Consolidated Blog

I have consolidated this blog to my GreenValhalla site. I will not maintain this blog any longer.

Wildlife Benefit BBQ

On June 9, Mary and I went to a benefit barbecue for the Wildlife Education and Rehabilitation Center (WERC)in San Martin, CA. The center is located in Morgan Hill and it's primary goal is the rehabilitation of injured and orphaned animals. Most of the animals that go to WERC are eventually released back into the wild. In some cases the animal's injuries are too severe to make a complete recovery. In these cases these animals are used for education programs. Some of the educational animals were present at the BBQ, including:

Ariel - a Merlin, which is a type of small falcon. Merlins hunt other birds by catching them in flight. Ariel came to WERC with a damaged wing which never healed completely. As such, she is not able to fly well enough to hunt on her own, so she has become on of WERCs educational animals.

Horus - a Peregrine Falcon, considered the fastest animal on earth. In it's hunting dive, called a stoop, it can streamline it's body and reach over 200 MPH. Horus also has a defective wing and can not survive in the wild. It is quite a treat to see such a spectacular animal.

Loki - a Great Horned Owl, one of the larger of the owl species. Loki was found abandoned at a young age by a well meaning person. However, by raising the owl by hand, the person inadvertently caused to Loki to imprint on humans. He does not really know that he's an owl.

Oscar - a Western Screech Owl, one of the smaller species of owl. Oscar was found near the side of a road, apparently having collided with a car. The people at WERC were able to rehabilitate him, but his right eye was damaged to the point of blindness. The eye is still there, but it appears black now.

WERC has helped a lot of animals over the years, not just birds. On a couple of occasions they have successfully raised and reintroduced orphaned bobcat kittens. Check out their website to read about some of their success stories. They accept donations via PayPal if you're so inclined. You can see more pictures of the birds above on my gallery, just click on the pictures or their names.

Technorati Profile

Energy Race

I was playing around with a website called EnergyRace. If you join and go through their questionnaire, they give you a rough estimate of your carbon footprint. Later, you can indicate any changes you have made to you car, home, etc. and they show you ho much you have reduced your footprint. They even give you a little badge you can put on your website with your latest results:


It looks like I still have some improvements to make.

There's a similar site encouraging and tracking the use of Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs (CFL) called One Billion Bulbs. They provide ratings of various CFLs, and if you create an account, they will show you how much money and carbon you are saving as you switch to CFLs.

CCTO and SJ Peregrines

I ended up going to the California Clean Tech Open (CCTO) Technology and Entrepreneur Matching Event on Monday. It was pretty interesting, but as I feared, most of the research technologies being presented were way outside my areas of expertise. Most of them were related to alternative fuels and large scale energy production.

There were a bunch of guys running around with CalCars t-shirts. CalCars is a non-profit initiative promoting plug-in hybrid cars. They have a plug-in modified Toyota Prius (left) that is getting over 100 MPG. Basically they added additional rechargeable batteries with the ability to charge them by plugging in to a standard residential power plug (right - the plug receptacle is on the left of the bumper just above the word "THIS"). The added battery allows this Prius to run much longer on the electric motor without needing to use the gas engine. Apparently this group is looking to spin off a for-profit company, which I guess is why they were at the event.

I did make one interesting contact at the event. I met a researcher at UC Berkeley working on a project which utilizes wireless sensor networks for energy management applications. Since this is similar to some ideas I have been considering, I will be meeting up with him later in the week to see if we can pool our ideas and resources.

On the nature front, the San Jose Peregrines are getting bigger every day. Actually, they're pretty much full grown now, and should start flying any day now. The picture on the left shows one of the chicks that has made it on to the top of the 2 foot high parapet next to their next box. They look quite similar to the adults now, except for the coloration. Apparently it will be a year or so until they develop their final adult plumage. In the mean time, I'm hoping to be able to spot them flying around the downtown San Jose area soon.

