Geek alert

I'm going to go all geeky on you for a minute or two. If you aren't even remotely interested in technology, then look away now.

An article in Slashdot caught my eye claiming that in the past five years, server power consumption in th US has doubled. At first, I thought they meant each server had doubled it's usage but it seems that what they mean is that overall consumption by servers in the US has risen from 0.6% of consumed electricity in 2000 to 1.2% in 2005. This is attributed to all sorts of things including the rise of the Blade centre.

But, from experience, it seems that Blades often replace old, inefficient servers and are capable of doing more on a per-unit basis which means that in a fair comparison of, say, productivity per watt consumed, the new systems win out for efficiency. On top of this, many organisations are installing large server farms but then getting rid of traditional desktops for users and replacing them with thin client terminals and Citrix environments on those shiny new Blade farms. I would be interested to see what the power consumption difference is between the two models but I'll be willing to wager that it is lower with the thin client/server farm option than having all those desktops sitting about the place.

As a result, this article seems a little disingenuous. I would be very interested to see if there have been any comparative studies done between the two models mentioned above and the efficiency of new vs old servers to see if the headline rise in consumption is automatically a bad thing or if we're actually reducing overall consumption per user by increasing our server farm sizes.

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Run Forrest, run!

Last week, I was overcome by a strange and irresistible urge to go for a run. Now, this was odd on more than one front. For a start, I'm a bit of a lard bag if I'm being honest. Obviously, running would be a good thing to help shift some of that flab which would be doubly handy as I seem to have agreed to take part in a 12 hour mountain bike XC enduro race (as part of a team of 8) at this years Bristol Bike Fest. So being a chubber is not, in itself, a problem although the reason I am currently carrying some excess pie, as my mate Chris who's from Yorkshire would put it, is because I'm basically lazy. I have a desk job and when I get home I like to do very little. Yes, I occasionally go out on the bike at weekends, something else which will have to increase in frequency over the coming months, but exercise and I are long lost acquaintances.

In my youth, I lived in the Fens and cycled everywhere. At 6th form college, I used to go to the gym three times a week too and even at university, where my full time smoking really took off, my second year was almost entirely devoted to Kung Fu sessions which probably explains my lack of academic achievement that year. But after that, it all melted away and I got porkier and lazier.

I gave up the fags over a year ago now (not that it feels like it sometimes) but recently I hit my heaviest ever weight. Despite me saying I'm a lard bag, I'm not some morbidly obese blob, but I do have a bit of a gut. I got to 16 stone (although bear in mind, I'm 6 foot 1 and have a broad build so it's not as bad as it seems) and I realised something must be done. I'm fluctuating a bit now so it's been at the back of my mind to get off my arse and do something. Which brings me back to this running malarkey.

I never liked it. Even when I was fit, and I tried running I didn't like it. So why the hell do I now have this urge to run? For years I have taken the piss out of runners safe in the knowledge that they were as mad as a bag of badgers and now I find myself as one of them, pounding along the pavement, lungs on fire and muscles screaming in protest. Things is, I got the urge again today (must be a Thursday thing as it was Thursday last week too) and I went again. And I'm planning to go more and more. Worse still, I timed myself last week and this week, and was gratified to note that I was a whole 2 minutes quicker. In fairness, this was entirely due to me slowing to a walk when I ran out of steam rather than just stopping as I did last week, but I still felt a frisson of pleasure in beating last weeks time and I'm quite enjoying it, once I've stopped feeling like I'm going to die.

I had best admit that my run is not very long (a less-than-impressive 0.89 miles according to mapmyrun) but then I'm quite unfit so I figure I'd best start small and when I can comfortably run that without stopping I can start to increase the length a bit and build it up. But still, I have spontaneously begun to be a bit more healthy and I wonder if this is just me growing up a bit. I'll be 32 this year but I never really think of myself as being that age. In my head I'm still a young lad (early 20's I suppose) in many ways. Not the going-out-on-the-rage-every-night way, but then maybe it's more a symptom of being the youngest sibling by 4 years that I've never seen myself as a proper responsible adult although I suppose I am just that.

Well, I just hope it lasts because I'm definitely going to need to get fit for the Bike Fest, but that's another story altogether.

Listening to: Classic Euphoria Disc 1

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Doctor who?

The abomination formerly know as 'Dr' Gillian McKeith has been told by the Advertising Standards Agency here in the UK that she must stop using the title Dr as it is misleading. Brilliant! Common sense prevails!

