The ideal bike lane solution.

The bicycle lane should not end and begin at every intersection.

Transit Miami posted images of the new bike lanes painted out on Coral Way and found them seriously lacking in design. I have to agree. Even the ones on Griffin Road in Broward don’t even at every street corner. While Felipe Azenha of Transit Miami has some very excellent ways other cities have improved their bike lanes, I don’t think it’s enough to just paint the intersection portions of the bike lanes green. People here are retarded when they drive. There is no way to fluff it. They just seem to lose all patience and sensibility. Besides, this isn’t how you bargain. You don’t start in the middle and work your way down. Let’s shoot for the top and if we are lucky, we get it.

Bike Shop Girl at Commute by Bike posted a very nice contraflow protected bike lane soon to be erected in Washington D.C. by DDOT. This is what we should be shooting for in South Florida. It’ll definitely be harder to implement in the Downtown area because of finite space, but in other areas it would be wonderful to have this.

DC will soon have its first protected bicycle lane.

DDOT is ready to begin construction on a protected, contraflow lane for bicyclists to ride south on 15th Street NW between U Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

By placing the lane adjacent to the sidewalk, buffered from high-speed traffic by parked cars, this will create a more comfortable environment for cyclists. According to a letter DDOT sent to residents, work will begin sometime in the next week depending on weather, and take about five days.

Not only does this serve the main purpose of protecting cyclist but think about the visual impact it will add to the city and county. No longer will the suburbs of Dade and Broward be bland and boring because this is miles and miles of prime artistic canvas. This could easily be turned into public art. South Beach has the art deco buildings and life guard stands, while the Grove has all sorts of other things. What better way to serve multiple purposes and create a unique character to our areas? The only problem we have is funding. How do we pay for this?

A physically seperated bike lane using parked cars as a barrier.

One thought could be leasing out portions of the barrier, by the foot, for artists or advertisements. I’m sure some shops would love to have a cost effective way to advertise their business with attention getting signs. Cafe’s could even take the daily specials and use the barriers like a chalk board. Maybe the various cycling groups and advocates can come together to form a non-profit construction company solely for the purpose of helping various governments to cheaply build cycling infrastructure. I know it will be hard to convince elected officials from awarding the contract to friends in the construction industry, but we have to start somewhere and try.

The imagination runs wild.

Tough love or just divisive politics?

Folks, it’s no secret that opposing sides like to poke fun at each other over their stances on political issues. But I saw something the other day that has left me wondering what exactly my reaction was. Here is the image in question.

This was posted on the Advanced Armament Corp.’s blog on Tuesday either showing off someone else’s sign or someone who works at AAC. AAC for those of you not familiar with the gun industry, is a manufacture of silencers and was recently purchased by Remington.

At first I wasn’t shocked or disgusted, but more confused with my reaction. My brain couldn’t decide how to react. It was quite the situation to be in, if I say so myself. This is the one part about gun ownership I hate the most, the political fighting between the different sides. It absolutely is one of the worst things to feel when you are right in the middle of it. Nothing makes you feel unwelcome to a place of business as the employees behind the counter berate your political stance just for being what they are. At least come up with a sound argument on why my stance is stupid.

A statue by François-Léon Sicard representing the Good Samaritan's rescue of an injured traveler.

Here is why I think the sign is a bad idea. Keeping in mind that I am not a trained lawyer, but the sign could create a situation where the owner of the sign would have to rescue his neighbor should he be in trouble. Every state has some form of Good Samaritan law on their books, and all of them are different in their own ways. Almost all of them protect people who help from being sued. But some states have a Duty to rescue law that in some circumstances, you can be held liable for failing to come to the rescue of another party in peril.

