Like Sunday Morning

Watts != Joules

“The panels will generate 18,000 watts of energy a year, enough to power all six units in the 7,000-square-foot building. Voltaic Solaire is so confident in its ability to create a “net-zero” building that utilities will be bundled into the rent.”

—
Brooklyn Apartments to Generate Their Own Power - NYTimes.com

The state of NY pays me to yell at students that get this wrong because energy literacy is important. So I write this in the name of consistent behavior.

Watts are a unit of power, not energy (rate of energy produced/consumed). Assume the earth stops rotating at brooklyn faces the sun for an entire year without clouds, the panels will generate at an average of 17 kW, or kJ/s

Also: press a bit harder on claims of net-zero.

Thanks.

The Thing To Do On The Internet: 20120101

Do a twitter search for Michael Bloomberg’s American Flag Sweater. Here, I did it for you

Ever Again?

Brushing this off for a few thoughts on Steve Jobs. Between work, home, friends and relatives, I’ve actively lobbied people into dropping, collectively, $40K to $50K into apple in the last 8 years. Given Apple’s stock price, I’m guessing I’m not the only one.

I’m a “switcher”. As a kid, a teenager, and a college student I was not an Apple Person. Who knows why I switched. But here’s the story.

Winter, January 2003. Wifi was “a thing” now, I stopped playing quake X (thanks Halo), and I was doing more productive things than ever with my computer. I didn’t know how to program, but for some reason, at that point it time, I decided that if I was going to sit in front of a computer all day, it should be a beautiful computer. And the white ibook, 12”, was a beautiful computer.

But I didn’t want to drop $1500. On anything. So it was MacWorld 2003, some new powerbook was announced, and craigslist was flooded with used ibooks for $700.

$700 was still very expensive (I had bought my last three computers for $700 combined (not even including Diante’s computer which I got for $40 worth of gamecube stuff). But oh god the want. So I put a bid in, and some dude in the Richmond told me to come by.

When I was halfway there he said someone offered him $750, would I match that or beat it. And I was like, “No!” and hung up. I “flipped a bitch” in SF and was heading back for the bridge when he called me back, apologized for the bad karma. I met him and bought it.

I wasn’t planning on selling my PC(s), particularly given that the computer was slow and couldn’t easily run half the software I needed to run. But 2 weeks later I sold all my PC’s. I was done with that. Two weeks after that I flipped the iBook for a powerbook Ti I bought from some guy that did stunts on a 1000 cc road bike for a living.

I use computers more and more every year, somehow. I love to program now, and I still, everyday, when I sit down to one of my 3 macs (one that I’ve had since 2005), I think, wow, this is a fantastic machine. Nevermind my iThings.

So yes. Steve Jobs, whom I’ve never met, has created objects that I spend over 50% of my waking hours using to do just about everything I do. Crazy. Absolutely nuts, really.

Can someone that I’ll never meet have more tangible, beneficial impact on my day to day life? It’s hard to imagine.

Thanks.

Check out this podcast episode

Check out the ‘Groove Salad Taste of the Week’ podcast. I was listening to the episode ‘The Launch of Space Shuttle Discovery’ and thought you might enjoy it