Being Green – Modeling and Monitoring

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Before I get started, last week’s post included a shout out for Steve Satow and a group of dedicated people in the Victoria area who are working to develop the Alternate Solutions Resource Initiative.  They’re still looking for support from interested parties.  On a more personal note, Steve is currently in the process of building his own home using ‘rammed earth’.  If you’d like to keep up to date with his progress, you can find out more at: the Natural Building project: a model for sustainability.

Now then: since one of the attributes of many if not all green building certification systems is the integration of a building’s different systems (heating/cooling, energy and water use, etc.), it’s very helpful to be able to model a building’s performance as part of the design plan.  Anyone who has done energy modeling (and I haven’t) will tell you that getting this exactly right is impossible.  Too much depends on the number of occupants of a building at any given time, their activity and resulting energy use, local weather conditions…  Still, an approximation can be made.

Once a building is completed and in operation, it’s also very important to determine whether or not the building is performing to specification, and if it isn’t, to be aware of it, determine the source of the problem and rectify it. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Cosmically Dancing

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Hello Dear Ones!

Today I am honouring a very dear e-friend – an amazing woman who continuously delights me with her upbeat and spiritual ways. She shares the deepest and richest of glows from her inner being to all around her. Wise and witty, playful and boldly brash when she needs to be, Nardine Neilson is a valued member of several forums of which Mike is an active member and I – well, I’m a lurker. Mike will notice a post or topic that he thinks might appeal to me and sends it my way. I usually respond and so am known to the groups. It is in this fashion that Nardine and I have since communicated more deeply the past many months.

The following is a poem that Nardine posted to the Astral Projection and Medaphysics Forum on April 30, 2010. She blessed me with the permission to publish it here for your enjoyment. What a powerfully spiritual piece! Continue Reading →

Panoramic Photography and Stitching “Errors”

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Hi Folks:

In a previous post I rambled on a bit about panoramic photography – basically a system where one combines several images into one using software designed for that purpose. One can also take several images of the same scene at different exposures and combine them into one HDR image using the same software. Mostly I use Autopano Pro for stitching, although I’ve also used Hugin, and since I work extensively in Lightroom I’ve been playing a bit with Photoshop CS5‘s HDR Pro and panorama tools as well. To create a stitched image the software looks for the same points in two or more images and assigns them as ‘control points’. The combined image is then mapped around those control points. Usually this works very well, but in my previous post I talked a bit about parallax errors and things like that, and sometimes these images don’t get mapped together perfectly. This can create situations like this: Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – The Mundane

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This is the task you have chosen. To live the magical in the world of the mundane.

You know in your hearts that you are unwilling to succumb to the mundane. You know in your hearts that you have chosen this challenge because you needed to restore your faith in yourselves, and in the never ending creative process from which you spring. For you could not, through your rational mind, endeavor to accomplish any of the things which you hold important – you could not write, you could not sing, you could not paint, and you certainly could not create your reality.

~ Conscious Creation

Hello Dear Ones!

Have you ever watched an 87 year old man slide a light bulb into one of his socks till it fills out the tip of the sock where his toes would nestle and where a gaping hole can be seen? With wool thread – not necessarily the same colour as his sock – a sewing needle and the light bulb as the base for his endeavours, he proceeds to weave back and forth. His patient and persistent process results in a neat, fully functional and hardly visible patch of ‘cloth’ occupying the vacant space where once a toenail had pierced through. He has just extended the life of his sock.

Observing this process, you experience a sense of calm – both within the man as he works diligently, and within yourself as the observer. Similar mundane processes can be seen in many day-to-day activities: a woman spends several hours ironing and neatly hanging and folding clothes; a construction worker methodically ties the laces on his work books; a small child with two Dinky cars and a patch of floor keeps him/herself amused for more than an hour.

It is more likely that you can see the magical potential in the child’s behaviour than in the other options described above. After all, we tell ourselves, children have amazing imaginations! What about adults? Do we have fabulous imaginations as well? Do you? Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says… Who Needs Ya, Baby?

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Hello, Dear Reader:

Who do you have in your life that needs you?  How do you feel about this?  Feels good to be needed, doesn’t it?  But what if nobody needed you… how would you feel about that?  Not so good?  Is it because you need to be needed?  This week we thought we’d explore this idea of ‘needs’, both being needed and being needy.  After all, Who Needs Ya, Baby?

Have a great week!

