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?)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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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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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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Starting a hacker space in Ensenada would be an interesting addition to the city with its collection of scientists and artists. Featured today on Boing Boing a video on hacker spaces.
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In my current pursuit for a new bike (which I hope to make as shown in a previous post)
I got a lot of riding on the bike trails in Toronto, which are under supported by the city there, but still rock in comparison to what is here in Baja! ( I should also note that Toronto put them in back in the 70-80's when the city wasn't much bigger then Ensenada is now!
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From SurgarStacks.com, images of fast food drinks with sugar cubes representing the amount of sugar it contains. Kinda makes you want it that muc
via BoingBoing
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Bibayoff, my favorite Russian-Mexican vineyard in the Valley is bringing a Spanish tradition to the Guadalupe valley. I'm hoping on going!!
TOMATINA MEDIEVAL EN BIBAYOFF - Lugar: Viñedos Bibayoff
29 de Mayo del 2009 // Fecha: 29 de Mayo 2009
Hora: 5:00pm
Actividad: Cena y Campamento Medieval.
Precio: $400 pesos preventa $500 el dia del evento
Fecha: 30 de Mayo 2009
Hora: 1:00pm
Actividad: Tomatina Medieval!
Precio: $400 pesos preventa $500 el dia del evento
Precio ambos dias: $700 pesos
Mas información:
Vinifera Enoteca & Wine bar, Av. Ruíz esquina Reyerson 37-b Centro tel:(646) 178.77.70
Nextel: 152*153960*3 y 152*153960*4
covelli_vinifera@yahoo.com.mx
Rest. Uno Tijuana Tel.664 681 32 03 y 152.202290.3
via Vino Club
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An impressive design from Speed Studio Design, from the quick folding design to the ratcheting drive train.
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Possible anti-obesity effects of white tea have been demonstrated in a series of experiments on human fat cells (adipocytes). Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Nutrition and Metabolism have shown that an extract of the herbal brew effectively inhibits the generation of new adipocytes and stimulates fat mobilization from mature fat cells.
via EurekAlert! photo via SunnyCanuck on Flickr
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I've been coughing in my sleeve since I worked at Magoo's Hamburgers. Not sure why, just seemed smarter.. Well, here is a tacky video about it.. Enjoy
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Finally, there is now a couple of websites that list the pics of the week from one of my favorite podcasts Macbreak Weekly.
They are; MBW Picks of Week and MBW Picks. Thanks for the sites. I usually listen while walking (or some other activity that lasts an hour) that leavs me without internet connection. And blasted web 2.0 names are creative, but a pain in the bus to remember!
via: targuman
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Well, not really, but it is less of a crime. This law seems similar to what passed in Canada, where small amounts (personal stash) is not illegal.
Under the bill, it would be legal to have 25 milligrams of heroin, a fifth of an ounce of marijuana or half a gram of cocaine. The bill also makes it legal to possess small amounts of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines and peyote.
This way people with large amounts are called dealers, and can be treated more harshly. I like to think that this law as well will allow for the legalization of all drugs where to sell requires a licence. Personally, legalize drugs, charge lots of tax, and force the Mafia either out of business through competition, or make them into mainstream businesses. From a use point of view, this would also allow for open competition of growers, and better control of product; i.e. protecting the citizen better. Only thing left is for the US to change its policy as well, and all of North America will be finally leaving the puritan experiment started in the early 20th century!
via NY times
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This seems like a useful device for computer control/monitoring. It looks a little simpler than the arduino. I'm thinking it would be good for simple prototypes.
Minia is an Usb, plug n play & multiplatform device that allows the computer to comunicate with the external /physical world. Since it´s open hardware, you can customize it and use in many ways with different kind of sensors, with differents softwares and for different applications such Audio, video, measurement of phisical parameters, etc.
Minia comes with 6 analog inputs at 10 bit of resolution (1024 steps) Minia uses the Hid protocol, this is a high speed protocol that runs directly over USB so, no drivers needed for this device in any platform (linux, macosX, windows) and no more pain with ancient protocols like “serial”. Hid has extremely low latency so the sensor response is inmediate.
via Harkopen
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This is a great way to approach the problem, and done with a sound economic viewpoint! What do I see, the need for small (1 MW) power plants to charge batteries. Home charges, fleets of tow trucks with battery changers, etc... Come on Federal Gov. of Mexico. Start supporting this! Now is your opportunity to make the beautiful country that should be here!!!
