I realized it’s been a while since I’ve talked about what was supposed to be a main focus of this blog: my business. In the past few months, dy/dx tech has actually really started to take off. It took a little longer than I had expected and hoped, but I’m now actually starting to get people responding to my ads. By far, my best performing ads have been those on Craigslist and those on the Boston Blogs Ad Network. I was putting a few up on Google, but because of the commonness of my keywords it was getting tot he point where I would just have to spend more on the ads than is really worth it. Fortunately, advertising has never been a big part of my marketing plan.

And, of course, I have my other projects. Cellphone Tech News, as some may have noticed, has not been updated in a while. This is for a couple of reasons. The main one is that dy/dx tech has kept me pretty busy in the last couple weeks, but in addition, I really want to make some improvements to the site before it really goes live. Currently it’s just a collection of static HTML files. Functional, but only just. My first step, one that I’ve been working on this week, is to replace that with a fully-featured, modern CMS. Originally I was thinking I’d just do it in WordPress, but after talking to a few other people about it I’ve decided to look into Joomla!. I took at look at Joomla! before when it was in it’s infancy and wasn’t particularly impresed. But it definitely seems to be in a better state now and I’ve installed it on a test server to play around with. If anyone out there has any experience with Joomla!, particularly with modifying the layout and writing themes for it, I would very much like to talk with them.

In addition to dy/dx tech and Cellphone Tech News, I’ve got one other project that I’m working on. In typical fashion, this one is also large-scale. Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that the phrase ‘high-end web design’ doesn’t do it justice. I am, at this very moment, on a train from Boston to New Haven, CT, where I will be meeting with some friends of mine (the guys behind College Poker Association) to hammer out some of the details so we can get this project off the ground (and yes, the CPA website is an example of the sort of talent that we’ll be bringing to the table). Be ready to hear a lot about this new project in the near future.

So overall, I’d say I’m doing pretty well. Within 6 months of leaving my last job, I’m now owner or part-owner of three businesses, all of which have the potential to be very successful, not to mention several other major achievements which I’ll save for another time.

Spent yesterday, last night, and this morning down on the Cape with some good friends. It was, as all trips to the Cape are, an excellent time. I also realized that the Cape is surprisingly close to Boston; it’s only about a 60 mile drive each way. Why is this significant? Well, other than the fact that it’s close enough to go even for just a day trip, it’s also well within the range of even the least technologically advanced electric cars. Even an old EV-1 would have no problem with a trip down to the cape, nor would something like Nissan’s failed Hypermini with it’s 62-mile range (provided you had a charging station down there as well) or Nissan’s upcoming new electric subcompact.

I think this is a very interesting and important fact. No one, or at least very few people, would deny that an electric car is a good choice for someone who lives in a densely populated city (like Boston) and never drives outside that city. Hybrids help fill this gap by providing not only the eco-friendliness and energy efficiency of an electric car (albeit to a lesser extent) but also the range of an internal-combustion car, thus allowing city dwellers to both feel good about their energy usage and still take weekend drives to their vacation home off in the country somewhere (like Cape Cod). But despite the seeming limitation of a 120 mile range (or 250 in the case of the Tesla Roadster), it’s really not all that limiting. An electric car has more than enough range for someone in Boston to drive around the city all week with no problem—very few people are going to drive more than 250 miles during their work day—and it also has plenty of range to take them down to the Cape on the weekend and back with a little bit of driving around while they’re down there (or lots of driving if they happen to have a charging station at their Cape house as well, and who wouldn’t really).

So really, it would seem that electric cars are the perfect fit for the modern citizens of Boston. Yes, there are some people for whom an electric car just wouldn’t make sense, but I imagine that the vast majority of Bostonites would do just fine in one. And, I think that Boston is enough of a liberal, forward-thinking, socially-aware city that electric cars would really catch on here. Now if only Tesla Motors would add Boston to the list of cities where they’ll be available next year…

In other news, I went to reserve a Zipcar for tomorrow morning for a job I’ll be doing. As usual, I checked on the status of the Rav-4 EV near me only to find that it’s no longer even listed! Hopefully it’s just out for repairs and the problems it’s had in the past haven’t rendered it completely dead. I’ve still never even had the chance to drive it. Even if it is dead forever, I really do hope that Zipcar will be expanding their EV fleet in the future. That they have EVs at all is one of the things that I really like about the company, and I still intend to do everything I can to encourage their continued usage.

Thanks to the prodding of a good friend of mine (and one of the guys behind the College Poker Association), I’ve recently become a member at Prizewagon.com. An online gaming site where you play with fake money for the chance to win real money. I’ve been playing tons of Texas Hold-em for the past few days (currently the only game where you have a chance at cash prizes, I think).

I’ve never really been much of a poker player. In fact, given my track record, I’ve pretty much considered it a lost cause. However I’ve discovered that I’m not entirely terrible at Texas Hold-em. After my first day of playing I was up $4000 (fake dollars, that is). I’m now down by about $1000, but consistently getting better. I think having a computerized version helps a lot since I don’t really know everything that’s going on and it explicitly spells out my options for me. I’m almost considering starting to play for real, just for fun. We’ll see.

