $100 per barrel, a gallon would cost about $2.40. Refining the oil adds another $0.35 and taxes about $0.65 (in California). Add another $0.10 for distribution, marketing and profits, and you have a gallon of gas costing $3.50.

Using these same numbers, if oil goes to $200/barrel, a gallon of gas will cost almost $6!

How Not To Hire

Max Dunn — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 09:16:00 -0800

The other day, I was talking to my friend Bill Keller about the best way to hire people. He mentioned that it was important to have a defined company culture and to hire people that fit in with that culture. I thought this was a good idea. We also agreed that the normal process of interviewing people across a desk was almost worthless and only proved whether people had interviewing skills, but not whether they had the necessary job skills.

Another thing we agreed on was that most people will only hire people that are not as good as they are. Generally this is a self confidence issue because people worry that the person they hire could take over their job.

I certainly have fallen into this, in particular in a job a had right before I graduated from college. I had to hire a programmer to continue my work while I went home to fulfill a summer obligation. I was very conscious to hire someone that was good, but not too good so that I would have a job when I got back!

So if this is how most people behave, what happens when you allow a large group of people to decide who to hire? You end up with someone that is less capable than everyone making the decision!

So while it is good to involve other people in the hiring process and get their feedback, the worst thing to do when hiring someone is to do it based on the consensus of a group.

Surfline's April Fools Joke?

Max Dunn — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 14:23:00 -0800

The Surfline report said this morning about 38th Street:

Pretty much flat this morning

and about Pleasure Point

Maybe you could get up on a longboard but its pretty desperate.

Well Mark and I went anyways and were rewarded with a fantastic day of surf. For the first 40 minutes, we were the only two out at 38th Street. Then a few other people came, but it never got crowded. The waves weren’t big, lots of 2 and 3 foot waves, but they had nice shape and Mark and I caught a ton of waves and had a great time practicing walking on the board. The water was still a little cold, but the sun was out and the weather was nice and warm. I am not sure if Surfline meant this as an April’s Fool joke, but the bad report sure kept away the crowds and made it a fantastabulous day for us!

Trouble In Tibet: Rumors and Facts

Max Dunn — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 14:48:00 -0800

It is amazing how distorted a story can be when you hear only rumors about it. For instance, it was my impression that the recent trouble in Tibet was caused by the Chinese cracking down on the Tibetans, and this was also the impression of several people I talked to. But then I read “Trashing the Beijing Road” in the March 22nd, 2008 edition of The Economist and got quite a different picture.

It turns out that it wasn’t the Chinese security forces that started the trouble – the Tibetans started rioting after hearing rumors that the police beat a couple of Buddhist monks. The Tibetans smashed into non-Tibetans shops, pulling merchandise from the stores and lighting it on fire. Many Han Chinese were quick to flee, otherwise the death toll might have been much higher than the 13 people the government reported were killed by rioters, mostly in fires. Shops owned by Tibetans were marked with traditional white scarves – almost every other one was wrecked. During the night, fire trucks were sent in, backed by armored personnel carriers with riot police, to put out the biggest fires. But the police did not immediately move into the alleys where rioting continued for a second day.

Overall, the efforts of the security forces appeared relatively measured. Rather than going in with guns blazing, which was the tactic used in the last outbreak of anti-Chinese unrest in Lhasa in 1989, they chose to let the rioters vent their anger, then gradually go in several days later. The government’s decision not to declare martial law showed its concern about the Olympics, since the Olympic flame is due to arrive in Lhasa on June 20th.

While the rioting was started by the Tibetans, the Chinese government is not completely blameless. The surge of spending in Tibet and the region’s high growth rate has been seen as benefitting mostly the Han Chinese. Tibetans also resent the hardline tactics of Tibet’s party chief – a Han – who is seen as harassing the Tibetans and stepping up the official criticism of the Dalai Lama. Nonetheless, whether or not it was true the the monks were beaten, it was the Tibetans that started the riots and the security forces that showed restraint.

So here is an example where the real facts of a story were quite different from the initial impression. We should all keep this in mind when hearing rumors and wait for the full story before making any judgments.

CUSD Teachers' Raises

Max Dunn — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 05:51:00 -0800

Previously we looked at Cupertino Union School District (CUSD) teacher’s compensation. What about salary raises? Over the last 7 years, the CUSD teachers have received a cumulative raise of 38%:

2006-2007 8.39% increase in salary
2005-2006 5.00% increase in salary
2004-2005 3.07% increase in salary
2003-2004 0% (district funding was cut mid-year 1.2% during this year)
2002-2003 2.04% increase in salary
2001-2002 3.87% increase in salary
2000-2001 11.02% increase in salary

Reference: Negotiation Questions from the Community II

Boarding Pass Shiraz 2005

Max Dunn — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:46:00 -0800

Anyone can walk into a wine store and spend a lot of money to get a good bottle of wine. However, for my wife and me the fun part about buying wine is trying to find a good wine for less than $20 – preferably less than $15. These are not easy to find, and we end up with a lot of wine that is fine, but not great.

That is why we were very pleased to find that the Boarding Pass Shiraz 2005 was a really nice wine for about $15. It has a high alcohol content at 15.7%, but the fruit was not overpowering and it has a particularly nice herbal undertone. My wife is not a big Shiraz drinker, but she also enjoyed this wine, so that means it must be good!

Only Locally Grown Food After Peak Oil?

Max Dunn — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:33:00 -0800

Many peak oil people envision that after oil becomes scarce, civilization will revert back to the way it was 100 years ago. In particular, they feel that large, centralized farms will not be viable and that only locally grown food will be available. I believe otherwise. I think that centralized farming is much more energy efficient than a multitude of local farms and will continue to supply the bulk of our food.

This was reinforced by some statistics I saw that showed that out of the total energy needed to produce and prepare food, only 14% was related to transportation of that food. Since this is a small percentage of the total energy usage, and electric vehicles could make this even more efficient, you can’t make an argument that transporting food is going to be the main problem after peak oil

(From University of Michigan: Food Fact Sheet)

Cupertino Teacher's Compensation

Max Dunn — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 06:31:00 -0800

Most people assume that teachers make very little money. In some parts of the country, this is very true. However, in the Cupertino Union School District in California (CUSD), teachers are paid some of the highest salaries in the country.

For instance, a first year teacher starts at $51,071 per year. After 7 years, they can make $62,321. After 15 years, it jumps to $80,836. (These last two salary brackets require additional semester units be completed.)

