An Irish View of the Celtic Curse

I was browsing the Iron Disorders Institute web site last night and came across a story about hemochromatosis in an Irish newspaper. Since hemochromatosis is known as the Celtic Curse--on account of its relatively high rate of occurrence in persons of Celtic ancestry--I thought this would be an interesting perspective on my wife's condition (and it could be a story you missed if you searched for hemochromatosis because the spelling of haemochromatosis is used, as in England).

How Irish is the Celtic Curse? Across Europe as a whole the chance of someone experiencing iron overload are one in 400; in Ireland, it's almost five times higher at one in 83. And one in five people in Ireland carry the gene that can lead to this condition. Of course, the problem is not confined to the Emerald Isle. With so many people having emigrated from Ireland to North America over the centuries it shows up pretty widely here as well.

The article is a good introduction to the condition with enough detail to give you a clear picture of the implications without getting too technical. It's also an interesting non-American perspective. What it does not explore in much depth is the distinction between treatment of iron overload and treatment of organs damaged by iron overload.

In other words, it is relatively easy to reduce iron levels through blood donation, not so easy to cure the damage to liver, pancreas, heart, joints, and various parts of the endocrine system. Indeed, some of that damage, due to failure to diagnose hemochromatosis at an early stage, can be permanent and leave a person--as in my wife's case--with a pretty miserable quality of life. That's why there's a great need to increase awareness of the Celtic Curse in the general population and in the medical community.

Which brings me back to the Iron Disorders Institute. It is an institution worthy of support. My wife recently completed a detailed study the Institute is doing on the experiences of hemochromatosis sufferers. My guess is that it will reveal a shocking lack of knowledge about the Celtic Curse in the American medical community, and a dire lack of treatment for all its effects.

Mac Mini RAM Upgrade Tips

I just upgraded the RAM on my Mac Mini and it has made a big difference to performance so I figured I would share some tips on this type of upgrade. (So many people share helpful information on the Web I've been feeling guilty that I have not done more sharing myself, so hopefully this will help make amends.)

Ironically enough, my first tip is to watch someone else's video of how to do a Mac Mini RAM and hard drive upgrade (it may make sense to do both upgrades at once--you have to take the thing apart in both cases, pun intended--but you don't have to do both, the video is helpful either way). This is the best video I saw during a fairly extensive review of what is out there. You can find it here on Vimeo.

I suggest you watch the video and, if you still feel like going forward with an upgrade, consider the tips I have written up here before you start (unfortunately, hardware can be more difficult to work with than it appears in such videos).

My second tip comes after you separate the outer case from the innards: Get a magnetic to use with your screwdriver. I use a magnetic hook. You attach the magnet to the metal shaft of the screwdriver so it will pull the screw out of the hole when I lift the screwdriver (helps to keep screws getting lost inside the case or on the floor). (These magnetic hooks are Neodymium and coated with soft plastic so they don't scratch. They have a holding power of about 9 pounds and I use them for hanging up key rings. You can order them here.)

Third tip is to mark the corner that requires a screw that is longer than the other three. I marked this on the optical drive cover with a thin Sharpie.

My fourth tip concerns removal of the 2-wire power connector as shown in the video. Do this very carefully, prying the black connector out of the socket. do NOT pull on the wires as they may be brittle (I ended up breaking one and fixing it was a pain). I think the key to getting this one right is using good lighting and possibly a magnifying glass.

Next up is the pulling the drive unit out of the innards, so to speak. You need to do this with care because there is a ribbon cable that wires the drive unit to the innards and it must not be strained or disconnected.

Complicating matters is an edge connector that must be pulled out, which means you do need some force to get the two parts apart. Then you will need to support the drive unit while you perform your RAM upgrade. The video glosses over this but the solution is very simple, just place the outer case under the drive unit.

Here you can see the drive unit on the case with the innards exposed ready to proceed. But first, I suggest you carefully place the whole thing on a tray of some kind and take it some place you can blow off the dust with an air can (or suck off the dust if you have a computer vacuum).

What looks like mold growing on the unit in the picture is dust. The fan unit is likely to be full of dust as well. Blow this out carefully, in a well-ventilated area. No point opening the case without performing this bit of preventive maintenance (Mac Minis are known for being super quiet but mine had started to make some noise--this cleanup returned it to quiet mode).

The video has good instructions on changing the RAM. My machine had two 512 megabyte memory cards and I simply replaced the top one with a 2 gigabyte card. This gives me 2.5 gigabytes total and seems to make the Mac Mini work a lot better (programs load faster than I'm not getting so many delays when running multiple programs at once).

Final tips concern re-assembly. Be careful that you thread the BlueTooth antenna cable the right way or it could get pinched. Also make sure that the wires crossing the ribbon cable do so neatly, within the fold of the cable. Finally, as recommended in the video, test things before you put the outer case back on. This has been a habit of mine from my earliest days making PCs out of cloned motherboards. The cover doesn't go on until everything checks out, otherwise you jinx things!

