New Florence. New Renaissance.

Guest Column: Technology and Gardening

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is my former Gartner colleague, Erik Keller who writes about his green thumb.

"Ever since I can remember, I have been deep in the dirt (or soil as we gardeners like to call it.) When I was a kid on Long Island, I mowed lawns and planted a vegetable garden in my parents’ back yard. The family rabbits had multiple purposes but to me they were my fertilizer factory, which ensured my vegetables would be luscious and large. As a young groom still in college, my wife and I fought our landlord for half of the vegetable plot she had so we could grow enough tomatoes to put up for the winter. As I have moved from house to house, I have left my mark in daffodils, rhododendron bushes and heaps of decaying plant material waiting to be turned into compost.

And like a tree with expanding rings of age around my middle, I am spreading my horticultural branches. Last year I decided to further my gardening education by enrolling in the New York Botanical Gardens’ program in Horticultural Therapy. Now for those of you wondering what comprises horticultural therapy (HT), it is not talking to tiny house plants encouraging them to feel better about themselves (though in some zip codes you could probably make good coin doing this.) Rather, this emerging discipline engages a client in gardening-related activities to achieve specific emotional, physical, social or cognitive treatment goals.

This comes on top of my going back to school a few years before to become a Master Gardener. During this time I unknowingly discovered (and practiced) HT during an internship where I worked in a girl’s prison. Gardening has always had a calming influence on me, but it was remarkable to see the behavioral and emotional changes in these incarcerated girls when exposed to a simple plant. It totally changed their world view.

So I’m continuing that work by being a volunteer one day a week at a at-risk facility for children called Green Chimneys. Here I work with individual children and classes to create positive, empowering garden-based experiences for them.

Technology comes into this and all aspects of the garden. Perhaps the most controversial area in gardening technology today are seeds, which range the spectrum from ancient, handed-down heirlooms to genetically modified, lab creations. There are lots of arguments as to what and how people should plant. But when it comes to kids, what matters is that what ever you drop in the ground has to be cool. So you plant weird stuff like cosmic purple carrots, Chinese red noodle beans or striped roman tomatoes that will excite and astound them.

Like other gardeners, I keep warm and hopeful during the northeast winter with countless garden catalogues from Burpee, Johnny’s, Logee’s and others. While I love my catalogues, gardening has drawn me even more into the web. A seemingly simple search for the best lavender, turns into a research project. Sites like Dave’s Garden become guilty addictions where I cruise for gardening insight and tips on how to best prevent fungus from attacking my peonies.

But as I look to garden with children and in my own home, I also find that much of the technology is so much “Back to the Future.” One of the big trends is to use old heirloom varieties to thwart the current generation of bugs grown plentiful and fat on a small number of cultivars that have been bred for good looks rather than agricultural sturdiness.

I am constantly amazed at how we have lost some of the great gardening technology of the past. But we have recently been able to recapture and spread this knowledge via the web. One of my favorite books today is a reprint of a 19^th century gardening classic, “The Field and Garden Vegetables of America,” by Fearing Burr, Jr. (you can download this and other books by Burr for free from Project Gutenberg.)

The Quakers were early users of hotbeds, which is a cold frame constructed on a large pile of manure. The rotting manure creates heat so that vegetables can be grown year round. At Green Chimneys we have created similar beds using rotting bales of straw. We can all learn from the past, much like the founders of VMware did a decade ago when they reintroduced 30-year-old-plus mainframe virtualization technology to the market.

In gardening we evaluate the new and adapt the old. Although I have to say that even though there are more ergonomically advanced ones out there, my trusty pair of Felco #2 pruners won’t be replaced anytime soon. There are no failures in the garden; you have either a nice plant or something for the compost pile. It’s always a learning experience with legacy being a good word rather than a pejorative.

Wikipedia defines technology as “a broad concept that deals with an animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts and how it affects an animal species’ ability to control and adapt to its environment.” This definition sounds a lot like gardening to me, which confirms my wife’s and daughters’ claim that I will always be a tech geek. A gardener is just like an IT professional: don’t get caught in the weeds and watch out for those nasty bugs.

Enjoy your garden wherever it is. I know I will. "

The Hurriquake Fastener

"Stanley Bostitch created the Hurriquake nail in 2006 to save homes from two great natural threats—high-winds and shaky ground. Redesigning this humble building component—and adding just 15 bucks dollars to the cost of a home—makes houses twice as likely to survive a hurricane and makes them 50 percent tougher against earthquakes.

