The WSDOT does a great job posting ferry schedules and making them available for cell phones. For some reason tho, the exact quotas for cars on each sailing are not online – you can get them in person at the ferry docks but no online presence. They are willing to email them to you tho, so here they are for Lopez this summer:

There are separate quotas for overheight vehicles, let me know if you need those.

Strategic News Service Blog » Blog Archives » Solving America’s Energy Crisis – a reasonable approach. I heartily agree with the idea of getting to all electric as soon as possible. We need an Apollo-like program – we need the leadership to propose it and to get everyone focused on it. The whole country focused on the July 20 1969 Apollo landing and rallied around it – we can do the same around the date of the last tanker docking at our shores from overseas.

As I’ve mentioned to some people – there will never be a solar embargo, there will never be a solar cartel, the sun isn’t controlled by governments inimical to our interests, “peak solar” is billions of years away, and solar production economics are going to follow a Moore’s-Law-like curve. What is not to like?

Rich cleverly figures out how to game the SBUX WIFI system – just have multiple prepaid cards.

Rented a flick on Amazon Unbox last night – it downloaded fine to my Tivo and it looked fine, but the 24 hour exploding limitation is beyond stupid. We regularly watch a movie on two nights running, half each night, but this is impossible with Unbox rentals thanks to the fact that the movie explodes in 24 hours. I can pay the same price and buy a movie off Tivo PPV and keep it forever. This unbox thing will be a failure until Amazon can get DRM straightened out.

Spent the morning hooking up my birthday present – a PS3. Replacing my DVD player.

One major bummer is the PS3’s use of bluetooth for remote. While I appreciate an RF solution versus an IR solution, as the PS3 boards note, no universal remote will currently work with the PS3. So sigh, I have to keep yet another remote around. Bummer.

Also my AV receiver is a few years old and doesn’t support HDMI and so I have to use RGB + Digital Audio connectors. My AV receiver is in a tight cabinet and so I have to work largely blind plugging cables in, this was painful. HDMI would be nice for reduction of cables.

* turn on color management * colorful list view in google reader – requires greasemonkey…i like it! * About:robots. cute * tweak the suggestion algorithm * piclens plugin. works great with smugmug * Sxipper – enhanced password manager

Electricity Rates from Solar Cost Competitive by 2015 « Cooler Planet

Clean Edge, a research and publishing company focused on renewable technologies and the non-profit organization Co-op America released a report that states the cost of electricity derived from solar power will be on par with electricity derived from fossil fuels by 2015.

Awesome, this is certainly my bet. The amount of investment that has poured into solar technologies is going to pay off somehow. I don’t know which approach will win, but one of them will.

Antonio Henton, On the Midnight Train to Georgia - Sunday Morning Quarterback – this is too bad, he seems like a great talent. But as another commentator noted, he has had a rough ride at times at OSU and a clean start may serve him well. Good luck to him!

* Toolmonger » Blog Archive » Meet Rockwell’s Jawhorse – I have a thing for portable work benches and their ilk * Borosilicate Tea Kettle – just because I like saying it, “could you please hand me my borosilicate tea kettle?” * Floating Wireless Speaker – there has to be a way to use this at Halloween. * Vertical Macbook Dock – kind of cool looking * Stylish Tape Measures – because they look awesome

NASA space colonies – awesome, I remember these pix from back in the day, very inspiring.

My other strange space link of the day – something about Nazi invaders from the moon. I too would watch any movie with this premise in a minute.

* HP working on solar PV, IBM putting a billion dollars into green datacenters, Intel spinning out a PV firm – nice to see the IT leaders getting behind alternate energy * DOE funds electric vehicle projects – not sure why GM, GE, Ford need DOE money – give it to startups! More interesting is the note about Tesla’s deal with Daimler, very smart. * Nuclear option gets more public support – thank goodness. The public is more rational than the politicians about energy strategy * Duke Energy jumping into residential and commercial solar installs – the wave of the future? * Green construction materials – I wonder about the 50 year life of these. I think I will let others be the beta testers.

14_3D Printers « long exposure photography, video and sculpture – via Make

MAKE: Blog: Electroforming an Iris Seed Pod – actually seems remarkably easy