Well, that about does it. One final tip is to make sure you have access to the video while doing this. I downloaded it to my Windows laptop so I could watch it while the Mac was in pieces. Good luck with your upgrade!

My 10 Year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee Turns 100K

Okay, so this is not exactly monumental news from the road, but it is a cool milestone. My ten year-old Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo passed 100,000 miles on my drive back from Philadelphia yesterday evening.

I was going to take a picture of the odometer at precisely the 100,000 mile mark but pulling over on the side of Interstate 81 in the dark for a snapshot didn't feel like a responsible thing to do.

The vehicle is still running smoothly and continues to deliver a very comfortable ride. For those who frown on SUVs I should point out that a. There's no way you can get up and down our driveway in the Winter without a vehicle that has a 4 wheel drive system that can be locked into low range, and b. The carbon footprint of continuing to run this vehicle versus buying a brand new vehicle that is more fuel efficient is an interesting calculation to make.

ION Upstate New York, NY Project - Round I Broadband Stimulus Awards

ION Upstate New York, NY Project - Round I Broadband Stimulus Awards

My "Satellite is Not Broadband" Letter to the Editor, FCC Test Data, and More

I just noticed that my letter to the editor of the Daily Star about rural broadband was published (back on February 15). I have pasted the letter at the bottom of this post.

The letter is part of my ongoing campaign to evangelize the need for affordable broadband connectivity in rural areas. I truly believe that if affordable broadband is not made available to what are currently "dialup-only" areas, once-thriving villages will eventually become ghost towns. On the other hand, if such connectivity is made available, then many rural areas can be transformed through better jobs, better education, and a variety of digital community-building initiatives that are currently impractical.

Sometimes you will hear people say "rural households can get satellite Internet, so they have broadband available to them."

As I have described at length before, my opinion is that satellite Internet service is NOT broadband and never can be. In my letter I try to explain that in plain English in the context of recent efforts by Otsego County to get federal funding for improved broadband access.

On a brighter note, one positive step the federal government is taking in this field showed up recently on the special FCC site called broadband.gov. The agency has posted a test that anyone can use (rural or sub/urban) to check their connection's speed. This test evolved out of growing suspicion that most broadband providers claim to provide higher performance than they actually deliver. (For example, I pay for a download speed of over 1,000kbps but as you can see from my test result, I get nothing like that.)

I urge you to test your own connection. In the meantime, here is my letter titled "Satellite Internet not same as broadband."

Dear Editor,

Your coverage of Otsego County's struggle to provide affordable broadband to rural residents is much appreciated by those of us whose property prices are being hit by the lack of broadband access. ("County's request for Web funding denied," Feb. 4.) I have seen neighbors move already, putting property up for sale because of the lack of broadband.

With all due respect to Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, whom you quoted, satellite Internet service is not broadband.

A broadband Internet connection should support real-time trading, Voice over IP (like Vonage), video streaming (like YouTube and NetFlix), and Virtual Private Networking (VPN is required for many telecommuting jobs).

Satellite does not support these core broadband functions, as stated on the website of HughesNet, one of Otsego County's two main satellite providers. The other provider, Wild Blue, is not accepting new customers in parts of Otsego County due to capacity issues. These can cause a big drop in performance. As a HughesNet customer, my median download speed is 258kbps, much slower than the "headline rate" of 1.6mbps for which I pay $70 per month.

Cheap dial-up delivers 56kbps plus better latency than satellite (which will always be weak in this regard because every bit travels 45,000 miles into space and back).

Sadly, lobbyists for cable and phone companies, fighting requirements that they serve rural customers, have tricked politicians into thinking that "everyone in rural areas can get broadband thanks to satellite." This is deceptive at best. Satellite Internet is not broadband and, if there's no broadband where you live, you cannot participate in all the opportunities that the Internet affords. As a result, the value of your property, like mine, will continue to decline relative to areas that have broadband.

Stephen Cobb
Cherry Valley

Back to the Futurama: That's the way this Hummer rolls

Congratulations to Brooklyn-based artist Jeremy Dean for realizing his vision: Creating a horse-drawn Hummer as a modern incarnation of the Hoovercart and getting it into a major art show.

When Jeremy says he's going to get something done, it usually gets done. Passengers in this rolling sculpture are treated to leather seats and flatscreens playing a video about oil, excess, and the limits of consumerism.

3 Pleasing Things: Office software, wireless router, and boots to boot

Too often a blog post ends up as a vent or rant about stuff that annoys the blogger (been there, done that). When I started writing this post I was pretty annoyed by a head cold I caught at a trade show last week, but I figured that expressing this in a blog post was not going to make it go away, so I decided to focus on the positive and ask myself: Can you name three things you're pleased with?



