Green Tomato and Onion Chow.

Grama's (both family sides) green tomato and onion chow.
Goes by the name "chow chow" all over North America.
Closely related to Picalilly (relish). Unsure where this type of "pickles" comes from.
A close approximation is Habitant Chow Chow Green Tomato.
Habitant is a Smuckers brand.
Howard's Picalilli Green Tomato is reasonably close.

So looking for a recipe?
Chow [Yahoo Answers]
Bernardin Chow
Both of the above involve cabbage and peppers.

But for Canadian variants.
A. Mostly no one grew peppers (wrong climate).
B. Cabbages were relatively hard to grow (pests).

Here is a straightforward formula more in line with the version of my childhood
Elizabeths Chow Chow [Food.com]

Take any of the formulas and go with green tomatos and onions (roughly equal portions - less onions) and make them up to the "other" veggie totals. Omit all other veggies. Use the spices you favor, but the core is made up of mustard and tumeric. Boiling/cooking longer to soften the tomatoes and onions, and evenly embue them with tang/spices, gives a better product by my tastes. Proportions of sugar, salt and vinegar control sweetness and tang. Cornstarch is there to thicken if you wish. Leave it out and cut the water for authenticity, though it might then end up less smooth if not cooked until the tomatoes soften.

Recap of rough ingredients:
Green tomato, onion, sugar, water, vinegar, salt, cornstarch, mustard, turmeric.

Your Browser is Not Supported - Below the Fold

Lately have been served more than the usual number of pages along the lines of “Your browser is not supported by our website”. Some are quite clever, but most are brief (and no matter how polite – they make one want to leave). Such an approach misses a huge opportunity.

The one liner redirect (zinger which effectively says you are sub-human for using browser X) is itself content, and could easily be replaced with a few lines and a few images which at least portray the most important site message(s). And then sends you…

Have often changed browsers to find a graphic heavy website, with little dynamics (no warrant for browser features), which does not answer basic questions like:

A – What is your offer/business?

B – Am I the right customer? (service versus product, and ideas of scale – individual versus corporate/government).

C – How to contact? (multiple methods).

D – How can I see/touch/feel/experience what you offer?

E – What are your best features? (these must be simple, innovative, and fit within my world view).

Notice it is mostly about “me” *grin*. Who you are and your history come later. And so do fancy media presentations (unless that is what you are offering… though those websites – those in the business of making media presentations, or truly deeply predicated on history – are seldom offenders in this regard… think about that).

Tangentially related:

Long (real) content on a single page is no harm. Everyone scrolls (especially mobile). Only recently have been shown outcomes from the “above the fold” controversy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold

http://uxmyths.com/post/654047943/myth-people-dont-scroll

Get your message out quickly. Back it up firmly and succinctly. Present action items.

Cimetrics Launches Analytika

Cimetrics just released the new analytics offering website - Analytika.
http://www.analytika.com/
With Analytika for buildings, cut energy usage and cost, improve comfort and performance, detect faults, and manage the workflow of any maintenance or improvements.
With Analytika for process, predictive analytics are utilized to provide early warning, actionable recommendations and supervisory control, before parameter drift causes quality problems, process disruptions and waste.

Picked up by media outlets:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cimetrics-inc-launches-analytika-145700352.html
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140212005852/en/Cimetrics-Launches-Analytika
http://automatedbuildings.com/releases/feb14/140212013404cimetrics.html

Cimetrics
http://www.cimetrics.com/

Grama Beryl's Passing

Grama - Ethel Beryl Putnam passed away in January 2014. She had a rich and long life and provided the cornerstone for the family. This says it best... [Well done Natalie.]

http://www.obitsforlife.com/obituary/841940/Putnam-Ethel-Beryl.php

http://thechronicleherald.ca/obituaries/1181843-putnam-ethel-beryl

Pre-deceased by Grampa - Albert Perley Putnam (HH #814 1996)
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CAN-NS-OBITS/2007-05/1179348744
And by Mum - Marion Elizabeth Putnam  (HH #4337 2002)
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CAN-NS-OBITS/2009-06/1244890267
And by Dad - Ralph Curtis Putnam (HH #367 1999)
http://www.forposterityssake.ca/Obituary/DS/DS-OBIT-0001-1000.pdf

How Many Tonnes of CO2 in a ....? And How Much is it Worth?

CO2 value and content? 

