soda barr… I mean, rain barrels

I decided to make a rain barrel. No, this isn’t totally random. I have a small garden I’m trying to grow and in researching, I came across making rain barrels. Basically, take some food grade barrels and attach them to your gutter. It seemed like a fun project to do, even though it won’t really save much in terms of water cost or runoff.

This is by no means a design I came up with myself. I got the idea from this guy here and just made my own slight modifications.

I had a hell of a time finding the barrels, but the l finally came across a local Pepsi plant in Hyattsville, MD that sold 55 gallon drums at $10 a pop (I got a smaller 12 gallon one, too, to sit on the deck). Hours are short, once a week on Fridays, but I’d call 301.322.7000 and inquire about them (as of May 2011).

I do want to expand a bit on the video. I had to reduce the two outputs from the Rainreserve system down to one. I tested full flow and it was too much water at max. It wouldn’t fill the first flush system and would just jump the “T” for it.

To expand on the “T” itself, I needed a way to basically add a valve when the water reached the top. As the video states, I ended up using a couple of ping pong balls. The diameter of it unfortunately JUST fits through 1.5″ PVC piping. So I had to use 1.25″ adapters butt up to each other. And if you follow the video, at the 90 deg elbow, I also stuck some 1.25″ PVC to keep the ping pong balls from rolling through the whole pipe.

You’ll also noticed I added hose clamps and on the Rainreserve. Merely a safety precaution. But in addition, I also added screening in various places. I wanted to make sure no random large particles came through. Yes, I realize there’s no real point in doing both places I show below. But I did also add screening on the ends of the overflow hoses (not shown). Don’t need mosquitoes coming up through there, however unlikely.

And that’s that. I just need to find a way to better stabilize the first flush system in heavy wind, but it seems to hold up as it’s not that windy there. I’m also not entirely sure how much the whole project cost. I’d guess anywhere between $50-$100 counting time and some other misc hose type items for ~100 gallons of water. I had a lot of the PVC piping lying around. Now, I just need it to rain to test it out (low pressure test shows no leaks). Oh, and to paint it.

The Mazda2 (Touring)

courtesy of MazdaUSA

Well, due to some unfortunate set of happenings, our family is possibly in search of a couple of vehicles.  One that I’ve had my eye on is the Mazda2 (and to an extent, the Ford Fiesta).  It is arguably the perfect commuter car for me, and relatively cheap.  So how does it stack up coming from a Mazda3 owner (and occasional Mazda6 driver)?  Not too bad actually.

First off, the quality of the interior was not quite that of my 2005 3, but close. I’d like to make an adjustment. At first glance, it is not bad, but I sat in another 2 that seemingly had more people pass through it. I am not confident in the longevity (as in, 5+yrs) of the cloth. Not for the 15k+ miles I drive a year. *edit over* I noticed the current generation 3 is better than mine, though.  The 6 tops them all except for the cloth seats (I personally hate the fabric choice).  The 2 just looks bare and basic, understandably so.  However, the big question is longevity, which I can’t obviously answer.  To be honest, I can’t reasonably judge interior quality unless it’s been driven for a while.  But everything I’ve sat in in the compact class outside of luxury brands has been roughly the same, give or take, at first glance.

Space-wise, my only real life comparison is a Scion xD.  The 2 felt a bit more cramped, especially in rear.  So if you’re regularly carrying rear passengers taller than 5’6″, it’s not going to be fun.  But the rear seats are a 60/40 spilt and fold down for a good bit of cargo room.

The drive was an unexpected surprise (I drove the slush box, wanted to get a feel for it).  City driving was not a chore.  The car felt nimble and agile.  Don’t get me wrong-it’s no Atom and it does take a while when you floor it.  However, it was enjoyable to just drive around.  On the highway, it was less fun.  You really had to stomp on it if you want to pass and there was hesitation in dropping gears to go.  But it’s a 1.5L engine on 4 wheels, you can’t have everything.  I suspect the manual would be a bit better (and I may be biased because my 3 is stick).

The bottom line, if I were to buy a new car today, I would seriously consider the 2.  My concerns are it’s a first year/generation car in the US (2nd or 3rd year worldwide) and the sticker price they tried to sell me on ($17k pre-negotiation) is bull.  Ideally, I could wait a year or two and find something on the used market.   Or if Mazda debuted they Sky-G engine on this.  I’d gamble on it.

*edit* I did seriously consider this car, but I declined. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to love it. I did love driving it. But passenger seating was a hair too cramped, and cost seemed too high combined with the lackluster interior. My goals are to drive the car into the ground, and I think the interior of the Mazda2 would not hold up to my liking for 5, 6, 7+ years. I ended up going with the Mazda3 hatch.

the reddit love machine

I often question humanity.  I sometimes wonder how we’ve not yet managed to completely destroy ourselves.  Especially after reading/watching something like this.  A 7yr old girl, Kathleen, is dying of Huntington’s and is being taunted by her “adult” neighbors.  These neighbors have been at ends with Kathleen’s family to the point of restraining orders put out against them.  Recently, the neighbors decided to not only photoshop Kathleen’s face above crossbones, but also photshopped her deceased mother into the arms of the grim reaper.

