Daylight Savings time: BOOOO!

Almost everyone is familiar with daylight savings time (DST). Some, because twice a year it messes with your schedule causing you to either be early or late to work the following Monday; others that don't change know about it because it messes with the t.v. schedule. For the lucky unaware ones here is a brief explanation.

Early in the spring the participating regions start DST by moving their clocks forward 1 hour at 2:00 in the morning. They lose that hour until the fall when again in the middle of the night they change the time. This time they gain the hour. This gives us the sayings "Spring ahead" and "Fall back".

So why bother?

Well those regions that do it claim the following:
1) It shifts the light from the morning before most people get up to the evening when sport activities are happening. This allows outdoor evening activities to continue later.
2) It saves in electricity.
3) It increases retail sales in the evening.
4) It decreases car fatalities.

When I examined these points I found that some of these reasons are true and others are kind of more mythical.
1) This first one is true, to a point. In Victoria it makes a lot of sense for the switch in mid March because it is actually nice enough out do have outdoor sporting events. This is not the case for the rest of Canada though. For Saskatchewan the average maximum temp in May is 18.8 and the minimum is 4.6 Celsius. This is about the soonest that you would want late evening sports and the sunset (without DST) on May 1st is 8:20 and by the end of the month 9:00pm.

Conclusion for reason #1:
The claims are true provided that the climate you live in is temperate or that you live in a lower latitude where the change in day length from winter to summer is less. Otherwise the argument is a lot weaker because by the time it is warm enough out the sunset is later anyway.

2) The second reason is highly contentious. The U.S. in 2005 moved DST earlier by 2 weeks because they claimed that there would be a large electricity cost saving since people would have more daylight in the evening and need less light and heat. The problem is that most people turn on the lights in their house in the evening anyway because it gives more consistent lighting. So it would seem that there is no gain. BUT it actually turns out that since DST goes all summer it shifts the hotter part of the day towards the evening. This is the time that people are coming home and they want their houses cooler so they turn up the air conditioners. A study done on Indiana last year showed that when they started to use DST the energy usage went up 4% and they estimate that this would be larger for locations with more extreme weather patterns then Indiana.

Conclusion for reason #2:
It would seem that this is pure myth and that the truth is actually the opposite, it usually increases energy costs.

3) All the evidence for this one is that you do indeed spend more money and you are more likely to stay out late shopping when it is lighter out. Also you are more likely to buy sports equipment sooner in the season. So this is good for the stores but not necessarily for your bank balance. There is a flip side though. It seems that the complexity of the change over to DST causes businesses that have holdings in multiple time zones with different observances to hold off on their market activities on the day of the switch to avoid confusion. This is estimated to cost the American economy millions.

Conclusion for reason #3:
It is true that you will spend more money. You can decide if this is good. Also it might cause business trying to avoid confusion money on the stock market.

4) It was reasoned that the daylight in the evening would help keep people safer on the roads. It seems that this is negated though by there being less sunlight in the morning on the way to work and school. The net affect seems minimal in either direction.

Conclusion for reason #4:
Mythical and not a valid reason.

Overall conclusion:
Daylight saving time only makes sense for those locations that have the nice weather earlier in the spring to take advantage of a longer evening. For everyone else it just gives them a long cold evening that cannot be used anyway. Also it may cost you as much at 3.19 a month.

Recommendation:
If we all stop it together this would end the confusion between provinces and states that do not do it anyway AND we can all save some money. The only downfall is that yeah we may have to wait a month to have little league outside in the evening.

Garbage goes in Electricity comes out.

Just the other day I was talking with a colleague at work about how it would be nice to recycle everything in a tiny building that we were tearing down at school. We lamented about how hard it is to do this. I then made some random comment about a plasma technology that I had read about a few years ago that would melt almost any garbage into a usable strong building material. I had never heard anything more about it so I assumed it was still in the prototype phase. Then today I read at CBC an article about a plasma recycling plant that can convert 1 tonne of garbage into: 1.4 MWh of power, 300 litres of clean drinkable water, 5-10 kg of commercial salt, 150 kg of durable construction aggregate, and 5 kg of sulfur based fertilizer. It does all of this while producing almost no greenhouse gases.

