January 20th, 2011

Illuminati

A matter of size

Poll #1669946
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All. Participants: 40

All other things being equal, the maximum difference in constituency sizes I would be comfortable with is

View Answers
0% (i.e. consituencies must have the same number of voters)
0(0.0%)
2%
0(0.0%)
5%
2(5.4%)
10%
9(24.3%)
15%
4(10.8%)
20%
4(10.8%)
25%
4(10.8%)
30%
2(5.4%)
40%
0(0.0%)
50%
4(10.8%)
60%
0(0.0%)
75%
1(2.7%)
100% (i.e. one constituency could have twice as many members as another)
2(5.4%)
No limit
5(13.5%)

The reasons I would expect such variations to occur would include:

View Answers
Illuminati

Interesting Links for 20-1-2011

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth - you can comment here or there, but I suspect that most comments will be here. Comments so far over there: comment count unavailable
Illuminati

A matter of law

I'm somewhat confused by the fuss over the votes for prisoners stuff that's currently in the newspapers.

The government has to do _something_, as it's been found to be in the wrong by the Europan Court of Human Rights. However, it seems unsure what, exactly, it has to do to be in the right. I know that human rights legislation is going to have some grey areas, but is there a reason why the ECHR wouldn't say "You are doing X, which is wrong, in order to be compliant you must do Y."?

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth - you can comment here or there, but I suspect that most comments will be here. Comments so far over there: comment count unavailable
Exciting

HTC Desire Battery Life

After various discussions about the battery life of my phone, I decided to run an experiment. I hadn't charged my phone fully for a while, so I left it charging overnight, and unplugged it around 8:30 this morning.

I listened to music (via Spotify), played half an hour of Angry Birds, had it checking email constantly all day (via Push email via IMAP), and have also checked Twitter and Facebook a few times each. I also made a couple of phone calls, about 30 minutes in total.

WiFi was off during the day (well, it turns itself on for ten seconds every five minutes to check if I'm near a WiFi point it can connect to), but then connected from 5:30 to now (8:00).

It has just now warned me that my battery has hit 15%. Which means that it would, theoretically last thirteen and a half hours before dying.

According to the battery metrics:
Cell Standby: 34%
Phone Idle: 30%
Android System: 15%
Wi-Fi: 10%
Voice Calls: 7%
Display: 7%

The big energy saver there over my previous usage appears to be having the WiFi turned off when it's not in use - it's usually up at the same level as Cell Standby and Phone Idle, and that would presumably have knocked the phone out around the ten hour mark (which jibes with my experience too).

High GPS usage also definitely burns through the battery life (but then that was also true of my Nokia). And I should note that I tend to turn the screen on when the LED tells me there's email, read the mail, and then turn the screen off again. If I'd been surfing the web a lot then that display usage would definitely have been higher.

My normal usage is also to have a charger in the flat and one in the office, so I can charge the phone in both places whenever it's running low. But it's nice to know that I could grab it when I left the flat this morning and it's still happily going (and would be going better if I hadn't re-attached to the WiFi when I got home).

This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth - you can comment here or there, but I suspect that most comments will be here. Comments so far over there: comment count unavailable