Condoms and Climate Change

A recent snippet from a home energy efficiency periodical that I read:


A recent study conducted by the London School of Economics for the organization Optimum Population Trust concludes that expanding access to family planning is five times more cost-effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than low-carbon technology. Based on recent estimates that the world population in 2050 would be half a billion smaller than projected if all women who want contraception now had access to it, the researchers calculated that CO2 emissions could be reduced by 34 gigatons.

Putting the cost of providing the contraception at a total of $220 billion, that amounts to $7 per ton of CO2 averted. Among more conventional technologies, per-ton costs were found to be $24 for wind power, $51 for solar, $57–$83 for coal plants with carbon capture and storage, and $92 and $131 for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, respectively. The full study is available online: “Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost: Reducing Future Carbon Emissions by Investing in Family Planning”.

Heh. Pretty cool.

Although I wonder about the phrase, "study conducted by the London School of Economics"--is this an actual endorsement, or did OPT just pay a grad student at LSE to crunch the numbers for them?

Incidentally, that image above is a Hand silkscreened giant condom pillow with giant fabric condom. Something I found while doing random image searches; thought it was amusing enough to share.

Bay Area Trip: Burning it at Both Ends

I managed to continue my pattern of being out to the Bay Area every even-numbered month of 2009, for that continuing house project in Oakland. It’s a nice feeling that we’re getting this project pretty close to buttoned up and ready to go.

Incidentally, this trip was a week ago--I've been slamming on a week-long trip to Vancouver, and haven't had time to post since then.

Infrastructure Disasters and Dorkery

First, I managed to time my visit right during the period when the Bay Bridge was dead closed for several days, due to a cracked eyebar—thus tying up Bay Area traffic into knots. Happily, I just stayed in East Bay for my weekday work. Perlick pointed me at this fantastic web page, which has loads of pictures and engineering explanations on the failure and the repair.

In retrospect, it is impressive to me that they managed to cook up this kludge (that what us engineers call an inelegant solution cooked up to solve a problem quickly) in short order, but it was a little underdesigned. It might have been a better idea to also try to replace the broken Eyebar soon after the band-aid was installed (it's been almost two months, but I guess they didn't want to close the bridge again to install a new Eyebar).

Kludge... excellent.

I was shocked by the picture of the cracked eyebar. I was expecting, “Oh, it’s some hairline thing they found with magnaflux, or some special detection technique.” Nope… it’s this huge, visible, ugly, rusty crack... holy crap. Nobody happened to notice that before?


Work

Anyway, as usual, I was working everywhere in the house, from up on the roof…


…to down in the crawl space…


…doing everything from airflow measurements to equipment efficiency to checking photovoltaic output to installing a condensate drain to building my own Ethernet cables (data acquisition system network connection).


Some serious frustrations at work… for one, I FedEx’d my big case of tools to my client’s office, which arrived the day before I did. Unfortunately, nobody was in their office to take delivery. So the case went into FedEx limbo, despite multiple phone calls and offers to pick it up at their warehouse. And thus, I had to spend a day and a half trying to do my job with a Leatherman and my teeth (FYI, your teeth are a passable, albeit unpleasant, way to strip 24 gauge telco/network wire).

On Friday around lunchtime, my tools showed up. Man… this totally made me think of Jess’s turn of phrase describing her previous job--Waiting for FedEx:

Let’s go.

We can’t.

Why not?

We’re waiting for FedEx.

Ah.


Friday

I managed to wrap up at a reasonable time on Friday, and have a lovely dinner with Bradley, Janie, Sabrina, and young Mr. Griffin. Also, a special guest appearance by Jill—yes, she lives in the Boston area, but she was out visiting randomly.


Griffin showed incredible competence at being extremely photogenic and cute for the camera.


Incidentally, email showed up at 11 AM on Friday morning from Quincy:

I am turning 36 on Friday. Do come celebrate with me. Pumpkin-carving and going 'AW' at kids' costumes starts at 6:22pm. There will be food. Bring something to share, or drink my booze. I'll have some beer and mixers too. Wear your costume. Even I am wearing a costume this year. Really! Merry Samhain!

