Intel’s Intelligent Home
Intel put together a very elegant concept for a energy dashboard that works off of the processors they manufacture. The micro site includes overview documentation as well as a demo and video of the system in action. It's crazy to think that something as significant and commonplace as our energy monitoring has been restricted to a metal monstrosity with a spinning arrow at the back of our homes. Even worse, as an apartment dweller I don't even know where I look to view my energy consumption levels. The only transparency I get on that matter is through my monthly bills - and no one really wants to look at that on a regular basis. Hopefully we see more innovations on energy monitoring soon, and hopefully we see it available at the consumer level even sooner.
Growing with your holiday tree
The holidays are very much about tradition and this winter season one of the most iconic traditions for many denominations has to be the Christmas tree.
Now for many, the annual Christmas tree has a unfortunately short life span. People head on out into the woods (predesignated, authorized woods of course) and chop down the fullest, greenest pine tree they can find. Others will drive to their local tree lot and drop some extra cash for a pre cut one. This evergreen beauty is then hauled back home, propped up on its stump, decorated and admired for about a month or so until it dries out and sheds almost every needle on its branches, carpeting the floor in a glorious mosaic of fire hazards. I apologize if that sounded a little cut and dry (pun intended) but that's the quickest way I describe it. Curtness aside, the Christmas is one of my fondest child hood memories.
It wasn't the sheen and crinkle of gifts that lay at the feet of the tree or the sparkle of the ornaments that hung on its branches (though those were all pretty indeed), it was the sight and smell of a bit of nature. Correction, it was the sight and smell of a formidable piece of nature right in my own home. I've always admired the grandeur and calming presence of nature and these trees were no exception. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and we always had to haul this little beauty at the end of the season and watch it get chipped with hundreds of other trees. It's good to see the trees be reused in form of mulch, but do so many trees need to be cut down in order to satisfy a single tradition? Can't we just go out and admire the trees? Perhaps not.
Some people use plastic trees that they can reuse each year. Others opt for live trees that they re-plant rather than chip every year. Now, in terms of greeness, re-planting sounds like a great idea. Many people may agree with me on this, but not everyone has the resources, drive or time to do this. But many of us have extra cash and will pay a little extra for convenience. So, a small Vancouver company came up with their own idea.What if they raised your Christmas tree for you?
Evergrow Christmas Trees was started in January 2009 by two UBC Forestry graduates, Sean Macalister and Jeff Ferguson. For a premium price they will deliver a living Christmas tree to you, pick it up when you're done with it, re-plant it and tend to until you're ready for it next year. You even get to pick the type of tree you like. What a great idea. But are you willing to pay for it?
Installations in Architecture
World Changing contributor Regine Debatty featured a book that quickly made my list of "to reads" (which is getting dauntingly large): Installations by Architects. The title alone combines to of my biggest interests, but to see them combined in a novel that looks at how architects have used installation work to test the boundaries of what architecture can be about seems nothing short of inspiring. The book will focus on 5 categories of architectural installation - tectonics, body, nature, memory and public space. Once I actually hit this item on my list I'll give an update on my thoughts. I sincerely hope the library will carry this one.
ESL Bulbs
Here is a video on a very promising technology setting out to replace the current lighting champions we find screwed in our homes: incandescent and compact fluorescent. Furthermore, it demonstrates several advantages over the more recent LED light bulbs.
Developed under the name of the Vu1 this Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) light can last up to 6,000 hours, about three to four times the lifespan of incandescents and comparable to CFLs. They produce 50 percent less heat than incandescents and have no mercury unlike CFLs. ESL bulbs would also be garbage disposal and cost around $20 when it hits the market.
On the side of practicality, the ESL bulbs appear to recreate an very natural form of light. I haven't seen a single alternative to incandescents that can create as nice a lighting effect. It also turns on instantly and is fully dimmable.
Me? In a magazine?
You read that right - I was recently featured in Granville Magazine.
Though the title may come off a little cheesy the article focuses on an emerging trend among young urbanites: personal gardening. Journalist Vanessa Richmond came to me through a mutual friend of ours who knew I was starting a little herb garden on my window sill. I never thought my novice attempt at developing a green thumb was part of anything greater; turns out I couldn't be anymore wrong. After a short discussion with Vanessa I discovered there is an alarming large increase in the number of urban dwelling young adults who are starting their own gardens. Anything from a small window sill garden to a full fledged in ground vegetable patch.
In retrospect, this makes a lot of sense. With hot topics like environmentalism, urban density, food manufacturing and sustainability its no wonder people are using gardens as a means of taking control of what their own environment. With feature films like Food Inc. coming out shortly its no wonder people are afraid of what their putting into their bodies. Personally, I'm quite concerned with the quality of the food on shelves these days but the biggest point of my herb garden was to be more financially responsible. I love cooking, especially with fresh herbs, but I found that my herb purchases would go greatly under used. I would purchase a bunch of one type of herb and use only a fraction of it - the rest would go to waste within a day or two. I thought, there had to be a better way to work with herbs. So I started a garden and I'm loving it.
