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I bought a 1.5 GHz G4 Mac Mini a little over a year ago to serve as my primary desktop computer at home. It's been a good machine, though it has always been limited on system resources. The points of contention have been disk space, disk speed, and memory. The Mini shipped with a meager 512 MB of RAM, which is barely enough to have OS X running along with a few apps (Safari/Firefox, iTunes, Terminal). Also, the hard-disk is only 60 GB in size and spins at 5400 RPM (most desktop hard-drives spin at 7200 RPM or more, which provides faster access to data on the disk).

So, I finally got around to upgrading the RAM to 1 GB. The Mini has only a single RAM slot, so I had to purchase a 1 GB memory module to replace the stock 512 MB module. I chose the Kingston 400 MHz PC3200 1 GB RAM module because it was fairly inexpensive ($90 at Fry's) and from a well-known manufacturer. Removing and replacing the Mini's case was an absolute nightmare, though working with the memory modules was a one-minute task. With that behind me, I'm now working with a solid 1 GB of RAM and have seen performance improve noticeably. It's also worth noting that I chose to purchase PC3200 RAM despite the fact that the Mini treats the RAM as PC2700. PC3200 is more readily available, more recent, and cheaper. And the Mini cares not. :)

I chose to upgrade the RAM before upgrading the hard-disk because RAM limitations have a big effect on the performance of applications while they're in use, whereas hard-disk limitations tend to affect performance only during application start-up and file operations (load, save, etc). Also, virtual memory on the hard-disk is used to supplement RAM when there isn't any free RAM left. A slow hard-disk will only make things worse. So, by increasing the amount of RAM available I can safely avoid relying on virtual memory. This lessens the importance of a fast hard-disk. Not to say that I wouldn't appreciate a much faster and larger hard-disk to accomodate my ever-growing digital music collection!

Posted by Scott at 11:06 PM | Permalink

Natalie & I watched the docu-film "An Inconvenient Truth" for the first time last night. I've been interested in effects of climate change from increasing levels of carbon and other greenhouse gases, and I think that the film did a good job of presenting the issue in a format that most people can understand and identify with. However, I've seen several episodes of the PBS program "Nova" that provided more detailed explanations of the problem.

One of my favorite episodes of Nova addressed the study of air quality levels during the days following September 11, 2001, when all commercial air traffic in the United States was grounded. It offered the scientific community the chance to study the effects of an absence of air traffic on climate. The results were astonishing. Throughout the country, air temperature decreased noticeably in comparison to historical records held for the last 30 years. The conclusion drawn was that air traffic causes a discernable rise in atmospheric temperature. This is due to condensation trails (con-trails) that emerge from the exhaust of jet-powered airplanes. The con-trails act like a blanket that traps heat generated from surface activity or reflected sunlight.

So, I started wondering about how a rise in ocean levels might affect the San Francisco Bay Area where we live. There are a couple of good websites (i.e. Future Sea Level) devoted to the issue, one of which includes a Google Maps "mash-up" that shows the effects of varying increases in the sea-level on the Bay Area. Low-lying areas like Alameda and Emeryville will be inundated with only one-meter rise in sea level. This has led me to believe that purchasing property set upwards from the coast is a wise idea. Such areas include the Eastern sections of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro. The liklihood of such a catastrophe occuring encourages the consideration of environmental factors that have been ignored during times of relative calm. These are basic things, like ensuring protection from flooding, locating reliable sources of drinking water, and establishing contigency plans for transporation through risk-prone areas.

I found "An Inconvenient Truth" to be very informative, though a lot of the material was not new. I agree with the conclusion that businesses and the environment need not be mutually exclusive; however, the businesses that yield a profit might not be the same business currently profiting from the mining of oil, coal, and other fossil fuels. The lobbying powers of these traditional energy providers are the real reasons why fuel-efficient technologies have been slow to develop in the United States.

Posted by Scott at 9:24 AM | Permalink

I've been a strong advocate of the 'final' keyword in the Java language. It's an effective way of communicating to both humans and machines (the compiler & JVM) that a class/method/field/variable cannot be modified or extended. A while ago, I had a heated discussion with a former co-worker regarding the necessity of the 'final' keyword in variable declarations because he felt they were unnecessary and cluttered up the code. My opinion on the issue is that the readability of code can be addressed easily by choosing a coding-style that suits your tastes, and that producing code with ambiguous behavior can be extremely difficult to correct and is very error-prone. I recently found a great web page that explains why the 'final' keyword is so valuable. It's a worthwhile read, if that's your thing.

Posted by Scott at 2:48 PM | Permalink

I heard an episode of the American Public Media "Futuretense" Podcast in March regarding the launch of a new music trading website called LaLa. What sets LaLa apart from network-based file-sharing systems like Napster or Kazaa is that LaLa participants obtain legal rights to new music by forfeiting legal rights to CDs in their existing music collection. To get new music using LaLa, you must indicate which CDs you own and would like to trade, along with which CDs you'd like to receive. LaLa then connects you with someone else who would like one or more of your CDs. Upon shipping your CD, one or more of the CDs you'd like to receive will be sent. The fee for this kind of transaction is just $1.00, plus $0.75 postage. And, $0.20 of each trade goes directly to the artist. Typically, artists receive nothing from sales of used albums.

I decided to leverage my 200+ CD collection by trading some of my less-played and less-loved CDs by creating an account on LaLa last Wednesday. So far, I've sent 5 CDs, have received one CD, and am expecting 5 more CDs to arrive soon. It seems like a cool system, though there are some areas that ought to be improved. Most notable is the order in which CDs from the "Want List" are sent: semi-random. Once I've sent a CD out, a CD from my Want List will be sent to me, but I have no control over which one. There are over 40 CDs on my Want List and I have no idea which will be sent in the near future.

Also, it's not made clear how to deal with album artwork that's difficult or not possible to ship. Most users indicate that they would like to receive album artwork; however, artwork is sometimes not included or is integrated into the CD packaging. It sucks having to throw away a nicely designed CD case because it can't be sent along with the CD in the pre-formed LaLa envelope.

So, LaLa seems like a good deal and is an interesting business venture, but there's a lot of work to be done in improving the process for users of the service. I'll continue to test out the service for a few more months to see if the time spent has been justified.

Posted by Scott at 8:47 PM | Permalink