Aw dude… Quincy, next time you’re throwing a party, give us more than 7 hours notice! That would have been an awesome way to wrap up the week, if I hadn’t already made plans.

Saturday

After crashing chez Bug’s in Alameda, and having a filling brunch at Jim’s Coffee Shop, I actually went back to the jobsite, for a half day of wrapup. It was nice to have the flexibility, though, to go back and finish things off. However, this was followed by annoying logistics:

• Drop off 118 lbs of gear at FedEx
  
• Drive down East Bay, then across San Mateo Bridge
  
• Drop rental car off at SFO
  
• BART from SFO to Millbrae
  
• CalTrain to Jen & Schmooz’s, to catch the tail end of Halloween
  

Unfortunately, this only got me down there by around 7 PM, so I missed most of Halloween with the kids. However, I did get to check out Schmooz’s most excellent mad scientist setup, for distributing candy! A Jacob’s ladder buzzing away, a Jello-O brain bubbling away inside a vat of green liquid, a variety of fake dead animals in jars, and wafts of dry ice smoke rolling down the whole thing. Awesome.


And did you know that quinine makes tonic water fluoresce? A neat touch. I knew it was a good sign that a few of the small kids were too scared to come up to get candy.


Sunday

Sunday morning, I managed to shoehorn in lunch with Jofish and Perlick at Palo Alto's California Avenue Farmer’s Market. A huge variety of choices… mmm… crepe-licious.


Then back onto Caltrain, to BART, to the jobsite. Wait, what? Back to the jobsite? Well, it turns out that we were missing a line of code in our data acquisition system program, and changing the program made the system actually write the data to the file correctly. Argh…. thus a quick trip out to Fruitvale. By random coincidence, while walking from BART, a Prius pulled up and folks waved—turned out it was Bradley and Janie, heading over to the Dia De Los Muertos festival at Fruitvale.

This was followed by dinner in Berkeley at LaLime’s, with John and Judy, who were in the Bay Area in their bicoastal relationship. Neat to catch them while I was in town.

Monday

I had the oh-so-lovely experience of taking BART around 5:30 AM to catch my flight to Vancouver—my next work destination. Hey, at least it wasn’t crowded, and I got some nice view of sunrise over SFO.


On my flight out of SFO, we flew over some fantastic views of the city, East Bay, Marin County, and the eerily empty Bay Bridge. Man… all these trips out to the Bay Area, and I’d never gotten that view. Neat!




Anyway, this trip was completely exhausting and jam-packed, running all over East and South Bay. Apologies for those that I didn’t get to see on this trip, and here’s hoping I have an excuse to make it out there in December, just to make it every even-numbered month of 2009!

Map (and Energy) Dorkery!

I am on plenty of energy efficiency mailing lists, and one of them recently pointed to the 2009 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, put out by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), and other groups:

In 2009, energy efficiency has risen to a new level of recognition in the U.S. We present here a comprehensive state energy efficiency scorecard to document best practices and recognize leadership among the states. The Scorecard examines six energy efficiency policy areas: (1) utility-sector and public benefits programs and policies; (2) transportation policies; (3) building energy codes; (4) combined heat and power; (5) state government initiatives; and (6) appliance efficiency standards. States can earn up to 50 points in these categories.

The “top ten” states in this year’s Scorecard are: California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, New York, Vermont, Washington, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Maine.

Note that the categories above are weighted by potential impact on overall energy savings. They map out their results in a color-coded map; note that actual ranking is not nearly as important as distribution in bins (i.e., #4 vs. #5, compared with top group vs. second-to-top group).


I just found it amusing that this metric maps pretty darn well to, "states where I would not mind living" (although not necessarily one-to-one). And is anyone surprised that Cheney is from Wyoming? But it also shows that some of the states that are doing the worst are the classic poverty-ridden ones (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virgina).

