Cloudy Sunrise with the iPhone
Day 284/366
10-10-2012

Nest Thermostat Reports

In June 2012 I installed 2  Nest Thermostats (order them on Amazon) in my home.. It takes a few months for the Nest to learn our home’s temperature habits. Over the first few weeks, just adjust the temp to the temp you wish and it begins to learn those habits and then you don’t have to worry about anymore. It learns your life! So the data is starting to reflect our usage. Here is the snapshot that Nest sent me via email showing the comparison of August to September usage.

Reports from Nest Thermostat

This accurately reflects the reduced temperatures for the month of September. I will be curious to see if our usage will be different next year in comparison. I would say we keep our home a bit cooler than others, but the Nest has allowed us to better manage those cooler temps for efficiency. The Nest tracks that efficiency by how many Leafs are earned each month, we are slightly above average, more Leafs more efficiency. Now to see the results in a reduced power bill over time, which we’ll be able to see in future statements. It’s fun to see daily usage on the web app or smart phone app but I find that the real interesting data is the data over time.

I do use the smart phone app to check in on the Nests when I’m away to see if they are behaving normally. It’s easy to check in from anywhere you have an internet connection.

So far I’m very impressed with the results and think it was well worth the $249 purchase price. Now the Nest has been upgraded; a 2nd generation version will be released soon and is available for pre-order: Nest Learning Thermostat – 2nd Generation-Amazon or you can also purchase the 1st generation for a lower price of $229: Nest Learning Thermostat – 1st Generation-Amazon

So far the only difference I can see between the 1st and 2nd generation versions is the size. The 2nd generation version is a bit slimmer and may have better compatibility with low voltage systems. Both my Nest’s auto updated to the version 3.0 software all by themselves.

I’ll be to see what happens over the winter months, to both my power bill and my natural gas bill as my heat is natural gas.

What’s been your experience with the Nest Thermostats?

Have you considered purchasing one? If so, I’d be grateful if you used one of the Amazon links above as I receive a small referral fee.

Been wanting to make Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies for a while now.

They need to be Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free and Rice Free. Might as well make them Vegan as well!

Here’s an image of the final cookies, my photo of the day. Its photo #283 of 366.

While good I’m not ready to post the final recipe as I would like more pumpkin flavor. I need to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to add more pumpkin and yet keep the dough from turning to goo!

Any tips or tricks would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

So I’ve been thinking about Canker Sore’s (Aphthous Ulcers or Aphthous Stomatitis). I’ve had these painful canker sores since I was a young child. I would get them on a regular basis, sometimes in three’s or fours. If I chomped my lip or cheek a day or so later, I would get one of these painful sores that would stay around for approximately 2 weeks. I remember trying to burn them off with silver nitrate, changing tooth pastes, take supplements, and try topical steroids. None of it ever worked. I learned to live with them.

Canker Sore=Aphthous Ulcer=Aphthous Stomatitis

Apthous Ulcers, “Canker Sores” are a fairly significant problem. Epidemiological studies show an average prevalence between 15% and 30%. With approximately 10% of the population suffering from Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis “ulcers”. (Source: Wiki:Aphthous_Ulcer yes I use Wikipedia for research. There are two referenced studies on the Wiki)

Approximately 3 years ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. The protein of wheat “gluten” causes an inflammatory reaction in the lining of the small intestine that allows lining of the small intestine to be permeable. This allows food particles and other stuff to move beyond the barrier of the intestinal lining. The treatment of Celiac Disease is a Gluten Free Diet. Remove wheat/gluten and this allows the intestinal lining to heal. After my diagnosis I started to look into whether or not Celiac Disease was related at all to Aphthous Ulcers and I did find some research as evidenced by the number of entries in Google Scholar related to Celiac Diease and Aphthous Ulcers. I even wrote about one study relating Celiac Disease and Aphthous Ulcers, previously. To treat my Celiac Disease I went on a Gluten Free diet and figured I’d see what would happen in regards to the canker sores.

