2008-08-30 1550: It occurred to me to look at the .xslx format for Microsoft Excel. It too is basically a .zip archive. Again, if you change the ending of the file to .zip, you can open it up (by double-clicking on it), and you see a little directory with subdirectories containing various components of the spreadsheet. I had always assumed that these new Microsoft Office 2007 file types were just the latest iteration in Microsoft's efforts to prevent other software from opening Microsoft documents (to force people to stick with Microsoft Office). But in fact, I read that this file types are intended to be open, so anyone can write software to use them. Good for Microsoft—but Open Office hasn't quite updated their suite to handle these file types (even though they too use file types with a similar, XML-based structure).
2008-08-29 2100: Another interesting thing I ran acros the other day: The mysterious new .docx format for Microsoft Word is nothing more than some sort of .zip archive. If you change the extension from .docx to .zip, then open the file (by double-clicking on it), it behaves like a zip archive. You can see its constituent parts, including the text of the document itself (in XML, I believe). I ran across this trick trying to use Open Office to open a Word document (Open Office can't handle .docx directly, but I read that you can get around it that way).
2008-08-29 2100: I just discovered a bug (or a serious limitation) in Microsoft Notepad: Apparently, on longer text files, it ignores line feeds and/or carriage returns, so there are no paragraph breaks whatsoever in the document; you just get a huge impenetrable block of text. (These are still in the file but just not displayed. Apparently, Notepad will open large files but it cannot parse them properly.)
2008-08-29 2030: I note with approval that John McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, named one of her children "Trig." (Added 2008-08-30 1930: According to a story on the People Magazine website that Google found for me, the name "Trig" means 'True' in Norse.)
2008-08-20 2200: Books I've been reading lately:
2008-08-13 2300: I was surprised this morning to read of a pair of new solar plants that will be built in California, that will together produce 800 megawatts of power—but the surprising thing is that the plants will be photovoltaic not solar-thermal. Currently, the largest photovoltaic plant in the US is 14 megawatts, and Germany is building a 40 megawatt plant. The power production will compare with nuclear or coal plants, which typically produce 1 to 3 gigawatts. (But because it will operate only during part of the day, it will produce no more than one-third the power of a nuclear plant of the same peak power. However, it will operate during the part of the day when electricity is most expensive.) The utility is claiming that this plant will be competitive with wind power, which is also surprising, but they're not disclosing what the cost will be. Apparently, they're expecting that the costs will drop as they scale up to this large scale of solar panel production. The plants will be completed in 2013.
2008-08-13 2300: Today, I saw a lecture (sponsored by the local Audubon chapter) about atlatls, also known as spear-throwers. This was a weapon used by Paleo-Indians from at least 12,000 years ago until about 1500 years ago, when they were largely replaced by bows and arrows. Atlatls were a simple but elegant technology. An atlatl is a stick about half a meter in length, used to extend the arm to throw a thin, flexible, fletched spear (referred to as a "dart") of about 2 meters in length. A skilled atlatlist can throw the dart over 250 meters (close to three football fields in distance). The word atlatl, by the way, comes from the Aztecs, who still used them when the Spaniards appeared—the Spaniards feared that weapon more than bows and arrows because unlike arrows, the atlatl dart could penetrate their body armor. We got a chance to try the atlatl out for ourselves after the lecture. I'm afraid to say that I show little talent at this (I was one of those kids accused of throwing a ball like a girl back in the 6th grade). But Richard Lyons, the lecturer, was frighteningly proficient with this weapon—he got the message across as to how deadly it is. He has a website, by the way: The World Atlatl Association.
2008-08-10 2100: The Old Testament lesson (reading) this morning (at my Episcopal church, Christ Church Cathedral) was from Genesis 37: They said to one another, 'Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him … and we shall see what will become of his dreams.' This took my breath away—just this summer, I saw this verse at the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King. This was on a memorial marker at the Hotel Lorraine in Memphis, Tennessee, now the home of the National Civil Rights Museum.
2008-08-10 2045: I haven't seen any more wind turbine blades, but I have seen a couple of very skeptical reactions to the MIT catalyst story on environmental websites (Grist and The Oil Drum). Disappointing, if these writers are correct. I of course can't tell.
2008-08-04 2200: Another wind turbine blade sighting. This time, three trucks, each bearing two blades. They were at about mile marker 1 on I-65, northbound. The other day, I read somewhere of wind turbines having blades of 131 feet in length—almost 40 meters. These could easily have been that size.
Now a colleague of mine was telling me today about the critical breakthrough that has just happened in solar power. Something about a new catalyst that can efficiently separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, that solves the problem of storing energy made from wind turbines or solar cells. He said that nuclear power is "done"; in 10 years, we'll have photovoltaic panels on our roofs that will produce hydrogen for fuel cells that will power our houses at night. I was a bit dubious, but I followed his advice to Google "MIT catalyst solar" and immediately found the press release on an MIT website ('Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution). If these researchers are right (and there's no reason to think otherwise), this is an extraordinary advance and everything has changed.
I have had a soft spot for nuclear energy for some years, perhaps because I am nostalgic for the scientific and technological optimism of the 1960s (when I was a child), but recently reinforced by a book I read this year, Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy, by Gwyneth Cravens. This is actually quite a fine book, but it may well be that nuclear is done. I would not regret that.