Ed's Tech Tips

This past weekend my 17 month old granddaughter and I took our maiden voyage and a few additional trips on a bicycle together with the aid of the new iBert child bicycle seat. Unlike older types of seats that put the child on the rear of the bike behind the adult where the child has to either stare at the adult's back or look to the side, the iBert puts the child toward the front of the bicycle just behind the handle bars. This way the view of the child is greatly improved and thus the bicycling experience for the child, as well as, the adult pedaling the bike. The iBert offers a better center of gravity and removes the mystery of what the child is doing behind the parent.

I've used both styles of seats and I like the iBert. WeeRide offers a similar style of bike seat, but the child's legs are not lifted forward and the adult has to pedal with his knees sticking out. 

The iBert is fairly easy to attach to your bike and it fits many styles of bikes as is attested to in the iBert photo gallery. A single mounting bar bolts on to your handle bar stem so that when you turn the seat turns with you. It did not fit my bike because my shifters and brake handles were right over where the legs go, so I installed it on my on my daughter's bicycle. I had to slightly raise the stem to allow the braket to be bolted on. Also it is a tight squeeze between the seat and the iBert. When you stop you need to be able to touch the ground from the bicycle seat since there is not much room to stand over the top bar of the bicycle frame.

It does take some extra effort to bike when you have an extra 25 or so pounds on the bicycle in front of you. Plus, you cannot really stand up to power down on the pedals. Still, it's a fun time. Yesterday, my granddaughter grabbed my finger and pulled me over to our bicyce helmets and wanted to go for a ride. It's a great opportunity to introduce your child to a fun activity which may be a primary form of transportation for them when they grow up as oil supplies dwindle and cost increasingly more. At the same time it encourages the habit of wearing a bicycle helmet. As my granddaughter grows up she will not remember a time that she did not wear a helmet to ride a bicycle. As parents and role models for your children, wear your own bicycle helmet. How can you make a good argument for helmets if you do not wear one yourself? Plus, they can prevent serious head injuries.

Tags: bicycle, children. seat, helmets, recreation, family

Here’s a Japanese TV show segment about an amazing bicycle parking tower in Tokyo with a robotic elevator that can automatically store and retrieve 9400 bikes. Itis safe, secure and fast. A bike was retrieved within 22 seconds. When do you think we will see something like this in the United States?

A bicycling idea that is more likely to catch on in America is a citywide bicycle program in Paris France, involving 10,600 bikes in a bid to cut gridlock and give citizens a greener way to get around town. The program, named Vélib — a blend of vélo (bike) and liberté — allows users to swipe their credit card and take and return a bike from one of 750 stations in the city. Already cities, such as, Boston, New York, Montreal and San Francisco are looking to replicate the concept. Learn more aout it in the video below:

I was shopping in Whole Foods the other week and remembered I needed deodorant. Normally I use Mennen, but Whole Foods does not carry that brand. Instead I discovered Tom's of Maine's line of deodorants. I knew of Tom's toothpaste, but I did not know that they made deodorant.

One of the items that struck me was that the deodorant is chemical free and uses hops to control bacteria growth which causes the bad odor in the first place and not the sweat like some peple wrongly believe. I used to brew my own beer and know about hops, the cone shaped flower that gives beer it's bitterness which balances out the sweetness of the barely malt. It's use is two fold: adds flavor and acts as a preservative. One of the hoppiest types of beers is I.P.A. or India Pale Ale. It gets it names from the fact that it was originally specially brewed in England for transport around the great horn of Africa (this was in the days before the Suez canal) to India. Extra hops were added to keep it fresh upon it's arrival months later in India. You can still find the popular style made by many microbreweries today and is one of my favorites.  

In addition to the use of hops, Tom’s of Maine signed a contract in 2005 that will convert 100% of their electricity consumption to wind energy supplied by Green-e, a certified, nationally recognized symbol of independently verified renewable energy.  This contract will eliminate production of 1.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually—the equivalent of planting 214 acres of trees!  