Yeah, you read that right.  Who the @$#!% makes fun of a 7yr old like that?!?  In the link above, the neighbors apologize the next day… but likely because of the eggings, fake pizza orders, getting child services called in (they have no kids, I believe)….  but this post isn’t about all that.

This post is about the so-called reddit love machine.  After gaining some headline room at reddit, a local toy store owner, Hans Masing, took it upon himself to start a donation toy drive for this little girl and to give the extra to Mott’s Children’s Hospital where hundreds share her situation.  What started as a whim to raise a few hundred, took off screaming.

On a simple act of humanity, Hans Masing managed to get the reddit community behind him–along with many locals, individuals and businesses alike.  The end result has been over $8000 $12000 $17500 in cash donations and an estimated $5000 in toys direct from businesses!  Kathleen will also get a shopping spree at Hans’ store, a free for all shop-til-you-drop-event.  And from there, she will bring toys and donate them to kids at the Mott’s Children’s Hospital in her name.  And after that, lunch will be provided by Caron’s American Bistro.  All the transportation will also be donated by Perfection Limousine.  Talk about turning a terrible situation upside down and on its face.

Needless to say, a smile was certainly shared by many.

PA110069
by Hans Masing, on Flickr

 

It’s pictures like this and people like Hans that restore some of my faith humanity.

Donations to this Toy-Mania can be made here.

Donations to Kathleen’s own fundraiser can be made here.

Restore Sanity, Keep Fear Alive! (help out teachers while you’re at it)

Political rallies are an interesting phenomenon to me.  It’s hard to judge if they have any real effect on anything other than media coverage.   The Left and Right pick and chose extreme examples and blast each other about it, but does that change the minds of anyone or just reinforce their already formed opinions? I’m going with the latter.

But that is not what this rally is about.  This rally is about comedic relief.  And more importantly (to me), the effort to get it started.  The story is vaguely summarized here but essentially a bunch of redditors decided to put their money where their mouths were and raise money for a charity Stephen Colbert sits as a board member, DonorsChoose.  It is a charity where teachers can make wish lists for things they need for their classrooms that their budgets cannot fill.

Initially, the goal was simply reach $30k and outdo Hilary Clinton.  Well, less than 18hrs later (after the poor DonorsChoose IT folk had to fix the donation counter since donors broke it) they reached $50-70k.  I don’t remember exactly, but by the 24hr mark, $100k was breached.

Yes.  One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.   And 48hrs later, $200k was breached.  Yes.  Another. One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.

That momentum can’t be expected to be kept up (and it wasn’t, the mark currently stands just under $280k), but the goal is to reach $500k by Oct 1.  And that’s the real reason for this post.  It saddens me to read the wish list of items for a teacher… pencils, folders, books…. wtf, they need money for PENCILS?!  I don’t have a solution for our education problem, and frankly, it won’t be easy to try to turn our system around.  Money isn’t the only problem.

But until we can find a solution, our current teachers need help now.  And if we can spare it, I vote to donate a little to help out.

Oh, and it’s a good excuse to just gather on the National Mall ;)

Vibram Five Fingers, first jog

I will warn you now,  you’re going to see a picture of my foot, naked and all.  If you have a large monitor/high res, it may be too late.  And if you don’t know about barefoot running, Google it.

With that, I had my first jog with the Vibram Five Fingers.  I got the KSO‘s in grey-palm.  It took nearly six, yes six, weeks of constantly checking the site  until my size was in stock, in the color I wanted.  Yes, I really did check almost every day.  And no, I’m not a crazy runner.  BUT, I was really anxious to try it out given I’m completely flat footed and always had odd issues jogging.

I’ve had these for a little over a week now, wearing them here and there to get a sense of how they feel.  Off the bat, I noticed I strike my heel quite a bit.  Of course, given my shoe wear pattern, you can tell this as well.  What struck me was I don’t really notice it walking purely barefoot, but I could instantly catch it wearing the Five Fingers.  I slowly adjust my stride to essentially be shorter and more focused on the ball of my feet. Other than that, not much to report.  It’s odd walking around “barefoot,” that’s all.  No one has yet to stop and ask me anything.

Today, I went for a jog.  First jog this year actually.  I’ve been on the elliptical exclusively since I bought one.  But I remember jogging after not jogging for a while, and how my legs felt.  This certainly was that, and then some.  I could feel muscles in my calves I did not feel before, haha.  I mean, my calves have been sore from jogging before, but this felt… different.  I could also feel my arches stretching more at times.  I’ve had this happen jogging with normal shoes, so I’m not sure what to think of it, especially for my first outing.

