CC&R's that are bad for the environment

April 23, 2008

Having looked at houses over the years I've seen some really bad CC&R's. But some go beyond being annoying to being downright harmful to the planet. Take for example this except from the Shamrock West website pointing out the most commonly violated CC&R's:

SECTION 9 – LIGHT POLE
“Each home is REQUIRED to have a photo-sensitive pole light installed in the front yard within (10) feet of the property line, designed to switch on automatically at sunset and off at sunrise with a minimum bulb power of 40 watts.”

So not only does this contribute to unnecessary light pollution, but it wastes energy. Living in the next neighborhood over we don't have this silly rule. And the neighborhood is much nicer for it. Sadly most new development CC&R's I've looked at lately have these same clauses requiring residents to waste energy.

Earth day home improvements for free

April 19, 2008

Earth day is coming up this week. Here's one simple tip that just about anybody can do that will save money and help the planet at the same time. Search your house and find light fixtures with more than one bulb. Simply remove half of the bulbs. Most likely you won't notice the reduction in light and now you're using half as much energy every time you flip the switch.

Previous experience in web design is also required

April 18, 2008

Had this ad been posted on April 1st it would have been a really funny joke. Posted late in the month it is more funny sad than funny ha ha. Sadly this is not made up but a real ad posted by a real law school. This could turn into the right opportunity for someone with a solid Drupal developer. Unfortunately for the law school in question it does not bode well.

As is the case in many shops this will be a one-person web shop. By itself this is not a bad deal. The challenge will be getting a good person. Unfortunately the advertisement suggests the organization understands very little about what to expect from this position. What is best about this advertisement is the line "[K]nowledge of a web programming language is required
(ColdFusion or Dreamweaver)." Sigh. If the school is really lucky they'll get a good Drupaler to apply and come explain in easy to understand terms what the school needs.

Senior Web Developer - Law School

This position will design, test, and implement websites, including
designing databases, web-interfaces, and reports for the Law School. While the
Director will be kept abreast of all activities (for purpose of approval,
particularly informational and/or content issues) related to Web resources,
most of the technological and operational aspects of the sites will be the full
responsibility of this position.

Requirements: Bachelor's degree in Information Technology,
Information Systems, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a closely

The Drupal shop

April 17, 2008

aten Design Group has a great article on why they chose Drupal. I would be hard pressed to tell you the number of high quality shops who have made the same choice. Many of us have set about building a better content management system. One better suited to our particular needs or our view of how to do content management. As someone who has used content management systems dating back to Clay Basket and NetObjects Fusion as well as rolling my own, Drupal simply makes it possible to focus on doing the things we want with a content management system (and yes it's more than just a CMS) instead of spending weeks and years building one.

Cutting the cable

April 17, 2008

Tom wrote recently about ditching cable TV. Over the last couple of years we've been watching not much TV. With our move last winter we ended up in a house that for various reasons isn't suited to cable or satellite.

This situation brought out the rabbit ears and there is an amazing revelation that free TV is still available via plain old rabbit ears. The coming conversion to digital TV won't even render them useless though an old TV set will need a converter box. But there is the lack of TiVo. That all powerful system for time-shifting shows. Fortunately there is a reasonable solution there too.

Admittedly the Eye TV Hybrid takes some cash up front. However, it pays off in the long run. There are no TiVo fees, no requirement to use anything but a computer and some rabbit ears. Though I don't yet have even the latest software, it does a great job of turning a 20-inch iMac into a great media center. Hook it up with an AppleTV and it's even better than TiVo in many ways.

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