Home Power Monitoring

I've been wanting to install a string of shunts in my basement to then monitor current usage on all my circuits.

Bill Porter has another idea: Clamp sensor power monitoring. Interesting project.

Links for Net Neutrality

Cade Metz from the register: Feds please no one with first official net neut rules (22nd December 2010 00:39 GMT)

• House moves to overturn FCC on Net neutrality : Yes, there idiots, why do you ask?
  
• Appeals Court Knocks Down Verizon Net Neutrality Challenge: Its more ok-ish for FCC to want Net Neutrality.
  
• What is Net Neutrality: Thank god for John Stuart!
• The Past And Future Of Information Empires: US has always loved innovation killing monopolies
  
• Rep. Eshoo: The state of the Internet: If we want to improve the nation's economy, the federal government must pass legislation to foster the Web's growth
• U.S. Bishops’ call for Net Neutrality!
• Why the American Right is spreading the lie anout Net Neutrality
  
• Douglas Rushkoff: The Next Net: A call to action to build a new "open" net.
  
• SciAm: Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
  
• Urge Congress and FCC to support Net Neutrality: Save the internet
  
• Timothy Karr: Obama FCC Caves on Net Neutrality
  
• Al Franken: 'The Most Important Free Speech Issue of Our Time'
• Fees for browsing to facebook, netflix, or youtube: Mobile Carriers Dream of Charging per Page
  

The Joy of Stats

BBCfour short from Hans Rosling showing the overall health and prosperity of the globe over the last 200 years.

Also note Hans's talk at ted, and his site gapminder.org

ASCII Art to png

Yea, probably thought you'd never need to do this, but just in case.... the folks over at ditaa.org (DIagrams Through Ascii Art) built a tool that will convert your ascii art into nice line drawings.

Not sure if it's really dumb or totally cool.....

Antikythera Mechanism + Legos

Engadget Points to a lego built replica of the Antikythera Mechanism, a computer to predict when solar ellipses would occur.

"Andrew Carol, who has lovingly pieced 1,500 Lego Technic blocks together, creating 110 gears and four gearboxes in total."

Consumer Reports: ATT Worst

Consumer Reports now rates ATT the worst carrier in the US. Not really earth shatering news, but worth noting.

Sky Lanterns

Got friends over, and want to do something cool at night? Get some of these "sky lanterns". It's basically a paper bag with a candle in them. Light them up and they take off in the sky. They go up really high, so by the time the candle goes out, so when they come back to earth, there's nothing hot. ... It is actually neat to watch...