Disqus - Latest Comments for Ian Wood

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » An Automatic Stirrer

Ian Wood — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 13:22:55 -0000

I had one of those. It fell into the pot and exploded.

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » Escape The Inferno Safely, With The EVAC-U8 Escape Smoke Hood

Ian Wood — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 13:49:45 -0000

I got one of these after 9/11 (I worked in a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan at the time). I never go anywhere without it - I got mine for $68, though, so shop around. If you actually have to use it in a fire, you send it back to the manufacturer and they send you a new one.

And those "airline magazines" pay pretty well if you're a writer, so read on.

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » Carbon Credits For Travel

Ian Wood — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 11:12:12 -0000

I'm with Shiloh. I'm sure "young Nick Hunter" won't have a problem with government restriction of people's freedom of movement, but those of us who don't live in Oceania will.

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » Filsafer Laptop Alarm

Ian Wood — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 12:44:44 -0000

D'oh!

Re: Ceramic Fuel Cells Coming to a Home Near You

Ian Wood — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 21:22:32 -0000

My only question: how many cubic feet of natural gas does it need to produce that 1KW? That could get expensive. It'd be good to be able to compare costs per kW/Hr vs. a typical domestic power setup (natural gas for heat/cooking, + a grid connection).

Re: JPL's Rovers Keep On Keeping On

Ian Wood — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 21:11:45 -0000

Mmmm...solar. I just got a set of folding solar panels from Conneticut Solar...they'll charge my laptop and cellphone while I'm bikepacking on my recumbent. But I'm only getting 32.2 watts out of mine! I want some o' them there triple-layer Gallium Arsenide panels.

Don't plan on going to Mars, though...

Re: Boycott Exxon!

Ian Wood — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 21:01:50 -0000

To be blunt: science is not about consensus. It's about hypotheses supported by experimentation with repeatable results.

Scientific "consensus," you will remember, supported ideas like the Earth-centric universe, phrenology, and racial theory.

This notion that the support of a majority of scientific organizations lends any validity to a concept is harmful to the entire field of scientific inquiry, and ought to be done away with.

Not making any claims for or against global warming theories, here, I'm just saying that if you want to gain traction with it, frame it like the hypothesis it is, and not as a matter of popular agreement. That's the only way to gain real credibility.

Re: Boycott Exxon!

Ian Wood — Sat, 16 Jul 2005 19:11:12 -0000

MGR--

That's my point: the whole issue now rests on the red herring of "consensus" rather than a search for scientific truth.

The government is claiming an irrelevant excuse for inaction, but the nullification of that excuse isn't sufficient cause for action...all you've done is establish a consensus, which is, in and if itself, irrelevant.

In practical terme, you *are* granting credence to the idea that consensus lends validity to an idea. And as long as you do that, you'll get stonewalled.

Seeking out the reality of the matter gets ignored, and the entire enterprise becomes not scientific, but political.

Re: Software Presets In Future Hybrids

Ian Wood — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 11:00:15 -0000

It'd be great is this was "on the fly." More power for merging and passing, fuel economy for cruising...

Re: Recycler: Make Your Move -- With A Bike Trailer

Ian Wood — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:15:28 -0000

I use another trailer made by Burley (the Nomad ) with my recumbent, and it is the best thing since...well, the bicycle, actually. Hauls recycling, groceries, and all my camping gear when I go bikepacking. Burley's a great company, and they make great products.

Re: Tango Meets Big Fan

Ian Wood — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:11:35 -0000

I think that a car chase would end with the Tango falling over.

Re: Venom Bike Line By Specialized

Ian Wood — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:09:26 -0000

It's a h--.

Oh.

Anyway.

I especially liked the ones with the large rear wheel and the smaller front wheel that have no possible way to steer. Sweet!

Re: Global Warming Critics Made Calculation Errors

Ian Wood — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 13:50:22 -0000

All of this assumes that 20 years' worth of data can be a predictor of complex atmospheric behavioral with cycles that span millennia, not decades.

The concluding remark by paper author Steven Sherwood ("Nobody is debating any more that significant climate changes are coming") is misleading at best. Plenty of people debate the fact of climate change; still more grant the fact, but debate the cause of that change.

