MET maker

The power consumption at my house for the last year. Although the average over the year is 218w, I know that the steady state usage of my house is around 120w or less. Most of this being the fridge/freezer. While my home server is around 10w (max.).

The data is being captured in RRDTool and graphed using Cacti. The technology behind this is described in my project Current Cost data published to iPhone using Perl, RRDTool and iWebKit.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

I am using an Mac running OS X 10.6.2 and using Arduino IDE 18.  I strongly suspect it has something to do with creation of the temporary folder at that location. Which in turn is possibly a permissions issue. Like many people I do not run as an admin when using my normal login account. I have tried making giving my normal login account admin permissions to no avail; I get the same error.

Any ideas anyone?

Whatever the issue it all looks good now.

Enjoy,

Mark

I think I had made my mind up about the iPad before it was announced. To my friends I said "if it has an iPhone-like OS then I don't want one". So when last Wednesday came I took one look and said to myself "why would I want to carry around a giant iPod Touch?". At the time I immediately said no. I have iPhone, I have several Macs. Do I really need a device that is neither? I had yet to get it.

Today I read two articles that went a long way to changing my mind. Secondly I spent the day analysing my own use of a computer.The first article I read was all about how the iPad represented a new world way of using computers. I am definitely old world. I am a long time IT pro and a geek, so messing with computers is both what I do all day and I enjoy. While I want to install a web server and run native Perl application in a terminal window I realised today that I do need to. Having used an iPone 3G for the last 19 months I realise that I should not need to think of a computer as a operating system, file system, window and applications, but rather as window to my data. I have long realised that most new world users are more open at using new applications and web sites than I am. While I look at Flickr and think I wonder their proxy servers work, most normal people look at Flikr and think what a great way to share the pictures from the office party. This first article nicely sums up my thoughts much better than I can.

I also read Andy Ihnatko's first impressions article. It is a great summary of how the iPad works and some of its short comings. Andy thinks the lack of a 'visible' file system is an issue. I would agree, the ability to move data between applications is a very important aspect of a multi tasking data device, i.e. a computer. While I do not think the lack of obvious multi tasking is an issue, the ability to move data between applications is going to be crucial for the larger device. Data sharing on the iPhone is of no real hardship. As the iPad is supposed to site between the iPhone and a full on Mac then in my view it needs to be more like a Mac and less like an iPhone.

As well as the ability to share files and data between applications I would also like to a better way to exchange data with a real computer. The monster that is iTunes is not really suitable for moving my Pages, Office, PDFs and other files between my desktop and the iPad. An Apple Insider article touches on this very topic. Maybe Apple's plans for cloud computing will address this. No doubt Apple would charge for such a service. Which is fine by me as I loath advert laden or limited functionality free services. However there a plenty of PC users that would be reluctant to follow sign up to The Apple Way.

In addition I would also like to see an easy way to directly print documents from the iPad.

I started to write this entry after I realised that I could have spent most of the day using a iPad and not really needed my Mac Book Pro. I spent some of the time coding, but I could have done that on my iMac. For the rest of the day I could have wandered around the house with an iPad and been just as productive (sic).

So have I changed my mind and do I now want an iPad?  Well maybe. I suspect that I will not be at the head of the queue on day one the launch in the UK. Just as I waited for a iPhone 3G rather than buy the first generation iPhone. I will wait for a few months to read how others a getting on. I have no need to be an early adopter these days. Also it would be good to see the iBooks application and accompanying store be available in the UK.

Keep in mind that thousands of people said when the iPhone came out; why would I want one? Some three years later the iPhone has made Apple one of the largest mobile devices companies in the world. Apple always seem to start slow and grow with amazing speed. The iPad juggernaut has only just started to get rolling.

A similar utility is available for Firefox, called Flashblock.

Highly recommended.

It looked very straight forward to get going however I kept getting the error "Error contacting apcupsd @ localhost:3551: Connection refused". I then spent the next hour trying to figure out what was wrong. After a lot of Google-ing I found the answer.

There is a line in the file /etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf that starts NISIP, the default value for this entry is the standard network loopback address of 127.0.0.1. It would appear at first sight that this is the correct value; i.e. the daemon should only listen for messages on the local network. For a reason I cannot explain I had to change this value to 0.0.0.0.  Once I had restarted the daemon with the command sudo /sbin/apcupsd restart, all was well. The command apcaccess now correctly returned the status of the UPS.

Eventually I will attach my Apple Time Capsule, iMac (with APCUPSD installed) and ADSL modem.

If you were Apple who would you buy with all the cash?  Sony music and video, Adobe, Amazon, Akamai or someone else?

Wonderfully imaginative. I love it.

The application will record the data output from the S4 monitor at regular intervals and store the samples in a MySQL database. If a heart rate monitor is attached to the S4 it will record that data as well. At the end of a rowing session the application calculates a summary of the data.