* Staples - 10 foot cable for $80 * Henry's - 10 foot cable for $70 * Hartman's - a surprising array of telephone, RCA, mini-audio, and even USB and Ethernet cables, but no DVI * RadioShack (Source) Bank Street - nope * Internet Cafe place - some ancient dusty printer cables and such, no DVI (nothing newer than 1995, looked like to me)
UPDATE 2006-03-19: RadioShack (Source) Rideau Centre, 1st & 3rd floors - 2m cable for $80. Sony Rideau Centre - same. (The Monster DVI400 cable.) Sears Rideau Centre is the winner: 2m for $100. Oh yeah, this shopping local stuff is great. the only one under $80 is Henry's, and it's closed on Sunday. Four hours of looking so far.
Meanwhile, FutureShop.ca, click click click, 5 minutes. But it doesn't tell me which of the 5 types of DVI cable it is. Even Amazon.com doesn't tell me which type it is.
Why in our wonderful Web 2.0 world can't I just type...
Dear Mr. Googleaton,
I would like to buy a DVI-D male-male 24+1 (or alternatively 18+1) cable from a store within about 20 minutes walk of my condo for about $50. Please map out my choices and give me clickable links to reserve the item.
Thank you.
Since we're not quite at that point yet, I did try a Google search (using a combination actually of web search and local search), it suggests PC Cyber in the Glebe and Laurier Computer on, well, Laurier.
There's also PC Cyber Recycle which is close by on Somerset, but I don't know how many cables they have.
ENDUPDATE
SECOND UPDATE 2006-03-19: Upon searching my various scattered cable storage containers, I find I have exactly the cable I need anyway. You know who has a lot of cables? It's me. It turns out I have a DVI-D male-male 18+1 (single link), 6', probably from the Dell 20" LCD.
ENDSECONDUPDATE
What's with the 10' cables? I only need a three foot cable. Who needs to have their computer 10' away from their monitor? I don't get it.
I don't know where else I could check nearby. I'm going to go back to Rideau Centre and return my cable to RadioShack/Source (1st floor) and see whether they or RadioShack/Source (3rd floor) have it.
Not sure where else to check downtown.
I might go to FutureShop near work on Monday to check, if I can't find anything before then.
posted by Richard at 15:56 /
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our stupid computer industry: DVI cables
Got a PowerBook with DVI out, got a monitor with DVI in. No problemo.
Buy a cable. Male-male DVI 24+5.
Oh woe. No. Incorrecto.
There are not one, not two, but FIVE different types of DVI cables. I need DVI-D 24+1 (dual link), or 18+1 (single link) would also be fine I think.
I will maybe try to dig up some links, in the meantime, here's the entire article:
Ontario will soon offer Canada's first subsidy to homeowners or businesses that install solar electric power.
The incentive — 42 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced — is to be announced Tuesday by Premier Dalton McGuinty, industry sources say.
To produce solar power, an average house would need a system that costs $20,000 to $30,000.
All the electricity generated would be sold to the local utility company and go into the overall power grid. It would be worth $1,000 to $1,500 a year. But, homeowners would continue to buy their power from the utility at whatever the current rate was. The price now is under 6 cents a kilowatt-hour, but is expected to rise in May.
With the energy savings, the system could be paid off in 20 to 25 years. That's when the main payoff begins, since the equipment is expected to last 40 to 60 years, Rob McMonagle, executive director of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, said yesterday.
Although among the most generous in North America, the program won't cover the entire cost of installing equipment that converts the sun's energy into electricity.
But it should be enough to kick-start an industry that now badly lags behind Japan and parts of Europe, industry officials say.
"It opens a tremendous opportunity," McMonagle said.
The solar subsidy will be part of a new incentive plan known as Standard Offer Contracts.
Under the contracts, those who generate electricity from solar and other renewable sources will be paid for all the power they produce.
The other sources — mainly wind, but also wood waste, manure or other biological sources — will earn 11 cents a kilowatt hour.
