Reducing Electricity Bill With New Lighting Technology—LED

It is actually safe to touch the light bulb.

LED has been around for several decades now. In fact, the concept was first discovered in 1907 by H. J. Round. About five decades later, the first practical visible red LED was developed. Now, there are some more interesting historical facts about LED like the first LED flashlight was actually conceptualised in 1984,  but I don't want to risk putting you, my readers, to sleep with history lessons at this point. For those interested, you can read all about it over at wikipedia.

LED, however, have yet to become a mainstream household lighting solution. You cannot even buy them from the local supermarkets here in Australia, at the time of writing. Correct me if I am wrong. Even if you can, they will be very expensive.

So a few weeks ago, I ordered 2 LED light bulbs from ebay to test if it can replace my current compact fluorescent lamp (CFL). Not that the CFL has died on me, but I am curious to see if I am able to reduce my carbon footprint. And to my surprise, the results are not what I had expected...

Side Project: Building Something Useful with the MSP430

At the middle of the week, two parcels arrived at my door. It was the MSP430 and the add-on (booster) pack that I ordered last Thursday (5 April 2012). That was fast. Thanks to Texas Instrument (TI) and FedEx. In the following week, I am going to explore all the features and functionalities of the MSP430 microcontroller and build something useful with it, such as (not limited to):

• Mp3 player
• Temperature sensor
• Home automation

Or imagine if it can build something like this:

I am going to show you what is it and why did I choose the MSP430 instead of Arduino. Is it a viable alternative?

I Made a Big Food Keeping Mistake

A few weeks ago, avocados are in season in Melbourne. So is banana with its prices recovering (or tumbling), from disaster-ravaged Queensland. Consequently, I bought 2 avocados for $2.50 and 1kg of banana for $1.98 (they were $10+ per kg a few months back). Then, I store them together in a bag in the pantry.


The Problem
The next day, I decided to eat 1 of the avocados. I took it out from the bag and gave it a gentle squeeze. It was soft (it was ripe). That was fast. Just a day before, they were firm. So, I sliced it open and discovered that it was beginning to sprout. It was still edible (refer to the picture below), but not that tasty anymore T.T

Then I suspected the bananas to be the culprit, since I had read about how to store food properly from Lifehacker. However, I soon find out that I was wrong...