From the 10th to the 14th centuries, temperatures were 1 to 3 degrees higher than they are now (whether or not that was a global phenomneon is still open to debate.)..followed up by the "Little Ice Age" from about 1300-1900. All of that happened in the absence of significant human impact on the atmosphere.

It is prudence that should inform the technological and economic changes required to live more lightly on the planet, not "science." I use quotes because what passes for science on either side of this debate at the policy-making level is alarmist at best, and fraudulent at worst.

We are seeking answers to questions for which we simply so not have sufficient data. Trying to then claim a political imperative based on conclusions drawn from this flawed and incomplete data and then presented as fact is actually counterproductive to any green goal, because it provides opponents to change with so much ammunition against change that inaction is inevitable.

This is, at its core, a philosophical issue. Science has become a schismatic religion, which issues regular pronouncements with near-clerical authority. Using the authority of science in this way will never sway the electorate, which instinctively recognizes the authoritarian nature hiding beneath the "scientific" trappings. It's why Bill Clinton--consummate politican that he is--never submitted the Kyoto treaty to Congress for ratification, and why the Byrd-Hagel Resolution passed.

What is needed is, I think, exactly what is often found on this blog: incremental technological improvements that introduce the ideas of environmental stewardship to the populace by harnessing the forces of the marketplace and making them work to the Earth's advantage.

Prepare the way.

Re: Global Warming Critics Made Calculation Errors

Ian Wood — Sat, 13 Aug 2005 23:17:33 -0000

Well, I wasn't really trying to disprove the long term trend all by my lonesome...I was just pointing out that the "trend" is far from established.

In terms of fraud, I was thinking of Michael Mann's "hockey stick" temperature graph, where Mr. Mann claimed to be using principal component analysis to find the dominant features in a set climate records, but turned out to be using an anlysis program that didn't do proper PCA and which produced results that were highly questionable...or should have been. [McKittrick & McIntyre, Energy and Environment 2003, who cited "collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects"]. Nothing "legal" mind you...

I was also thinking of any one of a number of dubious counter-warming studies produced by oil-company funded research projects.

At the moment, I'm reading They Shall Have Stars, a sci-fi novella written by James Blish in 1957. A character in it has a bit of dialogue that was so appropriate it gave me the synchronicity heebie-jeebies. Check it out:

"Remember, Bliss, that scientific method is not natural law. It doesn't exist in nature, but only in our heads; in short, it's a way of thinking about things--a way of sifting evidence. It was bound to become obsolescent sooner or later, just as sorites and syllogisms became obsolete before it. Scientific method works fine while there are thousands of obvious facts lying about for the taking--facts as obvious and measureable as how a stone falls, or what the order of colors is in a rainbow. But the more subtle the facts to be discovered become--the more they retreat into the realms of the invisble, the intangible, the unweighable, the submicroscopic, the abstract--the more expensive and timeconsuming it is to investigate them by the scientific method."

His point was that when science reaches a point where the only research worth doing costs millions of dollars per experiment then the experiments can only be paid for by the government, which results in inefficiency, substandard science, and stagnation. And I would add "foundations," "think-tanks," and "scientific consortiums" to that list...anywhere money concentrates with for sole purpose of producing "scientific research," results get tainted, truth flees, and politics intrude.

Man, that was long-winded...

Re: Choosing an Efficient Room-sized Air Conditioner

Ian Wood — Sun, 14 Aug 2005 22:20:42 -0000

Great info.

Y'know what gets me, though? Walk down Fifth Avenue or in SoHo on a day with a heat index of 110, and you'll find retail stores with their doors wide open, blasting AC onto their patch of sidewalk, hoping to entice you into the cool to buy something.

It's beyond stupid: every summer, you'll see footage on the evening news of a neigboorhood camping out in the streets because another portion of the ConEd infrastructure has collapsed in a shower of sparks or exploding manhole covers.

And yet, some folks think it's perfectly OK to pour the BTUs out into the air, while those of us with sense look for AC units with good EER ratings. Makes me wonder why we bother.

Re: US Managed Forests Devalued for Recreational Use

Ian Wood — Mon, 15 Aug 2005 20:34:14 -0000

Well...that's what happens when you try to quantify the unquantifiable.

Some people just don't want to live on Giedi Prime, and that's that.

