EC2 Micro Instance as a Remote Bittorrent Client
I know it will be easy but not this easy in Linux. The motivation is that it's private. Nobody knows who is downloading. Amazon doesn't provide any service other than a computer so I doubt if they maintain any logs.
The other thing is that it's fast. You can download anytime without interfering with your other work. It's up to 700 kb/s and a 1G file downloads in less than 1 hr, probably much less. Downloading from EC2 to your local computer is like 600 kb/s. It all varies.
Price wise it's free for storage unless you store the file up there. You have some 15 G/b in and about the same out free per month. More than that it's in pennies. For a 1 Gb file, it will become a few GB on your bandwidth. But because it's so fast, the upload is about 10% of the file. So the total bandwidth is like 2.2 plus the encryption / packaging overheads.
Even if it's not free, it's less than a penny to turn on the EC2. It's 10/15 pennies per GB in / out. So it beats any VPN / Bit torrent / Usenet / File download plans, unless you are a heavy user.
There a good step by step guide to start the EC2 service at the link. The steps are update except for the Security Group. Now there's no from/to Port, just Port. So you just need to open the port 9091 and the range 49152-65535. (plus ssh at port 22). The range is for random port numbers, you need at least one at 51413.
Now you can control the bit torrent client from your own browser, neat!
Now for Linux/Ubuntu, the copy command is built into ssh.
scp -i yourkeyfile.pem ubuntu@yourpublicdns.com:Downloads/yourfile .
The keyfile, public DNS are the same as you start the ssh. Downloads is for Transmission you setup in the linked instructions, under your home directory. You can also use the internal IP address of your EC2 instead of the public DNA, and also in your browser.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Compare secure online and offline storages for your digital life
I'm talking about storing the videos (and pictures) permanently for your whole life.
Since a decade ago, hard drives are so reliable that parallel RAID drives aren't really necessary. You need location diversity at the least. I looked at all the online storage options and they are no match for an external hard drive.
A 1 TB (1024 GB? A Terrible Blob anyway) external drive (USB) cost about $60 for the bulkier models. Whereas Amazon S3 cost 14 cents per GB per month. For the same money you can only have 36 GB in S3 for a year!
The speed of USB 2 drives are 480 Mb/s, while upload to S3 is about 100 Kb/s, a thousand times slower?
So the first line of defense is get a Terrible Blob and put it not next to your computer. For your home computer put the TB it at work and vice versa. I already have a fire proof (30 min or an hour) box for computer media. Now the media are obsolete (except for memory cards). I can put in an external drive with space to spare. Then I'll wrap it in plastic so it will survive fire and putting off the fire. You may not find a reliable airtight container to hold the drive, but making the whole thing float is easier. If you go through with that you can put a GPS inside too!
This is quite a permanent solution, part of. When the time comes, your fire proof box can hold many TB's and solid state drives/cards to replace your current TB.
The other solution is similar but very close to online backup. You buddy up with someone, or buddy up your home computer with your company computer. Get external drives or even cheaper internal drives. There are free software to do the backup between the two sites as if they are attached local drives. There are also encryption so your buddy can't see what's in your drive.
I still like the idea of online cloud backup. But you can't get away with less than 14 cent / GB / month. If that's not your only copy, you can opt for 9 cent / GB, which is already 400 times more reliable than your own disk drive, Amazon claims.
The big 3, others being Google and Microsoft, are competing for the Amazon business, so all the other clouds services will be value-added providers, that is, more expensive, usually a lot more. ADrive will give you 50GB for free but how long will it last? I can tell you that, having uploaded 50GB, you are as good as married to those guys, in order not to have to upload again.
A surprise contender seems to be Google Docs! Seems to be more than perfect except for the upload speed.
First, Google Picasa Web Album is useless. You cannot have nested folders or albums. You just can't put your whole life into it.
The Picasa software running on your computer is a rather good file management system, if only for your pictures. The Linux version works fine but does not deal with videos yet! You download via your browser and your Linux version will install it for you, with less hassle than in Windows. Picasa is very good in locating deeply nested pictures in copies of all your old hard drive images. So you will not missed in deleting some useless images. Otherwise it works fine like any file manager.
The problem with Picasa is that it does not sync with your file system. It will sync, on it's own will. If you understand that and are not confused then it's a good additional tool.
