I just returned from a trip to Croatia, a country I (and likely most Americans) know little about. During my two weeks there, I learned alot about the history of Croatia, and got a decent sense for the country. Here are a few random observations I picked up.

I Started in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Not really known as a tourist destination, but I was pleasantly surprised with how nice it was. Large pedestrian zone in the center of the old town, nice walks in the city and cafes.

Zagreb and Croatia as a whole was pretty inexpensive, so if you are looking to travel in Europe on a tight budget, Croatia would be a great option for you.

Thoughout the various destinations I visited in Croatia I noticed very few Americans. Thats not to say there were not a lot of tourists – there were – tourism is Croatias leading industry. Most the languages I heard from the tourists were British, German and Slavic, which gave it a nice international feel.

If you visit Croatia, consider skipping any city where the cruise ships visit, unless you want to do the sights early or late. When the Cruise ships dock at Dubrovnik and Split, the streets get flooded during the day with people. We started our trip through the town of Dubrovnik around 8am, and were done by 11am. As we left, the crowds where everywhere:

We got out of there quick. There are plenty of great stops where you don’t have to fight the waves of tourists.

Regarding tourism in Croatia, in talking with a few Croatians, I got the impression they are not happy about being a tourism driven economy. It seemed to me that they felt the fall of communism and the resulting Balkan war broke their country. Industries were privatized, and the high paying jobs associated with those jobs are gone. More than one Croatian lamented the outflow of immigration of Croatians to other countries in search of high paying jobs. Granted most the people I interacted with were in the tourism business, so this anecdotal observation may be slanted, but it felt pretty prevelant.

On our way back from Croatia we stayed over a day in London, primarily because it is hard to get direct flights to Croatia. This was my first visit to London, and found it interesting. I was surprised how dirty it was, walking through the streets there was lots of litter and garbage everywhere. I find most European cities to be pretty kept up so that surprised me. Also was surprised about the number of homeless in London. Not as many as in the states, but more than I recall observing anywhere else in Europe. I am not sure what that indicates, other than the problem is not specific to America.

In summary, Croatia is a great place to visit. If you go, take some time to learn about the history of Croatia, Tito and the fall of communism, and the rise of the independent Yugoslavian states. But also enjoy the scenery.

I am going to go a little outside my norm here and do a pop culture post.  The other day I went down a musical rabbit hole on the web and stumbled across an interesting historical artifact regarding a song that I had recalled from my youth.

If you are a fan of techno-pop from the early 80’s, you may recall a quirky album from 1982 by Thomas Dolby – The Golden Age of Wireless.  Lots of interesting songs with unique sound effect textures.  Anyway, one of the songs that I remembered on this album was a song about a relative of his that died on on a WWII Submarine.  ‘One of Our Submarines’ details the story as he understood it from his youth.

It turns out, with the declassification of records, the story behind this song was all wrong.  On a recent post, he revealed the true story is far different than the one written in his song – you can read the true story here.

Just a reminder that history is always changing.

If you are not familiar with the song,  you can take a listen here:

And if you want more, other interesting songs of note from this album are Europa and the Pirate Twins, Windpower,  Flying North and Radio Silence.

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It’s time for my third annual ‘Best Reads’ of the year post.  Again this year, this is not only my best reads, it’s all my reads.  So your first thought likely is, really?  5 books in a year?  And that surprised me too..  but I don’t really carve out a specific time to read, and I spend a lot of my free ‘relaxing’ time either writing or programming.  Plus.. the Peter the Great book was a big book with very few pictures..   Anyway, without further ado – here are my quick opinions of the books I read this year, in preference order:

I just got back from another trip to Paris and outer France, and had a few random observations.

