Bicycle made of wood, beauty and speed combined

I've always loved bicycling, and I'm really pleased at the new things happening in this field, such as electric bikes. Okay, my knees wearing out are the reason for that one. But, reading this article made me want to spend big bucks on a truly beautiful and powerful bike. There's a custom bike builder in Portland making bikes from hardwood. See the pictures and read the article here.

Radioactive rabbit poop - too funny not to share

I suppose it's not really funny, but the mental image I get from reading this story - the people with detectors going around searching for the radioactive rabbit poop... Well, alright, I have a twisted sense of humor. Read the full story here.

I'll return to my more serious posts next time with pictures of my perfect studio that will have to be dismantled when we move.

Solar power & politics

I've taken a small break from the virtual vacation while I deal with negotiating the sale of our house. But this crossed my email desk today, and I thought it worth sharing as we head into voting time.

US Solar boom requires policy and money, not sunshine is the headline of the article. It discusses the climate needed to quickly grow alternative energy, and the role of government in accelerating the development of a new industry.

I particularly like this quote from the article:

Exhibit A for such a phenomenon is Germany. With about as much sunshine as Maine, the European nation became the world's solar stronghold through policies that rewarded homeowners, businesses, and farmers for generating their own electricity.

Click on the link above to read the whole thing.

Tidal power in Snohomish - coming soon!

Today's email brought a link to this article about tidal power research in Snohomish County, just to the north of Seattle. Our federal dollars were important in funding the research, and will lead to power coming from the tides in 2012, if all goes as planned. I'll be interested in seeing how this goes. I think each area will have a better form of alternative energy depending on the local conditions. Hot and sunny, go solar. Lots of wind or tide, use that. I also think decentralized and multisource is a better way to go than a single giant electric grid, but that's a different post for another day. *smile*

Electric car support infrastructure coming to WA

Today's email brought a link to this article about electric car charging stations along I5 in Washington state. Read it here. There are several interesting points raised, particularly in the comments, although I can't help but think that I'd still prefer to have a hybrid car that could run on either fuel so my chances of not being able to recharge or refuel would be less. That's why I bought the Prius model we got, so we can do the aftermarket upgrade to a plug-in with additional battery capacity and still have the hybrid capability. It will be interesting to see how this all works out over the next few years.

Backup battery for your house or how to go off-grid for up to a week

Panasonic announces a battery for your home, able to store enough energy for a week. I think this is exciting news since having an easy energy storage system will make intermittent energy production more useful. If I have a battery that stores enough power to run my house for a week, then wind or solar is much more useful. Panasonic has announced delivery is planned for 2011. Read the full article here.

Buying solar for your house, CA plan goes national

While I struggle my way back to posting pretty pictures of what art I'm doing, I post this for your edification and amusement. I think I posted last year while on vacation about the California plan to allow people to buy solar panels by borrowing from the government and pay it back as part of the property taxes. Looks like there's a good chance that will be happening at a national level, presumably via encouraging states to do the same programs as California. Since we can sell excess power back to the power company, this seems like a fabulous idea to me. Read about it here.

Net-zero (almost) energy house being built now!

I spent last weekend on Whidbey Island again, this time for a birthday weekend getaway with the hubster, Jeff. There will be fabulous pictures of the garden and the rufous hummingbirds soon. But today's email brought news I just had to share - there's a green house being built here in Bellevue that will have almost net-zero energy costs. They're combining new insulation materials with a vegetated roof and solar water heating to reduce the energy costs below $500 a year. I'm excited to see this happening so I'm sharing their webpage here. I think people need an example of what can be done now and this is a good first step.

Friedman on moving to a sustainable culture

Today's email from Culture Change brought a column from Thomas L. Friedman, the nationally syndicated columnist. I guess if even the East Coast intellectuals are catching on, it must be true, eh? I liked the commentary that Culture Change had to make so I'm passing on the link for their reprint rather than the direct link to the column.

I particularly liked this paragraph:

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”


Read the whole column here.

Junk Cars morph into green manufactured homes

Okay, that headline caught my eye in my morning email. An interesting lead, especially for someone married to an engineer type, made me go read the whole article. Super energy efficient affordable homes made from scrap cars. I can only applaud...

Read the article here.

Reinstalling my computer - or what I did with my weekend

My computer crashed. I was forced to realize how much I rely on this technology to stay connected to the people in my life. I'd been thinking of reinstalling because something went wrong with the computer writing to CDs so this just sort of moved everything up. I first tried to avoid it by cleaning up the drive and defragging which took all day Saturday, and I'll just note that the defragging shows a really pretty colored display showing before and after. I'd just recommend that people do this for their machines a little more frequently than every 5 years. Today was spent admitting defeat, and reinstalling. The problem with reinstalling is that you also have to reinstall all the software you want to continue to use. I'm about halfway through that, and have a couple of things to recommend, just in case you want to avoid the pain I'm suffering. First, keep all the installation disks in one place, including any drivers you've downloaded, especially if you keep hardware until it dies and the drivers might no longer be on the websites of the manufacturer. Second, do regular backups and keep those with the installation stuff. Third, a list of software you've installed from downloads would also be a good idea. We had to create the lists for all of these items and I'll just say how happy I am that my darling husband is a professional in the computer field and very knowledgeable about Microsoft. Otherwise, I have no idea how long I'd still be doing all of this. I'm still not done, there's a bunch of stuff to reinstall, plus restoring the backed up data. But I'm past the worst of it, especially the frustration of not being able to respond to comments, or even read my email.