I was just listing to your Friday show about the issues involved in the online piracy debate.  There are a few points that I feel weren’t brought up and I thought I would send you a message just in case you feel they could be important in the future.  Sorry I couldn’t call in during the show, I’m usually driving home and need to concentrate on the small country road.

Firstly I’m not much of a music buyer, in fact I listen to Triple J and that’s about all the music I need.  All of my media purchases are TV or Movies.

Whilst the iTunes price may be fair according to industry people, there are a large number of people out there that can’t afford or think that it’s too expensive.  I for one am not willing to pay that price for unknown content.  I have been burnt too many times with shows or movies that just aren’t worth the plastic they are printed on and in the age of the Internet a lot of us aren’t willing to take that risk at the prices they are charging.  Back to the people can’t afford it…  Is it not better to make it cheaper, and therefore more accessible to the greater population than put it in a price range that only allows it to be affordable to those who aren’t earning around the average wage?  Surely this would give more value to the product placement they seem to be placing into films these days.  If we all purchased the content we wanted to these days then there would be a lot of people missing out on things that they should be spending their money on.  Like food, rent and other necessities.

Another issue is that I’m not a Mac or Windows user, I use Linux on my computer.  Now whilst I am aware that I am part of a very small percentage of the potential market, there is no real alternative as iTunes does not have a Linux install.  I therefore must either choose to use a commercial OS, or make do with what is available to me.  The world is moving away from expensive products and embracing the free communities out there, it’s no longer easy for big business to make an easy buck, and it seems more and more like these big businesses just don’t know how to deal with that so they are throwing their tantrums and taking their bat and ball as well as the park.  The whole concept isn’t about not paying for stuff, but it’s about having more choice about what we want to pay for.

The content industries seem to have tunnel vision, they see that there’s big money to be made in content and the best way to make everyone pay to see that content.  They fail to see that by making it cheaper  and more accessible not only will they have more sales, but their carefully placed product placements that earn them money will in fact get more views.  There are loads of content creators out there offering cheap stuff and raising the money themselves without the help of big business.  I would much rather these people got my money than big business that tries to dictate terms.

Finally, what about the issue of borrowing content from friends?  We like to know what we are paying for before we purchase it.  Even if they did bring in laws that prevent online piracy, they couldn’t stop legitimate copies being loaned amongst friends.  They don’t seem to be putting GPS trackers in DVD’s these days to track who watches what.  The whole idea that something that is designed to be shown to the public is then regulated with huge legal consequences seems ridiculous when you think about the fact that these issues have been building since the invention of the portable cassette player.  Content is meant to be shared and watched, charging for the right to listen/watch it is not the best way to make money from it.  The content is a means to creating the branding, and it’s the branding that they should be making money from, not the content itself.  The idea that trying to view that content through online means should be illegal is in fact almost offensive to some when they are giving it away for the small price of having ads incorporated.  Most people will only buy DVD of TV shows because they have seen the shows on “Free to Air” TV.   If they provided free legitimate copies on a website, even with small incorporated banner ads, they would get more support.  All these law and lawsuits are doing is disenfranchising the viewing public from the production companies and Movie/TV Execs and giving the public more of a desire to “Steal” their product.  After all, “it’s only the big companies that can afford to loose stuff” isn’t it?

I’m sure the issue arises because the Exec’s say that they are loosing sales because of Internet piracy.  The truth for me is that I will only buy stuff I really like, I won’t spend money on crap, and I won’t spend money on something I don’t think is worth the price they are asking.  A lot of the time that means I miss out on having a shiny well presented package.  It certainly doesn’t mean that I don’t buy things that I think are worth it.  TV and Movie Exec’s are greedy dicks, they prove that time and time again…  Just look at some of Joss Whedon’s work.   I’ll happily spend money on good stuff, and I’ll happily collect DVD’s and Blueray.  But the idea that I’m stealing by downloading their stuff and watching it before I buy a collection I find offensive.  If they don’t want people to watch it, then find another means of making money.

Interesting side note…  Most of the stuff I buy is not the big budget stuff, it’s the small budget stuff where you can tell the people making the production are really into it and aren’t just there to make as much money as possible.  I find the Hollywood big budget films mostly crap and even try and avoid them at the movies, waiting until they are weekly hires at the video shop.

This is no small issue and I’m sure if you wanted to you could almost devote an entire week of shows to the various aspects of the discussion.

Yours in friendly free and open discussion,
Syridian.

The rule states that you give way to anyone already on the roundabout, that’s pretty much it. For anyone about to enter a roundabout they need to give way to any car on it, or any car that has the potential to be in the roundabout before they enter it. So for all you out there who don’t slow down because there is a car entering from your left beware! If that car is in the round about before you they have right of way and you could be potentially blamed for any collision. That said, if there is someone approaching the roundabout from your right but you are at the round about, you don’t have to wait for them! They have to give way to you unless you do wait for them and they get on the round about first.

