Watch Me Pull Electricity Out of My Hat

Again disregarding the news itself in this morning’s newspaper and focusing on the advertisements, this one struck me on page B2:

Signup for a FREE in-school magic show for grades K-4.

“The Magic of Saving Power” is a spellbinding showcase on the benefits of conserving energey.  It’s hosted by Joules, the official NSTAR Energy Wizard, NSTAR’s master magician and energy saver extarordinaire.  Joules will dazzle your students’ minds with fun facts and teach them magic tricks to use at home to conserve energy.  The show lasts 30 minutes for classes of up to 50 students.

First of all, you get bonus points if you, like me, got halfway to the bottom of the next page of the paper before recognizing that “Joules” is not an actual name, but a play on the unit for measuring energy.

Secondly, what magic tricks do you suppose this entails?  I can certainly think of a dozen exciting Physics experiments that involve electricity off the top of my head.  Cook a hot dog in a couple minutes by applying a voltage across either end.  Make a pickle glow by applying a voltage to it.  Charge a large capacitor (1 Ferad will do) and then stick a screwdriver with a rubber handle across the contacts — big spark!  Et cetera.  However, all these things consume electricity, and frankly don’t even put it to particularly good use.

I’m a huge fan of energy conservation, but I admit it’s not very exciting — especially to children.  If NSTAR manages to entertain first graders by not using electricity, they deserve major accolades.

(At least two schools, and perhaps many more, have already taken them up on the offer.)

They Have the Internet on Television Now

My coworkers and I all gathered this afternoon to watch President Barack Obama’s first inaugural address, as people did in many offices across the country.  I took food orders and brought back lunch for those who didn’t have their own, and setup a laptop to stream the inauguration live onto the projection screen in one of our conference rooms.  About 20 people gathered to watch reverently.

And then the feed cut out.

Evidently the tubes of the Internet were clogged this afternoon with people trying to watch the events of inauguration day.  As the seconds to Obama’s oath ticked down, a room full of very intelligent people brainstormed ways we could get coverage.

“Try the local stations directly,” one of my colleagues suggested.  I brought up Boston’s NBC affiliate, WHDH.  They just offered MSNBC’s national feed, which was unavailable.

“Try YouTube!” another suggested.  We couldn’t find any evidence of a live feed on YouTube.

“Try NPR!  We’ll at least be able to hear it!” suggested a third.  I opened WBUR only to get a “server unavailable due to high activity” error.  We couldn’t even listen to it!

By this time President Obama had certainly taken the oath and had begun to address the nation.  Discouraged, and running out of ideas, I turned sullenly when a colleague asked, “What’s that box over there?”

We have a video capture station in the room to record demonstrations, surrounded by a small pile of video equipment.  (There’s also what I suspect is a genuine VT220 terminal, though I’d have to look more closely.)

“Part of the Echo360 setup probably, right?”

“It says ‘HDTV’ on it.”

If you haven’t been in a room with computer engineers when there’s equipment to setup, know that you should stand back in a hurry.  Wires were unplugged and rerouted.  Buttons were pressed.  Menus were seen and contemplated.  And then a live television picture appeared on the screen before our eyes, without all that fancy buffering nonsense.

So, in the end, it took a highly skilled information technology workforce of 20 competent adults fully five minutes to realize we could turn on the television.

We will never speak of this again.

A Window Into the (Recent) Past

An e-mail draft was sitting on my computer when I got to my office this morning.  It’s obviously something I started on Friday and never finished.  This happens occasionally.  The message read, in its entirety:

I want to run three areas for potential improvement by you

It did not have a subject or a “to” address.  I hadn’t even added punctuation to the end of the sentence.

So, at the end of the day on Friday I had devised three brilliant ways to improve some application — that’s the only reason I would write such a thing — but I now have absolutely no idea what they were, which application it was, who would need to know about them, or even if there’s still time to implement them.  I also know that I could not pursue this unilaterally, since I was about to ask someone else.

Discard.

Blërg.

And So Has My Cheese

My favorite sentence in the entire Boston Globe this morning was not part of any article.  Rather, it was in a small advertisement at the bottom of page A16.  The line reads (emphasis and capitalization as printed):

PRESIDENT OBAMA has MOVED to a new address and so has Xtreme Action Paintball!

I understand that this is from the same family of advertisement that puts “SEX” in huge letters at the top and then says, “Now that I’ve got your attention…” yet I still struggle to reconcile the connection between President-elect Obama (hey, I’m writing at 8 a.m. and I won’t be the one to jinx it) and paintball.  Unless there’s something the Democrats aren’t telling us…

Now If Only It Had a “Coffee” Button…

I love analyzing how computers in movies work.  In S1m0ne, director Viktor Taransky replaces a high-maintenance actress who’s walked off the set of his movie with a computer-generated actress.  The public thinks she’s a real person and demands to see more of her.  Taransky eventually responds by scheduling a huge stadium concert, where Simone appears in hologram form amid a stage full of smoke.

He creates this elaborate effect with a simple button on the computer console:

s1m0ne-hologram

It’s lucky the computer comes with that button on it.  Otherwise he never would have pulled it off.

(It’s honestly a good movie with an interesting premise.  It just gets rather carried away with the technology.)

Monica vs. The Scrubs

From the voice of “Hey!  Girl’s name!” comes:

JD: So this intern that you mentioned earlier; I’m sure eventually he turned into a pretty amazing doctor, didn’t he?

Dr. Cox: Actually it was a she.

JD: It wasn’t me?

Dr. Cox: No, no.  It was you.  It was you.