But here's a side benefit: It also helps pre-fab homes weather the open road on the way to the building site."

Popular Science

Impressive when something that an innovation that affordable can make such an impact...

Photo credit - amazon

Guest Column: Technology and "Super Mom"

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Joy Wald an IT Director at ADT, Having just returned to work with a young baby she talks about how technology is allowing her to manage the most intense work/life balancing phase in a modern woman’s life. Appropriate post - today being Ada Lovelace Day which celebrates women in technology.

“If Vinnie had asked me 5 years ago, I would have written about my love for soccer. Every new city I found myself in during a consulting assignment I would look for an indoor team to play with during the week. A few years from now, who knows it may be some new-fangled “green” hobby such as xeriscaping or hopefully travel!

But with a new baby three months old and another three years old coupled with my husband who owns his own practice as a Chiropractor and me with an intense IT job – my hobby should ideally be sleep. But in fact it is the delicate art of work/life balancing.

I often wonder how my mom managed when she had me. Did her generation do better because of multi-generation family units? Should my generation of mothers just throw our hands up and turn maternity into eternity leave? Or are we actually better off with all the technologies modern mothers have at our disposal?

Vinnie’s request made me catalog all the ways I think technology makes me better off than my mom had it:

In touch anywhere, anytime – I can be on my blackberry anywhere – even Disney – and stay in touch with my team. Just last month I was walking down Mainstreet USA in the Magic Kingdom approving an emergency change control. Fortunately, or unfortunately we are plugged in all the time. I can SMS my husband or nanny quick messages throughout the day. My nanny sends pictures of the kids explaining their activities while I am at the office. My husband and I use calendar invites to synchronize our calendar making sure we have the kids doctor’s appointments, gymnastics, and dance recitals.  You may have heard JetBlue has for a while allowed moms to handle reservations using flex hours from their homes - a different kind of work/life balancing.

Natal Medicine: from fertility treatments to ultrasound scans to monitors for your baby’s heartbeat to epidurals during delivery, you could write books on how science has made pregnancy and delivery so much safer and more comfortable (well, ok  - less uncomfortable). Having said that since much of the world still relies on more natural birthing methods, it is good to see the profession of midwifery continues to blossom and also benefit from technology. 

Digital babysitting – When I was growing up TV was called the “electronic babysitter” (and what we had was fairly basic compared to entire channels today like Disney and Nickelodeon). While we are now much more aware of the risks TV poses to young children, GPS wristbands can now help us track our kids. And through the magic of webcams, we can have far-off grandparents keep an eye on and entertain our kids. No more just the one-week-every-six -months bonding routine. I use Facebook to keep my family updated with the activities of our family by sharing pictures and updating my status with our whereabouts.

Electronic “angels”: I must have access to thousands of them. Questions about baby rashes. Diets. Feed schedules. Swim lesson instructors. Questions I never imagined I would ask. Sites like WebMD and social networks like hightechmomsclub either have the answers or can help get to a coach real quick.

Transport as if designed by a mom: I realize gratitude does not help in this tough auto market, but most moms I know thank Volvo for all the safety innovations they have pioneered from safety cages to anti-whiplash devices. They also thank Chrysler for all the creature comforts they innovated in the minivan (and SUVs) – from back seats that turned into flat beds to Swivel 'n Go (seating with rear-rotating second-row seats and a removable table). Not your grandma’s station wagon!

Food a mom could approve: One lament you hear these days with our hectic schedules and our travels is about the gradual disappearance of the 6 pm family supper. In exchange we now have a unbelievable bounty in food choices for babies and grown-ups:  homemade versus store bought, organic versus processed, all kinds of exotic fruits and ethnic flavors. I utilize many websites for quick and healthy dinner ideas as well as those critical “planned over” meals that I make on Sunday for use during the week. Two areas where technology has really helped – it has made the food supply chain more global and safer (tainted milk from China, you may argue. Stop and think - we can now transport milk from that far way?) and in appliances which have made preparation so much easier. Surely you agree it is progress when an iPhone can cook a meal. Or at least allow me to get the coffee maker going on my drive home.. 

Interactive scrapbooks: From smaller and easier-to-use camcorders, to photo-sharing sites to digital cameras to digital photo frames, I am convinced our kids will have 1000x the memorabilia we did growing up. Good for storage companies like EMC! 