What about work hours? Their contract requires teachers to work 6.75 hours per day (7.25 hours with a 30 minute lunch) for 187 day s a year. However, teachers will often spend more time preparing lesson plans, having parent conferences, coaching a team or working on a school play. So let’s assume most teachers work a 40-hour week. But teachers only work for 187 days a years, less than the average of 225 days that most Americans work.

This means that teachers work about 20% less days. Factoring this into their salary gives the equivalent (using the figures above) of about $61,000, $74,000 and $97,000 respectively.

Reference: CUSD Teacher Salary

Zapino Battery Report - 1000 miles

Max Dunn — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:18:00 -0800

I have put over 1,000 miles on my Zapino since we got it last August, and I was wondering if I needed to get a battery management system (BMS) to keep the batteries going as long as possible. So today, after a pretty long ride where the indicator started to dip into the red, I took off the covers and checked the voltage.

The batteries were labelled:

Electier
Danwant Silicone Power Battery
6-DW-38Ah (12V38Ah)

Before charging, the voltage on all 5 batteries was between 12.58V and 12.61V. During charging, it was from 14.5V to 14.9V. Then about 30 minutes after charging was done, they were between 13.52 and 13.54V. This is very close and within specs, so it looks like the batteries are doing fine and don’t need a BMS, at least for now.

Farting Along With Air Cars

Max Dunn — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:32:00 -0800

I was trying to explain to my wife how an air car worked, and with a smile on her face she said “So it farts as it moves forward?” Well maybe that sums it up nicely.

But do air cars really make sense? The information from the manufacturers seem like they are the solution to our energy crisis, and to everything else too [1]. But there are several fundamental problems with air cars.

Will Canadian Oil Sands Save Us?

Max Dunn — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 20:04:00 -0800

There is a lot of oil in Canadian oil sands. So it is easy to believe that even when OPEC’s production starts to fall, Canadian oil sands can make up the difference. However, the problem is not the amount of oil – the problem is separating the oil from the sand which is a slow and resource intensive process.

According to the Master’s thesis of Bengt Söderbergh [1], natural gas availability is likely to limit oil sands production in the long term to about 3.6 million barrels per day (mbd).

David Hughes, a geologist with Natural Resources Canada, believes that the peak will never exceed 2.5 mbd due to natural gas, water, diluent and infrastructure constraints. [2]

For comparison, the U.S. uses 22 mbd and worldwide demand is 86 mbd. So it is unlikely the Canadian oil sands will be able to ever provide a significant amount of the world’s oil.

Saudi's Admit Peak Production?

Max Dunn — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:02:00 -0800

Last weekend, the Saudi Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi said, “From now there’s a line below which prices won’t fall.” Further, he added that the Saudis have no plans to expand oil production beyond the 12.5 million barrels per day it hopes to have by 2009.

This statement could be the first real admission by the Saudis that they can’t pump as much extra oil as they previously claimed, and a real sign that they have reached, or are close to, peak production.

What is Web 3.0?

Max Dunn — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:08:00 -0800

Even while we continue to work on and define what Web 2.0 really is, many people have started to ask what is next; what is Web 3.0? Here is the answer: Web 3.0 is when all the Web 2.0 applications can start working together.

Independent Summary For Policymakers (ISPM)

Max Dunn — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:07:00 -0800

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the scientific body that researches climate change for the United Nations (UN) and released their Fourth Assesment Report (AR4) in 2007. There are numerous experts participating in the IPCC, and a lot of good science is contained in these reports.

However, there is a big problem with the summary that is included with the IPCC report – the Summary For Policymakers (SPM). This summary is not written by the scientists themselves but by unnamed bureaucratic delegates from the participating countries. As such, they tend to oversimplify and bias the actual results contained in the full report.

So I found that the Independent Summary For Policymakers to be more balanced and representative of the actual report than the SPM itself. The ISPM was prepared by qualified experts, but who were not themselves IPCC chapter authors. The ISPM was subject to expert review and the reviewer’s responses are tabulated so there is a clear record to the extent that the reviewers agreed or disagreed with the ISPM.

Electric Vehicle Battery Costs Per Mile

Max Dunn — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:44:00 -0800

When companies talk about electric vehicles costing pennies per mile in electricity costs to operate, they are being truthful. However, with current battery costs and lifetimes, the battery replacement cost in an electric vehicle will be more than the electricity cost. Let’s look more closely at this.

What is a "Moped"?

Max Dunn — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:07:00 -0800

After my stop yesterday by the policeman who thought my electric Zapino scooter was a motorcycle and I shouldn’t be riding in the bike lane, I decided to try to find out more information about what California Motor Vehicle law says about this. I found this interesting “Motorized Bicycle Instruction/Application” from the DMV site that defines a “motorized bicycle” (also commonly known as a “moped”):

Having two or three wheels
Fully operative pedals or powered solely by electric power
Maximum speed of 30 MPH on level ground
Automatic transmission and a motor with less than 2 gross brake horsepower

The first two requirements are easily met, and for the third, Zap states that it can only go 30 MPH, but the Zapino actually can go a bit faster. Regarding the fourth point it does have an automatic transmission but the 3000 watt Zapino motor puts out about 4 HP, which exceeds the maximum 2 HP allowed for a motorized bicycle.

Based on this, the Zapino is close to being a motorized bicycle, but not quite since it has more power than is allowed. However, since most people want know the conversion between watts and HP, it is not obvious whether the Zapino is a motorized bicycle or not.

Scooters in the Bike Lane?

Max Dunn — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:36:00 -0800

A cop just pulled me over on my scooter. I was riding in the bike line – like usual – and there was a bicyclist in the lane so I swerved around him. The cop saw this and said that since I was riding a motorcycle, I shouldn’t be in the bike lane. I explained that the manufacturer stated that it was a moped since it couldn’t go more than 30 MPH and it was all electric and so I should be riding in the bike lane. He said that I was probably going about 35 or 40 MPH (which is probably true) and that I should be riding just outside of the bike lane. However, he seemed a little unsure once I explained that the scooter was electric, so just gave me a warning.

However, this brings up a good question: should electric scooters ride in the bike lane or just outside of it? What is the maximum speed that we should go in the bike lane? In the California Motorcycle Handbook 2007 it says on Page 3:

You may ride a moped in a bicycle lane at a reasonable speed.

So is 30 MPH a “reasonable” speed to ride in the bike lane, or is this too fast?

