Week 8: Energy, Maps, and Grandma

Using Renewable Energy at Home

I recently switched our power and gas supplier to The Energy Co-op because I wanted our apartment to start using renewable energy. Although we’re not literally using power that comes straight out of wind turbines and solar panels (The Energy Co-op works by buying and retiring RECs for their subscribers), I feel good about redirecting our monthly bill to fund renewable energy facilities. It’s a little more expensive, but I think it’s still worth it for me.

Increasing Contributions to OpenStreetMaps

I often use OsmAnd or Organic Maps when I travel because they both offer offline maps for times when I don’t have any cell service or WiFi. I found them really helpful when I was in Iceland, for example! I prefer to use these over Google Maps’ offline functionality because neither of them track my whereabouts.

OsmAnd collects anonymous usage data, and Organic Maps doesn’t collect anything at all.

But I don’t use these apps outside of traveling because I find that OpenStreetMaps (their data source) is missing a lot of information on businesses and house numbers.

I want to improve these maps for myself, so I’ve been sporadically contributing to OpenStreetMaps over the last two years. But this week I managed to significantly increase my contributions because I found the Go Map!! app for the iPhone. It really made it easy for me to make edits on the spot.

Celebrating Grandma’s Birthday

This week my family celebrated my grandma’s 83rd birthday! We all met up in Maryland (I also drove from PA to MD using OsmAnd successfully) and we had a lot of fun. We also ate a ton of Filipino food.