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Some things I tend to overthink. Surveys, for example, take me a long time to complete because I must consider the question and the implications of the answer.

I was not involved in this survey, but I read a little bit about the results. The survey had to do with how much time people spend on their smartphones and when and where – all the usual habits.

One question that stood out to me was “Do you sleep with your phone next to your bed?”

The surveyors used the high percentage of positive answers to indicate that people are addicted to their phones. Something along the lines of “it’s the last thing they do before going to sleep and the first thing they reach for in the morning.” If I hadn’t known the intent of the question, I would have answered Yes. But knowing the intent of the question would make me want to answer No.

I keep my phone on my nightstand, but only because I use it as my alarm clock. Before I go to sleep, I put it out of commission – airplane mode, all communications off, etc.

If I answer the letter of the question: yes, I keep my phone next to my bed.

If I answer the spirit of the question: no, I sleep with my alarm clock next to my bed.

The fact that my phone is the same physical device as my alarm clock complicates things. In this case, I’m not using my phone for its communication purposes. Is a phone still a phone if it’s not used as a phone?

I would have a similar dilemma if a survey question asked me if I had an alarm clock. My answer depends on why you need to know. If you want to know how many people wake up on their own without some sort of a signal, then yes I use an alarm clock. But if you represent consumer device manufacturers and want to know which appliances are in one’s home, then no I do not use an alarm clock.

You wouldn’t think yes/no questions could be so complicated, and that’s why I don’t trust surveys. Because a lot of times, the people devising the questions don’t realize there could be complications with the way their questions are worded.

I’m on a field trip today. Technically, I’m a chaperone. But it’s all in how you look at it.

Either way, I don’t have a blog post today. Go outside and enjoy the weather instead of reading this.

Here’s a lesson from the grocery store this last week: is a bigger box of cereal a better deal than the smaller size of the same cereal?

Answer: usually, but watch out for sales.

Exhibit A:

Looking at the non-sale price, you see that the larger box (19.1 oz) is a better deal because it is 26.1 cents/ounce – lower than the 26.3 cpo for the 12.5 oz box.

As an aside, I prevent whining from the kids about picking out cereals when they accompany me to the grocery store. I do this by having a consistent rule and reminding them of it beforehand. Before we reach the cereal aisle, I let them know they can each pick out one box of cereal, whatever they want as long as it is less than 20 cpo. This heads off questions about what they can get and keeps them busy as they scan the shelves for qualifying items and weigh their options. It also usually weeds out bad choices such as Lucky Charms, but on the rare occasion when that is on sale I do let them get it.

Back to today’s topic… The sale price knocks the price of the smaller box down to be the better deal: 19.9 cpo vs. 23.5 cpo.
And if you buy 6 of them, you can save even more. Either way, the big box ends up being the worse value in this case. I’ve seen it where the small box was on sale but the large box was not, yet the large box was still a better deal, so don’t be drawn in by large colorful “SALE PRICE” signs – read the fine print.

Plus, shopping is so much nicer when they list the cents/ounce on the shelf tag.

I’m planning on making some heat exchangers. It sounds fancy, but all I’m doing is coiling some soft copper pipe.

My goal is the most bang for my buck, so what’s the best way of arrangement of copper for dollars.

Here’s an example:

My constraint: the water inlet and outlet are 3/4″ copper pipe.

For this analysis, I’m standardizing on a length of 50′ of coil.

The first obvious choice is using 3/4″ diameter to match the existing piping. A 50′ roll of soft copper pipe runs about $80 for 3/4″ diameter.

The main factor in heat transfer is surface area, so for a cylinder we need pi*d*h. The diameter is 3/4″ -> circumference of 2.356. For one foot, that’s 28.274 sq.in. of pipe. At $1.60 per foot, that’s 5.66 cents/sq.in.foot.

For cheaper, I could go with 1/2″ soft pipe. That would result in a faster flow though, which would give less time for heat to transfer, so I don’t know that it is a good choice. But we’ll look at it anyway.

The diameter is 1/2″ -> circumference of 1.571. For one foot, that’s 18.852 sq.in. of pipe. At $1.00 per foot, that’s 5.30 cents/sq.in.foot, a slightly better deal.

So the thinner pipe is slightly cheaper on a surface area basis. But the overall surface area is less and the water will flow faster so it won’t transfer heat as well, so that works counter to the point of a heat exchanger.

To get the same performance, we need the same cross section. Area of 3/4″ = 0.4418. Area of 1/2″ = 0.1963, or approximately half of the area of the 3/4″ diamter pipe. So if I double up the 1/2″ pipe, I can get the same flow as the 3/4″ pipe.