The company is called PlascoEnergy Group and they have started their first prototype plant in Ottawa. It is going to divert 85 tonnes of garbage from the landfill each day. Since this is the prototype they do not quite get all the results that they expect. It turns out that the plant will produce a constant 4 MW so only 96MWh instead of the expected 119 from the above list. The rest of the products are still expected. So I started to wonder how long it would take before this plant paid for itself.

This prototype plant cost 27 million they said. Assuming that they can sell the power at the Saskatchewan cost of 9.38 cents per kWh. This is a little higher then the rates in Ottawa but it is green power and many people are willing to pay those few cents extra for green power. They should be able to make $9,004/day from power alone. They will probably also be paid a certain amount per tonne of garbage that they handle for the city. They can also sell the water, aggregate, salt and fertilizer. Lets assume that they make about 15,000/day They need to pay for their employees at the facility. Lets assume 20 guys at 20.00/hour after all it is a fairly small facility. That means 3,200 in wages. Maintenance costs of about 2,000 a day on average (obviously some days will be much higher and some much lower). Also the plant only runs 340 days a year. (25 maintenance days) That means that each year they will gross about 5.1 million and have costs of about 1.9 million. So they will make about 3.2 million a year. This means that it will take about 9 years to pay it off. This is a fairly good turn around time as I expect that the plant lifetime will be anywhere from 20 - 40 years.

So who wants one? Well that is kinda the whole point of this project. They hope to show that it works and then they can shop it around. They apparently have a potential customer in L.A. who produces about 11,000 metric tons of garbage. If all of this were converted to power that is a potential power supply of 12,423MWhs or a constant output of 517MW. That is a decent size power plant. It won't provide all of the power for LA. which once set a record of 22, 622MW required but it would at least provide power for about 336,000 homes.

I think that this technology will have a huge future. Let me know what you think.

Human Power: The new renewable power

There is an interesting invention that has come out of Simon Frasier University. If you want a video clip check this out. It is basically a knee brace that generates power as you walk. I will try to explain this for everyone that might read this.

When you step forward your body swings your calf forward. You can think of this like a swinging weight. If the energy of your swinging forward calf had to be completely stopped by your knee you would quickly wear your knees out. To stop that from happening our bodies have muscles that slow our leg down as it straightens out. You can imagine these muscles as the brakes for our legs. Again, without these muscles your knee would have to do all the stopping of the leg. This would be similar to always stopping your car with the emergency brake.

So why did I explain the way your leg works and not the device? Well you need to understand that your leg already has a brake built into it. What this new knee brace generator does is help slow your leg down at the end of the step. (This is similar to a hybrid car using the forward energy given off by a car as it brakes to charge the battery) It does this by having your leg turn a small generator ( the reverse of an electric motor). This does not create any extra effort to walk. It will not be like trying to walk in knee high water or anything like that. The only extra work your body does is carry around a few extra pounds, and that will diminish as future versions get even lighter.

Some other quick details that the article listed:
1) It generates about 5 watts of power while at a normal walk. According to my quick research on Duracell's website, a regular AA can generate about 1 watt of power for about 75 minutes. That means that this is as good as about 5 continually new AA batteries. This is actually a lot of power. According to the article 1 minute of walking could power 30 minutes of cell phone use.
2) It weighs about 1.6 kilograms (3 1/2 pounds)

So with all of this in mind what can we use it for?

The first application suggested in the article is that it could power electric prosthesis so that amputees would not have to wear battery packs. There are also a wide range of other similar medical suggestions. For example any sort of monitoring unit that a person might wear or any sort of device like a pacemaker that might require power.

