QICBoy - TECH category

Lilliputians

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:30:00 GMT

This video from Gizmodo shows the cool effect of a shift lens when combined with time lapse.

The financial crisis simplified

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:00:00 GMT

The Vlogbrothers produced a video to explain the current economic crisis.

Tribe down

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Tribe.net has been down for a couple weeks. Burners are back from the playa and are dying to reconnect, I couldn't think of a worse time to bring it down. I received a nasty 500 error this morning. I don't know what's going on but whatever it is its bad bad bad.

Extended downtime topic posted Tue, September 9, 2008 - 4:56 PM by Darren
So, if you hadn't noticed, our downtime from Thursday was extremely extended until today, Tuesday. A vital piece of hardware malfunctioned and was irreparably damaged when we powered it back on. This equipment was scheduled for replacement on September 23rd -- we have the site held together with spit and bubblegum until we get the new storage solution installed. We apologize for the extended downtime, this weekend was about as bad as it could get. We will be sending out an email to all users tomorrow.

Minimum impressions

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Here are some figures that have been floating around in my mind that I thought I would share.

A website would need to generate 500 thousand impressions per month to receive an income of $5000 monthly. If you take 30% off (for taxes that amounts to about $3500. This would provide a modest monthly income for a one person show. The site would be about the popularity of cooltools or treonauts.

SITE               - IMPRESSIONS
laughingsquid[fm]  - 390,000
cooltools[fm]      - 480,000
treonauts[fm]      - 540,000
askaninja[fm]      - 780,000
43folders[fm]      - 900,000
boingboing[fm]     - 7,380,000

It's difficult to compare impressions since many websites don't offer that sort of information but you can use www.compete.com to get an idea of how the site ranks compared to others. Choose a couple of the sites you know the impressions for (laughingsquid, treonauts, askaninja as a baseline) as a baseline and compare the graphs to get a rough estimate. For example, tribe.net seems to far exceed the traffic of laughingsquid whereas tinynibbles.com seems to come pretty close to treeonauts.com. I've compiled an excel spreadsheet of sample impressions if you're interested in getting a better idea of what the numbers mean.

Here's how the numbers work out. If you were a website that charged $5 CPM (a modest figure, Gawker media charges between $6 and $10), you could sell 200 thousand impressions to 5 customers and earn $5000 monthly. This means your site would need to generate 1 million (one thousand thousand) impressions per month. You can double up the ads on a page and reduce this number to 500 thousand.

($5 per thousand impressions) * (200 thousand impressions) * (5 customers) = $5000 monthly (200 thousand impressions) * (5 customers) = 1000 thousand impressions

Car emissions

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

cooldrivepass.com evaluates your car's emissions based on make model and year. I drive a 1999 honda civic ex.

Your car consumes  7.17 liters of gas per 100km,  which equals  717 liters of gas per year.
Your annual emissions are: 1,692 KG of CO2 per year.
Your annual offset cost is : $ 33.84
Your total offset costs for 1 year(s) is: $ 33.84

Freezing time at Grand Central Station

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:46:00 GMT

A group called Improv Everywhere freezes time in New York City.

Linux video

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 03:00:00 GMT

I remember attending the very first Linux conference in 2000. It was held in San Jose and was so popular that they decided to move it to San Francisco the following year. I also remember, the following year, when IBM showed up to the Moscone Center with their astronauts from the future. The IBM-ers were all clustered together near their astronauts. They had on their IBM suits, complete, I would imagine, with IBM sock suspenders; or whatever it is they call those things. We huddled around the men in suits as if they were from another planet. Quiet frankly, they seemed more out of place then their astronaut mascots. Perhaps the mascots were an attempt to draw attention from their own outfits. Still, the Linux community is an accepting crowd and we welcomed them with open arms (though we kept an eye on our wallets). So it's strange to me to see commercials for Linux (I must have missed this one at the time) from the company that couldn't be more different from the community that gave birth to it. But maybe that's what Linux is all about, bridging these two communities together.

Christmas lights

Sun, 23 Dec 2007 19:53:51 GMT

My neighbors have a light show that's choreographed to music. If you drive up near their house and tune your radio to 95.5, you can watch the show from the comfort of your car. They even have a website where they've documented everything they've done. I recorded "Wizards in Winter" and "Carol of the Bells" by the Trans Siberian Orchestra.

Think different

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:00:00 GMT

These images represent the amount of space required to transport the same number of passengers by car, bus or bicycle (Poster is in the city of Muenster Planning Office August 2001).

Sunday bloody sunday

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 18:15:06 GMT

A couple years ago I posted a link to the audio of bush singing U2's Sunday bloody Sunday but I never posted a link to the video when I discovered it.