Rails Conference Picture

Max Dunn — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:23:00 -0800

My friend Will Leinweber just pointed out that on the Rails Conference site this year, there is a picture from last year of my shaggy head! Half of Will is there too on the right, and Wido is partially obscured on the left. What a crack up!

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Ready, Fire, Aim

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:35:00 -0800

I was having breakfast with my friend Bill Hyatt the other day, and we were talking about how important it is for startup businesses to have a very narrow focus, but also to be flexible about new opportunities. Bill called this “Ready, Fire, Aim”, which I found amusing.

However, this reminded me of the first business I started, Micro System Designs. I started this business with the idea that it would be cool to write software to backup a hard drive onto floppy disks using a disk auto-loader, because it was such a pain to have to keep changing the disks by hand when backing up a hard drive. I developed the software and got a little bit of interest, so then I needed to duplicate the disks. At that time, the duplication software that worked with an auto-loader cost around $500 and there was no way that I was paying that, so I wrote a duplication program myself.

It then turned out that my backup program wasn’t doing very well, but there was a lot of interest in my duplication program. Voila! I changed directions and had a successful business.

So I do believe that a startup should have a very narrow focus but be willing to change it when a better opportunity presents itself – just like Ready, Fire, Aim.

Bike Riding for Errands

Max Dunn — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:30:00 -0800

I should ride my bike more. It is good exercise and saves the environment. However, I don’t like to ride my bike on everyday errands.

I was reminded of this today when I got new tires for our car. Like usual, I threw my bike in the back and rode home after dropping off the car. It isn’t far, about 2.5 miles, but I was hot and sweaty when I got home. I was smart this time and brought a piece of string to wrap around my pant leg. Usually I forget this and wind up getting chain oil on my pant leg.

When the car was ready, I rode back to the shop to pick it up, and I was a bit tired.

So it certainly worked out fine to ride my bike, but it isn’t something that I would normally do. Also, for the same reasons, I don’t think we can expect many Americans to forgo their cars and start doing a lot more bike riding either. Good thing I have my electric scooter to scoot around on!

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) Cure and Theory

Max Dunn — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:51:00 -0800

I had my first bout of chronic fatigue in 1983. Back then, it was thought to be Ebstein Barr virus and I had to drop out of school for 6 months to get back to the point where I could function. Since then, I have continued battling my chronic fatigue and found something that has allowed me to control it – Vitamin C.

If I take 1000 mg of timed release Vitamin C sometime before going to bed (9 pm seems to work well) and then wake up at 2 am and take another, I can get a good night’s sleep. Otherwise, I usually wake up at 3 or 4 am and can’t go back to sleep for at least 2 hours and then will be exhausted the next day.

Skinny versus Healthy

Max Dunn — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:32:00 -0800

When my kids ask if they are too fat or too thin, I tell them not to worry about their body shape or size. Instead, I tell them to eat healthy, get plenty of exercise and sleep, and let their body do whatever their body does.

Hydrogen Powered Vehicles are Not Viable

Max Dunn — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:46:00 -0800

Regardless of what Bush thinks, hydrogen powered vehicles are not a viable alternative.

First off, hydrogen is not something that can be “mined”, but instead must be produced using other energy sources [1]. With current technologies, electricity from hydrogen fuel cells is four times more expensive than electricity from the grid [2]. Secondly, hydrogen is very difficult to ship and store. Leave a hydrogen car at the airport for two weeks and half of the fuel will be lost due to evaporation [2]. Thirdly, while hydrogen fuel cells are clean, currently hydrogen fuel cells are costly to produce and fragile [3] and only about 50% efficient [4]. Lastly, hydrogen is not very dense so cars would need to have a tank 2-3 times larger than their gasoline tanks [3].

With all things considered, it doesn’t make sense to power cars with hydrogen; instead, just put batteries in the car and use the electricity directly.

References:

Cantarell Field Decline

Max Dunn — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 17:10:00 -0800

Back in 2004, there were four oil fields in the world which produced over one million barrels per day. Ghawar, which produced 4.5 million barrels per day (bpd), Cantarell in Mexico, which produced nearly 2 million bpd, Burgan in Kuwait which produced 1 million bpd and Da Qing in China which produced 1 million bpd [1].

However, Contarell hit its peak in 2004 and has been in decline ever since. In 2008, it is expected to produce about 1.4 million bpd [3] and continue to decline at a rate of about 14% [2].

The Cantarell field provides 60 percent of Mexico’s total production. Mexico is the second largest supplier of oil to the U.S. [3].

This is another indication that the world-wide supply of oil will soon fall below demand.

References:

[1] Trouble in the World’s Largest Oil Field-Ghawar
[2] Cantarell Field
[3] Peak Oil is Now Official

Oil Depletion Levels in Ghawar

Max Dunn — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:24:00 -0800

The Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia is by far the largest oil field in the world accounting for more than one-half of all oil production in Saudi Arabia. It was discovered in 1948 and has been producing 5 million barrels of oil per day for the last 10 years [1]. However, many believe that Ghawar has passed its peak [2][3][4].

Here is another detailed and technical analysis of the oil depletion levels of Ghawar by Stuart Saniford [5]:

Depletion Levels in Ghawar

While much of this information is very technical and difficult to browse through, the pictures that show how much of Ghawar is now filled with water graphically illustrates the problem. Saniford shows:

“The northern half of Ghawar is quite depleted.”

and

“In particular, Saudi oil production has been falling with increasing speeed since summer 2005, and overall, since mid 2004, about 2 million barrels of oil per day in production has gone missing. That’s 2.5% of world production.”

Battery Electric Vehicle User Experiences

Max Dunn — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 10:10:00 -0800

Ron Freund, past Chairman of the Electric Auto Association, took a survey of 116 RAV4 -EV owners to see how they liked driving a battery electric vehicle (BEV) in general, and in specific, how their experience with the RAV4-EV has been. This is a great reference for anyone interested in how a BEV performs in the real-world. Some of his conclusions are:

Users frequently commented that the RAV4 has been the best car they ever owned
The RAV4-EV dependability is remarkable
The technology is working, no more research is needed
It is a tragedy that the choice for BEVs does not exist in the market today

Living with a BEV: A Survey of User Experiences

My Global Warming Beliefs

Max Dunn — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:36:00 -0800

I have been reticent to publicly state my beliefs about global warming for a few reasons. One is that some of my friends are global warming believers and I don’t want to offend them. Another is that the global warming movement has gained so much momentum that it has becoming a core-belief of our society and to speak against it often makes a person seem crazy.