Tom's also participates in or promotes a number of other environmental  and recycling practices and policies, but does the deodorant work? Well, so far so good. I tried the lemongrass fragrance, which smells quite pleasant and I have not had any complaints from my wife or co-workers.

I like the fact that Tom's uses natural ingredients and makes the most of technology in not only producing their products, but insuring that they are recyclable and using renewable forms of energy to produce them. They are successful at doing it and I hope more companies will follow their example. Now I'm going to give Tom's toothpaste a try. 

2008 is just around the corner and you may have already bought a calendar for the new year or may be expecting one under the Christmas tree, but you may not have sen on elike this. Here is a free simple compact calendar from David Seah that will make planning projects and events in the new year that much easier. From David's blog:

The problem with traditional calendar design is that they chunk time in months, not continuous days. I generally am thinking of things like:

• How many days are available, including weekends?
• When are critical deliverables?
• How much calendar time is needed to finish a task?
• What are the specific days we have to work around?

One way to do this is to use a long timeline, like a Gantt chart. All the days line up one after the other in a long horizontal format, which makes it easy to see how long something takes; distance is directly equatable to duration. The drawback of the Gantt chart is its lack of compactness.

The advantages of the Compact Calendar:

• The days are all packed together visually, so "distance" corresponds directly to time. This makes visually estimating how much time you need much easier, an visual advantage shared with the Gantt chart.

• The calendar for an entire year can fit on a single piece of paper, with plenty of room for notes. You can also just print out a section of it, for short projects.

• It still largely retains the monthly calendar format, with days of the week in columns, so it's a bit easier to use than a Gantt chart.

• Saturdays and Sundays are shaded differently, so we are not as tempted to plan our work schedule on them.

• It's easy to count weeks too. "Unit weeks" tend to be the building blocks of longer-term projects.

• You're forced to break up project tasks to fit into each 5-day work period. Gantt charts, by comparison, tend to draw long lines through the weekend because that's what lines want to do. Even if you don't work on the weekend, from a visual perspective it seems to imply that you should be working. This has always bugged me, from the perspective of visual gestalt and information design.

• Because we retain the days of the week in the same column, it's easy to mark recurring events that are tied to them. "Oh, every Friday we have a company meeting." Easy to see where they'll be; not so on the Gantt chart.

 You can download the calendar in Excel and PDF formats and in different country versions.

Despite all of the information available on the Internet and the portability of laptops and cell phones that can be used to access the Web, I still like old fashioned magazines. They are light weight, require no batteries, recharging or back-lights. They can be rolled up and tucked in a jacket pocket. The sharpness of the image and the clarity of color is pretty good, too. Also, despite my daily browsing of the the Internet and subscription to numerous RSS feeds I still find something I did not know on the printed pages. Yes, professional journalists are still needed despite the numerous amateur bloggers, such as myself, making their contributions to the collective. When there are portable devices that are affordable, flexible (meaning, able to be rolled up) and and easy to use I might consider giving up my magazines, but that does not appear to be happening anytime too soon.

Unless you have money to burn you should subscribe to magazines you read on a regular basis. You can subscribe in a number of different ways:

1. Fill out the postcards that fall out of the magazines, get a bill and pay by check via snail mail. This is the old fashioned approach.
   
2. Subscribe via the magazine drives that schools run as fundraisers. If you have kids, nephews, nieces, grandchildren or neighbors with kids you have probably been solicited with these offers.
3. Go to the magazine's web site and fill out the online forms and pay by credit card.
4. Or you could go to Amazon and select the magazines you want and after a couple clicks if you already have an account with Amazon you'll have a subscription at the same rate as the above methods but in much less time. 

 

A co-worker of mine here at the Alumnae Association office likes to keep the rest of us abreast of the air quality here in Western Massachusetts. The state recently exceeded safe ozone levels.

She recommended retiring that gas-powered lawn mower and relaxing in the tall grass. I agree with her to a point. I retired my gas mower some time ago and have used a push reel mower since, because my neighbors and wife frown upon tall grass in my yard.

