Montezuma Castle WiFi installation 1/25/08

[Boss]

Why am I so damn lucky?

Yeah, we have a castle right here in the roughest town in the old west.



On Friday January 24th 2008, I installed a new wireless Internet omni directional antenna in the turret of the United World College's famous castle. How many people get to go up there? No one I've ever heard of. I got to spend the whole day up there. Plus I got a bit of exercise running up and down nine flights of stairs during the course of the day.I crawled all over the castle as I ran Ethernet cable from the turret down to one of the many mechanical rooms. Later in the afternoon there was a student duet playing violin and piano, the lovely sound wafted through the building in an almost haunting fashion.  

Interesting historic note. The Montezuma Castle at one time was heated with geothermal energy from the hot springs on site.  

Brian

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Montezuma Castle (hotel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Montezuma Castle is a 90,000 square foot, 400 room Queen Anne-style hotel building erected just northwest of the city of Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1886 (the site was at the time called "Las Vegas Hot Springs," but is now known as "Montezuma"). The current castle is actually the third on the site, the first two (dating to 1881 and 1885) were the first buildings in New Mexico to have electric lighting, and they both burned down.

The Montezuma Castle, on the campus of the Armand Hammer United World College, May 2003

The Montezuma Castle, on the campus of the Armand Hammer United World College, May 2003

The castle was originally constructed by the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad as a luxury hotel, capitalizing on the natural hot springs on the site. These were widely thought to ease the suffering of people with tuberculosis, "chronic rheumatism, gout, biliary, and renal calculi."[1] The nearby Gallinas Creek also provided excellent trout fishing. Guests included Theodore Roosevelt, Rutherford B. Hayes, Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, Jesse James, and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. "The visitors to the Hot Springs represent every part of the continent of America, and nearly every tourist from abroad who crosses the continent by the southerly route stops there for a time."[1]

In addition to the natural recreation available in Montezuma, the hotel provided bowling alleys and billiard rooms.[1] The building was designed and construction was overseen by the great Chicago architects Burnham and Root.

It operated as a hotel until 1903. It was then briefly owned by the YMCA, then operated as a Baptist college from 1922 until 1930. The Southern Baptist Church sold it to the Catholic Church in 1937, and it was operated as a seminary for Mexican Jesuits until 1972. The building then sat empty for a decade and was subject to significant vandalism and decay. The Jesuits made a little money renting the building out as the set for the low budget horror movie The Evil in 1978.

In 1981, the castle was purchased by industrialist and philanthropist Armand Hammer for use as a United World College. In 1997, it was placed on the list of America's Most Endangered Historic Places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, along with landmarks like Ellis Island. In 2000 and 2001, the school invested over $12 million restoring the building, and it has won awards as one of the great historical restorations in the United States. It is also the first historic property west of the Mississippi to be designated one of "America's Treasures" by the White House Millennium Council.

[wooferhound]

Hey BOSS

I don't want to sound rude but these off topic stories are just Noise on a Topic based Forum like this. People are already having trouble finding information when doing searches on the board and getting results like this story in their search results is useless clutter. About 1/3 The diarys have become your posts about "What happened Today". I truely enjoyed when the Diary section was mostly postings about peoples projects.

Here is the description of the Diary area from the 'Story Posting Screen'

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Diaries -- this is for YOUR stuff, which should (please) bear some relation to the topics of our board.

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[WindHarvester]

Simple wooferhound,

If you don't like reading HIS diary, then don't read it, and don't waste your time replying to it.

Alot of people here enjoy these posts including me, and I believe in one of his first posts DanB actually said he enjoyed them.

I think he is posting them here for an archive until his site is completed and fully functional.

I mean heck, if we can have a diary about cooking on a smoker grill (which I enjoy also) then why can't there be a post about a WiFi instillation?

Lonnie

[Volvo farmer]

This does appear to be a touchy subject.

As a relatively longtime user, here's what I think...

