Tunnel of Luggage

Tunnel of love?

No, tunnel of luggage. 

Nothing comes out the same on the other side. 

This is called bumps and bruises. 

Still it’s a long way to paradise. 😉

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Space-Age Mouse

Just wanted to share my new futuristic ergonomic computer mouse. 

Thumb sits on the left.

Rest of the hand sits fully supported and swoops down towards the right. 

No wrist movement up and down. 

Left and right clicks buttons are at the top.

No bending of the fingers and no reaching.

Mouse helps protect against repetitive movement disorders like carpal tunnel syndrome. 

The HandShoe Mouse fits like a glove. 

It’s made by Hippus in the Netherlands. 

Comes in wireless or wired. 

Choose right- or left-hand model. 

And make sure you order the right size: small, medium, or large. 

Until we have full voice recognition or gesture control like in Minority Report, I like this space-age mouse. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal) 

Introducing The Valkyrie

Wow, just loved this new Aston Martin called the Valkyrie!

If I had a spare $2.6 million laying around that no one needed, I’d definitely get one of these. 

1,000 horsepower, V-12 engine, and they fit the car to you, literally!

“It’s a carbon fiber rocket” with an assisted electric motor for the environmentally conscious. 

Here’s a link to some awesome images of this gorgeous “hypercar” (which reminds me of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop and it’s a thousand time better looking than the Tesla).  

Fast, futuristic, performance, stylish, and sleek as can be.

I almost want to photoshop a picture of myself in the diver’s seat with a huge smile on my face as I wave and say see you later. 😉

(Source Photo: Aston Martin)

Futuristic Highway

Some really great ideas here for the highway of the future.

These are the inspiration of interactive artist Daan Roosegaarde.

To save energy and increase safety, there are four concepts presented:

– Glow in the dark road markings (i.e. lane dividers) with photo-luminescent paint that charges during the day and lights up at night.

– Weather symbols on the road with temperature-responsive paint, so for example, when the temperature falls below a certain level, the roads show snowflake symbols to indicate that they may be icy.

– Motion-interactive lights on the highway that light up when cars approach and are powered by the draft of the moving cars.

– Induction lanes that can charge car batteries as they run along them and reenergize the cars for further travel.

Already, there is a 500 meter stretch of road in Oss, Netherlands with the glow-in-the-dark road markings–these are almost radioactive green in color and give a futuristic Tron look to the roads.

Now the question is when can we get these high-tech upgrades for I-495?

What an awesome high-tech display befitting our nation’s capital and maybe it would help with traffic as well! 😉

Green Data Center Cooling

I read with great interest this week in BBC about 2 mysterious barges off the East and West coasts of the U.S.

One barge is by San Francisco and the other by Maine.

The 4-story barges belong to Google.

There is speculation about these being, maybe, floating data centers.

I think that is more likely than showrooms for Google Glass.

These barges would potentially avail themselves of the ocean water for cooling the IT equipment.

I would imagine that there could be some backup and recovery strategy here as well associated with their terrestrial data centers.

But how you protect these floating data behemoths is another story.

A white paper by Emerson has data center energy consumption in the 25% range for cooling systems and another 12% for air movement, totaling 37%.

Other interesting new ideas for reducing energy consumption for data center cooling include submersion cooling.

For example, Green Revolution (GR) Cooling is one of the pioneers in this area.

They turn the server rack on its back and the servers are inserted vertically into a dielectric (an electrical insulator–yes, I had to look that up) cooling mineral oil.

In this video, the founder of GR identifies the potential cost-savings including eliminating chillers and raised floors as well as a overall 45% reduction in energy consumption, (although I am not clear how that jives with the 37% energy consumption of cooling to begin with).

Intuitively, one of the trickiest aspect to this would be the maintenance of the equipment, but there is a GR video that shows how to do this as well–and the instructions even states in good jest that the “gloves are optional.”

One of my favorite aspects of submersion cooling aside from the environmental aspects and cost-savings is the very cool green tint in the server racks that looks so alien and futuristic.

Turn down the lights and imagine you are on a ship traveling the universe, or maybe just on the Google ship not that far away. 😉

(Source Photo: Green Revolution)