• No one looks good in florescent light
• CF bulbs contains mercury
• Only select models dim
• They burn out a lot sooner than advertised
• They dont work with all light switches, especially the high tech ones
• Or they will flicker, even when off, if you are using a high tech light switch.

Though mostly they just make my eyes hurt and give me headaches. Philips has come out with a line of High Efficiency Incandescent (HEI) light bulbs called Halogena. They work like normal bulbs but produce twice the amount of light for the energy consumed. Making them very close to CF in efficiency.

I have slowly started to replace all my dim-able lights in my house with these:
Philips 40-Watt R20 Halogena Energy Saver Reflector Flood Light

They work great. No hum or flicker while dimmed. The color of the light is white with a slight warmth to it. Overall I think it is a great find.

You can buy them at Amazon.com or in stores at Home Depot. The only bummer is that few other companies are doing this. GE stopped their research into this technology in 2008 probably due to the fear that incandescent lights will be banned like what is happening in Europe. I hope that is not our future too.

I am in love with this new Samsung LED TV. Not only does the performance make me drool but that it is eco-friendly. The claim is that the LED TV uses 40% lower power consumption and an ultra low power consuming standby mode. In addition no mercury, lead, or volatile organic compounds are used in the construction which means it is clean and safe to recycle.

Though, one of the coolest things about it is that you can connect it to your network with Medi@2.0. This allows the user to do a lot of interactive things without having to connect a computer to it.

Internet@TV – Content Service: Receive content from Yahoo!, Flickr, and more via on-screen TV widgets.
DLNA®: Sync your connectable home electronics and display remote content on your TV.
Pre-loaded Content Library™ (Flash): Enjoy hours of built-in entertainment features then personalize it by adding content that’s available online.
USB 2.0 Movie: Show digital home movies, photos, PC presentations and more on your TV, using the remote.

Here are some of the stats
All of it is 1080P (1920×1080) including the PC input.

40″ Model (UN40B7000)
TV without stand: 39.2” x 24.8” x 1.2”
TV without stand weight: 32.6 lbs.

46″ Model (UN46B7000)
TV without stand: 44.4” x 27.8” x 1.2”
TV without stand weight: 39.0 lbs.

55″ Model (UN55B7000)
TV without stand: 51.7” x 32.1” x 1.2”
TV without stand weight: 48.9 lbs.

Inputs/Outputs:

• 4 HDMI ports v 1.3
• Anynet™ Plus (HDMI-CEC): allows peripheral AV devices such as a DVD player to be controlled by a Samsung TV remote control.
• 2 USB 2.0 Movie
• 1 PC Input
• 1 Ethernet
• 1 Optical Sound output
• 1 Component Video inputs

Specs:

• Built-in digital tuner
• 3,000,000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio
• Response time: 4ms response time (this is good)
• Auto Motion Plus 120Hz™: Reduces blur and enhances image detail when viewing fast motion video sequences.
• HD-Grade pixel resolution: High resolution pixel density is combined with a built-in image scaler to handle inputs from a variety of digital and analog audio/video sources.

Features

• Medi@2.0 (see above)
• Picture-in-Picture (PIP) (from any source to any source)
• Game Mode: with one touch of a button it enhances dark areas, sharpens the picture, speeds up the image processing response and enhances the sounds of your games.

Rock Band anyone?

Oh and if you want to buy one for me, I hear frys.com is having an amazing sale on them. 

In my search for a new car, I am constantly amazed at what is finally coming to market. This is one of the coolest new cars that fit my requirements of eco-friendly with some cool factor. Loremo stands for Low resistance mobile. With 150 mpg a price tag of under $20K and no weird technology to make it work, the Loremo LS is sure to be a hit when it comes to market in 2010.

Like most people I primarily use petroleum based (polyethylene) plastic bags for all my food storage bags, produce, trash (non-compost) and recycling. The environmental impact of something that takes hundreds of years to decompose, does not recycle well, if at all and kills thousands of animals every year is just astounding to me.  And paper sacks generate as much as 70 percent more air and 50 times more water pollutants than plastic bags…  

So today I did some research today on corn based plastics. The cost is about 5-40% more than traditional plastic bags but they work about the same. They are not as durable or long lasting as high end plastic equivalent but they do work very well with fresh produce. There are two great companies that have biodegradable alternatives, Trellis Earth and BioBag.

BioBag is conveniently available through many local stores and online as such retailers like Amazon.com. However if you don’t buying in bulk, Trellis Earth online web store has all the popular sized bags with free shipping.

Did you know that the city of San Francisco composts?

My objection to composting had been simple: Compost is messy and it smells.

Since my green bin is outside, I either have to take the compost out every night before it smells up the house or I need to find a container that does not stink and that I don’t need to clean. And if I do need to clean it, it is dishwasher safe.

Compost pail, charcoal filters and compostable trash bags on Amazon.com:

With shipping to SF it costs less than $0.60 per month to conveniently recycle my food scraps and not smell up my kitchen. I reduced my costs to less than $0.50 per month by purchasing Biosak 125 Compostable Bags from Costco South San Francisco (10th St. SF was out when I checked) for $13.99 (+tax).

Here is what you CAN compost: [http://www.sfrecycling.com/pdf/compostggss.pdf]

• All Food: fruit, vegetables, meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish, bones, rice, beans, pasta, bread, cheese, and eggshells
• Food-soiled Paper: waxed cardboard, napkins, paper towels, paper plates, paper milk cartons, tea bags, coffee grounds/filters, wooden crates, and sawdust
• Plants: floral trimmings, tree trimmings, leaves, grass, brush, and weeds

The following items are NOT accepted in the green cart:

• Styrofoam
• plastic bags
• plastic flower pots or trays
• diapers
• kitty litter or animal feces
• rocks, stones, or dirt

With all the current college campuses that are participate, it is going to save 10,000,000 gallons of water, 23,000 trees, 500,000 gallons of gas and 5.5 Kilowatts of power this year alone. What do you think would happen if this same principle was distributed to all college campuses, middle school and high school?