I rather enjoy reading Brian's morning newsletter. However, I wonder if perhaps the daily posing from a single person in Diaries doesn't upset the apple cart some. I can only see four diaries at a time and see no user preference to change that. Every time Brian posts a diary (almost daily), it pushes someone else's diary off the fist page. What if I and Woof and maybe another four or five people started posting their morning thoughts over their first cup of coffee in Diaries? I could post about my daughter's teeth coming in or how we got the pool table set up last weekend or how I got brakes put on the Volvo, and nobody would have to read it who didn't want to.

Traditionally, Diaries have usually lived a couple days at least on the front page. Brian got the explicit okey-dokey do do what he has been doing by the Admin, so it's not like he came here uninvited with his newsletters.

Someone wrote up a nice piece in here recently about how the Scoop software causes a lot of these conflicts between members and I think this might be case again here. Personally, I'd like to read Brian's newsletters on his own website and if he has any neat projects, post them here. I'm especially interested in the nitty-gritty on how he built that solar WiFi tower, including radios, cost, power consumption, range, etc. But none of that information seems to make it into his diaries.

[Boss]

Thank you all

As for the general reference to me writing too much too often, you are absolutely correct. You have to admit that when I came aboard I was instructed that the diary section is the place for the type of content I write, and I have complied completely.

What I hope to do with my constant writing is to be an inspiration to people to communicate more freely, regardless of writing skills. I've found that many people don't write, for way too many reasons. Obviously I lack the talent of brevity, but it hasn't stopped me from trying.

I try not to cast a dark shadow, and give every effort to be polite and gracious to all. I am truly sorry a lot of what I write about seems trivial. Nevertheless I'll continue to use my endeavor to be more sustainable in my lifestyle and feel blessed and empowered by what I do.

Interesting that many people do not see that simplicity in lifestyle is often enough to immediately reduce our environmental impact. I chose to work at a job less so my overhead is less. Another thing which should be noted it is full-till Winter here in northern New Mexico. I do not have a heated shop. We are essentially snowed in. Come Spring, I'll be back to working more than writing.

Teaching from experience is a noble and vital effort, but there is also room for teaching by example.

My web site is up and running. Please visit http://outfitnm.com

If you are interested in how I built my remote PV powered Wireless Internet relay system, I now have three pages of WiFi information, along with biodiesel, wind power and many pages on forest management.

The truth is, I did not do any engineering for the PV - battery system, unless you consider seat of the pants common sense, good enough.

I simply measured the output of the panels in full sun, looked on the AC power transformer for wattage to run the routers and radio cards, figured the shortest day light hours, pointed my panels toward the south for Winter sun, read the AH listed on the deep cycle batteries, and it works! Forget about it.



As I did on Friday, I'll try and tag more of my newsletters together in one thread so I don't hog board space.

I hope this helps

[wpowokal]

Brian, please do not feel put down, you have a kind face and Karma will respect you. If you have been remiss it is in being too excited/believing in what you stand for and believe in.

Of the 10,000 plus members of this board, probally only 50 live off grid, some others are progressing towards some form of Re and some, oh $#|+ let's be homest, most are dreamers.

You have drawn our attention to your vision, and directed us to your web site, enough. I am personally very time challenged, and here I agree with Woof. I am only a member of this forum not the owner so can only speek personally, but when a single member's diary enteries account for a third of all diary enteries it will upset ppl. I certinally do not need a daily update on this forum, others may!

Not all of my diary entries have been about Re so I claim no moral high ground.

allan down under

[asheets]

I, for one, have been looking forward to reading your write-ups on PV powered WiFi equipment.  

[asheets]

Dang, hit return too soon.  I wanted to ask you how many watts of PV you are using to power your install?

[Boss]

Hi Alan

I am trying to get used to describing power in kilowatts, at the time I had an ammeter on there and I believe it read 2 amps in full sun



These are the photovoltaics

From my site I have more details on the PV powered WiFi relay

http://outfitnm.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=81

Sorry I haven't figured how to post a URL

It seems like I need to remove more branches from the trees and let sunlight on those panels.