Unfortunately, halfway through my short jog (aka, 10 minutes in), I felt a cutting pain in my left foot, inner side.  Something in the shoe was cutting me, or so I thought.  I stopped and inspected my fat-flat foot to find out it was somehow getting pinched.  The result at home is as shown:

Sexy, no?  It was actually a straight line initially.  If my Pre had macro, maybe I could show you (listening HP Palm?). *edit* yup, it quickly blistered *end edit*  I tried to readjust the Fives but ended up hobbling back home.  The trial jog was sadly cut short.

Overall, I will say it was actually a very enjoyable experience sans foot-pinching.  I had to focus a lot more on where I was stepping, and felt my toes doing more work in balancing.  Now, I don’t know if they were, but the glove like nature of the shoe made it feel that way.  I followed the normal path I take, so nothing new, on pavement (grass is tall, lots of dogs.. no thanks), some inclines, etc. I’m guessing some of my excitement is more that this is something new to try.  I have yet to get back to the point where jogging was relaxing for me.  It’s more of a chore now because I’ve gotta lose some inches, heh.

So the jogging via Five Fingers has begun.  We shall see how I feel 3 months from now if this has been a positive experience or if I’ll go back to my New Balance running shoes.   Assuming I last that long.

Palm Pre 341 days in, EVO?

Well, I wanted to do a one-year-later post regarding the Pre.  Sadly, the power button died on mine twice in the same day, so Sprint ordered me  up a new (refurb likely) one.  Kudos to Sprint for not dicking around on this one. Anyway, it seemed a good of a time as any to do this post.

Let me start–I love WebOS.  I think it’s the best implementation of multitasking and notification out there right now.  While seemingly two run of the mill features, you use those two features every single day, all day.  The form factor is also amazing.  It feels like a phone, not a large rectangular box.  Though, I’ll be honest, I have wished for a larger screen at times.  Also, the touchstone is very much worth it (just don’t pay retail for it).  I brushed off the touchstone as an expensive add-on I’d get, but after using it for a while, and having to plug in for charging at times, I found it to so refreshing to just grab the phone and go.  This is surely something that needs to extend to every phone in the future (ok, likely it will be wireless power, not inductive charging).

It is not without its own problems though.  No matter how much I love WebOS, it is slow.  Painful at times.  Especially when multitasking big items, or pulling up the unlock pad when said large items are in use (namely, the media player, Pandora, or camera).  They did improve the Phone App with the updates though.  I’m hoping WebOS 2.0 will give us 1st gen buyers a noticeable boost in optimization, but given it will likely run on something such as Snapdragon,  I’m not getting my hopes up on it.  The upswing to this is the 800mhz overclock (many threads, just one) has shown to give vast improvements, so a new CPU (+GPU optimizations) will go a long way.

Build quality is also of issue.  Given it has a slider, it was bound to be an issue vs touchscreen only phones.  I actually did not have much of a problem up till 9 months in.  Dropped it a few times, yes.  And it was like new for the most part.  But it felt like a switch went off, and suddenly I got much more of an Oreo effect and the screen was cracking along the USB port (and at the same point opposite, pressure from pushing the slider up?).  And the power button dying (brother’s did too, but I think it was different, they just “popped” it out). My refurb has a decent Oreo effect as well.  I’m hoping HP can really add value here, they’ve had some good stuff with their ENVY line.

On the app side, Palm just released the PDK, as well as access to the mic and camera via API.  It’s taken too long, and I’m not sure if it’s too late or not.  I can only hope HP’s infusion will allow Palm to push harder.  Someone had stated the lack of good “time-waster” apps which is spot on.  That’s what I always see iPhone users touting, and where everyone else is lacking.  But don’t get me wrong, productive apps are also lacking like a GPS logger, document editing, good virtual keyboard, RTM sync, wifi syncing, and self served streaming video to name the top things for me.  I also don’t want to have to “jailbreak” my Pre to add some  homebrew that fills some of those needs.  There’s a web distribution model, I’m not sure why more people haven’t taken up on it (it’s not like Palm is preventing homebrew, I’m just lazy, and don’t want to un-homebrew to get OS updates).

With all that said, I have the chance to switch to the HTC EVO when it comes out.  A month ago, I was set on doing it.  Mostly to put my Pre into backup status for my brother and I (especially since I have a fresh phone now).  Better than insurance, but a hair riskier if we both break our phones.  The key thing being EVO will address my speed issues, along with providing a nice large screen for video watching/streaming (which isn’t solved still from what I can tell, there’s no AirVideo like app for Android either) while on the elliptical.

