Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Teeny Tiny fuel cell. The size of a watch battery. It burns propane. Developed from work by Caltech, USC and Northwestern U in Illinois, the cell needs to generate enough internal heat to operate with hydrocarbon fuels. Add insulation, and it gets too big to put in your MP3 player. They solved it by controlled burning rates to keep temps up. Propane is liquid when compressed and vaporizes when released (think butane cigarette lighter as a fuel delivery example). So your watch battery will not need a carburetor (watchburetor?). See the Caltech news release titled "New Propane-Burning Fuel Cell Could Energize a Future Generation of Small Electrical Devices."
You can make your own room-temperature, ambient-pressure, "dissolved fuel" cell from common household materials, like an air cathode made from a nickel mesh with an applied manganese catalyst, on a carbon support, with a PTFE binder. It can be glued to almost all plastics using Loctite 406 instant adhesive, provided that the surface to be glued is treated with Loctite 757 primer. Also required is a fuel cell anode, made from nickel mesh with a platinum catalyst, on a carbon support, with a PTFE binder. Finally, the fuel can be methanol, ethanol or sodium borohydride (the last is the most efficient) dissolved in an alkaline electrolyte. See Electro-Chem-Technic to read and purchase materials.
On the large commercial front, an English company, Ceres Power , is pursuing larger and more powerful cells that can use commercially available fuels including LPG, alcohol, natural gas, hydrogen or vehicle fuels. Their focus is on solid oxide (SO) fuel cells ( as opposed to proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells). They are trying to reduce the operating temperature and as a result, the startup lag time and the need for high-temp materials for construction. Metals are easier and cheaper to work than are ceramics for the internal bits, but metals tend to soften or melt at regular SO fuel cell temperatures.
Solid Oxide fuel cells (SOFC) are more tolerant of different fuel types. A big advantage is that both hydrogen and carbon monoxide are used in the cell. In the PEM or Polymer Electrolyte fuel cell (PEFC) the carbon monoxide is a poison, while in the SOFC it is a fuel. This means that the SOFC can readily use many common hydrocarbons fuels such as natural gas, diesel, gasoline, alcohol and coal gas. In the PEFC an external reformer is required to produce hydrogen gas while the SOFC can reform these fuels into hydrogen and carbon monoxide inside the cell. This results in some of the high temperature waste thermal energy being recycled back into the fuel (from Ben Wiens Energy Science: "The Future of Fuel Cells"; section 8. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells). See Ben Wiens Energy Science site for all things energy.
As an added benefit, a home-located fuel cell generator can also make hot water for washing up and for heating. Keep an eye on the Big-Box home improvement stores. When fuel cell home generators (propane or natural gas fueled) show up there, you know it is time to get on board.
Posted 11:01 AM by Andy (5) comments
Comments:
- Andy, I recall an exchange a while back wherein you were skeptical, in the extreme, of the feasibility of fuel cell technology. The reason cited had something to do with the high cost of obtaining hydrogen from natural gas and the attendant pollution that would render the exercise an environmental wash. Is it your current opinion that this new technology will side step those problems? Is the production and use of propane more efficient and less polluting in the long run? Will I be able to illuminate my house with a Bic lighter?
- No, I am still skeptical. Trouble looms on several fronts. Econonic - it still costs more resources and energy to produce hydrogen that it does to produce petrochemical hydrocarbons. Look at a report by NPR today about the total cost of ethanol production vs petrochemical:"Professor Attacks Enthusiasm for Bio-Fuels."
