Russell Dicker

Unnecessary Cover-up

I just received my copy of The Prestige on DVD. The film was just as enjoyable the second time and I stayed up too late Wednesday night watching it. "Just 30 minutes," I told myself. That didn't work.

But enough about the movie, let's talk about the packaging. Like many DVDs I've bought recently, The Prestige came in a sleeve. A pointless, redundant, wasteful, and superfluous sleeve. Let's take a look at this thing. In both of these pictures, the item on the left is the sleeve and the item on the right is the DVD case:

      

It is like one of those "Find the Difference" games I used to play in the paper when I was six, only pointless. Seriously, what is the point? The packaging is almost identical and the only material addition to the sleeve is a sticker advertising an in depth interview with the director. Uhh...thanks.

Another befuddling choice in the packing is something I have seen more an more on DVD cases - fail safe claps:

Safety claps are a good idea. I'm very happy that designers have seen fit to add safety clasps to many things. Prescription medicine, cigarette lighters, table saws, handguns, and even expensive watches all benefit from solid implementations. But DVD cases? Is there a rash of DVD cases popping open that I'm not aware of?

Of course I shouldn't judge; there may be someone reading this right now thinking, "Eureka! My days of being plagued by DVD cases spontaneously popping open are over." Not so fast - this has been patented.

That's right, US Patent #6,719,133 says you need to back the fuck off this gold mine. The seven (!) guys that "invented" the Security Storage Container assigned it to the Panasonic Disc Manufacturing Corporation of America. So if you want to use this method to put an end to DVDs dangerously flying all over your home and viciously slicing up your loved ones, you'll need to talk to them. Sorry.

Speical to John: This is number 31. You could respond but it appears you don't even pay your bills.

<voice value="governator">
You've been disintermediated
</voice>

LED-ing the Way

While I'm in no danger of being called a hippie, I do believe in environmental causes and particularly those around energy conservation. Roughly 20% of energy consumed in the United States is for lighting. I have also long believed in the idea of voting with your wallet. So despite my normal skepticism around new years resolutions, I decided to make one this year: Replace every light source in my home with LEDs.

LEDs are very power efficient generally using a fraction of the power required for a compact florescent (which in turn use a fraction of the power of incandescent) and they have extraordinarily long lifetimes - usually above 50,000 hours. When run conservatively LEDs are good for 100,000 hours of operation - that's over 10 years of continuous operation.

So what's the downside? LEDs are expensive, even accounting for the considerable energy savings they cost more than incandescents. LEDs are also a much "cooler" color temperature than incandescent. Light from LEDs can be higher than 6000k versus 5000k for daylight and 2800k for incandescent. This cool light looks sweet in flashlights and headlights but can make skin and food appear creepy.

To begin I took an inventory of all the lights I have:

• 2 Nelson Saucer Pendant lamps with 60 watt incandescent bulbs.


• 5 PAR30 60 watt halogen in the kitchen


• 3 built in lights (entry, pantry, closet) with 60 watt incandescent bulbs.


• 1 IKEA reading lamp with 30 watt halogen bulb


• 2 IKEA torch lamps with unknown wattage halogen bulbs


• Vanity lighting in the bathroom with 5 unknown wattage halogen bulbs


• 1 IKEA table lamp with a 40 watt halogen bulb

Roughly 45 days into 2007 how is it going? Some successes and some failures.

I bought one PAR30 60 LED Bulb for the kitchen. I've been pretty disappointed with this bulb so far. The light color is the typical bluish-white light you get from LEDs and the bulb pales in comparison to the halogens when it comes to brightness. I recently found an warm white version on Amazon, but while the color may be better the customer review leads me to believe that it still won't be bright enough.

The IKEA reading lamp was successfully replaced with a Koncept Technologies IceLight with 60 LEDs. The IceLight has the same problem with color quality as the previous bulb I got, but where 60 LEDs where insufficient to make much of a dent in the kitchen they are more than sufficient for reading and color is simply less of an issue here.

Today I ordered a just released 150 LED warm white frosted bulb. This bulb is rated to be equivalent to an incandescent bulb of roughly 50 watts and could be an ideal replacement for the Nelson lamps and potentially the built-ins. I have concerns about brightness for the Nelsons and size for the built-ins. We'll find out if it works in a week.

Even if the new bulb works for all of the light above there will still be a number of challenges and a lot of expenses ahead. There may be a lot of trial and error (I already have one $60 bulb I don't like). The two torch lamps put out a large amount of light and will be hard to replace. Even harder will be the vanity lamps in the bathroom - they don't use a standard Edison bulb adaptor and are very bright. Finding LEDs bulbs that are both bright enough, small enough, the right color temperature, and fit the fixture may be impossible. I may need to tear out the entire fixture and replace it. Good thing my resolution didn't include a budget.

Who Me?

A while ago my dear friend Andrej Gregov posted five things about himself as part of a meme circulating where people would post such narcissistic internet detritus and then tag others to do the same.  In his post, Andrej tagged me.  Well I was busy and so I'm not getting around to it until the life had been sufficiently beaten out of that horse.  So here I am.

However instead of posting five things about me, I'm going to post six.  One of them will be false, and the rest will be true.  I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which is which.  Without further ado:

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1. While in college, I petitioned Guinness to recognize me as the record holder for "longest time spent walking up a down escalator".  Unfortunately my petition was denied with the reason that the record would not be "sufficiently notable".
2. I was in the upper deck of Camden Yards when the scene from the movie Dave was filmed there.  When the high definition version of that film becomes available, you might even be able to find me.
3. When I was a child a had a number of oral surgeries that required Novocain shots.  I developed such a distaste for the Novocain that when I finally needed my first filling at age 20 I had them fill the cavity without it.
4. I was once quoted in Rolling Stone magazine as an expert in human computer interaction.
5. Because I had childhood asthma, doctors suggested that I may be allergic to Penicillin and Aspirin.  Although I have never tested this hypothesis, I once developed a bad case of hives after eating an overly ripe and potentially fungus infested orange.
6. During a routine screening in middle school a nurse diagnosed me as having Scoliosis and stated it would be unlikely that I would ever be taller than 5' 8" (I'm 6' 3" now).  Later visits to a orthopedic surgeon determined that her diagnoses was incorrect and based on unusual muscle structure I developed as a medal winning kickboxer.

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If anyone wishes to continue this tired meme (either in its original or new and improved form) I would nominate Ian Sefferman and Buster McLeod.