Re: Solar Powered Wi-Fi Network Opens In Boulder

Ian Wood — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:16:05 -0000

These need to be everywhere.

Re: Gecko Adhesive Mimic from Carbon Nanotubes

Ian Wood — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:11:10 -0000

"Can't...do...plaid!!!

Re: British Berkefeld Gravity Filters: No Need for Bottled Water

Ian Wood — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:09:15 -0000

This is cool. I've got a Katadyn which has a silver-impregnated ceramic filter...but using it is roughly akin to pushing water through a brick. It's the size of the pores in the ceramic that filter out the microorganisms, and the silver inhibits bacterial growth.

Wonder how they managed to do the same thing without much pressure?

Re: Living In The Up-Down, Hot-Cold, Dry-Wet Future

Ian Wood — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 12:46:30 -0000

Good dancing (that's a compliment).

If you can apply that method to Kyoto, I'll be very impressed.

Re: CNN Gas gripes, Katrina & More About Oil

Ian Wood — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:44:34 -0000

What we need are cheap, full-spectrum solar cells.

Imagine being able to get most of the 1,000 per square meter that the sun throws down, instead of the measly 100 watts m2 we get now.

Then we'd need to convince the Guvmint to subsidize civilian solar the way it's subsidized oil for the past seven decades...hmmm...

Re: CNN Gas gripes, Katrina & More About Oil

Ian Wood — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:39:22 -0000

That's why I said we need cheap full-spectrum solar cells.

Re: Nissan Airstream BaseCamp

Ian Wood — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 20:56:52 -0000

That thing's a Cylon. It'll kill us all!!!

Re: Just what we needed: an LED lit plastic bathtub

Ian Wood — Sat, 17 Sep 2005 22:38:20 -0000

Well, I've been looking for a more efficient replacement for my sodium-arc illuminated bathtub, so I for one welcome our new bathing-LED overlords.

Re: Wall Street Journal: High Gas Prices Make Sense

Ian Wood — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:31:57 -0000

1) If you'll recall, the 90s also saw a surge and peak of anti-smoking advertisements and legal action. The "taxes kept preganant women from smoking argument" doesn't hold water.

2) Stop subsidizing gas prices and let the market do its work. Taxes aren't the problem; our gas prices are and always have been artificially low compared to the rest of the world's.

3) Finally, why is it OK for government to "modify behavior" in ways amenable to treehuggers, but not OK for government to "modify behavior" in ways treehuggers disagree with? I'm amazed at how casually Terry, for instance, supports the use of the tax-cudgel to force masses of people to move, change jobs, and put them in the impossible position of needed to buy a new car when there's no market for their old car.

Way to empower The State, people!

Re: Wall Street Journal: High Gas Prices Make Sense

Ian Wood — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 14:05:45 -0000

(and, I might add, way for me to proofread...)

Re: Here Comes the Sun

Ian Wood — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 18:50:01 -0000

I remain amazed that we have a shortage of the second most common element on the planet.

Yeah, I know it's all about manufacturing capacity, but still...

===== author's response =====

It was so much more fun investing in the internet bubble stuff when the only equity was desks and PC's. 'This silicon stuff takes all this expensive hardware and talent, can't we just have more search engine thingies?'

Re: The Windwandler – Topping up your energy on those dark days.

Ian Wood — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 18:45:57 -0000

I'd buy it just for the name.

"Say, that's a snazzy weathervane you've got there."

"Yes--it's my Wind Wandler!"

"Fantastic! I've been looking for something to wandle my wind, you know."

Re: Area Man \"Invents\" Peanut Trailer

Ian Wood — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 15:20:44 -0000

My trailer goes on my recumbent.

*pbthbthp!*

;-)

Re: Instant Survey: Technology

Ian Wood — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 15:12:08 -0000

I think you've missed the point, Dave. The idea is to develop sustainable technologies that don't require substantial personal sacrifice. If, for example, consumers are given the choice between cars of equivalent performance and cost, with one getting twice the gas mileage of the other, they'll buy the more efficient car. Efficiency has already been sold to the public as a good thing; now they need products to choose.

Your idea, basically, is to use the government to force people to go against human nature to achieve a result that has nothing to do with relieving social injustice. Not only is that oppressive, it's inefficient and ultimately, ineffective.

