Abstract
In this blog post we present a comparative analysis of our power usage and Bob Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower. We conclude that both are simple passages, yet are full of meaning and drama. We describe several nice-looking graphs too. Your eyes will probably also glaze over at points, so the important parts are underneath each of the charts.
Introduction
First released December 27, 1967*, All Along the Watchtower has become an iconic, if enigmatic, folk song. A marker of its appeal can be seen in how Dylan performed it more than any other of his songs, and it has been covered at least 70 times* by other artists. Its simple ballad structure with no chorus and the plain lyrics are still waters running deep with meaning, as are our power bills.
“There must be some kind of way out of here,”
said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”
Chart 1: Breakdown of power usage (doesn’t include useful heating of water cylinder or space heating)
-Total usage in above graph = $42/month. Our power bills are at least twice that. Easily so during the winter. Conclusion: the most significant way to minimise our power usage is to minimise the amount of hot water from the cylinders we use, since heating new water in the cylinders take a lot more power than just maintaining the state of hot water, and to focus on ways of reducing heat loss from our living areas. Thus the plastic glazing that we’ve begun to install (successfully on small windows. It’s been a, well a learning experience on a larger one), draft tape we’ve purchased (yet to deploy, but will), thermal backing for curtains that we’ve managed to obtain, and some very 1980s every-shade-of-brown-stripe curtains we’ve dug out of storage.
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”
But then how does Dylan see himself as the thief as well? Consider the Joker role to reflect the artist, the idealist. The natural complement would be the hard-nosed pragmatic Dylan, the one who’s taken his knocks and is prepared to understand that conflict between the ideal and the real are to be expected, and not any reason to get excited. The Thief knows that it matters little what the businessmen and plowmen do with the Joker’s entertainment, he knows that it’s for nought in the long run. You can’t use it when you’re dead.
Unless you’re talking about electricity, and are a computer, and aren’t really dead but just off.
Leaving all our computers turned off but plugged in uses 65W. That’s the equivalent of leaving three compact fluorescent light bulbs on continuously. Or one 65W incandescent bulb. Note that isn’t any sort of suspend mode we’re talking about, but machines that are actually turned off. Switch them off at the wall if you want to be really saving power. Nathan’s computer has two screens attached, thus the two readings (the first is with one screen, the second with both). That Claire and Lynda’s computers are laptops and the others are desktops suggests that if you’re in the market for a computer, laptops are decidedly lighter-weight on the power consumption front.
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Finally we come to the song’s namesake. The watchtower is commonly regarded as being imagery in reference to Isaiah ch. 21, making for very interesting interpreting if the Joker and Thief are in fact the two riders about to be mentioned, but let’s ignore that and focus on the relevant problems of this couplet:
Why are the servants barefoot? Surely that just increases space heating costs. And are the women switching the lights off as they go, and keeping the doors closed? Losing heat means the heatpump has to be on longer.
Chart 3: Cost of computer power usage, cents per month (aka: spot the computer science major)
Because of course, raw wattage isn’t the only part to the story in measuring usage. Time plays its part. If we take the figures in Chart 2 and factor in time based on a daily estimate of usage (which may have resulted in some decided… inaccuracies), the nice trendline emerging in Chart 2 is slightly destroyed.
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
We too have wildcats at the Castle. They don’t growl, they do fight a bit, and they spend a lot of time patrolling the property and looting the compost bin. The two riders are probably on bikes, and the wind howling is certainly a headwind, a portent of winter and change to come.
Conclusion
What It’s Costing Us…:
Hot water cylinder direct heat loss: $5.38/month
Fridge: $6.59/month
Dishwasher (4 washes/week), using fast wash: $2.71/month
Dishwasher (4 washes/week), using normal wash: $3.91/month
Microwave (7 minutes/day): $0.68/month
Jug (5 boils/day): $2.42/month
Stove: $8.17/month
Computers: $12.48/month (probably slightly high-balled guesstimates there)
Stove based upon: survey of usage, and assumption that small and large elements use 1250W and 1800W respectively, and oven uses 1100W on average (when kept at same temperature).
* Most Dylan facts cited come from Wikipedia, so it must be true.
March 30, 2008 at 8:24 pm |
[...] it’ll peel, slice and core an apple in a few seconds. Also note the power meter from the watchtower making a cameo [...]