Home – Page 8 – David Kotz

Snowflakes

Snowflake photography is hard.

It’s snowing lightly this morning, quite a change from the 50-degree sunny weather that has worn hard on the snowbanks this past week. It’s a welcome opportunity to pretty-up the view of the nearby hillsides and to coat the dirty old snow in a fresh coat of white.

I recently read a New York Times article about the amazing snowflake photographs produced as a hobby by Nathan Myhrvold, a retired Microsoft executive, like the one below.

Image copyright Nathan Myhrvold, from the New York Times.

I decided to dash outside and give it a quick try. Needless to say, my attempts – photographed in about five minutes using a handheld Nikon camera and a routine lens, of flakes freshly fallen onto a microfiber cloth – are not even worthwhile saving. Myhrvold’s work has taken years of experimentation, custom-designed equipment, travel to remote locations, and incredible persistence. It’s beautiful work, and I highly recommend a scroll through the photos in the article.

Who knew microfiber cloths have such texture?

Winter pizza

Pizza tastes even better in winter.

Regular readers may recall that we built a pizza oven last summer, out beside the patio. Well, we’ve worked hard to keep a pathway shoveled over to the oven all winter… and we’ve taken advantage of it a few times. It’s a bit tricky to cook pizza on cold, dark nights! Today, however, we built a fire in the morning and were ready to bake by noon, on a sunny warm (25º) day.

Because I’ve also continued to experiment with Indian cooking in our Ultrapot pressure cooker, I made some chicken tikka masala and decided to make a pizza out of it, adding shiitake mushrooms and curry leaves for extra flair. Here’s the result; pretty darn good, on a late winter’s day!

Chocolate

Feel free to send all the extra chocolate to me!

It is perhaps not surprising that I developed an even deeper addiction to chocolate when we lived in Switzerland, where world-class chocolate was available in numerous local shops. Here in New Hampshire, we buy the best local chocolate we can find, and sometimes special-ordered some Läderach Swiss chocolate by mail.

So I was interested to read this recent news story about the dramatic drop in chocolate consumption in Switzerland in the past year – to the lowest level in forty years. Maybe it’s because we moved out in July! 🙂

Solar flat

Even on a windy day, we can still generate power.

It was a wild and windy night, as a cold front blew away yesterday’s warm temperatures. Our solar tracker is designed to protect itself by going flat when there are gusty or strong winds, and that’s how I found it this morning.

Solar tracker goes flat in windy conditions.

You can see the anemometer at the far-right corner, which is on a gimble so it can measure horizontal wind speed even as the tracker tilts.

That picture was taken about two hours ago. It’s now quite sunny, and still windy; the tracker is still flat (and thus not pointed at the sun), but still generating enough power to serve the house, charge the battery, and feed the grid:

Avalanche

It was just a matter of time before it struck.

An avalanche just struck the house, in a massive rumble that shook the foundation. Ok, that’s a bit melodramatic, but it’s true! I opened the front door to see what was the matter and found a foot-high wall of snow had pressed up against the door:

Front door blocked by an avalanche off the garage roof.

This morning’s warm weather (35ºF and rainy) finally convinced the snowpack on the garage roof, which had accumulated over months and had slowly melted down to 6″ of thick heavy wet stuff, that it was time to go. Fortunately I could sneak out the side door to get a more complete picture.

The garage is to the right, that front door is to the left.

The good news: the snow came off in one quick motion, overshooting much of the walkway, meaning there is less of it we need to shovel away. The bad news? Forecast is for temps to drop to 3ºF tonight, so this stuff will freeze up like concrete unless we move it today. Gotta go get the shovel…

Solar complete

Solar and battery and generator.

Finally, more than six months after we received the initial proposal from a local solar-power company (Solaflect), we have a complete system installed: last week, they completed the installation of a battery back-up solution from a German company called Sonnen. Our house can now be supplied by solar power, grid power, battery power, or propane-generator power, depending on the situation. Although I won’t dig into all the details, it’s pretty cool, so read on…

diagram of power flowing — A screenshot from the Sonnen battery portal showing power flowing from the solar tracker into the house (supporting its consumption) and into the battery (keeping it charged) and into the grid (selling power back to the electric company). The actual graphic is animated, showing power ‘flowing’ from the top to the other three destinations.

Firewood anxiety

We’re almost out of firewood.

We have a woodstove in the living room, and enjoy that toasty feeling when the house is heated with wood. Even our cat luxuriates in the sort of radiant heat only a woodstove can provide. But can it last all winter? read on.

Tesla… not

A month of body work awaits!

Sadly, I lost my brand-new Tesla one week ago.

damage to my Model Y after another driver rear-ended me.

Well, to be more precise, my Tesla is now in the shop, after a distracted driver rear-ended me last Thursday at a remote intersection in Vermont. (Nobody was hurt.) I’ve spent the last week on the phone with Tesla, two insurance companies, and a couple of body shops trying to make arrangements. Not easy!

As it turns out, there are no Tesla-approved body shops in either Vermont or New Hampshire, so the closest realistic option was to tow my car about 20 miles from the accident to a garage, and then 160 miles from that garage to the body shop near Boston. Tesla cars require special training and equipment to repair, because of the high-voltage electronics and because of the aluminum body components.

On the other hand, a major advantage of Tesla cars is that they have cameras all around, always recording;* I was able to pull the USB memory stick after the accident, giving me a several dramatic views of the incident. Check out the gallery for two photos and two brief videos.

Now I’m in this Toyota RAV4 SUV rental car. Very odd blue!

* If you’re really into this stuff, check out the YouTube Channel Wham Bam TeslaCam for dramatic video captures by Tesla cars around the world. Ironically, I was watching video from that channel before I went out last Thursday.

Shedding snow

Avalanches off our roof.

A few years ago we put a standing-seam metal roof on our house. They are more durable than asphalt shingles and do not accumulate snow or form ice dams. Well, they do accumulate snow during colder periods, like the last week, but when it gets warm (like today), that snow slides slowly off, often in huge sheets. Whump! it hits the ground. When Pam re-did the decking, a few years ago, she had the clever idea to make a section of the deck fold up against the house, allowing the snow to fall through to the ground below. I’ve written about this before – but today I captured a brief video for you. These are small, compared to what they can often be! The whole house shakes several times every minute, as this snow load drops off.

Ultrapot

A new cooking opportunity!

A couple of years ago we bought one of these newfangled multi-function cooking pots – specifically, a Müeller Ultra Pot. But it was just a couple of months ago that I realized the incredible potential of this device, when I discovered this new cookbook from Urvashi Pitre, Indian Instant Pot. As many of you know, I love Indian food and have refined my ability to make a very small number of Indian dishes… but with this cookbook, and this cook pot, I could do a lot more. Read on to see what I’ve tried so far!