Pacific Northwest Eclipse Times, Dec 10
My sister passes along the OMSI planetarium manager’s useful local timeline:
“For the Pacific Northwest viewers, the penumbral eclipse begins at 3:33 a.m. PST and the umbral shadow takes a small, dark bite out of the left edge of the moon starts at 4:45 a.m. PST. For 66 minutes of the partial phase, the darkness engulfs more of the moon’s disk as it slides into the shadow. The partial eclipse ends and totality begins at 6:06 a.m. PST and the point of the greatest eclipse occurs at 6:31 a.m. PST. The eclipse’s total phase will lasts for 51 minutes. The moon will be only 6.5 degrees above the north western horizon at the instant of the greatest eclipse.”
So setup your camera tonight!
Cape Disappointment, 2011
Cape Disappointment 2011-08-31
Deception Pass 2010
2010-05-28 barnacle, Deception Pass
Seattle, Ivy (wallpaper)
Seattle, Ivy, 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Light Pole (wallpaper)
Ravenna, light pole, 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Tree Ivy (wallpaper)
Ravenna, tree, ivy, 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Lichen (wallpaper)
Ravenna, lichen, 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Tree Nail (wallpaper)
Ravenna, tree nail, 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Trail Marker
Ravenna, Trail Marker 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Footbridge (wallpaper)
Ravenna, Rock, Footbridge, 2010-12-23
Ravenna, Fir (wallpaper)
Ravenna, Fir 2010-12-23
Iron Springs Beach 02, 2010-08-04
I found the various posts around this stream outlet to the beach quite picturesque. This would be a decent background for a transparent terminal window like some people I know like to use.
Iron Springs Beach, 2010-08-04
PVC skater dolly (Make: Online)
This is pretty trick way to roll your camera around on the floor or a table.
Ocean Shores, Iron Springs Pier 04, 2010-08-03
I’ve taken a few pictures from the beach at Iron Springs (a hotel) near Ocean Beaches. There is an old pier there with some decrepit wood.
Ocean Shores, Iron Springs Pier 04, 2010-08-03
Picture: 2010-04-19 Squalicum Teeth
I floss and brush just like my dentist tells me. Unlike this old giant.
Squalicum Teeth, 2010-04-19
Photo: Squalicum Beach Piling
2010-04-19 Squalicum Beach Piling
Been a while since I uploaded a photo. As always, happy to help you get a print.
Welcome to Earth Day, Week…Year?
Earth Week Logo
April 22 is Earth Day! April 16 begins Earth Week!
Eventually you and I and everyone will be so used to it really being Earth Day every day that we’ll actually look back and laugh that we had to actually promote such common sense one day out of the year…right?
Using Freezers to Bank Energy?
I was listening to a recent Science Friday episode where the benefits of windpower were being debated. One of the drawbacks mentioned was that wind energy is intermittent, often present at off-peak periods-and there is no good way to bank electricity for later. Well, at a national scale. Solar installations, like the Luz generation plants or Solar One which bank solar thermal energy in oil or water underground, to power turbines later.
There are batteries, of course, at a local and homestead scale. Batteries are somewhat expensive. However more common are refrigerators. I don’t see why surplus evening power wouldn’t be ideal for running freezers. This would allow an evening power input to go into icemaking and using that banked cold, lower the operating load of freezers during the daytime.
Heat exchangers, better yet. If freezers and hot water heaters were part of a common heat exchange system, then there would also be warm water for the morning. At a community scale, a neighborhood butcher’s freezer would serve as a kind of energy bank. Here is a Sci Am article discussing ice generation as a method of power storage.
Cycling: Transit for Women with Groceries
There has been much debate in America over the years on how to integrate bicycling into urban transit. There is debate among cyclists about the value of multi-use-paths (MUPs). This article seems to draw the current trend, to design cycle oriented transit towards a typical user being a sixty year old woman with groceries.
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/04/can-we-all-cycle-the-last-mile.html
I like the mention of the “bike station” — bike rental at bus stations. Unfortunately, the notion of renting standard safety bicycles might not be as useful as renting folding transit bicycles (which addresses current bus+cycle loop issues highlighted in the article) — or recumbent tricycles, which are less physically challenging and thus more appealing to older riders.
Cycling Power in Watts
If you had to generate electricity with a bicycle, how many light bulbs can you power? Well, consider that an average bicycle on level ground in still air needs 100 Watts of power to cycle at 12mph. If you wanted to add an electrical generator to your normal cycle, the effect would be like going up a hill. You feel this resistance because you would be working against the electromagnetic resistance in the coils of the generator. To power a 60W bulb, it would feel like you were climbing a 4 percent grade…you’d break a sweat. So on your next bike ride, you could light one room in your house. For comparison, an electric range could use up to 12,000 watts, I’m guessing just one burner on high would use 2000 watts.
Trikes Safer Around Cars?
Just stumbled across this post describing how recumbent tricycles feel safer around cars because they’re given wider berth.
Ironic Gas Humor
Love this, never buy gas again.
Quake Rattle and Roll
We got a real roll from the 7.2 quake in Mexicali earlier this afternoon. Weswayed and rolled for nearly 45 seconds; the dining room chandelier swayedfor nearly 5 minutes afterwards. Both Dad and I felt a bit seasick for awhile afterwards! Kind of a strange one.
The recent Mexicali quake data from the USGS. News from ABC.com.
Update, my mom has a great sense of humor:
Lucy Jones just said we shouldn’t be surprised to get a “trigger” earthquake up to a 6.0 “somewhere in southern California” during the next week. We’re pretty much bolted down; it’s fun watching the home videos of the tsunamis generated in So Cal swimming pools!
