I know this has nothing to do with home improvement but I thought it was cool. This video comes courtesy of http://www.5min.com/

Who: The Gamble House
What: Architecture as the Third Skin
When: October 13, 2007
Where: The Gamble House, 4 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena

The Gamble House is presenting two lectures which explore the idea of Architecture as the Third Skin. The first, by Wayne McAllister, emphasizes show-off architecture, with his work on over-the-top neon and larger-than-life marquees. McAllister has worked on projects ranging from sleek and sexy Las Vegas casinos, to Bob’s Big Boy drive-in hamburger stands.

Christian Witt-Dorring, the brilliant and dynamic expert on Vienna at the turn of the century, will present a curator’s view of the designs of Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffman, and Adolph Loos, architects who set critical prerequisites for European Modernism a hundred years ago. In attempting to reconcile architectural skin and space with its furnishings, these pioneers created a language of design and craft that offered a fresh and provocative view of cultural identity.

This should be a great presentation, for more information be sure to visit the Gamble House's website.

In the May 2007 issue of Popular Mechanics, we tested seven popular compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and found that the light quality in all of them topped that emitted by traditional incandescent bulbs. Following that lab test, we received a lot of questions from readers regarding the environmental impact of the mercury contained in CFLs. For more of the lowdown on these energy-saving bulbs, we crunched the numbers and checked in with the Department of Energy and Russ Leslie at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. —Julianne Pepitone and Emily Masamitsu

Why do CFLs require mercury to produce light?
Compact fluorescent bulbs are made of glass tubes filled with gas and a small amount of mercury. CFLs produce light when the mercury molecules are excited by electricity running between two electrodes in the base of the bulb. The mercury emits ultraviolet light, which in turn excites the tube’s phosphor coating, leading it to emit visible light.

How much mercury is contained in a CFL?
Each bulb contains an average of 5 milligrams of mercury, “which is just enough to cover a ballpoint pen tip,” says Leslie, associate director of the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer. “Though it’s nothing to laugh at, unless you wipe up mercury [without gloves] and then lick your hand, you’re probably going to be okay.”

How do CFLs and incandescents compare in terms of electricity consumption?
On average, CFLs require about 25 percent of the electricity as their incandescent counterparts to produce equivalent light. Replacing an incandescent with a CFL ultimately decreases the amount of electricity the nation’s power plants must generate and, in turn, the amount of carbon dioxide—a powerful greenhouse gas—that they emit into the atmosphere.

How much mercury do power plants emit to light a CFL?

While it must be nice to own a home that's completely controlled by your voice, a clap, or a simple remote, getting this stuff up and running isn't always easy, and the INSTEON-compatible RemoteLinc doesn't seen to make things any less complicated. Sure, controlling your garage door, fireplace, kitchen appliances, home theater components, and six or so lighting schemes throughout the house may sound novel, but considering the extras required to make it happen with the RemoteLinc, you may want to look elsewhere for your home automation needs. The control only dictates items that are first connected to an RF-capable AccessPoint, which acts as a bridge between the item and the RemoteLinc, but hooking up a multitude of devices can get quite pricey when buying a SwitchLinc, LampLinc, or ApplianceLinc for every single unit. Still, it does boast of "Plug and Tap" ease when setting things up, and the remote itself will only set you back $49.99, but we'd be well aware of the necessary add-ons you'll need to make the magic happen before diving on in.

Battling over control of the office thermostat / air conditioning tends to be a passive aggressive flashpoint in any place of work, so even though this will undoubtedly set off some environmental alarms, the C2 climate control definitely fills a niche. Replacing the role of a regular personal fan, the C2 from Herman Miller allows users to adjust the surrounding temperature up to a 40 degree increase, and an 8 degree decrease, taking 72 degrees F (22 degrees C) as the starting temperature. The aforementioned environmental issues does raise the question of how far this technology should go, especially since office unity can't be that great if an issue as trivial as temperature can't be agreed upon. Still, we're not one to complain about having things easier in our work environments: not that we'd know anything about working in an office.

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This is a message from the creators of Home Improvement Blog. Over the next few weeks you will start to see a lot of changes with the blog. First off we have changed the Look of the blog.

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