Clean Energy for America - Strip District

Here are some of the Shepard Fairey posters in the Strip District. I have others from other places in town, including the big installation across the street from the Andy Warhol museum, bu they're all trapped on my computer at home (shhh...I'm throwing this post up from work right now). I'll post those later.

Shepard Fairey murals in Pittsburgh

Shepard Fairey is in town for the unveiling of a piece of work (Clean Energy for America) this weekend as part of a Netroots Nation event. He is, of course, to date probably best known for his Obama "HOPE" poster. A number of murals are going up around Pittsburgh.

I ran across one going up in an alley off Penn Blvd between 8th and 9th (I think) and watched them work for a while. Then I rode over to the one at 1st and Wood St, as shown below. I think this is a very exciting series of events for Pittsburgh. I'd like to see the mainstream media pick up some of the issues and talk about them. We'll see.

I'd love to go to the Clean Energy for America unveiling, but I'll be watching the Decemberists play at the Byham Theater. It's tough to have such difficult choices.

Here are a few links discussing the murals, the event, and the organizations.

• http://bittersweetharvest.blogspot.com/2009/08/la-street-art-in-pittsburgh.html
• http://iheartpgh.com/2009/08/12/party-to-celebrate-shepard-faireys-clean-energy-for-america-installation/
• http://www.netrootsnation.org/
• http://obeygiant.com/

Post on my official building science blog

I'm still trying to figure out how trackbacks work. On my HGTV blog, I put up a new post about strategies for conserving energy on miscellaneous electric loads. It's pretty dry, as it is more or less a cut and paste job from my work for our 2008 annual report to the Department of Energy. I've neglected that blog, so I felt it was fair to cheat. :)

Actual URL of the post: http://blogs.hgtvpro.com/hgtvpro/building_science/archive/2009/02/some_thoughts_of_energy_conser.html

Trackback URL: http://blogs.scrippsnetworks.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1848

1,400 miles

I'm at 1,400 miles on the bike this year in Pittsburgh. For an idea of the scale, the name "Pittsburgh" is about 1.25 miles. I tread the same paths a lot. The Google Earth map doesn't do a great job of showing that. I've had to reduce my mileage the past few weeks, of course, but I'm easily on a path to reach 2,500 miles for the year on the bike. I offset driving for 25 miles of work commuting a week and probably another 10 or more miles on average of errands. With work and vacation trips out of town, I'd guess it works out that it's maybe a 1,000 mile offset of driving the car. Using the federal mileage rate of 50.5 cents per mile, that's $500 in approximate savings. I can replace my bike every three years or so at that rate. :)

Electrical End-Use Disaggregation

It was a fun, albeit geeky way to spend the morning, but I met a friend at Carnegie Mellon to hear about his research project. He and his colleague have built a system to disaggregate power and events of various electrical end uses on the same circuit. This isn't really all that new of a concept. Several products and/or projects have existed before. I think some of their tools are new and improved. This is only a step in the larger project they are working on. I don't know if it's public yet, so I cannot really say any more about it. I do hope that my company's lab home and other monitored projects may be a good test bed for their system. Although, at the current rate, they will be out of grad school before our lab home has a real occupant. The first two years will see it as an unoccupied test bed.

Remainder of the ride was nice...

Nice 18.5 mile ride around the city today (including the commute to work). Beyond the exciting events in Squirrel Hill, it was a good day to be out on the bike.

I have no clue why, but the fence was on fire on the South Side. It drew a nice crowd. Everyone likes a fire. Just like everyone likes a bike crash...


Some shots from around the rivers. The first is the Heinz Lofts, across from the Strip District, where my office is. The second is the Strip looking at it from across the Allegheny River.



Is this "clean coal"? I hope nobody believe that shit... It's worth the research, as there will be no single solution to the mess we're in. Clean coal is certainly not going to do it, but it will have its place in the cocktail of energy sources we will have to rely on.