But the time has come for me to state my beliefs, and here they are:

Many parts of the world are experiencing rising temperatures or other climate changes
Man’s activities are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere
This increased CO2 is contributing in part to climate changes
The effects from man’s contribution to climate change will not be as bad as many claim

On the other hand, I do believe that peak oil is going to be a gigantically huge problem and will be a major inflection point in the development and lifestyle of all civilization on this planet.

Conveniently, the actions to reduce CO2 are almost exactly the same ones that will help with peak oil. So I don’t mind riding the global warming train for now since it leads to the same place eventually!

Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G)

Max Dunn — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:20:00 -0800

What is with this vehicle-to-grid (V2G) stuff? Why is everyone so excited about it? I already showed how using batteries to store energy at night when it is cheap and then use it during the day doesn’t make sense economically¹.

However, this is only part of the picture. It turns out that electricity generation is very complicated, in large part because there is no real storage on the electrical grid. Think about this: what happens when the power plants on the grid don’t produce enough electricity? There will be brownouts or blackouts, both of which are bad. But what happens when they produce too much electricity? Where does it go? Well, actually, since there is no real storage on the grid, it can’t go anywhere, so this is bad.

Electricity usage also changes a lot during a day. In California during the summer time, demand for power peaks about 50 GW and then goes down to 26 GW at night². Also during the day there are wiggles in the usage as people wake up, go to work, then come home, etc³. It is the job of the ISO to match power product to power demand very precisely.

But this is not easy. A large coal-fired power plant can take several hours to come up to full power. It is also not easy or quick to adjust the amount of power it produces, and producing anything less than the maximum amount of power is not efficient. Gas fired power plants can come up more quickly, usually within 30 minutes and are more easily controlled. So in order to smooth out the power produced by these “base” power plants, the ISO uses peak power reserves, spinning reserves and regulation⁴.

Peak power is used for just a few hundred hours in the summer months when it is really hot and everyone has the air-conditioner on. This can be anticipated fairly well so coal and other slow starting power plants will have time to come up to speed. For faster response, spinning reserves are plants that are running but essentially idling (usually natural gas) that can be turned up or down within 10 minutes. But this is still to long to adjust for all the little corrections needed throughout the day. For this, they use regulations services.

Regulations services are those power sources that can be adjusted up or down within seconds. It is used to smooth out all the little bumps and valleys in the demand-supply curve and usually is needed for just a few minutes at a time, and is sometimes called for 400 times per day⁴. And here is the kicker: for just standing by to provide regulation services, the ISO will pay $0.02 per kW-h (that is a kW capacity that is standing by for 1 hour) for up-regulation and the same for down-regulation⁵_⁸. So for most houses that have a 15kW electrical drop and use their car only 10% of the time, you have the potential to make almost $390 per month by providing regulation services⁷! Also, unlike using batteries for backup power that will deep discharge them, the short energy discharges that regulation services require allow batteries to last much longer. So there is some depreciation cost from this, but not too much. So the overall income that can be expected from providing vehicle-to-grid servers is about $2,500 per year⁶. Not bad!

¹ Can Battery Backups Make Money?

² The CAFE Formula

³ California ISO: Today’s Outlook

⁴ Vehicle-to-Grid Power: Battery, Hybrid, and Fuel Cell Vehicles as Resources for Distributed Electric Power in California (Page 4)

⁵ Vehicle-to-grid power fundamentals: Calculating capacity and net revenue (Table 2)

⁶ Above, Section 6.3

⁷ 15 kW x $0.4/kW x 24 hours * 30 days/month x 90% = ~$390/month

⁸ Frequency Regulation Basics and Trends (Page 7)

Are Buses Bad for the Environment?

Max Dunn — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:05:00 -0800

It is common knowledge that buses are energy efficient, right? I mean shouldn’t we all ride the bus rather than drive a car? Well a study looked at this more closely and found out something interesting. Here are some figures for passenger miles per gallon (PMPG) for various forms of transportation:

Light rail – 120 PMPG
Trolley bus – 104 PMPG
Commuter rail – 86 PMPG
Intercity rail – 66 PMPG
Car, average trip – 44 PMPG
Transit bus – 33 PMPG

Wow, look at that: city buses only get about 33 PMPG – this is even less than a normal car with 2 people which gets 44 PMPG! I guess to be more green, we should all avoid the bus and drive our cars instead. :-)

Reference: Comparison of Energy Use & CO2 Emissions From Different Transportation Modes

Which Alternate Energy Vehicle is the Most Efficient?

Max Dunn — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:33:00 -0800

There are several better energy alternatives to power cars than using gas. The top ones are hydrogen, air or battery. However, it turns out that there are big differences in the efficiencies of these technologies. For 100MJ of input electricity, this is how far each of these cars could go: [18]

133 km: Lithium-ion battery vehicle
46 km: Compressed air car
42 km: Fuel cell vehicle

So it turns out that battery electric vehicles are 3 times more efficient than either compressed air or fuel cell vehicles!

Can Battery Backups Make Money?

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:12:00 -0800

I don’t have a lot of confidence in PG&E. It seems that every time we have a big storm, our power goes out. Once, it took 3 days for them to get the power back on! So I have been considering installing a battery backup system for my house to get through these power outages.

If I install a battery backup system, I was wondering if it would be profitable to charge up the batteries at night when electricity costs are low, at $0.05/kWh, and then use it during the day when electricity costs are high, at $0.11/kWh to $0.29/kWh [9]?

Oil Usage

Max Dunn — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:29:00 -0800

What do we use all our oil on? Here is a breakdown from the year 2000:

From: DETAILED BREAKDOWN OF U.S. PETROLEUM USE

In summary, cars use about 41%, trucks 13% and planes 7%. So if we want to reduce the amount of oil we use, then reducing our transportation usage will be effective, since transportation comprises about 60% of all oil usage.

Strangely, Power Company Rebates Make Sense

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 17:17:00 -0800

It seems awfully strange that a company that sells power would subsidize compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) that use less energy, and give rebates for energy efficient appliances. This would be like Starbucks giving awards to people who cut down on their coffee drinking! But even though this seems strange, power companies trying to cut power consumption actually makes sense.

