BLOGGING AFTER major events gives people who care an opportunity to share in the occasion without burning the carbon to attend in person. We made it even more real by recording video of kids at Christmas and those video minutes will be passed around more than Christmas cards in years to come. We made more video with our mini-DV 3CCD camera this year, instead of using our cameraphones. Although the SonyEricsson K800i that we gave to the grandparents also caught some precious moments.
Those who follow me on Twitter know that our three-storey house expanded to serve as a hotel for nine people overnight, and in the process showed the value of having four toilets under one roof. I'm concerned at the energy footprint of our over-sized place and hope the Irish government wades in with a way for us to hook up an electricity meter and a water meter. I also have a wish for a control unit that's smart enough to display a colour code of real-time consumption. If I am below a pattern of consumption more than 10% reduced from an historical average, a white panel shows. If my usage is on target for a reduced or straight-line pattern, a blue array illuminates. Green glows when our current usage is on track to 2000 watts per occupant per year. Yellow glows when we are above both the 2000 watt and when our current burn will produce more than 10% above the previous year's consumption. And red shows anytime we are in full flow with the oil burner, oven, or water mains. One of the software development students in Tipperary Institute produced an X10 project that monitored activities in the home, designing a home smart enough to know whether a pensioner needed assistance. It might be relatively straightforward to modify the smart grid of sensors so all we measure are energy-related components of the house.
As we settle into a post-Christmas routine in Cashel, I'm offline to claim my biggest Christmas present ever--a small room that I'm allowed to use as a study. That always was the plan--to use a ground floor room as a home office--but now that we've taken all the Christmas presents from that room, I want to spend some serious hours clearing it out so we have less pressure in the kitchen, the place where I normally work from home. And although it's an embarrasment, I think I will show its current condition, thereby pipping Adrian Weckler and Misty V'Marie to their claims of having the messiest work spaces on the internet.
That said, it's off to make a minor bash at the clean-up while the rest of the house sleeps.
Sent mail2blog using O2-EDGE Typepad service since Gaelic Telecom borked my home internet connectivity.