In the common law of the United States, there is no general duty to come to the rescue of another. Generally, a person cannot be held liable for doing nothing while another person is in peril. However, such a duty may arise in two situations:

• A duty to rescue arises where a person creates a hazardous situation. If another person then falls into peril because of this hazardous situation, the creator of the hazard – who may not necessarily have been a negligent tortfeasor – has a duty to rescue the individual in peril.
• Such a duty also arises where a “special relationship” exists. For example:
  • Emergency workers (police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, etc.) have a general duty to rescue the public within the scope of their employment, but not a duty to specific individuals.
  • Parents have a duty to rescue their minor children. This duty also applies to those acting in loco parentis, such as schools or babysitters.
  • Common carriers have a duty to rescue their patrons.
  • Employers have an obligation to rescue employees, under an implied contract theory.
  • Property owners have a duty to rescue invitees from all dangers on the property.
  • Spouses have a duty to rescue each other in all U.S. jurisdictions.
  • Contrary to common law, eight states have laws requiring people to help strangers in peril: Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota,Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. These laws are also referred to as Good Samaritan laws, despite their difference from laws of the same name that protect individuals that try to help another person. These laws are rarely applied, and are generally ignored by citizens and lawmakers.

Where a duty to rescue arises, the rescuer must generally act with reasonable care, and can be held liable for injuries caused by a reckless rescue attempt. However, many states have limited or removed liability from rescuers in such circumstances, particularly where the rescuer is an emergency worker. Furthermore, the rescuer need not endanger himself in conducting the rescue.

I bolded the two most important parts of the Duty to rescue law. It really depends on the judge and/or jury. If someone can successfully argue that one neighbor created a hazardous situation by exposing security holes that can be easily exploited, and that said neighbor will not render aide, he may indeed be found of violation of Duty to rescue.

So after thinking over the image for two days, I am of the thought that it’s not just rude, but unhelpful to the cause of gun right ownership. Trying to convince people who having a different opinion by basically telling strangers to go ahead and rob your neighbors home because there will be no assistance is just plain stupid. In my eyes, all it does is create even more animosity towards not just someone you need politically, but your own neighbor. Don’t be an asshole to your neighbor just to score a zinger on politics. Have some decency. In the end you will find far more people willing to listen to your ideas.

Your internet connection sucks and you know it.

Image via Wikipedia

Charter, Comcast, DSLi, Earthlink, SnappyDSL, Atlantic Broadband, AT&T, they all suck ass. Some more than others but suck none-the-less. We all complain about it but there really isn’t much we as consumers can do. Then this gem popped up.

Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own

ISPs may not act for years on local complaints about slow Internet—but when a town rolls out its own solution, it’s amazing how fast the incumbents can deploy fiber, cut prices, and run to the legislature.

Regional telco TDS Telecommunications last week issued a press release announcing a major milestone for the company: 50Mbps service over fiber optic cable to residents of Monticello, Minnesota. The Minneapolis suburb became one of the few non-FiOS communities in the country to experience full fiber-to-the-home deployment, and subscribers will all receive a free upgrade from 25Mbps service to the new 50Mbps tier.

Even better is the price, which starts at $49.95 a month for 50Mbps fiber service without the need to buy other services.

TDS is thrilled. “This is a huge first for TDS,” said market manager Tom Ollig. “TDS is working incredibly hard to deliver the faster speeds customers want.”

But the entire congratulatory press release glosses over a key fact: the reason that Monticello received a fiber network was the town’s decision to install a municipal-owned fiber network to every home in town… spawning aset of TDS lawsuits that went all the way to the Minnesota Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the town.

Screaming to be heard

The saga began in 2007, when the town passed a referendum approving the city-owned fiber network. The city says that it had approached TDS and was told that no such system would be installed in town in the near future, so it went ahead with its own plans.

After the referendum, the city was sued by the telco just before groundbreaking began. The suit didn’t seem to have much of a chance under Minnesota law, and indeed judges at multiple levels ruled for Monticello. But in the meantime, TDS rolled into town with nine crews of its own and began installing—you guessed it—fiber to the home.

Monticello had just become one of the only US cities in which twin, parallel fiber networks were being built at the same time. Backers of the muni fiber plan were outraged; not only could TDS build a modern fiber network on a moment’s notice when it wanted to do so, but the lawsuits prevented the city from doing much of its installation even as TDS moved ahead.

Goman on Gamers With Jobs put it best, we need a public option for broadband. The cost wasn’t even that bad.

