As a next step I set up my machine to run for an hour before entering sleep mode then to hibernate while in Vista - and it did make a decent difference. While asleep, the computer was only drawing between  143 and 167 watts, and wound up using 3.72 kwh for a 24 hour period. This would reduce the annual bill from $175.00 to $131.00, which is an excellent drop in cost. Here is how the settings were configured:

• no screen saver
• turn off monitors after 15 minutes
• set to sleep mode after 60 minutes
• hard drives cycle off after 60 minutes
• Hibernate after 90 minutes. 

I have to give it to Microsoft here though, the sleep mode in Vista is vastly superior to that in XP and I had no trouble coming out of sleep mode the half a dozen times or so I awoke my PC. I turned the screen saver off on this test as well to see if it made any changed in the power draw because I have had my doubts as to whether the screen saver turns off after the monitors turn off, or if it continues to run in the background possibly affecting CPU power usage. After checking the wattage used during sleep with both the screen saver turned on and off - it seemed to make no difference at all.

Another thing I discovered throughout this test was that not all USB devices turn off when your machine is turned off. My keyboard still draws power, and will pass power though it to other devices. I have a small Plasma Ball from Think Geek and while it was plugged into my keyboard the power kept flowing regardless of whether the machine was on or off. This surprised me especial since the keyboards LEDs go dark, and it's plugged into the USB ports on the MoBo, not the PCI Card ports.

Still the best solution is to shut the machine down entirely, and let it draw its 35 watts of power while turned off. For those who want to go a step further, you can get a Smart Strip that will shut off all other devices when the CPU shuts down. It is controlled by a single outlet which shuts the entire strip off when the device plugged into that outlet gets turned off, eliminating excess power drain for devices which should be off. This is great for TVs and home entertainment systems as well. Unfortunately it is still just a power strip which I don't use at home. Once this starts getting into battery backups then I will be more likely to get one for my computer.

I have wanted to do this for a while now, to see what the first run results would be, so I toddled over to Think Geek and purchased a Kill A Watt. They have a couple other models, a Kill A Watt EZ and the Watt's Up Pro - but they are too rich for me, so I opted for the $25.00 option.

Watt meter in hand I unplugged my entire system which is connected to a battery backup, and plugged in my new toy. Here are the results:

 Windows Vista Home Premium (SP 1)

• Spiked to 301 watts during boot (just after log in)
• ran at 279 - 291 watts sitting idle 3-5 minutes after boot
• ran at 182-191 watts while in pseudo sleep mode (monitors off and hard drives off)
• after 24 hours - 4.83 KWH

Windows XP Pro (SP 2)

• spiked to 302 watts during boot (just after the loading screen came up)
• ran at 255 - 265 watts sitting idle 3-5 minutes after boot
• ran at 155 - 165 watts while in pseudo sleep mode (monitors off and hard drives off)
• after 24 hours - 4.53 KWH

Conclusions

If I take these results and factor in the national average for electricity costs of 9.78 cents, then it costs me roughly $175.00 cents a year to run my machine under Vista, and $160.00 under Windows XP. I have both machines set to turn the monitors off after 15 minutes, and cycle the hard drives down after 3 hours of inactivity.

There are a couple of reasons why this surprised me, first being that I have more drives being used under XP with one of my drives not being recognized (since the raid drivers don't work) under Vista. The second being the much expanded power usage controls that Vista has. Being that Vista has the capability to actual control how much of the CPU you use, I would have figured the power draw would be less, but it seems initially that XP handles power better. The biggest difference between the two though is how willing I am to actually allow the computer to go into sleep mode. There is no way I am going to put my XP install in sleep mode, or hibernation - it simply won't come back.

This isn't the truest test either, during both tests I was using my computer normally, but I played no games and didn't have Photoshop open or any of those things, it was only to see what I get for running the whole shebang.

I'm not done yet though, so expect another run at this. I'm going to test my Vista install again only this time set it to sleep after 1 hour. I might also run another set of 24 hours tests where I play some games for a couple hours during the evening, as well as turn of the machine when I go to bed, and before I go to work - which should drop my annual operating costs down to $45.00 or so.

