Archives for October 2009

Solar panels

October 30, 2009 by Jen

Solar panels - grid connected

In my full-on-nest of full-on weeks a month or so ago I finally decided which solar panels I was going to get. I’d been sitting on it for a while because it was a largish financial decision for me to make and I had to wade my way through sales pitches, advice from friends and relevant reading matter.

A few months prior to that I applied for the federal government rebate to get grid-connected solar panels and the approval came through. Unfortunately this rebate no longer exists so I’m quite lucky I got in in time. These are some of things that delayed my decision.

what size inverter to get?
what type of panels to get – thin film vs cyrstalline?
thin film panels take up more room but they can have part shade on them and still collect power
cyrstalline panels take up a lot less room but once shade’s on them they don’t collect power
which company do I go with?
how many panels do I want at this stage?
do I want a system that can be added to?

I’d been recommended a solar company by a colleague and I went to have a look at their setup and it was pretty impressive. After talking with him I decided to go with the cyrstalline – smaller – panels incase I want to expand. To use the thin film panels it takes up a lot more room and you need a large roof to accommodate them. I have a reasonable amount of roof space but I wouldn’t get that much from them on the north facing part.

You can see from the photo above that I’ve got eight panels. If I’d gone for the equivalent thin film panels where you need more to get the same bang for your buck then I honestly don’t think they’d have all fitted on this north facing part of my roof.

On my travels around the neighbourhoods looking at peoples rooves I could see where they’d gone the thin film solar panel path and they do take up a lot of room. What finally decided it for me was that I thought if I want to expand the system, or put solar hot water in then if I got the thin film panels I’d really be limiting what I could do in the future.

With the setup I’ve got I’ve got the option of adding four more panels but I think what I’ve got will more than cover our electricity usage.

I had a dream last night that I received a bill for $228 for electricity and I that was quite reasonable even with solar panels. That’s rubbish because I never received a bill for that much without solar panels. But perhaps it’s not so rubbish because electricity prices could quite easily go up significantly – well that’s what some reports say. I did receive an electricity bill one week after these were installed so I’m actually looking forward to my next bill because I think I’ll be in credit.

The sun’s beating down today as spring has completely passed us by and summer has arrived so those solar panels are hard at work and we can see from the inverter how many watts are being collected.

Now, if I could just sort out my reliance on mains water!

If you’ve got any questions or comments about your experiences I’d love to hear them.

Etiquette on public transport

October 26, 2009 by Jen

I know what I think the etiquette on public transport should be. That is:

Sit on the seat nearest the window if it’s vacant.
Put your bag on your lap or underneath the seat.
If the bus or tram is full move down the back so people getting on the front have somewhere to stand.
Don’t talk too loudly on your mobile phone.

But of course humans being what they are don’t follow these simple rules. They:

Sit on the seat near the aisle leaving the window one vacant.
Put their bag on the vacant seat next to them.
They stand up the front so it’s hard to get past them if the transport is full.
Speak too loudly on their mobile phones.

Oh, and I thought that high school students were supposed to stand for adults? No, it’s clearly not so any more.

I’m not afraid to ask someone to move their bag so I can sit down and so far everyone has obliged. I don’t know what I will do if someone tells me no one day. On the bus I catch there is space at the front of the bus for wheelchairs on both sides of the bus. The three seats fold up and face into the centre of the bus. This morning a young woman was taking up two of these seats and her shopping trolley was taking up the other seat. A man sitting opposite her was sprawled over the three seats leaving it impossible for anyone to sit near him without asking him.

As for people speaking to loudly on their mobile phones, it doesn’t bother me so much as it provides inane welcome distraction from work or whatever’s happening at home. I think people are under the illusion that a cone of silence surrounds them when on their phones because some people say some very private things. For example one young man was talking about his medication one bus trip and I think his medication was methadone.

I’m pretty lucky as my trip to and from work is not very long once I’m actually on the bus so if I’m perched on the edge of a seat, or if I have to stand, it’s not for very long. I also don’t have to worry about negotiating peoples’ poor driving and paying lots of money for parking.

How about you. Do you catch public transport often?

Smell the roses

October 23, 2009 by Jen

The other day I went along to a blogger meetup in the Botanic Gardens. After becoming completely lost and being mistaken for a wedding photographer (I stumbled upon a celebrant who was setting up for a wedding) I found the group.

We hung around and chatted for a while, ate some lovely homemade banana and choc chip muffins (thanks Kay). I learned a bit about just how easy it is to become homeless. You hear about these things but I’ve never met anyone it’s happened to before.

This and a couple of other ducks don’t read the signs about being not being fed and cleaned up our muffin crumbs.

Afterwards I strolled back to the car without getting lost this time. I’ve never been into the rose garden at the Botanic Gardens before but the smell of the roses drew me in and I’m glad I did.