Instead, mesh efficient technologies with human nature, and people will gravitate towards them. Basically, once the technology corporations realize they can turn a decent profit with sustainable technology, we'll see some success.

As another example: the first company that develops a reasonably-priced, high-efficiency full-spectrum solar cell is going to make a fortune. Imagine getting 800 watts per square meter out of a solar panel: distributed power infrastructure would no longer be necessary for large parts of the country. New housing would be built with its own power source. There would be solar-charged electric vehicles...the list goes on. IMO, it's one of the most important potential technologies ever.

And it's not going to happen by government decree. It's going to happen by hitching human ingenuity to human nature (that is, to greed and lust for profit).

Re: Instant Survey: Technology

Ian Wood — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:57:54 -0000

Ian, I think you've set up a bit of a strawman. Surely you don't equate any government action with "forcing" and "oppression" and "decrees." That's a right-wing frame and it always disturbs me to see how successful they've been in penetrating even the progressive community with it.

I'm similarly disturbed by Lakoff's penetration into the progressive community. ;-)

But no, I don't equate "any" government action etc., etc.; which is why I mentioned social injustice (specifically, I was thinking of civil rights legislation; sometimes, "human nature" does need a kick in the head). I'm also referring specifically to federal action.

Think about it: the reason we're in the mess we're in is because the private sector built a vast economic petro-based monolith leading into and following WWII. The citizenry wanted it that way...cheap fuel, big cars, long highways, lots of modern plastic, ubiquitous air travel, and everything else that followed from that. The money accreted first, and the power and regulatory inertia followed. You can see how very effective that's been.

It wasn't really planned. It was a natural consequence of the concentration of wealth into certain sectors of the economy which were based on a specific technology that required the profligate use of petrochemicals.

There's very little I trust the federal government to handle. What I do trust are human ingenuity and the profit motive. The two coupled together can move mountains, and they can certainly alter social structures.

And make no mistake: the current governmental and regulatory climate regarding sustainable development is a mountain that's been built by stready accretion over just fifty years. It will take at least that long, and require similar processes, to undo it.

That's not to say that no effort should be made changing community infrastructure...last month at a recumbent bike rally I met a women who's working with the building industry as a liason between the green housing movement, local municipalities, and the builders. Slow, painstaking, necessary work...but local.

The Federal mountain...that's an entirely different story.

Re: Nestlé’s New Fair Trade Coffee Causes a Big Aroma

Ian Wood — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 17:37:10 -0000

Kudos, Warren for putting this into an intelligent context.

Re: Recycler :: Solar Power

Ian Wood — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:13:59 -0000

Start by naming names, Lee. Raising awareness of any environmental issue is best accomplished by presenting specific information.

That is: back up "gnarly chemicals" with links to information on photovoltaic manufacturing processes.

Because right now, I don't know what you're talking about.

Information is power. Find it-->disperse it-->get things done.

Re: Instant Survey: Through Hikers

Ian Wood — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 19:21:52 -0000

QUOTE: Perhaps, just perhaps, people through hike with no environmental agenda whatsoever. I'd hazard the guess that the vast majority of through hikers ARE such people, interested in the hike or the journey and not on any kind of crusade toward any end other than self discovery.

Bingo. I'm pedalling the TransAmerica Trail next year, for pretty much that very reason.

Re: WalMart To Use Corn-Based Plastic

Ian Wood — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 01:00:03 -0000

QUOTE:

"The eco-effectiveness of this move must be weighed against the fact that the plastic will come from NatureWorks, a division of Cargill Dow."

This is the kind of thinking that gets the environmental movement painted with the same brush used to tar religious fundamentalists. Is the idea supposed to be that because Cargill Dow as a corporate entity is an environmental offender, no action they take can ever be simply accepted as eco-friendly?

The religious folks have a word for this sort of concept: "sin." The notion that the removal of who knows how many thousands of tons of petrochemical-based plastic from the disposable packaging chain is somehow "tainted" by the fact that it's being removed by Cargill Dow is mystical thinking at best.

A worldview that tends to reject practical environmental gains in the name of idealistic orthodoxy hobbles progress.

Re: Q&A Remote Portable Power

Ian Wood — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 20:18:04 -0000

Check out Connecticut Solar's Expedition Power Packages.