Similarly, there is a ranking of per-capita energy consumption by state, from the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Review 2007 (Figure 1.6 State-Level Energy Consumption and Consumption per Person, 2005).


Again, this maps similar to where I would want to live. Though I do wonder... are some of the high and low users due to industrial energy consumption, rather than personal energy consumption? I.e., the oil is refined and produced in Texas, but consumed in all states.

But before any of us feel too smug about living in low-per-capita energy use states, I would point out that there are also statistics for world consumption patterns, by country. Most New England states are in the 250 million Btu per capita range. Much of Europe is in the 100-180 million Btu range/capita (145 million average); Asia's average is 43 (although that's a huge range--Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are all in the 200 range); Africa's average is 16. And China is at 56; India is at 16. Insert typical commentary on "What will happen when a 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians try to raise their standard of living to first world levels."

iPod Hardware Dorkery!

During one of my recent interminable plane trips, my old and trusty iPod started to give up the ghost--it's a bad sign when the machine becomes unresponsive, you hear grinding sounds from the hard drive, and the whole thing starts to get hot in your hand. Sadness.


As background, I have had this iPod since before grad school--it's a Second Generation unit--released 2002, FireWire, 10 GB, no docking station, monochrome screen, old school, yo. I believe that Leper once pointed out, "Man... I think that Dennis Hopper had a newer iPod on his Harley in Easy Rider..."

However, I have a Fred-Fenning-emulating compulsion to keep old machines operating.... I decided, "Heck, I'll try fixing it." Fortunately, there are excellent geek suppliers out there. I decided to double my storage capacity (woo [sarcasm]) with a 20 GB hard drive from ifixit.com. And while I had the case open, I decided to install a replacement battery from MilliAmp LTD--an upgrade from ~1200 mAh to 2200 mAh. Mad props to both of those companies--for having the parts available, at a reasonable price, as well as incredibly fast shipping. MilliAmp also takes back your old battery for environmentally proper disposal--points for that as well. They also know their audience:

If you have a 1st or 2nd Generation iPod, you’ve understood the iPod mystique way before anyone else. But why get rid of your older model just because it has a few years on it? All you need is one of our two high-capacity 1st or 2nd Generation iPod battery replacement kits and you will be back on your way to longer playtimes than you ever had, even when your device was brand new!

So... I got all the pieces lined up, including an installation tool for cracking open the case:


Getting the case open is definitely the most difficult part--I'd say the tool makes it doable, as opposed to--say--easy:


And then doing a guts replacement!


A few tense moments of powering it up, reformatting the drive from iTunes, plugging in, plugging out... but eventually:


It works! Rock on.

Okay, now I have a mental image of an iPod commercial silhouetting my short stocky frame, doing my dorky oh-god-he-looks-like-an-animatronic-Santa-Claus dance.

So I know, you're going to ask--does it make any sense to spend $86.90 and burn an evening hacking hardware, when I could have bought a brand-new-with-warranty 16 GB iPod Nano for $179.00--with all those newfangled features like, say, a color screen? True enough. But I have a perverse joy in keeping a trusty old machine functioning, instead of consigning it the landfill. A bit of the whole buy less stuff ethos, too. Finally, I know that I complain I have more money than free time right now, but if it ever reaches the point when I couldn't justify doing this... man... a piece of me will have died.

First Pie!

Just thought I'd commemorate the first apple pie of the season! I always think of it as my official recognition of it being fall.


First of all, I realized that my pie-making setup is made up of a few gifts. The "apple lathe" is a Back To Basics Apple and Potato Peeler--a gift from AJFBS. And the pie plate is a gorgeous thrown clay pie pan, from BirdJen.

The crust recipe is straight from Cook's Bible (i.e., Chris Kimball/America's Test Kitchen), and the filling is mom's recipe (with a few tweaks). I only grabbed Macintosh apples this time for filling--I should have had a mix of a few others, a bit more tart, and a bit more bite. I have used Northern Spy in the past--and I agree with the common wisdom that they are pretty darn good for pies.


