good ol' PRT

November 19, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Salon's running a story today about SkyWeb Express, a personal rapid transit (PRT) concept from a company in Minnesota. The article presents a lot of cost numbers that make the technology seem vastly more economical than traditional transit concepts. For instance,

SkyWeb Express may also be the answer to the seemingly impossible quandary that every environmental advocate faces: how to make green technologies cost-effective. Taxi 2000 estimates that installation of SkyWeb Express would cost $10 million per mile -- nearly five times less than the cost of light rail and 10 times less than heavy rail. And operating costs at 38 cents per passenger mile (compared to $3.43 for heavy rail and $1.42 for light rail) mean that SkyWeb Express could operate on a break-even basis -- and therefore without the government subsidies that mass transit, which operates at a loss, relies on.

The company's web site offers a cost breakdown. Take a look at this cost analysis. What particularly interests me isn't their capital cost numbers (though I'd never believe capital numbers on paper until I saw the system implemented somewhere), it's their farebox numbers. Their first example system has 33 million passenger miles per year on an eight mile loop. Ok, I can see that. But from that passenger load they get a farebox intake of $29.3mil. Since they give passenger miles and not boardings I don't know exactly what fare they were using, but I'd say the minimum is about $1 (I don't see that number of people using transit for trips much shorter than a mile). I don't see people paying that.

I think what really bothers me about PRT is the sell they use. Consider this from the opening paragraphs of the Salon article:

What really makes PRT different from mass transit is that it combines the convenience and luxury of a taxi with the efficiency of subway and bus travel: Rather than packing into a large carriage with a hundred smelly strangers, with PRT you get a private car.

The sell is isolation from other passengers. You live in the city, but you don't want to have to endure the presence of others. That should sell well in LA.

declare it a draw

November 16, 2004 by Eric Richardson

For my games class we're supposed to be checking out Second Life. I'm really interested in doing that, since it seems to be the closest thing I've seen to Stephenson's metaverse.

I haven't had much luck yet, though. My only working Windows installation is on my laptop, which doesn't really have the horsepower to keep up with a game so intend on doing everything the intensive way.

Last night and today I've messed with trying to get the game to work under wine. I've tried regular wine, winex (err... cedega), and Crossover Office, and none have really done anywhere. On my desktop it liked to black out X and leave it in some funky dead state, while on my laptop it refuses to even get off the ground without 32-bit color, which my graphics driver doesn't want to support.

Computers and I have again reached an impasse. Nothing was gained, but nothing was lost.

a little reorganization

November 15, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I rearranged my room today (and you thought I was going to post something people would care about). Since May my desk has blocked access to half my closet -- that's fixed now. The change also consolidates open space in a more usable configuration.

Most importantly, though, I took a piece of sandpaper to the edge of my particle board desk. My wrists can already feel the difference.

My room's still a mess, though. I just have too much stuff and not enough to organize it into. My number one priority needs to be to get a filing cabinet.

Linux: fun with X.org 6.8.1

November 15, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I messed around a little today with X.org 6.8.1. That probably means nothing to most of you. If talk of x servers and xinerama just leaves you confused, feel free to click the screenshot link and then move on. Sometimes I need to do a little talking about Linux, as much for me to go back and look at later as for your benefit.

Getting the server itself up and running was no problem. I compiled it yesterday and just ran make install today. It plays well with the nvidia drivers. Getting xcompmgr going was similarly no problem, though it's definitely a little flakier -- when I first go to a desktop it'll be all garbled and I'll have to drag a window around to clear things up. But after that things seem to mostly work.

Right now the drop-shadows and transparency you can see in the screenshot only work on the root desktop, not on virtual desks (in e16 terms "multiple desks"). The drop shadow does work on tooltip-style popups on all desks, though, and looks really nice on things like the firefox auto-complete url drop-down.

Obviously the real fun starts when people start integrating support for this into window managers and apps.

The one problem that was almost a show-stopper was some conflict between Xorg's xinerama support and mplayer. When playing a widescreen movie mplayer would throw part onto the other screen instead of making full-size only one screen. My solution for now? Switch to xine.

i guess this is organization

November 15, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Several times over the last week or two I've thought about the fact that I hadn't seen my tickets for UCLA or Notre Dame lately. I knew they were somewhere in the apartment, so I wasn't too worried, but it was just a nagging little thought in the back of my head.

Today I had that thought again and decided to look for them. I vaguely remembered the last place I had them being the couch, so I went and looked under it. There they were.

Does that count as organization? I knew where they were.