The contracts will run 20 years and apply to projects with a generating capacity of up to 10 megawatts, or enough to supply about 3,300 average homes.
There will be no cap on the total amount of money available to pay for this power.
Ontario's solar subsidy will be unique in Canada. Only Prince Edward Island now has a wind-power incentive, said Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association. "Others are looking to see what Ontario will do."
At present, solar capacity across Canada is a mere megawatt "The (solar) program is designed to start building capacity in the industry so it can handle a huge increase in demand," McMonagle said. The aim is that Ontario companies will construct and install the systems.
The contracts are expected to lead to the installation of about 15,000 solar systems, with a total capacity of 40 megawatts, McMonagle said. After that, growth should speed up until, by 2025, solar capacity hits 1,200 megawatts.
The Ontario Power Authority, the government agency responsible for ensuring an adequate long-term power supply, forecast in a recent report that solar capacity would be only 40 megawatts by 2025.
It projects that, by then, the province will need a total capacity of more than 30,000 megawatts, and recommends $40 billion worth of new nuclear generating stations to meet the demand. Critics argue that that estimate could be cut dramatically if the province pushed harder on conservation measures.
At present, in Canada, solar capacity is a mere megawatt. In contrast, Germany — with much higher electricity rates and subsidies — installs 40 megawatts of capacity every six weeks.
In 20 years, solar will be the cheapest source of power for most homeowners, McMonagle said.
Solar projects are suited for individual homes and buildings, he said.
In places like Japan and Germany, where solar is widespread, the installations increase the resale value of houses, he said.
A more cautious outlook comes from Howard Gomes, sales director of Solar Roofing Systems Inc., in Aurora, which builds and installs solar generators that are integrated into roofing material, instead of in separate panels.
Home solar installations will likely last about 35 years, and the provincial system will be at best a break-even proposition unless the payment for power is tied to inflation, Gomes said. The new contracts are "a great first step ... a great move on the part of the province," but it's not enough to get solar into the mass market.
"The federal government needs to get involved," he said, so Ontario's incentives match those in the United States, where Washington offers a 30 per cent tax credit.
The 11-cent payment for wind power will "get a number of projects constructed," but it's not possible to predict exactly how many, Hornung said. "We expect (next week's) announcement will instigate interest and proposals."
The contracts will support wind projects built by municipalities, community groups or businesses, rather than homeowners, he added. They will complement the big wind farms — with up to 100 megawatts of capacity — being erected under a different provincial policy.
The maximum size of 10 megawatts is roughly the same as 12 wind turbines like the one at Exhibition Place, on Toronto's west-end waterfront.
By the end of summer, Ontario will have about 320 megawatts of wind capacity, mainly in big projects.
Tesla is popular in SF because he was a genius and no one is quite sure what he was doing.
There was a good SF story about him where he electrified the entire sky, causing it to glow permanently - no more need for streetlights. I'll google it up later if I have time.
posted by Richard at 07:23 /
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Thursday, March 16, 2006
new powerbook thoughts
New PowerBook G4 12".
- the only option at setup is wireless password, but I don't have a password, just a 128bit hex key, so I couldn't connect to my wireless network - firewall off by default, firewall hidden in sharing prefs - bluetooth on and discoverable by default - the Dashboard is stupid. The Mac I guess sucks my location from my .Mac registration, but then the stupid weather widget thinks I'm in Ottawa, IL or some place in the US, and it shows my temp in F instead of Canadian Celsius. - you probably want to have broadband, it downloaded literally 400MB or so of patches - it came with iLife 06, but it wasn't installed - if you didn't know this you could easily run the onboard iLife 05 for years assuming it was 06 installed - after installing 7GB of iLife 06, another 100MB of updates to download - it now comes with licensed GraphicConverter, weird how they license some things but replace others (e.g. Dashboard instead of competing existing apps) - OS X GUI sucks SUCKS SUCKS. I can drag directories to the Dock BUT NOT the identical appearing FOLDER WHATEVER THINGS in the left-hand of the OS X Finder windows. "It looks like your home dir, and you can drag it, but it's not really your home dir." - apparently to "calibrate" the battery I have to fully charge it, unplug the power, and then run the PowerBook until it goes to sleep. This must be done with each battery (I bought a spare). - I wonder how many people with Safari and Firefox are busily polling away on the default RSS feeds without even ever opening them. Talk about your needless web traffic. - there doesn't seem to be any way to tell Spotlight "thou art forbidden to index any and all external drives" so I had to disable Spotlight completely
Most of these are things I noted with the iBook, but I am just reminded of them as I reconfig my PowerBook to my liking.