Roundabouts are not 4 way giveaway sign intersections or stop sign intersections they are designed to allow traffic to keep flowing and if used properly they work very well, however if abused by both aggressive and passive drivers they become annoying intersections that can slow traffic to a stop.

Slow down when approaching a round about and be ready to give way to anyone on it, whether they enter from the left or the right. When you slow down you have a better chance of timing your entry to slot in and get through without stopping. This is what roundabouts are designed for and if people start learning to use them correctly then everyone benefits.

Christmas just seems to be nothing more than an excuse make us feel guilty enough to spend far too much on plastic crap decorations and presents. It really seems to me that the commercial industry has taken Christmas as it’s means of screwing as much money as possible out of all of us. My memories of Christmas as a kid tend to back up that thought. All Christmas seemed to teach me was that on December 25th I would get stuff, and I learnt to expect that, to want that… It was a way of buying my loyalty to tradition. All of the Christmas traditions seem to teach kids who are innocent that they can get what they want at that time of the year, including lollies, toys and the attention of there parents who spend a good portion of the year trying to save enough to make up for it in December.  Christmas these days seems to me to be a persons way of justifying a year of not being around for family and treating those around you right for the last 11 months. Maybe I’m just too cynical about the whole thing, maybe I have lost my Christmas Spirit…

Those cynical thoughts are also mirrored by the fact that I do enjoy certain aspects of Christmas.. I like the joy it puts on peoples faces, I enjoy seeing other peoples Christmas lights displays and I enjoy all the Christmas folklore and stories.  Even whilst not being a religious person, I do enjoy seeing the whole Christian side of Christmas being displayed.

So, where does all of this but me in terms of participating in the festivities of this time of year?  I guess it puts me on the outside looking in and vicariously enjoying the celebrations of others whilst hypocritically shaking my head and scoffing at the hypocrisy of it all.  Hopefully the fact that I know here I stand will be enough to get me through the next 12 days.

Merry Christmas to All.

The act of stopping and starting a vehicle unnecessarily is the biggest drain on energy in the world today.  To go truly green we must not only acknowledge that, but strive to do something about it.  One of the biggest reasons for stopping and starting isn’t excessive traffic, but the inefficient control of that traffic and though I’m only guessing, I would say that traffic lights are at the top of the list of inefficient traffic control systems.  Not only do traffic lights consume power just in their general operation, but the act of stopping a vehicle robs masses of energy from the movement of that vehicle requiring driver to put in more energy getting the vehicle going again.  Maintaining a vehicles speed once it’s running consumes much less energy than the act of getting it up to speed.

Thinking of that concept on a mass transport scale it’s easy to see how inefficient traffic lights can be.  How many times have you been driving along a road with 10-15 other cars only to be stopped at lights to let 1 or 2 cars through?  If there was a roundabout there the majority of cars wouldn’t have had to stop, as the 1 or 2 cars would have crossed in when there was a small break in traffic. In fact if all drivers were to consider all the factors it’s easy to slow down or speed up slightly and merge at the roundabout without stopping a single car.  Roundabouts might not give someone that same feeling of getting somewhere fast if all the lights are their way, but they most certainly do help in averaging out the fluctuations in speed and reduce the chances that we will be brought to a complete stop.

I believe one of the major aversions to roundabouts is that not many people really know how to use them, thinking of them as a give-way sign rather than a roundabout.  The fact that a car at the roundabout has right of way over cars approaching the roundabout from that cars right completely escapes some people.  This is something that needs education rather than just avoidance.  Do you give way to cars at the roundabout if they were there first but are on your left?  Roundabout should work like merge lanes however people seem to either be too scared to use them correctly or abuse the fact that others might be.  The TAMS guide on the Internet gives one of the reasons for choosing traffic lights over roundabout is that roundabout favour the busiest direction of traffic sometimes blocking out the other.  This is only true if people don’t work together and allow roundabouts to work as they should.  The rule is “A driver entering a roundabout must give way to any vehicle in the roundabout.” not give way to the car entering the roundabout from the right.  Basically this means that if you get in the roundabout before a car entering the roundabout from the right, you have right of way.  Don’t be bullied, just be assertive.

Come on Canberrians, lets learn to merge and use roundabouts to help towards a better environment.

