Category: Miscellaneous

Buzzard Cam! (Coming soon to a web site near you!)

The buzzards that hang out in the Hinckley Reservation roost in the trees that line our driveway. Last year on Buzzard Day, right before the sunset, an enormous flock of buzzards took off from the trees and flew varying paths across the sky. I guess checking out the area before going to sleep for the night. It was incredible to watch.

There’s this weather station with a wide angle fish-eye lens camera — Bloomsky — that we will be installing next week … way before the buzzards should be arriving. Hopefully we’ll have the same area over-flight … but it’ll be available online for everyone to see!

Middlemen, or lack thereof

How the Internet has changed business constantly amazes me. I made a cape for Anya over the summer, and we didn’t want something tied around her neck … so I wanted to use a magnet to hold the cape closed. It gets caught in something and the cape breaks free. A single pair of magnets, at the site where I was purchasing the fabric, was 7$. I’m sure they are *REALLY* nice magnets (or, rather, at 7$ for two maybe 1″ diameter magnets they better be really nice magnets), but that price seemed somewhat outlandish.

Enter the Google search for magnet closures (most of which seem to be for purses and have a snap in the centre of them). I happened across Alibaba — where the exact same thing could be had for 2¢ per piece. With a minimum order of 1,000 units. And, yeah, 20$ is a lot more than 7$ … and I wasn’t actually sure if it was 1,000 pairs of magnets or not. But even if I only got 500 pair for 20$ … that’s 4¢ a pair for something retailing for 7$. I could sell half of them on eBay or something, have a lifetime supply of magnetic button closures, and probably have paid less than 7$. Except — I don’t really have any idea how to ship something out of China. A lot of listings on Alibaba (probably because it is more geared toward B2B transactions) require you to sort out the shipping from whatever foreign port.

I wasn’t willing to put the effort into figuring it out — although it looks like being an importer with an online store could be a fairly lucrative endeavor. In poking around the Alibaba site, though, I found AliExpress … same companies offering the same products at a slightly higher price, but in smaller quantities and with someone else sorting the shipping. Ten pairs of magnet buttons for 3.55$ Buying something posted from China means you cannot be in a hurry — estimated delivery is 4-6 weeks out … but jewelry findings (especially clasps) are a quarter the cost, sewing bits, housewares (I got some of the plastic cutters to make ‘animal crackers’ for a tenth the price @ Williams Sonoma).

Maybe I’m not getting the exact same thing — since the 7$ magnet says it is made in China anyway … that’s debatable — but buying something you don’t need for a few months sure saves a lot of money. I can see why Alibaba — basically a broker that connects manufacturers with retailers and end customers — makes so much money Yahoo wants to divest their money losing search engine / e-mail business and just ‘live’ off of their investment in Alibaba.

New HVAC

The heat exchanger on our old propane furnace is cracked. And propane is an expensive way to heat a home. Here, it is trucked in and pumped – so in the worst of winter, we’ve got to manage to clear the driveway so the delivery truck can get here safely. All in all, not sad to see it go. We’re comparing air-exchange heat pumps with geothermal heat pumps.

Obviously the air-exchange sales guy has a lot of terror stories about loop fields going bad, digging up the whole yard, and incurring tens of thousands in repair expenses. Our neighbor has a geothermal system and says he’s constantly using emergency heat so it’s really a super-expensive propane furnace.

I spent some time searching for the down sides to geothermal. Found a news article republished in quite a few small town news sites with a study claiming a town had so many geothermal installations that they caused their own localized warming. Suck heat from earth, pump to house to heat, lose heat through exterior walls … town heats up. Except all other heating sources extract an energy source from elsewhere, heat the house with it, and lose heat through exterior walls too. It’s not like we rip out our exterior insulation to get geothermal. If they’d wanted say the Earth’s temp lowered locally, it would at least pass a prima facie logic test. But they wanted to scare off the global warming types, so they went with “you’re causing global warming!!!”. And ended up with a completely illogical argument. If they wanted to talk about older, undersized, systems that created hyper-local problems caused the system to run on emergency heat … well, don’t undersize your system.

The only down side I’ve found is the installation cost and potential cost of emergency heat. We’re going to get the air exchange heat pump – the infinitely variable pump is supposed to operate in sub-freezing temperatures, and it’s a quick install instead of taking a month or two.

Save The Humans

I am continually astounded by people who think industry should have the right to spew whatever cocktail of toxic chemicals. Bully for you, you’ve got a load of cash and can just move somewhere else. Empathy for others aside, unless you are preparing your own biodome , eventually you are going to run out of “elsewhere”.

I remember reading an article from the American South-East coast somewhere – maybe a Carolina. A local law enforcement officer was discussing how voluntary evacuations work (or don’t), and he said the most effective tool he’d found was an indelible marker. Asked anyone who wanted to remain on site when a hurricane was headed their way to use his pen and write their name on their arm. So their bloated, floating corpse could be identified. Just writing your name is morbid, and a lot of people would start packing. But the mark served as a constant reminder of your poor decision, and people would clear out a few hours later too.

We need to adapt the same idea to environmental protection. Because, let’s be honest, the planet will still be here. A lifeless rock orbiting around the sun maybe, but short of vaporizing a good chunk of the planet … it will be here. I’m not sure what the equivalent of floater ID markings would be for creating un-breathable air or caustic water, but I suspect that type of save *you* approach would be far more successful than trying to engender concern for animals, plants, or grandchildren in people who obviously have no such concern.