A few months on a gluten free diet I noticed the frequency and duration had decreased. Not only did I rarely get them but they would only last for a few days and then go away. Obviously this is a tiny sample size of one. I definitely had improvement but still got them on occasion. This corresponds with current research about modern wheat and what it does to the intestinal lining, even those that don’t have celiac disease. Remove wheat and allow the lining to start to heal. The number one cause of intestinal permeability is Modern Wheat! According to Dr. William Davis M.D. author of the NY Times Bestseller Wheat Belly, it’s not necessary to have Celiac Disease to have intestinal permeability. This post from the WheatBellyBlog- Modern Wheat: A Terrorist’s Delight explains that wheat is the primary instigator of intestinal permeability. Removing wheat appears to only be the beginning.

Fast forward approximately 2 years. I still wondered if the gluten free diet was doing what it was supposed to do and heal my fragile intestinal lining. There is evidence that only a small percentage of Celiac patients will heal on a Gluten Free diet alone.  So I started to investigate how to determine if my gut was healing. I had a blood test done for the Cyrex Labs Array 4. It’s a blood test that checks for IgG and IgA for various other cross reactive foods that mimic gluten to also promote intestinal permeability. My blood test came back showing elevated levels of dairy, millet and rice. I read this that my gut wasn’t healing. I was experiencing cross reactivity to dairy, rice and millet. These foods were reacting just like gluten was. For an in depth review of Cross Reactivity read this article from Dr. Tom O’Bryan.

I have been off dairy for approximately 5 months. A few weeks ago I chomped my lower lips 3 times in the same place just days apart and no canker sore! It healed like I would assume any self inflicted bite would heal, without a painful ulcer. Again this is a very small sample size, but it’s a change and a positive one. I wonder if it’s safe to assume that my gut lining is starting to heal? I’m planning on having both Cyrex Labs Array 2(this test measures health of the intestinal lining) and 4 done at regular intervals to see how things are healing.

So back to Google Scholar to find if there were any studies related milk and Aphthous Ulcers and I found this study from 2009. Which provided evidence of patients that suffered from Recurrent Aphthous Ulcers had significantly higher levels of Cow’s Milk antibody in their blood samples, the immune system has detected milk protein in the blood and has tried to remove it. How did these patients form antibodies to Cow’s Milk in their blood? My guess is through a permeable intestinal lining.

Heal the Gut, Heal the painful lesions on the mucosa of the mouth? As a dentist I see canker sores all time. I see other ulcerative type lesions from Lichen Planus and Sjogren’s disease. I have a hunch these are related to intestinal permeability as well. I’m beginning to understand these are linked to a problem greater than Celiac Disease. That problem is intestinal permeability.

Questions that need to be answered

• Could these types of lesions be used to help determine the health of intestinal lining?
• Why do some with intestinal permeability get canker sores and other don’t?
• If these are occurring in the mouth are they actually occurring in the intestinal lining as well?

My son gathered a few items from the forest floor over the weekend. Mainly pine cones and pine needles and a few rocks. Today when I got home from work he was busy setting them up in the back yard. Trying to build a wall of rocks dirt and pine cones.

He asked, “do we have any dynamite?”

I explained that we didn’t have any dynamite.

He asked, “do we have a bucket so we could put some bark and pine cones in to start a fire in the bucket?”

I asked why we needed to start a fire in a bucket?

He said, “to blow up the rocks!”

I didn’t want to be a big party pooper, but we weren’t going to start a bonfire in the backyard tonight.

So I asked if a candle would do…..

He said, “sure.”

Whew! This was a going to be a minor explosion!

So today’s photo comes from the set up of the minor explosion to bring down the rock wall. The wall is in the left hand portion of the frame. The wall came down and nobody was injured.

Photo a day 282/366

This is the second pine cone that I remember in this years 366 project, the other one can be found here. And the rest of years photos can be seen in the 2012 photo a day gallery

Gluten Free Vegan Cookies: Chocolate Chocolate Chip with dab of Peanut Butter

Taking beautiful photography of food can be tricky! I also get excited when I taste a brand new recipe for the first time. I was so pleased at how well these Gluten Free Vegan Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies  turned out that I wanted to take a snap and post to Instagram! So I did and here it is:

After further review, “What was I thinking”! They either look like Cheeseburgers or well something else…… 🙁  The photo above really isn’t worth an instagram!  I share it anyways and I left it up, cause it’s worth a chuckle or two.