Other information on Roundabouts.

www.dot.state.wi.us/library/publications/docs/pim-4-roundabouts.pdf

http://drej2522.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-drive-a-roundabout

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/2743688/Rip-them-out.html

Duty Cycle is usually used in digital electronics and defines the amount of ON time of a circuit with reference to the ON + OFF time.  If a circuit is on for 1second and off for 4 seconds it is said to have a Duty Cycle of 20%.  How does this relate to driving a car?  Well, to be honest it’s an over simplification of the amount of work your car is doing.  Though there is a hell of a lot of other factors to take into account to get an accurate figure, simplification can work in this example.  Driving a vehicle has many variables, but if we assume that what goes up, must come down, and that over an extended period of driving the route driven is averaged out, then we can eliminate a large number of factors such as the actual route driven, the weather conditions and even the health of the vehicle if the time used in the average is long enough.  What we are left with is one big variable and one constant*.  The variable is the driver (or how the driver drives), the constant is the fuel efficiency of the vehicle Though this does change from open road to city driving).  The “driver” variable can be thought of as a Duty cycle, and if we multiply that by the fuel efficiency of the vehicle they are driving we get a figure that represents the fuel usage of a particular driver.  The higher the number the more fuel used.

Now, is smaller better?  Smaller cars are thought to be better in city traffic due to the stop/start nature of the driving, however in my experience the stop/start driving a driver more aggressive thereby increasing the duty cycle of their driving.  It is also a fact that a smaller lighter car will slow down quicker due to wind resistance than a larger heavier one, this in turn increases the duty cycle just to maintain speed on the road.  Another factor is that a smaller car has to work so much harder for so much longer to get the vehicle up to speed than a larger car with much more power.  Typically small 4 cylinder cars work so much harder than 6 or 8 cylinder cars, to get similar results.  All of these factors increase the duty cycle of motor usage, which in turn increases the fuel usage.

Basically it comes down to the type of driver you are, and the uses you have for the vehicle.  Personally with the number of cars on the road these days, I think the average 6 cylinder car is a much better choice than any small or even medium 4 cylinder one.  A 6 cylinder car has the power to accelerate without needing to stress the motor, the Duty Cycle is going to be much lower for normal driving and when you need the power, it’s there without you having to stress the motor.

In conclusion, yes, it really depends on what type of driver you are.  I personally love the feel of driving a small car however having spent many years in numerous small cars, I will happily acknowledge that I certainly do not think of them as the best option for a greener future unless you are such a green driver that you forcibly impose your driving on the rest of the driving public (which meh…  may be a good thing for the environment, but is likely to cause other issues).

* Yes, it’s not really a constant, however with the averaging out I think we would find that it does not vary anywhere nearly enough to be too much of a concern and can be thought of in the context of this explanation as a constant.

One thought it to do a period replica, using examples recovered from, as well as the techniques of the 15th century to make a chess set worthy of winning an A&S Competition.  Fully documenting the entire set and making it out of materials that would have been used in period.  This would

The other thought is to take the techniques I know that were around but not necessarily proven to be used in the 15th century to make a chess set that is uniquely a celebration of Their Highnesses coming reign and is very much a celebration of what it means to be SCAdian.

I’m leaning very much towards the latter option myself, as this would let me more utilise my mould making and casting skills and also alow me to make a chess set that is also saleable, and manufacturable in a reasonable quantity so that I can (yes, permission has been given), make sets to sell to the populace.  The idea of making a full chess set with each of the 32 pieces being a unique piece also has appeal, however that task would be daunting if it were not for the ability to make a basic figure mould and then cast waxes and then individualise them.  This ability alone makes me lean more towards the latter option as the chess set would be far more impressive with each piece slightly individualised.

I need to start this soon, which means getting moved fully so that my time is my own again.  stay tuned to find out more…

In the days before technology, back when electricity was still new and exciting they didn’t have traffic lights, real people were employed to control traffic, much like real people are still used today to control airline traffic.  Don’t take the following as an anti-traffic light campaign, but more as something to get people thinking…

Traffic lights are most likely a 100 Watt bulb that is on constantly.  Usually an intersection has at least 4 but most likely 8 and sometimes even 12 facings, that’s an average of 1200 Watts of electricity being used 24 hours a day 365 days of the year, when you add up the thousands of traffic light systems in a city that’s a lot of power and that doesn’t include the electronics and control equipment needed to run them.  Whilst these are being phased out in favour of lower wattage LED lighting systems it’s not just the power to run the lights that you need to think about, in fact the greatest cost to energy consumption is probably the one you are paying for yourself.  The energy that is taken from each vehicle each time it is stopped to let an already stopped car go.  This might not seem like much, but when you stop 20 cars in order to let one car go that already has had its energy robbed it adds up.  No only are the stop lights robbing potential energy from your vehicle, but they are causing you to have to invest that energy again to get your vehicle up to speed again.  Is this still an acceptable cost to the environment?