Picasa only sees images and nothing else. One good come out of it is that it's trivial to separate the images into a separate folder and move the image folder somewhere else. Then you can sync the pure image folders with albums in Picasa Web Albums. Of course you can still sync your mixed folders, but having to backup the same folder into PWA and something else is a nightmare.
Now back to Google Doc. Actually you can "copy" over your nested directories or your whole hard drive for that matter. It's video and picture aware, making you wonder why you still have PWB around? You can view pictures and stream videos, and share like Youtube.
Google Doc provides 1GB of free storage. Additional are at 25 cents / GB / year, not per month !!! So this is more like a permanent archive for your digital life. They didn't say about the reliability, in contrast to Amazon. But everybody is using Google online services and I never heard of any data lost.
The fine prints are even surprising. You can increase storage anytime and your rate prorated. It's not surprising. But if you reduce storage or unprescribed altogether, it looks like Google still keep all your data permanently, but you cannot edit or add to it. So it's more like paying $5 once and you get 20GB permanently! Of course Google can terminate and change terms of service, but this is the terms at the moment. There's no guarantee but obviously Google is not aiming to get money from storage. They want to get you to use their service and sell advertising.
Even more surprising is that pictures smaller than 800x800, and videos shorter than 15 min, are always free, that do not appear on your account. So it appears to be too good to be true. Forget about the pictures. Cutting videos into 15 min pieces is trivial, and nowadays everybody only take interesting 1-minute clips. But it seems to be true. I uploaded a video and it doesn't show up in the total usage. You can download the original, that you cannot do in PWA.
There's no worry about backup or upload/download software. It's much easier than I found out in the last few posts. For Linux you have SMEStorage software for free. You download it as in Windows, and it will install itself. You register, login and start the software via GUI. Then you have a 1TB drive attached to your PC. You can do whatever as a local drive, and everything goes to Google Doc. And you can also access it online. You can use the Linux file manager to do whatever to the files and folders like in Windows, and use any tools on Linux that can be used on ordinary local files. Actually the file manager is much better than Windows because it can have tabs, and you know it takes IE a long time to catch up with the competition.
SME software includes how to automatically sync the remote directories to your local directories, as frequently as you want. I'm pretty sure any backup software will work on the remote directories the same as local.
SMEStorage not only support Google Docs, but many storage services like Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Storage for developers, and many other add-on providers. Windows is everybody's bread and butter so anyone can use them. But I'm sure there are plenty of other software developers as good as SME, but they just don't bother with Linux.
For the free SME service, you can pick two storage providers, and multiple accounts on each I think. For Amazon you need to have different payment cards and perhaps phones, but for Google I wonder how many free accounts you can have.
As I have said at first, Google Doc is very slow. But everybody know it when you upload and work in Google services, same as attaching a large file to your email. It turns out to be 10 Kb/s (<20), an order of magnitude slower than Amazon's speed of 100 Kb/s (<150).
So you need overnight to upload 1GB into Google Doc. And you probably need 3 months to upload 100 GB. That's why PWA doesn't support much fancy things, and Google never worried that users will cheat their disk space. If you manage to upload 100GB to Google, you are likely to be chained to them for life.
If you have 10 to 100 GB of critical data to backup frequently, Amazon S3 is a no brainner. For videos and pictures Google Doc is as permanent as it gets, close to free if you ever need to pay for it. But if you can spare $60, an extra 1TB drive may be all that some people need.
Since a decade ago, hard drives are so reliable that parallel RAID drives aren't really necessary. You need location diversity at the least. I looked at all the online storage options and they are no match for an external hard drive.
A 1 TB (1024 GB? A Terrible Blob anyway) external drive (USB) cost about $60 for the bulkier models. Whereas Amazon S3 cost 14 cents per GB per month. For the same money you can only have 36 GB in S3 for a year!
The speed of USB 2 drives are 480 Mb/s, while upload to S3 is about 100 Kb/s, a thousand times slower?
So the first line of defense is get a Terrible Blob and put it not next to your computer. For your home computer put the TB it at work and vice versa. I already have a fire proof (30 min or an hour) box for computer media. Now the media are obsolete (except for memory cards). I can put in an external drive with space to spare. Then I'll wrap it in plastic so it will survive fire and putting off the fire. You may not find a reliable airtight container to hold the drive, but making the whole thing float is easier. If you go through with that you can put a GPS inside too!
