US Halts Applications For Solar Energy Projects

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Apparently my idea's of building large solar parks in unused areas of the US is already in action and swamping the BLM.

Check out this link for more info:

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/321400439/article.pl

Here's another idea. Do you know what a solar tower is? One of the complexities with these guys is that they require a height distance which increases the temperature gradient and hence the efficiency. Australia has proposed building one and the initial plan was that this would be tallest man-made structure in the world. My idea is this: build the solar tower next to a large mountain with a high to 100% incline that is perpindicular to the sun. You get half of the usable space to heat the air at the bottom but you can augment this with mirrors and objects that trap solar heat (such as shredded waste tires). Your build costs would be substantially cheaper because you can support the tower against the mountain (cheaper materials).

I live in Carson City and drive through Washoe Valley a lot. This area gets quite windy and often flips full tractor trailers on to their sides. Lets harness that power!

Obama to Pay Clinton's Debt?

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I think that would cause a few disgruntled democrats that may want to close their purse strings going forward... If this was an issue for her she should have quit when the not so subtle hints were being made ten million dollars ago.

ASP.NET Error Resolution

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Man I love how Microsoft makes me spend needless hours fixing weird oddities. My latest one was the following WinXP error:

The site [site] has not been configured for use with ASP.NET 2.0. Microsoft Visual Studio has been designed for use with ASP.NET 2.0. If not configured some features may make incorrect assumptions, and pages designed with the tool may not render correctly. - Would you like the site to be configured now?


A Google search returned some hits but nothing worked. I finally resolved the issue by using the following set of commands (within the Framework\2.0.xxx directory):

aspnet_regiis -ua
aspnet_regiis -i

If that fails - make sure the Default Site is configured for ASP.NET and run through the permissions wizard. Note, the above commands probably kills .NET 1.1.

Take care!

The Middle Class Continues the Decline

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About 6 months ago I predicted 2008's inflation at about 6.5% compared to the 4.2% from the prior year. I'm starting to wonder if I need to upgrade that target to something higher...

I woke this morning to hear that Dow Chemical is increasing prices by about 25%. This is a big company that (whether you know it or not) plays a central role in your style of life.

Link:
Dow Chemical raising prices by another 25 percent

Gabe's Deal of the Day

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Buy.com is selling a pretty well equiped laptop for $479.00 with free shipping. Reviews appear favorable.

A "Thank you!" to the United States Supreme Court

6 comments
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


There is no doubt that the United States is in a war. Our war is not against a nation or regime but against an activity called terrorism. This is a new type of war that requires change in the way we fight and the way we make peace. We will lose lives during this war but we must remember that hostility breeds more hostility our best defense is to stick with our highest ideals because we will win by making friends, not beating enemies.

Our leadership has opened up several detention camps to house "enemy combatants" caught during our war. Whats unfortunate about this is the aura of secrecy surrounding the people in these camps. The camps are usually on foreign soil, the circumstances of capture are classified and the government process for detaining enemies is not clear to the average American citizen.

I wanted to take the time to applaud the Supreme Court for making a difficult decision. The decision was in favor of yielding the detainees the rights we take for granted as U.S. citizens.

There are arguments that these people were caught on foreign soil and therefore should not have the same rights as a U.S. citizen. I disagree, that very same argument was made for the slaves traded by the early American colonies. The argument was wrong and the higher ideals won out, yielding to us a stronger country because of it.

