Tag Archives: history

Places

Alexandria, Virginia

The city of Alexandria (Virginia, USA) began its life in 1749, as a port for Scottish and English merchants. Alexandria is located in Northern Virginia, across the Potomac River from southern Washington D.C. The city encompasses 15.75 square miles at an average elevation of 30 feet above sea level.

It was named in honor of John Alexander, the Scott who purchased the land in 1669, for 6,000 pounds of tobacco and cask, from Robert Howson, an English ship merchant. Howson had received it as a land grant from Sir William Berkeley, the Governor of Virginia, for bringing over 120 settlers from England.

The town was incorporated in 1779, and by that time it had become a bustling port, filled with brigs, schooners and ships who came there to trade in flour, hemp and tobacco. In 1789, the town was ceded to the Federal Government, to become part of the new District of Columbia. It was retroceded to Virginia in 1847. In 1852, it gained city status and a new charter.

By the time of the American Revolution, it was one of the principal colonial trading centers and ports. George Washington, America’s first president, maintained a town house in Alexandria, and was on its Board of Trustees. During the Civil War, it was occupied by the Union Army and was a major logistical supply centers for the federal army.

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Thoughts

The history of rickrolling


The History of RickRolling

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Events

Keynote video from State of the Word 2010

If you haven’t yet seen the “State of the Word” keynote from WordCamp San Francisco, held on May 12, then it’s worth a watch. Matt Mullenweg, WP’s founder, talks about WP’s history, the challenges of a growing platform, and highlights the neat features of WordPress 3.0, which will soon be released.

I’ve been a big fan of WordPress, and have been using it since late 2005 (publicly since 2006). After more than three years of self-hosting a WP.org install, I moved to WP.com, so I could focus on writing and leave the hosting to the folks that made the platform.

Can’t wait to see (and use) the new features of WP 3.0!

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Places

Romania in 1964, through British Pathe eyes

In this video, you can see the beauty of Romania in 1964, through the excited eyes of visitors from the British Pathe agency. I found it on YouTube as well.

In it, Romania certainly looks like a beautiful, happy country, but the truth lay somewhat to the right of that picture. Romania was under the complete control of a totalitarian Communist regime, which took over at the end of WWII, under the tutelage of the USSR. Its leaders changed over the years, as they tried to slowly dig themselves out from under the heavy boot of the Soviets, and they succeeded to a certain extent to maintain a somewhat independent stance. It all came tumbling down in 1989, while under the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania’s last dictator, in what is now known to have been a coup d’état.

What the viewers likely did not know, and may not have known even if they visited Romania, was that the camera crew was closely monitored. Everyone who was allowed to be on camera was warned ahead of time to smile and say nothing bad about the regime… or else they’d be persecuted or put in prison.

Among the many persecuted by the Communist regime were Corneliu Coposu, Ticu Dumitrescu, and Traian Dorz (a friend of my father’s). In my family, my grandfather (my father’s father) was imprisoned because he owned too much land, according to the Communists. They called him a “bourgeois” (he was an honest, hard-working farmer), took away all his land, and put him in prison for a year. My father was expelled from school for the entire 5th grade when that happened, because his father was a “bourgeois”.

Romania wanted to appear friendly to foreign eyes. It flirted with foreigners because it wanted their currency. It also wanted to fend off international critique, because it was playing a double game. On one hand, it was trying to distance itself from Russia, to whom it was paying heavy tribute by the trainloads, every week, so it had to court Westerners, but it had to do it slowly, so as not to anger the Russians, or they might risk retaliation and a leadership change. Meanwhile, they were keeping a very close eye on everything going on in Romania. Any dissension was quashed with an iron fist.

This video will give you a better idea of what was really going on at the time.

Also, here’s a this typical propaganda video for the country’s “beloved leader”, Nicolae Ceausescu. Romanians had to watch staged bull like this daily, because all media was controlled by the state. All foreign content was heavily censored, and Romanian movies would go through multiple approval processes in order to get made, shown in cinemas and on TV. The only things I could look forward to on TV as I grew up in Romania were a half hour documentary on Saturday evening, then a movie later that night, and on Sunday morning, 10 minutes of cartoons. Sometimes they’d play Tom and Jerry cartoons, which were my favorite. Most of the time, it was Romanian or Russian cartoons.

Here’s another video from British Pathe, this one from 1961, detailing a fishing trip to the mountains and to the Black Sea. It also shows the idyllic countryside and the beauty of the Romanian wilderness, which can still be seen today. There’s historic value in these British Pathe videos. They show that Romania was a beautiful country indeed. It’s still beautiful today, and that’s why I love to travel and stay in it.

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Reviews

CFL vs LED rate of adoption

I think it was sometime in 1997 when my college (Middlebury) ran an energy efficiency campaign and held a few sessions for students where they could learn about new technologies, such as CFL (Compact Fluorescent) bulbs. Those who attended were given their very own CFL bulb, for free. Prices then were about $20-30 per bulb. I used mine in my desk lamp, then took it with me when I graduated, and it made various moves with me, lighting various lamps of mine, until 1½ years ago, when it finally gave out one evening.

