… I saved a lot without solar. (this is a re-post of a blog originally published in 2014) If you read my other posts, I outlined my Solar production from 33 panels on the roof of my old house in Maine. Probably too much information, but it is what it is. But recently I plotted my usage year over year; this is pure usage regardless of my Solar panel production. It looks like this: In 2012 we averaged 1,279 kwh perRead more
Three Years of Solar
I installed 33 PV panels on my roof in July of 2012 and this summarizes the first three years. The panels are Canadian Solar CS6P-240M and were expertly installed by Revision Energy out of Portland, Maine. This first image shows my production for 3 years. 2012 is shown in the blue background as the graph looked funky without the first 6 months of data. The trend is pretty clear but you can see how much things vary year-over-year. To make itRead more
That Old Desktop is Costing You
…. It may pay to replace it. Literally. I turned one off and it’s saving me $228 per year. Sometimes savings are right under your nose. So I’m a bit of a computer “aficionado” as it were. And over the years I’ve automated a bunch of stuff in my house: for instance iTunes can simultaneously stream music to three rooms and two TVs which makes for, well, a cool multi-room streaming music and movie system without the cost of custom. Read more
16-inch Guns and No Sleep
The scale of Battleship is nearly impossible to fathom without crawling through its four or five levels of catacombs and sitting inside a 16″ gun turret. The level of detail and analog ingenuity shows up at every turn, and to imagine all of this design being done without computers.Read more
Now THAT’S a train set!
In this little train universe, circa the late 1930s, details are there to be discovered as well…. if you slow down and take a lookRead more
Stones Unturned 