Another year of statistics is in the books for the Prius.  Nothing much out of the ordinary from previous posts, except it's interesting seeing how quickly the price of gas fell and I didn't have any fillups during the month of September.

The table has a bunch of statistics for the life of the car and then shows the trend over the last 90, 180, and 365 days.  Savings comparisons are approximate (I'm calculating based on averages and I'm not sure it's accurate).  Pretty charts are below.

Prius MPG for 2008

Prius Lifetime Average MPG by Month

Prius MPG Distribution

Gas Prices

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I finally got my act together and started listing things for sale on my Etsy shop.  You can find me there as DesignTime.  At the moment there are a few ceramic clocks, but some day I plan to include woodworking projects.  I've got some ideas for cutting boards, trivets, and more clocks.  Enjoy! (and spread the word)

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We had a cold and snowy new year's eve and woke up to windows covered with intricate ice crystals.  The pattern looks a little tropical, but the temperature never made it above 20°F (and the wind chill kept it feeling like single digit temperatures).

Ice Crystals

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Happy New Year

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Went for a walk around the Mt. Auburn Cemetery.  Fall foliage was a little past peak, but there was still some amazing color on a few trees.

Red

Red Yellow

Red Yellow Blue

Past Peak Cathedral

Cyprus

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I've been taking lots of closeup pictures recently and wished I had a wideangle lens.  I was poking around dpreview.com and found a thread explaining how to add a wideangle converter to my Fuji F30.  The Nikon WC-E68 was given high marks and can be found on eBay these days for around $20 or $30 (although some retailers are asking up to $190).  To attach the lens to the camera, I did a little bit of sawing and sanding to get the Nikon UR-E3 adapter to fit the Fuji.  Finally, the UR-E7 step up ring allows you to connect the two.

Test shots are below comparing the standard 36mm view to the 24.5mm field of view you get with the converter.  I'm extremely impressed with the image quality, especially for my casual usage.

Standard Lens

Wideangle Converter Attached

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These fireworks caught me by surprise.  They just happened to be at the beach next to the place we were having dinner.  I didn't have a tripod, so I found a flat rock and just tried to keep the camera steady, which seemed to work.

Last month while watching fireworks I got the idea of trying a video for the finale, since the intensity of the finale usually overwhelms the image, leaving you with a bright white blur.  I jumped the gun on anticipating the finale, and also mistakenly put the camera in manual mode instead of video, which was set to a 1/4-second exposure.  I really like the resulting photo, which shows people on the beach illuminated by the pyrotechnics (image number 5).  I did manage to catch most of the finale on video, too (the end of which allows me to see that my camera has a dead pixel -- grrrr!).

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It's that time of year.  The fireworks barge has appeared in the Charles River in preparation for the Boston's 4th of July Celebration.  For those in the area, details of the event can be found at july4th.org.

Boston Fireworks Barge (July 2008)

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Another six months of Prius statistics is in the books.  I've changed my work commute to mostly public transportation,  which has significantly decreased my average miles per day.  The table below shows a bunch of statistics for the life of the car compared to the last 90, 180, and 365 days of service.

With the rising cost of gas, I was wondering the savings of owning a Prius versus cars that got lower gas mileage.  Here are calculations of savings for the entire 4.5 years of ownership:

• Lifetime Savings vs. 25 MPG = $1,917.75
• Lifetime Savings vs. 30 MPG = $1,215.93
• Lifetime Savings vs. 35 MPG = $714.63
• Lifetime Savings vs. 40 MPG = $338.66

Prius_mpg_2008

Avg_by_month

Prius_mpg_distribution

Gas_prices

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We had a company outing to watch the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles play at Fenway Park last night.  The Red Sox won 9-2, bolstered by a grand slam in the 5th (the Orioles decided to intentionally walk Manny Ramirez, setting up the grand slam by Mike Lowell).

I would have posted this last night (as well as watching the Celtics), but Verizon screwed up my order from earlier in the day.  I canceled service at my old address and they shut off service at both my old address and the new address.  It's probably just as well that I couldn't watch the Celtics game, because they seem to do better when I don't watch.

Update: Apparently our section was frequently the start of the TV pan, so we were on TV a lot.  If I'd known, I'd have recorded the game (although it wouldn't have worked since I didn't have TV service).

It's a Hit

Back to First

The Rundown

Lowell Grand Slam

Sweet Caroline

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