$795 gets you "two Expedition 30W folding solar panel, 16AH sealed gel cell battery capacity and Steca Gamma charge controller." This will power anything that can use a DC (automobile cigarette lighter) adapter.

$875 gets you all that plus a sine-wave inverter, which allows you to plug your devices into two standard AC sockets on the inverter, with no adapter.

Basically, you'll want something to run your devices and charge their batteries. Otherwise, you will be restricted to the battery life of (for example) your laptop--five hours at most.

These 60-watt systems provide enough power to run the laptop, charge the laptop's internal battery, and also charge a separate gel-cell battery for use at night or during overcast conditions.

Alternately, two of their folding 30 Watt panels (without the gell cell and other hardware) will provide enough power to run your laptop and charge its battery, but at night or on overcast days you'll be relegated to using just the device's internal battery.

For long term use with multiple devices, the Expedition Power Packages are your best bet. If you get the package with the sine inverter, you can hook up any AC-powered charger and charge standard AA, AAA, C, D etc. rechargeable batteries.

I use a single 30-watt folding panel to charge my laptop's battery using a DC-DC convertor that puts out a steady 13.8 volts, which I use with a DC automotive adapter. I'm restricted to the life of my laptop battery (4.5 hours, tops), but I use it for bicycle touring, so weight and space are a factor for me.

Re: Q&A Remote Portable Power

Ian Wood — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:21:50 -0000

Re: Brunton panels

I've commented on this before, but I'll repeat it because I think it's important that people know what the real deal is with portable solar panels and laptop power.

Brunton's site claims that their 25 watt panel "puts out enough power to run most laptops."

Most modern laptops require a minimum of 50 watts to run (Apple G4 laptops, for example, run off of 60 watts).

You cannot run a 50 watt appliance off of a 25 watt panel. You can charge the battery (in 8+ hours of full sun), but that's it.

I really wish companies would be more truthful about this.

Re: Old Faithful: Centennial Lightbulb

Ian Wood — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 23:52:55 -0000

Ooooo. . . twisty-glowy!

Re: Sunball - the World's First \"Solar Appliance\"?

Ian Wood — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 16:02:56 -0000

Looks interesting, but man do they have to de-clutter their website.

All I wanted to know: approximate wattage output per SunBall (yes, I know it will vary; just a ballpark).

Answer? Nowhere to be found after ten minutes of determined searching, which is far more than someone less, uh, determined would have given the task.

(By the way--treehugger webmaster person? I like ellipses, and the fact that your comment engine prohibits their use is annoying. Any idea why?)

Re: Sunball - the World's First \"Solar Appliance\"?

Ian Wood — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 19:24:22 -0000

QUOTE: I suppose the biggest problem would be noise. Stirling engines would unavoidably make more noise than a silent solar cell.

Actually, Stirling engines are known for their extremely quiet operation - they're used on submarines, for example, where quiet is critical.

Not silent like PV, but not loud, either.

Re: Hyper-Powerful and Inexpensive Solar by Pyron

Ian Wood — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:32:28 -0000

Holy sh*t. I really hope this pans out.

I'd love it if they would embrace truly distributed power, though, and offer a 1.5kW unit. One house=one unit. Build entire developments that are off the grid. No high-tension wires, no transmission efficiency loss!

That said, if I have to, I'll fork out $18,000 to power my straw bale mansion. When I build it. After I find the land for it, I mean.

Re: Hyper-Powerful and Inexpensive Solar by Pyron

Ian Wood — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:50:02 -0000

QUOTE: The only way to capture the entire dawn to dusk solar availability is with full apperature tracking.

And this design can't do that because of the water bath, correct?

(By the way--I'm a technical writer by trade, and you should know that the instructions on the Green & Gold Energy website for using the Sunball calculator with a non-listed location are so unclear that they're basically unusable.)

Re: Hyper-Powerful and Inexpensive Solar by Pyron

Ian Wood — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:10:59 -0000

Hmmm. Didn't mean to sound quite so harsh re: the site instructions (it was late, I'm sick, blah blah).

Anyway - my point was that while it's clearly been well-thought out, the Calculator's utility for those of us outside Australia is compromised by the instructions.