Political - entrenched interests are way over on the petro side with tiny little projects on renewable. Also, a huge part of our engineered materials (plastics, synthetics, composits) are based on the carbon-chain backbones from crude oil. I mean, when untold billions are pouring into the oil company banks, why change the direction? Technical - many steps and improvements are needed before you and I have a fuel cell on our wrists, or in our laptop, or even in the basement. I am looking at the slow progress of 90%-plus efficiency gas furnaces. I went to school for pulse boilers in 1985. Today, new installs are mostly 80% or greater efficiency forced air and hot water. But the maintenance and repair costs are triple that of the old technology (more controls, sensors, fans, plumbing). Also look at the progression of automotive fuel injection for average consumer vehicles. VW was the exception and had electronic fuel injection in the 1970s. It is common today, but the implementation was incremental, costs crept into the product, manufacturer and consumer resistance was slow to overcome. I see the same evolution for fuel cells. Off-grid will always be more expensive than on, and most useful in rural and remote areas. The most extreme off-grid is space. In the 1960s, the Apollo program had hand-built hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells to produce electricity and water. Over forty years later, we still don't have them commonly available. I don't see this technology as the immediate savior of the oil-hungry West.
- OK, clears that up. What do you know about the co-generation front (i.e. capturing and reusing waste heat) or efforts to improve the energy extraction efficiency of current systems?
I've thought that encouraging the use of small electric commuter vehicles would help (versus single occupant SUV's), which it would in terms of fuel, but ultimately you end up with more vehicle mass/passenger causeing the savings to squirt out somewhere else. Efficient mass transit seems to be the answer. The reason one oil barge is more efficient than 800 tanker trucks applies to human cargo with the trade off being the inconvenience of having to actually participate in society.
- Co-Generation skins the cat more closely. For example - in the basement of the boiler house at Ohio University, where the main steam line exits to the rest of the campus, there is a throttling valve, designed to regulate the mass of steam sent down the pipe based on the line pressure and flow demand. It's a noisy thing, screaming like the damned as it lets some steam go down the pipe and diverts the rest back to the condensors. The University put a co-generation turbine at this point to take the "waste" steam and make electricity. It not only paid for itself, but for the multi-million dollar new substation they installed to handle the campus power flow. Savings in commercial power costs were purchased by tapping steam that they had already bought via coal and natural gas. It has always seemed to me to be a fractal division. Each potential difference in energy states might be used to do work. But as the differences get tinier and tinier, the costs increase and the returns vanish. Could you put a turbine wheel in your sewer pipe to capture the gravity flow of effluent? Yes, but you have to put up with potential breakdowns and backups. Most household waste is "gray water" from sinks and laundries and dishwashers. Only a few percent is "black water" from WCs. RVs use separate tanks. Home DWV plumbing (currently a Victorian-era design)would have to change to capture waste-stream energy.
The same visualization can be done for heat energy flowing through walls, for electric and mangnetic fields oscillating around the wires in your walls, and the wind pressure differential between the peak of your roof and the eaves.
Post a Comment- Now that last picture woke me up. Amazing what an unfettered brain can do. I was visualizing the roof as an airplane wing. A duct installed between the high-pressure surface and the low pressure downstream side could easily drive an enclosed impeller. Now. How to keep the rain and snow and bird's nests out.... Oh well, the genius part is easy. The rest is simply engineering sweat.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
I'm sure Andy could use a laugh about now and boy do I have one for him. Too cute for words, too embarrasing to ever live down, it's rootin'tootin' whatley!
Why do I do this to myself? Have I no shame? Guess not. Wonder if Ralph has any? hmm... Hey Lila! Got any vintage (winkwinknudgenudge) pics I could borrow for a bit?
Posted 6:39 AM by whatley (3) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- Why Russ! You haven't changed a bit! Just like we've come to expect from you. Like Betsy said: "That's just adorable!"
Friday, January 27, 2006
Rush headlong, dear fellow-humans, toward the precipice overlooking the ocean. I saw a cartoon yesterday that applies. A small, brown, furry rodent, sitting upright, reading, and thinking "What the…?!" The title of his booklet is "Cliff Notes for Lemmings." That is a Speed Bump cartoon from 1/26. I also like the one from 1/22 titled "eggnostics". A man at a bar says to two others: " I have a confession... Sometimes I doubt that God is really a giant chicken." See Dave Coverly's site for more of his works.
