Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
What is a geek?
New Hampshire magazine has a number of articles under the "Nerd Power" title this month - including this different sort of paean to Ralph Baer, inventor of the first home video game. I was asked to contribute something, so I contributed this: A geek is somebody who...
An Ethernet cable runs down my hallway but it’s not my fault – it’s the house’s fault!
(Note: A good long video explaining the system can be seen via this Treehugger article) Judging from my decades of life experience there is an iron-clad rule about every room in every house ever built: The electric outlets are in the wrong place. Outlets are always,...
COVID numbers good but school is looming
The latest report from the Monitor’s weekly tracking of the COVID-19 pandemic is very upbeat but it feels like a scorecard from the final baseball game of the regular season: Almost irrelevant because everybody’s waiting to see what happens in the playoffs. The...
Temperature-spotting kiosk is also a wear-a-mask reminder
A New Hampshire firm that makes stand-alone kiosks for things like buying tickets is creating COVID-specific products, including a kiosk that measures body temperature through thermal imaging (accurate enough to spot people who need a check w/ a thermometer) and also...
N.H. patents through Aug. 23
By Targeted News Service The following patents were assigned in New Hampshire from Aug. 16 to Aug. 23. *** Parallel Wireless Assigned Patent for Base Station Grouping for Topology Hiding Parallel Wireless, Nashua, New Hampshire, has been assigned a patent (No....
Any incandescent bulbs still used out there? (Update: Real data!)
NHSaves, a program to urge energy efficiency in the state, and sometimes give financial to upgrading items, sent out an item today telling people how bad incandescent bulbs are. That led me to wonder: Who uses incandescent bulbs any more? Funky restaurants use them to...
Hunting COVID, Dartmouth-Hitchcock jumps into sewage (so to speak)
Looking for the SARS-CoV2 virus in sewage is a hot topic, if also a smelly one. I wrote last month about Keene's plans to test the city's wastewater as a relatively quick and easy way to spot a COVID-19 outbreak (from, say, a bunch of returning college students, to...
Electric school buses make sense, so why is $9 million to help them sitting unused?
School buses, especially in cities, are perfect vehicles to be electric: They have set, predictable routes and return to the same place every day for charging. And being fleet vehicles, the cost savings in fuel and especially maintenance will be immediately...
Another invisible thing the pandemic made visible: Logistics
"The unsung heroes of the pandemic are supply chain managers" says the headline on a story in the Monitor (read it here) and boy that's true. Most of us hadn't even heard the term "supply chain" until a few months ago and now our lives are whipsawed by them. There are...
Rattlesnakes – yes, rattlesnakes – are part of New Hampshire culture
It has always surprised me how many places in New Hampshire are named “rattlesnake.” There’s Rattlesnake Hill in Concord, of course – home to Swenson Granite – and boaters know Rattlesnake Island in Lake Winnipesaukee, but there are also five other Rattlesnake Hills...
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