It was a spiral-type CFL bulb like the one you see below, it wasn’t a particularly powerful model, and it certainly took its time to get warm and reach its rated lumens (10-15 minutes), but I thought it was a cool concept and I was glad to do my bit for energy efficiency.

Nowadays, there are a ton of CFL bulb models, for both indoors and outdoors, made to fit all lamps, of all shapes and sizes, and even colors. I’m not just talking about different bulb temperatures, but also literally about bulb colors. I’ve seen blue, red, green and orange CFL bulbs — I don’t who’d buy them, but they’re out there.

They even have dimmable CFLs, which is a big deal for some people.

If you pause a moment to think about this, it took over 30 years for CFL technology to mature and reach the same sort of production and adoption levels as incandescent light bulbs, which were invented in 1879 by Thomas A. Edison [source]. CFL bulbs were invented by Ed Hammer from GE in 1976. Initially shelved by the company because they deemed the technology too expensive, the design leaked out and became popular [source]. Commercial models first came to the market in 1980 from Philips, then in 1985 from Osram [source]. I, along with many others, first heard of CFL bulbs as a new technology about 13 years ago, after they’d already been on the market for over 15 years.

LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs have an interesting history. The bulbs themselves as we know them today (replacements for CFL and incandescent bulbs) have a fairly short history, having only been introduced in 1999, although their ancestor, the now-humble light-emitting diode, has lived inside our electronics for decades. Unlike with incandescent and CFL bulbs, it’s much harder to attribute credit for them to any single person. Generally speaking, Nick Holonyak, an engineer at GE, is considered the inventor of individual LEDs, having made them in 1962. LED light bulbs are a different story altogether, and it’s much more of a group effort, with many people and companies working together to produce commercially viable versions of this new lighting technology.

It was the Philips company who came up with the first 1W LED bulbs in 1999. In 2002, Lumileds came out with 5W LEDs [source]. After that, progress came quicker. The key with LEDs is the ability to increase their light output to make them viable replacements for regular light bulbs. Newer, more powerful LEDs have been introduced since then by various companies such as Cree, Inc., Seoul Semiconductor, Nichia Corporation and others that have each been more powerful, brighter and efficient than their predecessors.

That brings us to where we are today, which is just a few short years since 1999 — relatively speaking. It’s 2010, and LED bulbs are getting massive press attention. There are already a ton of models on the market, from various companies, in various sizes, color temperatures and screw types. The only thing holding them back from mass adoption are their prices, which are still hovering above $30 per bulb. Some bulbs go as high as $50 or more.

There are distinct advantages to LED bulbs, or else they wouldn’t get all this attention. For one thing, they’re even more efficient than CFL bulbs, and for another, they contain no harmful mercury, unlike CFL bulbs. (Given the mercury levels contained in CFLs, it’s unfortunate and thoughtless of the EU to outlaw incandescent light bulbs as they did last year, in 2009.) Finally, LED bulbs last a LOT longer — their projected life span is 20-30 years, which is more than the 5-10 years we expect CFL bulbs to last.

Another benefit that doesn’t get as much airtime is their ability to operate at voltage ranges, not at specific voltages, which has been the case with all bulbs so far. I’ve seen LED bulbs that can operate from 85-250V, and that’s huge for me. It means I can take a bulb I bought in the US to Europe and use it there, or vice-versa. For those who travel between continents, this is a big deal, just like it was a big deal when companies started putting out 110-240V adapters for electronics. It meant I could take my laptop to Europe and use it there without a separate transformer, or I could take my cellphone along and charge it without a separate transformer.

I first heard about LED bulbs a couple of years ago, when LED christmas lights first came out. Remember that time? The lights were expensive, but given how much electricity gets consumed with festive lighting during the holiday season, switching to them was a compelling choice. As I write this, I’m looking at the LED lights in our Christmas tree, including the LED star on top (we still haven’t taken it down because it’s so nice to look at), and I realize how far we’ve come.

Given how fast LED bulbs have progressed, technologically, I think it’s safe to assume the public will also adopt them faster than CFLs as well. LED bulbs have the added advantage of having reached mass production much sooner than CFLs, and having made it to store shelves a lot sooner than CFLs. The only thing that remains is for their price to become more affordable. Market-wise, I think they’ll cannibalize the CFLs first, not the incandescents, simply because the same people who are interested in CFLs will tend to switch to LEDs now. The people who are still buying incandescents, for whatever reason, such as the requirements of their electrical installation or their price, will still continue to buy incandescents. What may hurt the sales of LED bulbs though is the fact the a lot of people have already invested heavily in CFL bulbs. My parents and I have switched almost all of the bulbs in our homes to CFLs, have already made that investment, and will likely wait until our CFL bulbs give out before we get new LEDs.

Still, when you consider that the market for lighting products continues to increase, I think we’ll see increasing levels of LED bulb adoption, starting as early as this year.

Updated 12/10/10: According to this article from Care2, Sylvania and Philips have already begun selling more affordable LED light bulbs, at $20/bulb for about 60 watts of light output.

LED and CFL bulbs are available for purchase from Amazon.

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