Today I have to go back near the gardens to go to the dentist. If I was more organised and didn’t procrastinate quite so much I would have made my appointment for around the same time and not have to drive back there. Fingers crossed I’m all fine and there’s no problems that require more of my time or money. I’ll lie back in the dentist chair and imagine the smell of the roses.

Making boring stuff fun

October 20, 2009 by Jen

This came across my radar yesterday via a Facebook friend. This video shows how to make stairs fun to walk up. How would you make stairs more interesting to climb? The title of the video and the image gives a clue.

See this and more on The Fun Theory website. I love it.

Why RAW is good sometimes

October 18, 2009 by Jen

I bought a new camera a few months ago and it’s the first camera I’ve had that shoots in RAW format. I usually use the JPG files but occasionally I need to modify the RAW file – usually because of over exposed photos.

Because my photography is a hobby and I don’t do that much with the photos except for putting them on the web and occasionally printing them out I don’t keep all the RAW photos I take. The reason for this is that they take up a heck of a lot of disk space and I’m not equipped for that so JPGs suit me just fine.

Even when I do edit the RAW photo I keep the resulting JPG file, not the RAW file.

I wanted to share a couple of examples of how I salvaged a couple of photos from the RAW file.

The first photo here is the original and the one underneath is the result after editing it. I flipped it and I also tidied up that brown smudge on my wrist using some Photoshop wizadry. Goodness knows where the smudge came from – I’m sure it was JJ’s fault.

I wanted to keep the photo below of JJ and took it while praying he wouldn’t come off because sliding on the gravel would have been quite painful.

I probably over compensated a bit with the colours and saturation here but it certainly works a lot better than the washed out version above.

The only software I have to edit RAW files is what comes with Photoshop CS3 but that seems to do me okay. Lightroom would be the ideal I understand but I can’t justify it at present.

Just in case you don’t know what the heck RAW is, here’s RAW phto file format explained.

This video from Blurbomat shows how to adjust RAW photos using Lightroom.

What do you shoot in?

A happy tale

October 16, 2009 by Jen

I thought I’d share this little story with you as a nod to good customer service which can be quite rare. I also wanted to share a great place to buy shoulderbags.

Late last year I bought myself a new handbag – one I planned to use all the time and use it all the time I have. Because I use the front zipper all the time too the fabric on the front was starting to wear off (see below). I could just see that it was going to get worse, not better so I emailed the company I bought it from – Mattt – a Melbourne based company to see if there was any chance of getting the fabric replaced.

bagbefore

I sent them a couple of photos showing the problem and after a couple of back and forth emails they asked me to send the bag back to them and they would replace the fabric.

It took me a while to choose a new fabric but I chose an upholstery fabric which I thought should be hard wearing and I chose colours that will pretty much match everything. They’d run out of the fabric that I originally chose.

Mattt were very quick with replacing the fabric and I’m rapt with it. As the zipper bit that you pull on to open the zipper (you can see I don’t know the proper term here) is quite short I’ve extended it with a dangly thingy (again, another very technical term) so I won’t run into the same problem. See for yourself. It’s not a very pretty option but I’ll keep an eye out for something else. Any ideas are very welcome.

I love the bag because I can separate all the bits and pieces I want to. My bus pass, building pass and keys go into the front pocket. There’s a little mobile phone pocket inside the bag so I don’t have to rifle through everything else to find it when it rings. There’s also another little pocket within the bag to keep my lip stuff and girlie stuff. My purse and other miscellaneous bits go in the main part so I know where everything is and can easily access it.

The upshot is that I’m a happy customer and hope to have this bag for years to come. And if you want one, I originally purchased mine online and it was a snap. Or if you’re in Melbourne they’re also sold at various markets. Just visit their website – Mattt – to find out the details.

This is where I’ve been

October 12, 2009 by Jen

Last week I had the week off work and spent some time away at a beach house. In short I wish I had organised the house for longer as we’d no sooner settled in, and we had to leave.

The view above was only a block away from where we stayed. When the tide goes it out it really goes out which makes for lots of space to walk around on. Monty had a great time rolling in the wet sand and sniffing too much at the seaweed. She’s rolled in seaweed before and as you can imagine it makes her stink but fortunately she didn’t do it this time.

For all JJ’s problems at school, he’s pretty good with me and we had a great time together. Mum and dad dropped in for a visit and took us out to dinner at the nearby tavern and I also caught up with an old school friend who lives nearby.

There’s a great path along the top of the beach along the coast and we nearly walked to nearby Moonta Bay and wore Monty out so that she didn’t mind so much having to spend time outside only at the house. And JJ ran around the house with Monty chasing him at other times.

We also spent a couple of days with some good friends afterwards so all in all it was a very relaxing week..

I caught up on sleep I’d missed out on in the last few weeks which was fantastic.

Usually the first thing I do when I’ve finished one holiday is to plan the next so I’m hoping to take all of the summer school holidays off – all six weeks of it. Fingers crossed that gets approved. Don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing but I’m sure I’ll think of something.