Hot Tub Energy: Electric vs Gas

Max Dunn — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:38:00 -0800

Nowadays, if you are looking to install a hot tub, your only option is likely to be a hot tub that heats with electricity. The salesman will tell you that they are very well insulated (which they are) and that it will only cost about $30 per month of electricity to heat it (which is possible but optimistic.) Let’s look at the math and physics behind this.

MythTV Trial

Max Dunn — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 09:15:00 -0800

Several weeks ago, my Windows Media Center started having problems. TV playback would stutter and the CPU was pegged at 100%. After looking for solutions on the web, I deinstalled all codecs and then reinstalled NVidia PureVideo. Now TV and DVD’s wouldn’t play at all! Since I was tired of continually hassling with Media Center, I decided to finally give the Linux based MythTV a try.

The Trouble with Lithium

Max Dunn — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:39:00 -0800

It turns out that lithium is not very abundant or easy to mine, and that the price is going up. In this paper, the author even argues that there is not enough lithium available in the world to convert all cars over to plug-in hybrid (PHEV) if we expect to use lithium batteries in them:

The Trouble with Lithium – Implications of Future PHEV Production for Lithium Demand

Lithium Silicon Nanowire Battery - 10 Times As Much Energy!

Max Dunn — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:16:00 -0800

An revolutionary new technology is being developed by Stanford researcher Yi Cui that could could generate 10 times more energy from lithium-ion batteries. The trick is that instead of using carbon anodes, they use silicon nanowires because silicon can hold large amounts of lithium atoms. The nanowire technology allows these small wires to swell to four times their normal size without breaking. [1]

When Cui’s paper was originally submitted six months ago, they had only achieved 30 charge-discharge cycles. Since that time however, Cui’s team has pushed the battery through 1000 cycles. [2]

Ultimately, these batteries should be cheap to build. However, they are probably 5 years away from being commercialized. [3]

In reality though, the “10 times more energy” figure is just the theoretical charge capacity increase in the silicon anode, so a real production battery won’t see that much improvement. But even if it improves the overall energy density of a lithium ion battery by 2 or 3 times, that would still be very significant.

[1] Nanowire battery can hold 10 times the charge of existing lithium-ion battery

[2] New Nanowire Battery Life Reaches From iPods to Electric Cars

[3] GM-Volt.com: Interview with Dr. Cui, Inventor of Silicon Nanowire Lithium-ion Battery Breakthrough

Antarctic Cooling

Max Dunn — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 19:31:00 -0800

In my son’s 7th grade social studies class today, he was given an article that discussed how the warming of the Antarctic was melting ice sheets and reducing the population of some penguin colonies. However, while the breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf was unexpectedly rapid, the Antarctic as a whole has actually had stable or decreasing temperatures and the overall ice pack has probably been growing. Even the IPCC recognizes this by stating:

“Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show interannual variability and localised changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming refl ected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region.” [1]

Another source confirms that:

“it is also clear from satellite data that surface temperatures decreased during the years 1982 through 2002” and “the Antarctic ice sheet had gained enough mass between 1992 and 2003 to slow sea level rise at a rate of about 1 cm/century” [2]

And one source states:

“over the past four decades, and during the time of the greatest build-up of greenhouse gases, Antarctica has been cooling!” [3]

These observations in no way disprove global warming in general. However, they do clearly show is that climate change is very complex science and that you can’t draw simple or universal conclusions based on it.

[1] IPCC AR4 Summary for Policymakers (Page 9)

[2] Is Antarctic climate changing?

[3] Antarctica: Warming, Cooling, or Both?

Food versus Fuel - Which Wins?

Max Dunn — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:04:00 -0800

Here is a very long and detailed analysis of food-based biofuel production and how it could cause problems with the food supply:

Fermenting the Food Supply

The scary point about this article is that it illustrates how profitable it is to make biofuel when oil prices are high and how this could lead to devastating consequences if we have a bidding war between the gas tanks of the roughly one billion middle class people on the planet, and the dinner tables of the poor.

Better Storm Drain Filters to Make the World a Better Place

Max Dunn — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:44:00 -0800

Do you know what would make the world a better place? Better storm drain filters! While this wouldn’t be as dramatic as solving AIDS or world hunger, clogged storm drains cause a surprising amount of damage. This point was made evident by the recent storms in California where clogged drains caused many road closures, flooding and water damage. We live in an advanced society where technology has solved many problems – why can’t we develop better storm drain filters that are able to filter out leaves and debris and still allow the water to flow through? Solving a simple problem like this would greatly reduce the economic storm damage in urban areas and make the world a better place.

Primitive Electrical Distribution in the US

Max Dunn — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:58:00 -0800

We like to think that we live in an advanced society where the miracles of technology provide a high quality-of-life. However, the recent storm in California proved what a primitive electrical distribution system we have.

This storm was nothing special; it didn’t have hurricane power winds or particularly spectacular lightning. It was just a run-of-the-mill winter storm that we expect every year or two. Yet it was able to knock out electric power for more than 1.6 million people, of which 420,000 people still didn’t have power after a few days.

It is not hard to see why our power system is so antiquated – just look up in any neighborhood. There you will see power lines strung on poles, the same as they were a hundred years ago. This system is very fragile and will continue to break down in high winds and lightning strikes. We do have a better solution – bury the electrical cables underground, which will make them impervious to these common elements of nature. But we live in a fairly backwards country where we would rather suffer through losses of power every year and frantically send out crews to fix problems after they occur rather than spend the money to solve the problem once and for all.

Cheap Solar Panels to Save the World

Max Dunn — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:22:00 -0800

Nanosolar announced that is is starting to ship its thin-film solar panels that cost less than $1 per watt! Could these panels save the world?

Maybe, but Nanosolar is being very tight about information, citing patent concerns:

“Technical Data Sheet? We presently share product data sheets only under Non-Disclosure Agreement with qualified volume customers. This is so we can extend the period of protection for certain proprietary features we have developed.”

Their first 12 months of production is already sold out and is going to commercial installations, so maybe it isn’t efficient enough to put on a house. But there was one tidbit where Nanosolar’s CEO said they could produce about as much energy as the a silicon wafer.

It also received Popular Science’s Green Tech product of the Year award

Solar vs Coal: Who Wins?

Max Dunn — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:09:00 -0800

A new solar power plant just opened up at Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada [1]. Currently it is the largest solar photovoltaic system in North America with a capability of 14 megawatts (mW) of peak power, and producing about 25 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year [2].

