July 2009 Archives

A curved bridge in a small town frames a timeless stone church. A spark in my imagination turns a smile. I am looking at a castle on the Rhine River or am I in Venice.

Forget that I am beneath a poorly drained, decaying concrete railroad bridge in Red Lion, Pennsylvania... for a moment I am dreaming.

This is the beauty of rail trails.

It's a moment of peace beyond the bustle of life. It's a new view on the world.

It's potential.

It's a preservation of history, a preservation of green space; a preservation of a corridor of land for common use now and for the future.

The Red Lion Mile rail trail will run from the railroad station and museum on Main Street in Red Lion through the borough west, through some current and former industrial sites into fields and woods near Springwood Road.

Your donation during a free, benefit concert this Saturday will help continue this dream.

The video is a tour of the trail with music by two of the artists who will be performing for the benefit concert. A map to the concert and the trail is included.

There is a strange reflection looking out my mirror, the one I usually reflect on others at an angle so that only I can see and interpret.

York Daily Record correspondent Teresa McMinn recently observed me tweeting.

I looked back to make sure my photographer, Paul Kuehnel, hadn't been gobbled up by a snapping turtle or some other wild beast along the wetlands path while on assignment at a butterfly survey earlier this month.

LED lights for home lighting are appearing everywhere, but mostly packaged in arrays of smaller bulbs that look like an old Tandy science experiment kit.

Coming across a built from scratch, high output (single source) General Electric GU10 track light bulb in Walmart is a sign that the technology is evolving and going mainstream.

My halogen track light bulbs consume 50 watts each. A single GE LED bulb uses 4 watts. Of course, the LED bulb doesn't quite have the light output (it's close). The color temperature is great, almost matching a halogen track light.

An LED bulb is a highly efficient semiconductor as opposed to the simple heated wire in a halogen bulb, so the interaction with dimmers can be unpredictable. I'm surprised it even works at all with the Lutron dimmer.

Using a Lutron Maestro electronic dimmer, I was able to get the GE LED light to dim like a halogen bulb when combined with halogen bulbs. Alone, the LED bulb didn't function properly. It just stayed on during the whole dimming cycle. I would have to guess that the power demand of the bulb is so low that it is below the minimum load of the dimmer to make it function.

@paulkuehnel http://greenmesh.com/ LED bulb dimming experiment cycles interact w/ vid camera fon http://myvid.me/bzII

@paulkuehnel http://greenmesh.com/ LED light falling on a moving fan will reveal the cycling of light http://myvid.me/bzVw

I sent email to GE asking about the ability of a dimmer circuit to handle the bulb and am still waiting for a reply. There isn't any information on the GE lighting website about this bulb, though they appear to refer to components used in the bulb.

The GE LED bulb also cost me $24, so large scale experimenting with LED bulbs and my Lutron dimmer is costly.

It's interesting to note that 12, 4 watt LED bulbs equal the load of one 50 watt halogen track light bulb.

It is also interesting to note that if I were to turn on all 20, 50 watt halogen bulbs in my downstairs track lights, I would be consuming 1000 watts, while 20 LED bulbs would consume only 80 watts.

It's easy to see how multiplying the energy savings power, plus a lifespan eight times the halogen bulb can add up.

It also made me conscious that of a good power spike could possible damage $480 worth of light bulbs. Maybe it's time for a whole house surge protector.

Sharp is introducing a variable color temperature and dimming LED bulb ( via a remote)

It's shameful. EWG tested 1,606 sunscreens for last week's special report, and we found that 3 out of 5 offer inadequate protection from the sun or actually contain toxic ingredients.

Yet the federal Food and Drug Administration still refuses to hold the manufacturers accountable for their misleading advertising and dangerous products - despite more than 30 years of promises. -- Ken Cook President, Environmental Working Group

2009 Guide

Honda is adding a CR-Z sports car hybrid and Fit hybrid to the offerings for 2010. Honda's New CEO Takanobu Ito says all cars could be hybrid in 20 years to meet emission standards. (wsj.com)

Mindy Metz saw people donating to the victims of the Chestnut Street fire and was moved to help sort items. Her home is near a donation drop-off center at the First Church of Christ, Scientist on North Broad Street in York.

Metz said that she hadn't volunteered much in the past, but that she was moved by the heart of the people she saw giving.

This is a magic moment for the human heart.

The same heart that moves a company to look out for their employees (and their consumers) and the employees to look out for their company even when it doesn't always make sense from a point of personal gain.

The same heart that seeks to conserve resources so future generations can simply live, to look out for other creatures that share the earth - to love and respect life.

It's been ten months since I put my nuclear powered clothes drier into action. Since then, I have used my monopoly powered clothes drier twice during an extended rainy period when going naked would have been the only alternative.

My natural gas bill for June 2009 was $34.5 and my electric bill $31.5.

Aside from saving a lot of money and taking a moment to enjoy the outdoors each week in ritualistic meditation, I have come to the conclusion that the sun is a great stain remover.

After washing these kaki shorts one day, I realized that some tomato sauce that I forgot to spot was lingering. Three hours in the direct sun and the stain was gone.

Lemon juice can accelerate the sun's stain fighting potential.

Over the past week, family and co-workers have bombarded me with cheerful questions and ugly comments about Twitter. This forced me to think about and explain this seemingly stupid activity.

