Vino-Tourism

A great article by Steve Dryden in Mexidata. If you want to read about this years wine festival he has a good summary of the main events. The main page for the Festival de Vindimia is here. (altho it is a somewhat heavy flash page.. ergg)

Every summer the wineries of Baja California, Mexico pool their talents and wares to host an amazing series of wine, food, music and cultural events throughout the region. Most of these festivities take place in Ensenada and/or the Valle de Guadalupe, with a few events in other areas. You may need to get a bank loan to attend some of the events, but if you’re selective and practical you can enjoy some great wine, food and entertainment.

via mexidata

Lens baby; shift tilt lens?

Seems like a simple application of a shift tilt lens with a bunch of added optics attachments. I'm sure I could have lots of fun with a Lensbaby set.. maybe I'll become religious and pray for one.. maybe not..

An interesting solar concentrator

Seem pretty much like a fresnel lens, but in reflection behind the optic (actually I think it is the upper part of a series of nested parabolic reflectors.) Anyway, from SVV tech , it looks neat. But, I don't know how they patent this stuff, its cool, but not too original. Anyway... good luck..

Draw a parabola with a carpeters square and string

Thanks to the link from Red Rock Heliostats, here they outline a simple way to draw a parabola.

Used car parts for solar power

I heard about this a few years back, out of MIT the Solar Turbine Group has a system made from car parts and parabolic trough to create power and cooling. Their system which uses an organic Rankine cycle is described on their web page. This is the type of project that I'd like to see made open source.

Solar Roasted Coffee

A well done project of using solar energy to roast coffee. I've talked with many people about the idea, and there have been several sites with attempts at this, but Solar Roast Coffee seem to be the only example of industrial size solar coffee roasting. They just had a contest end where they offered $1000 prize for an electronics package to track the sun (currently they do it by hand). Very interesting, and well done!!

Sundoller, active daylighting

I've seen several ways to actively track the sun and send the light indoors. Sunflower's solution is the simplest of optical design, though I'm not sure why they don't use a full parabolic (I see, it is a 2D reflector, makes sense.) And I really hate these sites that can't tell you what they cost! Call for a quote my ass.. come on, at least order of magnitude.. $1000, $10,000.. Is that too much to ask? Its like an overpriced restaurant, " if you have to ask the price, its too much for you.."

Plasma arc garbage eater

S4 Energy Solutions uses a plasma arc into molten glass breaks garbage into its base elements. Metal sinks and dielectrics melt and float. The gases escape and can become combustibles.
Could this be used with a heliostat array? I think yes, might make the worlds coolest solar toilet

Molten salt research

An interesting video from the UW-Madison lab that studies molten salt; an apparently useful material in solar applications. I'm still curious how you transport the salt when it is solid.



via PDD net

Back online

I've started my new line of investigation at CICESE in renewable energy (we still haven't set the lab name, it is currently the "Alternative energy lab" but I'm not in love with the name; any ideas?)
Unfortunately I could not get Qumana to go through the firewall/proxy so I've now switched to Marsedit.

A brief recap; a few weeks back was the Guateque and the Feria de Hongo. Both great events and very full!

This coming week I will be filling applications for funding and also will start looking at opensource hardware. If you have any thoughts on the matter add a comment.

Que vereuenza, 0.33% of Gross Internal Product for science and Tech in Mexico

In an interesting article in Green Momentum that looks at the investment the Mexico, in comparison to Brazil, is investing in its science and technology. Correction( $1.3, thanks Alex!) 1,300 million USD is the  Conacyt budget! A first world country should be putting 1-2% of their Gross Internal Product into science and education. Brazil is at 1.2%. Mexico is 0.33% !! That is a disgrace, and the Mexican people should realize this is why their country is not advancing!

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33 of the most healthiest foods

A huffington post article outline healthy foods for post hospital visits.

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Writing a thesis; learn to touch type

One of the best things I did before writing my thesis, was to take two weeks of free time, and learn to touch type. This will help you to write quicker and more accurately since you can read as you type.

I used a program for Mac called Ten Thumbs, I saw in Life Hacker a link to a free online program to teach you called typing web. When I learnt I recalled hearing that there was a different keyboard layout called Dvorak. In the apple keyboard menu I can set a shortcut to switch between QWERTY and Dvorak (QWERTY); the brackets note that pressing the apple key uses the QWERTY settings. This helped me to learn because looking at the keys didn't help you at all, so I couldn't cheat.

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Femtosecond laser makes super bright light bulb

Reported in U. of Rochester web anouncements a femtosecod pulsed laser exposure to a tungsten light filament would increse the light production eficiency by 50%. This would be something of interest to CICESE's optics department! The current proposued theory is that the femtosecond laser, which is well known to cause the formation of nanometer sized particles and defects, gives the material a complex three dimensional structure with varialions smaller then a light wavelength. How this couples into light will described in the forthcomming publication in Physical Review Letters.

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