I finally got around to putting together a page providing an overview of our recent installation of solar panels for our Seattle area home.  You can check out the details at http://dano.vfsystems.net/the-pacific-northwest-solar-experiment/.  The big question is, does solar power make financial sense in the cloudy and rainy Pacific Northwest?  I think so.  But I plan to track my investment to see how the investment works out.  I was provided an estimated six year payback after including all the incentives, which seemed pretty attractive in a time where the 5 year T-Bill is at 1.37%.

After the panels were installed, I spent a fair bit of the time automating the collection of data.  I have my system configured to pull solar statistics daily and load them by hour into the database.  This process allowed for easy retrieval and display using Google Charts, and should provide the ability to show a nice variety of charts once I collect more data.  I plan to keep my solar page updated as the results come in, to see if the promised six year payback can be achieved.   So keep watching this blog as I will provide updates as performance and financial milestones as the year progresses.

For the last few months, I have been tinkering with AngularJS, Google’s javascript framework for web applications.  Perhaps the best chart I have seen to sum up my feelings about Angular was a chart Ben Nadel posted on his blog:

I am probably somewhere in the bottom left of that chart – but overall its pretty cool.  AngularJS is the first client site web library that I have used that feels like a framework – JQuery feels like just a bunch of utilities to be used (or misused) at your leisure.  AngularJS requires you to think like Angular, and thus conform to the framework.

I am primarily a server side web developer – with a long disdain for javascript development.  But I have to admit it doesn’t make sense to have the webserver always bind html templates with data and send it pre-rendered to the web browser.  Perhaps the client server vision from the 1980’s (when the argument was to offload processing from the mainframe) never died in me,  and that servers should just send data to the client and let a fat client assemble the webpage.

So I have forgone refining my knowedge of Razor, and at this point plan to focus on assembling more templates on the client.  That’s what led me to AngularJS.

As the chart above shows, there are times where Angular has you ripping your hair out.  And there are several posts out there (see this and this) discussing valid points about problems with Angular.   But I plan to approach this in moderation.   Most of the issues I see out there is using Angular to build Single Page Applications – going whole hog into a client-centric app.  For me its way to early to go there, but using AngularJS as the basis for generating data lists and basic input forms – I think that’s ready for primetime.

Angular makes it very easy to bind on the client data pulled from the server, and building forms using Angular is the way to go once you kind of get past some of the hurdles.  I am treating AngularJS kind of like Microsoft Access – as long as you follow the rules you can build really quick apps – but if you try to get fancy that’s when the hair pulling begins.  I recall in the 90’s many of the Microsoft Access tips involved calling Windows API’s to do certain thing – and to me that was a sign that your solution was probably wrong or you should switch applications.  That’s how I feel about Angular – as soon as I have to start writing fancy or nested directives – its back to the server and the warm fuzziness of Razor.

Rumor has it lots of changes are coming in AngularJS 2.0, another reason not to get to fancy with it.  But if you are building simple web CRUD applications, start tinkering with AngularJS.

Comcast has recently been trying to get all their customers to upgrade their internet modems to ensure we all get faster speeds.  Unless you believe Comcast is truly interested in your internet speed,  here is the real reason for their interest in upgrading your modem.  Their new modems come with a public Wi-Fi accessible  to all Comcast customers that is hosted by each modem owner.

Actually, this feature is a pretty handy technology if you are a Comcast customer. You have access to Wi-Fi just about anywhere you go, thanks to mostly unwitting customers.  I guess that’s the problem I have with it – it was rolled out with no explanation to its customers and it was an opt-in by default program.

So this was enough to finally get me to install my own modem, and save the $10 a month modem rental Comcast has been charging me for being lazy.  I had bought a Motorola Surfboard SB6121 several months ago, but couldn’t get it to recognize my home network. I figured at that point it was a problem with my wireless router, so I set it aside for a few months.  Recently I replaced my old router, so I no longer had an excuse.

If you plan to do this yourself I have a couple tips.  Dwight Silverman has a pretty good article that sums up the steps to go through, but I have a couple of points to add.

Before starting, I opened up a Comcast chat window and contacted their support through that.  I told them via chat that  I wanted to install my own modem and the person (or the robot – kind of hard to tell) on the chat said I had to give them the mac address and serial number.  This is better than sending this over the phone because you can’t review what you told them easily, and its more likely the person on the other end might typo a number.  After waiting 5-10 minutes (and getting a stream of information  about their exciting special upgrade offers), I was told to try swapping out the modem.

After swapping the modem, I lost my ability to browse the internet – so I was thinking it wasn’t working.  However, my chat was still active with Comcast, so I  realized that Comcast was just blocking HTTP traffic until the modem was activated.  After waiting another few minutes, the Comcast Rep told me I had to call a number to get my modem activated.  Now my land line phone was not working because it runs through the network, so I had to use my cell phone.  After going through all the security questions again, my new Comcast rep tried a couple things, and suddenly my internet was working.

All told this process took about 45 minutes.  If you plan to do this yourself, I recommend doing this via chat to ensure your modem is working prior to activation, and have your cell phone handy if use have a VoIP land line.

If you don’t plan to do this – I thank you and  I look forward to using the public Wi-Fi you are providing when I am in your neighborhood.