Content Preview: rss
3 days ago
I took a look at solar power for residential use this year. The last time I did the analysis was in 2004 and the payback was over 15 years, best case. It is now down to 12 years best case. After a lot of research I went with Puget Sound Solar for my estimates. They are the most honest and have a nice presentation on the Internet. They also had a number of installations on the East Side of Seattle for me to consider. Also I looked at wind turbines, but if you mount the turbine on your roof, any gust of wind over 25 miles an hour will shake the whole house. Running the turbine on a tower is a very costly solution with the need to climb the towers yearly for maintenance. And there is apparently a lot of noise associated with wind turbines. The solar power option I was looking at was a photovoltaic system: Solar electric, or photovoltaic (PV) systems , collect electricity from photovoltaic panels and send it to an inverter and into your house electric panel. PV systems ...
9 days ago
It was announced this week that we are moving to another building on the same campus we are currently working at. So I grabbed my cell phone and took some pictures. The first picture is of the park north of our buildings. This is the view I will be giving up for a view of the side of an office building: I’ve also included a picture of my desk and the door to my office. Yes, that is a Saxophone calendar above my desk. We were in the Marvel theme’d building. I’ll have to change my ‘privacy’ poster to something else for this move. Maybe I’ll move back to the film noir theme. You get used to a space after spending time there. Let’s see we will have been in this building for around 18 months. Moving is just one of the things you get used to when working at Microsoft. In 18 years I’ve moved over 20 times. Some times it just seemed everyone was moving one office over. But team change, re-orgs happen, and life moves on. And I do have a great job with many, ...
13 days ago
Sometimes there is beauty in unexpected places. Musical Transformations is but one example of this. Click on the picture above for the blog.
14 days ago
Painter of robots Brian Despain’s new paintings can be viewed tonight, November 13, at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery. Above, "The Prodigal Son" (oil on panel, 15" x 19").Also showing is John Brophy, whose paintings mixes up iconography from various cultures and religions in a bowl of consumer culture. “ Brian Despain works with imaginary yet recognizable modern landscapes, but populates his world with seemingly self aware and melancholy robots in a seemingly endless quest for the numinous. His work blends the natural world with technology and usually has a slightly morbid slant. Archetype-loaded imagery such as skulls, gears, fish, and birds provide the forefront for a seemingly arcane number system the artist employs in all his work. His rich and somber color palettes of post apocalyptic ochres, deep blues, and steel greys belie and hidden warmth and dark humor within his work. This show will feature 8 new paintings.” Read more …
20 days ago
Today is the birthday of the inventor of this instrument. Can you name him? Here are some clues: “His childhood was tragic. Hardly able to stand, Antoine-Joseph fell from a height of three floors, seriously bumping his head against a stone: he was believed dead. At the age of three, he swallowed a bowl of vitriolized water, and then a pin. Later, he was seriously burned in a gunpowder explosion; he fell onto a cast iron frying pan and burned himself on one side. Three times he escaped poisoning and asphyxiation in his bedroom, where varnished items were lying about during the night. Another time, he was hit on the head by a cobblestone; he fell into a river and was saved by the skin of his teeth.. "He's a child condemned to misfortune; he won't live," his mother said. In the district, they called him the ghost". These initial serious incidents were, alas, but the prelude to an eventful existence such as only a few have known. In 1858, he was miraculously ...
