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A blog of software development, .NET and other interesting things
  • Jun 28, 2008

    Standby power in the home

    A few months ago I was visiting our local library, when I noticed some interesting kits behind the the desk. They turned out to be "Home Energy Action Toolkits" (which has an acronym of HEAT!). I put my name down on the list, and finally last week it was my turn to borrow one of the kits.

    They include the following items:

    • Power-mate power meter
    • Infrared thermometer
    • Stop watch
    • Compass
    • Worksheet

    I was primarily interesting in using the power meter to gauge how much power various appliances use in our home.

    Here's what I discovered:

    Appliance Standby (Watts) On (Watts)
    DVD Player 2.1 12
    VCR 5.6 16
    CRT TV n/a 56
    2400 W Heater 1.3 960/1370/2210 (low/med/high)
    CD Cassette Radio 1 5.3 8.5/6.5/6.3 (Cd/Tape/Radio)
    CD Cassette Radio 2 4.0 5.9/5.3 (Tape/Radio)
    Computer + CRT Monitor 8.5 160
    Computer speakers 2 3.6
    Small CRT TV n/a 44
    1000 W Heater n/a 960
    Camera battery charger 0.4  
    Automatic garage roller door 10.4 100
    Mobile phone charger 0.2  
    Microwave oven 5.4 1550
    ADSL Modem n/a 8.3
    VoIP ATA n/a 2.9

    Two other appliances were also measured, using a feature of the power meter which calculates running costs by allowing you to enter in the cost per kilowatt hour (I used 17.99 cents). The results were very interesting:

    Dishwasher 14.44 cents per standard cycle
    Bread machine 8.3 cents to make 1.25Kg loaf

    So it probably is cheaper to make your own bread after all.

    As a family we’re not too bad at turning off things that we’re not using. We’ve also started the move to compact fluorescent lights, and I intend to make use of a service like Envirosaver, which will come out and replace all your incandescent bulbs with CF ones for free.

  • Jun 28, 2008

    CodeCampSA 2008

    CodeCampSA is on again, over the weekend of July 12-13th.

    The speaker list looks impressive:

    (Yes, I've put up my hand again!)

    The event is free, but to assist organisers you're encouraged to register your interest. There's also a dinner at Marcellina's in Hindley St on the Saturday night which sounds great.

    I'm definitely going on Saturday - will have to see about Sunday though.

    Updated Jason’s surname, and added links to speaker blogs – let me know if I’ve missed someone.

  • Jun 25, 2008

    Security tools

    Microsoft have just released a couple of new security tools that might be useful, especially if you’re still running some legacy ASP applications.

    • Microsoft Source Code Analyzer for SQL Injection - a static code analysis tool for finding SQL Injection vulnerabilities in ASP code
    • Microsoft Urlscan Filter v3.0 Beta - a security tool that restricts the types of HTTP requests that Internet Information Services (IIS) will process. By blocking specific HTTP requests, UrlScan helps prevent potentially harmful requests from being processed by web applications on the server.

    UrlScan has been around for quite a while, so I’ll be interested to see what new features are part of v3.