Things like this are why I tend to bike whenever possible, even in the winter (it doesn’t snow too much here, and much of the winter season is quite bikeable with the right jacket). In addition to being cheap, about as quick as public transit, and flab-fighting, it also lets me get a closer look at things I might otherwise miss.
Some quick Googling revealed what it was all about: it’s promoting this weekend’s Grow Op art-and-ideas exhibition, which is described as follows:
The Gladstone Hotel is pleased to announce the inaugural year of Gladstone Grow Op: Exploring landscape and place, a four-day event to celebrate innovative ideas and conceptual responses to landscape and place across a broad range of creative practices. Grow Op 2013 will facilitate a cross-disciplinary forum for landscape, garden design, art and place making within the vibrant setting of Toronto’s West Queen West neighbourhood.
Grow Op will explore new territories and uncover new ways of expression and meaning through projects that represent a wide range of approaches from the prosaic to the poetic, the elemental to the ephemeral.
Last night, I attended 2013’s first After Work Drinks Toronto party, a regular gathering of Accordion City’s downtown working folks for food, drink, and most important of all, getting-to-know-you-conversations. It took place on King West at Fynn’s of Temple Bar and featured some tasty strawberry-basil mojitos and killer fruit-infused beer from Innis and Gunn (I’m pretty fond of the ginger). They also had a couple of guys onstage doing the guitar-and-cover tunes thing who invited me to join them for Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline, which worked out so well that they brought me back onstage for their subsequent set. Jon Gauthier and Anne Mackenzie caught bits and pieces of me with the six-second-repeating-loop-video app Vine, and I’ve included their videos below.
Among the numbers I got to play with the guys, who were incredibly cool and accommodating, were:
It was good fun, and it was easy. While I’d never played Moondance, Night Moves or Don’t Look Back in Anger before, I knew the tunes and only had to be told what key they were playing in. They even let me have a solo on most of the numbers; the one I’m most proud of was the one where I duplicated the line from Don’t Look Back in Anger. I probably should add some Brothers Gallagher to the repertoire!
I had a great time — thanks to Amanda Blake and crew for putting the event together. I’m also looking forward to seeing the photos Casey Palmer shot at the event.
While covering yesterday’s press conference on the arrest of the suspects involved in the VIA Rail terror plot, FOX News’ Shepard Smith found the whole thing lacking in that FOX-y oh-god-the-ferriners-are-coming oomph and a bit too heavy on a language he can’t understand:
“Let’s get the details, in English and in French, it’s how they roll, they are still saying ‘hello’ over there and they are going to say ‘hello’ for a long time,” said Smith, as the RCMP spokesperson spoke in French. “God love Canada, but they’re not great at the television. I don’t know what else to say about it.”
God love FOX News, but they’re not great at the journalism.
In Case You’re Wondering…
The title for this post comes from the episode of The Tick titled That Mustache Feeling:
The article was meant for a beginner audience interested in Bitcoin mining. “How do I do it, and how much can I make?”, a few non-techie friends asked. So I performed the experiment on a spare machine that they were likely to have at home — perhaps a machine that’s since been replace by a more current one, or a cast-off from a friend or relative (I myself prefer to give my old computers to friends in need rather than selling them). I picked the HP IQ526 Touchsmart as my mining machine for a couple of reasons:
It’s probably representative of the sort of machine most non-technical people might have lying idle in their house.
Aside from being a cooking and drinks recipe machine (it’s on my bar, and right by the kitchen), it’s the one computer in the house that isn’t really being used for much.
So fret not, Bitcoiners, I’m not trying to malign what you’re doing; I’m just trying to show some non-techies how to get started, and what to expect with the gear they’re most likely to have available.
I’ve Got a Little Mad Money. What if I Got a Gaming Rig?
Consider this rig, the iBuyPower TG930SLC Gaming PC, which you can get online for US$900 at Tiger Direct. It’s one of the “budget” machines:
Remember, Bitcoin mining is mathematically intensive, and best relegated to the processing unit on the graphics card rather than the central processor. So we’ll ignore the CPU (central processing unit, the “main brain” of the computer) specs, as the GPU (graphics processing unit) will be doing the heavy lifting as far as mining is concerned. This machine features an nVidia GeForce GTX 600-series GPU, which according to this chart, should mine at a rate of somewhere between 110 – 130 MHash/s (megahashes per second). My machine mines 0.0001 BTC a day under current conditions; this machine, performing at 100 times the speed of mine, should be able to mine 0.01 BTC a day, or 1 BTC every hundred days, or 3.7 BTC every year. At the current Bitcoin exchange rate of 1 BTC = US$124 (which you can always check at Mt. Gox), that’s US$1.24 a day, just shy of $9 a week, a shade more than $37 a week, and a bit over $450 a year.
According to Bitclockers’ mining calculator, the graphics card that gives you the best bang for the buck is the AMD (a.k.a. ATI) Radeon HD 5870 if you buy it on eBay at the average price of US$140. It can mine at the rate of a miner- and stoner-friendly rate of 420 MHash/s, which should work out to 0.042 BTC a day, or 1 BTC about every 24 days, under current conditions. That works out to US$5.20 a day ($1900 a year) at the current exchange rate. Not bad.