Mishaps: I hate to touch on every parent’s nightmare, but technology has allowed us to set up mechanisms like the AMBER alert And monitoring for all kinds of medical and other alerts. 

Sleep: a new mother’s most common craving! It is good to see newer technologies which are attempting to get us better quality sleep, even if they cannot free up more time for it. Differently, but as effectively the Angelcare SIDS monitor helps many parents sleep better at night.

Dads: No one is more grateful than I to have an active husband in raising a healthy and happy family. My friends and family joke that my husband is “Mr. Mom”. He too has found many avenues from technology to assist in child rearing. He organizes his patient schedule to allow some afternoons free to participate in a local on-line meet up group that share events and activities for our children to attend. He also is considered an expert in all iPhone applications for children under the age of 5! There is nothing like watching your grown husband playing Tinker Bell with your daughter and being able to recite all of the Pixie Hollow fairies by heart! He does have other hobbies and it is good to see things that his peers enjoy from golf to fishing are themselves improving with technology as Vinnie’s other guests in this series are showcasing.

With all these technologies, I am convinced if Hilary Clinton were to write her book today, she would title it “It takes a virtual village”. But I would be lying if I told you I did not have days when I would like to be a throwback to my mom’s days as a young mom"

"Trickle-up innovation"

"This month, General Electric's (GE) health-care division will begin marketing a first-of-its-kind electrocardiograph machine in the U.S. Although packed with the latest technology, the battery-powered device weighs just six pounds, half as much as the smallest ECG machine currently for sale. It will retail for a mere $2,500, an 80% markdown from products with similar capabilities. But what really distinguishes the MAC 800 is its lineage. The machine is basically the same field model that GE Healthcare developed for doctors in India and China in 2008.

The process turns conventional product development on its head. Over the years, multinationals have prospered by turning out premium-priced products for the world's affluent. Rather than also designing products for poorer people elsewhere, many businesses found they could simply pass yesteryear's models down, as if they were unloading fleets of used cars. Lately, big companies such as Microsoft, Nokia, and Procter & Gamble are discovering that they can profit by targeting the world's masses first. And they can score again by selling these low-priced products elsewhere."

BusinessWeek

Photo credit - Medgadget

Guest Column: Technology and Big Band Jazz

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is Joe Thornton who runs Media Relations for Lawson Software. Here he writes about his  beloved sax and his jazz band.

"Right now there are thousands – if not millions - of young music students out there who would look at a guy like me (PR guy for an ERP software company) and say to themselves, “man, I’m never gonna be like that old dude.” I know this for fact, because 25 years ago I would look at corporate guys and say that very thing.

As a young music student, you never envision that you’ll spend your career trying to explain things like “business process optimization” and “enhancing user productivity.” You imagine yourself entertaining the masses and living the music dream. Then one day, you come to the harsh realization that decent saxophone players are literally a dime a dozen. The great ones are rare. I even tried living close to Bob Dylan's birth home (yes, he is a Minnesota boy who made Highway 61 famous) to no avail. So, contrary to what you previously thought about yourself, you find yourself in the dime-a-dozen crowd. The dream dies. Or does it?

Even though I’ve become the corporate guy I once dreaded becoming, I have the rare opportunity to keep one foot in the music biz. I play the lead saxophone in an 18-piece traditional big band jazz group called the River City Jazz Orchestra. We play everything from weddings and private parties to community bandshells, the occasional VFW hall and an old folks’ home or two. I play a 1947 Selmer Balanced Action alto sax and a 1970 Selmer Mark VI soprano sax. It’s fun. And I get a taste of the music business that I used to long for as a career – without having to rely on it for my livelihood (though it does pay for an occasional set of tires).

So how does technology play into this? Simple. I’ve learned that as a “working musician”, there are two things that you fear the most – playing a job and no people show up, or showing up at the wrong wedding. Our group is now using cool technology to avoid those two nightmare situations.

On the first great fear – nobody showing up – social networking is proving to be a powerful tool for musicians. We’ll set up an event on Facebook, invite friends and friends of friends. The notice of your “gig” stays on their personal pages as a great reminder. Our vocalist, in particular, is great at letting people know where to catch us via Facebook, MySpace, Plaxo and multiple others. And it works like a charm! Sometimes we’ll even post last minute notices on Twitter – and people respond in real time, tweeting things like “what time?” and “where?” or the one we really want to see “we’re on our way to hear you.”

