The Big Think

Silicon just got a LOT cheaper, and this is reportedly going to drop the the price of solar panels. Technologyreview has an article on it.

I would love to see solar drop to the point where it’s competitive, or even cheaper, than grid-tied electricity. We have plans in our next house to generate much of our electricity from solar panels. I mean, how cool would it be to run the whole house off of solar-tied to the grid for when I’d like to run my table saw or dishwasher, of course.

Ultimately, it’d be nice to be able to generate enough power to charge a plug-in hybrid so that we could almost completely do away with paying for gasoline as well. I think within 10 years we’ll start to see this kind of thing become mainstream. It’s possible now (there are thousands of people living completely off the grid), but the primarily-electrical, plug-in car is only now starting to hit the streets. Give it a few more generations and some improvements, and I’ll bet that we see this soon. Not only will this get us off of foreign oil, but it’ll reduce emissions and free us from the tyranny of the gas pump.

It can’t happen fast enough for me.

I spent 8 more hours in the shop today for a running total of 82 hours! Had to run back to the lumber yard for three more pieces of QSRO. Hopefully the final bits of solid wood I’ll have to buy. Came home and spent a quality 90 minutes in front of the planer driving my neighbors nuts with the noise. I got everything planed up and the rest of the day was spent gluing up one final panel (this one will be the main surface directly underneath the TV) as well as making the face frame for the left side bookcase. A funny thing happened whilst doing this. I had very carefully measured all the pieces and pocket screwed them together. Perfect 90 degree angles between them. The bookcase also has perfect 90 degree surfaces. When I applied one 90 degree surface to the front of the other one…..

everything was crooked.

It was like suddenly we didn’t live in Euclidean space-time any more. It was the weirdest thing. I could measure 90 degree angles all over the place, but the face frame was “slanted” by as much as 1/4 inch between the top of the case and the bottom. This utterly flummoxed me until I took the face frame apart, reconstructed it (with the same wood and the same screw.. in the SAME HOLES), and it worked. Amazing. I think I’ve discovered a unique quality of wood: it has the ability to bend spacetime.

So anyway, that’s how I spent my 8 hours today.

4 hours yesterday (total of 74 hours!) on the entertainment center. I planed up a bunch of thin pieces and glued them to the back where the TV will be mounted. This is so, when you look at the surface the TV is mounted on, you’ll see solid hardwood oak and not plywood (yuk!). I only applied solid wood where you’ll see the back around the edges of the TV, and not over the whole back “wall”, so right now I’ve got a roughly 16×9 TV “space” layed out. Looks kinda funny.

I also started in on the face frame but ran out of wood. Well, I have more QSRO, but it’s not the same color and I want to make sure the color match is right, and that I’m using stock that has consistent grain and ray-flecking:

Back to the lumberyard today for more wood.