Short article in Dec 14, 2013 Economist p70. Easy to miss.
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21591601-some-firms-are-preparing-carbon-price-would-make-big-difference-carbon-copy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Trading_Scheme
ETS price $5 - "EUA" (which appears to be a tonne of CO2 'equivalents')
http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/euets/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_credit
California price - very roughly $12.

But for businesses internally: $6 to $60.
Non-energy companies around $10.
Energy companies around $30-40.

So how much CO2 in, say, a barrel of oil?

0.43 equiv-tonne CO2/barrel.

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html

Comprehensive, yet simple open book calcs.

Given carbon credit (tonne of CO2, ETS EUA, etc.) prices above; what fraction of an energy unit cost is this cost/price?

http://www.oil-price.net/ Barrel of oil Jan 2014 about $100.
0.43 equiv-tonne CO2/barrel @ $10-40/equiv-tonne CO2 implies $5-20/barrel carbon price… five to twenty percent of oil price. Not insignificant, but not so high as to set off reality alarms.

"Theoretical" societal CO2 cost of $33/tonne implies $15/barrel.

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/EPAactivities/economics/scc.html (using %3 rate at 2013?)

How much does it cost to produce a barrel of oil?

EIA: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=367&t=6

[And this excludes transportation and such.]  Very roughly $30/barrel.

Observations for rules of thumb:

“Market” cost divided by two gives roughly sum of production, societal and transport.

Production cost divided by two gives roughly societal cost.

New Devices – Just Give us the Pins and APIs

Recently blogged about the renaissance of the DIY electronics pathway.

http://albertputnam.blogspot.com/2013/12/renaissance-of-diy-electronics-store.html

Now one can find modules for almost any function - at near instant mail order and even at a local retail outlet.

That speaks to a message that needs to get to the developers of new chips and modules for connectivity and core or ancillary functions. The release of such modules often involves a CPK (programmers kit) to the chip or module API – fair enough. The supplier company often releases a development kit - which has a reference design board, their module, a power supply and various cables, and a DVD or CD with the CPK (or more lately a slip of paper or QR barcode code with a website link to a CPK download *grin*)

The new paradigms of modules at retail screams out to stop building/providing hardware development kit boards - with UARTs and LEDs and converters and drivers power connectors and all such do dads, plus saying nothing of CAD and revisions for a reference design.

Suppliers - just put your chip or module on a carrier with pins (at human scale with 0.1” or 2mm spacing). Make your reference designs utilize other modules. Refer to said modules specifically if you like.

The only things the developers add are

A. wire interconnects between modules (and the developer at the end gets to choose which modules to use). There is no harm in a reference /design/, just do not make it the defacto only thing the developer can use as hardware.

B. code interconnects between module APIs.

The work in development becomes the interconnection for pre-existing functional blocks with accessible API and pinouts. There are some nice USB (and other protocol and wireless) bridges developers could really go to town with given accessible pins. This is to say nothing of a fair bunch of embeddable microcontrollers. Get humans something to get humanly started. Then the design wins will come.

Renaissance of the DIY Electronics Store.

Most who are old enough remember when Radio Shack

had walls of electronics and hardware components for DIY

The dawn of the Twenty First Century seemed to bode poorly for such retail. Catalog companies like Jameco and MPJA, and even the majors like Digikey and Mouser  became the source of choice for DIY.

Online sales outlets then saw growth. Some above morphed to online. And many project oriented experimenters (“hackers”, “makers” – what have you) moved to coordination with such online entities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adafruit_Industries

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkfun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_(magazine)

And there are closely allied entities (physical or conceptual DIY)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makerbot

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructables

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_cutter

And one can get practically anything from Amazon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com

And well executed online hardware thrives in forms like McMaster-Carr   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMaster-Carr

But the retail store is not dead... Sometimes as a hybrid works - like fasteners from Fastenal   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastenal

And Home Depot and Walmart are developing online presence to leverage their retail…

But getting back to the point. DIY modules are now back on the walls at Radio Shack. And they are popping up else where. There is a whole section at Microcenter in Cambridge for such. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Center

CompUSA and Fry’s are similar (and there are some locals still holding on like You-Do-It in Waltham).

Might not be long before craft supply and home improvement get on the band wagon? And there are always players like Walmart which might take up the banner. One wonders if such a game change could save Kmart/Sears?