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via Bong Boing
I'll be making this next weekend. I'm surprized that the cardboard doesn't burn...
The Kyto Box is a cardboard box, with an interior that's painted black, aluminum foil-covered top panels, and covered with clear acrylic. It gets hot enough to boil water. Its inventor, Kenyan-based Jon Bohmer, won a £51,000 prize from the Forum for the Future.
The box will be produced in a factory in Nairobi. He told CNN: "This took me about a weekend, and it worked on the first try. It's mind-boggling how simple it is."
Xeriscaping is landscaping with low water consumption plants. There are many links on how and what plants to use. Of course, they are in English, and with English names. Transferring this to Spanish has been difficult, and the people in garden centers and landscaping know very little about this.
In this post I have a list of resources that I have found in the US/world. If you have translations for these plants, or know of a good garden center, please leave a comment, or mail me and I'll make a post in the future.
Drought resistant plant overview from about.com
Arizona Municipal water users association on plants for the Arizona Desert.
A great introduction to California plants from Las Pilitas Nursery; their printable guide to drought resistant planting, and a guide to designing your 
Drought-Tolerant Gardening: The Cheaper Landscaping Alternative
A simple D.R. landscape plan
A well known plant is the Yucca. Here are articles on Yuccas and their care in the garden.
I would love to make an Ensenada plant guide. If you find this interesting, and have information, or a garden that you wold like to share, write me or leave a comment. I can come take pictures and add links.
Happy gardening
UNIDOS POR ENSENADA invitan
PASEO FAMILIAR CICLISTA
LUGAR: frente a la VENTANA DEL MAR en ENSENADA B.C.
RECORRIDO: BLVD.COSTERO IDA Y VUELTA.
Asiste con bicicleta,patines,carreola o a pie. TE DIVERTIRAS.
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On the list of projects that we have planned for Hogaza Hogaza is to start delivery in Ensenada by bike. I knew a bunch bike couriers back in Toronto, but it is nice to see that other businesses have been taking the idea of bike transportation more seriously.
Jed Lazar doesn't ride an average bike. Then again, he’s not riding it for average reasons. Although many of us don a helmet and mount our cycles in order to get to work, pick up groceries or just spend an afternoon outside, Lazar’s reason for cycling is all business. Co-founder of Soupcycle, Lazar rides his bike around the streets of Portland delivering handmade, organic soup. But because of a multitude of reasons, Lazar’s business isn't the only one that’s harnessing the power of pedaling.
What Ensenada is experiencing in the recent push for a bike lane by groups like Grupo Pro Ciclovía is a trend throughout North America;
“I think the recent explosion in biking is both a return on our communities’ investments in encouragement programs and infrastructure - bike lanes, paths, bike boulevards, etc. - and a sign of increasing concern about economics, health, and the environment. We are seeing a much greater diversity of people out biking and even bike commuting these days,” says Stephanie Noll, Bicycle Transportation Alliance Programs Manager. Noll also points out that the reason for choosing cycles over cars is multi-faceted. “The increasing cost of driving or concern about the environment alone are generally not enough for most of our communities’ members to imagine themselves on a bike.”
This trend can be in all types of business;
Another Portland based company, Q19, operates its sustainable cleaning service (they use 100% ecological and petrochemical-free cleaning agents) with the help of bikes for the same reason. “Q19 came about out of a local property management firm’s need for an accountable, high quality, consistent service provider… Utilizing Bakfiets, or Dutch work bikes, became a vital way to achieve all of our objectives- creating happy, healthy, empowered work environments, limiting our impact on the environment, and building a financial viable company,” says Hannah Sandmeyer, Q19’s Managing Director.