Scrubs is back!  (And I’m only three episodes behind, thanks to ABC’s unfortunate policy of making people download completely pointless software to watch videos on their website — a policy that makes us hate them with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns.  That’s right ABC.  Flash is your friend.)

Dynamic Looping: Making the T More Reliable

The MBTA needs to explore a simple, low-cost (perhaps free) solution to one of the Green Line’s  most common and most noticeable problems: trains bunching together.  Dynamic looping, as I’ll call it, lets inbound trains get reassigned easily and transparently to different outbound lines.

Any regular rider knows that trains tend to come in pairs, and can sometimes emerge from the subway in groups of four or five at a time.  After 30 minutes without any service, a stream of trains will roll by together — the first few packed to capacity, and those behind nearly empty. Although this is a maddening failure to provide transportation, its causes are easy to understand.  Traffic lights turning red, inconsiderate or inattentive drivers stopping on the tracks, pedestrians running in front of trains, and other routine parts of city life all impose delays.

Every second that a train gets behind schedule allows more passengers to accumulate at upcoming stations.  A larger crowd of passengers takes longer to board, so the train is even more delayed at the next station, and the problem cascades.  Meanwhile, as the following train catches up, even fewer people accumulate at each stop so the later train can quickly find itself tailgating its predecessor with hardly any passengers aboard.

Many expensive capital projects could improve services.  With limitless funds, burying the B Line up to Packard’s Corner would be a smart move.  More realistically, the T could let trains preempt traffic signals (extending green lights a little longer if a train is about to pass through) as many other cities do.  Even that, however, would require new equipment that the MBTA cannot afford.  We need a free solution that we can implement with the resources already on hand.

Let’s accept that delays above ground are inevitable but that not all lines will be delayed in the same way at the same time.  Currently, underground stations usually see a fairly steady stream of trains.  Unfortunately, they are not distributed evenly among the four branches. A trio of B trains might pass uselessly by passengers who have been waiting for a D train who then crowd into the next D car when another is right behind it.

Since we accept that delays are inevitable on the inbound trip, we can assume that B and D trains will tend to arrive at Government Center (their last stop) in pairs spaced closer together than when they left Boston College or Riverside.  Currently, those poorly spaced trains will loop at Government Center and start their outbound trips to the same place they originated, incurring more delays all the time.  By Washington Street on the B and C lines, all hope is lost, and trains are frequently sent “express” to the end of the line.

By introducing dynamic looping, delays can be corrected or even eliminated halfway through the trip.

When a train arrives at Government Center, it should begin outbound service on whichever branch needs it most.  If the last B train left 10 minutes ago and a D train left just 3 minutes ago, the next train should make Boston College its destination.  Later, when a pair of delayed B trains arrives together, one can service the Riverside branch.  By routinely reassigning trains in this manner, delays are either balanced across multiple branches, or in some cases eliminated entirely.

Until recently, Type 8 cars couldn’t run on the Riverside branch, so Boston College and Riverside trains were not interchangeable.  However, since at least December, Type 8 cars have been in regular revenue service on both branches.  Now is the perfect time to implement this simple and affordable system.

No passengers would even need to be aware of this new policy.  Both branches begin their service at Government Center, so people waiting on the platform would not have any prior expectation about which train might appear next.

Unfortunately, this is not true for the C and E lines.  Their inbound trains run to North Station and Lechmere respectively.  Even excluding them, dynamic looping can improve service on two lines.  However, with a more dramatic change, we could expand the program to all four branches.

First, all trains could be reassigned when entering Government Center.  Some B and D trains might continue north (as though coming from Heath Street or Cleveland Circle), whereas some C and E trains might discharge their passengers and loop.  This would add complexity that dispatchers would need to unravel, and would confuse (and presumably annoy) many passengers.

Alternatively, all trains might terminate at Government Center.  This would simplify the dispatcher’s job to that of tracking which of the four branches most needs the next train.  Service to the north would come from shuttle trains operating on Government Center’s inner loop — a stretch of track already in place for southbound trains to turn around and return north.

These shuttle trains would be operating entirely on dedicated rights of way (underground or on overpasses), so their schedules should be inherently more reliable than the trains at street level.  This would lessen another major complaint about the Green Line: that service to North Station is too unpredictable (another symptom of the same basic problem).

This is a more dramatic step, of course, whose disadvantages shouldn’t be overlooked.  Someone who works on Beacon Street in Brookline and commutes via the Commuter Rail might be pleased at having more regular and reliable service, but might be displeased at suddenly needing to change trains at Government Center.  This is an area that requires further study from past occasions when the T has changed a line’s terminating station.

Even without the C and E lines, however, a pilot program with just the two branches that already loop at Government Center is worthwhile.  Dynamic looping could make a big difference in performance and passenger satisfaction.  At a time when use of mass transit is rising, but when no funding is available for major capital improvements, this simple solution could go a long way.

It’s time for a change.

Lord of the Reality Show

Hulu linked to an episode of a show called Superstars of Dance that it described like this:

Michael Flatley and Susie Castillo host week three of the international dance competition.

I won’t even link to the episode to lessen the risk that some poor, innocent person will inadvertently watch part of it.  Just after reading the description, thousands of my brain cells committed suicide to spare the rest of the mind from the trauma.

Let this serve as a warning.

Radiological Janitors?

Bryan Bender reports in this morning’s Boston Globe about security arrangements for Barack Obama’s upcoming inauguration:

Because the biggest fear is a large-scale terrorist attack, the Pentagon will have on hand specially trained troops to deal with the aftermath of a chemical or biological attack, or radioactive fallout from a “dirty bomb.”

I’m glad we have people trained in handling the aftermath, but please somebody tell me we have other people trained in keeping there from ever being an aftermath!