The bond sale was successful with $26,445,000 invested in our project by private investors. As a result of the legal challenge, however, the revenue bonds were placed in an escrow account with an expiration date of one year pending the outcome of the court hearing. The City Council renewed its belief in the FTTP project by authorizing city staff to release RFPs for the Head-end (central office) Building and site grading and utilities and a RFP for a fiber backbone loop to reach a large number of commercial businesses and industries in the City.

Monticello has a population of 11,414 people, 2,944 households, and 2,066 families residing in the city. Assuming each household has one account of 20 Mbps at $34.95 that’s $102,892.80 per month on residential customers alone. With only residential customers it would take 21.41792234247683 years to repay back the initial investment of $26,445,000. If we add commercial and if the city decides to go into wireless they can surely lower the amount of time to repay back the bonds.

The example here clearly shows that if your service sucks, the possibility exists that government CAN do it better than the private sector. This is what the health insurance industry fears with a public option. -FunkenPants

The threat of a good example. -Paleocon

Now let’s take that and scale it up for South Florida. According to the census, Monticello is actually denser than Miami-Dade County. Monticello clocks in at 1,264.6 people per sq mi while Dade comes in at 1,158/sq mi. So at $26,445,000 / 1264.6 sq mi we get $20,911.75 per sq mi to roll out fiber in Monticello. Since we have considerable more population in Dade (2,387,170 total with 1,158/sq mi ) costs would scale up but it could also be paid back fast if we combined the cost savings of municipal buildings, commercial, residential, and wireless. Consider the following.

This awesome infographic shows the internet costs and speeds around the world for the top 20 nations in the ITIF Broadband Rankings. Unsurprisingly, we don’t compare too well.

Number one is, predictably, Japan, where the average broadband speed is 60mbps and they pay $0.27 per 1mbps. We, in comparison, average 4.8mbps and pay $3.33 per 1mbps, putting us at #15. Be sure to click the above image to see it in its full glory. [Zach Klein] via Gizmodo

With the right business plan, the county and city could use this business opportunity to help create revenue and jobs to close up the budget gap. So if you want better speeds of broadband, it’s time we tell all the telco’s to go fuck themselves. Next time I’ll make the case on why we would want to do this.

Florida places four cities with the most Call of Duty pre-orders.

Some background information for you.

Amazon.com’s Call of Duty-est Town in America promotion features the towns that have the highest percentage of Release-Date Delivery COD:MW2 pre-orders. To calculate, we are using the most recent U.S. Census data for U.S. towns and cities with a population of more than 5,000 people, that have ordered enough copies for two squads (18 people) using Release-Date Delivery. Amazon.com will donate a $5,000 Amazon.com gift card to a charitable organization of our choice that serves the winning town. The winning town will be announced shortly before 12PM PDT on November 10, 2009.

The list of the Top 40 Call of Duty-est Towns in America will be updated on a daily basis allowing fans to track demand for the latest Call of Duty game at Amazon.com.

The list itself is full of interesting cities, ones you never thought of would have a high amount of buyers, but when you think about it, isn’t that surprising. An overwhelming majority of college towns with some military towns thrown in for good measure.

The Top 40 Towns Answering the Call of Duty on Day One

Last Updated: 11:00 AM PST 11/03/09

1. Grand Forks, North Dakota (Yesterday’s Rank: 1) 2. Urbana, Illinois (Yesterday’s Rank: 2) 3. Idaho Falls, Idaho (Yesterday’s Rank: 4) 4. Athens, Ohio (Yesterday’s Rank: 6) 5. Warwick, Rhode Island (Yesterday’s Rank: NA) 6. Norman, Oklahoma (Yesterday’s Rank: 5) 7. Normal, Illinois (Yesterday’s Rank: 8 ) 8. Morgantown, West Virginia (Yesterday’s Rank: 7) 9. Clovis, California (Yesterday’s Rank: 11) 10. Downey, California (Yesterday’s Rank: NA) 11. Puyallup, Washington (Yesterday’s Rank: 9) 12. Leesburg, Virginia (Yesterday’s Rank: 18) 13. Columbia, Missouri (Yesterday’s Rank: 10) 14. Boulder, Colorado (Yesterday’s Rank: 12) 15. Grove City, Ohio (Yesterday’s Rank: 30) 16. Provo, Utah (Yesterday’s Rank: 14) 17. Corvallis, Oregon (Yesterday’s Rank: 13) 18. Stillwater, Oklahoma (Yesterday’s Rank: 3) 19. McKinney, Texas (Yesterday’s Rank: 15) 20. Beaverton, Oregon (Yesterday’s Rank: 32)