In an eco-conscious era, both Q19 and Soupcycle have seen a positive customer response; running operations with bikes proves the companies’ commitments to responsible business plans. “People are drawn to Q19 because we provide a high quality sustainable service in addition to representing change they can believe in,” says Sandmeyer
But it is important to note that all these businesses have come about thanks to infrastructure that exists in Portland. I hope that the Ensenada city hall can see the economic benefits to the city by bicycle based infrastructure.
story via Boing Boing and Wend Magazine;
Pedaling to Profit: The Upswing of Bike Powered Business
I've been meaning for year to learn how to make my own web pages, but it has just not been that important yet. When I first made the Hogaza Hogaza web page I did it with iWeb. This was... ok.. but not very powerful, and when iWeb 2 came out, I could not modify the old web page. So I got my hands on Dreamweaver, but never really understood what was going on. I also started playing with flash, but did not get too far (I wanted to make presentations and cartoons).
Finally I have some time and I was shown a great trick on how to use photoshop to export to Dreamweaver. Hopefully I'll combine that with a sliding effect done through jQuery, but this is all done in the code, so I needed to at least learn the basics.
I found a great tutorial on HTML. I feel much more confident, and also finally understand what CSS is!
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I remember when I was just entering grad school and I thought that the coolest job would be to work in a company that was think tank that used creativity, and science to approach current challenges. Like all great ideas, many people have similar ones, so when I saw the TED talk by Bill Gross I was excited to see what they were working on.
The talk focuses on a solar thermal power generator, using a sterling engine combined with a small heliostat array. They used evolutionary algorithms to help in the design (something that I've been interested in for while as well, but never tried).
His company, Idea Lab, is full of great work, and seem to have produced a lot of good technologies; well worth a few minuets to go through their projects.
Another great talk is given by Saul Griffith, who started one of my favorite sites Instructables. He talks about kites and their use as a renewable resource; there is an earlier talk on self replication, also well worth the watch. He has some interesting companies that are also worth a look; Makani Power, SQUID Labs;
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I try to stay out of US politics (at least formally) by there were a couple of good jokes in this one.. tyranny definition. Really, did these people not go to school? Sure, complain all you want, but please try not to change the meanings of words.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| Baracknophobia - Obey | ||||
| ||||
This seems like a well done blog on enviormental concerns. Written in spanish; there are not many of these. I'll keep posting interesting stories here.
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La intención del evento, comentó, es vincular al sector restaurantero nacional con los productores pecuarios, acuícolas y vitivinícolas de la región, por lo que el domingo 19 de septiembre se llevará a cabo la Feria del Pescado y el Marisco, y la asamblea será el lunes 20 y martes 21.
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La intención del evento, comentó, es vincular al sector restaurantero nacional con los productores pecuarios, acuícolas y vitivinícolas de la región, por lo que el domingo 19 de septiembre se llevará a cabo la Feria del Pescado y el Marisco, y la asamblea será el lunes 20 y martes 21.
from ensenadahoy.com
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For anyone interested, they have a website with listings that seem quite useful; Ensenada Cruisers.
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There are large groups interested in human powered vehicles such as the International Human Powered Vehicle Association. I wont go to into this, but a search on HPV in del.icio.us gives good results (also known as velomobile).
An open engineering design for a simple recumbent bike where the steering is controlled by shifting your center of gravity called the python has a good following of makers and builders (a great read is their Python Wiki.) There are other designs like the build your own recumbent trike designs. But I want to avoid excessive wheels, again it comes to portability, and a big trike is more to lock up ect... Here are some good videos of pythons in action; vid1, vid2. (right click and hit 'save linked file'.)
To make a bike truly care free it needs to be portable. This needs some bicycle origami like that used to make the Brompton Bike or the Dahon Bikes Flo folding mountain bike (the best of the folding bikes that I could find; the Brompton just doesn't look cool good, sorry.) I have a couple of ideas of what I'd like to try. Part of my problem is that the bike needs to be able to ride off-road, and do it comfortably.
Also I'd like to address the drive train. Ideally the gearing is very important. I would like some type of continuous gearing. Designs exist like the NuVinci, aimed at geriatrics. I've also been thinking about the need to use a chain drive, and if something different could be tried.
As well I would like to add in a type of regenerative braking and motor assistance. I've been thinking a great deal about compressed air propulsion, and paying attention to compressed air powered cars; MDI. The use of pistons does seem antiquated and the tesla turbine seems to be an interesting type of turbine for a DIY project; youtube is full of interesting videos presented by gyroscope.com (see video below.) Here is a great video with a tesla pump as well; the fun starts at about 6min in.