Beyond marketing our group, social networks are connecting musicians and fans like never before. Case in point – I just returned from a family Disney vacation. While waiting in line for Space Mountain with my two boys, I happened to meet two wonderful jazz musicians from Sydney, Australia - Jacki Cooper and John Morrison. When I returned home I posted links to their YouTube videos and websites on my Facebook page, which exposes Jacki and John’s music to hundreds of musicians and music fans here in the States. This would not have been possible just a few short years ago. This kind of marketing is changing the way musicians survive and thrive, especially as clubs and restaurants are scaling back on offering live music.

Regarding the second fear – showing up at the wrong wedding – technology can save us from the wrath of an angry bride or, worse yet, the bride's parents. Living in a town like St. Paul, MN, getting directions like “we’re playing at St. Mary’s” doesn’t help. We have dozens of churches with identical saintly names in this saintly named town. But, with the help of GPS or Google Earth on my Blackberry, we can just enter the church name and address along with the scheduled start time and the technology gets us all in place at the right place and time. If one member of our 18-piece group fails to show up, it can ruin night for all.

Interestingly, I find technology has done little to improve the quality of musical instruments in use today. I, like many other sax players, have tried horns old and new to find the perfect sound. One would think that technology would improve the precision and tonal quality of a musical instrument. Surprisingly, companies have not been able to replicate the magic of a vintage Selmer saxophone.  Selmer makes outstanding instruments, but even with the great technology available in production, the company has not been able to match or surpass the craftsmanship of the horns the company made by hand 50-60 years ago. Like the musician’s art, the art of creating the instrument is still something technology cannot replicate.

Keep in mind the next time you see a corporate PR guy for a tech company, there just may be a hidden musician, actor, playwright, painter, sculptor or glassblower inside. And, since we’re also tech geeks at heart, we’ll find ways to "mashup" our passion for our art with our passion for the latest technology.

Finally, please support the arts. You might be keeping a true professional musician in business – or you might be helping a corporate PR guy put a new set of tires on his car!"

IE 8

"Users upgrading from previous versions of IE are going to be pleased. There are bunches of little things, like new bookmark manager and the ability to isolate and print a specific part of any page, that are just added niceties. But it's the "five S's" — speed, stability, security, standards and search — that are the most important enhancements."

Epicenter Wired Blog

Guest Column: Technology and Wine

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is John Dean, former CIO at Steelcase. I have enjoyed a few reds with him in various places around the world, and here he writes about his love of wine.

“First, let me share my perspective on wine.   I see wine as something you should enjoy almost every day.  I do have standards but the standards don't require me to choose the wine carefully based on complicated scores or by spending a great deal of money.   I don't want to over analyze wine. I won't try to choose exactly which berry flavor is present.   I don't want to describe it, I simply want to enjoy it.  To me, a victory is to find a very good wine at a cheap price.   The simple rules of nose, first taste, and finish are the ones that matter.   I have learned, like most everyone else, the price of the wine is not always a good measure of those attributes. 

My wife and I are charter members of the GWCP (Good Wine Cheap Price) group.  A closed group of 5 couples dedicated to finding wine matches exactly what the name of the group implies.   I have enjoyed many wines at many price points, but I have found that the discomfort caused by price shock included with say a $100 bottle of wine doesn't make up for the difference in nose, first taste, and finish.   And the other point is the expensive bottle of wine isn't an every day bottle of wine.    

So, what do I think about wine and technology?  I like technology that helps create very good wines at a cheap price and then tells me about it.   I have been told by the wine makers that I respect that the wine is made in the field.   They claim that all they do is tweak what was created by simply doing a great job of treating an excellent crop well.   It then becomes a game of an efficient supply chain to get the product to the consumer.   To give you an idea of the broad number of technologies that are available for this supply chain go to this website . 

So here is my list of technologies that meet the GWCP objective...

Producing the Grape.   Any technology that can help the wine maker grow great grapes at a lower cost.   For example, there are wi-fi sensors that check soil moisture, air temperature, and humidity.  Logic would say that this should help the grower increase volumes in areas perfect for growing grapes and add more marginal areas to the grape producing pool.   There are also very specialized irrigation systems coupled with these sensors to also increase yield.   My math says that more yield means lower prices.