At any rate, if you have any interest in poker at all, I highly recommend you check out Prizewagon.com. And don’t forget when you sign up to say that I referred you. My username is ‘joshourisman’. I look forward to taking your fake money (yes, that’s a challenge).

IT Week reports on an amazing new technology under development by Eneco that promises to revolutionize modern electronics and many other things.

The technology is a solid-state chip that uses thermionic energy conversion to generate electricity from a temperature gradient with an efficiency as high as 30%. If successful, and they’re already in talks with both Apple and Dell, this could mean big things. For example, as we all know, computers generate a lot of heat. This is one of the primary factors limiting the size of laptops; the smaller they are, the harder it is to keep them cool. But with a technology like this, that heat is no longer such a bad thing because, in the process of passively cooling the electronics, electricity is being generated that can then be contributed to active cooling or any other purpose increasing battery life. There are also plans by which this technology could replace batteries all together. By using these chips in combination with a small burner, electronics could be powered in an efficient and environmentally friendly way by burning fuels such as ethanol.

Obviously, a technology such as this has all sorts of applications. Any process that generates waste heat (which would be almost everything we do) could now also generate electricity. A suggested application is replacing the alternators in cars by using these chips to generate electricity from the heat of the engine. This would have the benefit of aiding in cooling the engine as well as improving gas mileage as there would no longer be any horsepower being wasted on spinning the alternator.

I’m left to wonder if the human body generates enough heat externally for these chips to be incorporated into clothing.

I’ve been contemplating the best way to handle my phone numbers. Currently, I only have one phone: my Motorola e815 on the Verizon network. This works just fine for me as I have no objection to only having a cell phone and no land line. The problem is that it makes it difficult to distinguish personal calls from business ones. As a result, I can’t really say how much I spend on business calls and how much I spend on personal calls, and, more importantly, I can’t say ‘I’m not working today, so I won’t answer any business calls’ or ‘I’m busy, so I’m not answering any personal calls’ very easily. To somewhat combat this I got myself a SkypeIn number a while ago. The advantage of this was that I was able to have a local Boston area (617) number while my cell phone was still a Berkeley (510) number. I set the number to forward to my cell phone, and pretty much just left it alone.

However I recently discovered that Skype wasn’t doing that good a job of forwarding calls. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn’t. And the ones it didn’t forward went to my Skype voicemail instead of my Verizon voicemail meaning I didn’t even know I had a some important messages until I happened to log into Skype one day. Another disadvantage of Skype is that, come January, it will start costing me money to have Skype calls forwarded to my cell phone.

Fortunately, I think I’ve come up with another solution. Jessi and I, when I first moved out here, changed our Verizon accounts to put us on a family plan. Amazingly enough, this actually cut our monthly phone bills in half because the low-end family plan costs the same as the low-end individual plan, and we still only use about half the total minutes. For an extra $9.99/mo I can add another line to our plan. This line could be my business line (or my current line could be the business line and this one could be the personal one). That would solve all the problems of only having one phone, without tying me down to a particular location in terms of taking calls. It will only cost me an extra $120/year, compared to $30 for the SkypeIn number plus however much it would cost in calls, and I’ll get more reliable service and better voicemail. Plus, adding this line won’t increase the minutes we use at all, because I’ll be making the same number of calls, some of them will just be moved from one line to the other. Additionally, I qualify for a free upgrade to my phone thanks to Verizon’s ‘new every two’ program, so I don’t even have to pay for a new phone.

So really, the only question now is what phone do I want. I believe I’m going to go with the LG VX8300 pending some more research.

I’ve discovered what is, unquestionably, scientific proof of the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. This picture of the so-called ‘Eagle Nebula‘ (NGC 6611) is, without a doubt, actually a picture of the FSM and His most noodly of appendages, thus proving that not only does the FSM exist, but that He created the stars in the sky. Take that, Kansas Board of Education!

You can clearly see the twin globes of His Holy Meatballs at the top-right of the ‘nebula’. There are also tons of noodly protrusions surrounding them. The large stream of matter coming from Him, must be the primordial materials of the universe.

As looking at the cosmos through a telescope is effectively looking back in time, I believe that what we are seeing here is the FSM creating the universe.

RAmen

I’ve just discovered this page: The Best Of Craigslist. It looks like it’s all the highest rated Criagslist postings, and it even has an RSS feed. I highly recommend that you check it out. My favorite so far:
Dear Jesus,

I want to believe in you and your miraculous powers, I really do. I was raised in a devout Catholic home, and as long as I remember have been hearing about your divine nature and limitless compassion. You turned water into wine, healed lepers, and even raised the dead. I know you have boundless abilities. I also know that your compassion compels you to assist those who suffer, and to hear their agonized prayers.

