Author: Joey Ciaramitaro

Can’t say enough about the comfort of my @coastal_dog swim trunks. Truly revolutionary swimwear for men. Hey, merchants of #GloucesterMA and #RockportMA, you should be carrying this line! Quick drying, comfortable lining. One of a kind premium swim trunks @ShopRockport

Manny is the man! One of my favorite series on GMG lately has been his “Happy On Main Street” Series.
Hope you have a great day Manny!

So the person who couldn’t find Cape Ann Giclee from doing a Google search on a map tells me that I need to redo gmg,  and I need to chill out and that I’m a drama king for pleading with people to send their press releases to other contributors while I’m on vacation.  Now here’s what I propose she does and what she may or may not understand in the media business.

You know when we get the most subscribers? When I go off on rants.  When there’s controversy and when it’s not just pretty pictures.   This is not to in any way shape or form discount the pretty pictures and awesome contributions from everyone but I can rattle off a dozen fantastic photographers that have blogs or musicians that have blogs or cooks that post recipes.  People love the sum of it all all together.   What she should do,  just like when she proposed that “we” in quotation marks hold a city wide yard sale and when I told her to organize it,  I haven’t heard a peep about it since.  And then she writes a lengthy comment criticizing the way I handle things.  Here’s my proposal to you- start your own frickin blog.  Put in the tens of thousands of hours promoting it to get it to the size of audience it has so that your awesome group of contributors’ work gets recognized and commented on, thereby keeping them motivated,  and then,  when you get it to that spot you can make it as generic and sterile as you want it,  without any “unprofessional” rants or whatever you’d like. 
Come on now,  get to work.  I’ll give you a whole list if links on how to start a blog if you’d like.  I suspect you’ll put in about ten posts worth of content together and then,  on your best day when you get about 100 hits ask yourself if it’s worth it and I hope you keep going.   I hope you keep trying to find interesting content and place your content relentlessly in front of the audience most likely to embrace it and build your subscribers base one subscriber at a time.  Every single day.  Tweeting,  Google +ing,  searching for online message boards that might be interested in that content, and putting the links in front the of them, hoping you earn more dedicated readers.  Out of 1000 blogs that start my guess is that 5 continue to post weekly after the first year and maybe 2 post daily after the first year and maybe 1 posts 4-8 times a day every day after the first year. 
So go ahead.  Buckle your chinstrap.  Get to work.  Start your blog and stick with it through the building year when a big day is 100 views.  Stick with it in the second or third your when you might reach 1000 views per day.  I wish you nothing but the best of luck.

Just as I suspected…

  
Only an absolute savage chooses to step in dog poop over gum.  Just reconfirms everything I know about dog people.  Cray Cray…

JOEY IS AWAY

PLEASE SEND PRESS RELEASES TO ANY OTHER CONTRIBUTOR UNTIL NEXT FRIDAY
PLEASE AND THANK YOU

If you would like a completely free Solar evaluation to see if your house qualifies for the crazy amount of incentives and potentially 90% of your electricity for free, Fill Out The Form and Solar Advisors Will Contact You To Set It Up-

Energy Sage explains the process of how Solar Systems are designed-

The process of of how solar installers design a solar energy system is often a mystery for most consumers. Because of this, we would like to give you some insight into how solar installers design a solar power system for your home or business. A solar power system is designed considering two important factors – the amount of space that you have available for installing solar panels and the amount of electricity you consume annually. Other factors, like shading analysis and the efficiency of solar panels and inverters also come into play.  

Space to Install Solar Panels

Assuming that you are interested in installing solar panels on the roof, the amount of viable roof space determines the maximum number of solar panels that can be installed. An individual solar panel varies in size, but is usually around 16 square feet in a rectangular shape. The panels are affixed to racking systems that are more efficiently designed when installed in a contiguous space together rather than spread out all over the roof. The available roof space – limited by vents, chimneys, dormers and any required offsets from roof edges or roof-mounted equipment – may limit the system size such that a solar system offsets less than 100% of your annual electricity consumption. The average solar system in the US consumes about 300-400 square feet of space, so your viable roof space may limit the size of the solar system you are able to install. In this case, installers may recommend higher efficiency panels that generate more electricity per square feet than standard panels. These will also come at a higher cost, but is something you might consider depending on your personal goals.

An average solar panel system may generate different amount of electricity based on your location in the world and the orientation of your roof, so installers will use various tools to estimate the viable solar system size. These tools allow installers to use aerial imagery and to “draw” in system designs on your roof space in order to estimate the size of a system that will fit and how much electricity this system will produce each year given a number of assumptions. If you’d like to try this yourself, you can go to PV Watts, a tool developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories, to estimate your system size and annual production.

Annual electricity consumption

One of the first information a solar installer might ask for is twelve months of electricity bills. While this might seem like a lot of information right off the bat, this gives the installer a sense for how much energy you use throughout the year. Often an electric bill will include the last twelve months of usage history in a table or a chart, removing the need to fish around for past bills. Armed with your electricity usage information, the installer can determine about how big of a solar photovoltaic system would be required to offset 100% of your annual usage. This will vary by your location and roof profile. Typically, solar panel systems are designed to cover 100% or less of annual usage to maximize the financial benefits, but if you are planning to increase your energy use in the near future – for example, if you are planning to buy an electric car or converting from oil to electric heat pumps – you might consult with your solar consultant to estimate your expected energy demand in order to design a system that better matches that use profile.

The impact of shading

If your roof has shading – from neighboring trees, other buildings or large chimneys – installers may choose to leave these areas uncovered by solar panels to optimize the production of the system or may place panels in these locations with the understanding that these panels may produce less energy at certain times of the day. Installers may also suggest changes to system design to create separate solar panel strings that are designed to avoid power loss from shading or may suggest the use of micro-inverters or power optimizers to help mitigate the impact of shading of the production of the overall system. The latter two technologies may come at a higher cost, but these costs may be justified from the additional power they help your system to generate.

From Energy Sage Site

https://twitter.com/CapeAnnTVCATV/status/597862578254127104

I love Uber! If you sign up using the promo code you’ll get $20 off your first ride, a Total No-Brainer! : http://www.uber.com/invite/kypfk

So last night we had a few adult beverages and left our rental downtown Naples instead of driving with a buzz on. Dialed up UBER on the cell phone and got home safely.  I’ll never understand people who refuse to take cabs or, now, UBER instead of driving drunk. 

Here’s our sweet UBER car that picked us up this morning to go retrieve the rental car-

But anyway I took a video of my screen on my cell phone which shows exactly how it works and why seeing exactly where your car is and the type of car that’s picking you up and your driver’s UBER rating is so cool.


Watch the video of how it all works here-

and some screenshots-

   
 
I love Uber! If you sign up using the promo code you’ll get $20 off your first ride, a Total No-Brainer! : http://www.uber.com/invite/kypfk

Martin writes-

Sunday was the 10th annual Mad Hot Ball.  For the past three months, every 5th-grader in the city learned ballroom dancing techniques at school.  On Sunday they demonstrated their steps to a packed GHS field house, and competed for prizes in a variety of dance styles.

Photos from Hilary Frye