21. Twentynine Palms, California (Yesterday’s Rank: 16) 22. Blacksburg, Virginia (Yesterday’s Rank: 33) 23. Waco, Texas (Yesterday’s Rank: 37) 24. Pensacola, Florida (Yesterday’s Rank: 34) 25. Reno, Nevada (Yesterday’s Rank: 25) 26. Fort Lauderdale, Florida (Yesterday’s Rank: 24) 27. Santa Clarita, California (Yesterday’s Rank: 27) 28. Vero Beach, Florida (Yesterday’s Rank: 23) 29. Auburn, Alabama (Yesterday’s Rank: 31) 30. Clearwater, Florida (Yesterday’s Rank: 28) 31. Coral Gables, Florida (Yesterday’s Rank: 29) 32. College Station, Texas (Yesterday’s Rank: 20) 33. Des Moines, Iowa (Yesterday’s Rank: 21) 34. Oxnard, California (Yesterday’s Rank: 22) 35. Ames, Iowa (Yesterday’s Rank: 19) 36. San Rafael, California (Yesterday’s Rank: 17) 37. Naples, Florida (Yesterday’s Rank: NA) 38. Broomfield, Colorado (Yesterday’s Rank: NA) 39. Olathe, Kansas (Yesterday’s Rank: NA) 40. Temecula, California (Yesterday’s Rank: 40)

Quite a few Florida places show up on the list. Pensacola is no big shocker as it is the “Cradle of Naval Aviation” (the National Museum of Naval Aviation is located at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, home of the legendary Blue Angels). I honestly don’t know why Clearwater is on the list other than a Coast Guard Air Station, so I am just going to guess all the Scientologists like Call of Duty. You heard it here first folks. Coral Gables is actually a surprise for me for only ranking 31. I figured more of the UM frat boys would be in on this. Rounding out the list is sleepy town Naples.

The Nightlife

Statistics like this make me wonder how the county would’ve ranked as a whole. Coral Gables is tiny compared to the vast swaths of Kendall, Hammocks, Miami proper and unincorporated Dade. Also fun to note is the system breakdown. Another no surprise is the 360 with 61% while the PS3 has 31% and PC trailing in the distance with 8%. I wish I could see a time line with sales data pre and post dedicated server gimping announcement. Would be nice to see if there was a cause and effect action there.

The distant future of…

Rick over at South Florida Daily Blog posted a viral video about the ROLLTOP and asked if this is the future of laptops. His post got me wondering about the future of everything. It reminds me of how a typical conversation with a stranger turns to various technologies just because that’s how we are taught to converse by society. “Hi I’m Edwin.” “Hi Edwin, what do you do?” It never fails to happen. So whenever someone that is not as tech inclined as I am asks, I inevitably blow their mind by the lone virtue that we as geeks in all of our various industries handle technologies that most people do not know exist. The concept of home automation alone does something to the brain of people when you explain it. You can not believe the amount of people who still think running dual monitors is something special. Especially so in South Florida.

I don’t know what kind of demographic reads my blog, but I know someone does. So here is the first in an ongoing series that will showcase new and interesting concepts as I find them. Keep in mind that a lot of these posts will be showing off concepts, so that means a overwhelming majority of what I show will never happen. It’s just the nature of things. For our first example we are going to discuss video games, a subject near to my heart. But the future of video gaming is far too broad of a subject to cover so let’s focus on one particular example of how we as players might be interacting with some games in the future and other applications for user interaction.

R.U.S.E. was unveiled in this concept video seven months ago.

Imaginations and speculations ran wild because it was not that long before that Microsoft unveiled their own touch based system, titled Microsoft Surface. Surface is almost identical to what was shown in the trailer. Gamers and geeks everywhere buzzed on forums with thoughts of how it would work in games. None of us actually thought it would ever be done. Then this showed up online.