I have been ceaselessly praying to you for over three years now Jesus, yet still my prayer remains unanswered. Please tell me: Why won’t you run over my co-worker Renee with an 18 ton cement truck? Every day is another eternity of listening to Renee talk about her mildly retarded, morbidly obese child and her husband’s swollen testicles and ass-boils. I am suffering beyond the point of endurance my Lord. Please make manifest your divine Love and Grace by sending a cement truck of mercy to squash Renee flat in all your love and wisdom.

Thank you in advance -

I’ve gotten a lot of response to my two posts about the problems I’ve been having with Bank of America, and a lot of good advise on what banks would and wouldn’t make good replacements. So now I’ve been doing a little more in-depth research and finding some trends.

Bank of America:
Basically, no one really likes Bank of America. Adam pointed me to this article in which a San Francisco man was arrested simply because he tried to verify a check at his local BofA branch which turned out to be fraudulent. He then ended up spending around $14,000 just to clear his name, even though he was just doing his due-dilligence to find out if the check he had been sent was real or not. He thinks BofA should pay the tab, BofA disagrees. There’s even a whole blog about it. And of course plenty of other bloggers have their own stories about why they don’t like and/or are leaving Bank of America, such as this one. [Edit: Wikipedia points out some other issues with Bank of America. Basically, they're just not very nice people.]

Citizen’s Bank:
I had been thinking that I’d go with Citizen’s Bank as I’d previously heard only good things about them. However, Rebecca and Mike both have had problems with them, similar to the ones I and others have had with Bank of America, and this guy is also having problems with them and currently considering leaving. [Edit: Citizens Bank, it turns out, is a member of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group. This wouldn't really affect me, except in that the RBS is the main sponsor of the Scottish national rugby team and the RBS 6 Nations international rugby tournament (my favorite sporting event of the year).]

Sovereign Bank:
Sovereign is another bank in the area that I walk by all the time and thought I’d check out. However Andraste has had a lot of problems with them and says to stay away. A quick search has revealed a few things about them. For example, this person received two Sovereign Bank check cards (with PIN numbers!) addressed to someone else. They did the right thing and tried to get the to the rightful owners (something which Sovereign wouldn’t help them with), but what if it were someone a little less moral? I certainly wouldn’t want my check card and PIN number being sent to some random person. It also appears that their online banking is sub-par; not a huge problem, but an annoyance.

Leader Bank:
Leader Bank is yet another bank that I walk by all the time. I haven’t been able to find a single bad story about them. And I’ve found this story in which Leader Bank has started allowing people to communicate with their bank manager via IM. Cool idea. Probably wouldn’t use it, but it gives them points in my book.

Wainwright Bank:
Thanks to Aaron, Wainwright Bank is the only one that’s actually gotten a recommendation. In addition, a search has revealed no horror stories about them. Plus, I think they’re the bank with the closest location to where I live (although only by a block or two). Also, their website was a winner at the MITX awards that I was at the other day.

So at the moment, it looks like the short list of banks would be Wainwright and Leader. I will, of course, be doing more research into it, but at the moment I’m leaning toward Wainwright. We shall see. And so I leave you with this poll:

I’m still beset with the same AJAX problem that was standing in my way last month. The problem revolves around using responseXML.documentElement rather than responseText when passing data from a PHP server-side script to the JavaScript client-side script. For whatever reason, it just fails to work. At this point is seems extremely unlikely that the problem is one with my code, and I’m nearly 100% certain that it’s not a problem with the way that I’m passing the XML from PHP to JavaScript.

I managed to find a tutorial describing how to do what I want to do, but it uses exactly the same method I was already using, and their demonstration script exhibits the same problem as mine when I try to use it. This is starting to get pretty frustrating, especially as this is a project I’m doing for myself in my spare time and so don’t really have the time to do the in-depth research it will probably require. Fortunately it also means I have no hard deadline…

Anyway, I don’t know if anyone who reads this knows anything about AJAX, but if you do, do you have any thoughts? Does the demo script from the tutorial work for you?

Thanks to Digg I found this article from The Christian Science Monitor. It’s about a local Massachusetts company, Climate Energy, that sells micro-combined heat and power systems for homes and small businesses.

Micro-combined heat and power, or cogeneration, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a system that provides both heat and power. The way it works is so incredibly simple and obvious that most of us have probably actually thought of it a few times. Basically, it’s just an internal combustion electric generator (it burns natural gas, rather than gasoline or oil). As anyone who drives a car knows, internal combustion engines put off quite a lot of ‘waste heat’. So in a Micro-CHP system, that heat is put to use instead, heating your home. The result is that you heat your house and generate electricity at the same time. Because the ‘waste heat’ is no longer wasted, the system can actually approach 90% efficiency, making it an extremely economical use of resources.

The system costs around $20,000 but will apparently pay for itself within 3-7 years (depending on local energy costs). The currently available model heats air for use in forced air heating systems, but they’re working on a model that will heat water for other heating systems as well. I assume it would also be possible to use one to either replace or augment your water heater to increase efficiency and power generation (and therefore savings and potentially even earnings) further. Combine a system like this with photo-voltaic solar generation on your roof and you’re probably getting pretty close to living off the grid.

As a soon-to-be homeowner (hopefully), this is a very interesting piece of technology to me.