Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with efficient

Backing up a messed up older Mac?

southvie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:59:51 -0800

Best method/software for efficient, non-annoying backup for a slightly older Mac (G4 running 10.3.9)? Trying to back up a ton of Pro Tools sessions and other audio junk from an older G4 running OS X 10.3.9 onto a newish LaCie external drive. From several years of misuse, mismanagement and abuse, there are a lot of duplicate and corrupt files. Simply dragging and dropping the folders in Finder is getting annoying, because every time it encounters a corrupt or wonky file I have to start over and be super-diligent to ensure every single possible file is copied. Trying to get about 200G copied this way is becoming annoying and wasting lots of time.

Is there a better method or application I could use (ideally, free or cheap) to let this run for hours and have it automatically skip, check or even fix any messed up files -- and just have it done?

Would like to thoroughly understand investment, then forget about it till age 50.

Anonymous — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:14:26 -0800

Does the backlash against the Efficient Market Hypothesis have another answer for my lazy-investing needs? So, reading about a 'random walk through Wall Street', etc., I was somewhat convinced, and then the little bit of information that (expert-in-not-much) Tim Ferriss posted from Warren Buffett (invest in a low-cost S&P Index fund) continued to push me in that direction. And, sure, I've put a very relatively small amount of money into an index fund since, but now I'm rethinking whether it makes sense to invest in something else.

Basically, statistically, do mutual funds or any other form of investment, outperform, on average, index funds, whether in a general sense or if you narrow them down to a known property like MorningStar ratings.

Here are some particulars, although they barely pertain to my question. If you've got some sweet investment advice (ha, please no penny stocks), then throw it at me; otherwise I'm really just interested in the 'going thought' amongst casual investors like myself:

- I've got ~$1,000 a month to invest. This is the delta between post-tax income and living costs
- I've got a whole lot in cash reserves to throw at other things gradually. Allocation is currently 90% cash, 8% mutual, %2 index. I know, insane, but, hey, it worked in this whole recession thing.
- No dependents, 22 years old
- No immediate need for returns, won't be in home-buying mode or anything like that (car either) for a while (~8 years?)
- Okay with risk but not flailing. Big fan of science.

i love u smartwool!

leotrotsky — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:31:22 -0800

Super efficient/awesome clothing &/or gadgets that have changed your life? I finally bought a lightweight soft wicking wool undershirt and it's a revelation. I can't believe that it took me so long to realize how much BETTER they are than standard cotton or synthetics. Does anyone else have any similar recommendations?

under pressure

freddymetz — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:53:49 -0800

im looking for a new fangled device designed to measure tyre pressure for cars. you drive onto a ramp and somehow it reads the pressure. apparantly this is much more efficient than measuring the pressure of each tyre manually. how much do these devices cost and where could i buy them? any useful websites to the topic?

Which charity is the most cost-effective?

SamuelBowman — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:20:42 -0800

What is the most cost-effective charity I can donate money to online, in terms of welfare increased per euro donated? I'd like to donate money to a charity, preferably one in the developing world because I want my money to be used as efficiently as possible. Which charity's work saves the most lives (etc) per euro donated?

I know that it's tough to compare different positives with others (how can you compare, say, restoring somebody's sight with giving someone an artificial limb in terms of utility?) so this will have to be a rough measure, but I want my money to have the highest marginal utility possible.

This isn't a question about overheads – those don't necessarily matter. Nor does the country in question. I'd prefer to avoid politically active charities. Thanks!

I'm in Ireland, if that's relevant.

Help Me Get Things Done

parmanparman — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:21:26 -0800

I love taking risk-taking. I am bold, tenacious, speak my mind and if you've met me you would know that I get a certain thrill out of it. Increasingly, I am finding myself wanting for ways to channel my love of risk into the energy I need to get things done. Please help me do this. In almost every aspect of my life, I can say with honesty that I take advantage of my love of being challenged. In work, I have moved from difficult position to difficult position looking for ways to create better enterprises but have been happy with my work in general.

I fear I am unable to put real strength into overcoming certain obstacles that are "New Beginnings". I want to take the GRE and finish my MA; I want to become a leader at work instead of just being the "Idea Guy who is good at building relationships"; I need to show that I can implement my own good ideas and be a capable ally to others. I am not following up all of the projects and people like I need to be doing and it's bad for me.

I ordered "How to Lead When You are Not in Charge" and "Inside the Millionaire Mind" but I would like to especially hear from creative people who decided they needed to get moving on things and found ways to be constructive, please people and most importantly please themselves. Any other help, links, or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

The steps I am taking now are:
1. Knowing I cannot please everyone.
2. Being aware of when I might overstep my station.
3. Taking care with information I have gathered.