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Being Green – Cost/Benefit Analysis

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again…  Before I get started on today’s ‘Being Green‘ post I thought I’d take a second for a little shameless self-promotion.  Marcia and I write on a variety of topics, as you can see from the columns on the left side of the page.  In addition to Friday’s  post, on Mondays Marcia does a ‘Marcia’s Meanderings‘ segment, on Wednesdays she writes her ‘Poetry Corner‘, and on Sundays we both write on a shared topic in our ‘He Says, She Says…‘ posts.  There are also sections on food, photography, random items, spirituality, and at the top of the page you’ll find links to some of our short stories and other creative writings.  Okay, that’s all the ‘advertising’ you’re going to get here, so on with the show!

Okay, the title for this week’s post is ‘Cost/Benefit Analysis’, and it has several sources for its inspiration.  In some Native societies there’s an idea of the ‘seventh generation’ – that we must plan our actions now for how they will affect the earth seven generations from now.  In a world run by politicians we tend to think in four-year terms instead, knowing that a new candidate or a new government can overturn much of what’s previously been done .  If the world were run by accountants, everything would have a margin of profit or loss and everything would be measured in terms of whether or not a specific product or activity made a profit.  We tend to apply such thinking to most if not all of what we do as a society. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Remember Father on Mother’s Day

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Hello Dear Ones!

As long as I can remember, every Mother’s Day – without exception – my Dad would be heard to say, at some point to anyone and everyone within ear shot: “Don’t forget Father on Mother’s Day!” Though we lavished Mom with gifts and flowers, cards and, usually, a meal out, we always remembered Dad in some fashion.

Though my Mother has left this world physically, she is with us in our hearts and memories. It is to our memories of her and our hearts’ yearning for her that I dedicate this post in advance of the Mother’s Day weekend. MoM, wherever you are and whatever celestial mischief you are getting into today … Happy Mother’s Day!

(BTW Dear Reader: if you hear thunder and see lightning on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 … that’s my Mother telling us ‘kids’ that she’s thinking of us! How do I know? Well, that’s a story for another day …) Continue Reading →

Deleting Old Lightroom Backups

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Hi Folks:

I still remember a computer teacher of mine from… let’s just say more than twenty years ago… telling us of a project where he gave everyone in the class several pages of text to type in, set them to it and waited until they were about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way done, then turned off the power to the computer system.  Amid the groans of everyone who was sitting in front a terminal he said, “Let’s talk about backups.” Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Gratitude & Appreciation

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Hello Dear Ones!

“The day, water, sun, moon, night…I do not have to purchase these things with money.”
~Plautus

The above quote is such an inspiring one for me. It helps me to recognize the abundance of all good and wonderful things that there are in my life – ones I do not require money to purchase, yet that enrich my life immeasurably.

Here’s another quote with the same focus:

“We don’t want things, people, or events. We want the feeling we mistake them for.”
Cindy Teevens from Twitter

When I look around me at the people, things and experiences that bless my life, I can’t help but to be grateful. I am so appreciative of all the bounty and the beauty around me; so fortunate to have such incredible people sharing their lives and walking with me on this journey called life. Many of you I will never meet in person. You bless my days remotely via the internet – through Twitter and Facebook.

There are days when I’m feeling grumpy or frightened or angry or less than abundant or … and on those days it is so easy to see the dark side of life rather than the bounty and the blessings; to see the glass as half empty rather than full – one 1/2 with the fluid of your choice, the other 1/2 with air! It takes less time these days to get to a place of feeling better – that in itself is a true blessing! It used to take days, weeks; there was even a time when I went months in a state of despair. That was a world and a lifetime ago. I am grateful every day that those days are long behind me. (BTW: I used to spell grateful – greatful! After all I was filled with the greatness of wonder and appreciation!) Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says… Expectations

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Hello, Dear Reader:

If you follow the idea of ’cause and effect’, then everything that happens has a reason behind it, and everything we do will have some result.  Every cause creates an effect, and every effect has a cause behind it.  Often when we set out on a path we discover unexpected events or circumstances, but with everything we say, everything we do, and everything we imagine, we ‘expect’ something.

WorldNet Search defines ‘expectation’ as:

If you follow the ideas of ‘Law of Attraction‘, then all of our expectations are fulfilled; it’s just that sometimes we’re not aware of what our expectations truly are.  Expectation can sometimes be a loaded word, especially if we find a disconnect between what we ‘want’ to happen, and what we ‘expect’ to happen.  Therefore, for this week’s ‘He Says, She Says…‘ post we thought we’d discuss ‘Expectations‘.

Have a great week!

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View