My wife and I have been remodeling her office for the past several weeks and since we finally got the new floor and cabinets in, I decided to rebuild her computer into a cabinet fit unit rather than the Aspire box case that I originally bought for it. It's been an okay machine other than the Celeron D runs very hot compared to my AMD; but it's bulky and wouldn't fit very well on her smaller desk surface.

I basically trashed the case for parts, keeping only the power button and LEDs from the parts installed. I did pull out the front panel USB, audio and FireWire board - but I didn't wind up putting it back in. Since the motherboard tray just slides out of the chassis, it was easy to keep everything altogether and I did very little cutting. The only part I had to really destroy was the front bezel to get the power switch out in a way that I could reuse the housing. These are the parts I kept, and these are the parts I didn't.

I was originally going to go and get some 1/4 or 3/8 inch plexiglass, and glue all of the pieces together, figuring that would be the easiest way to go about it. I'm glad I decided to use some of the left over good plywood I had instead - because it would have been a huge pain in the arse otherwise. Using 1/3 ply, I cut the bottom and face, plus 2 small corner pieces to add more rigidity to the face of it. After removing the LEDs from the other case, I decided to go to Radio Shack and get some new ones with a chrome casing, the main reason was to get them to fit better, but they look a lot better too.

After cutting the CD slot, slot for the LCD temperature display, two holes for the LEDs and the hole for the power button I set about painting and going through final assembly. The bulk of the work was done in a single day - I wasn't going for winning any awards - just getting it done really. Pictured is the completed case.

It turned out alright - nothing to really write home about - but it was fun, and I learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when doing this sort of thing. First and foremost I learned I don't have the right tools for doing really fine and precise wood work. A coping saw is very difficult to use, and always make sure something is right-side-up before you silicon it into place. After getting it fit into the cabinet as well, I had to make a couple of modifications - in particular I had to add a case fan back into it to keep it cool. I thought having it be open would be enough, but no.

One thing that would have been nice though is to have had a hard drive cage to mount the DVD and hard drive rather than custom fabricating aluminum mounts for everything. I still want to build another custom PC - but right now I have no idea what I would do. 

It's taken me a few days to decompress and restore to the organized chaos of my life. Okay, that's a sham - it's all chaos.

I live for this type of interaction with ideas and people within the industry, even if I do utterly suck at interacting with groups of people where I don't know anyone.... See, living in a small town in rural Pennsylvania - I'm bitter. So I have to stick with God, Guns, and Booze..... Oh wait. I can't drink.... uhmmm never mind. But living in a small town is very isolating from what is happening in the real world and it is very easy to completely lose touch with trends within my chosen field of Web and Flash design. So let's count the things I now want to work on:

• Multi-touch display
• Adobe AIR applications
• Getting better with AS 3
• Experimenting with AS 3 programming (like particle and 3d effects)
• Figure out ways to create interesting artwork in Flash (look at Erik Natzke's work and wonder no more)
• Build myself a new website
• Redevelop my blog and have run in Flash using AS 3
• Build RIAs with Flex 3
• I still would like to build better games
• Get into building components
• Be able to truly reuse my code
• Get more into OOP

Now, all I have to do is wait for cloning technology to get to the point to where I will actually be able to do all of these things before I ascend.

I had every intention of living, eating and breathing Flash while I was there too. I took all of me dev files for my new Flash site, and never even touched them. I ended being too absorbed in Toronto and other things to even sit at the computer while I was there in the evening. Many nights, after unwinding a bit and eating dinner, I just sat and watched TV while scrawling pages of ideas down in one of the notebooks I bought for doing just that - I think after all was said-and-done I had 20 plus pages of ideas and thoughts of what I could do both for work and personally with many of the things I was introduced to and learned more about.

On the way back on Wednesday I stopped outside of Lincoln Ontario at this marina where this is an old beached boat, and shot a few images which I have been meaning to do the past 4 times I have passed it on the way back. It's pretty cool, and there were some immense geese hanging out being loud too. On a creepier note, I noticed afterwards that there were these little wafts of smoke coming up from trees all over the place along the freeway - at least I thought it was smoke. I finally got a closer look at one, and they were ginormous swarms of bugs. Billions of bugs milling about in tall strands above some trees - but it only spanned a 5 to 7 miles stretch along the freeway. Weird as heck. I have never seen anything like it, and the road was too busy for me to be able to risk trying to fumble around to get my camera out. I liked it better when I thought it was twilight zone wisps of smoke.