Poor Man's File Synchronization using PowerShell

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I developed the following Powershell function to help me synchronize code on my new servers:

function SynchronizeFolder([string]$source, [string]$destination, $recurse, $exclusions)
{
   if($source.tostring().endswith("\") -ne $true){$source = "$source\"}
   if($destination.tostring().endswith("\") -ne $true){$destination = "$destination\"}

   # Variables
   $child_items
   $destination_file
   $destination_folder
   $result

   # Folder exists?
   if((test-path $destination) -eq $false){$result = md $destination}

   # Build child items
   if($recurse)
   {
      $child_items = get-childitem $source -recurse
   }
   else
   {
      $child_items = get-childitem $source
   }

   foreach($child_item in $child_items)
   {
      $destination_file = $destination + $child_item.fullname.substring((get-item $source).fullname.length)      
      $destination_folder = $destination_file
      if($child_item.psiscontainer -eq $false){$destination_folder = $destination_folder.substring(0, $destination_folder.lastindexof("\")) + "\"}   

      if($child_item.psiscontainer -eq $true)
      {
         #folder
         if((test-path $destination_folder) -eq $false)
         {
            $result = md $destination_folder
            echo $destination_folder
         }
      }
      else
      {
         #file
         if((test-path $destination_file) -eq $true)
         {
             #exists
            if($child_item.lastwritetime -ne (get-item $destination_file).lastwritetime -or $child_item.length -ne (get-item $destination_file).length)
            {
               if($child_item.fullname -match $exclusions -eq $false)
               {
                  copy $child_item.fullname $destination_folder
                  echo $destination_file
               }
            }
         }
         else
         {
            #new
            if($child_item.fullname -match $exclusions -eq $false)
            {
               copy $child_item.fullname $destination_folder
               echo $destination_file
            }
         }      
      }
   }
}

Using Powershell to Find Unused Images on my Site

2 comments
I developed the following Powershell code to help me isolate images in my website's "images" folder that were not being used by the site code:

$image_folder_mask = ".\website\images\*"
$source_file_mask = ".\website\*.aspx",".\website\*.cs",".\website\*.ascx",".\website\*.master",".\website\styles\*.css"

$image_list = new-object system.collections.arraylist
$image_list.addrange(@(get-item -path $image_folder_mask -include "*.png","*.gif","*.jpg" | select name))

foreach($file in get-item $source_file_mask)
{
   foreach($text in $(get-content $file.fullname))
   {
      #echo $text

      if($text -match "[a-z0-9_]+\.png|[a-z0-9_]+\.gif|[a-z0-9_]+\.jpg")
      {
         foreach($current_match in $matches)
         {
            $searcher = $current_match[0]

            for($i = 0; $i -lt $image_list.count; $i++)
            {
               $searchee = $image_list[$i]

               if($searchee.name.trim() -eq $searcher.trim())
               {
                  $image_list.removeat($i)
               }
            }
         }
      }
   }
}

echo $image_list

Google Earth - Go to Disney World now!

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OK this is just plain cool!

If I had money to invest...

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Since these ideas are of no use without the means I'm going to list them here for your perusal. Here's my list of investments based on my intuition about our world's future.

1) Purchasing large tracks of land in remote areas (think BLM auctions).

The reason for this is that the world is coming to terms with our problem of peak oil (aka Hubbert's peak) and that it will eventually be hard to dig a hole and pull up cheap energy. This is something I learned about 3 years ago during my own research and I have to admit that it made me scared... But upon 3 years of contemplation I have come to realize that we have PLENTY of energy. Now I'm not a scientist but I believe that our two primary sources of energy on this planet are solar (byproducts include wind, hydro, bio, petroleum, sea currents, etc etc) and nuclear (nuclear plants and geothermal). In either scenario land will be needed to harvest this energy. To make this work, however, you'd eventually need grey/sea water piping to the site.

2) Aluminum mining operations

Steel has been our ally and friend since the industrial revolution but our new economy will require us to make better use of our energy and steel is just plain heavy. Aluminum (the 13th most common element in the universe) is the likely alternative.

3) Runabouts

I scoff at people driving 4-6,000 lb trucks alone to get to work or the grocery store. This is just plain wasteful and disrespectful of humanity and our environment. Companies with ideas to make fuel efficient 1-2 person vehicles will boom very soon (think 3 wheeled vehicles with light engines/transmissions within/near the tire-well).

Gabe's Deal of the Day

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Buy.com is selling a recertified 24" lcd monitor for $279.99 shipped.

One reviewer complains of a high frequency "hum".