Progressive Odyssey

One of my favorite podcasts is 99% Invisible  a show about design and its unseen power to make or break our experience with the objects arou...

I found out our furnace had a problem after the weather did thus to us: Almost a 30 'F drop in three hours.  When we went to bed Th...

If you are a frequent reader of my infrequent writing, you'll know that last summer (2011) I installed a system to measure the temperatu...

I'm getting close.  I've got a few more parts on the way and then some final assembly still to do.  I should be done in time. ...

It works lower than I expected. (Its measuring volts, by the way.)  This will make my life easier.

I've been able to test another aspect of the secret project and it looks like its working as advertised. Here's the proof: More...

Here's a very early look at another nerd project I've started working on.  No hints, I'll leave it to your imagination as to wha...

In writing yesterday about evaluating the cost effectiveness of our fancy whole-house fan I mentioned that I only had a way of measuring h...

As I've written before , two years ago we installed a whole-house fan in an attempt to make better use of the sometimes-colder outdoor ...

At the beginning of the summer one of the pastor's of my church challenged the congregation as a whole to memorize a particular book of ...

An important part of my home power monitor is the ability to measure the instantaneous power for a given circuit; this will allow me to calc...

Here's the latest developments in the home power system monitor: The black rails down the side are the connectors for the curre...

Each one of those green things is a radio capable of transmitting and receiving data when hooked up to an Arduino .  You'll notice th...

For the past few months, in my voluminous spare time, I've been working on developing a system similar to my home temperature monitor ...

I just stumbled upon a free photo stitcher called  Hugin  and have been using it to redo the panoramas I have taken over the years.  I prev...

This is one for the nerds.  If you've ever been frustrated by technical support that seems to know less than you, you're going to be...

My wife was very interested in visiting plantation during our trip and even though we went to three, I think she would have liked to see man...

If you have very many compact florescent light (CFL) bulbs, you may have noticed that they glow for a while after you turn them off. Th...

This past week had been a week of delays for me as the bureaucracy that is Wichita State has been dominating my attention. That I even have...

Baton Rouge is the capital of Louisiana and it has a fantastic capital building.  Actually it has two fantastic capital buildings and both a...