Jean-Marc Skopek

Little things

It’s the tiniest features that make a product shine in my eyes.

I recently discovered that a brand new Macbook Air can use the same charger as a six year old, first generation vanilla Macbook. This is something that you’ll never see in a feature list or promotional video, but it sure put a smile on my face the first time I discovered that.

A lot of my favorite things have become just that through little, hidden features. A Breville toaster oven doesn’t start its countdown timer until it is fully preheated. My Volvo disables the door locks when doors are opened, making it impossible to lock the car with your keys inside.

On the flip side, I’ve noticed that some minor flaws can lead to massive frustrations. A Nexus S android phone running GPS will drain power faster than a car charger can provide it. This feels like a minor enough issue, until you find yourself in the middle of nowhere in a car running on fumes, desperately alternating between charging your phone and trying to figure out where you are. Six months later, and I still haven’t gotten over my hatred of Samsung.

2 days ago |

Space

Russia’s Vostok space program was responsible for several ‘firsts’ for Russia; the first manned flight, space walk, and the first human to die in space. Each flight seems to have an interesting story;

Aleksei Leonov, the first astronaut to conduct a space walk:

Though Leonov was able to complete his spacewalk successfully, both that task and the overall mission were plagued with problems. After his 12 minutes and 9 seconds outside the Voskhod, Leonov found that his suit had stiffened to the point where he could not re- enter the airlock. He was forced to bleed off some of his suit’s pressure, in order to be able to bend the joints.

I’m amazed at how young the crew was - most were in their early 20s - and how comfortable they seemed to be entering unproven aircraft that they knew were plagued with problems. That ability to ignore fear is what makes Formula One drivers so unique.

The two crewmembers subsequently experienced difficulty in sealing the hatch properly, followed by a troublesome re-entry in which malfunction of the automatic landing system forced the use of its manual backup. The spacecraft was so cramped that the two cosmonauts, both wearing spacesuits, could not return to their seats to restore the ship’s center of gravity for 46 seconds after orienting the ship for reentry and a landing near Perm. The orbital module did not properly disconnect from the landing module, causing the spacecraft to spin wildly until the modules disconnected at 100 km.

The delay of 46 seconds caused the spacecraft to land 386 km from the intended landing zone in an inhospitable part of the Ural Mountains, in Siberia … The two men were both familiar with the harsh climate and knew that bears and wolves, made aggressive by mating season, lived in the taiga; the spacecraft carried a pistol and “plenty of ammunition”. Although aircraft quickly located the cosmonauts, the area was so heavily forested that helicopters could not land. Night arrived, the temperature fell to below -22 degrees Fahrenheit, and the spacecraft’s hatch had been blown open by explosive bolts. Leonov and Belyayev had to strip naked, wring out the sweat from their underwear, and redon it and the inner linings of their spacesuits to stay warm. A rescue party arrived on skis the next day with food and hot water, and chopped wood for a fire and a log cabin.

Russia also developed and tested a lunar lander - the LK - which never saw the face of the moon because of launch issues.

1 month ago |

Coal

There’s a great article over at grist on the state of coal energy.

40% of the world’s energy is generated by coal, even though the advances in alternative energy are rapidly reducing the economic benefits.

A group of activists are trying to get the US to switch away from coal power generation by 2030, and it looks like their efforts are producing results. Serial investor Warren Buffet has canceled plans to develop 9 new coal plants, and across the nation plans for 117 other plants have been stopped. CoalSwarm is a wiki outlining the steps anti-coal activists are taking to cancel the creation of new plants, and it’s a pretty interesting read.

The efforts of these activists may not be neccessary, however. The combined amount of electricity generated by all US coal plants has stagnated around the 330 gigawatt mark for the last 15 years. In 1987, coal accounted for 57% of energy usage. Now, it’s only around 45%. In the meantime, natural gas and alternative energy plants have been going up like wildfire. In the last year alone, new wind farms added 18 gigawatts of energy to the US’s total output.

1 year ago |

Prefab housing for Haiti

A number of companies are starting to come out with innovative new solutions to help rebuild devastated regions of the world. Andres Duany’s attempt is wind and earthquake resistant, quick and easy to build, light, and cheap. Plans are in place to set up a factory in Haiti in the coming weeks

(via jetsongreen.com)

1 year ago | Tags: environment

Earlier today Macmillan announced DynamicBooks, their newest push into online publishing. As usual there’s a ton of PR surrounding the announcement, but there are two things that stand out for me:

1. Prices for textbooks will drop to around $50 in an effort to stem the drop in profits caused by used textbook stores and online piracy. This move is long overdue, in my opinion. While it’s true that academic textbooks have a far lower market then mass-market paperbacks, the incentives for buying have all but dried up. Since the beginning, students have found it hard to drop $150 on a textbook, but now it’s no longer a necessity in order to pass a course. This could also eventually help digital libraries subscriptions like Safari gain traction.

2. Macmillan is promoting the fact that professors will now be able to tailor digital textbooks to suit their needs, editing and removing passages without any kind of review process. I’m anxious to see if anyone actually uses this in their lessons. It’s a smart idea: most already pick a textbook to be the backbone of their course, tailoring bits and pieces to suit their teaching styles.

I’m a little skeptical, though. Most professors I’ve interacted with made it pretty clear that they’re not around to teach, and that it’s just a necessary evil on the path to obtaining research grants. That’s why I feel technology has failed to really pick up in the academic sector - most professors just can’t be bothered.

I’m excited to see how this does. I hope my judgement is wrong on this one.

1 year ago |