This is quite a permanent solution, part of. When the time comes, your fire proof box can hold many TB's and solid state drives/cards to replace your current TB.
The other solution is similar but very close to online backup. You buddy up with someone, or buddy up your home computer with your company computer. Get external drives or even cheaper internal drives. There are free software to do the backup between the two sites as if they are attached local drives. There are also encryption so your buddy can't see what's in your drive.
I still like the idea of online cloud backup. But you can't get away with less than 14 cent / GB / month. If that's not your only copy, you can opt for 9 cent / GB, which is already 400 times more reliable than your own disk drive, Amazon claims.
The big 3, others being Google and Microsoft, are competing for the Amazon business, so all the other clouds services will be value-added providers, that is, more expensive, usually a lot more. ADrive will give you 50GB for free but how long will it last? I can tell you that, having uploaded 50GB, you are as good as married to those guys, in order not to have to upload again.
A surprise contender seems to be Google Docs! Seems to be more than perfect except for the upload speed.
First, Google Picasa Web Album is useless. You cannot have nested folders or albums. You just can't put your whole life into it.
The Picasa software running on your computer is a rather good file management system, if only for your pictures. The Linux version works fine but does not deal with videos yet! You download via your browser and your Linux version will install it for you, with less hassle than in Windows. Picasa is very good in locating deeply nested pictures in copies of all your old hard drive images. So you will not missed in deleting some useless images. Otherwise it works fine like any file manager.
The problem with Picasa is that it does not sync with your file system. It will sync, on it's own will. If you understand that and are not confused then it's a good additional tool.
Picasa only sees images and nothing else. One good come out of it is that it's trivial to separate the images into a separate folder and move the image folder somewhere else. Then you can sync the pure image folders with albums in Picasa Web Albums. Of course you can still sync your mixed folders, but having to backup the same folder into PWA and something else is a nightmare.
Now back to Google Doc. Actually you can "copy" over your nested directories or your whole hard drive for that matter. It's video and picture aware, making you wonder why you still have PWB around? You can view pictures and stream videos, and share like Youtube.
Google Doc provides 1GB of free storage. Additional are at 25 cents / GB / year, not per month !!! So this is more like a permanent archive for your digital life. They didn't say about the reliability, in contrast to Amazon. But everybody is using Google online services and I never heard of any data lost.
The fine prints are even surprising. You can increase storage anytime and your rate prorated. It's not surprising. But if you reduce storage or unprescribed altogether, it looks like Google still keep all your data permanently, but you cannot edit or add to it. So it's more like paying $5 once and you get 20GB permanently! Of course Google can terminate and change terms of service, but this is the terms at the moment. There's no guarantee but obviously Google is not aiming to get money from storage. They want to get you to use their service and sell advertising.
Even more surprising is that pictures smaller than 800x800, and videos shorter than 15 min, are always free, that do not appear on your account. So it appears to be too good to be true. Forget about the pictures. Cutting videos into 15 min pieces is trivial, and nowadays everybody only take interesting 1-minute clips. But it seems to be true. I uploaded a video and it doesn't show up in the total usage. You can download the original, that you cannot do in PWA.
There's no worry about backup or upload/download software. It's much easier than I found out in the last few posts. For Linux you have SMEStorage software for free. You download it as in Windows, and it will install itself. You register, login and start the software via GUI. Then you have a 1TB drive attached to your PC. You can do whatever as a local drive, and everything goes to Google Doc. And you can also access it online. You can use the Linux file manager to do whatever to the files and folders like in Windows, and use any tools on Linux that can be used on ordinary local files. Actually the file manager is much better than Windows because it can have tabs, and you know it takes IE a long time to catch up with the competition.
SME software includes how to automatically sync the remote directories to your local directories, as frequently as you want. I'm pretty sure any backup software will work on the remote directories the same as local.
SMEStorage not only support Google Docs, but many storage services like Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Storage for developers, and many other add-on providers. Windows is everybody's bread and butter so anyone can use them. But I'm sure there are plenty of other software developers as good as SME, but they just don't bother with Linux.
For the free SME service, you can pick two storage providers, and multiple accounts on each I think. For Amazon you need to have different payment cards and perhaps phones, but for Google I wonder how many free accounts you can have.
As I have said at first, Google Doc is very slow. But everybody know it when you upload and work in Google services, same as attaching a large file to your email. It turns out to be 10 Kb/s (<20), an order of magnitude slower than Amazon's speed of 100 Kb/s (<150).