The fastest card listed on Bitclockers’ mining calculator chart is the AMD Radeon HD 6990 — on the chart, it retails for US$950, but sells on eBay for about $500. At 700 MHash/s, you should be able to mine 0.07 BTC a day ($8.68 at the current rate), or 1 BTC every fortnight, under current conditions.
Note that I keep describing the return “under current conditions”. Bitcoin is a system that adjusts itself so that blocks are produced at a consistent rate, no matter the collective horsepower of all the machines doing the mining. This adjustment is made by changing a factor called the difficulty, which affects the difficulty of the number-crunching involved in mining. Barring malfunction, any machine will mine at the same rate, but the difficulty will always increase. The same mining rate, over time, will produce a an ever-smaller amount of Bitcoin.
If you’re serious about Bitcoin mining, I’d advise against getting a gaming rig or another graphics card for your computer. GPUs, for the purposes of Bitcoin mining, are nearing the end of their era of usefulness, as a new processor technology is coming on the scene.
Produced by Butterfly Labs, it’s powered by an ASIC — an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit — which means that its processor was custom-built for a singular purpose: performing the calculations that mine Bitcoins. At US$250 (plus $50 for shipping), it mines at a rate better measured in gigahashes rather than megahashes. It’s rated at 5 GHash/s, and in the video above, it’s surpassing that, clocking along at just over 5.5 GHash/s. At that rate, it should — under current conditions, of course — mine at about 0.55 BTC a day, far outstripping the performance of even the fastest graphics card. If you want to get started Bitcoin mining now, the Jalapeno gives you the baseline performance you should expect, and at a nice price.
You have to remember: this is Butterfly Labs’ budget model. Take a look at their catalog:
Click to see the catalog.
They’ve got machines mining at 25, 50 and even 1500 GHash/s. These machines are only entering production now, and if you can somehow get one early, you should do quite well.
Keep in mind that Bitcoin is a self-adjusting system and as machines with this level of mining power become more common, the difficulty will automatically adjust to keep the rate of production steady. Fast gaming machines, and eventually even the Jalapeno, will eventually mine as much Bitcoin as my sad machine does now.
I’ll have to admit, that at $300 with shipping, I’m tempted to place an order for the Jalapeno. The problem is that it was available for pre-order a good while back, and production is just starting now. As a result, there’s a waiting list, and I have no idea how long that list is. Remember, having one sooner is better: the more of these things that are in use, the worse their returns will be.
For more about ASIC-based Bitcoin miners, see this Wired article: Inside the Race to Build the World’s Fastest Bitcoin Miner, which covers the companies making them, and the difficulties they’ve encountered pushing the bleeding edge.
Should You Mine Bitcoins?
My answer is “only if you’re serious about it”. Bitcoin mining is both an arms race and a zero-sum game: in order for you to do better, you will need to regularly upgrade your hardware, and some combination of everyone else has to do worse. The system is designed to adjust for changes in the size of the competitive field and evolving technology, which means that today’s excellent mining machine is tomorrow’s junk. If you’ve got the money and can manage the arms race and take advantage of situations which let you access better mining hardware sooner than others, and you have a firm belief that Bitcoin’s will become a viable currency, then by all means, go for it!
Damn… Christina and Wendy James of Transvision Vamp were my iconic female leads of the 80s. This makes me sad, but thanks for the share; I’ll give a moment of remembrance for her.
Which led me to think: “Wow…Transvision Vamp! I haven’t heard that band’s name in a good long time.”
I got a fair bit of mileage in my college pub DJ days from Transvision Vamp, particularly off their 1989 album, Velveteen. Although much better known in the UK and Australia, they got some alt-rock radio airplay here in Canada, and with a little assistance from friend and classmate Kelli Rankin (now Pallett), I was able to get people out on the dance floor with their single Baby I Don’t Care:
And during the less dance-y times, the title track, Velveteen, would get a couple of people coming up to the DJ booth asking “What is this track and where can I get it?”
So here you go — a little music you might not have heard of, from my misspent youth. Enjoy!
I saw these last night and thought “Hey, let’s see if we can make something tasty with ’em”. From what I can recall — it’s been a while since I’ve had chicken hearts — they taste like an amped-up version of dark meat. I’ll try this recipe this week and let you folks know how it turned out.
If you have any good recipes for chicken hearts to share, let me know!
I’m sure it’ll be a far more pleasant experience than this scene from Game of Thrones, where Daenerys has to eat a whole raw horse’s heart (warning: not for the weak-stomached):
Update
My friend Brad McFarlane, upon seeing this article, pointed out this Bill Cosby routine to me, and I had to share it:
Last night, I attended 2013’s first After Work Drinks Toronto party, a regular gathering of Accordion City’s downtown working folks for food, drink, and most important of all, getting-to-know-you-conversations. It took place on King West at 
