Australia subject to Carbon Tax. Unnecessary?

Well the Australian Labor Government's 'Carbon Package' was voted in favor this morning. I have mixed feelings about the whole situation.

One thing this decision has done is prompted me to finally make a blog entry I've wanted to do for quite awhile, but it never happened before due to various reasons (mostly laziness :P), until now.

I am a firm believer that technology is steering "us" towards more sustainable living as it is...without taxing people. If you've read my blog for awhile you'll have seen entries about energy efficiency and use of resources.

Today I will post some amateur, independent...and well rushed research I have conducted - The difference in energy demand between VHS/VCR and DVD technology. Enjoy, and if you know people that would be interested, could learn something or need something like this for homework by all means feel free to share :)

Okay here it is...

Aim:      To determine the differences between VHS/VCR and DVD technology in terms of energy
             demand.

Method: Play 'The Big Lebowski in both VHS and DVD formats on compatible playback devices whilst
             gathering data on energy consumption from a power meter device (as found in stores)

The DVD set-up: DVD Player connected to power through a power meter

DVD playback maintained a power consumption rate of 5 Watts, skipping chapters did not result in an increase of energy demand.

 The VCR set-up: DVD Player connected to power through a power meter

The VHS tape (ex-rental)  reaches this classification screen at 13m:18s in...

 The power consumed during Fast Forwarding (and Rewinding for that matter) runs at 9-10 Watts. 

Note: I did not time how long it took to Fast Forward to this point

VHS playback maintained a power consumption rate of 8 Watts

Conclusion: To play a DVD (in this instance...variation would presumably exist between difference
                    brands/models) requires 3 Watts LESS than it takes to play the VHS format.
                    The VHS tape requires rewinding after it has been watched for re-viewing


Further notes:

1. The Big Lebowski has a running time of 119 minutes
2. The tape length of a 'E-120' VHS cassette is 173.7 metres (570ft) - 18.8m of tape is involved to reach the 13 minute mark (to the classification screen, as above).

I hope you have enjoyed this

IBM 120 Petabyte 'Drive'

This is file #2 of what I'll label as being the lost blog entries. A file created on August 31st 2011, published for the first time...right now, October 2nd 2011. I hope you enjoy it.


A project being undertaken by IBM being discussed on an online message board the other night got my attention - A 120 Petabyte Hard Disk Drive run by using 200,000 regular computer hard drives. I ran a search of the topic on an online search engine and there were news stories about it claiming it to be the biggest of its kind.

Frankly, I was underwhelmed. Compare me to the likes of Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, but when you break it down, those 200,000 HDD's are packing on average just under 630GB (from memory of my earlier calculations), which for hard drives selling on the market today is talking the lower end of storage capacity. For about 5c per GB that 2 Terabyte HDD's retail for, this project is (not factoring in labor for installation and setup, nor electricity requirements) is the range of about $6 million dollars - A lot of money for everyday people but spare change to, I would imagine, the product that this storage system is making available.

In the news story, it is speculated that in the near future cloud computer infrastructure will incorporate storage systems like this project as an industry standard. I wonder when the 1TB 'thumb' drive will be available. I am still fascinated about the storage capacity of not only SD cards but MicroSD cards. I am amazed that movies that were once in massive film canisters and in VHS cassettes now fit on the size of a fingernail (no piracy).

The largest HDD I have now is 2TB (less formatted) as well as a portable 640GB HDD powered by USB alone. Master the possibilities!

Technology 'Golden Age'

Hi everyone,

As some may have picked up on, I have recently gotten into pawn brokerage reality television shows. One thing that is often a requirement to start talking about a deal is to test the equipment to ensure it is in good operational condition.

I've found myself appraising items around my home. It is fun because I have realistically valued things that I have held onto that are worth nothing and I have no use for, nor would anyone want it.

An example of what I'm talking about is a pair of DELL desktop PC's. They are from 2001 and have had parts (i.e. RAM, HDD) taken out for other projects...they are obsolete...cheap Netbooks are cheap, they are more power efficient, have displays built in and can outperform these desktops. What can I do with these things? Well I believe I'll deconstruct them and take photos during the process. Who knows someone might want to know how they were put together one day.

Moving on...

One thing I did come across today was my brothers old SONY Walkman (WM-F2015 Google it ;) ), Made in Japan...with belt clip :D

I plugged it into my personal stereo and fired it up...it even had a cassette tape in it! Worked like a treat. I couldn't help but think the thing is close to the size of massive personal Hard Disk Drives on the market today. My brother used the thing a fair bit at one stage, before he eventually got a portable CD player and  a 30GB iPod after that.

A guy that closed a web forum he operated stated (in 2009) that his purpose for the forum had been soaked up by cheap web hosting, internet speed and social networking sites.

I was upset that forum was closed and scoffed that NOW (then) was the so called "golden age of technology".

Increasingly people are saying how 'Millennials' already don't understand what technology like cassette tapes and VHS are like. Below is a picture I took of old school VHS, DVD and blu-ray. As you will see the VHS tape was an ex-rental and asked for $4 to rent it for 7 days, the DVD I bought cheap, the blu-ray I believe even cheaper years later. As you can see the tapes we big and bulky, you had to fast forward and rewind and well looking back now it looks like a total pain in the ass. The DVD comes with 'extra' bonus material and the blu-ray with even more. So you can own forever movies now in High Definition bundled with all sorts of extra footage and material and it's CHEAPER?!? I think I'll reconsider my stance on the whole golden age thing now...

Also, the amount of resources saved from the upgrades is really a good thing. I suppose digital downloads on lightening fast internet's coming soon with a solid grounding already occurring.

Thanks for reading :)