Developer Eugen Systems actually took R.U.S.E. and gave it support for multi-touch based interfaces. With one effort they made me seriously consider spending $12,500 on a MS Surface system. Here is one more video of the Surface system and R.U.S.E. in action.

Now, Ubisoft releases an official trailer showing off built in support for multi-touch devices as long as you are running Windows 7.

Seeing as the overwhelming majority of us can not afford a MS Surface, what will we be playing R.U.S.E. on? Newegg has 33 touch screen monitors listed. Prices start at $370 for a 15″ old school CRT. But if you want a 19″ flat panel be ready to shell out $540 and above. Consider it the early adopters fee. Well, the demand has increased and we should be seeing supply increase as well. Albatron has a nice 22″ LCD multi-touch display for $450 and they just announced a 42″ version.

Now let’s move beyond the game. What other practical applications can we think of? The obvious one would be to use it in military. Just replace the video game with real world data from satellites, RATS, Land Warrior, the Navy’s Command Center and much more. Well someone took it to heart and the Navy actually has a working concept.

The Navy's Command Center of the Future

Education is another big sector that can work well with a multi-touch system. We know most schools won’t be able to afford them, but you can see them in a museum, assuming the school can afford to take kids to the museum these days.

Ideum, which popped out a rather gigantic MT2 multitouch table earlier this year, is now introducing another model that makes that fellow look like child’s play. The 100-inch MT-50 is an outright beast, boasting 86 viewable inches, a 16 x 5 aspect ratio and a stunning 2,304 x 800 resolution. It was engineered for the Space Chase Gallery at the Adventure Science Center, which is one of several high-tech exhibits the company has deployed at the Nashville, TN-based science center. The table itself can support over 50 simultaneous touch points, and while the Flash-based software is obviously tailored for learning applications, there’s nothing stopping this thing from becoming the world’s next great arcade fixture. Hop on past the break for a drool-worthy vid.

The possibilities for application are endless. Nuclear plant techs can have it instant access to a lot more information on one of these tables than a traditional computer and monitor. Traffic controllers in LA would probably kill for this, as well as major metropolitan transit controllers for the NY Subway system or London Underground. Most of the submarines in the US Navy already have touch screen, but they are simple single touch similar to what you see pilots using in the Air Force. Imagine a disaster recovery scenario where every asset out in the field could be tracked with GPS and FEMA can co-ordinate every single asset with the table. You start to imagine maps with layered information similar to what you see in the R.U.S.E. trailers. Like I said, the possibilities are endless. It’s just up to someone to pay for the hardware and software.

Seeing as the iPhone/iPod Touch is pretty much the first mass market product that support multi-touch interfaces, users are not going to have that big of a problem using it. The true challenge is programming applications that support and take advantage of the system. Development teams will either be split up into specific teams for each type of interface, touch and traditional, or have extended development time. Companies will need to take greater risks in the short term to adequately gain experience in multi-touch UI design and programming so as to capitalize on that experience in the future. I would love to pick the brain of R.U.S.E.’s developer, Eugen Systems on how they are handling the addition of touch UI into their game development.

Feel free to share you thoughts in the comment section on how multi-touch user interfaces can be used in the various industries.

What a mess. At least I didn’t cause a fire.

Just so you know, this post isn’t about Miami politics. But considering the title I can see why you would think that. No this is about cooking. I’ve covered food here before but always the kind at restaurants. You know, the good stuff. I tried my hand at making something for the first time in a long time and it turned out half way decent. You see, I’m the kind of person that absolutely loves Food Network and loves to eat, but has absolutely no idea how to cook anything. Eggs don’t count, any dummy can make eggs.

Walking down the isles of Publix, I look at all the various ingredients and have a mini-panic attack. I know what they are, they don’t scare me. But regardless of the knowledge I have about the individual food item, I still can’t get past the anxiety of what to do with it. This time I just went and bought what I was comfortable with. I still had the anxiety/panic while strolling the isles but by the time the vegetable section came up at the end, it was ok. I was at peace. I still had no confidence but there was plenty of time to destroy any hope of gaining any later in the kitchen. Taking my receipt, I pluck down and do what a geek does. I post on twitter and Gamers With Jobs for help. I own a few cookbooks but they are in storage. Guess I should go get them. The web helps me deal with my strange relationship with food. Follow me here.