However, it cost $100 million to build, which is about $7,000 per kilowatt (kW). This is a lot more than a coal-powered plants which costs about $3,000 per kW to build [3]. But since the sun is free and coal-powered plants have to pay for the coal, shouldn’t this make up for the additional cost of solar systems?

It turns out, that it doesn’t. To see why, let’s look at the numbers.

Electric Vehicles Produce a Lot Less CO2

Max Dunn — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 09:35:00 -0800

When I talk about how clean electric vehicles are, people sometimes ask if they really do reduce greenhouse gases since burning coal to produce electricity creates a lot of CO2. My standard answer to this question is that even in the worst case, electric cars are twice as clean as gas powered cars. However, while reading an article in Forbes about vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems. I realized that in general, electric cars are much cleaner than even this.

This article had an interesting chart that said electric cars produce about 1.1 tons of greenhouse gases a year while gas powered cars produce 6.3 tons – over 6 times more! Let’s see if we can verify these numbers.

The average car is driven 15,000 miles per year and electric vehicles normally get 4 miles per kWh, so it takes about 3,750 kWh of electricity a year to power an electric car. In California, the mix of electricity production produces about 0.6 lbs of greenhouse gases per kWh so this would produce 2,250 pounds, or 1.1 tons of greenhouse gases – right on the money with the Forbes chart.

A gas car, on the other hand, produces about 1 lb of CO2 for every mile driven (based on producing 20 lbs per gallon and getting 20 mpg). So 15,000 miles would produce 15,000 lbs of greenhouse gases, or about 7.5 tons – which is more than the Forbes estimate of 6.3 tons (maybe they are using a higher mpg).

So electric cars are even cleaner than I had thought, producing about one sixth as much greenhouse gases as a gas car.

War in the 21st Century

Max Dunn — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:53:00 -0800

War in the 21st century is going to be all about oil – including what wars will be fought over as well as determining the ability to wage war.

Analysis: China’s fuel oil reserves

Peak Oil Prediction

Max Dunn — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 10:34:00 -0800

I haven’t written in my blog yet about peak oil, although my friends and family have certainly gotten an earful. I will be writing more about it in the future, but for now I wanted to put a stake in the ground and publish my prediction of worldwide peak oil. Here it is.

I believe that worldwide our demand for oil is now passing our total possible production which will lead to sporadic shortages and continuing price increases. (Of course there will be ups and downs along the way, but this will be the overall trend.) In concrete terms, I believe that sometime before the end of 2011 oil will hit $200 a barrel, gas will cost $7 a gallon and there will be times when we won’t be able to get gas to fill our cars.

There it is, my peak oil prediction has now been published.

Sources of Scientific Bias: Both Money and Beliefs

Max Dunn — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:03:00 -0800

When trying to discredit a scientist’s work, critics sometimes simply note: “They received funding from XYZZY corporation.” It is interesting that often nothing more is said, as if it is apparent that taking any money from a party with a vested interest will inevitably skew the results. This seems like a pretty harsh position, but there is some basis to this claim.

For instance, new research looked at drug studies and found that while the results of the study were not likely to be biased, the conclusion from those results were. In particular, they found that studies funded by a single drug company have a 55% rate of favorable results that is transformed into a 92% rate for favorable conclusions, representing a 37% gap. The gap shrinks to 21% (57% to 79%) when two or more drug companies provide support. Yet the gap vanishes entirely for studies done by non-profit institutions alone or even in conjunction with drug companies. These findings suggest a disconnect between the data that underlie the results and the interpretation or “spin” of these data that constitutes the conclusions.[1]

So it is apparent that receiving funding from a particular source that has a vested interest in the outcome will likely affect the conclusion of a study.

But are there other biases besides funding sources that can affect the results or conclusions of scientific work? What if a researcher isn’t taking any outside funding but has a passionate belief about what they are researching – will this affect their work as well?

Global Temperature Reconstruction

Max Dunn — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:43:00 -0800

The global temperature graph that appears in An Inconvenient Truth and also the one that the IPCC uses is usually referred to as the Mann or MBH98 graph.

However, this temperature reconstruction is controversial. One of its problems is that it doesn’t show the Medieval Warming Period or the Little Ice Age (LIA).

More recently, Loehle put together another temperature reconstruction that doesn’t use tree rings and this reconstruction does show the MWP and LIA.

Beliefs and Global Warming

Max Dunn — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:36:22 -0800

When talking to people about religion, you have to be careful. Many people don’t want to hear facts or ideas that contradict their point of view; they are only interested in hearing things that reinforce what they already believe.

This same phenomenon also happens when talking about global warming – most people have their minds made up on this issue and aren’t willing to consider any evidence that would challenge their beliefs.

When to Buy an Electric Car?

Max Dunn — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:09:00 -0800

That is the question – whether to buy a low-speed electric vehicle now, or wait for a high-speed electric vehicle later? Here are the factors I am looking at:

What type of transportation do I need?
When will high-speed electric vehicles really arrive?
How much will they actually cost?
When will the severe oil shortages start?
Will there be subsidies for electric vehicles?

The short answer is that I am going to buy a low-speed NEV now and wait for later to buy a freeway capable electric car. Here is the long answer:

Blogging

Max Dunn — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 09:08:53 -0800

Blogging would be more fun if it didn’t feel so much like I was talking to myself. :-)

Presidential Candidate Discussion

Max Dunn — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 12:49:00 -0800

What makes a good president? Who should we vote for in 2008? Neither of these are easy questions. In this blog entry, J.R. Tozer and I will debate these questions and hopefully come up with some interesting insights.

Avoid Spam - Don't Use Simple Email Addresses

Max Dunn — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 07:08:00 -0800

When choosing an email address, it is often tempting to use just your first name or last name like lisa@mycompany.com or smith@mycompany.com. Don’t do it!

The problem with these simple email addresses is that spammers often use directory harvest attacks to find new email addresses to send spam to. In these attacks, they try using all sorts of different email names to see if any go through. Here is an edited portion of my mail log file that records these attacks:

...
Oct 28 01:51:26 <barker@testcompany.com>... User unknown
Oct 28 01:51:27 <barnes@testcompany.com>... User unknown
Oct 28 01:51:28 <barnett@testcompany.com>... User unknown
Oct 28 01:51:29 <barrett@testcompany.com>... User unknown
Oct 28 01:51:30 <bates@testcompany.com>... User unknown
...

