Sable, where I'm from from 11AM-5AM you have 15-20 MPH winds, pretty much all the time. In winter it's all day, 10mph+. The last time I talked to the RI Wind guy he was spinning up (no pun intended) to do a Windspire install on someone's house. Also a large boarding school in RI got a HAWT a couple...

I would type more here but I'm tired: - The Windspire turbines are very good, my company back in Alaska had one under test. Their primary limitation for us is that while they have a very low wind start-up speed, they also have a very low wind destruction speed. In other words, while they (and all ve...

Elomin Sha wrote:They still have the bus it just doesn't work. I wonder why they haven't used the inside for a video yet. It's an untapped set.

Busses are, in general, tiny inside.

The LRRBus is even tinier.

Also I think it's parked at a rather severe angle at the moment.

Hi! I've actually built a few hybrid wind/solar/generator systems, so for the purposes of this new wall of text, let's pretend I have some idea of what I'm talking about. Solar panels certainly do keep getting better, but they aren't advancing in a Moore's Law-esque way. Solar panels purchased five ...

I'd love to see the Wartsila factory - the links in my first ultrapost are to their biggest engine, in the 80MW range. The crankcase has ladder steps in it. Ladders! LiFePo batteries are pretty trick, but you've missed one of their best qualities - unlike "normal" li-ions, they don't exper...

There have been rather a lot of devices and materials in the past several years that claim to boost solar panel efficiency higher than it is now, but they very rarely top around 25% in claimed efficiency (photosynthesis is about 17% efficient if I'm remembering right). Furthermore, while there have ...

Electrically separating hydrogen from water is an incredibly inefficient method. Combined with its explosive properties, and how when compressed to 250 atmospheres, it still has roughly only 1/7th the amount of energy as an equal volume of diesel, it's a very, very, bad way to store energy. While t...

Yes, a battery technology race that bears a similarity to the CPU technology race would be of tremendous benefit. A block of wood is considerably more energy-dense than a block of lithium-ion batteries of equal mass. Solar panel efficiency is a tricky beast owing to a number of attributes of the mat...

You ever seen someone try to dock a cargo ship? It's worth it to put pods on them, IMO. They're putting pods on cruise ships, tugs, coastal cargo ships, large pleasure vessels, and supply vessels. I don't think anyone has put one on a large cargo ship yet. They're actually pretty efficient, the gen...

I'm happy for to see ye home, hurroo, hurroo I'm happy for to see ye home, hurroo, hurroo I'm happy for to see ye home All from the island of Sulloon So low in flesh, so high in bone Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye. Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg,...

Working, as I do, with the Army, this video was incredibly depressing.

(Because it is not that far from reality.)

About the only thing I could contribute to this would be answering questions as a guest, provided anyone still has some they want to ask me.

The best coffee in Seattle is at Monorail espresso. They're on 5th and Pike (520 Pike), at a little hole in the wall. Their espresso machine says "This Machine Kills Hipsters: Your Bike Is Not A Fashion Accessory." On weekends a very nice...I want to say Bulgarian guy takes care of the sta...

Coming out of (apparent) posting retirement for this: I am the very model of a scientist Salarian, I've studied species Turian, Asari and Batarian, I'm quite good at genetics (As a subset of biology), Because I am an expert (Which I know is a tautology)! My xenoscience studies range from urban to ag...

Ten years ago I was making plans with my younger self to confiscate Alja's time machine, because he's fucking with the goddamn timeline and I'm tired of fixing it. Ten years in the future I will probably be engaged in a reasonably gentlemanly sword-fight with said time traveller on the shores of som...

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore Sandman by Neil Gaiman (Seriously - get the Absolute editions if you can, especially of the "Ramadan" issue) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen , Alan Moore Maus by Art Spiegleman Hellblazer by Mike Carey and others Lucifer by Mike Carey - arguably a Sandma...

... "Plutonium," I hear you saying, "What on Earth is that good for, other than bombs?" Well, the question is a good one: Plutonium is unbelievably dangerous. It's powerfully radioactive, and the key component of nuclear weapons. So what could extracting plutonium possibly be go...

This was a fantastic movie. I really enjoyed it. Yes, I know it's awesome to cross your arms and say "I'm gonna hate it, never gonna see it, fuck you," and I'm happy for you. Good job. It's a really fun movie, and absolutely some of the best visuals ever. I agree with pretty much everythin...

Wow, I was all ready to come in and say "I don't suppose you embryos remember A Charlie Brown Christmas!" but the cockles of my heart are warmed that I'm not actually as old as I feel sometimes, having apparently grown up in some kind of time vortex where Little Boxes and Johnny B. Goode w...

While I applaud your forward-thinking energy designs, I do want to take care to point out that if ever we were to actually implement some of the fast-neutron reactor designs coming out of (I believe) France, there is enough uranium hanging about (as in, already mined) from the US' nuclear disarmamen...

The spent fuel rods are hardly left "lying around," it's not as though you can go to The Big Nuclear Waste Facility and walk away with a fuel rod. There are many, many methodologies for dealing with nuclear waste and byproducts that can render it stable and if not inert, then certainly man...

I miss rotary-dial payphones.

And no prefix codes. You could dial your house with four digits.

And they only took a dime.

Yeah, I don't suppose you embryos remember those!

I am getting bounced straight out of the Ustream chat - using settings that worked last night. How peculiar.

Edit: Using Colloquy on OS X.

I've had a Droid since launch day (and had an iPhone since launch before that). I really like it, and I'll write up some thoughts on it later today.

Beneath this grassy mound now lies
One Edgar Oscar Earle,
Who to another hunter looked
Exactly like a squirrel.

Actually I have no idea.

"Behind You" is a good one.