Electric or gas to boil the kettle?

bystander — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 04:14:46 -0800

An energy efficient cuppa? I have a 1900w (240v 10A) electric kettle, and an enamelled steel Le Creuset kettle that sits on the natural gas stove. Which is more energy efficient? When he visited today, my Dad said he would buy me an electric kettle because the gas stove was taking a while to boil. I repeated that I had read that gas was more efficient, and resulted in less CO2. He replied that the scale efficiencies at an electric power plant beat the heat lost around the sides of a kettle on the gas stove. I can see his point, but am pretty sure the received wisdom is gas is better. The gas does take longer to get to a boil, probably twice as long.
Which is more efficient if the time taken isn't an issue?

Why doesnt my fridge make use of the winter weather?

damn dirty ape — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:55:48 -0800

Why doesnt my fridge make use of the winter weather? Is there a reason why fridges arent built with the coils outdoors or with a tube going outdoors (like a dryer or portable AC unit)? Shouldnt it be possible to push the waste heat outdoors or somehow make use of the fact its 4 degrees out today? Or maybe the cold air just passes through the fridge between the insulation and the thin plastic inside wall.

My heater seems to be fighting my fridge which only costs me energy dollars. Or does it all somehow balance out? I imagine the energy running the compressor is significant. The only reason I can think of is that its a pain/costly to cut a hole into your kitchen wall.

On preview: The fridge could have some logic to close the tube on warm days.

Better bulb for those halogen torchieres?

bink — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:13:22 -0800

Does anyone make a better bulb for those ubiquitous halogen torchieres? You know the lamp, we all had one in college and zillions of them are still around.

Does anyone make a bulb out of LEDs or CF or something better than halogen that will work in the existing fitting of one of these lamps?

I know torchieres do exist in fluorescent form, but I was hoping somebody has come up with a more efficient bulb that would work in the old lamps.

Where to find energy efficient GU10 bulbs in Canada?

gfroese — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:25:52 -0800

Where can I find GU10 compact fluorescent bulbs in Canada/US? I've found these bulbs overseas at sites like this one but can't find a source for these in Canada/US. I'm located in Winnipeg (central Canada), so any Canadian vendors would be ideal, shipping to Canada from the US would be second best.

Cheapest/Best Portable Net plan for Xbox Live?

vanoakenfold — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:48:07 -0800

Barring signal strength for a location or normal lag issues, what which plan is cheapest for portable Internet (Clearw're, Xanadoo, etc) service that I can laglessly play Xbox Live with? There's different plans for different speeds -- what speed, other than blindly choosing the highest, would be sufficient? Anyone have any experience with these providers (preferably Xanadoo for non-contract options) who play XBL?

Algorithm performance and throttling in PHP/Apache

Mr. Six — Sat, 13 May 2006 04:34:40 -0800

Efficient string array comparisons in PHP, and a question about Apache and PHP performance... I have two arrays of same-length strings that I would like to compare. I have another two arrays that store probabilities ("scores") calculated for those strings. If the two strings match, I need to calculate another value from their respective probabilities. Here's the pseudocode:

run through all values of the string1-array { run through all values of the string2-array { if string1 matches string2 { score[string1-index] = function(string1's probability, string2's probability); remove string2 from string2-array; remove string2 probability from string2-probability-array; break; } } remove string1 from string1-array; remove string1 probability from string1-probability-array; }

I am working with DNA strings, essentially arrays of up to 4^n values, for length n. For example, for a string length 7, in a worst case scenario, I can be comparing up to 16,384 string1 entries with up to 16,384 string2 entries.

The problem is that my PHP script does not complete this comparison, when the string length is 7 or longer. I either get a blank web page after about 15-20 minutes of work, or an error message that the network connection is broken.

First question: Is there a way to implement this comparison more efficiently — or adjust my PHP 5 or Apache 1.3 configuration to either log at what point exactly this code gets stuck or perhaps allocate more resources to solving this comparison?

I have added the "removal" code after a match to try to shrink down the comparison space on the following round of the loop. With or without this code, the script appears to take the same time +/- a percentage point on comparisons of length n. Probably because of the overhead of resizing the arrays. Comparisons of length 6 and shorter generally take a few minutes or less — I seem to be hitting a resource wall somewhere that drives the CPU to nearly 100% for a long time.

A related problem is that my web server slows to halt while the httpd process appears to allocate 95%+ CPU to this comparison task. I cannot open another session to the PHP application until the current comparison task is finished.