So you need overnight to upload 1GB into Google Doc. And you probably need 3 months to upload 100 GB. That's why PWA doesn't support much fancy things, and Google never worried that users will cheat their disk space. If you manage to upload 100GB to Google, you are likely to be chained to them for life.
If you have 10 to 100 GB of critical data to backup frequently, Amazon S3 is a no brainner. For videos and pictures Google Doc is as permanent as it gets, close to free if you ever need to pay for it. But if you can spare $60, an extra 1TB drive may be all that some people need.
Mother board compability with Linux
I always failed to read my CPU temp from the motherboard in Linux.
The OS has little to do with how the mother board is designed in hardware. There is the memory and there is the CPU. But for personal computers, there are some communications between the OS and the motherboard. Monitoring the CPU temperature and reading from the motherboard is one of them. The others are power management such as allowing the OS to control the CPU and fan speeds.
These are the lowest level of hardware drivers. It's the manufacturers job to provide drivers and to pick some standards. However, even there are more Linux users they are still less than 1%, and most of them aren't those typically using Windows. Therefore most manufacturers just don't provide drivers for Linux. The Linux developers do it for free with the manufacturer's documents. There are also some defacto standards due to the monopoly of some critical chip manufacturers.
Devices, like printers, drivers used to be the problems with Linux. Even Vista can't be compatible to XP. But nowadays most devices should work ... to some extend. Like my printer, it's working fine on Linux, until the ink goes out. Then I realized that the ink monitor and cleaning program aren't available in Linux. I have to go back to Windows to see which ink cartridge is out!
My problem is out there for years, when my motherboard is between old and new. The old way of doing that in Linux is out and the new way hasn't work yet. So they still have the problem and nobody is going to do anything for my motherboard. There is a fix, it works for some people and I don't know how they do it.
I can always change to a new motherboard or a new nettop. But the whole point is that my PC is still way more powerful than nettops. Moving away from Windows is like a major upgrade in speed. And the current setup will last a couple more years. That is a certain. The only catch is that my CPU may overheat someday without me knowing.
So when switching to Linux a dual-boot is a very good idea. And if you are worrying about your hardware or buying something new, check the compatibility list. For the portable computers, check your power management. I'm sure standards are well established, or you can just get a Linux one. The Chrome OS is coming out. It may be good for portables but you don't want to do things differently on your top and your book.
The OS has little to do with how the mother board is designed in hardware. There is the memory and there is the CPU. But for personal computers, there are some communications between the OS and the motherboard. Monitoring the CPU temperature and reading from the motherboard is one of them. The others are power management such as allowing the OS to control the CPU and fan speeds.
These are the lowest level of hardware drivers. It's the manufacturers job to provide drivers and to pick some standards. However, even there are more Linux users they are still less than 1%, and most of them aren't those typically using Windows. Therefore most manufacturers just don't provide drivers for Linux. The Linux developers do it for free with the manufacturer's documents. There are also some defacto standards due to the monopoly of some critical chip manufacturers.
Devices, like printers, drivers used to be the problems with Linux. Even Vista can't be compatible to XP. But nowadays most devices should work ... to some extend. Like my printer, it's working fine on Linux, until the ink goes out. Then I realized that the ink monitor and cleaning program aren't available in Linux. I have to go back to Windows to see which ink cartridge is out!
My problem is out there for years, when my motherboard is between old and new. The old way of doing that in Linux is out and the new way hasn't work yet. So they still have the problem and nobody is going to do anything for my motherboard. There is a fix, it works for some people and I don't know how they do it.
I can always change to a new motherboard or a new nettop. But the whole point is that my PC is still way more powerful than nettops. Moving away from Windows is like a major upgrade in speed. And the current setup will last a couple more years. That is a certain. The only catch is that my CPU may overheat someday without me knowing.
So when switching to Linux a dual-boot is a very good idea. And if you are worrying about your hardware or buying something new, check the compatibility list. For the portable computers, check your power management. I'm sure standards are well established, or you can just get a Linux one. The Chrome OS is coming out. It may be good for portables but you don't want to do things differently on your top and your book.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The switch to Linux
I was wrong to say that I won't blog here again. For things that will not possibly identify me personally, I don't see what will stop me from blogging something else. See how it goes.