So am I just whining about this cause I hate getting stopped at lights?  Not really, I just think that we need to start looking at ways to reduce this cost to the environment.  In the past before we had traffic lights we had traffic police who could intelligently look at the on coming traffic and work out the best solution for them getting through the intersection with as little as possible.  Technology today has progressed so much that surely we can start putting in some more intelligent traffic light systems?  Visual recognition systems could quite easily gauge traffic approaching the intersection, feeding this data into a computer to calculate the best sequence to allow all traffic through with the minimal cost to the environment.  Programming lights to be aware of on coming traffic could also reduce congestion allowing better flow of traffic and utilising the gaps in traffic to allow cars to cross or turn.  Image a set of lights that as you are approaching them turn green because they can see that there are no on-coming cars.  This would be a huge improvement in traffic systems and save thousands of people from frustration and potential road rage.

Another solution is to start using more roundabouts as these when used properly can eliminate the need for traffic lights entirely.  Though this solution would require an education campaign teaching motorists the proper use of a roundabout and how to keep traffic flowing.

The point is, adding more traffic lights without a significant look into a smarter way to implement them is only going to cost more in both money and the environment than I believe is really worth while.  We seem to have an attitude of blocking/shielding ourselves from harm rather than educating in the dangers and I believe that all this will end up doing is hindering development of proper solutions and making life too controlled.  Lets take responsibility for our own safety and not try and protect by reducing freedom.

What about other enery that we don’t even concider as energy, such as piped running water or peddling nowhere on a exercise bike. All of these things are designed to help us, but as the greenies have been saying for years are they really just tools to help us dig our own graves? Whilst we have all of these renewable energy sources springing up, there is one source that we are repeatedly not making use of and in fact using more energy in an effort to not use. And what is that energy source? It’s Us… ourselves. We create so many energy hungry devices and all in order to allow us to do less work in our day to day lives.

If you think about this cycle then it really is staggering… I mean we buy these devices so that we can have an easier time at home so that we can go out and work harder during the week to make money to pay for more of these devices and also the cost of the power they are using to run. Who are we really helping, ourselves or big business? Just think about the energy used to get food on your table, the farms, the farm equipment, the transport, the refrigeration, the fuel used to go and pick it up from the store, they all add up to a total energy added to the final product… A product that

Now think of those of us who actually pay money for a Gym membership…

Because our lives are less active these days due to these devices that we work hard at mostly shuffling data around to buy, we need to also pay for a membership to a gym so that we can then go and work physically to keep our bodies in shape. In times gone by this was accomplished by physical work around the house or at a place of employment, but these days modern society has machines and robots to do the meanial tasks that kept previous workers in shape. So now we are paying these Gym Memberships to use our own energy up doing meanial tasks such as riding a bike to nowhere or running on a treadmill or rowing a machine… These gym machines take our personal energy and well… wastes it. Wouldn’t it be far better than instead of spending time, energy and money ona Gym membership, we spend that same time and energy on creating something? Grow a garden? Harness the enegy in a bike powered generator or do something else just as productive?

As any decent economist will tell you all of these things are designed to keep the money moving. Having Money gives us choices, we can choose to pay for our energy consumption or we can choose to limit it. However the system is flawed… Not the Energy system, but the money system. Money seems to float to the top of the pile giving those with money more choices and those with less well… Less. Is the economy driven purely by Energy? I’m not sure but I do believe that this is what is scaring the major players into trying to keep our reliance on Fossil fuels and limit the change to renewable energies that they have less control over.

I too have fallen in with the rest of society but I do long to change. I think the difficulty though is that society has created a “Norm”, and we strive even if only sub-conciously to achieve that. But then maybe I am wrong, maybe I can change…

In my Post/Page “2011 and beyond” I set out what I would like to acheive or this year, however getting from here to there as well as fitting in life seems to be a plan that is too big for me alone to grasp.  If there is anyone local to Canberra who would be interested in spending an hour or so with me each week to help put this goal into small bite sized chunks and help plan the process to getting there I would certainly like to hear from you.  I would love to learn from this experience and come out of it with a better knowledge of how to plan, document and research a project.  I suppose the Internet also would allow that person to be aywhere in the world really, so it needn’t be someone in Canberra.  However I personally think it would help.

I’m still continuing with my dream to see Crossroads turned into something usable.  It still needs either Members who value it enough to spend time out there and contribute money, or members to realise that they are holding the rest back and to pull out.

Above is some of the repair work that was needed to the guild hall, but thanks to a member is now being repaired.  This is also so I can trial my new photo gallery software in an attempt to get all of my photo’s over to this site.  This gallery will expand to have lots of photo’s of Crossroads, but probably not until after Festival.