THINK YOU ARE ALL HEADED FOR THE LOONY BIN WHERE THE FOLKS IN CHARGE CONTROL THE OTHERS WITH ELECTRONIC GAMES. THAT TWITTER AND FACEBOOK STUFF AIN´T FOR US FISHING FOLK
- My uncle

Twitter is scaled texting. You can talk to one person or you can talk to thousands. It is dynamic conversation unlike email, instant messaging or texting.

Twitter is free from the confines of cell phone company text charges and text multi-media messaging for pictures and video. It travels as pure data.

You choose the portal (desktop or phone) and mode of transmission. You can sent tweets from text, the twitter website or an application on your phone.

twttr is abt compressing yr thoughts & efficiently communicating the moment.

Twitter identifies with a generation of short attention span thinkers who grew up texting. They don't read the newspaper and won't wait for our website to load. It's reading the newspaper without taking your Ritalin.

Twitter is more about a concept of communication than it is about locking you into software, phone carrier, or App store.

I use a Blackberry Storm smart phone and the application ÜberTwitter.

ÜberTwitter is a beta program downloaded from an independent vendor not tied to your phone carrier or your phone manufacturer.

Using ÜberTwitter, I can expand my tweet by embedding videos and still pictures that I create on my phone and tie them to my relative GPS location.

Using bit.ly, I can tell the world about web links and track who is looking at them.

With ÜberTwitter, I can search the world, or my GPS location, or my friends, for other people who are thinking what I am thinking at any given moment.

Twitter uses all this freedom from monopolies to harness free choice which sparks innovation.

Twitter is a raw communication tool to help the mind expand rather than a button to push or a pill to pop. Perhaps this is why it is a hard concept to grasp and a definite reason to try Twitter before it is harnessed for revenue streams, gobbled up and repackaged for the masses to consume (understand) without question.

Sometimes the challenge begins after you come back from shooting a fire. I should have taken it as a hint when my car was "hosed in" for the first time in my career that this night would not die easy.

It just has to make you smile though to see a man, who has just saved his dog after being told to evacuate, find a moment to praise firefighters even after his house was destroyed.

The Hanover made Fitz Waterwheel at the Wallace-Cross Mill historic site in East Hopewell Township brought new efficiency to 19th century water power.

According to tour guide Wayne Spyker, the buckets of the wheel allowed the weight of the trapped water to carry the wheel a full 180 degrees.

The Fitz wheel could more efficiently trap energy from falling water and turn it into usable energy. In this way, a 19th century mill could do more work with less water.

The Fitz wheel also had the advantage of less splash than a traditional wooden wheel that resulted in less ice buildup locking the wheel in winter.

There is some irony that the wheel, installed in 1922, is now demonstrated with with an electric pump powered by a regional electrical monopoly that pushes electric power many miles through wires probably generated by a combination of coal, nuclear, and perhaps a little bit of water

It would be very difficult with the current population load and the resulting need for government control of waterways to just harness the power of a stream in your backyard.

From: @paulkuehnel Sent: Jul 4, 2009 10:55a

I'm diggin this new LED desk lamp. Its white, its bright, and it takes 3.2 watts http://myvid.me/7y3N

sent via UberTwitter

Every once in awhile gravity takes over and things tumble off my home computer work station. This time my aging Ikea lamp tumbled, did a back flip, missed the cat and met the floor in two pieces.

I took the opportunity to buy a new LED desk lamp that I found at Lowes. The unit puts out a nice white light.
.
The LED array replaces a 35 watt halogen bulb with 3.2 watts of energy consumption. With a 100,000 hours expected life, my lamp could be burning continuously for over 10 years.

About six months ago, I found this interesting clear white LED standard Edison socket bulb for my back porch at Ace Hardware in Manchester. It replaced a 40 watt bulb with a couple watts of consumption.

I recently noticed a wide selection of LED bulbs at Walmart, with specialty bulbs for track lighting.

Most of the currently commercially available LED bulbs will not work on dimmers, but they are out there for a price.

Jack Kosko from Old war planes tell a new story still has the car, complete with bill of sale, that he met his wife in 60 years ago. It's a '48 Mercury. "I have alot of soft spots", Kosko said.

Some men have life-changing experiences in their youth. Others spend their lives dreaming. A few have the opportunity to work through these moments later in life.

In Fawn Township, a group of retirees is turning discarded aviation memories into working studies of history.

Some men have life-changing experiences in their youth. Others spend their lives dreaming. A few have the opportunity to work through these moments later in life.

In Fawn Township, a group of retirees is turning discarded aviation memories into working studies of history.

Jack Kosko flew 18 missions in a Grumman TBM Avenger as a radioman during World War II.

"It took me out there and brought me back," Kosko said of the Avenger.

One of the planes made a bad landing on the aircraft carrier USS Langley. Kosko salvaged an altimeter and voltmeter before the bomber was pushed into the sea.

Today, the first Avenger Kosko ever restored still flies at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, carrying those gauges with it.

Kosko owns the Fawn Township property where the group gathers about twice a week to restore the old planes.

One of the men, Bill Butler, remembers how his father, a naval aviator during WWII, would take him to air shows.

"I can't fly, and I like to watch," said the Sykesville, Md., resident of the hobby, "so this is my big chair."

Frank Darney, of Jefferson, was an Air Force mechanic during WWII and with the Maryland National Guard for almost 40 years.

"We never had to do much with these planes back then other than daily inspections," he said.

While working to reconstruct the bomber doors of the group's second Avenger, Darney said, "This gives me something to look forward to."

Progress here isn't measured by time. It can take more than five years to reconstruct a vintage aircraft. But as Kosko will tell you when you meet him, "There are no problems, only challenges."