There are many benefits to a push reel mower:

• They are pollution free and I'm not just talking about air pollution, but noise pollution as well. I find the whispering whish of the blades actually relaxing.
• They are less expensive to purchase.
• They are practically maintenance free. There is no gas, oil , air filters, and spark plugs to look after. The blades should be sharpened once a year and it can be done easily by yourself.
• They provide you with some exercise. Do we really need to sit on our butts to cut the grass?
• They are better for your lawn. Reel mowers gently evenly cut the grass like scissors, instead of whacking it like a gas engine mower.
• They are much safer. When you stop walking, it stops cutting. Children can learn to cut the lawn at a younger age because you do not need to worry about them loosing a toe. The trick is getting them to walk in straight overlapping lines.

Learn more at PeoplePoweredMachines.com, which feature the Brill mower, the Cadillac of push reel mowers that I aspire to own one day. I'll leave you with an intersting fact: Each weekend, about 54 million Americans mow their lawns, using 800 million gallons of gas per year and producing tons of air pollutants. Garden equipment engines, which have had unregulated emmissions until very recently, emit high levels of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides, producing up to 5% of the nation's air pollution and a good deal more in metropolitan areas.

A conventional lawn mower pollutes as much in an hour as 40 late model cars (or as much as as much air pollution as driving a car for 100 miles).

 

 

 

Tivo, On-Demand, digital cable, fiber optic and high definition television are all the rage, but my wife and I have decided to switch to basic cable much to the disappointment of my teenage children for the following reasons:  Cost, Quality (what they watch) and Quantity (how much they watch).

Cost:  Cable, beyond the basic is rather expensive. The basic service cost $8.99 a month and get me about a dozen channels. I get two of each of the network channels and a couple news channels and a couple home shopping networks and TV Guide to show me what I am missing. Standard analog cable is $53 and digital packages start at $65 plus the set top box and remote you need for each television to decode the signal. New on-demand movies are $3.99 and are only available for 24 hours. Yes, there are free movies but most of them are ones you do not care to watch or have seen numerous times already. Add a premium channel and you're at $84 a month. 

I have Internet access through my Cable company at $50 a month. The alternative is dial up or DSL. DSL cost about  $40+ a month and is slower than the cable. As a network administrator and web master I need the Internet access and dial-up is just too slow.

I've looked at DirectTV and while it cost a little less, there is the issue of the local broadcast stations, quality of reception and the additional cost of the set top boxes which are required. At least with cable, the boxes are optional for now.

Quality: My teenage daughters are drawn to some shows I would rather not have them watch, such as, "I Love New York" on VH1 which features a rude, ill mannered loud-mouthed woman from the popular "Flavor of Love" series. This is not a woman you want your daughters to imitate. Another I do not like and they love is "My Sweet Sixteen" which is about ridiculous birthday parties for spoiled rich kids. Then there are the various dating shows that feature shallow narcistic individuals.

There are means of blocking shows on the cable set top box or built-in vchip, but that is somewhat haphazard. You can block by show title (if you know the title and new titles are always being created), channel or ratings. Some shows have no TV ratings and the rating system is inconsistent. If I'm going to block half the shows, why am I paying for them?

There are some good shows on. I love the Discovery channel, History channel, TLC and Animal Planet, but my kids seldom watch those unless they are watching them with me. I am also a big fan of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi channel. It has no real redeeming educational or social value, but it is a cool sci-fi action drama. However, a new show will not be available until 2008. If I can wait that long I can wait for the show to come out on DVD.

Quantity: My kids watch way too much television. I encourage them to read, write or do other hobbies, but they almost always gravitate to the television, the path of least resistance. I am not home in the afternoons when they are after school and cannot switch off the TV. Plus, they will watch the same shows over and over again. The Disney Channel constantly runs re-runs of their shows and they the reason they can do so is because kids will watch them over and over and over again. I would think they would get bored of watching Zack and Cody again and again, but they don't.