Re: Hyper-Powerful and Inexpensive Solar by Pyron

Ian Wood — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:56:50 -0000

QUOTE: Not to be a downer, because this is a great technology, but we need to consider the full energy analysis here - what is the energy input to create this system?

I've been wondering about that sort of thin myself. Not too long ago someone made a reference to all the "toxic" materials used to make PV cells, but didn't provide any info on it.

I tend to think of it this way: at the individual "me" level - that is, stuff for MY house - there's an ROI for PV installations of many years. X number of years 'till I recoup my initial $$$ investment.

Similarly, I would think that on a larger (planetary?) scale, something like that would eventually come into play once a certain level of power-per-capita is generated from clean sources. Perhaps, at that point, factories producing the PV devices would themselves get all or most of their power from renewable resources, all the way along the manufacturing chain.

I have no idea what that point would be, but it would be interesting to find out.

Re: Edward Burtynsky Photographic Works: Exploring the Residual Landscape

Ian Wood — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 21:01:51 -0000

Mmmm. Hellish.

Re: Molectra Tyre Recycling — Reverse Alchemy

Ian Wood — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:17:41 -0000

That's excellent. However, the best thing about it is the term "crumb rubber."

CRUMB RUBBER!

Love it.

Re: Treehugger in BusinessWeek

Ian Wood — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 02:32:57 -0000

Yes, congrats, dammit.

I can't wait for my writeup in Interesting Fungus Quarterly.

Or wait. . .maybe I can.

Anyway: let us know what the traffic bump was! I'm curious.

Re: Cranberries and your teeth

Ian Wood — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 18:10:57 -0000

Reminds me of the story a few years back that cocoa was good for your teeth, but only (of course) when mixed with sugar.

Re: Fuel Cells Powered by Creepy Crawlies?

Ian Wood — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:11:15 -0000

Eventually, the cockroach species will produce The One, who will embark on an epic quest to reach the Source that will ultimately prove to be disappointing.

Re: A Man and his Velomobile

Ian Wood — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:25:02 -0000

Sweet! Although I'd favor bigger wheels myself.

The Dutch are into these because the Netherlands are flat. If I ever live where it's flat (Midwest US, say), I'd probably go car-free with a velo.

Re: Cars and Votes: The Anti-Social Bastards in our Midst

Ian Wood — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 01:21:22 -0000

Mobiot's smug rant is rooted in such a deep morass of ill-conceived, poorly-considered, contradictory ideas that it's barely worth the effort to type this comment about it, let alone dig through his nonsense.

And I say that as a dedicated cyclist.

Re: People of the World Lift a Finger Against the Hummer

Ian Wood — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 21:31:41 -0000

Whatever makes you feel good, I guess.

Re: LIME: Cleaner Ferries, Ahoy!

Ian Wood — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 21:38:29 -0000

About damn time. What they *really* need to do is clean up the NY Waterway ferries.

I loved being on the water at the start and end of my day when I worked downtown, but I've walked through enough black clouds of particulate diesel death to last a lifetime.

Re: The Next Big Fuel Source: Microbes?

Ian Wood — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 12:12:15 -0000

Bummer for the corn-future speculators.

Great for us humans.

But the inevitable microbe uprising will be a problem.

Re: Bush Promotes Alternative Energy During Trip

Ian Wood — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 12:46:23 -0000

Unto itself! Yay, distributed power generation!

Re: \"Waste of Packaging\" Finalist: Individually Packaged Peanut Butter

Ian Wood — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 13:34:24 -0000

So...somebody spilled peanut butter into the Kraft Singles machine?

Atrocious.

Re: Fuel Cells for Laptops: The Wait is (Almost) Over

Ian Wood — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:58:59 -0000

I'm building a PV system for a cross country cycling trip. You need about 60 watts' worth of panels to power a laptop *directly* from the panels. That works out to (very roughly) about five or six square feet of panels.

Most PV systems are set up to use the panels to charge up a deep cycle battery, which the laptop then runs off of. This is where the fuel cell leaps ahead: energy density. A six-pound sealed lead-acid battery of the type used in PV setups will power a laptop for roughly three hours (lighter hi-capacity batteries, like Lithium-ion, don't work well in PV applications).

So there's really no comparison in terms of energy storage and output. I really wish these were out now...I'd be taking one along instead of a PV system that weighs eighteen pounds in total!