Monthly Archives: January 2005

Review: Hunter Humidifier and AllergyBuyersClub.Com

Reviews

As winter approaches, indoor air gets dry, which can aggravate asthma and allergies. We needed a humidifier.

I started my research in the humidifier section of ConsumerSearch.Com. After reading through their material, we decided we’d like an evaporative/cool mist model, and the Hunter 34357 looked good.

Read on for more…

I did some more checking of reviews, then went over to AllergyBuyersClub.Com. They aren’t your typical small Internet retailer; they actually review the products they sell. They have a nice humidifier comparison chart, a cool vs. warm mist comparison, and a humidifier FAQ. They also recommended setting the humidity level at 35%-40% (or as high as 45%). That level of detail seems to be typical for them, and the other nice thing is that they actually describe the minuses of each of the products they sell.

The mean reasons we went with the Hunter 34357 are: it produces no “white dust” so it can work with ordinary tap water; it requires very little cleaning due to a nice filter system; it has the digital humidistat; and it has a large tank.

Some people complained that it is noisy. It’s true for the high-speed setting only. On Low, it’s quiet enough to have in the bedroom at night.

Some others complained that it takes a while to raise the humidity in the room. That’s true too, but it’s not a big deal thanks to the large tank and humidistat. Unlike many other humidifiers, this one can be left on all the time, and it will keep the humidity in the room at a constant level. So you only really have to bother to significantly raise the level once.

We wound up purchasing it at AllergyBuyersClub. We’re happy with both the purchase and the unit.

Today’s Reading

General, Hardware

Apple: iPod Domination Or Just Another Fad? at The Register.

Various SELinux material from Gentoo. Also, Getting Started with SELinux and Writing SELinux Policy. SELinux looks very complex. I think I’ll just use vserver instead.

The System Rescue CD and Partimage pages. The system rescue C looks like it can pretty much eliminate the need for spending money on Partition Magic or Ghost because of its inclusion of qparted and partimage. Nice!

Today’s Reading

General

Ethics for the Robot Age at Wired. Less interesting than the author thinks, perhaps, but some questions of robots competing with humans for resources are interesting.

Novell’s Major Filesystems in Linux appendix for Suse. Surprisingly lucid, and with solid explanations of why JFS, XFS, and ReiserFS are all less reliable than ext3fs in data=ordered mode. I wasn’t certain about XFS, but by now knew the answer for JFS and Reiser3. It appears that Reiser4 may equal or exceed ext3 data=ordered semantics in terms of reliability. ext3 is just not practical for me; it gets very slow for large files or directories, especially compared to JFS or ReiserFS. At the same time, it looks like JFS may gain these semantics.

Good Timing?

The ChangeLog

I have no idea how this managed to happen…. I’m very rarely ranked high on Google for semi-common stuff like that. I suppose it’s because a site that talks about Haskell doesn’t get a lot of inbound links :-)

I noticed this because of a sudden spike in Drupal’s referrer report. (Which is slick, BTW).

Today’s Reading

General, Technology

Here’s what I’ve been reading today:

Hackers, Slackers, and Shackels by Matt Barton, a fascinating article about trends in game development. The author calls Martin Luther “the Richard Stallman of his time.” That’s one analogy I hadn’t heard of before. (seen on Slashdot) Also a bit of insight into the history of Unix I hadn’t heard of before, either.

Personal Chemistry and the Healthy Body by Gerald Weinberg, (via Slashdot). Seems like sound enough conclusions, with some rather mushy in-between stuff.

Review of Author Unknown by Foster. Foster attempts to identify the authors of various bits of text. Seen on a comment from Jon on an earlier story here.

Jon Stewart gets Crossfire Canceled

TV

Back in October, Jon Stewart (host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show) appeared on CNN’s Crossfire, and called for the show’s cancelation. To quote a comment on Slashdot:

I did watch the show yesterday thought and it was awe inspiring, especially because it was live and they kept coming back from the commercial breaks for another beating. I especially liked it when they were in Rapidfire and Stewart ignored the gong until they gave up on it.

So anyway, Stewart’s main point was that merely repeating talking points and analyzing how things “play” — rather than statements themselves — is actually a disservice to the public. I would add that obsessive coverage of the trail du jour — OJ, Peterson, whatever — is just as silly.

It seems that the new head of CNN US listened. Phil Rosenthal has this little quote in the Chicago Sun-Times:

On Wednesday, CNN’s Klein told the AP, “I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp” and would prefer a more substantive discussion of current events and controversies.

“I doubt that when the president sits down with his advisers they scream at him to bring him up to date on all of the issues,” Klein said. “I don’t know why we don’t treat the audience with the same respect.”

You really don’t think the president’s Cabinet meetings come with an audience ready to cheer, boo, applaud or hoot when prodded?

Apparently Klein wants to re-brand CNN as the hard-news, in-depth alternative to Fox and MSNBC.

I hope he does, because America really needs one of those. It’s sad to have to resort to BBC for in-depth coverage.