Well let's start with Open Office, a suite of software I've been using a lot lately, on both my Mac and my PC. I can definitely say I like this a LOT.

This is great software. If you tried it in the past and found it slightly flaky, you really should give it another go. As far as I am concerned there's no need to buy Microsoft Office any more.

Today, Open Office is what you want for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, document layout, databases, and drawing tools. It really is free, it supports many languages,  and it works well on both Macs and PCs. Here's how the OpenOffice.org web site describes it:

...the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

All true. And in some cases it works better than Microsoft Office. I know because I just used Open Office to create a new set of product literature for Monetate. These are pretty fancy documents--like the one shown above--and they are not something I would feel comfortable creating in Microsoft Word. They are made to be downloaded as .pdfs from the company web site but they also get sent to a high-end printing press to create sell sheets for shows.

Watch Out Wall Street and Central Park, the CEO Wagon is Coming

Look for Jeremy Dean's rolling artwork, Back to the Futurama, in New York's Central Park next weekend. Pulled by two white horses, it will be hard to miss this statement about corporate greed, consumerism, sustainability, and human pride.

Look for more pictures on Flickr. And at the blog: Back to the Futurama. If you are in the area, check out the details.

Run Dates: March 4th – March 7th 2010
VIP Reception: Thursday, March 4th, 9am-noon.
Location: Pulse New York art fair Booth #C4
Daily: Thursday- Sunday 12-8pm
Directions: 330 West Street @ West Houston
New York, NY 10014

I've Moved! But I'm still here...

Last night I completed the move of cobbsblog.com to a new hosting service!

Moving a web site is not that hard, but moving a WordPress blog with all that SQL database stuff can be tricky.

So please let me know via the comments if you see anything missing or not working right. Fortunately I found an excellent set of instructions here, for which I am very grateful.

Another factor that can complicate the moving of a web site is the reluctance of the existing web hosting company to let you go (more on that later). However, this move will save money on hosting fees and give me greater control of the site. (It is now on my virtual private server, operated by a hosting company that has proven helpful and reliable over the years: 1&1.)

BTW, the graphic in this post is not the covert transportation of billions of bits that make up my blog but the not-so-covert and ever-so-stupid moving of billions of dollars of cash into Iraq.

Conceptual Artist Deconstructs Hummer, Video Goes Viral: Art World Take Note!

The buzz about Brooklyn-based Jeremy Dean's art project "Back to the Futurama" has now gone viral, with coverage in a wide range of online media. As regular readers will recall, Jeremy is converting a GMC Hummer H2 into a horse-drawn carriage to create a symbol of America's perilously unsustainable lifestyle.

Jeremy has bet the farm on this project, so to speak, and exposure of the project will be vital to its chances of success. A big boost came two weeks ago when influential car expert and automotive journalist John Voelcker wrote about Jeremy's project under a headline that is itself an alliterative classic: "Hummer-Hating Artist Hacks H2 Into Horse Cart, Cites Hoover." This article has already racked up 16,000 views and 285 diggs.

The story spread like exhaust fumes through the automotive blogosphere and there are now over 100,000 Google hits for Hummer Hating Artist Jeremy Dean. The video that Jeremy made of the first cut into the Hummer has been viewed over 16,000 times on YouTube (http://tr.im/humvid) and more in Vimeo ( http://vimeo.com/8962281).

Not to be outdone, the equine community has picked up the story, appearing here in Horse Journal. Maybe some cart horse experts can help Jeremy match power source to completed carriage. Of course, this story was destined for mainstream press coverage from the start. We now see the project making its way into the Huffington Post and it may be on Current TV soon (it's on their web site's Upcoming section).

When us social media mavens talk about something "going viral" there really has to be a global element. The story has to be covered far and wide. Well here it is on a forum in Russia. And getting from the East Coast to New Zealand probably counts. The story was covered there in the equine press.

What is really interesting, from an art perspective, is the lack of coverage [so far] in the art press. When assessing the work of Jeremy Dean, the art world would be wise to take a tip from the film world. Conventional wisdom said Jeremy could not, as a first time film maker, make a documentary about race, not one that could be nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Dare Not Walk Alone did not win that award, but it did get a theatrical release, positive reviews in national press, a spot in Walmart's catalog and, on Tuesday night, there was an Oscar-winning actor in the front row for the screening at the Skirball Community Center in L.A. Immediately after the screening the actor walked up to Jeremy, shook his hand, and said: "Great Film!"

Footnote: Jeremy's art has been mentioned on the influential art blog EAGEAGEAG but I confess it was me that did the mentioning. (Who am I to talk about art? Well not that it really matters, but I do have a minor in Fine Art from the University of Leeds. I started a Master's degree thesis on Hegel's Aethestics at McMaster University and a doctoral thesis on William Blake's Notes on Laocoön. However, don't take my word for any of this "what is art?" stuff, check out the New York gallery show in March and decide for yourself.)