In lieu of total television deprivation we will retain basic cable which guarantees good reception and subscribing to Netflix with which we can be more selective and still be able to watch televisions series that have made it to DVD. I like the fact that there are no late fees and that there is a wide selection to easily choose from. There is almost every concieveable category of videos.

My avoidance of set-top boxes may change in February 2009 when analog tv may no longer be offered since that is the deadline for over-the-air analog signals to cease to exist and only digital signals will be broadcast. This is a move that is being subsidized by the federal government. 

I am hoping that DVD will be around for a while or at least until Blueray or HD-DVD players come down in price to the same levels as DVD players.

As far as sports go, I am not a big sports fan. Actually I am not much of a sports fan at all. I tried to follow basketball, but to me it is hard to be loyal to a team that switches players all of the time which happens in any major league team sports today. Gone are the days when a person could spend their whole career on a single team. Could you imagine Larry Bird playing for anyone else besides the Celtics? My wife is a huge Bost Red Sox fan, but she is content to listen to the games on the radio or on the Internet.

I do not know how I managed to go this long on this blog without writing about coffee. It's my favorite beverage. I cannot (easily) start the day without a couple cups of coffee. I've gone so far as to roast coffee beans in a hot air popcorn popper. I have a drip coffee maker, a French press, a Starbucks Barista expresso machine and a burr coffee grinder. I have to thank my sister for the last two items who is even more of a coffee nut than me. I also overhauled the office coffee when I started working at the Alumnae Association. It had consisted of large cans of ground Folgers or Maxwell House which I cannot stand. I brought in some of my home roasted coffee and a grinder to introduce the staff to fresh ground coffee. I then educated them about organic and fair trade coffee. We now order coffee from Dean's Beans and a have a large Bodum grinder to ground the beans for each pot of coffee. Everyone in the office are now coffee snobs.

Getting back to the title of this article, cold brewed coffee. I cannot stand room temperature coffee. I drink coffee black, but it has to be hot. I like iced coffee, but has to be sweetened. Cold brewed coffee is a method of brewing a concentrated form of coffee that you add to hot water or milk. Seattle's Best used the method for it's cold coffee drinks. Also, the coffee is low in acid and convenient to make. It is ideal for coffee martini's, which I have yet to try. Brew your once a week and keep a pitcher in the refrigerator. easy to make. No special equipment is necessary, but there are companies that will sell you some if you want.

Toddy Coffee is a company built around cold brewed coffee. They sell a $35 pitcher and filter system, as well as, already brewed coffee and ground coffee. There is another company called Filtron, which sells consumer and commercial models. Deans Bean's uses the commercial model to make a concentrate used by Berkshire Brewing Company for their coffee porter beer. However, like I said, no special equipment is necessary. You probably already have the equipment needed to cold brew. I have not tried it yet, because it takes a pound of coffee, but as the weather warms up, I might try it out since it sounds like a better method for cold coffee drinks. Check out INeedCoffee.com for some cheap cold coffee brewing methods.

No electronic gadgets here. Although I have seen a Dremel electric carving tool and strobe lights. I like my Jack-O-Lanterns simple. I did not even use a pumpkin carving kit with the specialized tools. Just a pencil, sharp paring knife and a large metal spoon for carving out the insides. I got  a number of compliments on it. I was happy with it. It was inspired by the Pumpkin King from the Tim Burton movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

This is the first of my low-tech solutions in a high tech life. Expect to see more.

I like to visit 43folders.com which is about personal productivity, life hacks, and simple ways to make your life a little better. One of those simple ways to make your life better is to use a bound notebook for, guess what, taking notes! I'm not talking about a spiral bound notebook, but a hard bound book with ruled pages and a ribbon for marking your loaction that I always considered useful for personal dairies or journals. However, they are idea for taking notes. I was an avid notetaker in college and need to get back in that habit.

Notebook computers can be cumbersome even though they continue to shrink in size and those that are handhelds are difficult to type on. Laptops are not that easy to use on your lap and can get downright hot. In addition, batteries die and there is not always an outlet where you need it one.

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