posted by Richard at 21:42 /
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Tuesday, March 14, 2006
anti-terminator seed meeting in Ottawa
The Canadian Government tried to overturn the international moratorium on Terminator technology in February 2005 and continues to support Terminator. The Ban Terminator Campaign in Canada is extremely important to the work of people across the world to stop Terminator. This is a key opportunity to work in solidarity with peasant farmers and indigenous peoples across the world. Effective Canadian mobilization could mean the end to Terminator.
...
Event Notice: March 20, Ottawa "TERMINATOR ON TRIAL": Suicide Seed Technology, Implications for Global Food Security and Farmers' Rights ...
Monday March 20th [2006] 7:00pm-9:30pm OTTAWA CONGRESS CENTRE, (Hall A/B) 55 Colonel By Drive at Rideau Street Everyone Welcome-Free Admission- Donations Welcome
Galactica Season 3 delayed till October (item dated Friday, 10 March 2006)
SciFi.com: With the second season finale upon us, many fans are keen to see the next season of "Battlestar Galactica" start sooner rather than later. However they'll have to learn a lesson in patience that "24" and "Prison Break" fans have had to endure this year - a longer wait in exchange for more regular material. This past season "Galactica" ran the first half of a season from August-November, and then the second half from January-March - a formula that's worked for the Sci-Fi Channel's "Stargate" shows for nearly ten years. Next year however whilst both "Stargate" series will still follow the old mold, "Galactica" has been pushed back to a fall season premiere. The 20-episode third season of Battlestar Galactica will now begin in October 2006
So the iBook G3. Some combination of age, carrying it back and forth to work the last couple days, the fact it was raining one of those days, and using it tilted in my lap appear to have caused it deep distress.
Friday night I think I tried it and it wouldn't boot. Then very flaky, like shake it and it might boot partially, wierd video display. Anyway, I did eventually get it booted up sitting on the table, and left it overnight. It was fine in the morning.
Started torrenting. Froze after torrenting for several hours I think.
Went into emergency mode, bought external harddrive. Err ok yes, I already have two external harddrives, but they are both Windows formatted. I got a third Maxtor 200, Mac formatted, for direct partition clone.
I tried a straight copy and then it died. And it was dead for quite a while. I tried many many things. Including removing the wireless card and extra RAM.
I tried to see if it was just the HD, but it won't boot from DiskWarrior in the CD drive either.
I decided to use the "if I buy a new computer, the old one will start working" theory. So I have bought a PowerBook G4 12".
Then, after many hours, I eventually discovered it will boot if tilted at a 45 degree angle. I don't know if you can fully appreciate how insane you have to be to get a non-booting laptop to finally boot. You would think a person would give up after a few hundred times pushing the power button and having nothing happen. Fortunately, my obsession triumphed.
As mentioned in my previous post, I eventually ended up using SuperDuper to clone the OS X and OS 9 partitions. You know what is very slow? Copying gigs of data. I guess I have distorted expectations. In my mind, 30 GB should take maybe 10 minutes tops. In reality, it took about 1.5 hours to copy the 32GB in the main OS X partition (via Firewire 400 to the external drive). Our i/o speed is not matched with our storage :(
So I'm not sure what to do with the iBook now. Should I disassemble it? DiskWarrior the disk? Take it in for repair?
posted by Richard at 08:42 /
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