Posted 11:36 AM by Andy (0) comments
Comments:
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Requiem for a career.
When a homeowner looks out of her beautiful picture window one day, and says, "That tree blocks the view of my daffodil bed," she has it cut down. It doesn't matter that the tree took twice as long as her life span to stretch toward the sky. It doesn't matter that the tree shelters many lives. It doesn't matter that the tree recycles the rain and reduces her air conditioning costs. The tree dies. Next spring, the homeowner looks out of her beautiful picture window and says, "That daffodil bed would look better on the other side of the driveway."
A large manufacturing company looked up from its accounting books this week and saw the view blocked by too many trees. On "Black Wednesday" this week, the "Forest Resources" department started felling trees. In every building, in every department, many, many people looked up from their desks at a forester who said "Come with me." One saw 10 of her coworkers being marched to the woodshed. The words she uttered were " surreal, spooky, frightening" and expressed feelings of displacement and disbelielf. It was not a workplace, but a bloody battleground where the felled were unarmed and unwarned. The defeated were not allowed back to their work areas. The foresters' assistants packed up what they judged to be personal affects and boxed them for later. Each head of deadwood was taken to an office, formally informed of termination (read from a form letter), stripped of ID badge, pager, cell phone, computer access, credit card and keys. Then each was escorted to the representative of a contract outplacement company who offered resume and self-marketing assistance. Then the forester, following a preprinted checklist, presented an envelope containing the company termination policy. Termination was immediate.
The discarded trunks and branches were finally escorted outside and the door was closed firmly behind them. No appeal was possible. It was sudden, brutal, impersonal, dehumanizing and terribly, terribly final. I understand how, for others, death may be a welcome alternative to this treatment.
Locally, there weren't many axed. Just two. And I do not know who the other one was.
Posted 2:14 PM by Andy (5) comments
Comments:
- I think I understand how much your career there meant to you. Hang tough paisan. They're the ones who fucked up.
When you get around to getting your resume together fire me over a copy (pdf if possible). My salespeople are in a lot of offices. You never know.
- You, my friends, are much more important, and more valuable to me than all of the pistons in SUV-land.
Post a Comment- I hope that you will end up in a much better environment than the craptastic one you were just thrust out of.
Could this be a case of age discrimination? That's the first thing the lawyers asked about when I got canned in '04.
Take care and let us know how your search progresses.
Mike
Need a sheet or two of graph paper but don't want to buy a whole pad? No? Well, me neither, but you never know when a cool little resource like this will come in handy.
Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs
BTW, looks like Blogger is in the midst of some kind of upgrade. Uh oh.
Posted 10:24 AM by whatley (1) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- I think that Darwinism is inherent in social as well as in biological processes. "Change or die" is the watchword of the ages. Some branches always head off into extinction. Blogger/Google is about to be run over by the next great thing. I heard that there is a group in Europe trying to develop a search engine that will out-Google Google. C'est la guerre.
Monday, January 23, 2006
For those of you who are not familiar with Kim Sadler's married name (Hilary Janowicz) or do not read the Chronicle Telegram, I thought you would like to know that her son, Michael, passed away on Saturday. His obit is in today's Chronicle.
