Keep Austin Beautiful

this past saturday i took dylan out to the lake travis clean up organized by the keep austin beautiful organization. it was really quite fun. we got out to the meeting place by 8:30a and picked up our stuff and then headed out to the park we volunteered to help clean up.

mostly we picked up bottles, cigarette butts, and food wrappers. but when we were walking across the bridge at the low water crossing park, we found a 20" bmx freestyle bike at the bottom of the lake (really a the lower colorado river but who's paying attention). there were some people who had their canoe and kayak with them that we got to help us try and get the bike out. however, by the time they got their loads of trash out of their boats and back over to the site where the bike was submerged the flood gates had been opened and the current had picked up too much to even find the bike again, let alone get it out of the water.

after we were done with the trash pick up we went back to the satellite building where we picked up our supplies and had a bit of lunch before heading back to the low water crossing to break in our new fishing rods. we lost two lures and didn't get a single bite. doesn't really matter though. it was just fun being outside with dylan. he mainly let his lures "swim" in the water at the shoreline. i figured out how to cast my setup properly. so all in all it was a very fun and productive day.

sustainable datacenter

so i've been reading up on high availablity architectures and strategies for a presetnation i will be giving in august and thought that it would be cool to desgin and research what it would take to create a completely sustainable data center...

from the data side of the equation...you'd have to have fast and secure access to the site from a remote location...you'd want to know your data was not only safe but secure from internal and external prying eyes...

network considerations

• speed of light


• geographic distance to data center


• satellite wifi access

building site considerations

• do you build to suit and completely customized the structure?


• do you search for a pre-existing site that fits most of your requirements?


• do you stay local to the U.S. or do you look for an international site?


• if you do look intl, where do you start?


• what countries are attractive?


• what types of natural disasters are "normal"?

would it be a good idea to attempt to reach out to a third world country such as an african nation to host the data center?? this could potentially be a means to provide training for the local peoples in many areas...such as building design, systems design, solar energy designs, actual hands-on experience with new technologies...

homebrew project requirements 0.0

so i've got a small garden at home that i've been maintaining since this past spring and i'm learning quite a bit about how to water properly...that got me to thinking about what i would like an irrigation system (ISM) to monitor and tell me...

i've found that my garden plants like to be watered less frequently but at greater amounts than shallow waterings on a daily basis...i would like my ISM to monitor and tune watering cycles based on the dryness (or wettness) of the soil...this is a critical feature...so one question i have is how many electrodes should i use in the soil and to what depth should they be to obtain reliable and accurate readings

there is a question of power...how do i power this system??? i am very intrigued by the notion of sustainable living and alternate enery sources...so it would be cool if it was solar powered...there's plenty of sun down here in tx

more to come as the ideas hit me...