Growing up in a Puerto Rican family there are certain things you see in typical cuisine and a lot of things you never see. Vegetables is not one of those. There is a reason why the saying “Rice, beans and some type of meat” exists. It doesn’t help that the main cook of our family, my mom, is a really picky eater. The woman will hardly eat anything. I can only surmise this is the reason why I am so fascinated with foods of the world. To annoy the living hell out of her. It’s only natural that I would buy the things I’ve never seen in my own home before. Zucchini and yellow squash are about as foreign to me as an Apple fanboy having a calm and rational discussion on the merits of using Windows. You knew I had to work a tech joke in there. Armed with my newly acquired alien produce, I fire up the tool that all chefs use in times of cooking, the web browser (Chrome in this case). Taking suggestions from my previously named sources I turn to the AllRecipes.com app on my iPhone. With it’s convenient to use interface I set off to mince, dice, cube and other cheffy jargon. Here is what I came up with.

Chicken, Sausage and Zucchini Pasta

Rated: Submitted By: Mary Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 20 Minutes Ready In: 40 Minutes Servings: 6

“Savory sausages and tender cubes of chicken leap into a saute pan with onion, garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and zucchini. Toss with hot pasta and serve with a sprinkling of grated Parmesan, if you wish.”

Ingredients:

1 (16 ounce) package rotini pasta 4 (3.5 ounce) links Italian sausages, sliced 2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cubed 1 onion, chopped 1 clove garlic, minced 1 green bell pepper, diced

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning salt to taste ground black pepper to taste 1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes 1 3/4 cups spaghetti sauce 1 (4.5 ounce) can sliced mushrooms 3 zucchinis, thickly sliced

Directions:

1.	In a large pot with boiling salted water cook rotini pasta until al dente. Drain.
2.	Meanwhile, in a large Dutch oven cook sliced Italian sausage until brown. Add cubed chicken and cook until no pink remains in either meat. Add onion, garlic, green bell pepper, Italian seasoning, salt and ground black pepper and stir together. Cover and simmer until vegetables are tender. Stir in tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, mushrooms, and zucchini. Simmer until zucchini is tender yet crisp.
3.	Toss cooked pasta with sauce. Serve warm.

Nutrition Information Servings Per Recipe: 6 Calories: 631

Amount Per Serving Total Fat: 23.5g Cholesterol: 70mg Sodium: 1025mg

Amount Per Serving Total Carbs: 74.2g Dietary Fiber: 7.3g Protein: 31.5g

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 2009 Allrecipes.com

Printed from Allrecipes.com 11/1/2009

After prepping all I can I find in my kitchen, I realize I am short of some ingredients. Off to Publix! [insert spinning 1960's Batman logo and sound]

What a mess!

Then the miracle occurs and I didn’t cause an accident. I was astonished as you all are that it actually tasted good. The best part was the Italian sausage. The stronger the flavor, the better this recipe will be. Let it also be known that I have forever replaced all salt in recipes with Bacon Salt. I don’t care what the food is, it’s getting bacon salt. I also suggest you do something with the chicken. Mine came out pretty flavorless. Season it or something. For some reason I tasted no garlic at all. Not sure if mine was defective, but I couldn’t really RMA it. Maybe one day when I am better at not setting the kitchen on fire, I can make decent tasting tomato sauce. For this experiment I tried a flavor of Newman’s Own just because I didn’t know better. Other suggestions I can make is adding crispy bacon and some sort of cheese. It was the first time I’ve ever cooked bacon in the oven. I was very pleased with the results. The bacon was cooked evenly all the way through and had a very nice flavor. I’m pretty sure my bacon will be oven baked all the time from now on. Of course, it does take a lot longer to cook. About 20-25 minutes total, but it’s worth it.

Now that I have enough left overs to last me a few days, don’t forget the most important part of cooking. You actually have to try. Oh and good luck finding coupons on vegetables. I couldn’t find any no matter where I looked. Damn farmers.