Untill I have a work space to make some prototypes I'll be in the planning stage, here is to hoping for a lab soon!
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If a scientist discovers something in the woods, but no one hears about it, was it really found? From the point of view of the society and culture, no. Science is by definition a culture phenomenon. What one person can discover is almost irrelevant, but when the work of a group is combined, then science becomes powerful. In my thesis there are a great number of equations, most of which I would take a lifetime to derive and test myself, but because the work was performed and successfully shared, I could use that work to support my own.
Here is a list of 10 writing tips for scientists. There are many more words of wisdom on the inter-web. But this list covers some of the most important aspects.
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Really.. I really don't care enough to bother. But, if you feel the need to make a statement, then place into public record your lack of belief. I'm of the state of mind that ignoring something is the true way to make it go away. But if religion tries to reestablish itself in government, then that is a different story.
This is a list of scientist, science minded people who are on twitter. I think the idea of maintaining a list like this is great. I like the idea of hearing what other scientists around the world are talking about. I think this is a great idea!
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A bike lane on to Sauzal, combined with the lack of parking in many of the schools (CICESE, UABC, UNAM ) at the entrance to Ensenada could give a recreation lane and allow student to commute by bicycle.
The newest group that is actively pursuing the government to build the bike lane, Groupo pro ciclovia, has several people giving radio interviews:
Viernes 27 marzo - 8:00am - radio 1010AM
Martes 1 abril - 9:20am - radio 1590AM
The group has also started a yahoo group. If you know people who would be interested, pass the web page around. You can send the organizeres a email if you want to be on the mailing list.
Next week is bike week on this blog, I'll be posting the interesting projects that I've found on line, and some new ideas to try.
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I remember seeing this TED talk a few years back, and I even tried to use an amimation in a talk on sustainable water production that I gave in CICESE a few weeks back. I recommend stopping by gapminder and checking it out.
**I'm going to try and start publishing in english and spanish. I'm looking for a good dictionary (free ideally) to help my grammer.. So today is baddly written.. sorry about this.**
Recuerdo que vi este platica de TED algunos años passado. Entente a usar una animacion en una platica que hago en CICESE hasta dos semanas sobre el producion sustenible de agua potable. Te recomienden a passar gapminder y ver la.
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a simple DIY solar thermal project.
Here is an idea that I was thinking of as well, using the drip-irrigation tubing in thier pond heater.
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I've been getting New Scientist emails for a few years now, but something has always bothered me. While any given article has its ups and downs, there seems to be a very opinionated editorial slant. I've noticed this with a slew of anti-marijuana reporting where studies a chemical imbalance caused by smoking pot led to schizophrenia. But the results, when the original text is read, is not even close to conclusive even thought the article proclaims a strong relation.
The attack on Darwin's theories seem to be more of the same slanted editorial content.
What science rag is good to read? Leave in the comments.. (Dawkins suggests Discover and SEED.)
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Last night the CEARTE in Ensenada presented an exibition of Chinese art. all photos on flickr
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While surfing a form for arduino projects, I ran across a post by Steve Roberts who continues in his quest for "playing NASA" which can be followed on his blog where he has moved to a salling ship for his nomadic funness.
I was there looking for an opensource datalogger. Something that can be placed outside and take temperature, RH, dew point for several weeks and be easily plotted on computer. I'm considering combining with a small stepper motor controlled heliostat with potovotalic to both measure solar intensity and keep the system charged.
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a youtube video of condensation traps in India. The troughs linned with plastic seems like a good idea; make it facing the wind for greater exposure and cleaning of sand?
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I've been working on the Hogaza Hogaza web page and collected a list of good bakeries that have been inspiration to us.
In Quebec there are La Patisserie Belge, Premier Moisson, LA FOURNÉE BIO, and Piallard. In Quebec city there is also a great chocolate shop called Choco Musee.
Other places; in San Francisco there is Boudin. In San Diego there is Bread and Cie (but with a web page that is 2 years under construction.)
here is a well known french bakery. The site is pretty, but clunky.. Poilane
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The lines outside the CEARTE open-air theatre shows how the city has and activly supports a diverse culture. Images can be found on