Producing the Wine.   There are two main organisms in the making of wine.   The grape and the yeast.  The wonders of genetic engineering of both have enhanced the quality of both which in turn aids the fermentation process.  My math again says that this means that there will be more quality grapes producing more wine translating into lower prices.

Packaging the wine.   There is so much automation and enhancements in technology to get the wine from the "barrel" to the bottle or box and the types of "cork" that I could write for a long time on the topic. With a growing focus on “green” the packaging will evolve even faster. The quality of the box wines continues to get better.   I know, the romantic types that like to hear the sound of the cork, won't appreciate this, but the cost of packaging and distribution of the box wines is lower than for bottles.  It is the wine drinkers that influence the packaging of choice.   I guess I will have to get more GWCP members.  

Distribution.   I can only say that the combination of access to the Internet and the ability to buy direct is a big deal at least in terms of efficiency to get the wines that I can't get where I live.   I count on the major retailers to drive the efficiencies in the supply chain for the everyday wine.    I am counting on their business systems to move the information and product through the supply chain.   It is easy to find a GWCP certified wine for under $10.

Selecting the wine.   I won't dwell on the actual buying of the wine.   The opportunities for buying wine have remained the same.   We know where the stores are.  We know where the web-sites are.   I will focus on the impact of technology on selecting wines.   Web 2.0 has moved us into a new world of providing information needed to select a wine that meets your simple rules.   It isn't just a significant improvement in the content and collaboration of those who enjoy wine, but it also includes how you can get access to the information through a broad array of devices.  On the content front there are sites like Wine 2.0 focused on the next generation of wine drinkers.   There are social sites for different levels of wine drinkers base on how analytical you want to be (my perspective).  corkd.com is a site that is closer to my level of commitment to assessing wine.   I don't want to dwell on choosing the fruit or flower.   I still need to find the site that simply rates the nose, first taste, finish and price to find those GWCP certified wines.  

For those that really need the help at the store to select a wine, many of these new technologies will push and or allow you to pull wine rating content to iPhones, Blackberrys, and even more basic cell phones.  I guess these are great solutions for the infrequent buyers.  It would be better if the technology would match my GWCP simple rules with the inventory of wine at the store to list the best values by price from low to high.

Wine is a very personal thing.   Every individual has their own rules, from simple to complex.  The good news is that technology is helping to produce and distribute more quality wines at an affordable price.   The one thing that I don't ever want to change is the variety and the constantly changing character of individual wines we get through the things that we can never control... the different growing conditions year over year and the people that make the wine.  

Enjoy what you like knowing that technology continues to make it better and cheaper.”

Photo Credit: Ideal Moments

The other communications "unification"

Microsoft, Cisco, Siemens and others have been talking for a while about Unified Communications. This week Google announced Voice. But like Larry Dignan I was intrigued by Plantronics Savi due next month. It promises to unify into a single head set landline, mobile or VoIP calls. Solves as Larry says the “last 10 feet” problem.

This I got to see, I said.

So I reached out to Karen Auby at Plantronics volunteering to be a guinea pig for Savi. And she goes – why wait till April? She sent me their Calisto Pro, the early version of the Savi.

And sure enough I can pair the headset via Bluetooth to my PDA. I can use it as a wireless headset for landline calls – the phone uses low-interference DECT 6.0 functionality (or I can plug another headset in the 2.5mm jack on the phone). I can make Skype calls on the PC with that headset (the computer has to be connected via USB to base unit).

So now my mind is racing – can I use it when I am traveling? (sure, since it is paired with my PDA but the headset charger is built into the base unit so I would need to lug that and power unit along). Can I stream A2DP music to it? (No). Ok, so I am getting greedy, but for a home office unifying all 3 modes – landline, soft and mobile - into one headset is pretty nifty.

The Savi should increase the range the headset or phone can be away from the base unit. And as Larry writes it also lets Plantronics dabble in software.

Which reminds me – I better upgrade my Grand Central subscription to Google Voice.

Mapping a City's Rhythm

"Citysense, which has access to four million GPS sensors, currently offers simple statistics about a city, says Jebara. It shows, for instance, whether the overall activity in the city is above or below normal (Sense Networks' GPS data indicates that activity in San Francisco is down 34 percent since October) or whether a particular part of town has more or less activity than usual. But the next version of the software, due out in a couple of months, will help users dig more deeply into this data. It will reveal the movement of people with certain behavior patterns."