1.  The view from the states is that Europe is on edge due to the fear of terrorism, but in the various neighborhoods I visited, I saw no evidence of concern.  Parisian cafe’s are as bustling as ever, and the parks are filled with locals enjoying the outdoors.  Maybe it is boiling under the surface, but by my eye, Paris is as vibrant and friendly as ever.  I know Paris has a reputation (“Paris would be great, except for all the Parisians.”) – but I can’t say I buy into that.  Have always enjoyed the atmosphere.
2. The public market culture in Europe still surprises me.  Throughout Europe, in all the towns (include Paris), there are days where markets appear in the public square where people do their shopping:No big box stores,  every morning the Boulangeries are full of locals buying bread, every town seems to have a butcher to buy meat, and when the market comes to town the townspeople come out.  It seems an anachronism in this day and age, but the model appears to be working.  However, more towns are seeing more supermarket style stores in them, and the crowds in there seem younger, so maybe this style of retail will give way to the central supermarket.  I think that would be a shame.
3. Cigarette smoking is still very prevalent.  In the US< many states have banned smoking in bars, restaurants, and in public places. It has really seemed to cut down on it.  In Paris, you can only smoke outside - however that takes away from the enjoyment of sitting in an outdoor cafe, where you periodically get buffeted by waves of smoke. Its also concerning that the vast number of smokers were under 30, so its a problem that appears to be getting worse.  I hope the take America's lead on that - I never thought America would make progress in that area.
4. As always, I try to pay attention to see if the small storefront culture of Europe is healthy.  In previous posts I have mentioned my concern that online shopping may kill the local shops here.  I was pleasantly surprised how few empty storefronts there were in Paris.  I can’t say the shops were full of people, but at least there weren’t many empty retail spots for rent.  Also didn’t see a lot of UPS or FedEx style delivery vans doing retail deliveries.  So in the heart of Paris, the retail apocalypse seen in many areas of the US does not seem to appear here.
5.  Traffic is worse than ever.  From my youth I remember hearing that Europe was not as much of a car-centric culture as America, but now I don’t believe it.  Even in as big a city of Paris, it seems like more city dwellers own cars then in America.  Maybe because Paris is so sprawling and did not grow around interstate arterials, it is a quagmire of cars.  Also, because the retail environment here is built around small shops and local produce, delivery trucks further clog the roadways in the inner city.  I can see why many European cities are looking at different ways to  restrict inner city traffic, it currently is kind of a mess.
6. I happened to be in France in the first days of the GDPR – the European data protection regulation.  As a software developer, this is been annoying to have to be involved with all the privacy changes –  but as an internet user, I think its a step in the right direction.  Every site I went to in Europe asked in in clear and consistent language what level of tracking I wanted on the site.  If I opted out of all, some sites would show me all the ad networks it had to contact to get my data un-tracked.  It also got me thinking when I opted out – what benefits are there to being tracked?  OK, the argument would be contextual based ads, but the current ad algorithms are pretty poor at providing useful ads.  At any rate, before my trip to Europe, I may have had the opinion that the GDPR is a waste of time – but after seeing it in use, I think it will raise the visibility to all internet users of all the tracking that is going on.

It’s always refreshing to spend some time outside of the US to get a different perspective on the world.  It is easy to live in the bubble of our daily lives and not see issues other countries have and how other cultures solve problems, so I recommend to anybody occasional travel – to a foreign country or even a distant state, to re-invigorate the mind.

Time for my third annual Solar power progress report.  Overall, I saw in increase in solar production in 2017 over 2016, likely all weather related.  Below is a chart of my 3 years of production by Month:

A long stretch of sunny weather in the summer helped me beat 2016, even though the other seasons seemed cloudier than normal.

Payback Update

I had originally penciled out a 6 year payback when I made the decision to move forward with this plan.  Now that I have a better feel for my annual production, assuming the production credits stay above 40 cents thru 2023, I think I can achieve an 8 year payback, recouping by investment by the end of 2023.  Of course that 40 cent number is probably optimistic, though I am hoping the production incentive credits do get grandfathered for those of us that took the risk early.  And the fact that it seems every year I stretch my estimated payback a year, doesn’t give me a lot of confidence yet in this estimate.   At any rate, I was pleased to see no significant drop in solar power production as the panels aged a year, so that is a promising sign.

Regarding maintenance, I have settled in to a pretty comfortable schedule.  In the spring as the days start to get longer and the weather better  – usually May’ish, I give the panels a good cleaning with a sponge mop and a squeegee.  I may clean them a couple months later if we have a heavy pollen outbreak that coats the panels in pollen.  But for the most part I can occasionally just spray them with a hose from the ground.  The panels are very little maintenance in the winter, as the production is so low it doesnt really matter if they are clean or not, and we get so much heavy rain that it keeps them pretty clean.

