Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Festivus, and/or Winter Solstice, whatever your choice. Enjoy it!


15 days until OSU plays for the national championship
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 12-0 Next up: Florida 1/8/2007
Tune: We Three Kings by The Roches
Technorati Tags: Happy | Holidays | Mike Harding Blog

This week, Southern California Edison signed an agreement with Alta Windpower Development, LLC. (subsidiary of Australia’s Allco Finance Group) to purchase the output of an aggregation of projects to produce some 1,500MW of electricity from turbines located in Tehacapi. That’s renewable at utility scale and it’s very exciting to see. I strongly suspect that a large portion of that 1,500MW is power that will be displaced when sites in Tehacapi are “repowered” – taking older, smaller turbines down and replacing them with larger, more efficient models. Regardless, it’s encouraging to see renewable projects on this scale.

To put 1,500MW into perspective, the average wind turbine has a capacity factor of 30% meaning the net average generation capacity at any point in time would be around 450MW flowing onto the grid. As a reminder, a MW of capacity is capable of generating a MW per time period, say an hour, to get megawatt hours (MWh.) A MW at 100% capacity and availability would be able to generate 8,760 MWh (non-leap year) or 8,760,000 kilowatt hours. This project will generate approximately 3.9 gigawatt hours per year (3,900,000,000 KWh.) Check your electric bill, it’s metered and billed in KWh, most households in the US consuming around 1,000 KWh per month. The net is, that’s alot of power coming from a renewable resource. Very encouraging.


16 days until OSU plays for the national championship
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 12-0 Next up: Florida 1/8/2007
Tune: Taylor by Jack Johnson
Technorati Tags: Energy | Investment | Power Purchase | Mike Harding Blog

Japanese researchers managed this feat in the waters 1,000km south of Tokyo near the Ogasawara Islands. The squid was 24 feet long, small by giant squid standards, and unfortunately died during its capture. The footage taken is believed to be the first ever of the giant squid species while alive.


17 days until OSU plays for the national championship
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 12-0 Next up: Florida 1/8/2007
Tune: Hana by Ozzie Kotani
Technorati Tags: Giant Squid | Photograph | Capture | Mike Harding Blog

The naked wine run that is. Details available here. The irony of naked and packaging is just too good to pass up…


18 days until OSU plays for the national championship
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 12-0 Next up: Florida 1/8/2007
Tune: Tush by ZZ Top
Technorati Tags: Silly Stuff | Wine | Naked | Mike Harding Blog

Last night was a busy one…but not how you’d expect with it being the silly season and all.

It started off with a meeting of the community that is launching a startup around pet needs last night in Palo Alto (at Mandarin Gourmet restaurant – it’s very good, I recommend it.) A colleague has some great ideas about how to merge cafe culture, pets, communities, and intellectual property, all bound together by the network. This is an early stage business and as soon as it’s appropriate, I’ll make a more in-depth entry about the business. In the meantime, it’s great to see it develop as an advisory board member. It’s always very exciting as a new business is born…

Rushing off from that event I headed to the Makeout Room in San Francisco for an evening of alternative music. The bill consisted of Cult of Sue Todd, The Boneless Children Foundation, and Naked & Shameless. While this lineup might seem a bit outside my taste, suffice to say a family member is involved in one of the groups. Sue Todd are a modern pop/punk outfit, Boneless Children have a cool name (kind of a poor man’s Rush,) and Naked & Shameless are an insurgent country or acoustic punk performance act. I particularly enjoyed “Four Food Groups,” a modern interpretation of Peggy Lee’s “Fever,” and a cover of Johnny Cash’s dark ballad “Delia’s Gone.”

Nothing like going to a San Francisco club surrounded by drunk 20-somethings while loud music, some of which you like and some you don’t, blares to remind you of your age! Regardless, I had a great time and would encourage you to take a night out like this every so often.


19 days until OSU plays for the national championship
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 12-0 Next up: Florida 1/8/2007
Tune: Delia’s Gone by Johnny Cash
Technorati Tags: Pets | Startup | Music | Mike Harding Blog