LED lights are the future

I've been meaning to write a blog about LED lighting for a while now and it seems  suitable to dot now that this years winner of the Nobel prize in physics have been revealed. Those that came up with LED lights.

Well The EU banned traditional light bulbs 2012. Before that the alternative to lights bulb was energy saving lamps. And those of us who tried them out didn't like them at all. They were supposed to last longer than light bulbs and used much less energy. That was the only good thing about them. They were expensive and sensitive to thrusts. Like if you had a heavy shopping bag and slammed it a bit hard down on the kitchen table when you got home from grocery shopping, chances are the energy saving lamps worth 20 € or more in your shopping bag was broken. You couldn't dim them. You were alls supposed to dispose of them separately, you couldn't throw in your trash can. Since there were no clear guidelines on where to bring them I bet most still ended up in the household waste. Releasing the mercury they contained where the waste was disposed of. I bet by 2020 you will have a hard time finding a energy saving lamp in the store shelf. It was a temporary solution that will be phased out by itself during the next few years.

The next solution was halogen lamps. Most lighting in our home right now are halogen lamps. They look and worked like traditional light bulbs, they are cheap and uses a lot less power than traditional light bulbs. The downside is they still use a lot more power than energy saving lamps and get hot. They have been blamed for causing a number of house fires.

Then LED lamps came along. First they were expensive, then they got cheaper. Still not as cheap as halogen lamps but almost on the same levels as energy saving lamps. We got a LED flashlight to use at work it uses one AAA battery. I haven't dared to look straight into it's light. Fearing it might cause me to see a bright light for several hours afterward. I have a 6D cell Maglite at Home, this little LED flashlight brings out more light than the Maglite does.

Compared to light bulbs LED lamps are using about 1/10 of power that light bulbs needed, even less than energy saving lamps. They also last a lot longer and are not that sensitive to thrust. They are getting cheaper as they become more common. Some of them look a bit weird but that's not really an issue. The only bad new is that if you need dimmable lamps, those kind of LED lights are about as twice as expensive as the normal LED lights. This is the future.

Finding my way back

I have begun exploring the world of blogging again. Joining different blogging groups on Facebook and blogging communities on Google+. And the most important thing of all; writing a few blog posts. I've needed a different approach to blogging than I had 5 years ago and I think I'm finding out what that is.

I'm not sure how to describe it in words but momentary blogging is  not my thing. I don't have the time or ability to do that. What I need to do is to think out a few blogging issues while I don't have the ability to blog and then write about them when I do have the time.

Another thing, the HBlog app for Windows Phone is a much better app than I thought it to be. I didn't like it at first but it's much more useful than going trough the Blogger web page on my phone. It does all the thing it's supposed to do in a simple way and nothing else. It doesn't feel tedious writing with it as it can do trough the web page on the phone. I like it.

Feedly

I finally got into Bloggers own Reading list setting and deleted every blog I have been following. I've been trying to get get my hands on that settings page for over a year and I finally got in and deleted everything. No worries though, all of you who are reading this have been moved over to Feedly or Google+, or will be shortly, so I'm still reading all of your blogs.

For some time you have been able to add blogs to the reading list but not remove them as you can only do from the settings page which you haven't been able to reach. And even before that it worked really badly. Blogs you added could be removed after a couple of weeks all by themselves and blogs you removed could be added  after a couple of weeks all by themselves. The removing or adding of a blog required something between 3-5 attempts during a course of 2-4 months. This was as good as it got.

I had blogs there going back close to a decade and a large part of those bloggers are no longer blogging for various reasons. There were also people there who I had no idea who they were and/or the had actually deleted their own blogs. Time to go.

But since then both Google Reader and Google Friend Connect has been discontinued. Blogger Reading list was built on those two platforms so it has sort of become this appendix that well, doesn't really work or have any use but still hangs around. Google+ is what you work trough now if you go all Google. I love Google+, it's better than Facebook, but not all of the blogs I read are on Blogger. Some use Wordpress and other platforms so this is were Feedly comes in and it works great.

Writing season

I know I have periods when I write less. I also have periods when I write more. That also goes for blog commenting. I always read blogs, all the time. But sometimes I feel like I have nothing to add to the blog by commenting it.

Lately I have been really drawn towards blogging again. I realize I need to change the style of blogging. Back in the old days I used to think of something, sit down and blog about it. With a family that doesn't happen often. Yes I still get several ideas daily for a great blog post but it's all forgotten once I sit down in front of a computer. So shorter blogs on my phone this one is written on my phone and it's tedious) and longer posts, somewhat planned ahead, when I know I have the time.

I'm a night owl

This is brilliant.

Intelligent People All Have One Thing In Common: They Stay Up Later Than You

Summer

Well dear blog readers, summer is finally here. Although we had a very small taste of it in May, all of June was cold. Some days people were still wearing beanies and small children most of the month. But with July came summer. We had beach weather most of July and the last few days it has been so hot I've have really enjoyed being at work because we have AC. Well for a Finn 29 C (85 F)  is hot.

Today is warm, around 20-24 C and rain showers are expected in the afternoon. So it's a fairly good summers day today. An according to the fortunetellers that call themselves meteorologists  we will have summer for the rest of the month. So it's looking good.

Android

In the mobile sphere and tablet sphere Android is king. Not because it is better but because it has the biggest market share and it has the biggest number of apps for its users. I have no personal experience of Apple so I really can't comment on them. But I can compare Android to Windows Phone or shortened WP. And it's really quantity over quality.

First of all have you ever tried writing a long text on Android? Or just a sentence? The text on the screen seem to be one word behind your fingers on the virtual keyboard. And I'm a slow writer, And speaking of the virtual keyboard. On a tablet you can usually hit the right "key". However try a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini and you'll be writing everything twice, at least.

And then there are virtual books. I know good writing costs but e-books available for the Android platform usually all cost something. And finding an app that can use you Google Drive or OneDrive a e-book source is difficult. Have you found one? I haven't.

Using a browser of any kind on a Android system. Well it helps if you got other things to do at the same timer

The only compliant I got against WP is that they should have entered the tablet market earlier and their tablet(s) are too expensive. A phone screen is still small. And the lack of apps for WP. Well  that's not really a compliant. Sometimes quality is better than quantity.

6tag vs Instagram BETA

After having tried out Instagram BETA on my Nokia for a couple of months I decided it was time to go back to 6tag. I began with 6tag but due to some crashing and in my mind a more difficult user interface than Instagram BETA I switched to Instagram BETA. It worked fine except that it was often very slow on wifi. But the last few days it stopped sharing pictures to Facebook. I have no idea why because on Android it works and on 6tag it works. So back to 6tag.

Twitter & Instagram

I wish I had more time and inspiration to blog but I don't.  So for those interested in my life look to the right of this blog  post. There's a Twitter feed and a link to my Instagram page. It's only short comments and a few snapshots of my life and my thoughts. Something to read in between those blog posts that do get written sometimes.

Tropiclandia

Today we spent a couple of hours at the local spa (Tropiclandia) with the kids. It was fun and we were all tired afterwards.

This is all written with the tablet and I think I will never write long blog posts with this.

HBlog vs Blogger

After trying out Google's own app for Blogger I think HBlog for WP is the better app. I'm writting this with the Blogger app on a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3. It's a wonderfull tablet but blogging all together are meant to be done with a keyboard.

Reading list

The RSS reader on this site, yes Blogger, is probably one of the worst there is. Yes it's on the same page as you your blogs but I've been trying to remove a few blogs lately and every time I try to do that, the settings page is not even reachable. And sometimes none of the blogs on the reading list shows up, like today.  Please Google, fix it.