Anyway... nom nom nom. Need to make more soon...

Previous Denver Trip

And sadly, I did not get to schedule time to see my favorite Denverites (Dr. Tectonic, or Julee). Alas.

It is worth mentioning, though, that I did get to see Beemer two weeks ago... when I was in Denver... on a completely different work trip. Some highlights included:

A day off wandering around Boulder--included a meander around the Pearl Street pedestrian mall, lunch, and postcards.



I even found a postcard that shows NCAR (The National Center for Atmospheric Research)--that's where Beemer works! See?


Got to hang out with Beemer and Greg--Jerry is away in Japan now, on an exchange term. Saturday was a hike out in Boulder Canyon with Beemer and his mom--who was a curator (?) at the Colorado School of Mines (?)... so she could identify everything out there on the trail. Pretty awesome.



Saw the movie "9"--a lovely little film, which puts together a wonderfully evocative world and atmosphere. However [spoiler!], we found that the ending was a little disappointing--not bad, just not a payoff in line with the rest of the movie. But if you are curious the award-winning 10-minute short film that got this movie rolling is on YouTube.


Anyway, thanks for the hospitality, Beemer! Was great seeing you!

Denver Travel Adventures

Just got back from a bounce trip to Denver for work--flew out on Sunday night, and flew back on Wednesday. The trip went well, but I'm still residually tired. And sadly, I did not get to schedule time to see my favorite Denverites (Dr. Tectonic, or Julee). Alas.

My Sunday flight out was a connection flight, BOS-ORD-DEN, meeting my coworker in Chicago. However, seriously sucky weather on the way in to ORD--we got pushed out of the pattern, had to loop up almost to Milwaukee, and have another run at it. Serious turbulence on the way in--the last plane ride where I was that close to hurling was probably in the back of a P-3 Orion.


Of course, this go-around was a delay... I was trying to figure out all the ramifications of missing my connection... cancel the hotel room tonight, get a hotel near ORD (or crash with Tappan?), rebooking for tomorrow morning, figure out a way to get out to the jobsite... all unpleasant. As soon as we touched down, I started texting my coworker, to find out the situation. He wrote back:

No worries on missing your flight. Plane to Denver is the one that you are currently on. You don't even need to deplane.

Awesome. Although it was still an unpleasant travel day--getting to the hotel at 2:30 AM (4:30 AM EDT). Ugh.

The work itself was two days of setting up an insulation reference sample at a manufacturer's testing lab. Not really worth going into much detail about it. Suffice it to say, though, it was a few days of getting my hands dirty and building stuff, which is always good. Work actually wrapped up on time.


Also, the test lab is on the edge of town--you can see the foothills right out of the front window. Nice.


I also took my small bit of amusement at the coffee carafe labels at the Hampton Inn:


Yep... the decaf was labelled "UNLEADED." Heh.

Travel out was... actually eventful, this time. My coworker was doing more work in Denver, so he dropped me off at a skyRide shuttle bus stop. As we were approaching DIA, I was looking out the window, when somebody pointed out, "Hey, there's smoke coming out of the floor!" Yikes! We pulled over at the side of the road, and opened up the hatches to ventilate out. Swell. At least the bus did not actively catch fire while we were on it.


Fortunately, a few cabs pulled up to bring us the last mile or so to the airport... made it to the gate with a few minutes to spare.

The next bit of travel is going to be at the end of October... I feel like I could use a breather from this for a while.

Weren't You Just There Last Month, Bats?

Considering that I was last in New York City a month ago, I guess it's odd that I took a weekend trip. But hey, it was a fun, jam-packed weekend... resulting in a long, photo-filled post here.

Friday

First of all, it was pretty damn satisfying to bail out of work early on Friday, hop the Acela down to New York Penn Station, drop off my bags at my sister's place, and make it to the Blue Note in time to catch the 10:30 set (Dave Holland Quartet).


