recycling aeroplanes
The big aeroplane manufacturers Boeing and Airbus are starting to recycle their old planes (30 year old+) before the government is telling them to! I suppose it’s a bit self-serving, as they want to set the standards of what is economically viable before the government sits down to decide what those standards are, but at least they are recycling.
From Where old aeroplanes go to die [BBC]
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blogging through other distractions
It’s hard to put down words for a blog when you should be putting down words for an essay. Apologies for the slow blogging this past week.
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give up flying?
Have you given up flying? [BBC newsnight]
The ethical man ponders about his own carbon emissions, his own global foot-print and discovers that the jet setting holiday contributes a huge amount to his family’s carbon emissions. Ethically, can he continue to take advantage of the dirt cheap airlines?
Apparently not.
Europe is famous for cost cutting airlines, such as Easy Jet, Ryanair, and others, which offer plane tickets at insanely cheap prices. Now, they can do this because Europe is, let’s face it, a small place. It has 55 countries crammed into a continent a little bigger than Australia. (via wikipedia on Europe) You can take a quick flight and be at an exotic destination. Many Europeans take holidays in other countries, arriving by plane.
It seems like you are personally ripping chunks out of the ozone every time you take off, and it is true, aeroplanes burn an enormous amount of fuel to get into the air. But let me tell you a simple truth:
It’s going to fly whether you are on it or not!
The comments on the newsnight article are amusing, and very concerning. There are people convinced that they are helping the environment by driving instead of flying. The logic is flawed- if you leave the car at home, it stays at home.
The true alternative is taking transport that will be going anyway, and if we can encourage lots of people to go by boat, bus or train and reduce the amount of flights, then it will help the environment.
Giving up flights for some whacked ethical reason isn’t going to do anything but inflate your ego.
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ready for some stories?
Have you struggled to explain that brilliant new technology, RSS, to your favourite non-geek, only to be met with a blank stare and a “huh?”
Well, flounder no more, with how to explain RSS the Oprah way [back in skinny jeans] (via LifeHacker.)
The article explains the time saving aspect of RSS, and how easy it is. A must read- it really does a good job of translating geek to non-geek.
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evil technology
The curse of the blogging world seems to be re-blogging, that is, copy and pasting other’s content verbatim, especially if that includes using RSS to automatically suck content to ad-filled pages in a moneymaking scam.
Many blogs have taken to partial feeds to dissuade scammers, though this of course damages readership- many people read blogs through RSS readers. (see Partial vs Full RSS feeds [Paul Stamatiou])
All lamenting aside, the technology could actually be used in a good way- say for a front page of a site that has several different blogs. You could pull in the partial feeds, post them in chronological order (which is automatic), and save yourself a stack of time maintaining a separate front page blog, and focus on the content of the other blogs.
Just a thought.
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VW Nepal rally
Another great series of photos from the BBC:
[In Pictures] Nepal VW Beetle rally
I really like VDubs’/Bugs/Beetles/Petas – they are fun to drive. See, mum, they are “solid, heavy metal, I feel safe driving one”.
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weird art
Something completely bizzare: New recruit joins Terracotta Army
The picture is pretty funny. You can see the Chinese police are fighting hard with their smiles.
And I’ll leave the surprise to the article, I won’t spill the beans here.
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iTunes 7: it’s blue
Thousands of screaming music heads stampeded to upgrade to Apple’s iTunes seven. I became one of them today, downloading the hefty upgrade. The first thing I noticed upon starting up is that the familiar green note has gone- replaced by a blue one. iTunes 5 was white, 6 was more silver, and 7 is blue. There are hints of the blue toning through out the interface: blue tinted scroll bars etc.
There have been cries of iTunes messing up the sound of the song files, and at first I heard the phantom crackle. I’m pretty sure that they have changed the ways that the bits are interpreted, but the fault really lies with my tinny standard laptop speakers. Plugging in my nice Sony headphones showed that the changes were meant as improvements- and boy does it sound good.
Another thing that I have just noticed, and I believe to be new: The equaliser has presets, such as bass boost, bass reduce, spoken voice, jazz, piano, classical and the list goes on. This is fun to play with, but the ground shaker is this:
if you view a song’s information, you can set the equalizer preset- so your different styles of songs can exploit the speakers best.
Gapless album: a very exciting box to tick for those albums whose tracks run into each other. A quick fiddle with this didn’t seem to have much of an impact though- I could still randomly jump around the tracks. Of course, you could tick “skip this when shuffling.”
My big gripe though: iTunes wiped my podcast directory. Everything. Gone. A clean slate.
This is annoying when you have hour long lectures podcasted to you (thank you Monash computer science faculty!) and have to download those monsters all over again.
This has lead me to appreciate the number next to Podcasts and Downloads this is very helpful- a quick glance shows that you have un-listened to episodes.
The new Downloads view is very nice- shows what you have lined up for download and individual progress bars showing time remaining, how many megabytes out of the total you have downloaded. It also only tries downloading three things at once- the others are “waiting.”
Of course, there are a stack of new features, some subtle, others mind blowing, and I haven’t covered them all here. Overall, it’s a good upgrade, (though I don’t iPod, so be warned that there have been some complaints there.)
To sum up: on decent speakers, the sound upgrades, especially the equalizer preset for individual songs, is absolutely fantastic. Biggest gripe: wiped my podcasts directory. Very annoying.
Lifestyle adjustments:
I just can’t walk around my room any more, anchored by the headphones. Speakers are on my wishlist for Christmas. Oh- and I might get close to my download limit this month.
All images are screenshots of Apple’s iTunes product. The logo and any copyright belong to them.
A small final note- no thanks to Louisa Hearn who wrote
Apple’s new iTunes version branded a lemon [the age] and provided no links to the forum posts she was referring to.
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can you blog on a TV?
Sun setting on TVs, research shows [the Age]
Pick one- keep your TV, computer, or mobile/cell phone.
less than 20 per cent of the gen Y group (aged 18-26) ranked TVs top compared with the 37 per cent who rated their PCs as the most important. A further 27 per cent preferred their mobile phones, while the remainder nominated other gadgets.
I would definitely go with computer (I’m one of those pesky 18-26s). It is the way I stay in touch with people around the world, and it’s my entertainment, though I still use the mobile phone when on the go for phone calls, and the TV isn’t dead in this household.
The study shows that the older you get, the more likely you would say “TV”. Is this because it is the technology that has been around in our homes the longest? I’m not sure that many older people appreciate or even have a computer or a cell phone.
The question that I want to know, however, is kids of 13-17 years old. Would they say “mobile” straight away?
Perhaps we are becoming a more connected society, engaging with each other more, or are we just becoming more and more dependant on the electricity running through metal and plastic?
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Immigration Coast Guard
They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and I really like the simple visual way the
The BBC’s In Pictures feature tells a story.
This one is about a task force set up to patrol the sea between Africa and Europe, looking for the illegal migrants. They do so to take the boats to port, where the people are looked after by the Red Cross, and then taken to detention centres.
It really struck me how awkward, emotionally, the situation must be for the men of the Guardia Civil (civil guard). There is concern for the illegal migrant’s safety, while they are also protecting the borders of their country. There is also a large amount of respect for the migrants, and their tenacity, courage and strength.
The point that is hammered home for me, as you see the huge amounts of people willing to risk their lives for a better one, that something must be done to make the world a place where illegal immigration just isn’t needed any more.