Brad Ideas - burning man - Comments

Maybe rather than reselling

Paul O — Sat, 12 May 2007 15:00:37 -0700

Maybe rather than reselling into the grid, the signal could be to take office buildings and other mid-size industrial or government users off grid, and power them from their parking lot. Companies could make their employees whole for the contribution, and there would be less risk to powerline workers in case of an outage. Residential users could continue to be considered in base load, and large industrial users could take responsibility for their own draw.

Sure, the multiplicity of smaller generators is less efficient than single large generators, but as you say this is peak power (and a large generator sitting idle most of the day is pretty inefficient, too). And there's already lots of investment going into making those small power plants highly efficient - it is conceivable that increased effort to make large generators more efficient could lose out because of economies of scale going into automotive research.

It's been talked about

brad — Mon, 07 May 2007 22:00:24 -0700

I think some models are considering it.

One proposal that's gone out is that for plug-in hybrid cars, which are normally plugged into the grid for charging as they try to use as much grid power as they can, and only burn gas when out of grid power, this would make even more sense.

The reason is the car could sit in the driveway, plugged into the grid. When the grid faced a shortage (hot summer day with lots of AC causing brownouts) it could send a data signal to the cars to fire up and provide power back to the grid. Since peak capacity is the real cost of the power generation system, this could be a win -- though these generators are not nearly as efficient as big ones, and thus would make more pollution. And it had better not fire up in a garage.

But this requires a fancier hookup.

Hybrid vehicles as Generators

Paul O — Mon, 07 May 2007 18:01:37 -0700

Sorry for being late to the game on this one, but I've often wondered why car companies haven't started marketing their Hybrid vehicles as standby (or camping) generators: for the extra money (as an option) and the extra hardware, how difficult would it be to use the existing automobile power plant to supply a few amps of Alternating Current at 120V?

Such an option would also be helpful for emergencies, especially were home power to be restructured to be able to disconnect from the grid (during power outages) and power high-priority circuits from your car (e.g. draw enough power to keep your food from spoiling, and let the engine recharge the batteries as necessary, or provide the full power).

Of course, you'd have to drive your generator to the filling station every now and again.

And if it can reduce the waste associated with dedicated generators which would no longer be required, all the better.

P.S. My experience would be consistent with your "last name" filter doing a comparison without 'lcase'ing the user's input.

burning man origin?

Kaleberg — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:49:53 -0700

Is this Burning Man festival thing related to the old Santa Fe Zozobra? They burned a large effigy to fight off the seasonal doldrums.

Pictures of Mark's Big Round Cubatron

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 00:44:40 -0700

Hi Brad,

I just wondered if you were able to get some night pictures
of Mark's BRC art piece. I would love to see them. Some folks
have posted them on flickr.com and there is one video over
on YouTube.COM though it's not that revealing.

Would love to see some shots that you might have taken.

thanks!

-lile

ps. Hope you are well and that you find the bandaids that don't stick
to hair...

Dunno

brad — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 23:31:01 -0700

If it doesn’t say on his web site, I would have no knowledge of his particular technique. I have done several myself. Yes, you want a panorama head (day or night) though for night a stable one is important.

A fast lens is nice but of course if you need depth of field you can’t really use it and must take a long exposure.

A number of panorama packages will let you handle moving people, if you can adjust the blend zone (or like photovista, they naturally use a small one.)

Panoramas

Brian Sullivan — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:15:59 -0700

I have also been fascinated by the 360 QTVR Panoramas done by Peter Murphy:

http://www.mediavr.com/blog/

some at night with people. I haven't been able to determine how he does these. I don't know if you have seen these?

Any idea on what techniques he uses (yes I have asked outright with no response) -- equipment (lens, tripod jigs or ..?), software?

What equipment do you use? Do you use a nodal correction setup on your tripod? What lens(es)?

(BTW I remember meeting you -- sometime in the early/mid 80's -- I think you were working on a Pascal compiler/interpreter for the (Ontario) ICON computer?)

hi

jack.mardack — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 22:59:11 -0700

Welcome back from the Playa, Brad.

I "surrendered" a half dozen close friend first-timers this year, and was as nervous as an expectant papa.

I could not make it this year myself.

Thanks for bringing good things back -- :)

2HP

Ryan (burner) — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 06:47:37 -0700

Great Work - your booth was a highlight of the show! I spent about a half hour talking with random people dialing "Burning Man". It was great when I realized that the other phone down the across the street wasn't connected... I was reading the sign (Pac*Hell) when it rang. The girl on the other end kept asking about "burning man" and I just kept explaining that I just answered this phone on the side of the playa. Of course I had to explain the the whole thing and it was really confusing untill I hung up and got another call. It took a few more rings before I realized that it was an outside line and people were calling-in from who knows where. One guy was calling a friend back after he missed the call (caller ID I guess). Any-who... It was kick-ass fun, thanks!

Fresh — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 03:37:12 -0700

Brad....
So.....cool!!!!

Lapeste — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 20:42:06 -0700

(POSTED AT SURREAL CAFE 5:36 AM 9/18/04

I apologize to photographer Brad Templeton for inlining his photos from Burning Man 2004. I had every intention of asking his permission to display his photos, but in my haste to post them, I cut corners. I always try to credit sources as you can see from the content of my blog, however due to the often high price demands of intellectual property, I often procrastinate on securing permission. You can view Brad's beautiful portfolio of picutres at http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/ .

..:: post by Lapeste | 17:36 | comments ::..