So the next morning I was ready to make amends with a better photo of these gems.

This is a photo is better. I added a dab of peanut butter to half of the cookies as sometimes the kids don’t like all the extra flavor. I really liked the extra peanut butter and they are really good on their own as well. Next time I think i’m going to bury the peanut butter in the middle of the cookies, then I think the’ll be more like peanut butter cups! 🙂

1 Cup Almond Flour
1 Cup Coconut Flour
4 TBS Cocoa Powder
1 tsp Baking powder
1tsp Xanthum gum
1/2 tsp Sea Salt
1/2 Cup Coconut Sugar
1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
1 Stick Earth Balance “butter”
2 tsp Vanilla
1/2 Cup Vegan Chocolate Chips
2 Chia Eggs (2 TBS ground Chia seeds combined with 6 TBS of liquid)

Preheat oven to 350F. Combine liquid and Chia Seed grounds in a bowl and set aside for approximately 5-10 minutes.

Add dry ingredients into one bowl and whisk together. Combine EarthBalance “butter”, both sugars and Vanilla in a separate bowl and combine with an electric mixer. Once combined add the dry ingredients and Chia Eggs and mix together. Add Chocolate chips and mix with a spoon to disperse.

Place dough on a Silicone pad lined cookie sheet and add a dab of peanut butter if you so desire and bake for 8-10 minutes. Enjoy!

Penstemon barbatus

The Penstemon are everywhere in the Spring Mountains of Southern Nevada. So much so that my Mother has tried to cultivate them in the yard around the cabin. With a little bit of water and TLC they have been in bloom all summer long. These are the Penstemon barbatus, more info can be found at this Wikipedia entry. To find out about the over 250 varieties of Penstemon see this wiki article

This is photo number 281 of 366. The entire gallery of images can be found at this gallery: 2012 Photo a Day

The weather is due to change this week, so they’ll probably be gone soon after the first hard frost. Penstemon a really small flower, so photographing them has always been a challenge for me. This is an image that I actually like, even though the light was a bit harsh, I like the delicate details that you are noticeable on the very top petals. Winter is on the way and we’ll have to wait until spring for the next crop of Penstemon.

This image is available for purchase

Amazing Fall Colors in the Desert Mountains

Spent a great afternoon in the local mountains taking in the fall colors. We don’t get many colors in the Southwest, but we do have Aspens that turn into a beautiful yellow!

Our son has been getting over a cold for what seems like weeks. Now it’s a pesky cough that doesn’t want to subside and we thought about just laying low today. But the allure of seeing the only fall color of the season in our area called for new plans. We packed some lunch snacks and piled in the car for a 40 minute trip to the Spring Mountains in Southern Nevada. Lot of aspens amongst the pines above 7000ft elevation.

This image is a hand held 3 exposure HDR, processed in Nik Software HDR Efex Pro2

Canopy of aspens on the trail! This is a single exposure with the sun at about 2 o’clock… notice the slight sun flare in the middle top of the image.

This is an image looking towards the valley floor 5000 ft below the trail.

The last 3 images are 3 exposure HDR’s edited in Nik Software HDR Efex Pro2 and OnOneSoftware’s Perfect Photo Studio 6

I’m definitely not an HDR pro and I needed my tripod, which of course I didn’t want to lug around with me. A lazy photographer I suppose. It’s fun to try new things and see what you can do. One day I really do need to replace my clunky Canon 5d, the original one from 2005….

Kids Art

Photo a day 277/366-I’m glad Crayola created washable paints for kids art. These easily clean up from most surfaces, which means more can be created!

Unfortunately, paint brushes tend to get left in the bottles of paint over night, which of course dries them out and leaves that bottle useless. That is how I found this brush and bottle. It had been theres all day long. I liked the way the light was hitting the brush handle. I had fun post processing this image. I initially edited it in Aperture and then opened it up in Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro 2 and applied a neat filter. Even though this isn’t an HDR photo I thought it helped it out quite a bit.

Photo edited in Nik Software HDR Efex Pro 2