Satellite Internet

Well, I'm back working in the woods of Western Canada. From now until the beginning of August, I'll be working in northern British Columbia and northern Alberta.

This year, a number of positive improvements have taken place within our company. The most exciting for me is Satellite Internet! No, not because I can check my email frequently - to be honest, it's nice to get away from it for most of the summer. However, this will be a big time saver in submitting payroll data for my camp to the home office. No more four hour drives on inconvenient mornings, trying to find an internet cafe that lets me email attachments. The internet connection is pretty decent. It took me a while to set up the dish, because aiming it is particularly tricky (I had help from my compass and a satellite directional finder), but now that I have it working, it is a decently fast broadband connection, with downloads averaging about 120KB/sec tonight. I also have a VoIP satellite phone attached to the dish, which significantly increases the safety factor due to improved communications for emergencies.

On an unrelated note, I saw a sign this week that said "for sale by owner." Those signs always bothered me due to the wording. I'm looking forward to the day when I see a particular ugly house for sale with a sign on the front lawn that says, "for sale by neighbour."

One Man's Trash

Lots of people have heard the saying that, "one man's trash is another man's treasure." I was thinking about just how true that is going to be in another decade, although I bet that most people don't realize it.

Right now, the world is experiencing some of the highest metals prices in the past two to three decades. Zinc, Copper, and other metals are definitely setting records, and PGM's (gold, silver, etc.) are showing huge signs of strength. Many of these different metals are used in tons of industrial processes and hi-tech equipment, so demand has been growing very quickly over the past decade. The problem is that even with the higher prices providing the funds for companies to increase exploration efforts, diminishing returns are being experienced. In many places, all the "good finds" have already been taken advantage of. The problem is not as significant as in the oil industry, because there will certainly be many more deposits discovered which can turn into viable mines. However, demand is increasing at a rate which suggests that the mining industry won't be able to keep up, and will fall further and further behind in the next decade or so. And of course, if oil prices go up significantly in the next year or two, metals prices will have to follow because it takes a lot of energy to mine and refine metals. The metals shortage probably isn't something that is going to turn into a crisis overnight like energy could, but it will certainly become a challenge ten to fifteen years from now.

And that's where garbage comes in. Just think of how many landfill sites there are across the country, just full of old cars, appliances, computers, batteries, and all sorts of other goodies containing dozens of different types of metals. I'm not suggesting that people should dig up the landfills and pick through the garbage looking for old items to recycle. I'm thinking that the entire contents of the landfill could go to a smelter and be processed the same way that ore is processed when it comes out of the ground. The concentrations of some metals in this garbage have got to be higher than concentrations in random truckloads of ore coming out of the ground directly. There would be some challenges, but I'm sure that most smelters or ore-processing facilities could be converted to be able to accept landfill detrius mixed in with conventionally mined feedstock.

Maybe I should start looking into trying to buy an old city landfill or two, although I bet they'd be way too expensive for me to afford. After all, who would want to sell a future gold mine?

Mess in the Middle East

The Middle East has always been a geo-political mess, and the current tensions are no exception. However, one notable exception with current affairs is that the Americans are reportedly considering the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, to try to prevent further problems.

Next week's New York will have an article which outlines some of the issues with Iran's nuclear enrichment activities. In Washington, there is apparently a divergence of opinions. Military planners suggest that IF diplomacy fails and a military approach is utilized to throw Iran's nuclear ambitions off-track, then the problem is that some of their facilities are so protected that "small scale" nuclear weapons (bunker-busters) would be required to "do the job" properly. Within the US administration, some military personnel support such an option, while others are very much against it.

The full text of the New Yorker article can be found here:
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060417fa_fact

The rationale behind putting an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions certainly has some logic to it, IF you subscribe to the view that the ultimate risk of such knowledge would lie in the production of nuclear weapons (which could easily be shared with certain terror groups) rather than the provision of electricity for Iranian citizens. However, the fact that the US is allegedly considering using nuclear weapons itself (to prevent other people from developing nuclear weapons) seems rather hypocritical. Of course, it shouldn't come as a big suprise, considering the history of use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq, which are sort of related to nuclear weapons when you consider the radiation dangers.

Theodore Roosevelt is well known for his suggestion of over a century ago that the US should, "Walk softly and carry a big stick." Hopefully diplomacy will prevail, but IF military options are pursued, I hope that the American government sticks to conventional weapons, rather than using the nuclear stick to start a beating in Iran.

Movies for the Impatient

I was watching a movie last night, which in itself was uncharacteristic. Exams have started here at the university, so the club is pretty quiet, and my latest book order from Amazon didn't show up yesterday as I had hoped (I need a breathalyzer on my laptop that prevents me from ordering books on Amazon when I'm intoxicated, because it tends to be a recurring "problem"). Anyway, because of all this, I decided that I'd pass the time before I could morally go to bed by watching "The Guns of Navarone," an old 1961 movie set in World War Two.

The movie was about two and a half hours long, and I decided that I was too impatient to watch the whole thing. I figured it would be nice to watch it in "fast forward." I figured that if it is possible to speed up the pitch control on a turntable, a person should be able to play a movie at 120% of normal speed to make it go by more quickly. Programmers should even be able to build in a special "pitch override" function which would prevent the speech and music from going up in pitch at the higher speed, by sampling the music repeatedly and just dropping the appropriate number of samples, so the audio portion sounds "normal" (albeit somewhat fast).

I was quite surprised that none of my video players on the laptop could do this. What if you were getting on a plane that was going to be making a 98 minute flight, and your video Ipod had a movie that was 117 minutes long? You should be able to watch it in "fast mode" so that you can take in the entire movie during the flight. Am I the only person in the world who has ever wanted to watch a movie in slightly compressed time, maybe to save half an hour or so?

Bye Bye Birdie

I have lost a pet. I had a bunch of people over for a beer & wine making competition yesterday, and before they arrived, I thought I'd do a major cleanup. The birdcage was a bit of a mess, so I thought I'd just vacuum out the bottom. No, I know you're probably thinking right now that I sucked a budgie in the vacuum, but no, it just flew out of the cage, which wasn't a big deal since I let them all fly around the house pretty frequently. What I didn't notice, however, was that one of the windows was open, and he took advantage of it. It was a nice day outside, so I hope he enjoyed his last few hours of freedom (hanging out with a flock of robins) before he probably froze to death in the rainstorm last night.

RIP Yellow Bird.