Oh yeah. They offered up a California-made Belgian-style ale, called Brother Thelonious Belgian Style Abbey Ale, complete with an image of Mr. Monk himself on the bottle. I had to try one... which meant finishing a 750 mL ale by myself on an empty stomach. Hey... it was a long week... I managed to stumble my way home all right.

Saturday

Saturday was the planned get-together with A & Guy--we decided we wanted to catch the James Ensor exhibit at MoMA before it closed. Ensor is an odd duck--Belgian, late 1800s/early 1900s, rather surreal and avant-garde. Honestly, I knew him mostly from the They Might Be Giants song:

Meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Dig him up and shake his hand
Appreciate the man

Before there were junk stores
Before there was junk
He lived with his mother and the torments of Christ
The world was transformed
A crowd gathered round
Pressed against his window so they could be the first

To meet James Ensor
Belgium's famous painter
Raise a glass and sit and stare
Understand the man

For reference, the New York Times review of the show is here: "From Ensor’s Curiosity Shop, Nightmares of Gruesome Beauty"

Ensor is difficult to pin down--style wise, you don't really say, "Oh yeah, that's an Ensor"--his works were everything from realist to neo-Impressionist to finely detailed line drawings to works, if unlabelled, could easily pass for mid-20th century. I guess stylistically, there are common threads running through his work: creepy, skulls, masks, death, bodily functions (urination, vomiting, defecation). Incidentally, the junk store line above is relevant--he lived above a junk store, and various ephemera made its way into his art, such as the masks and other background clutter.


Skeletons Trying to Warm Themselves 1889

One of my reactions was, "He created all these works, and they hadn't gotten around to inventing LSD yet? Wow..."

We spent a few more hours at MoMA; I caught the Ron Arad exhibit (Israeli industrial designer-artist-architect)--he does stuff like abstract sculpture in modern industrial materials like aramid fiber-Nomex composite. Also, there was one work that caught my eye, concentrating on the suburban sprawl at the Tijuana-San Diego border:

...Cruz envisions a new urban landscape, calling for a densely arranged network of retrofitted homes. In this installation... a series of Latin American immigrants to the United States describe how they imagine the network of suburban San Diego homes transforming over time. The animated rendering on the right depicts the "McMansion" evolving as the characters tell their stories.


Heh. Immigrants turning San Diego into Tijuana. I'm not sure if I'm more delighted by the horror this inflicts on suburbians, the effective higher density use of these buildings, or sentencing these houses to such an ignominious fate. Hey Omri, you checking this out?


And dinner at Katz's Deli (i.e., from When Harry Met Sally) followed, along with an evening's wander around SoHo. Even managed to shoehorn in a late showing of In the Loop (satire about the rush to go to war, between the UK and the US).

Sunday

And Sunday morning, more museum geekery. I had been meaning to catch an exhibit ever since I read about it--“Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City”. Researchers took historic maps, soil borings, written records, archeological information, and put together many maps of what Manhattan was like before European settlers found it in the 1600s:


Really fascinating, such as checking out how thoroughly humans have reshaped the landmass of Manhattan and New York City. They had contour and geospatial maps, of everything from estimated incidence of forest fires, beaver populations, geology, etc. For instance, I did not realize that there is a seam of non-homogeneous bedrock that underlies both Roosevelt Island and the Lower East Side.

There was also a photography exhibit--Dutch Seen: New York Rediscovered. One interesting artist does portrait photography in the style of seventeenth century Dutch painters, but with a twist.


Hey... wait a second... that's a plastic grocery bag! Heh.

I then caught the Fung Wah back up to Boston... man, it's really hard to beat that $15 fare.


(Hell Gate bridge, from I-278)

I'd never taken it before, so I thought I ought to try it out, just for the experience. No complaints about the ride, but there's a certain luxury on Amtrak, on being able to spread out, plug in your laptop, and get some work (or reading, or whatever) done. Plus the train has a much smoother ride, and avoids traffic. But it's sometimes hard to justify a close-to-order of magnitude difference in price ($15 vs. $109).