Category Archives: Uncategorized

Drying for Freedom

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natural_clothes_dryerI’m an advocate for drying clothes outdoors. There are many reasons why I choose to do this but the biggest is the reduction in the utility bill (we have an electric clothes dryer). Even before we installed solar panels on the roof, I would hang laundry outside to reduce our carbon footprint.
Jeff just tipped me off to a new movie coming out in 2010 called Drying For Freedom that explores the growing and reversing trend of drying clothes outside. The trailer mentions that $5 billion (yes BILLION) is spent on just drying clothes in America. What a waste! The movie also exposes the growing trend of communities passing laws that prohibit clothes lines. What this causes, according to the trailer, is to equate power consumption with status. (This sounds awfully familiar!)

UStream.tv Broadcaster on an iPhone (Jailbroken)

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A while back I had jailbroken my original iPhone and installed the UStream.tv Broadcaster application.  It was great and worked really well.  If you have an iPhone 3G it will work over 3G as well as WiFi (sorry, no Edge).

No matter, since I got the 3G S, my 2G hasn’t had much love.  So I picked it back up again and jailbroke it (OS 3.1) and went to look for the UStream Broadcaster app.  I couldn’t find it, it was removed from Cydia.  After some searching, I found the fix.

Found the Ustream streaming app.
Cydia/Manage/Sources/Edit/Add
Type
1999.ustream.tv
click Add Source

Downloaded it and it does not work on 3GS with OS 3.0

Source.

Solar Success

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solarToday was the first day we had the solar panels turned on since they were installed last week. (We were waiting for the final inspection and the orientation session on how not to get ourselves electrocuted.) Unfortunately, today was a very cloudy day with some rain (unlike the picture here) there was no sun to be had. But I have high hopes for the remainder of the summer season, especially with the cool weather we’re having now.

The system is internet-enabled, sending statistics from the inverter to an online site that will create fancy graphs and such so we’ll be able to track our “investment.” At full capacity, it will generate 3.67 kilowatts of power (18 panels total).