But it’s not like I *need* to do this.  Nor is the Pre so terrible that I want to get rid of it.  Despite the more negative bias this post has, I really do like the phone.  I’m very good at finding the issues I have with whatever I buy ;)  At the end of the day, I need messaging, email, quick searches on google, and a camera (this last one needs speed increases).  Everything else is gravy.  I’ve learned full web browsing is great, but a tablet will be better for me in that arena.  No matter how large a screen a smartphone has (I define “smartphone” as something I can pocket easily in jeans *looks at Dell Streak/Mini 5*) it will be too small to really enjoy full web browsing for more than a few minutes.  So we’ll see if I bite the bullet, but I really want to see Palm pull through.  And I may just stick around to see what HP does.   And save myself $200 to put toward real camera gear ;)

The Palm Pre, 6+ months in

Well Palm, it’s been 6 months since you introduced your make-it-or-break-it phone.  And now it’s time for me to give my overall thoughts on the phone.

WebOS is a wonderful OS.  I love it.  From a user standpoint, I like it much more than anything else out there now.  With that said, the hardware behind the OS needs a lot of work, or alternatively, the software needs to be much more polished.  Basically, it’s slow.  The music app takes forever to load, and takes up 80% of the system resources it seems (pure feeling, not scientific).  Random pauses here and there.  Making a quick phone call… is not so quick.  There have been updates, and the phone loading/priority is much better than at first, but it’s got some ways to go.  But I’ll reiterate, the WebOS UI is simply awesome.  Quite a predicament.

Physically, the Pre is also the best shaped smartphone I have ever held.  It’s almost the size of a “normal” phone, but still very usable as a smartphone.  Every one else seems to be going for the large screen iPhone monstrosity which I personally dislike for a phone.  The screen size on the Pre is a wonderful balance.  The downsides are the Pre is a bit plastic-y in parts and that the touchstone back should be the default rear cover.  Also, it does feel a little “rocky” with the slider mechanism.  We’ll see what another 6 months will do.  For reference, I think the HTC Hero is close to the perfect touchscreen only form factor and the Pixi sits somewhere in it’s own world.  It’s very nice to hold, but the permanently exposed keyboard feels a bit wasted.

The lack of apps is a bit frustrating, but to be honest, there isn’t much I would buy anyway.  I’m still waiting for a good GPS logger so I can geotag my photos.  I’m not sure any other phone has this either.  But other than that and maybe a few more puzzle games, I wouldn’t get much.  It’s just a matter of improving the apps out there now.  Oh, the default apps need more adjustment options, like volume association, and everything needs to be faster.

Recently, my alarm clock volume got tied to the music volume.   I leave my music app open and playing when I go to bed, at it’s lowest level.  I have never had a problem with the alarm not going off in the past at it’s normal volume.  Last Friday, Monday, and Tuesday I somehow slept through my alarm.  I RARELY ever do, and was baffled.  Turns out, I happened to catch it Tuesday morning when I snoozed the alarm after scrambling because I was late again.  It rang… at a very very faint level.

I have no idea why this happened.  I have since tested the alarm against the same scenario of the music app open and finishing up playing.  The alarm functioned properly again.  We’ll see if it holds tomorrow morning.  But dang, way to break on me right when I was writing up this little experience piece.

The keyboard has been fine.  I’m actually making more errors now than I did before though, probably out of trying to type faster.  WebOS desperately needs a good text correction/prediction algorithm, however.  We’re human Palm, we’ll make mistakes whether we get a virtual keyboard or a physical one.   But I have to say, I’ll take t his over any other smartphone that has a keyboard right now, sans maybe the pixi keyboard.  The current landscape ones are huge, and the Blackberry’s are just an oddly shaped phone.

All in all, speed is my biggest complaint.  Early on I could deal with it, but as I started using my phone more and more, it has become more frustrating.   The fastest way to work is to slide the keyboard open and start typing.  But coming out of lock mode sometimes takes a few seconds.  Trying to use the phone touchscreen only and using 3rd party software for quick contacts is painful.    You can’t make a quick one-handed call.  It may sound trivial, but when you are used to doing it that way for 10 yrs, it’s annoying as hell when you can’t.

So, what’s the verdict?  Palm, fix the speed.  And fix it fast.  Everything else is pretty subjective for the most part.  I can live with the faults because EVERY phone will have it’s faults with me.  But c’mon Palm, the iPhone 3Gs and Droid are running the same hardware, give or take.  They are kicking your ass around (ok, they are also both 3rd/2nd gen OSes).

The bottom line is I was an early adopter, and this is a first generation product.   Palm has a mountain to climb now that Google is full steam ahead.  I honestly don’t know if Palm has the ability to stay afloat for another 5 years, but it would be a damn shame to see them go under.  WebOS is truly an innovative OS, it just needs to get to 2.0 fast.  Hopefully, it’s not too late.