But what about surface area? That doubles! So slightly smaller cross section total, but (18.852 + 18.852)/28.274 = 33% more surface area. Looks like it is better heat transfer performance to have two 1/2″ pipes rather than one 3/4″ pipe.

Now let’s check the other part of the equation: cost.

The two 50′ pipes will cost double a single pipe (no, a 100′ pipe costs more than double, so I wouldn’t save anything by buying that and cutting it in half).

So 33% more performance for (100/80) = 25% more cost. Sounds like a good deal.

One more adjustment, just to make sure all the bases are covered: the area.

The 3/4″ pipe has (0.4418/(0.1963+0.1963)) = 12.5% more cross-sectional area. Which in theory would mean the water flows slower and has more time to absorb the heat.

So 33% more surface area but with a 12.5% reduction for flow rate, compared to 25% more cost for these two choices.

In conclusion, I’m going with the single 3/4″ pipe because it’s half the number of joints to solder therefore the double 1/2″ pipes are twice as likely to fail.

The English language is not very consistent. Today I’m proposing some singular/plural forms to help reduce the confusion.

For example, the plural of mouse is mice.
The plural of louse is lice.
The singular form of lice is louse.
But the singular form of dice is die.
It should be douse.

mouse -> mice
louse -> lice
douse -> dice
spouse -> spice
rouse -> rice
vouse -> vice
twouse -> twice

I don’t know how you can have a singular form of twice, but in case you should ever need it, there it is.

And, of course, we one ouse -> many ice.

Here is a construction tip for you:

Don’t confuse lintels with lentils.

The wife and I went to see the reincarnation of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

It was okay.

The main story was still good. The movie was successful in that it conveyed the story. I laughed, I cried, etc.

But it was annoying in some aspects. I had known about the changes to LeFou, and I’m not going to discuss that aspect much – only to say that it was more of a distraction that anything else. I’ll liken deciding to watch this movie to what I heard a number of people say about voting for Trump. They did it in spite of his issues, not because of it, because it’s better than the alternative. Except in this case there were many alternatives and none of them was Hillary, so maybe the analogy breaks down there.

I had 3 main complaints about how the movie was inconsistent. Not necessarily inconsistent with the original movie, but rather inconsistent with itself.

• Claims of Live Action : The big selling point of this movie is that it was a live-action version of the animated classic. Come see the movie you love, but with people doing the acting – it’s not animated! They might not have said those words directly, but that was the feeling that was portrayed.

  Except…

  The Beast was computer-animated, Lumiere and Cogworth were computer-animated, Mrs. Potts and Chip were computer animated, as were the wardrobe lady and the piano guy and the footstool dog and so on.

  It’s hard to accept that a movie is live action when so many of its main characters are not.

  And I didn’t like the CGI, especially with Lumiere. And the Be Our Guest song. And the Beast’s gait. You get the idea – it was distracting.

• Setting and Accents : Was this set in England or France or America? The story says it’s in France, and part of it takes place in Paris. There are some French phrases thrown in for good measure. But only Lumiere attempts to have a French accent. Belle has a decidedly British accent, and the other main characters sound American. Of course, the best choice would be to have everyone with a French accent. But it wouldn’t have bothered me if everyone had a British accent, or American accent. If the movie is consistent, I wouldn’t notice it. But when the acecnts are all over the place, it is a distraction.
• Progressive and Oppresive Villagers : I think I understand the director’s/producer’s intention behind casting people of different races, but again it was inconsistent with the story and was more of a distraction. It was inconsistent because those villagers must have been very progressive not only to allow different races to have prominent roles but also to accept mixed-race marriages. (Although the races were only combinations of blacks and whites – didn’t see many Asians in there.) Since the setting is 18th-century France, it was anachronistic. But let’s give the director the benefit of the doubt and assume he was just trying to promote racial harmony and was using this movie as the vehicle to do so. But then we see these same villagers oppress Belle because she dares to teach a girl to read.

  In the original movie, the “provincial” villagers seemed rather indifferent – they thought Belle was odd but didn’t think much of it, and certainly didn’t teach her a lesson for going against the village’s unwritten rules. But this new adaptation of the movie makes the villagers both more progressive and less progressive. Why couldn’t the director have the villagers be supportive of girls’ education? If this movie was to be the means by which equality and tolerance are promoted, why only with the subject of race and not with gender? Again, inconsistent.

One more thing that bothered me was the choice of fuzzy camera focus during pans. Things went extra fuzzy/blurry when the camera was moving. I assume this was the director’s choice, as I haven’t noticed it in other movies I’ve seen. I disagree with that choice, since it happened a few times and each time it took my mind out of the story because my mind was trying to figure out what went wrong with my eyes. Again, a distraction.

The movie wasn’t bad, overall. It just had a number of things wrong with it. See it if you want. But if you want your kids to see a good movie, just show them the original animated version.