Posts from — March 2008

This is cool. What we got here is the last remnants of the 8” of snow that dumped on Boulder yesterday. The Colorado sun came out in force today, melting most of the white stuff; the final traces are hanging tough here in the shadow cast by the ballfield fence, all nice and neat in a line, while Hooper and Lulu watch in despair as Jeannie and the other woman walk away with their dogs Joplin and Kyla:

Just goes to show you what a little shading can do in terms of reducing the amount of direct beam solar radiation that affects a given area.

P.S.
The bits of snow missing in the foreground were eaten by Hooper. No shading device could have prevented that.

Webster’s defines a patriot as “one who loves his or her country and supports its authority and interests”. But with a country this divided, the term almost has no validity anymore. I mean, our country’s “authority and interests” are presently defined by the Bush administration. Therefore, our country’s so-called authority is bogus, stolen, abused, misused and illegally expanded. Our interests? Hegemony and Looking Out for Number One. Sure as hell, I don’t support those. Am I not a patriot?

The first patriots were revolutionaries. Maybe it’s time to restore the original definition.

A former co-worker just IM’ed me to let me know that a project I worked on has received two Lumen Awards for exemplary lighting/daylighting design. I am pretty psyched, since to date these are my first two Lumens in my 15 year career in lighting.

Awards are stupid, until you win one. Yay!

Looking back, it’s interesting because this was the project that finally got me to get over the learning curve of Radiance, as the tools I had been using were simply not up to the job of simulating the daylight and electric lighting in this complex space. This project forced me to learn Radiance, made me jump back to the Apple Macintosh world (because of OSX’s superior UNIX environment), and, ultimately, those skills landed me my current job in beautiful Boulder, Colorado—and now, a couple of industry awards to boot.

Yay!