I'm always the sort of unwilling pioneer. I was exposed to email long before most. Anybody can see that it's the future. I should have find a job doing that for whatever means, instead of complaining that I have to write a letter on paper every time. The difference is, Bill make sure that it get to everybody's desktop. But it will still takes decades now for the post office to disappear in its present from.
I'm sure they have cable TV, but the cable company did a lot of digging and other work for me when they first delivery Internet and phone to my street. They still call me a decade after to ask my opinion when they launch some new services.
I was under a lot of pressure to buy my last watch. What a relief when I heard that people with a smart phone don't wear watches! I was ahead of the era of smart phones by a few years at least.
Now I'm one of the 1% who switches to a Linux desktop. Actually I could be 1% of 1% if I wanted to be a pioneer. For example, the last reason that I didn't switch is because of Hotspot Shield. Most people having a notebook computer should have a VPN when they do anything in hotels or cafes. HSS is fast and free, and it's trivial to get rid of the ads. But it didn't support Linux. For this non-reason I put up with Windows longer. It only cost a few dollars per month or even per year. But I stuck on the free service. Not anymore.
I can say a lot of good reasons to switch but not right now. Today's topic is why I switch because I like free. And Amazon web services is free (for a calendar year).
You have to understand that trivial things necessary on your computer, perfected decades ago, became integrated part of any operating system, like Unix. But when Windows came along, all hell broke lose. This tiny "computers" have only 256K of memory! And a floppy disk!
Now Windows became the dinosaur, while Linux can do what Unix mini computers could do in a fraction of the resources of Windows, and do it faster.
Take backup. To backup to Amazon S3, you only need one command:
s3cmd sync yourfolder s3://yourbucket
Only changed or additional files will be uploaded to S3 - synchronization. You may prefer GUI but immediately you will understand that why GUI is an obstacle. The command itself is flexible, allowing any folders you want. And for different destinations, you can have another command. You can put all your customized locations in one single text file and name it "syn3", like shortening URL's. And if you copy the file into the daily jobs directory, you will never worry losing another file longer than one day old.
Nowadays installing software is easier than Windows. You don't even need to go through the browser to "download" ! If you try to run s3cmd, Ubuntu will tell you that you need to install it first by the command:
sudo apt-get install s3cmd
It's a single step to download and install, and then you can run it right away. (There's a interactive program to run first to get your S3 access keys.) Whereas in Windows you have to start the browser, find the download URL, wait for the download manager, and then run the installation program.
For me this is (one of) the killer application. And this is the only way to upload to S3. Because S3 is actually very slow (~100 kb/s) and unreliable. You always fail in the middle of uploading a large backup file. If sync fails, it will only be the current file. And if you keep syncing, all the files will be there eventually. There are similar things is Windows but you have to pay for it, or it won't be that convenient, and because of GUI, it can't be that easily customized.
And for a slightly conventional task, backing up your critical files into a separate drive daily. I have been struggling to do this for years in Windows. But in Linux, this is trivial:
rsync sourcefolder destinationfolder
Only the new and modified files will be copied. This is part of the OS 10 to 30 years ago! You can see the problem with Microsoft. First they have to strip off everything to fit in the tiny IBM box. They could have done a better job providing backup software, but they can't kill third parties for commercial reasons. You can pay but companies do that sort of business are desperate. Amateur developers come and go.
The other thing is, if you search there are lots of backup programs for Windows, many from 1st year Computer Science students, and some may crash your disk. But in Linux, the developers have some standards, even that the software is free. The bad ones will not be recommended or advertised, and the few good ones will find their way into depositories, where you can easily download and install, and even become installed by default, or part of the OS.
I'm always the sort of unwilling pioneer. I was exposed to email long before most. Anybody can see that it's the future. I should have find a job doing that for whatever means, instead of complaining that I have to write a letter on paper every time. The difference is, Bill make sure that it get to everybody's desktop. But it will still takes decades now for the post office to disappear in its present from.
I'm sure they have cable TV, but the cable company did a lot of digging and other work for me when they first delivery Internet and phone to my street. They still call me a decade after to ask my opinion when they launch some new services.
I was under a lot of pressure to buy my last watch. What a relief when I heard that people with a smart phone don't wear watches! I was ahead of the era of smart phones by a few years at least.
