Naked Economics

I started on Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan which is about how basic economic stuff shape our society and make the wheels go around. We had some basic economic theory in high school in the history classes, so I didn't hold my hopes too high but I've already learned some profound insights after having read the first chapter. It's a great book.

One of the first thing he writes about is the market and pricing system as a decentralised system for distributing goods. Think about it.

Having worked a couple of years on decentralised large-scale software systems for the internet, it makes a lot of sense. Centralised software systems have many scaling issues. They easily break down or are very inefficient, or both. But it's not exactly easy to construct a large-scale decentralised software system that is sustainable in the long run either. And software, as complex as it is, is nowhere near the complexity of a human society.

The book also points out flaws of capitalism and how government tries (or should try) to amend those, e.g. through taxes on goods that harm the environment and thus incurs hidden costs to all of us. I'm looking forward to some well-founded thoughts on globalisation.

So far the worst thing about the book has been the foreword by some other guy (I've never heard of him, but he's probably famous). The book would actually have been better off without it.

Battle scene revisited

I had a look at the battle scene of yesterday. I can see why the youngster was cycling in the middle of the bicycle lane, with the downhill corner and a thorny rose plant leaning over the lane.

But he made two mistakes. He didn't compensate for the fact that he had a sidecar mounted on his bike, leaving too little space for me to get past him unless I drove over the edge of the lane. And with such a dangerous path he failed to pay enough attention to whether someone was coming round the corner. I hope for him that he didn't bang his head so hard in the lane that he suffered a concussion. My little finger is surely still hurting.

In other news I watched Al Gore speak in An Inconvenient Truth today at NOVI. Disturbing non-news. I am still determined to buy a windmill if I ever get rich. A local upstart called ClimAid handed out adverts at the event, they appear to be selling CO2 reductions.

The duel

What do a young computer scientist and a medieval knight have in common?

They both have to duel to get to work.

I dueled today on my way to work at lunch time. A malefactor rounded the corner downhill just before the tunnel I was parting through. I initially thought we would be able to pass each other without dispute, but no, he went for it with his sidecar. A big clang, my steed was forced to its knees and we were both down in the mud. My opponent hit the trodden road behind me. I landed on my hands, gauntlets taking most of the shock but little finger crushed, though not broken, then got on my feet to witness his fate.

He did not came back for another round, instead he simply glared at me, still seated on his charger on the ground, blood trickling from his face. A fair lady ran to his help; yet another tender champion ready for the hospital. Pity his ill fate. I turned my attention to my steed, its neck turned around, mud in the ear, but otherwise virtually unharmed. Checking up on my opponent again, I eventually left the scene of battle.

No young upstart shall bring a seasoned warrior down for good. A duel was fought, blood was spilled, but in the end we both survived, without permanent injury I believe.

But I don't think I'll be able to dig the rest of the garden the next couple of days.

Camera batteries

I've been looking for new batteries for Janne's digital camera. We're getting tired of buying expensive Duracells. The cheap batteries go dead almost immediately.

After having read the Wikipedia articles on batteries and discovering that lithium-ion AA-compatible batteries do not appear to exist (update: I later found some on batteribyen.dk, but unfortunately not rechargeable), I was going to buy Sanyo 2700 mAh rechargeable batteries from batteribyen.dk. The shop owner recommended Sanyo Eneloop, however. They are supposed to be able to keep their energy for longer. But they are only rated for 2000 mAh...

But then I found this page (which in turn references this test, I also found another big test). Apparently some cameras are very picky with the voltage they get from the battery, turning off at the point most batteries deliver the bulk of their energy at.

But not the Eneloops. So I'm going to be buying a set of those with a charger.

The small things

Still settling in at our new home. It's funny how small things can make a big difference.

Like the lighting. We've bought and put up a couple of lamps. Transforming the apartment from a grave or a scene in a detective story in the evenings. Actually I have already formed a habit not to press the light switches since they didn't work. Will have to unlearn that.

Or the stove and cooker hood. The stove is quick to warm up and easy to clean. And the hood doesn't make much noise while actually sucking pretty hard. The one at the old place sucked a lot too, but not in the sense you want it to.

Or the fridge, kindly borrowed from Janne's sister, which has one large instead of two small vegetable drawers, meaning that it can store cucumbers, probably the second most common vegetable after tomatoes in Denmark.

Or the wall-mounted things that I haven't had the time to put up before now. Changed the setting from construction site to something closer to a home.

Or the fact that the two phalaenopsis orchids which have bloomed the last few months are still carrying their flowers while the two others decided to bloom almost simultaneously. So we now have four blooming phalaenopsis in a row at the counter between the kitchen and the living room. Pictures soon, I promise.

Still on the todo list is digging the garden. Yesterday I put felt feet under the piano, in attempt to reduce floor vibrations, hopefully transmitting less sound to the neighbours. Tilting the piano was like lifting an elephant.

Efficient work force

Janne mentioned yesterday that the head of a recycling company was eager to hire former farmers. Over the last couple of decades a lot of farmers in Denmark have had to stop because small farms cannot produce enough surplus to give a decent income. They used to large or medium farms, now they're simply too small. So many farmers have had to find a job.

A similar wave hit the country when industrialisation started kicking in and women in large numbers began joining the work force. I remember reading about egg-packers in a factory in literature classes in high school. The point is that those women were also valued because they were used to work for themselves and thus act responsibly and conscientious.

I think there's a parallel here to open source developers who have run and nurtured their own projects. It shows that they care.

Whether there really is a difference, I don't know. I haven't met that many non-open source developers and in any case I'd think that discipline is much more important in non-creative factory work.

Finally moved

So we moved the remaining things Saturday and are now officially living at the new place. We were pretty bombed Sunday but managed to buy some flower bulbs and a small raspberry bush to put in the garden. I'll post pictures soon. It's nice with the extra space, although the bed got stuck in the staircase a couple of times - we barely managed to squeeze it through.

We still need to do some cleaning and painting in the old place.

Also the internet connection arrived today (5Mbit/256 kbit ADSL2) right on schedule. So far it's working fine.