Marsha
Posted 3:47 PM by A. O. (1) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- For those who have trouble finding it:
Michael Janowicz
Michael E. Janowicz, 26, of Elyria, died Saturday, Jan. 21, 2006, at home after a long illness. A lifelong Elyria resident, he was a member of St. Jude Catholic Church. He worked as a machine operator at Poly Case in Avon. A Cleveland Indians and Ohio State Buckeyes fan, he enjoyed word and logic puzzles, spending time with family and monthly outings with the Murray Ridge Community employment group. Survivors include his parents, Larry and Hilary Janowicz; brothers David and Paul Janowicz, both of Elyria; his maternal grandmother, Florence Sadler of Roslyn Heights, N.Y.; paternal grandparents Frank and Eunice Janowicz of Elyria; and several aunts, uncles and cousins. He was preceded in death by his maternal grandfather, Robert Sadler Jr. Friends may call 2 to 7 p.m. today at Bauer-Laubenthal Funeral Home, 38475 Chestnut Ridge Road, Elyria, where services will be held at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday followed by a 10 a.m. funeral mass at St. Jude Catholic Church, 590 Poplar St., Elyria. The Rev. Edward Smith will officiate. Burial will follow at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Elyria. Memorials may be made to the National Neurofibromatosis Foundation, 95 Pine St., 16th Floor, New York, NY 10005.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Extraordinary History of Amateur Radio Satellites is on Space Today Online, which in itself is an amazing resource.
Posted 1:00 AM by Andy (2) comments
The National Lighting Product Information Program (NLPIP) has an abstract by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Reasearch Center laying out the case for and against the claims made for full-spectrum lighting as a health benefit and curative for the winter blahs. Since full-spectrum light fixtures and bulbs are marketed at many times the cost of "normal" lighting products, the findings, accompanied by spectrum charts and explanations, do not seem to justify the high cost. See The NLPIP posting of "Full Spectrum Lighting Sources". I found it interesting that the actual frequency spectra for florescent fixtures marketed as "full spectrum" matched those for normal florescent tubes almost exactly. Another datum is that "full-spectrum" fixtures actually emit less visible light. It is noted that a person who spends all day under full-spectrum lighting (as in an office), gets the same UV as experienced in a couple of minutes outdoors. This is not enough UV to result in any added vitamin D. So it's bright, white, cheap florescent tubes, me boys. I'll spend the difference on the electricity.
Posted 12:22 AM by Andy (0) comments
Comments:
Friday, January 20, 2006
Broadband internet connectivity is almost taken for granted these days. A big downside to broadband is that, unlike the days of dialup when there were lots of ISP choices, you're limited to two providers, cable or DSL (and DSL depends on the proximity of a switching center so cable may be your only option). Because they can control what flows through their pipelines and how fast it moves these providers are in a very powerful position. To them this is a revenue opportunity. Why only charge the end users (us)? Why not charge the sites we visit as well? Sound like extortion to you? It does to me, but they're testing the waters. BellSouth: Cyberextortion Pays Off - Google: We Won't Pay Broadband Cyberextortion. Here's another take from The Washington Post.
Posted 5:10 AM by whatley (4) comments
Comments:
- Hmm. Thinking outside the box, for a moment, how can we jump the track and bypass cable and phone company (DSL)? How about a pirate internet station, like offshore pirate radio? Only this will be a pirate satellite. Outside the boundaries of all countries, broadband (the download part) is just an antenna away. The uplink is another matter. However, if we all contribute spare change, it won't be long before the millions needed for a space-net bird are in hand. I hear that Russia has reasonable launch prices these days. What the heck? Ham radio has many private amateur radio satellites in orbit now. We can do this!
- Since posting this I've been thinking about alternatives and y'know, in a way people are already finding alternatives for themselves (I'm thinking of "sharemywifi" a couple of posts ago). Satellites work for download but for both up and down you've always needed a hard connection, copper for DSL or coax for cable for example, and bringing that connection to each house is where the big bucks come in. But now there's WiFi. Citys are finding it within their budgetary reach to WiFi themselves for benefit of their citizens. The fact that existing providers are using lobbyists to fight this tooth and nail makes the idea seem all the more feasible. I think this could be done by a private company as well. You could start out relatively small, say one neighborhood affluent enough to have a good computer/household ratio. Hmm.... that may mean they all already have cable. More thinking needed. But it's doable.