Second, related question: Is there anything I can adjust in PHP 5 or Apache 1.3 to throttle PHP's CPU usage, or any way to code this comparison, so that other users can connect to the website and use the application while this loop does it work?

Make my heater green!

shokod — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 21:44:05 -0800

What's the most energy efficient way to run the heater in my office? I am an English teacher in a school in Korea (background: in Korea they don't heat the schools whatsoever, only the individual classrooms and offices are heated). I have a swanky new English Zone with nice big office and classroom that came with a swanky new ceiling-mounted heater. The problem is that in these cold winter months, with poor insulation and no school heating, it takes up to 4 hours of 30 degree C heat pumping just to get the room remotely pleasant (it's worse for classroom than office).
I'm in my office for 8 hours and in the classroom for about 6. Subsequentally, almost right after the temp is finally nice, it's time to leave and I just turn off the heater (as I was told), giving ample time for the heat to dissipate and to start the process over again the next day.
My question: is it more efficient (in terms of wasted energy/energy consumed) to do it this way or, after it reaches comfortable temp, to lower it to, say, 19C for the ~16hours it's not in use? I wish I could give you information about the heater itself but searching the website (it's an LG Whisen) I couldn't find it, especially since it the website is in Korean. But it looks really new and nice (it's also an air-conditioner) so I assume it's not like some old lunker.
More info that might be useful: Office is about 6m x 3m, with a "normal" door that seals it pretty tight. Classroom is 10m x 7m (it has two heaters) and is connected to a hall (30m x 2m) and has two "swing"-type doors that close, but not extremely tight. Even though I'm not paying, I'm not looking for the "leave the heat on all the time! you might as well!" answer; I am curious solely from the energy consumption view. Thanks!

Efficient computer tools: what would you put on the list?

yoga — Fri, 06 May 2005 09:57:24 -0800

What tools do you use to be efficient while working on a computer, be it online or not? Things like del.icio.us, dropload, winzip, phpbboards, group blogs/wikis, etc. Are there any books for general fine tuning of already computer-familiar users? What about seminars? I was thinking about everyday things people do to speed up their work - like, not everyone uses alt+tab, for example, to switch between app windows. I was also thinking about how to travel as lightly as possible business wise - so, if all your data & tools are stored online, it's just you and the suitcase. I know this is probably a cloudy question, but I know you guys can help me clarify. :D

Becoming more efficient

sirsteven — Mon, 07 Mar 2005 22:27:42 -0800

I'm giving a presentation on things that people can use to be more efficient. I've already covered things like google maps, google calculator, google dictionary, and metafilter and (of course) basecamp. Do any of you have any little thing you do to make your life more efficient. I'm not looking so much for computer programs anymore (unless they are web-based) but things you do/have that make your life smoother/more efficient.

Homemade salt dehumidifier?

Shane — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 16:01:32 -0800

I'm looking for and learning about energy-saving/environmentally-friendly clothes dryer alternatives. My (basement) dryer is inefficient and requires a good 6' - 8' to vent (again, inefficiently) outdoors. I'm thinking of getting a Spin Dryer, but still just occasionally using the regular dryer to finish larger loads after the Spin. For the regular dryer I'm thinking of using an indoor dryer vent, but I'd like to limit the added humidity with a homemade salt dehumidifer. Anyone have experience making one? Can I just put the indoor dryer vent in a big plastic tub with some road salt to trap the moisture, maybe with some filtration media instead of the tub's lid to allow for some air escape? Or something somesuch? Does this plan sound okay so far?

stackable washer dryer what is the best

Shanachie — Sun, 02 Jan 2005 10:51:58 -0800

Have you ever bought a stackable washer/dryer? I'm looking for a New York City sized washer dryer set, something that will fit in my small space. I have a hookup that was here when I bought the place but I've never used it. Any thoughts on what the smallest, most incredibly efficent, wonderful, washer/dryer unit might be?

good, small, inexpensive, energy-efficient space heater?

gottabefunky — Thu, 23 Sep 2004 10:34:27 -0800

What is a good, small, inexpensive, energy-efficient space heater? Living in a leaky old house, we're starting to dread the approach of our first winter here. All we have is one crappy gas wall heater, this electricity-sucking system on the roof that pumps down solar-heated air, and a fireplace in the bedroom. We need more. (We're already going to seal the windows with plastic where we can.)

FHA Energy Efficient Programs

jazzkat11 — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 18:55:03 -0800

Has anyone had experience with the energy efficient program for FHA mortgage loans?