An Australian couple that owns a Guinness Book record for getting best fuel mileage in a long-distance trip fueled up in Concord on Thursday as part of their attempt to break a record in a similar trip around the U.S. It’s too late to say hello, however - they’ve already made it to Ohio. (Here’s their Facebook page.)

John and Helen Taylor struck out from Chantilly, Virginia on Wednesday for a 23-day, 8,000-mile loop around the lower 48 states, trying to break the Guiness World Record for the lowest fuel consumption on a trip around the U.S.

The current record stands at 51.8 mpg. They’re driving a 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI, which has an EPA rating of only 40 mpg highway, but the Taylors think their experience with super-efficient driving will let them beat the record. In 2006, they set a record driving around the globe in a Volkswagen Golf on only 24 tanks of gas.

Brilliantly written story (ahem) in the Telegraph today about FairPoint rolling out 7 mbps DSL in some areas, as a sort of place-holder as they work on an IP network that the company says will allow copper-line DSL downloads of up to 25 mbps in much of New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.
At the same time, [...]

Granite Geek has transitioned from LifeType to WordPress, and is now hosted by the Nashua Telegraph so I can profit from its search-engine visibility … I mean, to better serve my readers. I lost a couple of posts, categories on articles and all the pictures in the transition, and I’m still fiddling with the whole [...]

The Concord Monitor has the story - and the contest to name it (mentioned in a post last week) is still ongoing. The engine will burn a diese/biodiesel combination.
For those who haven’t been around Mount Washington when the Cog goes up, it throws out a ton of smoke. In 2005 and 2006 they [...]

NOTE: We’re switching blog platforms, so posting may be light.
As components are assembled north of Keene and I await word on a chance to visit contruction at Lempster Mountain Wind, work has begun on another wind farm in Maine: What will eventually be a 44-turbine operation near the New Hampshire border. (Lempster will have 12 [...]

I have to write my Telegraph column soon - part of it is going to be on this survey from speedmatters.org, a site run by the Communication Workers of America (which is my union) that asked members to test their upload/download speed.
New Hampshire’s state average was 1.877 kpbs down and 445 kpbs up, putting [...]

It’s good - although slightly depressing - to see mainstream media discussion of alternative energy move from "cool technologies will save us" to details about the difficult reality of making it work. The NY Times article on the need to rebuild the (discussed here last week) is part of that, as is today’s Globe article [...]

The dream of any state is to have a self-generating industry, a la Silicon Valley - an industry that spontaneously grows it own companies, better than any other location does. Minicomputers are the obvious Boston-area example; biotech hasn’t quite gotten there yet. This Globe article raises the hope that robotics might do it. From the [...]

Picture this: You’ve just taken pictures at your neighborhood’s annual block party. Now it’s time to post them the neighborhood Web site for those who purposely missed the gala celebration. "Who’s that with the ape mask on? Must be Andy, he’s always a jerk at these parties," you think. As you move the cursor over [...]

On another political note … the Democratic National Convention was big on "green" hype, but as this report from CNet notes, had some trouble following through:

"Bikes aren’t permitted inside the convention’s security perimeter, sogolf carts and other vehicles are used. The wooden card keys provedbuggy, and some were replied with more reliable plastic. Fried mini-donuts [...]