Power Use Report

Being the power geek that I am, I also updated my power usage report for the year.  My total household usage for the year was the lowest on record (well… since 2015).  Usage was down 7% after being up 4% in 2016.  A couple theories on why.  I have continued to replace bulbs with LEDs as they burn out, we had a very moderate summer requiring very little air conditioning, and we were also out of town on vacation a few more weeks last year than previous years.  I also added more lights to my Wink Hub, which I think managed my outdoor lights more efficiently.  For 2017, I don’t have as many vacations planned, but I plan to continue adding LED lights, as well as possibly hook up my furnace to the wink hub to better manage when the heat is on.  Overall, I am guessing the vacations had the biggest impact, so I would guess my power usage for 2018 will increase slightly.

My long term plan has always been to upgrade my panels once I have my investment back.  However, if the panels continue to perform, there is likely no reason to.  Interestingly, on Amazon, the price of solar panels has not dropped over the last year, in fact they have gone up slightly.  I would look to see that change in 2018 though as there are more advanced solar panels that should be coming online this year.  On a related note, Consumer Reports did an interesting payback analysis on Tesla’s solar roof – it appeared to be pretty encouraging.

Overall, still happy with my investment, and I still think residential solar / utility scale wind and solar is the power model of the future.

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It’s time for my second annual ‘Best Reads’ of the year post.  This year, since I didn’t read much, I decided to expand it to all the books I have read this year – so I am exposing how little reading I get accomplished in a given year.  These picks are ranked in favorite order, though I could be talked into the top two being a tie. So without further ado – here are my quick opinions of the books I read this year:

For 2018, I could see myself sticking exclusively to history this year, and I might sprinkle in a World War II book – old habits die hard. In case you missed last year’s reviews (and if you have read this far you may be interested) – here is my list for 2016.

A few posts ago I mentioned concern about how the transformation of retail might hurt the interesting cultural feel in Europe.  However, after reading this article about how small towns might be the savior for retail, I am a little more optimistic.

There is no question online shopping will further transform the retail shopping model for some time to come.  But maybe small towns give us an early clue to how everything will shake out.   Perhaps retail will just get more focused – not a wide variety of shopping centers spreading a feeling of ‘Generica‘ throughout the country – but a focal retail center in every town, large and small.  Perhaps each collection of retail centers will have a theme or specialty.  Strip malls will disappear, with retail clustered around core centers of small towns or neighborhoods within large cities.

This central core would have more than just retail shops.  Much like you are seeing shopping centers branch out into restaurants, gyms, and other service providers.  I think it would be much more interesting to see neighborhoods within cities have a central core of unique combination of shops, and a place that can be the central gathering place for residents in the neighborhood.  Europe has perfected this model, with the central town market square typically lined with restuarants with outdoor seating, with stores surrounding the central square.  The further you get from the central square, the more it turns residential.   We do see a flavor of this today in some neighborhoods (i.e. Fremont in Seattle) – perhaps the future looks like a lot more small funky neighborhoods and fewer strip malls and big box stores.

As our society becomes more virtually connected and physically isolated, a changing retail model might be the solution to bringing back a feeling of a physical community.   The next waves of technology will be bringing even more social upheaval – perhaps those surviving physical retail stores will evolve and thrive in the coming new world.

I recently spent a couple weeks on my first trip to the Netherlands, and thought I would share some random observations.  I spent a week in Einhoven,  a couple days in Delft, and a few days in Haarlem, and I feel I got an interesting immersion into Dutch culture.  The Netherlands wasn’t at the tops of my list of places to go, but circumstances happened that I got to spend time here.  As with all my trips to Europe, I enjoy the cultural differences I get when I leave the United States.  So here are some random observations, in no particular order.