Post a Comment- OK. Maybe it is time to build the "apace elevator" wherein a diamond-carbon fiber cable anchors from earth to geosynchornous orbit. Three of those and we have the earth blanketed for hard-wired coverage. You can use my back yard as an anchor site. The Tower of Babel is within our grasp.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
MercuryNews.com | 01/19/2006 | Feds after Google data:
"The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.I'd Google the phrase "Big Brother" but I'm afraid to.
The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. "
Posted 9:23 AM by whatley (1) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- I think Google should comply by sumbitting the requested data as printed binary code in the order it was compiled without any kind of reference and let them spend eight years trying to figure it out.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
sharemywifi.com: "If you've got WiFi and are willing to share it - or you can can 'see' someone else's WiFi and would like to use it - you're in the right place."
A pretty cool idea. If it ever caught on we could all have fun watching the lobbyists for broadband providers weasel some kind of law through to stop it. We can already see them in action at the state level.
"Verizon Communications supported a Pennsylvania bill barring communities from building their own network, but struck a deal with Philadelphia to allow the city's plans to go forward."Sitting here at my desk, in my little suburban neighborhood, I can see two other WiFi access points. Hmm.....
Posted 5:58 AM by whatley (1) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- When my brother visits my parents with his laptop and his wi-fi card, he can hit the morthern neighbor in the kitchen and the southern neighbor at the other end of the house. I have gone to digital spread spectrum (DSS) cordless phones for my house. Bluetooth applications are becoming dense enough that they are beginning to interfere. The first version of Bluetooth had a 30 foot range. Current versions reach 60 feet. I was grazing Best Buy tonight. Portable music players, bluetooth phones, wi fi networks are all competing via incompatible protocols. Then factor in HDTV, digital broadcasting, net-bus architecture for vehicle operation control, and stir. There's a whole lot of shaking out going to go on.
Monday, January 16, 2006
I just bought and installed the firewall "Zone Alarm" on my computer. About $42.50 including tax. Immediately, I have seen, with each mouse click, dozens and dozens of headers, ads and cookies blocked on their way into the box. Additionally, the Privacy settings keep showing added marketing and advertising sites for which Zone Alarm blocks ads, third partycookies, web bugs and private headers on board. Some site names include "adbrite.com", "tribalfusion.com", "doubleclick.net", "ad.trafficmp.com", "casalemedia.com", "overture.com", "atdmt.com", "hermoment.com", "zap2it.com" and others that keep pouring in. I Googled these and found most of them to be marketing groups that contract for webvertising to the masses (that's us). It also has a cache cleaner that sweeps out the temporary stuff in the memory. I just ran it and threw out 838 files, freeing 4 Mb of space in the process. This is after about an hour on the web. Strolling the web is like wandering the streets in New York City. Everything is there, even if you pretend it doesn't exist. So look into the dark alleys of your own computer sometime. While you are gazing up at the skyscrapers, someone is pinching your wallet.
Posted 4:53 PM by Andy (5) comments
Comments:
- Zone Alarm has already blocked a couple of attacks to port 139 of my computer. The programn says that port 139 is normally used by a network for file and information sharing. Zone Alarm shows the internet addresses for each attack. One came through Qwest Connumicaitons from a city in Kentucky. The other was an internet reserved address that was probably counterfited to prevent back-tracking. I also accidently set the security protocols so I was blocked from going to the Blogger or to the RBT. Woops! Here's another hack attack coming in! This is better than reading a mystery novel!
- This last hit was from a company called XO communications in Reston Virginia. Per the on-line Zone Labs information, they are aware that their machines are the source of illicit activity and are working to contain the problem. Per the XO.com site: "XO Communications is the NLEC™ -- National Local Exchange Carrier. That means we're a telecommunications provider offering nationwide communication solutions exclusively for businesses, agents and carriers. XO delivers a range of services from Local to Long Distance phone service, DSL to Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), and advanced Network Security solutions. XO also has an award-winning Internet backbone network and serves 75 U.S. major metropolitan markets." Just goes to show you - nobody is safe, even those providing "advanced Network Security solutions."
- How do you connect to the internet (Cable/DSL/Etc.)? What IP# is on your computer?
This site allows you to generate some simple port scanning against yourself as well as a few other things. The guy's kind of a blowhard but he is very knowledgeable and a good coder.
http://grc.com/default.htm
See "ShieldsUP!" and "LeakTest" towards the bottom of the page.
Zone Alarm is a great utility. I use the free version to see what programs on my PC are trying to "phone home".
- Dial up and the ISP hangs a new tag each time I jump in, I believe. I am not quite ready to fork over $50 per month on top of basic connection charges. Plus cell phone charges. I don't have any cable or satellite TV hookups to pay for, but the annual expense still grows. Greedy bastards.
Post a Comment- I have the Internet Secirity Suite that Verizon offers and it passed all the leak tests with flying colors. Coupled with PestPatrol, HijackThis, and Spybot I've been able to things pretty clean.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Here's a treat for ya. I found a bootleg copy of the 2006 Hooters Calendar. Prints real nicely too.
Posted 7:36 AM by whatley (1) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- Jeepers Creepers - Louis Armstrong
Jeepers, creepers....where'd ya get them peepers
Jeepers, creepers...where'd ya get those eyes
Gosh oh, git up....how'd they get so lit up
Gosh oh, gee oh....how'd they get that size
Golly gee...when you turn them heaters on
Woe is me...got to put my cheaters on
Jeepers, creepers....where'd ya get them peepers
Oh, those weepers....how they hypnotize
(instrumental break)
Jeepers, creepers....where'd ya get them peepers
Oh, those weepers....how they hypnotize
Where did ya get those
Golly where'd ya get those
Where did ya get them there eyes
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
I got a look at this design on an 800x600 resolution monitor today. Man, it sucked. On 1280x800 (my setup) it's great. On 1024x768 it's ok. But 800x600? Forget about it. I don't know what to do now. Does anyone (except obviously the library) use that resolution anymore? Shit. I have a lot of time invested in this. The big comment thread a couple of posts down has a partial log of work I've been doing. Oh well.
Do you prefer the old design? It won't take long to restore that. Please let me know.
Posted 1:53 PM by whatley (7) comments
Comments:
- I am just a sentimental softie, albeit new to the site. I liked the old stuff better. Sorry for the time invested. Now you can write that book you have always wanted to but could never find the time.
xxoo
- I looked at it in 800x600 (Firefox) and it looked good to me so am not sure what you meant when you say it sucked. Both Robin and I like the new color scheme but like Andy have reservations on the font size. The other thing I noticed is that there is no obvious way to collapse the comments once you open them.
- John - Just to get our terms straight, this template has a center justified container a little under 800px in width. Monitors set higher will see a muted orange border on both sides. Monitors at 800 resolution will see the container with a tiny bit of border. The container backgrounds are white and two shades of gray. The library monitor didn't show the contrasts between white and grays well at all. It was very washed out. The text, especially on the sidebar, was overpowering, and the absence of the muted orange on both sides really changed the whole inpression. I dunno, it certainly wasn't what I had in mind.
I think a part of my dislike sprang from my being used to higher resolutions in general. I don't know if anything would look good to me at 800. Question is how much importance I should give viewing through lowres monitors? A lot, a little, none?
I'm glad somebody besides me likes the color scheme. You and Robin are obviously people of refined taste.
- Oh, I forgot, comments now open in their own page (check the URL when reading). No collapsing like before. If you're seeing something different let me know.
- Russ,
I have 1024x768 and it looks fine, resolution wise. At higher res it becomes too small to read on my monitor.
It may just be that I was used to it, but I found the old display easier to read and I did like the comment feature that John mentioned.For me its an eye issue. The current scheme physically hurts my eyes. I have a hard time with sites that have dark fields with white lettering. It becomes an effort keep the text from turning into streaks of white. That's what's happening here particularly with the red text which may be why the sidebar seems so intrusive. Maybe playing with varying shades of text and background might help to head off a complete redesign. You might do a couple of samples and post screen captures side by each in a link and have the teeming masses vote on it.
The problem you experienced on the library computer(not differentiating the grays) is probably a monitor/video card color calibration problem that their tech guy should address. Sounds like brightness/contrast issue.
- It's nice to have something small and non-controversial to bicker about! I got a pair of glasses a couple of months ago made just for my middle distance vision (computer screens, prices on shelves at grocery store, Hooters' calendar pics). I just started using them. They resolve a lot of the "assume the bifocal position" of head tilted back, nose scrunched up, and mouth gaping open when trying to read stuff on the screen. I just started using them and stopped the involuntary drooling.
Post a Comment- Been thinking about the 'font-size' resolution issue. Dug around a little bit in the style sheets. Look like the font-size (for most of the presentation) is fixed at 12 pt. That would explain the overwhelming text at 800x600 and the hard to read at large res. [font renders relative to screen size]. Instead of setting font-size:12pt in the body element you might try setting it in em as the others are set. If you want finer grain control you might look at a javascript to get the res from the client then choose alternate stylesheets (more admin but very effective). You could also handle the display div width in the same files and thus preserve the orange border in every res.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Well, I almost forgot what I have to look forward to in July, approx. 40 weeks post Wilma. We had a small baby boom last spring after the Frances/Jeanne party in 2004. Did not realize dogs had anything else on there agenda but this. But I guess if you can't watch tv . . . Katrina Aftermath Includes Puppy Boom - Yahoo! News
Posted 7:34 PM by Terri S (3) comments
Comments:
- It is curious that there is not a concommitent rise in the feline birth rate. Do you suppose that cats have higher standards than dogs? "I can't possibly think of mating tonight. The house is a wreck and I need a bath!"
Post a Comment- "I just licked my fur and I can't do a THING with it!" The way that cats snub others as being beneath contempt, no wonder that the toms slink away to some milk bar and trade catastrophes.
As you can see I had some spare time today. Not everything works yet but I'll keep plugging away. So far I like it and hope you do too. Comments have been giving me some trouble (what else is new) but if you happen upon this while I'm working and want to leave one go ahead and give 'er a try. No promises it'll be saved so don't enter the answer to everything (42) and expect it to be there for the rest of us. I'm gonna take a dinner break now.
Posted 5:21 PM by whatley (15) comments
Comments:
- Any way to make it fill the screen? And may be soften the background color, its almost too bright to look at.
- Jeez, I take an hour off and already I've got complaints.
No, this design isn't meant to fill the screen and can't be made to at this point. It's that different from the previous one. Maybe it'll grow on you?
Too bright huh? It looks pretty spiffy on my laptop. Let me get a look at it on some other PCs before I start tweaking colors.
Worse comes to worse I can always restore the old one.
Other opinions?
- Bitch, Bitch, Bitch. Here's some more.
I've always had very light sensitive eyes and doing search and rescue on the water made it worse, so what might appear acceptably visible to most people is excruciatingly bright to me. I found the old design soothing and readable. The sidebar with the links and archive stuff kind of over powers the postings. I think it should be much smaller relative to the main section of the page. If the background ins going stay as bright as it is the font size could stand to be increased by a couple of points.
I don't know if you saw the question I asked on the previous post but when I saw your inquiry I thought it might be good opportunity to futher my education. Any suggestions?
- Let me get a look at this on s desktop monitor or two before I junk the whole thing.
I saw your other comment and answered it there.
- I guess I'm not too bright. The RBT, I mean. No, the screen... anyway, the only thing that I can kvetch about is the size of font. Seems harder to read than previously. Kinda gotta squint and get real close with these bifocally astigmatic eyes of mine. But the intellectual content of the posts is still the same. I mean, just as good as before. Aw, forget it.
- A little confusing. When going to the comments, can it open a new window with the lead at the top and the comments thread below? I head to experiement to find the "home" button to return to the top blog page. It might be nice to be able to merely close the comment string window without having to switch pages back to the main screen.
- The font size - yes, we can increase it. You can do that in your browser as well. I use a 1280x800 screen resolution so to me the font size is small. Those using less dense resolutions will see the font larger, at 800 quite large, I think so anyway. Check resolution on your monitor and maybe even temporarily change it to see what I mean. I try to aim at a medium (1024) resolution setting figuring that's what most people have.
Comments spawning a new window (or in Firefox a tab)- yes, we can do that if people want.
Going back to the home page - "The Red Brick Times" on the top banner is now active. It'll change color on a mouseover and is a "home" link when clicked.
- The color and brightness don't bother me, but then again look at the shirts I wear. Once I read your comment about the active top banner, I stopped using my back button to return to the top. It's cool. Good lyrics and you can dance to it. I'd give it a 62.
- I hereby christen this RBT template the Hageshirt Design.
I finished up all the archive links this morning (Blogger has a utility to generate and show archive links but because we've been in existence so long and have used multiple page coding formats it doesn't work for us. I gotta do it by hand.) and I think that's it. Everything works now.
I have to go to the library tomorrow anyway so while I'm there I'll try to view this on one of their PCs to check the color scheme. Library PCs are popular and often all taken so no promises. Should I want to experiment (yet again) with background colors maybe I'll save some screen captures as gif's and let you all see them. Maybe some grays. I dunno. I still like it as is.
Post a Comment- Removed the Google www/rbt search function from the right sidebar (bottom). Moved it to a new "Search & Utilities" page linked under "rbt links".
Saturday, January 07, 2006
I think maybe it's time the ol' RBT had a new look. I'm really tired of this one. Problem is that I'm way busy implimenting a new e-commerce site for my company right now. One site at a time is all I can handle. If anyone else feels like giving it a whirl I'd be happy to help with the Blogger code portion of things. If you know CSS (John? Anybody?) you can build a template from scratch. Or you could create a test blog on Blogger, design your little heart out there, and once it's finished we'll install it here. Your 15 minutes of fame awaits.
Posted 9:55 AM by whatley (2) comments
Comments:
- Russ,
Assume I'm a Trobriand Islander and have never seen a computer more advanced than an abacus. Where would I start to learn Web Design and coding?
Post a Comment- A Trobriand Islander would have to start with some very basic concepts. Let's assume instead that you speak english, know how to use a mouse, and have a working knowledge of folders and how to save/copy a file.
I'd advise you to see what your local community college, vocational school, whatever, has to offer for beginner web designers but mostly what I've seen lately is that they all want to teach a program. Frontpage, Dreamweaver, there's lots of them. All you learn is that particular program, not how html and css really work, and they don't tell you that these programs all expect your web server to be set up in a certain way, one that caters to these programs.
So I dunno. Do some Google searches on terms like "introduction" "html" "css",things like that. html would probably be best to start with. When I get time I'll look around and see if I can find an online tutorial to recommend for you.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Well, now you've done it! The last post got me thinking (yeah, we all know where that can lead) and in my electronic reverie I came across a site that led to other sites that are beyond cool. Check these out for starters and report back on where you end up. The Edge is an on going series of discussions by guys caling themselves The Third Culture, scientists and science oriented thinkers looking at social issues/ramifications relating to . . . science. Which got me to a 1997 lecture/discussion by Stewart Brand (original editor of The Whole Earth Catlogue) which had a link to one of his current projects, the 10,000 year clock, at the Long Now Foundation.
Enjoy
Posted 2:56 PM by A. O. (2) comments
Comments:
Post a Comment- Interesting.
At Crank Dot Net there be "science oriented thinkers" too. Of a different type though.
An 1885 Schoolhouse Blog
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