Now I'm one of the 1% who switches to a Linux desktop. Actually I could be 1% of 1% if I wanted to be a pioneer. For example, the last reason that I didn't switch is because of Hotspot Shield. Most people having a notebook computer should have a VPN when they do anything in hotels or cafes. HSS is fast and free, and it's trivial to get rid of the ads. But it didn't support Linux. For this non-reason I put up with Windows longer. It only cost a few dollars per month or even per year. But I stuck on the free service. Not anymore.
I can say a lot of good reasons to switch but not right now. Today's topic is why I switch because I like free. And Amazon web services is free (for a calendar year).
You have to understand that trivial things necessary on your computer, perfected decades ago, became integrated part of any operating system, like Unix. But when Windows came along, all hell broke lose. This tiny "computers" have only 256K of memory! And a floppy disk!
Now Windows became the dinosaur, while Linux can do what Unix mini computers could do in a fraction of the resources of Windows, and do it faster.
Take backup. To backup to Amazon S3, you only need one command:
s3cmd sync yourfolder s3://yourbucket
Only changed or additional files will be uploaded to S3 - synchronization. You may prefer GUI but immediately you will understand that why GUI is an obstacle. The command itself is flexible, allowing any folders you want. And for different destinations, you can have another command. You can put all your customized locations in one single text file and name it "syn3", like shortening URL's. And if you copy the file into the daily jobs directory, you will never worry losing another file longer than one day old.
Nowadays installing software is easier than Windows. You don't even need to go through the browser to "download" ! If you try to run s3cmd, Ubuntu will tell you that you need to install it first by the command:
sudo apt-get install s3cmd
It's a single step to download and install, and then you can run it right away. (There's a interactive program to run first to get your S3 access keys.) Whereas in Windows you have to start the browser, find the download URL, wait for the download manager, and then run the installation program.
For me this is (one of) the killer application. And this is the only way to upload to S3. Because S3 is actually very slow (~100 kb/s) and unreliable. You always fail in the middle of uploading a large backup file. If sync fails, it will only be the current file. And if you keep syncing, all the files will be there eventually. There are similar things is Windows but you have to pay for it, or it won't be that convenient, and because of GUI, it can't be that easily customized.
And for a slightly conventional task, backing up your critical files into a separate drive daily. I have been struggling to do this for years in Windows. But in Linux, this is trivial:
rsync sourcefolder destinationfolder
Only the new and modified files will be copied. This is part of the OS 10 to 30 years ago! You can see the problem with Microsoft. First they have to strip off everything to fit in the tiny IBM box. They could have done a better job providing backup software, but they can't kill third parties for commercial reasons. You can pay but companies do that sort of business are desperate. Amateur developers come and go.
The other thing is, if you search there are lots of backup programs for Windows, many from 1st year Computer Science students, and some may crash your disk. But in Linux, the developers have some standards, even that the software is free. The bad ones will not be recommended or advertised, and the few good ones will find their way into depositories, where you can easily download and install, and even become installed by default, or part of the OS.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Suspended
Dear readers,
If I carry on this blog, my personal information will be leaked and my identity exposed. So I have to suspend this blog for an unspecified period. Sure I may write somewhere else, but that will be a totally fresh start.
I may still reply to comments though.
The geek at heart
If I carry on this blog, my personal information will be leaked and my identity exposed. So I have to suspend this blog for an unspecified period. Sure I may write somewhere else, but that will be a totally fresh start.
I may still reply to comments though.
The geek at heart
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The giant magnetic door catch
My door to the garage is big and heavy, and is the only door used. Any door catch cannot stand the repetitive impact due to carelessness of the kids. Also the door must be easily kept open to unload the grocery. My wife came up with the idea of magnetic catch. I went on to make one but it was rather poor until now.
You need powerful magnets such as those greater than 1 inch long, about 1/2 inch wide and 1/8 thick, available in many hardware stores, rather cheap. You need a few to stack up for power and more importantly, to adjust to suit the space between the door and the wall.
You need two different metal plates, such as those used for building decks from hardware stores. The right ones need a great force to be removed from powerful magnets above.
The larger or bigger steel plate is to be mounted to the wall, the smaller thinner one on the door. Just put the magnets on the steel plates and they can hold the door open. When you close the door, the magnets will stay with the thicker plate on the wall. That's the law of physics.
That's it. There's no need to mount anything except for screwing the plates into the wall and door. Both the door and the wall are protected by armored plates. The catch area is as big as the plates.
