Category Archives: Geek Stuff

Geek Stuff, General, Preparing for the worst

Hybrid Solar House

Dave Pogue, at the NY Times, wrote about an interesting technology. A solar house that heats and cools itself by having an atmosphere.

It seems that it would work well in our region, with 300+ days of sunshine. They are basically kit houses, some assembly required. Unfortunately, they ship the house parts from NC and I am in CO. I think the freight charges will be significant.
I like the look of the Aquarius design with the optional garage (gotta have a garage in CO). My one concern is how sound travels from the basement through the double interior walls.

Maybe if we ever sell our current place and move…

Geek Stuff, General

International standard paper sizes

A4 paper format / International standard paper sizes

I find the whole concept of A series paper to be fascinating. Maintaining proportionality as you keep cutting the paper in half.

Dr Science (AKA Courtney Willis) did a nice demonstration of A Series, very scientifically, at the recent COSine.

Be sure the read the History section. Very interesting.

And the different relationships between envelopes and paper sizes and hole punches and drawing pens. A very integrated package.

Then there are the B and C series.

I think I shall move the to the A4 format at home. Even if the rest of the country can’t get its act in gear, that is no reason not to try. But then, I’m the kind of guy that likes to walk around with dollar coins.

Geek Stuff, General

Things to Remember

Just because you get an error message from flickr saying it can’t upload a picture to your blog doesn’t mean it’s true.  Check your blog first to see if it really happened before retrying, getting the same error message and retrying again and then finding out you have a boatload of photos in your blog all with the same look and comment. Just a different time-stamp. (unless you were really fast on the retry button.)

Do you know how tedious it is to delete a post  in this blog?