[Boss]

As I mentioned I will post this morning's newsletter as an attachment to the previous Diary and as a link to my site http://outfitnm.com

http://outfitnm.com/index.php?option=com_letterman&task=view&Itemid=76&id=13

[Boss]

Keeping my diary short here. Please drop by a read the BMN by clicking  

BMN State of the Union Blah blah blah

You needn't register to read and hit the back button to return here.

If you do register you get a free gallery and may post comments.

Sample info:

DOE Selects 20 Teams for the 2009 Solar Decathlon DOE announced the names last week of the 20 university teams that will participate in the 2009 Solar Decathlon. The teams, chosen from the United States, Canada, and Europe, will each receive $100,000 from DOE to design, build, and operate energy efficient, solar-powered homes. Universities from 15 states--Arizona, California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin--as well as from Canada, Puerto Rico, Germany, and Spain were chosen to participate. For a complete list of the participants, see the DOE press release.

The Solar Decathlon is an international, biennial competition that challenges university teams to design and build energy efficient solar-powered homes. In the fall of 2009, the students will transport their houses to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where the homes will be open to tour. The homes will be judged according to 10 contests that will rank the houses based on their technical design, functionality, market viability, and ability to power an electric car. See the Solar Decathlon Web site.

Photo of a rectangular house with paneled oak walls and large glass windows. Large wooden screens are folded back to let in sunlight.

The team from the Technische Universität Darmstadt won the 2007 Solar Decathlon with this entry, made largely of German oak. The team will have another shot at the title in 2009.

[Boss]

January 31st 2008

Good morning and good riddance January.

We had the meeting of NM Synergy Fest yesterday. A fairly productive meeting considering it lasted just over an hour. At this point, we are making lists and deciding who will be doing what. I signed on for grant writing or at least assistant to the the main writer, as I don't know anything about this. I figure that it should be easy to get businesses to donate money or become Synergy Fest partners since I feel the way I do about this festival. Its good clean and green fun for the whole family. Obviously a lot of attention and hard work goes into the Synergy Fest. We have a fine group of people to take the project forward. The first thing we need to do is contact musical groups to schedule stage times. If you know of a band that is interested in performing at Synergy Fest please let me know ASAP. The deal is Synergy Fest pays travel expenses and the Plaza Hotel provides quarters for the whole band.

More weather yesterday, but all in all it was just plain winterly. It started out windy, while I worked on a ladder it went from windy and cold to blowing snow. Brrrr. I think the ground thawed a couple inches deep in the sunny areas, but it quickly froze solid again as the clouds rolled in. None of this raining in the middle of a snow storm like we had a week ago. This is good weather to be inside with a good fire going in the wood stove, working on the broadband Internet. Of course I'm having a blast working on my new web site. We are still getting a steady stream of new users registering. Adam and I are hashing out the WYSIWYG editors. Which for the most part are exactly as the name implies; What You See Is What You Get. Sigh. The problem is simple: I absolutely need a Table of Contents creator in the Newsletter creator. So far I have been unable to get a ToC to move from Mozilla's Thunderbird client email software to the website newsletter creator. It shows the ToC, but it doesn't work. This morning I will attempt to copy and paste directly from Open Office Writer to the newsletter creator, leaving Mozilla out of the loop.

Yesterday I tried something different and copied the newsletter into a different WYSIWYG editor and all the dynamic images pasted perfectly. This saved me a lot of time. I still need to trim the process even more. That was acceptable progress.