1.  It constantly amazes me how easily Europeans switch between languages.  Often when someone initiated a conversation with me – they would fire off a dutch phrase that to me sounded like garbled German.  I speak a little German, but I had a real hard time understanding Dutch.  At any rate, as soon as I said ‘spreekt oo Engels’ they fire off the same phrase in (usually) flawless English.  As a person who only speaks one language fluently -but as a software developer who can write in many languages, I am always impressed at how their mind can so easily shift gears.
2. The bike culture in the Netherlands is fantastic.  As an avid American bicyclist, I am jealous at how they have built their infrastructure around biking.  Everywhere I went were bike lanes, and I made a point of renting a bike whenever possible to see the sights.  None of the bikes people use are fancy – just very utilitarian.   Only the occasional bike racers wore helmets, the rest of the people just casually ride without them.
3. I saw little trace of homelessness.  I think Europe is dealing with the situation much better than the crisis we face in the United States.  There are a lot more public workers doing jobs that you don’t see often in the US – i.e workers repairing bricks in town squares,  street cleaners walking around picking up trash, people wiping down walls and floors throughout the train stations.  Perhaps the US could follow Europe’s lead in helping mobilize some entry level jobs for the surplus of untrained labor.
4. With the rise in online retailers, I have been paying close attention to the demise of mall traffic in the US.  So I was curious to see how online retailing will impact Europe.  It seems to me that retail in the Netherlands is more scattered  – every small town seems to have a market square, but radiating for blocks around that you still see little shops of clothing and various other retailers.  I don’t see how these little shops will stay in business if Europe is hit with the mass exodus to online shopping like the US.  I saw some delivery trucks making the rounds, but online shopping does not appear to be as pervasive as in the US.  It would be tragic to see these small towns turn into shells half empty shops.
5. It took me a bit to get used to the public dress code in the Netherlands.  The first day it hit the upper 60’s here in the Netherlands, I put on a pair of shorts and hit the sights.  Umm…. I was the only person in shorts and I stood out like the tourist I am.  Everybody else was wearing jeans and long sleeves and a jacket.  The next day was a little warmer – low 70’s and humid, and I wore long pants and a sweatshirt, and I fit in fine.  Everybody was still wearing leather jackets and jeans ..  and I was overheating.. but looking good.  Part of this could be the mobility issue – we here often throw a jacket in the car for if it cools down later – I guess if you are on a bike it may be just easier to wear it.
6. I took a lot of trains in my various travels through Dutch towns, and once you get the hang of it it is a pretty efficient way to travel.  Most of my trips required changing trains to get to my destination, but because the network is so laid out and the trains are pretty exact on their schedule, I rarely had problems.  Most rail station had a place where you could rent a bike to continue your travels for the last leg, which makes for an interesting hub and spoke system of travel.

I had many other various observations but will leave it here for now.  It is always enriching to travel to foreign destinations to see how cultures have evolved in different small ways.  Now back in America, it causes me to notice little idiosyncrasies that are uniquely American.   In an increasing globalized world, I hope these cultural differences can remain, and that each culture retains its own unique little ways of doing things.

I was in a discussion with a family member who was heading for vacation, and he asked me if I had any reading recommendations.  Most years I rarely get through more than a book or two, but this year for some reason I plowed through a bunch of books.  I typically read histories and biographies, yet sprinkle in a little popular fiction when I want to give my mind a rest.

So since my year has been so productive, I decided I better put together a ‘best of list’ of the stuff I read this year.   Since the fiction I read is just pop culture stuff, and usually pretty old, I didn’t include it.  So I decided to limit it to history this year.

So, without further ado, here is my list of favorite history books I read this year.

 1.  Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival

We all know about Lewis and Clark, and their exploration to the Pacific.  Soon after Lewis and Clark, in the early 1800’s, John Jacob Astor saw the business opportunity of this unexplored land and tried to build a huge monopoly in fur trading.    Even though I have grown up in the Pacific Northwest and traveled extensively around this region, I wasn’t aware of this interesting story.  As I sit here during a dreary December Day, I can only imagine the mental struggles this party went through.  In addition to a great adventure story, an interesting business angle too.

2. D Day Through German Eyes

A short book – only 140 pages – so it is a quick about the German soldiers stationed on the French coast on D-Day.  As part of a German propaganda effort the author interviewed a number of soldiers prior to the invasion gathering patriotic stories.  The author then tried to track down a number of these soldiers after the war to hear their story of what happened to them the day of the invasion.  An angle on WW2 you don’t often hear, and you realize how tragic the war was for everybody involved.

3. Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War

4. In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin