Swan's Maple Products.

Recent chance meeting at a conference made me sit down and properly get the links for Swan's Maple Products. http://www.swansmapleproducts.com/aboutus.html

It is a convergence of many things.

"Charlie" is my grandfather and the (half) namesake of my son. The half is because of my wife's grandfather - also a "Charlie".

Recent discussion with colleagues, has run to maple sugaring process. Had almost forgotten the trick of letting the sap freeze overnight, and removing the ice, as a natural pre-processing phase. Have been thinking lately that that freezing may add an artisinal twist to the product/flavour... the flavour I remember as unique in my childhood.  

Along another vein, cannot determine the cause of the strange correlation in "maple" flavor/scent found in Thai iced tea. None of the listed teas and spices seem to account for the maple. But there it is. Might be fenugreek (or related compound)?

Was also recently pointed to newsletters
http://www.themaplenews.com/
http://www.northamericanmaple.org/index.php/en/maple-syrup-digest

And here is some basic stuff
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maple_syrup
http://www.massmaple.org/

Completely puzzled why Google Maps labels Swan's Maple as in Belmont? Map location pin is right but that is Central New Annan.

MBTA - Run More Trains.

MBTA
Run more trains.

One could digress:
- Better (not lesser) service during construction and disruption.
- Improvement of daytime operations before late night (are you listening sponsors?).
- Tooth on-time guarantees.
- Expresses (over holds).
- Address dangerous platform overcrowding at rush hour.
- Out-of-servicing only in sparsely-populated direction.
- All (or most) Green-lines inbound to at least North Station.
- No schedule adjustments at core and terminus stations.

But to get back to the crux...
Run more trains.

Network Enhanced Everything - NEE.

Have discussed "supers" previously - capacitors, batteries, insulation - and in general - materials...
also LEDs, solar photovoltaics and other renewables.

Lately thinking about everything network (and computer) enhanced...
Enhanced - manufacturing, services, handling, inventory, sensing, communications and analytics.
By no means comprehensive, but meant to encompass some popular specifics like
robotics, 3D fabrication, telepresence, IoT and M2M.

Robotics - Economist - Analysis, Logistics.

Feature section on Robotics in Economist March 27, 2014.
Rise of Robots [Ecomomist]
Economist Robotics

Highlights:

Asking for help where a robot is helpless is perhaps feature and not a bug. Drones are not in as much military demand as one might think. Who will provide us our last human kindnesses?

Thoughts:

Opportunity for analytics? Amazon Kiva Union [Forbes]
Kiva

More succinctly analytics for Logistics Automation

For cleaning iRobot Roomba
For snow? Tuvie Roofus

For lawn? Robotic Lawn Mowers

Little mention of trade show robots as a tele-presence application.

Trade Show Robots [Wired]

Great Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies.

Here is the recipe for:
Great Grandmother's Oatmeal Cookies

2 cups rolled oats
1 cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon soda (baking soda)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix all together plus add the following heated together
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup water
Heat the above two until the shortening melts.

Mix and roll out 1/4" thick.
Cut with a round cutter.
Re-roll, cut, repeat.

She always put icing on top.
Icing:
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (probably 1/3).
Mix the above and bring to a boil.
Add icing sugar until the mix thickens.
Add 1/4 teaspoon vanilla.

Albert's notes:
Rolled oats are critical above.
Need a box (1 cup plus?) of icing sugar on hand.
Hmmm. No sign of baking instructions.
Probably something like 325-375F for 30-90 minutes.
(Some heat for enough time until they just start to brown.)
Probably can be taken from a standard cookie recipe?

Transcribed by Albert Putnam from notes by Ethyl Beryl Putnam (ne McCully). Spring 2001. Based on cookies baked by Alma Mae McCully (ne Withrow).

IQ Power Xpert meters - Westinghouse, Cutler-Hammer, Eaton, INCOM - brought to TCPIP.

Have a bunch of IQ meters and/or switchgear? - maybe branded Westinghouse, Cutler-Hammer or Eaton?... Know the meters? - They are the ubiquitous first generation digital meters in practically every facility. Either one has never networked these meters (though one might have a blue INCOM line running between them one barely even recognizes), or one has soldiered through the ups and downs of the Power Xpert software gateway architecture running on PCs.

Have in mind that the only way out to the future is to upgrade the meters, but that would be a major project with shutdowns and swap outs. So one just sits and does nothing and waits for the meters to "inlast" the building; though that is rife with danger from normal maintenance failures.

Eaton has a little known solution/pathway for these meters.
It is called the Eaton Power Xpert Gateway PXG600.

How does it work:
- Upgrade set of meters to INCOM (sometimes with a PONI/IPONI = INCOM product operated network interface - often these are already in place).
- Run blue cable bus for INCOM between local sets of meters (up to about ten (best) to forty (pushing limits)) in a group. Often "blue hose" is already in place.
- Attach meter group(s) to the INCOM port(s) of PXG600.
- Attach PXG600 to a TCPIP Ethernet network system (attach like any common IP device).
- Setup PXG600(s). The PXG600 has internal template maps for the long history of IQ meters. It supports a variety of protocols like Modbus TCP and in some cases BACnet IP and SNMP.
- Get "middleware" together. One probably has systems that can consume and log meter data (HVAC, SCADA and such). One wants to convert the Modbus TCP data into such,  whilst also leaving openings for others to attach to Modbus TCP in parallel. Something like a Cimetrics B6035 does the intermediation job nicely. But it is also the case that many management systems will read the interfaces directly (especially if you have BACnet/IP in your building management system
or Modbus TCP in your SCADA system).
- Enjoy.

Too hard? Talk to Eaton. Eaton can set this up for you.
Too expensive? The PXG600 is "open channel" and supportable by third parties. Talk to someone like PWA - Physical World Analytics in their troubleshooting capacity or Cimetrics in their network-architecture design capacity. They too can set this up for you.

Continuous Monitoring Based Commissioning.

Article regarding Continuous Monitoring Based Commissioning.
http://w3.usa.siemens.com/buildingtechnologies/us/en/Smart_Buildings/Documents/the-12-things-you-need-to-know-about-monitor-based-commissioning-a-siemens-white-paper-final.pdf

Most everyone knows about commissioning. For most systems the concept is straightforward, and the goal is universal - optimization - chiefly for reliability (be it economic or functional.. and this is not really an "or" at transcendence).

It is more nuanced what happens with re-commissioning a system... Is it a snapshot? Does one stop the process? etc.

Then after one gets the before/after understood... one is faced with understanding ongoing versus batch/jump. The real winners (sometimes better termed "non-losers") are the ones who can harness the power of continous improvement.

Here is Contiuous Improvement with a large "C". 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continual_improvement_process