The fancy stuff.
You can decrease the magnet and plate size or increase the force and catch distance by mounting the wall plate at an angle. The angle is to ensure that when the door is fully open, the magnets are the door are in parallel, when the magnetic force are greatest. This can be simply done by putting something under the wall plate on one side, or a soft wooden wedge for clamping and spacing filling.
You can also put some pad materials to soften the impact and reduce noise.
Of course you can mount and fix the magnets, and use angled plates.
No pictures because the first excellent version is ugly.
You need powerful magnets such as those greater than 1 inch long, about 1/2 inch wide and 1/8 thick, available in many hardware stores, rather cheap. You need a few to stack up for power and more importantly, to adjust to suit the space between the door and the wall.
You need two different metal plates, such as those used for building decks from hardware stores. The right ones need a great force to be removed from powerful magnets above.
The larger or bigger steel plate is to be mounted to the wall, the smaller thinner one on the door. Just put the magnets on the steel plates and they can hold the door open. When you close the door, the magnets will stay with the thicker plate on the wall. That's the law of physics.
That's it. There's no need to mount anything except for screwing the plates into the wall and door. Both the door and the wall are protected by armored plates. The catch area is as big as the plates.
The fancy stuff.
You can decrease the magnet and plate size or increase the force and catch distance by mounting the wall plate at an angle. The angle is to ensure that when the door is fully open, the magnets are the door are in parallel, when the magnetic force are greatest. This can be simply done by putting something under the wall plate on one side, or a soft wooden wedge for clamping and spacing filling.
You can also put some pad materials to soften the impact and reduce noise.
Of course you can mount and fix the magnets, and use angled plates.
No pictures because the first excellent version is ugly.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
The future of goods and services
Your local shops are selling you things that they can survive on, not what you really need. The discrepancy is getting bigger and bigger. I get my electric toothbrushes and replacement heads from the net, cheaper and more choices.
Many goods in Target can be replaced by online purchase. Indeed I find more things that I need that is sold by Target online only, than sold at stores only.
Local stores can survive by a few things, customization, touch and feel, and knowledge. Apparel stores are doing well but once you can try on clothes by your online clone, and view yourself in all 360 degrees at home, a lot of people will stay at home instead. Lands-end had it but it was too primitive to be useful. The colors are not even accurate.
Touch and feel can't be replaced, but hardly any goods need that. And if you provide that, you risk become free demo for other online businesses.
People don't like car salesperson, but can't do without car mechanics. You go to a garage because you don't know how to do it, so you buy parts and labor from them.
For the future of goods and services, we can looking at the most expensive personal items, the house and the car. Home Depot is actually selling you knowledge, you buy from them tools and items that are designed for doing it yourself. If you don't mind things that are not completely flat and straight, you can pave your whole yard and build walls without any experience.
The high labor cost is killing the service industry such as plumbing. In many cities it's hard to find a plumber because they cannot afford to live there. You can use cowboys but there's no guarantee. To protect consumers and to protect skill labors, there are many red tapes, and a lot goes to insurance. It's crazy to find a plumber to do a job for you. If you buy all the tools and parts you only pay for a fraction of the cost for calling out a plumber.
Even the car mechanics are not safe. Local mechanics are charging an arm and a leg. But they could be forcing people to drive to Mexico for big services. It started many years ago now. If you plug a scanner into your car, you know what went wrong and what need to be replaced. Mechanics kept saying that the codes don't tell you anything and insists to charge you $40 to $100 for the diagnostics. But do you believe that the many error codes are designed to tell you something? At least they are designed for dumb mechanics.
For simple things such as fluid flush and oil change, you can drive a bit to find cheap labor, or do it yourself. You can find all sort of manuals leaked on the net - the knowledge. For diagnostics, you can do it more reliably than dumb mechanics, and replace parts yourself. It's much cheaper to get parts online, and many old cars are still supported with OEM parts.
Even car wash is a rip-off. If you want the brand new car with deep waxy look, it's hard to say. But for most people, manufacturers should use easy wash paints, available many years ago as options. These surfaces do not need waxing for 5 years. But I think most paints hardly need any waxing and special body wash. I have been using auto car wash for years. After apply "conditioner " and rinse off, no drying is necessary. Even if you go for hand wash, the chemicals are the same. The difference is that they have cheap labors holding the brush in additional to the pressure wash. And they have people to pad dry the car.
