Month: June 2006

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An Energy Future We Can Live With

PopSci has a decent piece detailing ten steps to ending our “fossil fuel addiction.” Many of these you’ve heard before (like using more wind power), but this piece provides a nice up-to-date summary of the various technologies concerned. The real tragedy in all of this is how relatively easy many of these steps would be to implement, if we had the collective will to do so.

Step 1: Harness the Wind
Turbines are getting stronger, lighter, bigger
Step 2: End Gridlock
Make power where we use it
Step 3: Rev Up Our Hybrid Rides
Ultralight parts and a plug could double America’s mileage
Step 4: Brew Better Ethanol’
Step 5: Switch on the Sun Lamp
Step 6: Go H2
Step 7: Ride the Waves for Watts
A sea change, indeed, with tidal turbines and generators
Step 8: Dig Deeper
We can now mine hotspots in more places
Step 9: Make Gas from Trash
Heat + waste = power
Step 10: Use “Negawatts”
Nice: saving money. Nicer: saving the planet

[Via Boing Boing]

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Parts Bundles for Make BEAM Projects

The always thoughtful wireheads over at Solarbotics have put together a couple of parts bundles for my two BEAMbot projects in the latest issue of Make. Each bundle comes with a solar cell, a cassette motor, and all required electronics. All you need to add are the structural pieces (paper clips and other buildy bits) and the wheels (for the Roller).

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Warren Ellis Announces TV Pilot Deal

Comics and graphic novel juggernaut Warren Ellis has announced signing a contract with AMC cable to create a pilot for a half-hour “sci-fi/black comedy.” He writes on bad signal, his mailing list:

“As with all TV Things, everything could go horribly wrong. But this is the deal I’ve been waiting for, with people who understand the project and format I want to work in. And you know something’s going right when people in TV are telling you to go more experimental and take more risks. This isn’t your US network TV experience.”

Cool. We can’t wait to see what he dreams up.

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Roboreptile [With_Teeth}

We blogged about the new Wow Wee robot, the Roboreptile, earlier in the week. Today, PC Mag has a hands-on review of the little mecca-godzilla. Their verdict? It’s cool, fast moving, and true to its BEAMish progeny, it achieves a “startling effect” with its simple, largely analog, electronics. But they also found it be one pissed off bot that’s a little hard to tame and maybe too much of a handful for the youngins. As they point out, each robot in the line has a distinct personality: the Robosapien is a big goofball and Roboraptor is playful and aggressive, like a dog. Roboreptile is… well “irate.” Cool. A REAL candidate for feral robotics.

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That is One Dense Tag Cloud

Tags are the warp (or is it the woof?) of the Web 2.0 fabric, but until now, they’ve only threaded together the content of individuals sites. That’s changed with TagFetch, a tag-aware search engine that returns results from Flickr, YouTube, Newsvine, del.icio.us, Feedster, and other sites that incorporate tagging.

[Via Lifehacker]

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HD Movies: Ready to Take One for the Team?

HDBeat, a voice we respect in all things high-def and next-gen TV, discusses and links to a list of top ten reasons you NEED to be an early adopter of an HD movie format. The argument basically boils down to: you need to “vote” on one format (HD DVD or Blu-ray) with your checkbook and “take one for the team” in terms of early adoption problems and pricing, ’cause if you don’t, one format will never shake out and prices won’t come down (and movie libraries will stay small). Personally, I’m with this guy (from the HD Beat item’s Comments):

“?#$% the studios and the manufacturers. If they lose money because they were too narrow minded and greedy to make a smart decision, I’m not going to lose sleep over it. The studios should have forced a single format in the first place. Now everyone has to muddle through years of competing formats and partial library releases on different formats. I love HD and gadgets as much as the next guy but I’m not going to spend a dime until something big happens.”

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The PaperMORE Office

The Kool-Aid continues making the rounds at Sony. The latest victims appear to be designers in the display department. They’ve come up with a real corker of an idea, a monitor that has a special area below it for Post-It Notes. (I have this already. It’s called an iMac G5.) Oh, but wait, this baby has a pen holder, too! As The Reg put it:

“It is a mystery why they didn’t go the whole hog and include a hand filing cabinet and somewhere to keep your sandwiches.”

Thanks, Jay!

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Geeks Have Sex?

Gina Trapani, the Lifehackertrix, was “taken to task” by well-known sex author Susie Bright for not having much about sex on her blog. Susie invited Gina onto her podcast, In Bed with Susie Bright, to talk about it, and to talk about IT. The appearance has even sparked some discussion about starting a spin-off blog, Sexhacker. I’d read it.