MIT Technology Review

Guest Column: Technology and Sailing

This continues a new category of posts: Guest columns where friends and readers share how technology is reshaping their hobby – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.

This time it is my former PwC colleague, Curtis Beebe who has spent the last decade or so in various roles in the Microsoft Dynamics reseller world. Here he writes about his love for the sea.

“For centuries, sailing ships have been at the leading edge of technology. Innovations in carpentry for hulls, textiles for sailcloth, metallurgy for cannon all owe themselves to the demands of moving men and goods across the water. Even something as basic as a reliable time keeping device is a direct result of the demands of navigating ships across the ocean (read the book Longitude by Dava Sobel).In recent times, several well known technology guys have completed major projects that apply what we’ve learned in our vocation, to our avocation: Larry Ellison, Tom Perkins, and Philippe Khan are all avid sailors that have pushed the technology along.

My passion is less ambitious. I take my family “down to the sea” for relaxation and recharge. We enjoy sailing our boat, “High Cotton,” along the Florida coast as an escape from the pressures of modern life and to re-connect as a family. There is nothing like locking yourself in a 400 square foot space with your wife and three teenage boys if you are interested in reconnection!

The modern cruising sailboat is the result of thousands of years of technological development. Just in my lifetime, the refinement of fiberglass construction has resulted in relatively inexpensive, low maintenance hull shapes that are very complex, refined, and versatile. Sails can now be molded into shape out of high-tech polymers rather than woven and sewn. Carbon and Kevlar show up in hull, spar, and fittings.  Suffice it to say, high technology is very prevalent in the design and construction of the modern sailboat.

That brings us to the electronics. When we purchased the boat 5 years ago, my goal was to keep it simple. A handheld GPS would be fine, because I’d use paper charts. The single permanent instrument on board was a combined depth and speed sensor. A depth sensor is mandatory along the west coast of Florida because, as the saying goes, “If you haven’t been aground, you haven’t been around.” The speed sensor was less important: we’re cruising on a sailboat….does it really matter if we’re going 4.6 knots or 4.8? We also had a marine band radio in case things hit the proverbial fan and we needed to call for help. (Cell phone service is unreliable more than a few miles offshore).

I boldly made the edict that we would NOT be one of those families that installed a TV, Playstation, and Microwave on the boat. We were going to read books, talk, play scrabble, and cook on a grill off of the stern.

In retrospect, we’re at least in partial compliance with that edict. As you know, modern technology is insidious and wiggles its way in when you aren’t looking.

Technology’s advance aboard “High Cotton” began innocently enough. I started out planning our trips on my notebook computer using free electronic charts then transferring the routes and notes to paper. That soon morphed to leaving the notebook on at the navigation station of the boat to save all of that copying and wasted paper. As long as the notebook was on, I might as well connect the GPS to display our current position on the chart, right? The horse was out of the barn, the camel’s nose in the tent, the genie unbottled.

Today, we’re sporting a fully integrated instrument, navigation, and communication system that is tied into an autopilot. I can plot out a course on a digital chart and the boat will follow that course. I can monitor wind speed and direction, depth, water temp, speed (both through the water and over the ground), heading, course, bearing to our destination, and expected time of arrival. I can get current weather reports via satellite and plot them on the same charts I’m using for navigation. I even get plots of ship traffic that sound an alarm if we are going to get too close. If we get into trouble, one button will transmit an SOS along with our location so help can find us quickly.

The good news is that all of this technology went together with a minimum of fuss. The sensors all share a common interface specification and the industry has done a pretty good job of keeping everything in compliance.

The bad news is the same bad news that affects electric cars, cell phones, notebook computers, Gameboys, and every other “wireless” gadget: batteries suck. When away from the dock, we rely on batteries for electrical power. We’ve got a small diesel engine for when the wind dies, and it will also recharge the batteries, but we’re out there to sail, not to listen to the noisy, smelly stinkpot of an engine.

As a result, I’ve become an electricity miser, hoarder, scrooge, and cop. (If I could be that miserly on land, our family would win several “green” awards). I have a meter that monitors every amp in, and every amp out of the battery bank. If one of the kids plugs in his cell phone charger we have a new conversation:“Is calling your girlfriend really worth 4 amps?” “Do you really need that fan on? It’s pulling 2 amps!”

If I could figure out how to recharge the batteries from rolling eyes I’d have it made :)”

 

Photo Credit: CafePress