2010-03-27
Apartment Idea Revisited
I moved back Friday. The apartment did not save enough time to justify the expense.
2010-03-22
Apple OSX Cruft Removal
I am obsessive about the organization of the files on my computer. Apple does not understand my organizational system, and I do not understand theirs. On the operating system drive, I leave the files how OSX put them. On my removable media, Apple should leave things as I put them. So I wrote two files to allow me to "umount" properly.
To make this work by just typing "umount /Volume/<VolumeName>", I added "export PATH=~/bin:${PATH}" to my "~/.profile" and put the following files in "~/bin".
If you read this far and do not know what I am referring to, you probably should stop reading here and find something else to do. Otherwise, let me know if you have any problems with this technique, or a better solution.
To make this work by just typing "umount /Volume/<VolumeName>", I added "export PATH=~/bin:${PATH}" to my "~/.profile" and put the following files in "~/bin".
If you read this far and do not know what I am referring to, you probably should stop reading here and find something else to do. Otherwise, let me know if you have any problems with this technique, or a better solution.
--- ~/bin/umount Begin ---
#!/bin/sh
# File: umount
# Author: Brian Lindsay
# Purpose: umount a volume from OSX.
# Usage: umount /Volume/<VolumeName>
uncruft "${@}"
diskutil unmount "${@}"
--- End ~/bin/umount ---
--- ~/bin/uncruft Begin ---
#!/bin/sh
# File: uncruft
# Author: Brian Lindsay
# Purpose: Remove OSX cruft from a filesystem volume.
# Usage: uncruft /Volume/<VolumeName>
# MCP
main(){
clean "${@}"
}
# All known sources of cruft in OSX
osxcruft(){
#Files
#echo "._AppleDouble"
echo "._*"
echo ".DS_Store"
echo ".VolumeIcon.icns"
#Folders
echo ".fseventsd"
echo ".Spotlight-V100"
echo ".TemporaryItems"
echo ".Trashes"
}
# Forcibly remove cruft
clean(){
cd "${@}"
osxcruft | while read cruft; do
rm -rf ${cruft}
done
}
# Run program.
main "${@}"
--- End ~/bin/uncruft ---
2010-03-17
African Aqueducts
Recently I have been spending a lot of time thinking about getting clean water to underprivileged people. This is probably due to the fact that I now live in a desert. Nevertheless, it seems important, so it stays on my mind.
If you could only do one thing to help prevent the spread of disease, it should be to supply clean water, because nothing else has such a dramatic impact. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that a steady supply of clean water permits the irrigation of crops, which creates a stable food supply. You know what happens when your village no longer spends all its time worrying about its next meal and surviving the next outbreak? Industry. Well, not immediately, but it permits the possibility.
So the important part of the idea. How do you get freshwater to the desert with no streams or aquifers? On a much smaller scale, the Romans had some plumbing that did not require power. Aqueducts. We could use something like that to transport water for the highest places in Africa to all of the smallest villages. The initial expense would be enormous, but if you build it with local materials, you would not have to maintain it. As a passive system, it would require very little maintenance anyway.
The really hard part is getting the freshwater to the highest points in Africa to begin with. I like the idea of selling sea salt from the Atlantic ocean to the developed world, and pumping the distilled water uphill. I have no idea how much salt would need to be sold, nor at what price to make this possible, but I have heard little discussion about it, so I thought I would start the conversation. Anyone interested in a business venture?
If you could only do one thing to help prevent the spread of disease, it should be to supply clean water, because nothing else has such a dramatic impact. Perhaps more importantly, however, is that a steady supply of clean water permits the irrigation of crops, which creates a stable food supply. You know what happens when your village no longer spends all its time worrying about its next meal and surviving the next outbreak? Industry. Well, not immediately, but it permits the possibility.
So the important part of the idea. How do you get freshwater to the desert with no streams or aquifers? On a much smaller scale, the Romans had some plumbing that did not require power. Aqueducts. We could use something like that to transport water for the highest places in Africa to all of the smallest villages. The initial expense would be enormous, but if you build it with local materials, you would not have to maintain it. As a passive system, it would require very little maintenance anyway.
The really hard part is getting the freshwater to the highest points in Africa to begin with. I like the idea of selling sea salt from the Atlantic ocean to the developed world, and pumping the distilled water uphill. I have no idea how much salt would need to be sold, nor at what price to make this possible, but I have heard little discussion about it, so I thought I would start the conversation. Anyone interested in a business venture?
Apartment
As of March first, I have moved into an apartment much closer to the U of A campus. This is a temporary arrangement for the rest of the semester. Apparently five classes is more than I can handle. At least when three of them are math, and the other two computer science.
I have been toying with the idea of rewriting my website again (the previous versions were short-lived publicly) through google's appengine. This would allow me to organize messages with respect to topics. That way people interested in my personal life would not have to read about my grand ideas for bringing freshwater to Africa (e.g.), and vice versa. For now though, I think it is better for me to just post everything I want public on this blog until I have time to learn python (a necessary step to move to appengine). In the interim, you can expect a little more frequency here, but less relevance.
I have been toying with the idea of rewriting my website again (the previous versions were short-lived publicly) through google's appengine. This would allow me to organize messages with respect to topics. That way people interested in my personal life would not have to read about my grand ideas for bringing freshwater to Africa (e.g.), and vice versa. For now though, I think it is better for me to just post everything I want public on this blog until I have time to learn python (a necessary step to move to appengine). In the interim, you can expect a little more frequency here, but less relevance.
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