Roviyas

Energy not just Electricity

Implementing nuclear power on a grand scale will not secure an energy supply for the U.K., nor will it significantly reduce our CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. The reason is simple, but is seldom rendered explicitly, that only 18% of the total final energy consumption is provided by electricity. 78% (430% more) of the U.K.s total energy is produced by burning coal, natural gas and oil directly, and this burden would not be influenced at all by any amount of nuclear development. The maximum change that might be made - at least in principle - is the substitution of all fossil fuel (mostly coal and gas) fired power stations by nuclear.

Exactly how monumental an undertaking this would be may be gauged from the fact that the current 17% of total electricity produced by nuclear is generated from 18 reactors, which are housed in 10 separate power stations. On this basis, to substitute for the 80% of electricity currently produced from coal and gas, using nuclear, would require building around 100 new reactors, and that is on top of the new ones that will be required in any case, to replace all but one of the existing reactors, which will come to the end of their working lifetimes by the year 2023. This clearly is a colossal undertaking which does not solve the major issues of "security of supply" or CO2 emissions in any significant degree. We will still need to import oil and gas from politically maverick regions, mainly Russia and the Middle east, and is the uranium fuel required for nuclear to be found on our doorstep? Hardly. Most of it comes over from Canada.

What about renewables? It is thought that in the longer run (say, by 2050) around 40% of the U.K.s electricity might be provided using wind/wave/hydroelectric/ solar power. A significant proportion of this would be produced by "microgeneration" devices, rather than a large scale "grid", though any excess electricity generated beyond the local demands of each "micro" community, could be fed into the central network. This still only addresses "electricity" as a final fuel, and the question of providing the greater bulk of "energy" persists.

In simple economic terms, on the level of an individual or a country, the degree of security depends on the gap between income and expenditure. More can be earned or less spent. As far as the U.K.s energy earnings are concerned, the limit is in sight. We cannot realistically "earn" more fuel, and we may well have to endure a pay-cut. It is thus a matter of economy, and of economising. That we spend the precious resources of oil and gas only where it is essential to do so. This will involve schemes of energy efficiency, for example the "40% House" being researched by Dr Brenda Boardmans group in the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University and the Passivhaus concept.

Such advances in building design could make huge savings in energy use for "space heating" across both the domestic and commercial sectors (each of which accounts for around 30% of the national total energy demand). Transport, which uses another 26%, mainly in the form of oil, is another area where savings could be made, both through more efficient combustion engines (or fuel cells, if the costs can ever be made realistic), and simply by eliminating all unnecessary use of cars (especially the military style "road wagons" - 4x4s, SUVs, depending on which side of the Atlantic you are - that have more to do with symbolising status than any practical transportation issue) .

To a reasonable mind it all seems straightforward, but I suspect there are too many people making too much money to allow any attention more than lip-service to be paid, until it is too late and there is no longer any choice.

Available link for download

Facebook Check if user clicked Like page button just liked the Facebook page

Very often Facebook applications have "Fangate" page, meaning that if user hasnt liked the page and if he opened application - he can see application page with text something like "Please like our Facebook page before using the app" and cant use the application until he is not page fan.

Our clients as usual ask us to track how many users liked the page from the application.

Signed request contains an information about if user like a page:

$facebook = new Facebook(array(
 appId => $app_id,
 secret => $app_secret,
 cookie => true
));

$signed_request = $facebook->getSignedRequest();
$like_status = $signed_request["page"]["liked"];

So, the challenge is to catch the moment when user clicks like button.

The simples way is to store like status to the session. But it doesnt work in Safari, for iframe Facebook applications Safari doesnt accept cookies and user session is lost.

Nowadays most of polar browsers support local storage. So we can use it to store like status information. Example of source code is pretty simple.

This code example should be in template that is rendered if user is a fan of Facebook page:

<script type="text/javascript">
 if (localStorage in window && window[localStorage] !== null) {
 if (localStorage.getItem(liked_state) == 0) {
 // weve go it: user just clicked like button
 }

 localStorage.setItem(liked_state, 1);
 }
</script>

Pretty simple, isnt it?

Available link for download

Echochrome Not Just Another Game

Even though Im not a real gamer, I still like to follow the development in the game world. From what I see in the recent years, the development of games is a bit stagnant. Its true that in matter of graphics we have been experiencing an incredible improvement. However, the types of game doesnt vary as much as I expected. A death in creativity?

If you also have a similar opinion, then you might be interested to know this game: Echochrome (Mugen Kairou). It is a game developed by SONY for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3. Echochrome is a puzzle game involving a figure traversing a rotatable world where physics and reality are affected by perspective. What seems to be a impossible path is made possible by rotating the camera to the right angle. A hole will not have any effect when you cover it with another object.

This game based on OLE Coordinate System developed (an engine that determines what is occuring based on the cameras perspective) by Jun Fujiki. This engine made it possible to constraints movement not only by 3D coordinates but also by the position of camera as well.

Take a look at the trailer below and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do :)

Available link for download