I started installing OpenBSD 90 minutes ago on the old Thinkpad, and that’s it done. When I get my static IP, I have plans …
try conderoga
Yep, another one about pencils. I do like the Dixon Tri-Conderoga, but I don’t think I could quite gush about it as much as Pencil Revolution did. It’s a nice writer, but the first one I tried was a bit gristly for sharpening with a knife. They do smell good. There’s a freshly sharpened one nearby, and it’s doing an excellent “walk through cedar woods” impression.
Just as well the six pack comes with a sharpener. Tri-Conderogas don’t fit a regular one.
scissors, shears, geddit?!
The presenter of this paper claimed that PowerPoint changed α, the wind shear coefficient, to ✂. We laughed, briefly.
didn’t make it
One of the little guys didn’t make it. There’s a sad little grey fuzzy corpse in the back yard, already pulsing with disco rice and greenbottles.
flahz
Our peonies are the envy of the neighbourhood, despite our (well, my) slightly lax gardening skills.
aah! the world is ending!
Telus Teleconferencing have replaced their awful, awful, so awful it’s good wait muzak with popular tunes!
and then there were eight
The formerly seven locks of Chester.
gone with the wind
I see that Americas Wind Energy updated their website to replace the site I wrote for them a couple of years back. It’s purty, but:
- The page URL sometimes inexplicably switches to d3095932.ejt86.ejtechinternational.com from awe-wind.com.
- The product page for the AWE 52-750 shows a bunch of non-operational turbines.
- The AWE 52-900 page also has a picture of a parked turbine, and it looks a lot like Tallon Energy’s 52-750 at Pincher Creek.
- More parked turbines on the 54-900 page, and occasionally a completely different machine is shown.
Oh wait, I get it – it’s a random turbine image for each page. Hmm.
RE Imaginations – Renewable Energy Art
I was about to rush off and tell Emma Jane about RE Imaginations – Renewable Energy Art, when I discovered she exhibits on it already.
(They had a nifty display at AWEA, and I just bought an Aleksandar Rodic print.)
my, how you’ve grown!
Rum Do At WindShare
WindShare‘s having a special general meeting tonight to discuss the following resolution:
Moved that the Board of WindShare recommends to the WindShare I membership at their general meeting of June 7, 2006, the merger of WindShare I and WindShare II for the purpose of entering into the activities necessary for the development of the proposed Lakewind Proposal.
This is quite an important step, and since I’m still in Pittsburgh, I’d hoped to vote by proxy. I was informed by the WindShare administrator that this wasn’t possible; the Cooperative Corporations Act does not allow proxy voting.
I’m annoyed by this, as it looks like WindShare is going to merge its capital with a 10MW project being built on a site with a 6.5 m/s mean wind speed. I wouldn’t develop a project on a site with this low a wind speed, so I asked the following of the board:
Can you clarify, please, that the vote can only be carried if a majority of WindShare members are present at the meeting? It would be grossly unfair if an important vote like this one was carried by a minority.
I would also like to have questions brought to the board, and if possible, the meeting itself. The LakeWind information package states that Bervie has “an average wind speed of 6.5m/s … making this an excellent site for Ontario”. I would not consider a site having this wind resource to be excellent, and it would certainly not be one that would attract a commercial developer. So my questions are:
- Is it in the membership’s best interests to develop a relatively low wind site? WindShare made their political point with the ExPlace turbine, and now we must show that community wind is economically viable.
- Would either of the potential sites be forced to curtail output when/if the extra Bruce units come online? While LakeWind would be connecting to local distribution, any generation in that area might be subject to queueing limitations.
So far, I’ve heard nothing, which makes me uneasy.
it’s over ….
AWEA 2006, that is. Best swag was probably the places that had USB keys; yeah, they’re only 64MB, but these are big enough for tiny Linuxes or restore tools.
Freebies aside, it was a great show, and I guess a few hundred thousand business cards changed hands.
drinking with the wind
I didn’t go to the AWEA banquet last night, but did sneak into the GE Wind event (to which I was semi-invited) at the Andy Warhol Museum, and then on to the Clipper event (to which I definitely wasn’t) at the insanely ornate Heinz Hall. I guess you could say that place amounted to a hill of beans.
Caught up with Norman & David Surplus of B9, whom I last saw more than a decade ago. As there was free drink, I am slightly fragile this morning.
And so to pack …
General Tso’s Beef
It’s a little known fact that General Tso’s Chicken does not celebrate Zuo Zongtang‘s liking for eating chicken. Instead, it commemorates his pet chicken (whom he named Maude) who travelled everywhere with him in a silk-lined portable coop of fine rosewood.
Stewart’s Images :: AWEA 2006
Stewart’s Images :: AWEA 2006 – pictures from the floor of the American Wind Energy Association trade show and conference, Pittsburgh, PA – June 4-7, 2006
zeiss it ain’t
For no good reason, I bought a very cheap ($20) mini digital camera at the airport. Its limitations make it quite fun to use:
- has the astonishingly high resolution of 352 x 288
- fixed-focus lens chock-full of chromatic and spherical aberration
- no display, except for a cryptic 2-digit LCD
- takes 20 images, then it has to be downloaded
- grossly inaccurate viewfinder, which shifts when you press the shutter button
- images have pronounced scan lines
- refuses to take images in low light
- weird non-standard USB connector
It is very small, and can also work as a webcam. It also works as well as it could under OS X (use macam to download the pictures, or enable the webcam). Using the webcam does seem to delete the pictures, so make sure you download ’em first.
I’ve made a minicam gallery, which I’ll add to until the novelty wears off.
AWEA06: by the river (or in it, nearly)
We’re not getting the best weather for the conference, but I hear that the coincidentally-running Three Rivers Arts Festival has had rain 18 out of the 20 years it has run, so noone’s surprised.
Conference hasn’t quite started yet, but the preliminary swag is quite promising; yoyos and balsa aircraft.
I spent the day in workshop run by KidWind, who have a school science kit for teaching the basics of wind turbine effectiveness. We got to build wind turbines, and test them. Here’s mine, big wean that I am:
I guess I got some losses near the hub there, but at least it worked. I was the only developer type there (there was a DoE person, and lots and lots of Pennsylvania teachers). I came away impressed, and hope I can work with Michael Arquin of KidWind to bring the project to Ontario.
(This post has the worst GPS location ever; could only get a fix to within 100m, so that’s why the map location appears to be in the river.)
Pittsburgh: I’m only hea for AWEA
In town for the AWEA 2006 Conference. Pittsburgh looks like it has some interesting topography, and has some huge buildings downtown. Trying to get a GPS signal for the map (amid a bemused high-school prom crowd) was hard.
I’ll be your terrorist for the evening…
I’m at YYZ, and despite the Canadian passport, I’m still Mr Designated Searched Guy. Thought that the passport might’ve changed things, but no. Sigh…
It does mean I no longer have to do those dumb visa waiver things, yay!
And it didn’t help that part of one of the lighting panels started to fall off inside the cabin before takeoff, so we had to taxi back, get it fixed, and head back out an hour later. Gotta love Air Canada.