Ciro’s Pizza & Italian Restaurant

Swine Flu not included.

Note: This is a cross post from WorstPizza.com. You can find my guest post over here.

My family is  not what you would call foodies by any stretch of the imagination. They are most satisfied with swill such as Papa John’s. So, it was up to me to end the cycle of abuse that the civilized world has ignored for far too long. Given $25 and the task of bringing tasty pizza back for consumption, I set off on my mission. Like a clandestine agent, I pretended to call Papa John’s to order some of what any reasonable human at The Hague would consider a war crime against humanity. Instead I call Ciro’s in Briar Bay. Seeing as I am feeding philistines, I choose something other than plain cheese so sadly I can not benchmark the baseline pizza from which all other branches and derivatives come from. I ended up with the ham and cheese pizza. In my lack of foresight I forget to ask what type of ham, but I assure you, it was ham.

Right away you could tell it was better than the mass produced stuff you can get at Papa John’s, but that’s not really saying much. The underlying crust was thin, crispy on the bottom with a thin layer of bread like fluff. The sauce is the typical stuff you find in a can most places get from Sysco. The cheese’s flavor was so subtle I could hardly taste it. The slice had a slightly sweet taste to it overall. The crust was crunchy, but not crouton crunchy. Like light toast crunch with the strength of a garlic roll. The kind that demanded effort and muscles working in unison. The perfect analogy of a machine with your arm, hand, neck, cheek and jaw muscles working in sync to tear off a piece of crust off of the main body. Imagine a lion tearing into a zebra here.

After my first slice, I felt like I did due diligence. Now to jazz it up. I went outside and picked a fresh avocado from my backyard and sliced it up nicely. Being the uncivilized barbarian that I am, I just threw it on the pizza. Not bad. But it’s missing something. What could it be?

It makes everything better. Everything.

My old friend from Mexico, Tajin! Oh how I love you. For those of you who have no idea what Tajin is, think of it like Mexican Bacon Salt. It makes everything better. Especially good with watermelon. Consisting of chile peppers, salt, and dehydrated lime juice, this gave the ham and avocado pizza a kick that it sorely needed. But to be fair, ever since I discovered this miracle powder while doing a lap around the Yucatan, nothing has even been the same.

Now the true test of pizza. Reheating it the next morning for breakfast. Everything came out of the toaster oven nicely but the cheese had a different consistency to it. Not in a bad way, but different from the night before. So in the end Ciro’s came out above the mass manufactured pizza but fell short of better places. According to WorstPizza.com’s scale I would give this 4 slices, the bare minimum needed to be considered fit for human consumption. One time may have been a fluke, let’s hope the second time around they do better.

0-3 slices are places we wouldn’t recommend our readers to try
4-5 slices are places we would like to try again since we deemed them to be average
6-7 slices are places that are fantastic and you should check out
8 slices is a perfect rating and a place you should not avoid

Facts

• Turn around time for a pickup was 15 minutes.
• Large pizza is $15.
• Bacon is not a toping. Clearly a sin against God.

Yes I am crazy.

Swine Flu not included.

WorstPizza.com is run by Lapp, a mysterious national superstar that can not gain weight even though he eats nothing but pizza. Lapp also runs VOIS, a social outsourcing website.

Edwin Garcia is a geek and IT guy looking for work local to Miami. He also writes for his blog at TheRealEdwin.com.

Hire me!

 

As some of you know, I was laid off last June due to the downturn of the construction sector in Florida, as that was my company did. I was one of the few that lasted as long as I did, being laid off during the fourth round compared to the first late last October. Well now I have a fool proof plan to get hired. A celebrity endorsement!

Call me.

Why are you not showing perspective?

Image by kevindooley via Flickr

I have a bone to pick with other writers. Why do you write $3.4 billion or $200 million instead of $3,4000,000,000 or $200,000,000? To me it feels like I am failing to properly convey the size and scope of whatever it is I am writing about. I could understand why some print medias would do so, after all there is finite amount of space. But even then, print media outlets that deliver news should not do so because your job is to show the facts of a topic and I believe properly showing people the impact of decisions to spend money is one of the smallest things organization can do.