The need of the power outweighs the needs of the gadgets
Just a quick post about a topic area I believe is sorely understated in the world of gadgetry: battery technology. It appears scientists at the University of Waterloo have designed a lithium-sulfur battery that is capable of 3 times the power of lithium-ion batteries through the use of nano-technology - wonderful. Though there are more articles on greening technology and developing alternative fuel types than you can shake a stick at, the specific topic of portable battery technologies appears to be lacking.
It may just be the information that I come across but there seems to be an imbalance here. Technologically, mobile devices seem to be making leaps and bounds in their computing power and functionality. A cellphone used to just be able to place calls, but now they are capable of voice commands, Internet browsing, video conferencing, GPS, texting, short range file exchange etc. This is all good and dandy until the device shuts down. The more the disparate functions of our daily lives get pushed together in a single multi functional device the more we use it; and consequently, the more power that it demands. I'm glad to see research is going into battery technology, because the demand for it seems to be ever increasing.
One of the reasons I kept my cell seperate from my media device is because I don't think they can keep up with my usage. I want a charge to last longer than 1 day.
Take a read.
Good Magazine and Good Infographics
First and foremost, I wanted point out the wonderful magainze that does GOOD. Good describes themselves as "...a collaboration of individuals, businesses, and nonprofits pushing the world forward. Since 2006 [they have] been making a magazine, videos, and events for people who give a damn." The succinct and blatant statement immediately caught my attention. I quickly scanned through some of their content and frequently found myself reading into tid bits of their articles which covered a variety of topics I'm interested in - environmentalism, politics, media, design etc. But what made this magazine join my long list of RSS feeds so quickly. Well, you can subscribe to the magazine for as little or as much as you want and 100% of the proceeds go to a charity of your choice. Good stuff.
Check it out. They do some great work.
One thing in particular I consistently love from GOOD is their infographics. Not only are their infographics well designed, but infographics are a invaluable way of communicating material in an informative and interesting that could otherwise be boring and dry.
Here are some of my favourite examples thus far:
A time line of state same sex marriage laws - here
Changes to 15 most popular public transit systems in the US - here
Step aside CFLs – LEDs are in town
picture - Oskay at Flickr
A quick browse through my RSS feeds today brought me upon this article on a potential new standard for lightbulbs - LEDs. Now, I've been aware of the push/research into LED lighting for a while now but it appears researchers at Cambridge University have brought it to a whole new level. One of the largest hurdles in the race to an LED filled world was the production costs. Previously, the expected cost of producing an LED lightbulb was $40. Gallium nitride, which is used in the production of the LED light bult is normally "grown" on sapphire but the research done at Cambridge found a method of doing this on silicon wafers instead. What cost savings does this translate to? An estimated cost of $3 (that's a $37 savings!). To top this all off, the lightbult would use a third of the electricity of CFL (compact fluorescents).
Via Green Daily
Desert energy
To some, the desert might be looked at as a desolate stretch of land incapable of sustaining much life, or lacking in any sustainable resources; but to the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (or TREC) these hot, arid barrens stand to be a potentially rich source of clearn, renewable evergy that could to fed to the whole world. This organization of engineers and scientists formed an idea called Concentrating Solar Polar (CSP). The idea of CSP is to arrange mirrors in the desert to concentrate sunlight and use the resulting heat to raise steam to drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station.
How would they transmit this energy? Well TREC has calculated that 90% of the wrold's popluation live within 2700 km of a desert. Using low-loss HVDC transmission lines, it is feasible to transmit electricity for 3000 km or more. That alone sets the ground work for a basic concept or generating the energy and setting to people's homes. But TREC didn't end it there. Without getting into too much detail, it appears the organization has thought this plan out well. Everything from weather fluctuations, future energy needs, costs and grid implementation have all been given thought. Be sure to read the whole article here.
The Green”er” Docks of Paris
The city of Paris created a competition to create a new structure for the docks of Paris. One of the challenges of the redesign was to decide wether or not to retain the old concrete structure that originally was built there. Architetural firm Jakob+MacFarlane appears to have won the comeptition and opted to maintain the original building. Rather than destroy the original piece, they instead decided to "grow" upon it with a skin comprised of steel and glass. The end result was a intricate building literally representative of old and new architectural styles. Though it may not be as beautiful as something that may have been built from the ground up, I think the designers made a piece that worked well within their constraints. In doing this they saved a lot of energy and waste that would have been put into destroying the original building and hauling it off.
http://www.contemporist.com/2009/01/12/docks-de-paris-by-jakobmacfarlane/