Now that I’ve given birth to OutInUruguay.com I have a little more time to work on other things. I’ve been promising entries about electricity for a while so here’s Part I.

Part I, Electricity in the world. All of North America uses a common electrical standard Alternating Current (AC) 120 volts at 60 Hertz. Growing up in Canada or the United States you’re not exposed to any other electrical standards. Well, it turns out that most of the world uses 220 volts at 50 Hertz. While researching this entry I discovered that it’s commonly accepted that 220 V at 60 Hz is the most efficient way to deliver electricity but very few countries around the world use this standard.

To make this a little more confusing the terms 120 V and 220 V are not really accurate. 120 V really allows for a range from 100 V to 127 V. Anything you plug in should be able to operate with an electrical supply falling within this range. 220V allows for a range of 220 V to 240 V.

Uruguay uses 220 V at 50 Hz. The good news is that many of todays electronic items don’t run on Alternating Current at all. They actually use Edison’s original Direct Current (DC). That’s why almost everything you plug in has a “power brick” either inline (attached to the power cord) or in the appliance itself. That power brick converts or transforms the electricity from the supplied AC to DC. So far there’s nothing good about this. Those damn power bricks are a pain in the butt to carry around and are quite often a pain to plug into the wall, especially the ones that have the brick part directly attached to the plug. Here’s the good news… a majority of these DC converters accept AC power sources anywhere in the range of 100 V to 240 V and 50 Hz to 60 Hz. In my experience very few of them require one or the other standard (be careful though because there are some that only work on one or the other).

Those power converters that accept the full range may be plugged directly into the wall in North America or Uruguay. Some items like desktop computers have a switch on the power converter that lets you switch between 120 V or 220 V. If you have the switch set in the wrong direction when you plug in your computer you will instantly fry the power supply though if you’re lucky the computer itself should be okay.

For the items you have that can’t use 240 V directly you can buy converters or transformers. For the ones that can plug into the wall directly you’ll still need to buy adapters since the plugs here are a different shape than in North America. I’ll tackle converters, transformers, and adapters in Part II. In the meantime here are a couple of links with much more detailed information on the subject. Note that in these pages you will encounter some, gasp, “British English.” The expressions “mains voltage” and “mains electricity” translate to household voltage and household electricity in North American English.

Wikipedia: Mains Electricity
Electricity Around the World

Introducing OutInUruguay.com. Pablo and I have been working on several Web projects and this is the launch of our first big one. I’ve worked in technology for around 20 years but becoming a Web developer/publisher required learning a whole new set of skills — and I’m the first to admit that I have a lot more to learn! The cool thing is I’m enjoying the work. It allows for much more creativity than being a systems engineer.

About OutInUruguay.com. This site came about as the offspring of one of our not-yet-ready-for-prime-time projects. I was taking too much time learning new skills — content management systems, programming languages (HTML isn’t what it used to be — where the hell did CSS come from?), SEO, SEF URLs, Web hosting, etc. Since I’m the tech side of the team Pablo was getting anxious to sink his teeth into a project so he thought up OutInUruguay.com. When he pitched the idea to me I liked it. It works well with our yet-to-be-developed larger project and the subject matter is something we both know and love — Uruguay.

The original idea for OutInUruguay.com was to make a gay and lesbian community / portal for Uruguayans and immigrants/expats. It’s something that is definitely lacking here. The more we worked on it the less I liked the idea of creating a “gay”site. One of the problems the gay community faces in many countries is a self-imposed segregation. Many of my closest friends are straight and almost all of my friends here in Uruguay are straight. I don’t like segregation. Pablo agreed. OutInUruguay.com will not be a segregated community. The result is a community / portal site that stresses human rights and sexual minority rights in particular. Sexuality is only a part of what makes us all human. It’s a part that shouldn’t be forced into a closet but it’s still only a part of the whole. So if you’re straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, pan-sexual, asexual, none-of-my-business sexual, or just confused, you’re welcome at OutInUruguay.com. It doesn’t matter if you’re in or out (of the closet) you can participate in the community at whatever level you’re comfortable with. We have over 30 members already (we were beta testing in April) and, as far as I know, most of them are straight. I think the straight people I know who don’t have an issue with other people being gay are some of the coolest people I’ve ever met.

Please check out the site (OutInUruguay.com). I’m still finishing up some formatting things so if you stumble across light gray text on a white background here and there, don’t worry, I’m on top of it. Also, for some odd reason I can’t get the personal messaging system to allow you to upload a photo. Damn technology!

Hopefully by now you’re no longer reading this blog and you’re already over at OutInUruguay.com. For those of you still reading this, after you check out the site, please let us know what you like and what needs improvement. Be gentle though—we know we have a lot of work yet to do.

If you do not want to receive prescreened offers of credit from this or other companies, call the consumer reporting agencies toll free, 888-567-8688.

It’s been over a month since my last post. Time sure does fly. I’ve been incredibly busy on one of my web projects. We’re going to officially launch one of the sites any day. I’ll post more info here after we do.