Lucas Hale – Page 2

What am I reading? – Wheel of Time

I was given Book 1 of the Wheel of Time – The Eye of the World as a Christmas gift in 2002. I was lucky if I was getting through 2 or 3 books a year at that time and it was not until late last year on a trip to the USA that I managed to get to the book. Yes 8 years later. Little did I know I was tackling a book series that was already into it’s 13th book and still incomplete!

I’m up to Book 3 – The Dragon Reborn which so far is the best of the series.

New Spring: A Wheel of Time Prequel

The Eye of the World – Book 1

The Great Hunt – Book 2

The Dragon Reborn – Book 3

The Shadow Rising – Book 4

The Fires of Heaven – Book 5

Lord of Chaos – Book 6

A Crown of Swords – Book 7

The Path of Daggers – Book 8

Winter’s Heart – Book 9

Crossroads of Twilight – Book 10

Knife of Dreams – Book 11

The Gathering Storm – Book 12

Towers of Midnight – Book 13

More details on series can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

Over half a megawatt!

Our little solar panels have harvested over 500kW/h of sunlight!

The solar meter was installed in December and is a Landis+Gyr EM1200. Details can be found at http://www.landisgyr.com/ap/en/pub/products.cfm?eventProducts=products.ProductDetails&ID=131&catID=61

The full list of display codes was a little hard to track down but here it is for anyone else looking for the information.

[table id=2 /]

Still waiting for our first full power bill to see how much difference the grid connected solar system has made to our household.

http://www.lucashale.com/2010/11/you-are-my-sunshine/

Even the kitchen sink

The next place that needed the water saving touch was the kitchen. The old tap was 15+ years old and was one of those nasty cheap ones that leaks, bends, paint chips off, just junk really.

It was time for a upgrade and we wanted a mixer tap. However since the old tap was one of the 3 piece systems we needed some stainless blanking plugs to cover the extra holes, Bunnings to the rescue again!

We got the actual tap from a plumbing supply store as they had a better range and we finally selected the Adelphi mixer made by Dorf.

http://www.dorf.com.au/product-ranges/mixer-taps/adelphi/adelphi-sink-mixer

The tap is installed and we think it looks really good (that isn’t our sink in the photo above). Hopefully combined with our water tank we will see a difference in our water usage.

Cutting grime, cutting time, savings dollars

One of the next steps in changing our house over to using less energy and less water was the purchase of a new washing machine.
We considered several factors and not only wanted to get one that used less water and power but also one that was built to last.
The power consumption can be assessed by using the following government website – http://www.energyrating.gov.au/
The water consumption can be assessed by using the following government website – http://www.waterrating.gov.au/

Assessing how long they will last was a bit harder, we decided to stick with one of the well known European brands Miele.

We got a combo washer/dryer – front loader washer and condensing dryer
http://www.miele.com.au/au/domestic/products/washerdryers_models_17213.htm

We also wanted a model with a delay start timer since now the we have our solar panels the new meter is measuring usage at time of day so it is less expensive to run the machine between 11pm and 7am. Combined with our tank water we should be reducing our impact on the world every day. The old machine didn’t end up in land fill either, we found it a new home with a friend that was moving house and was looking for a second hand washing machine.

No more vampire devices

We’ve finally found a power board that does what we want!

The Smart Home Theatre Power Saver power board from Mort Bay. We found ours at Bunnings

It comes with an infra-red sensor that learns the “off” command from your remote. It then waits 60 seconds and if the power consumption of the devices connected is low it then turns them off at the power board. It also has 1 outlet that is always left on which we use for our PVR.

It is nice to hear the little “click” and see all the red and green stand-by lights turn off.

You are my sunshine

After reading many horror stories on the Whirlpool forums we finally settled on a 1.5kW grid connected solar system from Origin.

Interest free and big name were main deciding factors for us. Downer EDI did the install and the guys were really professional and happily answered our numerous questions. Like many people we were offered an AreoSharp inverter because of supply issues with the Sharp model but we declined and had to wait an additional 2 months for the install.

We have:

8 x 188W Sharp Panels http://www.sharp.net.au/product-catalogue/products/NUA188EY/
1 x 1600W JH1600E Sharp Inverter http://www.sharp.net.au/product-catalogue/products/JH1600E/

The panels are installed on the north side of our house and actual look pretty good when seen from the street.

solar panels on house — The panels installed on my roof

I still have my old meter which happily spins backwards during the day and over the last couple of weeks we have produced much more power than we have used. The new “solar” meter will be installed in about a month. On a sunny day the display on the inverter usually shows between 1200W and 1400W.

Inverter installed — The inverter installed and operational

So now we can run the pump for my water tanks without any worry about CO2 or cost 🙂

Plus we can use the tank water to keep them clean and operating at full efficiency.

In the first 3 weeks we’ve generated over 150kWh!

Got Water…?

We are growing some of our own food but we still need to keep it alive over summer and also keep the some of the extra rain water for use around the house to further reduce our impact on the world.

We were lucky enough to be included in a study into storm water management and recieved funding towards the installation in addition to the state and federal government rebates. More information about the study can be found at http://www.urbanstreams.unimelb.edu.au/

We have a 5000 L tank connected to all the downpipes on our house. This is achieved by using a “wet system” where all the downpipe are connected together under the house and then taken into the tank. You can see an explanation of this style of system at http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/fs73.html#configurations

The tank is connected to two toilets, the washing machine, and a garden tap to keep our vegies growing. We still use town water for drinking but we have room to add extra storage, filtration, and treatment if we want to add this option. The rain fall and usage model predicts that our little tank will overflow on about 35 days in the year. This excess water is treated and filtered naturally in an infiltration trench for storm water management.

The installation was done by http://www.theirrigationshed.com.au/.

Own your grow

For the second year our little vegie garden is growing our summer food. Winter was not that great but we did get some garlic growing along with some celery and parsley. The garlic is in the small bed on the right hand side.

Now we have bok choy, spinach, and broccoli in the main bed and herbs and strawberries in the pots in front. There are still some celery and parsley from winter and room for some other vegies once we decide what we want to grow.

The fence is to keep the dog out. 🙂

We are thinking about adding a second bed to see if we can grow even more of our own vegies but we need to ensure that we don’t grow more then we can eat or store for later. Last year we grew more basil than we could ever use, we still have jars of it dried that look like they will last years however we did use up the pesto we made.

Compost, manure, blood & bone, seaweed, sugar cane mulch, and tank water keep everything growing.

The Gardening Australia website has a helpful planting guide http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/vegieguide/

A book that has been great is The Kitchen Garden Companion: Dig, Plant, Water, Grow, Harvest, Chop, Cook by Stephanie Alexander

Chromium Project uses Timer Resolution to debug battery life issue

Based on the information at https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=46531 it looks as if Timer Resolution has been used to identify and verify an issue with Chromium.

Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome. I use Chrome every day on my work laptop and also no my netbook. I had no idea that Timer Resolution had helped to create such a great browser!