Advogato blog for abg

IP Mnemonics

Wed, 21 May 2008 23:08:57 GMT

Author's Note: This is a really old article that I'm bringing back to life for a different project. If you've read this before, ignore.

Scooter numbers - breaking even?

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 17:07:06 GMT

Assumptions are my business and business is good. So let's get down to something that has been on my mind for a while - when does my purchase of a scooter break even? There's a number of items to consider here:

The initial cost of the scooter
The price of gas
The difference in gas mileage between my car and the scooter
The decreasing value of the scooter as years go by (resale value)

It's not a terribly difficult forumla. My break even comes when the money saved on gas + the current value of the scooter becomes greater than the initial investment in the scooter. (This is where the 'assumption' business comes in - scooter devaluation, variable price of gas, inflation, etc., etc.) Fortunately, we have Google Spreadsheets to the rescue. Look at the chart above - it's the $3/gallon gas chart and the green line is my 'break even' line. If a new car (scooter) loses half it's value when you drive it off the lot, then my break even point is out there a ways. 13,000 miles. Considering that I've been putting 500 miles a year or so on my scooter, that's 26 years.

...which is a long, long way out there. But hey, high priced gas to the rescue:

This is UK-style $5/gallon gasoline. This break even point is just 6000 miles. If you tend to be gas-pessimistic like I am, then $5+/gal gas is something that's not far around the bend.

And when gas prices continue to rise, I'd bet that I'd put more than 500 miles per year on my scooter.

Dukes Site Relaunches. Also: Timezone Hatred

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:07:31 GMT

oops.

This shouldn't have been here.

26 Apr 2007

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 21:07:40 GMT

I updated the webpages for PyGS, my Gopher server.

Of course, I haven't worked on it in years, but I got a few emails recently from people wanting access to it. The page had disappeared, but links to it still hung around on places like Freshmeat.

So I brought it back up again. I still want to improve it... but I dunno. Maybe it would be a good project to learn Ruby with? That's an idea right there...

12 Oct 2005

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:43:22 GMT

Two small things to note:

I wrote an SSH presentation for NORLUG. LaTeX again, just like my old Vi presentation. You can download the SSH presentation here and get the 'source' for the presentation here.

I've been doing some Civicspace hacking, for Northfield.org. We're going to roll out a CS site within about a month or so, and I've been doing some extensive theme modifications. There's only a few changes left and things we be much better for us. :) I also blogged the process that I went through to install the Drupal banner module into Civicspace for various sponsors. The documentation that comes with it is a little behind the times, so this is a nugget out there for the searchers to hit upon.

4 Feb 2005

Fri, 4 Feb 2005 19:54:13 GMT

I'm currently knee-deep in trying to find out if there exists a Redbrick DB client/ODBC-hoohaw for Linux. This is all complicated by the fact that while some people claim that Redbrick == Informix compatibility, others say Redbrick != Informix compat.

The Python InformixDB client hasn't been updated this millenium, which either means it's perfect or dead.

Willing to pay $$$ for Redbrick connectivity, contact redbrick@gurno.com!

8 Jul 2004

Thu, 8 Jul 2004 03:46:25 GMT

gregors: OS X is flirting with the idea of 'everything as a database' for many of it's apps. The most popular of this is iTunes, which fits your bill exactly. Smart playlists, quick filtering, etc.

It's the wave of the future - file your patents now. ;)

It doesn't have file system integration, but from what Jobs was hinting at during the last WWDC, something like that is on the table, FWIW.

There was a KDE-based metadata filesystem thing that got some play on /. some time ago. Don't recall what the name of it was - I followed it for a while until the author decided to call it quits. Good stuff, tho.

On a different note, Opera's mail-client-formerly-known-as-M2 operates on a database-like interface. It's a real love-hate thing, but I like it quite a bit.

Ack. FOSS content of post: 03%.

1 May 2004

Sat, 1 May 2004 03:17:36 GMT

Bug Tracking

So, there came a need for a bit of bug-tracking to be done at work. I wanted small and easy - I found 'What Bugs?', which worked well, but still had a number of bugs itself. I contacted the author, who told me that he wasn't maintaining it anymore. He pointed to someone else who had contacted him about it. Ex-maintainer had sent Other Guy an unreleased tarball of what would have been 0.5. After talking with Other Guy and getting 0.5 (lots of unfinished changes - didn't work), we decided to pick up with 0.3 and add features to that. We're this close to being able to ship 0.4, but you can play with it now, if you want (user/pass advogato/advogato if you want to log in). It's got some nice features with just a few more on the way. KISS is the guiding principle for this one - there are some big fish out there that there's no need to replicate. The 0.4_pre1 was 21k, compressed. ;^)

Life

Good. Thinking about buying my first computer in nearly five years. It just might be a dual G5.

27 Feb 2004

Fri, 27 Feb 2004 22:41:18 GMT

Finally updated some of my (very old) Python modules for to use distutils. Took me long enough...

Using a combination of Christmas and birthday money, I bought myself a Lesche and a GPS for this summers metal detecting expeditions. They didn't tell me that they came with a bad case of Sudden Cabin Fever.

I tossed a few improvements into EZGallery - you can see an online demo right here. It's not perfect yet, but I can crank out baby picture galleries like never before... 8^)

2 Jan 2004

Fri, 2 Jan 2004 15:35:03 GMT

SPAMMERS MUST DIE

Gurno.com has been joe-jobbed and rendered pretty much unusable for the last three weeks or so. Chaos has ensued. There is a burning nugget of hatred inside of me for spammers. I'm about to start banging the 'email is broken' drum.

OSS

I've got a few things queued up to update once gurno.com returns to functional.

CVS

Let's just say that lots of people don't realize the power of simple tools and Free licenses.