Another application is of course military in nature. Soldiers could use it to power their GPS units and other handheld devices. This would mean that they would have virtually unlimited battery life and would be in less danger of falling out of contact.

The exciting applications are when you start to think about every day use. The reason many portable devices are so bulky and limited in there abilities is that they require enough battery life to be practical. Once you improve the battery life they can add many more applications.

A classic example is the IPhone. When it came out everyone complained that it could not use the internet and talk at the same time. This is something that is not possible for second generation GSM edge technology. That is why almost all new phones being offered by AT&T (the company selling the IPhone) use third generation GSM umts technology. It allows the user to surf the internet or send a video from their camera while still talking on the phone via their bluetooth. It also allows the internet to be faster. It is like going from dial-up internet to broadband. So why would Apple release a phone that is clearly inferior in its internet and data usage? The official reason is that the computer chip for umts is a power hog and it would shorten the battery life unacceptably. Until they can resolve this battery problem Apple won't release a 3G umts IPhone.

No imagine if battery life were not a problem for portable devices. The displays may be thinner, storage may be a little higher, screen size a little bigger for watching video, internet a little faster. There are also a variety of other things that may eventually be possible that will require a power source like this one. One is a shirt that has a tv built in. It is flexible screen technology and it would be like having the ipod screen built into a patch on your sleeve. If that is a little too weird for you then maybe just a shirt that can change its colour using electricity. You may also have shoes that track your running and workout stats. That would be cool.

I'd like to hear what other people think about this.

Robot Club (K-3) Pictures

Hi everyone. Robot club finally happened this week for the little guys in kindergarten to grade 3. The older kids still didn't because they had a symphony field trip but I'll get them next week. I though rather then make everyone wait for the bigger kids I would share some of the pictures from the little kids. I picked a variety that I thought everyone would like and I have a few comments about each one.

Name: Sarpiner
This one is a paper work ninja! It fills out tax forms faster than if they were grade 1 math!

Name: Angel
This one reminds me off the fat angels that Mom always prayed would sit on the car, to give us good traction, when we were driving in blizzards growing up.

Name: Astro Boy
This robot reminds me of a cross between Astro boy and Strong Bad.

Name: Flying Dutchman
The kid that drew this told me that what made this an awesome robot is that it can fly even though it is a boat. I agree with him. That does make it awesome

Name: Fudgicle

This robot looks like a fudgicle to me. I like to think that it makes fudgicles and gives them out to good boys and girls.

Name: Ih.
This robot apparently has the ability to talk backwards. When I first saw it I thought the image soaked through the paper, but her name that I blurred out was spelled correctly so she really did write it backwards.

Well everyone. Let me know what you think. Next week (3 days or so from now) we should have some pictures of lego "robots". Have a great night everyone.

Chris

Because I'm a nice wife and all

...I'm going to start telling stories on him until he starts updating his own blog:

Chris has a lot of trouble turning down free stuff. Normally it's small stuff he finds on the street and feels the need to put in his pockets. This stuff normally shows up in the dryer -- stray keys, puzzle pieces.

Today Chris handed me a calendar. "It's all about BC's history! And it's free! We hadn't bought a new calendar yet!"

I sort of shook my head, because considering the fact that all our previous calendars have been of Saskatchewan it's kind of weird to have a BC one. But then he reached down and pulled seven more calendars out of his bag.

"They were all free! Our school got sent too many and so I took a whole stack! We can put one in every room of the house!"

Right. Anyone want a free calendar?

Re-Starting Here Be Dragons

Hey everybody! This is Chris's wife, the Queen of West Procrastination (you may call me Maryanne). Since the last time our dear hero wrote here, he got himself another teaching job! (Trumpets and huzzahs.) This past fall he started teaching grade 10 (and 8/9 science) at a private Christian school.

What this means is that he has many new stories, pictures and videos to share with you about his adventures in Teaching Land. It also means that he's been insanely busy and hasn't had a chance to write about them yet. And so he's added me as a contributor here so that, at least to start off, he can provide me the raw materials and the stories, and I can write them out.