So from now on, I will write all number figures in the full and normal lengths to express how big things are compared to what you are used to. As a bonus here is $1,000,000,000,000 visualized.

New smart grid funding and a follow up.

Yesterday I wrote about the new FPL PV solar plant in Arcadia, FL, so a few new ideas and comments popped up in my head. Here are choice quotes from the St. Pete Times and what the Herald printed.

Standing in rural Florida amid 180 acres of solar panels, President Barack Obama on Tuesday announced $3.4 billion in federal stimulus grants to modernize America’s power grid and create jobs.

Among the 100 projects receiving stimulus grants: $200 million for an FPL initiative to modernize its power grid, including transmission line improvements and more than 2 million “smart meters” that enable consumers to monitor and adjust their own power use and costs.

“Here in this region of Florida, this project will reduce demand for electricity by up to 20 percent during the hottest summer days that stress the grid and power plants,” Obama said. “It will provide smart meters to 2.6 million more customers. And most importantly, it will create thousands of jobs – good jobs, by the way, that can’t be outsourced; jobs that will last and jobs that pay a decent wage.”

The current grid system relies on century-old technology that the president said “wastes too much energy, it costs us too much money, and it’s too susceptible to outages and blackouts.”

The vast fields of panels are tucked out of sight outside Arcadia, and utility officials said the $152 million facility generates enough power for about 3,000 homes. In reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the solar facility is estimated to be the equivalent of removing 4,500 cars from the roads every year.

Miami Herald

Image via Wikipedia

$3,400,000,000 to revamp a centuries old power grid system is way overdue. But what part of the system is going to be redone? There are several parts and I am assuming all parts are going to get an upgrade but the article only mentions distribution, the part of power transmission that involves your home or office building and the meters. There is also no mention of which smart meter will be used. Is it Google’s PowerMeter, Microsoft’s hohm, Cisco’s Network Building Mediator, or someone else entirely? While Cisco’s is more for a enterprise, they are suppose to have a more consumer friendly solution. From the Energy Smart Miami, here is a video explaining the problems we have and how Cisco want’s to solve it.

I haven’t seen or read anything for distribution but long haul transmission has a few options, so lets explain where we are. Right now we have long distance power transmitted on overhead power lines at high voltages (110 kV or above) because we lose power after a certain amount of distance. Overhead lines are inefficient, require lots of space, can be blown down and generate electro-magnetic fields (EMF). We can make them better but it costs more and most companies just do not see the economic benefit of making long transmission lines more efficient.

Transmission efficiency is improved by increasing the voltage using a step-up transformer, which reduces the current in the conductors, while keeping the power transmitted nearly equal to the power input. The reduced current flowing through the conductor reduces the losses in the conductor and since, according to Joule’s Law, the losses are proportional to the square of the current. Halving the current makes the transmission loss one quarter the original value.

Transmission and distribution losses in the USA were estimated at 7.2% in 1995 ^[14]

So what can we do to make things better? American Superconductor has come up with what looks like a good solution. While it does cost more, this type of cabling reduces loss, consolidates existing cables, is hidden underground so no more unsightly towers, and pretty much eliminates EMF.

Just one of these is capable of carrying 574 megawatts of power, enough to power 300,000 homes.

That’s all great and all but you’re probably wondering if this is going to affect you. If you’re in Florida you more than likely will be. This is just FPL alone, but several other municipalities and power companies in Florida also got funding from the DoE.

The DoE application has this listed. Note that the project’s total cost is $578,347,232.

Energy Smart Florida is a comprehensive project to advance implementation of the Smart Grid, including installing over 2.6 million smart meters, 9,000 intelligent distribution devices, 45 phasors, and advanced monitoring equipment in over 270 substations. By incorporating intelligence into the transmission, distribution and customer systems, the utility will be able to anticipate and respond to grid disturbances, empower customers through alternative rate programs, and enable the integration of renewable and on-site energy sources.

There are a lot of possibilities to improve the future. These are just some steps we can take and are currently doing with transmission, distribution and smart energy meters.

Sources: Miami Herald, Ars Technica, Gizmodo