In the old days, you had to cut wood to keep warm. The years went by, and shoving coal was the way to keep warm. Either way, you had a pretty good feel of how much work/material/effort/cost it was taking to keep you warm.
Now days, you just flick a switch and this invisible force keeps you nice and warm (or cool if you are reading this in Australia). You have no feel at all for what the cost is….. That is until some 30 or more days latter when you get your power bill, and by that time, you cant take it back, or change it, you just have to pay for it and try to remember to take it easy next time.
Thus is the situation we all (with the exception of my Dad, he’s living on fire wood and alternate energy (solar and wind for the most part)) are in. We just don’t how much electricity, or as my mate Matt calls it, electrickery (he does not do it, leaving it to me for the most part, which is good thing, I have seen him (and Gary) solder…scary….) we are using when we flick that switch.
The past three and a bit months of my working life here at Opto 22 have been spent doing something about this little dilemma….. The results have been past my wildest expectations.
Its all a bit of blur to fill you in, but it’s been gathering steam and does not appear to be slowing down any time soon with both Verizon (America’s largest cell phone company (that’s enough out of you Gary)) and Google looking at what we are doing.
To give a feel for what we are doing (public web site coming soon, but not just yet) we have two videos that were taken by some guys at a seminar that Opto 22 was at last week.
Now, unfortunately, the first is really long, but very interesting, and the latter is very short, but hopelessly out of focus….. Anyway, here is the link to both and a little blog entry about it.
If you are bandwidth challenged and just want to read a little, here is one guys blog entry about the seminar.
Its pretty exciting and some what bizarre that two blokes in/from Ballarat are in the thick of it.
Two? Yeah, my mate Nick had a bit to do with it as well. He got the snowball rolling with some code that he wrote and I have just been kicking it down hill ever since. At the moment I think I am part of it and am getting bounced around a far bit. I get the feeling that Nick is safely at the top of the hill having a little laugh at me, but that’s ok, we are a pretty good team, sort of an Opto strike force.
Between that and Bob and Bensons contacts, sales and marketing skills, things look interesting ahead, very interesting indeed…..
Anyway, its all very cool and I never guessed that I would be doing stuff like it when I came over, but then again, this is one of the main reasons I came over, in the hope that I could do stuff like this.
Watch this space.