Hopefully we'll have the first one up tonight: Robot Club.

Update: Robot Club got postponed until next week, and so we may have to post something else first. Like Chris's video of a Pringle's can blowing up but the chips staying intact.

Sunday afternoons are existential

I quite literally never post and no one is likely to read this anytime soon. But this weekend has been a good one for stopping and examining my life and motives and I thought since I was making changes I might as well tell someone to be accountable and I also might as well start doing some of the things that I have been meaning to do but keep putting off (aka bloging).

Maryanne is away this weekend and despite the fact that I have uninterupted computer playing opportunity I have not felt like computing but have gone on long walks (5+ Kilometers up and around a small mountian) This has been good because I need to be more active and because I find that I always do my best thinking when I am out on a walk. It is for these to reasons that I am going to try and go for a good wlak daily. I think after work would be the best time for me as it is still daylight out and then I can reflect on the things from the day.

The walks and Church this morning (which was extra nice as we had people attending from Saskatchewan that I knew and that is always exciting) have got me thinking about the importance that I place on things in my life. Not in the usual way where you suddenly realize that something is more important but in the lifestyle way in which the things that you give the most time to are the things that are the most important. I realized that while I value activity I have not been making it impostant. That is why I'm starting the walks. I also realized that while I say that I value things like friends and family that I don't make a very big effort to include them in my life. Which is one of the reasons that I'm going to start blogging again.

One of the visiting Elders at church shared today about being overcomers and a whole buch of other stuff that I haven't fully processed yet. So this afternoon I'm going to enjoy the beautiful day head for a walk/hike pray, reflect and be existential which is something that I have missed doing on Sunday afternoons. That is al I really wanted to say. Have a great day.

More Changes

Okay so when it rains it pours, right? Well I hope that you can all follow this and that everyone who should get this in the next day or so does. I'm moving the site from blogger to my own site, www.christopherreed.net I will begin the transition either friday night or perhaps on saturday but it will happen. Also over the next week to a month expect to find that the links without drop down menus start working and lead you to other parts of my new site.

So why all the change? Well it is not a sudden thing. I began to play with this idea last september and began to seriously persue it over the last couple of months. I want to have a site that can act as a blog, a discussion forum on topics that interest me, a sharing of teaching resources, a secure password protected electronic portfolio for potential employeers, a homepage for myself and various other things. In other words I wanted more than blogger alone could provide.

So what can you expect in the next little while? I'm not completely sure. With my own domain I have the freedom I want to develop the site however I want. I do know that I built the following things into the menu.
1) The home button will not take you to my blog (although clicking on the banner will) but to my homepage that I plan on using myself. It will have the weather for where I live, some RSS feeds for things that interest me and will act as the perfect place to start al of my internet sessions.
2) The blog link will continue to take you to my blog.
3) The archive link will continue to show archived files.
4) The little building link is a Forum and will take you to the new forums part of my site where people will be able to share thoughts ideas. So initial forums will be: teaching resources to share, science articles or stories for discussion, possibly a religion discussion forum, etc.
5) The briefcase is also called a portfolio and will be where I have my electronic portfolio. Most of it will be open for everyone to enjoy and will contain things that I have done and will act like an electronic resume. The actual resume part and other documents that contain sensitive information will be passowrd protected.
6) The grammaphone is the music menu.
7) Sir Francis Drake is the friends menu.
8) The computer is computer related stuff.
9) The model of the atom that was outdated by about 1930-1940 is the science links. (eventually clicking on the atom may take you to the science forums)
10) The CBC logo is my news links.
11) The graduation hat is the education links (again, eventually clicking on the hat may take you to the education forums)
12) The dart board is the games, sports and entertainment links
13) The Bible is the religious related links (this to may eventually lead to the religious forums)
14) The question mark is the catch all list of links.

More may eventually come and the site may, no will change its looks over time. So see you all later at the new site.