Funny photo | SF compost

This morning I read over on the Inhabitat blog that San Francisco has jut made it a "law" (seems odd to think of this as a law) that the city will now add mandatory composting to their waste management. I applaud this effort (though I'm a little confused how it all will work - I'm sorry, I can't see how this will a) Not smell! (because people will not know what is the right thing to compost or not, and because people are lazy (and/or stupid) and they'll just put anything they want into the compost catagory) and b) not attract rodents.
But hopefully they have it all figured out - because I know first hand - no wait, I guess it's "second hand" that my ma also composts for their small backyard garden. It's really a good thing.

All of the above said... when I looked at the photo above, I just had to laugh at the guy in the lower right hand side. He's just got his head down, and is pinching his nose as if he has the worst tension headache. I can just imagine him as one of the mayor's advisers and he's thinking to himself, 'THIS will be a disaster!' :)

(if you can't see it, you can click on the image to enlarge it).

new batteries from Toshiba

Been a while since I posted anything "green" so here's a cool discovery...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22240865/

And it's a short post to make up for my "book" post yesterday.

Off the grid...

I just read this post over on the makezine site about how a guy made his own "hand-cranked" reading light for his bedside. I really like the idea, and even more, I like his justification of the idea. He read this article over on treehugger.com about how this person says that rather than try to take on the monumental task of living off the grid (in green-terms that's different meaning than conspiracy-terms ;) He suggests picking one room of your house or apartment and taking that room off the grid. Interesting. I might have to think about if I can do something similar to this.
Here's the instructable for the hand cranked night light.
While you're over at the instructables site, be sure to check out my first instructable - I put one up for my water rocket experience (here).

Shame on Amazon

So I've been very conscious lately of lessening my "green footprint" lately. Turning off lights when I don't really need them, recycling, etc... Well, I just ordered a new mouse via Amazon.com the other day. (I also ordered a Wacom Graphire tablet). So this morning I arrive at work, and there are TWO LARGE boxes waiting for me. After the initial excitement of seeing the little happy face icon from Amazon, it struck me... WHY is that HUGE box (16x21x10) there when all I ordered was a 3x4" mouse? Well, I got home tonight and unpacked it all. What a real shame that someone in the packing department WASTED all this packaging on this small object. The BIG ball of paper you see is one long continuous strip of paper... I didn't unroll it all but it had to be at least 20 feet long. So this is a Colbert Report styled blog post with a "WAG of my finger" at Amazon.com.
(Oh, and so far - the mouse is GREAT! at a simple $19 - and the Graphire tablet is great too! A must have for photoshop work.)

Tech Tags: Green packaging amazon.com wasteful wag

more free energy

I just realized that this idea of "free energy" may be misleading... technically speaking a hydro-electric plant is free energy in that the company is simply harnessing the power of the water via a damn to creat energy then selling it to the users. Hmm, pretty good deal for them huh. Well, There's been mention of this idea before, and I think it's a GREAT idea... to harness the power from the ocean via the ups and down of either waves of tides. This guy over on the MAKE magazine site has made his own prototype and it works pretty well. (though one person claims it's only genereating a minuscule amount of power). The real point of this though is that it can be scaled up and used to create continuous power, and cleanly too! I think this is the answer in the future that there will be large off shore power plants that are anchored to the ocean floor yet bob up and down on the tidal flow. Here's the link to the make site.

Tech Tags: Makezine Make Free+energy prototype waves ocean

New Book

Woohoo! I finished a book last night! I would like to tell you about it but I have a reason not to at this moment. I will post about it later. (Ooo, sounds so secretive doesn't it?).
So rather than pick up one of the many other books I have on my night table to finish, I pick up a new book!
It is a rather intimidating book. It's a monster at about 600+ pages (though there are quite a bit of photos). And the paper (which is very nice) is rather thick, so I hope I'll be able to push my way through this relatively easy.
The title you ask? It's called "WorldChanging: A Users Guide to the 21st Century" (amazon link). See, even the title is intimidating isn't it? I've only just scratched the surface (I finished the into and the "pre-something or other" by Al Gore) and started the first chapter. The pre-amble (that's what I'll call it) by Al, was good but a bit on the dry side. (much like Al, and his movie). But it was still good. The introduction was much better. It started to fill me with a bit of dread and depression talking about how much trouble the world is in due to our human impact, but it started to offer hope. I'm now encouraged to continue reading this in the hopes of learning more and doing more. I hope I can stick with this book and finish it.
One thing it did that I found encouraging is that it encouraged starting small. Just do one thing to lessen your "footprint" on this earth. I started by turning off the hallway light. It then encourages you to consume less, and be thoughtful about what you do consume. Send a message by what you consume (or don't).
I hope to be posting more as I read on. In the meantime, check out their website (At first glance it looks well designed). OH, the book is gorgeous. It has a dust sleeve with a fantastic image of a bird with laser cut holes (I found this a bit unnecessary though, and with a book about being "green" I thought it a bit hypocritical). The inside pages are also well designed.

Grr... I tried uploading an image of this book but blogger is not letting me upload.
Yeah! It looks like I can upload photos again - 12/31/06

Tech Tags: worldchanging book green earth humanity hope footprint