Black Canyon Kayaking

Max Dunn — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:30:00 -0700

As we were flying to Las Vegas to go kayaking on the Colorado River, Suzanne and I were thinking about how many times we have taken a trip by ourselves without the kids. The answer was three times – and every one of them was because J.R and Eileen invited us to go someplace, with the implicit understanding that the kids were not invited!

While we love going places with our kids, we really appreciate that they invite us on these trips so that we get to spend some time with adults, to reconnect with each other and to have some fun. And this trip was definitely a great time!

After flying to Arizona, J.R. and Eileen picked us up at the Las Vegas airport and then we drove to Boulder City to spend the night. The next morning, we drove down to Willow Beach to pack the kayaks and launch. The trip was put on by Jen of Aqua Adventures and she did a great job. There were 13 of us total, and we enjoyed everyone’s company. (Later, I was informed that unlike power boaters, ALL kayakers are nice people. ;-) )

She's Geeky Unconference

Max Dunn — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:30:00 -0700

A friend of mine, Kaliya Hamlin, is putting on the She’s Geeky unconference in October 2007 for women working in technology and is using MaxWiki to run the conference.

This event is designed to bring together women from a range of technology-focused disciplines who self-identify as geeky. The goal is to support skill exchange and learning between women working in diverse fields and to create a space for networking and to talk about issues faced by women in technology.

The True Cost of Carbon Offsets

Max Dunn — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:29:00 -0700

There is a growing interest in buying carbon credits to offset our carbon footprints. However, there is evidence of widespread failings in the market for carbon offsets. Some of these failings include:

Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.
Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.
A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

In addition, many carbon offset projects don’t pay for the whole cost of CO2 removal projects they just kick in a little money and claim all the carbon credit of the project. Is this really going to significantly reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Grocery Shopping on the Zapino

Max Dunn — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:26:00 -0700

Today, I went grocery shopping on our electric Zapino. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to fit all the groceries in the basket and under the seat, so I took a Trader Joe’s bag too and planned to hold it between my feet. However, it turned out that I didn’t have any problems. Here is what I bought:

Large powdered Gatorade
2 – Boxes of cereal
Half gallon milk
Quart of goat’s milk
Jar of mayonnaise
2 – Tamales
Frozen fish
Asparagus
French rolls

As you can see from the pictures, they all fit in nicely! I definitely could have squeezed a few more things in, and then could have filled up the shopping bag and put it between my feet.

Designing Web Sites That Look Good Everywhere

Max Dunn — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 13:25:00 -0700

There are three main issues to consider when designing web sites that will look good to the widest number of visitors: monitor size, OS/browser and colors.

Monitor Size

First, no-one uses 640×480 anymore, so this should not be considered. Next up only about 8% of users have 800×600 displays. The biggest group is 1024×768 which accounts for about 50% of user’s displays. At the 1280×1024, we have about 17% of the users. The rest, about 25% have higher resolution displays.

What this means is that to design for the widest group, web pages should be displayable on a 800×600 display, but can be optimized for best viewing on a 1024×768 display.

Keep in mind though, when thinking about the design is that it is hard to read long lines of text and that narrower web pages are often easier to read. Also, when users scan web pages, they look in an F-shaped pattern: first along the top and then the left side. So having a wide page with a lot of important information on the right side will likely not be effective.

Zapino Charging

Max Dunn — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 08:02:00 -0700

After running the Zapino battery all the way down last night, I put the charger on it with the Kill-A-Watt meter to record how much power it would take to recharge. The charging rate started at about 360 watts and then increased to 400 watts. The total power consumed was 2.68kWh.

This is an interesting number and does make sense since the battery pack is rated at 2.28kWh (60v-38ah) and you would expect that there are some losses when charging. Sealed lead-acid batteries typically can be up to 95% efficient and chargers are typically 90% efficient, so combined these numbers lead to the total efficiency we measured of 85%.

Another useful fact about charging is that for every hour that the scooter is being charged, you are adding about 4 miles to the range. (Based on the charger putting out 400 watts, and the Zapino using about 100 wh/mile.) So, for instance, my wife works part time at an office about 18 miles away. So if she is there for 4 1/2 hours, the Zapino will be completely recharged.

Zapino Range

Max Dunn — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 19:01:00 -0700

After the excursion with my wife today where we traveled about 20 miles, I went to go pickup my son at the pool which was a little over 5 miles away. I was still taking it easy in economy mode and staying around 25 mph. However, I did go through the neighborhood where there were a lot of stop signs. Coming back home, we got about 3 miles away and the range indicator starting to drop into the yellow when we accelerated. At 2 miles it was dropping into the red, so I started driving 15-20 mph. At about 1 mile away, the engine cut out because the indicator dropped below the road while accelerating. Coasting to a stop, I turned off the key and back on again and was able to continue. I then starting going really slowly, about 10 mph. The engine cut out a few more times, but we made it home. So i consider that we fully utilized all the available range.

Total distance today 31.2 miles. Not bad!

Zapino Excursion

Max Dunn — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:02:00 -0700

Last Wednesday, after weeks of looking around at electric scooters, we finally bought a Zapino and love it! Today, Suzanne and I took a little excursion around town to see if it could carry both of us and to see how the battery would hold up on a longer trip.

The first thing you should know is that it was hot in San Jose today, getting up to 94 degrees. Riding the Zapino was nice because the breeze cooled us off. However, we were worried that it would overheat because we were pushing its 282 lb weight limit with our combined weight of 275lbs. (And no, Suzanne forbids me to break out our weights separately. ;-)

Since we were just out cruising, we were using the energy saving mode which limits the top speed to 30mph. Most of the time, this is plenty fast, but I did kick it into high-speed mode several times going down Highway 9 to Los Gatos.

The Diagnosis light was flashing its 2-3 combination which means that it is overheating, but I just ignored it and kept going

We stopped at a store and looked around for about 5 minutes. When we got back on the Zapino, the overheat protection kicked in and it made us go really slow. This was probably because after stopping, there was no more wind to cool off the controller and it was so hot out anyways. This slow speed was fine since we only needed to ride a block. We then got off again and walked around for about 20 minutes before getting back on the scooter, at which time it had cooled down.

Going home, we continued to take it easy but the “overheating” warning starting flashing again very soon. This didn’t seem to make any difference, although our top speed was a little lower, around 25 mph in the energy saving mode. Just for fun, right before we got home I put it back into high-speed mode and it sped right up past 30 mph, no problem.

