Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
The lights are on, but is it home?
The ridiculous EU has decided, in all their ill-conceived wisdom, that tungsten filament bulbs are to be phased out. The 100W one was killed off last week, and by 2012 even the lowly 40W will be consigned to the dustbin.
Their replacements are those ghastly, expensive, “eco” bulbs, which apparently last for years and use a quarter of the power of Edison’s equivalent. This is all very well and good, but what they don’t tell you on the box is that when you turn them on, you feel like you are in an operating theatre.
Gone will be the cosy nights by the fire, reading by the horrendously inefficient light of the bulb that has served us perfectly well for the past 100-odd years.
Ok, they may give off only 5% of the energy they use as light, and the rest as heat – but is that so bad? Surely that means you can turn the boiler down a bit.
Stockpiling has already started, apparently, and thinking about it I will probably be joining them as the date draws nearer; particularly as my missus has previously not allowed the eco bulbs in the house.
As Edison spins in his grave, start your hoarding now – and show the EU that when it comes to how we light our homes, they really should keep their well-fed snouts out.
Digital silk purse or sow’s ear?
Back in 1998, when I worked for a company in Harrow that had a US supplier, I once went to a trade show where we were exhibiting some of their products.
I’ll never forget what one of the American guys said to someone regarding digital capture technology, when the discussion came around to how wonderful it was. “When you digitise shit,” he said matter of factly, “you don’t get gold: you get a digital shit.”
His point, buried in that surprisingly un-American-like comment, was of course that unless the source material is good, digitising it won’t help – you’ll only end up with a more-or-less exact copy that won’t get any worse.
I was reminded of this the other day when I carted two boxes of CDs down from the loft. My plan is to digitise them all as audio files and then ebay/car boot/charity/sling them accordingly. Having finally made the big decision to get rid of them all, the thing is, I was then faced with an even tougher choice: what format to choose?
I plumped for Windows Media Pro Audio at 192KBps, which means that I am technically sacrificing half of the audio information somewhere. Lost forever, never to be heard again.
Will it matter? Probably not, but the loss of the music data will probably be easier to take than saying goodbye to some of the discs; one of which was my first ever CD single bought in 1990 in HMV Oxford Street – Adamski’s Killer.
That’s the price of progress I guess.