I’ve been thinking about energy lately, or more specifically how to save some in my house.  I made a switch to CFL light bulbs in many cases, but I think I’m going back to good old incandescents.

I can’t use CFL’s in cases where I want to use a dimmer, like over the vanity in our master bathroom, and in the basement where we dim some lights for good movie viewing.

CFL’s are also a bit inconvenient in that you can’t just throw them out with the rest of the garbage due to the fact that they contain mercury.  And that’s another major point; they contain mercury.  If you break a CFL bulb, you have to ventilate the room, scoop up the debris and put it in an air tight container.

Some people will argue that there isn’t enough mercury in each bulb to really harm you, but my position is that if there’s too much mercury to throw out in the trash, there’s too much mercury in them, period.

Another alternative?

LED lights.  These things are amazing, and they’re showing up everywhere.  From big screen TV’s to laptops (they’ve been around in laptops for a while), to the red lights in stop lights…  They’re solid state bulbs with no moving parts and no volatile or poisonous gases.  Most of them will last as many as 20,000 hours or so, which means I’d have to replace them when my 5 month old son graduates from high school.

The one drawback is that they’re still pricey, and the traditional 40 to 60 Watt replacements haven’t matured quite yet, although you can already buy the “flood” type bulbs at Home Depot.

An investment of two types…

If LED lights can last as long as advertised and can come down in price quite a ways, I’d certainly entertain the thought of replacing my CFL’s and incandescents with straight LED’s.  I look at is an investment with a return of lower energy costs, both in the form of direct electrical consumption and thermal savings (did I mention LED’s don’t produce much heat?).

In addition, I could also make an investment in the company that develops LED’s as well.  A company like CREE (CREE: chart, web, Y!)) would be a good bet, and they’re making advances in LED technology nearly as fast as prices on technology are dropping.

I’ll be researching CREE over the next several days, as I think this could be a company worth investing in that produces a product that’s worth buying.

Environment, Technology CREE, LED lighting, Technology

One of most amazing things about nearly all of Europe is their vast railroad infrastructure.  I took a high speed train from Frankfurt to Seigburg, Germany, topping out at a breathtaking 300 km/hr, or about 180 miles per hour.

To top it all off, their rail infrastructure is almost completely electric.  No diesel is sacrificed as it is here in the United States.

So why can’t we do that?

In the Midwest, there are light rail proposals being thrown around annually, gaining marginal traction with taxpayers. The problem typically revolves around ‘who ends up paying how much for what’.  And I can see the point.

I surely don’t want to pay for a local rail system I don’t use and can’t foresee any return on.

In my opinion, we need a national high speed rail system implemented from coast to coast, boarder to boarder.  Unfortunately the government would have to get involved to help define the standards (you don’t want one system on one gauge of track and another on a different gauge).  Ideally though, the infrastructure would be privately developed with government subsidies.

Think about it, going from New York to Chicago, or Chicago to Dallas via Kansas City or St. Louis.  Make that a day trip!

I believe that once such a system is defined, more local, light rail systems can take shape with much less risk to the bottom line.

If you live in a city with light rail, or even a country with high speed rail, do you see the system as an asset?

Technology, Travel high speed rail, transportation

Google recently released it’s new browser in an effort to compete with Microsoft and Firefox for your internet perusal tool of choice.  

I have to admit, I’m a bit of an early adopter, so I jumped at the chance to download “Chrome” in beta format. 

Chrome appears minimalist by design, but the advertising super-giant claims that the browser is faster, safer and “easier” than its counterparts.

So far, the new browser does appear to be faster than loading the same pages in Firefox, and considerably faster than Internet Explorer, although I really don’t have the means to quantify that statement.

A few features I like about the new browser: Dynamic tabs, application shortcuts, and what they’re calling “incognito mode“.  The dynamic tabs feature allows you drag individual tabs out of the browser into its own window.  At first I thought this was kind of “gimmicky”, but then I realized that I could launch two instances of Chrome side-by-side on my monitor, and move tabs from one pane to the other.

The incognito mode is neat because it doesn’t save any information (i.e. cookies, passwords, history, search information, etc) on your computer.  It’s not terribly convenient since you have to open a separate instance of the browser, and it’s not something to use all the time since it won’t store cookies to the sites you want to have stored in local memory.

With all the data tracing going on these days, one really has no idea what the information you’re blasting through the ‘net will really be used for, much less what you blindly allow to be stored on your computer.  Incognito mode would be nice for public computer access though…

Application shortcuts allow you to store shortcuts to internet-based applications right on your desktop; although I’m not sure how this is much different than creating a link to an application.

Chrome is taking a bit of getting used to, and there are a few quirks about the program that I’m still trying to figure out.

Tried Chrome? What do you think?

The Story Behind Chrome

Technology Google Chrome, internet browsing, Technology