For those of you not in the know, this hideous woman (apparently referred to in medical circles as 'The Awful Poo Lady' - all will become clear) has made a very large pile of cash punting alleged health foods, potions, lotions and powders along side lucrative book and TV deals. Just how much of the health food products are snake oil is probably a question for debate on it's own, but it's her idiotic claims and utter babble which she tries to pass of as science, along side the use of the title doctor which really annoyed on regular reader of badscience enough to do something about it. It would seem her doctorate came from a correspondence course in America and carries no accreditation over here. She plays on this by wearing a lab coat and poncing about in what appears to be a lab on her Channel 4 TV show "You Are What You Eat" whereby she visits some terrible lard ass and takes a sample of their poo which she pokes about in on the telly (not something you want on at tea time) and then berates them for eating kebabs.

Now, you might think "What's wrong with that? Surely any prod given to fat bags to stop them eating themselves into an early grave and draining the NHS is a good thing?". Well, yes it is, but the nonsense this woman spouts under the pretence of science is frightening. I won't go over it here as there is an excellent article on badscience which lists a number of the inanities that have issued from her trap like the malodorous turds she likes to play with. Suffice to say that, as noted in the article, she seems to have failed to grasp the concepts of basic pre-GCSE level biology entirely. It is pap of the highest order and will be instantly recognisable to readers of New Scientists Last Word column as the kind of thing which deserves to be publicly derided lest anyone who might be a touch naive is taken in by it and believes it to be the truth. And there are plenty who would believe her because she calls herself Dr and wears a lab coat, mores the pity.

So, good on the ASA for upholding the complaint and delivering a well-aimed kick in the cobblers to another tranche of the moronic pseudo-celebrity mumbo-jumbo which pollutes our media. Goodbye 'Dr' McKeith - you won't be missed.

Listening to: eels - Beautiful Freak

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And now for something completely different...

Well not really. This is just filler until I write something worthwhile (playing a poker tournament or two tomorrow so you never know I must just rant about that). OK Go, one of my current top listens, are getting a rep for minimalist but inventive self-directed videos for their songs and this one (for the single Invincible) is no exception. You may well have seen the others as they did the rounds last year (they're on Youtube and I highly recommend taking a peek if you haven't seen them).

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I'll donate, but by my decision...

Earlier today, I saw a post on a forum regarding a petition being raised using the UK government's new online petition system (and there have been others using alternative online petition systems), which calls for the system of organ donation in the UK to be changed to an 'opt out' system. Essentially, this would be a system whereby you are automatically added to the organ donor register when you turn 18 and you would have to actively remove yourself from it if you objected.

My first reaction was "no way". Now, I did think about this; I have been on the organ donation register ever since I was 18 and would hope that even if I hadn't, my reasonably enlightened family would, should the worst happen to me, donate my wobbly bits so that someone else might benefit (we have enough medics in the family that it is a dead cert they would do so). So why did I immediately find the idea objectionable? Was it because opt out schemes inherently remove some control over your decisions? Was it because this would be offensive to many religious groups (not that I share their views as I am an atheist but thats no reason to deliberately offend them)? Was it because I don't like the idea that someone else makes a hugely important decision on my behalf without my consent and I then have to reverse it?

In truth, it was a little of all of these. At the risk of trvialising the issue, I would draw a very loose parallel with those irritating tick boxes that appear on more or less every order form or registration form on the net which have a statement next to them declaring that you either do or do not wish to have crap sent to you by every possible communication method. There has been some attempt to make these easier to understand by requiring them to NOT use confusing language and not opting you in by default to these odious marketing campaigns (with limited success as half the time you tick one box to opt out of one things and tick another to opt into something else but you tick or un-tick both and end up with crap no matter what you do unless you pay attention). This is a pretty trivial thing in the grand scheme of life, yet the government has tried to stop these schemes being an opt out system and make them opt in, so why would something so important and potentially contentious as organ donation be made opt out? The decision to become an organ donor is incredibly personal and is not something that should be assumed by society on your behalf because society believes it knows best.

I fully agree that awareness of the organ donation system needs to be raised to encourage people to register. The public should also be made aware of the need to inform their family of their registration to avoid possible problems should the worst happen to them. But to petition for a system whereby an intensely personal decision is taken away from people? Sorry, but I just can't support that.

Listening to: Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left

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