Now I tried the dry organic wash and it works fine, almost as good as auto car wash, but better because it's a hand wash. If you wash your car every week or every other week, it is just a matter of wiping the dirt off with a cloth, and then dump the cloth into the washing machine. It also works if you car is dirty. But if your car is all dirty, it's simpler go to an auto car wash, or leave it in the rain.
Also the wheels. I spray it with biodegradable detergent and leave it for one minute. Then I wipe it off with a cloth and a bucket of water. It's dirty work but just 4 wheels. And your wheels will be cleaner than any auto or hand wash joint.
My old neighbor, a classic car enthusiastic, use only a bucket of water to wash the whole car. But I think his cars are very clean. I always want to wash my own cars, if only to avoid the hassle to go to the auto wash. But the dirt water goes directly to the beaches here, if they don't get to my plants first. Now it's "dry" wash for the body and one bucket of water for the wheels. I can even do it inside the comfort of my own garage!
Many goods in Target can be replaced by online purchase. Indeed I find more things that I need that is sold by Target online only, than sold at stores only.
Local stores can survive by a few things, customization, touch and feel, and knowledge. Apparel stores are doing well but once you can try on clothes by your online clone, and view yourself in all 360 degrees at home, a lot of people will stay at home instead. Lands-end had it but it was too primitive to be useful. The colors are not even accurate.
Touch and feel can't be replaced, but hardly any goods need that. And if you provide that, you risk become free demo for other online businesses.
People don't like car salesperson, but can't do without car mechanics. You go to a garage because you don't know how to do it, so you buy parts and labor from them.
For the future of goods and services, we can looking at the most expensive personal items, the house and the car. Home Depot is actually selling you knowledge, you buy from them tools and items that are designed for doing it yourself. If you don't mind things that are not completely flat and straight, you can pave your whole yard and build walls without any experience.
The high labor cost is killing the service industry such as plumbing. In many cities it's hard to find a plumber because they cannot afford to live there. You can use cowboys but there's no guarantee. To protect consumers and to protect skill labors, there are many red tapes, and a lot goes to insurance. It's crazy to find a plumber to do a job for you. If you buy all the tools and parts you only pay for a fraction of the cost for calling out a plumber.
Even the car mechanics are not safe. Local mechanics are charging an arm and a leg. But they could be forcing people to drive to Mexico for big services. It started many years ago now. If you plug a scanner into your car, you know what went wrong and what need to be replaced. Mechanics kept saying that the codes don't tell you anything and insists to charge you $40 to $100 for the diagnostics. But do you believe that the many error codes are designed to tell you something? At least they are designed for dumb mechanics.
For simple things such as fluid flush and oil change, you can drive a bit to find cheap labor, or do it yourself. You can find all sort of manuals leaked on the net - the knowledge. For diagnostics, you can do it more reliably than dumb mechanics, and replace parts yourself. It's much cheaper to get parts online, and many old cars are still supported with OEM parts.
Even car wash is a rip-off. If you want the brand new car with deep waxy look, it's hard to say. But for most people, manufacturers should use easy wash paints, available many years ago as options. These surfaces do not need waxing for 5 years. But I think most paints hardly need any waxing and special body wash. I have been using auto car wash for years. After apply "conditioner " and rinse off, no drying is necessary. Even if you go for hand wash, the chemicals are the same. The difference is that they have cheap labors holding the brush in additional to the pressure wash. And they have people to pad dry the car.
Now I tried the dry organic wash and it works fine, almost as good as auto car wash, but better because it's a hand wash. If you wash your car every week or every other week, it is just a matter of wiping the dirt off with a cloth, and then dump the cloth into the washing machine. It also works if you car is dirty. But if your car is all dirty, it's simpler go to an auto car wash, or leave it in the rain.
Also the wheels. I spray it with biodegradable detergent and leave it for one minute. Then I wipe it off with a cloth and a bucket of water. It's dirty work but just 4 wheels. And your wheels will be cleaner than any auto or hand wash joint.
My old neighbor, a classic car enthusiastic, use only a bucket of water to wash the whole car. But I think his cars are very clean. I always want to wash my own cars, if only to avoid the hassle to go to the auto wash. But the dirt water goes directly to the beaches here, if they don't get to my plants first. Now it's "dry" wash for the body and one bucket of water for the wheels. I can even do it inside the comfort of my own garage!
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