I realized on this trip that the diagnosis light is a little annoying. In order to read the flashing codes, you have to look at it continuously for about 5 seconds, which is very dangerous while driving.

Our total outing ended being about 20 miles and the charge indicator was only about halfway down in the green. So we have now confirmed that driving conservatively with a heavily loaded bike can take you at least 20 miles on the Zapino.

Suzanne and I really enjoyed our little excursion on the the Zapino!

Road Trip Vacation

Max Dunn — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:15:00 -0700

We didn’t plan a big trip this year so instead, we got in the car and drove. We ended up spending some time in Newport Beach, Las Vegas and San Diego. Here are the things we enjoyed most about the trip:

Eating hamburgers and fries at In-N-Out
Frozen yogurt in San Luis Obisbo
Riding the eGo electric scooter in SLO
Eating lunch on the cliffs in Laguna Beach at Las Brisas
Shopping for surf clothing at Jacks in Newport
Buying cupcakes at Sprinkles
Surfing all over
The wave pool at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas
Seeing the Blue Man show
Sleeping in
Hanging out at the beach in San Onofre
Paige’s Craft Corner at San O
Maxie getting coffee at Startbucks
Seeing baby Mitchy

Migrations With Referential Integrity

Max Dunn — Tue, 15 May 2007 11:11:00 -0700

Migrations don’t come with referential integrity directives, best as I can tell. There are some plugins but it appeared to me (ok, after only a brief review) that they were more focused on adding referential integrity for rails object hierarchies (:belongs_to etc.), so that seemed both overkill and insufficient for what I needed to do.

But it turns out that an “execute” statement in the migration lets you issue sql directives directly.

create_table "dvectors", :id => false, :force => true do |t|
  t.column "length",      :integer, :default => -1
  t.column "fvector",     :binary
  t.column "document_id", :integer, :default => -1
  t.column "total_size",  :integer, :default => 0
end
add_index "dvectors", ["document_id"], :name => "document_id" 
execute "alter table dvectors add constraint `dvectors_fk` " +
        "foreign key (`document_id`) references `documents` (`id`) on delete cascade"

(Submitted by Wido Menhardt)

Initial Subversion (SVN) import

Max Dunn — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 09:31:00 -0700

If you are using the SVN command line, here is a trick that makes it easier to import your files into Subversion. The problem with the usual method is that after importing your files, you have to check them out to a different directory, rather than continuing to work with them in the same location. This methods avoids that problem:

Last Minute Kauai (literally)

Max Dunn — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:05:00 -0700

(Suzanne) If you know me, I’m the one that has to research everything for months before making any kind of big purchase. Trips, on the other hand, can be a different story. Don’t get me wrong, I still love doing research for certain destinations, but there is some sort of thrill that I get out of being spontaneous—this trip being one of them!

Automatically starting Apache with chkconfig

Max Dunn — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 07:44:00 -0800

It is interesting that Apache 2.2 doesn’t include a startup script that is compatible with the Linux ‘chkconfig’ command. Here is how you fix this:

First, add this information to the top of /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl:

# chkconfig: - 85 15
# description: Apache is a World Wide Web server.  \
#              It is used to serve HTML files and CGI.

Then change to /etc/init.d and do:

sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl httpd
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --add httpd
sudo /sbin/chkconfig --level 2345 httpd on

That’s it! Now Apache will start when the computer starts up.

MySQL Recovery

Max Dunn — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 08:57:00 -0800

We had a bad crash yesterday on our MySQL 5.0.22 database. Our guess is that we ran out of hard disk space during a large transaction and the database somehow got corrupted. Worse, restarting MySQL didn’t clear the error, but continued to have the problem. Luckily, we could still read from the database so we were able to do a current backup which allowed us to recreate the database and re-import the data. Here are the steps we used:

In my.conf use:
innodb_force_recovery = 6
(or lower) to bring the database up.
(See http://www.mysql.org/doc/refman/5.1/en/forcing-recovery.html)
Dump the tables. For example. to dump the ‘maxwiki’ table use:
mysqldump - mysqldump --database maxwiki -u (username) -p (password) > maxwiki.sql
Repeat for all other tables
Shut down the database
Move all files out of /usr/bin/mysql and put elsewhere

Re-init with:

  mysqld_safe --user=mysql
  mysql_install_db --user=mysql
  mysqladmin -u (username) password '(password)'

Reload all the tables from the sql files
Reset the users

Setting up Subversion 1.4 with Apache 2

Max Dunn — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:50:00 -0800

I like Linux, I really do. That is one reason why I got a Mac last year and also why I host my web sites on Linux servers. However, for all the talk about Microsoft’s DLL Hell, it is nothing compared to Linux Dependency Version Hell. Those of you that have tried installing new versions of software on Linux know what I mean. Whenever you upgrade one piece it causes a cascading effect of having to upgrade lots of other pieces. And sometimes there is a problem with the latest version of a library so you have to use an older version. Now if you have something like apt-get, yum or urpmi, it can help a lot by installing all the needed dependencies for you. But once you venture outside the official versions, it will take a long time to get everything right.

Take for instance, what should be a straightforward task of getting Subversion 1.4 (SVN) working with Apache 2. Of course, you don’t have to have these working together because you can use svnserve by itself. But this only lets you set access control for the whole repository, rather than the finer grained access you get going through http, and you also need to add all svn users to Linux, which is problematic. So to get the advantage of having Subversion working through Apache using http, I spent a day figuring it out.

In the end, the procedure turned out to be fairly straightforward and to save others the pain I went through, here is the trick:

Use the Apache apr and apr-util libraries when making Subversion.

On a standard install, you will probably have libapr-1.so and libaprutil-1.so in both /usr/local/apache2/lib and /usr/local/apr/lib and maybe even /usr/lib. If you configure Subversion with the defaults, it will find the apr libraries in /usr/lib. And if they are not the exact same version as in /usr/local/apache2/lib, there won’t be any errors but when you try to access the repository, you will get error messages like:

Could not fetch resource information.  [500, #0]
Could not open the requested SVN filesystem  [500, #2]
Internal error: Can't open file '/var/svn/format': No such file or directory

So the best thing is to delete all the libapr* files everywhere but /usr/local/apache2/lib and then configure Subversion like this:

./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apxs \
--with-apr=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apr-1-config \
--with-apr-util=/usr/local/apache2/bin/apu-1-config

After that, you should be able to follow the Subversion/Apache setup instructions with no problems.