I have our camera back from mom and dad. They were using it to digitize old photos. I want to carry the camera with me just in case I get to do another job like the project in the turret of the castle. I may even claim I need to go back up there for some reason and take some pictures. Smiles

Well I am heading to Luna Community College to spend the day with Austin and Kevin. Austin's Synergy Fest poster was a resounding success with the group. They want to make his background the Synergy Fest 2008 logo. I agree the poster was gorgeous. Also, Desertgate has agreed to have a banner from my new site on their web site, so I will get the media arts guru to help me build a real catchy banner. Once I see how it is done we'll work on a banner for NMSynergy Fest for placement around the Internet. Oh, this reminds me, if you know of New Mexico web sites which might like to post the NMSynergy fest banner and you have a contact name, please, please let me know. This includes the newspapers large and small, any publication which covers New Mexico preferably concerned with similar ideals, but this isn't crucial. We need to spread the word, We will have the preliminary Press release ready in a few days.

One last thing about the Synergy Fest. We need more quality food booths. Macky and Jewels had a great Buffalo Burger food booth last year. We would like a few more food vendors of this stature this year. If anyone knows a vendor or you want to have a food booth this year please let us know. We have set up a email address synergyinfo@gmail.com

Thanks and I better get this out the door.

Sincerely,

[Boss]

February 1st 2008

Good Morning.

Time to make a new BMN folder on my noisy little computer. Dare I chance a peek back and see how many monthly folders I created for the BMN? Why would I? Because when I made the first BMN folder was the last time I refreshed this computer. I like that, "Refreshed." Sounds so much nicer than "failed, or crashed," don't you think? Anyway it was June. I replaced this hard drive seven whole months ago. Since then, I have doubled the amount of memory to one gigabyte and installed an additional 160 gigabyte hard drive, installed and removed a DVD burner. Yeah this old machine has been through a lot of changes. It is the old style case that sits horizontally, which is what this old desk has a space for. I have had this computer case for well over five years now, I can't count the mother boards I installed inside, and subsequently removed and upgraded. Kind of reminds me of my record with VWs; one decent body deserved several engines.

I hope the Adobe Flash movie is at the top of the newsletter where I placed it. I won't be surprised if it isn't. I forgot that Flash is designed for HTML, not email messages. Nevertheless, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Austin and I worked on several Flash movies yesterday. The underlying purpose is to learn to create banners to promote my new website on other websites, with a side purpose that I've volunteered to build Synergy Fest banners and place those on websites as well. As it works out, I think I've reached some kind of understanding with this newsletter. I'm looking over the differences between web page programming and email programming. I see a lot of similarities, but now I need to find my way through the quagmire of my memories and experiences in computers. Yes, I know I can send an email in text and HTML, but I still need to figure out how to compose an email in HTML. What you may see this morning is the first of the true HTML newsletters.

Woe, how have I come to this point? What is the matter with plain old text messages? Nothing, but I need to feel like I am progressing. Besides, transitioning the newsletter to the web has brought to light a whole lot of stuff I had previously only kicked around. It all comes down to questions. I do ask a lot of questions. Sometimes the answers make sense. Of course I'm not deluded to the point where I think I have the big picture, absolutely not. But hard work and diligence are beginning to give some insight. Hence, the Flash movie will show up in this email or it won't.  This may or may not work, nevertheless this won't be my only attempt. No, it isn't important to you that the Flash movie shows up, but it is to me. If I can make this break-through perhaps the next newsletter will be simpler and better. You know how it is: We all start out trying every technique we can, just to see how and if it works, then as we mature, we refine our techniques.

Adobe Flash is a neat program. It is quite similar to other movie making software and audio packages I played with. You get a time-line across the top of the page and events are positioned along the time-line. For our movie we have a background image of an axial flux wind turbine. We typed three lines of text and turned the text into a mask. A mask is simply a transparency with one layer being transparent in one way and the letters being transparent in another. In our case, we have the transparent letters with a sliding, and rotating graphic behind. Meanwhile, the mask itself is transparent to the background image. At one point, I think we had 12 layers in one image. The time-line helps keep track of what and when things happen and interact. We got really crazy toward the end of the day with massive lightening storms electrifying the scene.

Y'all have a marvelous first weekend of February.

Sincerely,

Brian Rodgers

P.S. Nope Flash can not be displayed by email clients

Check it out on my website Home  Newsletter

Also it is an attachment which can be opened with a browser.

Bri