I don't know what lies in store for me in 2009, but I could easily do worse than head back up north for FITC 2009.

As a side note: Thanks for another stellar FITC Shawn! 

I think maybe I had too many neurons firing over the day 1 activities because I woke up with a headache yesterday, and it really put a damper on things until about lunchtime. That's not to say I didn't have some good sessions though.

Day Two
Session 1 was led by Seb Lee-Delisle from Plug-in Media in Brighton, and it was top-notch for being early in the morning for everyone. The talk was on Flash pyrotechnics or particle effects and it was cool. Again I left there wondering how I could do something with my new found knowledge and source code. I still have no real idea about how I could use this stuff except in games and to start working on some AS3 experiments of my own, but this is one of those things that I love to get in on. Maybe I will get to build some more games this year....

The next session only added to my headache. The one I wanted to go to was canceled, so I chose a runner-up because it sounded interesting and turned out to be... well... ignorant. I'm not going to go off and slag it, because I am sure the gal who was on stage is a decent developer, but I didn't drive 3 hours and pay the admission to listen to someone piss and moan about their job. Boo hoo.... It might have gotten better, because I heard some dude just ranting about how he loved it, but within the time I was in there - about 10 +/- people left; and I wasn't in the mood to sit through the full hour on the off chance it became more interesting.

The rest of the day was an interesting mix of work from various places around the US mostly - and there was some wonderful work showcased. Day 2 left me wanting a bit though. The previous day was so mentally charging for me that I was hoping for day 2 to be the same way; but I am sure my headache got in the way a bit. It was great to see new works from GMUNK, Joshua Davis though - they are very talented, and it's always good to see what other folks are up to.

The last session I went to for the day was by Buck. This was an excellent sesion too - these guys build some really cool videos. I don't really do a lot of video, nor do I do any 3D (or get the opportunity too) - but as I said above, it's always good to check what other folks are up to. I can get ideas, and quite often do, from other styles or genre of work other than just Flash and Web Design.

After the day was over, I walked around Toronto a bit since I wanted to go up the CN Tower. Holy smokes this thing is big! I was up all the way to the top, and it is pretty freaking cool. I will post some more pics on flickr either tonight or when I get home.

I have yet to totally plan what is in store for me today, so maybe I should shut up and get to it. 

This is awesome - I love the FITC conference more than... french toast? More than a cream cheese bagel even....

I picked up my goody-bag at check-in yesterday afternoon, and promptly went upstairs to survey the loot. Pretty cool stuff this year too. I am particularly fond of the little metal dude and the alarm clock guy - okay, well than and the I quite flip-off pop-up sign.

Day One:
I started the day off with a talk about Flex, Flash and mapping which was very cool. We have been kicking around options for building a new mapping application at work and this gives me a lot more information, options and ideas as to how we might be able to self-accomplish a new mapping application that would be more usable, portable and cheaper than the solution we currently have ultimately adding far more value to ou site. This talk was lead by Poly9 founder Greg Sadetsky and was a good start to the day, their FreeEarth app is very cool.

I chased that down with a talk about the new Adobe Media Player and again the ideas starting swimming about how I could use this, and possibly tie it into the mapping application. It all makes me want to get back into using Flex again, and doing more than just touch on what it can do - really start building meaningful applications. 

The entire day was awesome, I finished off with Erik Natzke talking about his digital art and the process he went through in order to begin creating the artwork he is working through now. If you haven't seen, take a look - it's completely amazing. I also bought a signed print from him while I had the chance. I know, total geek but oh well; you play the hand you are dealt.

My head is still swiming with ideas and concepts and that's exactly why I love coming to this event - I get to recharge my noggin - it's too bad it only happens once a year or every other year, but it's definately worth the price of admission and then some.

Day 2 is about to klick off, so I need to meditate or something before I get started again....

This is the view from my window too - not too shabby....