California Clean Tech Open

Over the past few weeks I ran across a green technology related business plan competition called the California Clean Tech Open. The competition is sponsored by Acterra: Action for a Sustainable Earth, a non-profit organization based in Palo Alto, CA. The competition focuses on 6 different clean tech categories:

• Air, Water & Waste
• Energy Efficiency
• Green Building
• Renewables
• Smart Power
• Transportation

Each category winner will receive a "Start-up in a box" prize package worth $100,000. During the course of the competition, there are many opportunities for entrants to attend workshops receive mentoring, and meet many venture capitalists and industry professionals. The entry deadline is June 30.

I'm interested in the clean/green tech field, but I'm not sure I have a good enough idea for a start-up. I did sign up for the Technology and Entrepreneur Matching Event on June 4. This event attempts to match entrepreneurs with researches in the clean tech field. Who knows, maybe I'll find a partner to team up with.

Last year there were more than 500 entries in 5 categories. The winners and finalists are listed here. My favorite entry from last year is a company called SoCool. They are making a solar powered AC for cars which fits into a standard sunroof footprint. It keeps you car cool without wasting gas. It even keeps your car cool while parked on a hot, sunny day! That really is So Cool. Why didn't I think of that? I'm not sure if this product, called Helios, is commercially available yet.

Gumbo Limbo and Turtles

I went to the Gumbo Limbo Environmental Complex in Boca Raton, FL. It's located in Red Reef Park on the barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway. The main purpose of the complex is to protect a stand of forest known as the tropical hammock. The small park includes coastal dunes, sable palm hammock and mangrove wetlands. There are also a lot of the park's name sake, the Gumbo Limbo tree (picture left).

There's a nice boardwalk through the hammock and along the Intracoastal. There are a lot of different trees in the hammock, though some of it was damaged by Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. The damage has allowed some different plant species to emerge. For example there are a lot of papaya trees growing which haven't been seen in the area for some 60 years. A 40' tower provides a nice view from above the canopy. There's supposed to be a family of gray foxes living under the boardwalk, but I didn't see them.

There's a research center at the complex including 4 outdoor aquariums. One of the aquariums contained small nurse and lemon sharks. They are being used for perception research by the Florida Atlantic University. Another tank contains various reef fish and crustaceans. The final two tanks contain fish and turtles. One tank has a Kemp's Ridleys Turtle and the other contains 3 Loggerhead Turtles (left). There are also some tortoise there. The staff leads turtle walks during the nesting season to see egg laying and later hatching. Unfortunately I was there a couple weeks before the first walks start. There are apparently some Leatherback Turtles laying eggs along the SE Florida coast, but they are very protected and the nests are not publicized.

It's a nice complex preserving a small glimpse of the natural Florida coast. There are more pictures in the Gumbo Limbo section of my Gallery.

Green California

I am continuing my investigation into green technologies and potential related careers. There are many different technologies in areas such as monitoring and conservation, alternative fuels, power generation, power storage, transportation, etc. Many of these areas require completely different experience from my career in semiconductors and consumer electronics. Most of my hardware experience in ASIC and logic design falls short of the device level physics and materials knowledge required in some of these areas. A lot of the fuel and transportation technologies center more around chemical and mechanical engineering. There are a few opportunities with embedded control systems and more general project management. This is my current focus for now.

There are more and more venture capital funds focusing on green technology, clean energy, etc. There are even some non-profit entities such as the California Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) receiving funds from the likes of PG&E. One of the biggest hurdles seems to be the federal governments close ties to the fossil fuel and transportation industries. Without a strong commitment from the US government, I'm afraid the industry will not move as quickly as it could. In the mean time countries like Germany have enacted Renewable Energies Laws which have stimulated huge growth in their solar industry. At least some states are starting to take action such as California's Green California program. How do we get the federal government to follow suit?

In the mean time, the San Jose peregrine falcons are doing well. It is fun to watch Jose and Clara feeding and protecting their three chicks on the webcam. They seem to be doing a pretty good job. The chicks are getting bigger each day. They are starting to look like baby birds rather than boneless lumps of white fluff. I haven't had a chance to spot the falcons during my visits to downtown, but I hope to do so. I'll be especially interested watching them when the chicks start to fledge.