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Awesome Lego Construction

This is the most awesome Lego construction I have seen in a while.  Its called CrawlerTown, and its back-story is one that tries to tell some eco-moral, about survival in a post climate change world.

crawlertown

Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming
Well - I am not purposely turning this blog into an environmental rant, but I noticed in the news that the Russians have also confirmed something is up with the way the Russian weather station data has been manipulated similarly to the recent discovery related to the Darwin stations.
 
Is CO2 caused Climate Change the new WMD's?
Okay - this is a pretty over-analysed topic, but CO2 caused climate change is starting to smell to me like a Weapon of Mass Destruction, i.e. everyone is sure it exists without evidence, until it doesn't.
 
(Being clear here CO2 caused climate change as opposed to climate change in general, which has happened many times before in history, and at times much hotter than now.)
 
What has really shocked me is some independant work looking into how data from weather stations in Darwin Australia have been used by the "scientists" we trust with our future: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/ 
 
Reveals that for unknown reasons, the data has been "Homogenised" from showing cooling to showing warming. 
 
 
Now, my personal position is that I believe that climate change is happening, but am unconvinced as to the cause.  I base this on nothing but what I hear and see and experience.  I know when I was a kid the winters were colder, sometimes the grass would even be crunchy in the morning, something I have not seen in many, many years.
 
So why do the scientists have to artificially skew the data so badly to convince people?  I would have believed it without the adjustments.  Personally I would prefer them focus on what the cause of climate change is.
 
I don't mind us switching to renewable energy sources, as burning oil and petrol at the mercy of the middle-east has generally never been a good plan for the future - but I don't like us being forced to do it under the guise of responding to a fictional WMD-like threat of CO2.
 
I worry that too many people have placed themselves in industries that now rely on the "Climate-Threat" to remain real so they maintain their own livelyhoods.  "Knights of the C02 Footprint" or some such thing almost treating it as a new religion.  So much so, if anyone tries to question rationally the basis for whats going on they become a "skeptic". 
 
It very closely reminds me of the loss of rational thought that happens to people when they buy Apple hardware - but that belongs in a separate rant.
 
J.
The Evil Bit (RFC 3514)
It continually amazes me finding gems like this in the RFC Database:
 
Life would be so much easier if firewalls just honoured the Evil Bit: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3514
 
(RFC = Request For Comment, the informal rules that make the Internet what we use today)
 
 
Aeroponics/Hydroponics Update

Okay so the aeroponics is probably classed now more like hydroponics as the ultrasonic mister didn’t last very long before it failed.  Seems it needs to be cleaned too often to be useful, so instead I am relying on the little tubes feeding water directly to each basil plant.

After 1 week in 13cF nutrient and 5.8pH level the little plants are not dead, but don’t seem to be doing much.

DSC05270 DSC05278

Week 0

Week 1

I have noticed considerable root growth into the water streams.  When I put the seedlings into the system their roots had to be trimmed quite a bit so I guess they should be allowed some adjustment time.  I think next time I will try to start the seeds in the same medium that is used in the system.

The Website is Down

After reading Jake’s blog I found this little nugget, and its the hardest I have laughed for a good while:

WebSiteIsDown

Mobile Monger has moved..
 
You can now get a new and improved Mobile Monger in the Windows Mobile Market place.
 
How can it be both new and improved I hear you ask? Well it has improvements from comprehensive testing and efforts to make it compliant to the Marketplace standard as well as many hours subjected to "The Hopper" turned up some stability and memory problems that were fixed. Its new because it has a new user interface for selecting a storage card and memory locations. 
 
Remember, like any Windows Mobile Marketplace application you can always give it a try for 24 hours to see if it suits you, and if not just return it.
 
Coming soon are new features for deleting and moving files, which if you get Mobile Monger from the marketplace you will be notified of and receive when they become available.
Aeroponics – Part 4

Okay, so its been a while since I posted an update on the Aeroponics/Hydroponics project, but finally all the ingredients have come together. 

So the final setup is:

  • 12 Litre top container
  • 55 Litre bottom container
  • Fish Tank pump
  • Ultraviolet water steriliser
  • Ultrasonic water mister
  • Some clear plastic and silicone pipe and fittings
  • 1 LED Grow Lamp (Home made)
  • Nutrients/PHUp/PHDown.
  • Various Meters to measure pH and cF
  • 4 x Basil seedlings raised by Angela

Put it all together….

DSC05271 DSC05272

 

DSC05277 DSC05270

Will see how it goes – if they are still alive after a week I will declare success!

Inside Torrens Island Power Station

 

IMAGE_106_1

Recently I was privileged to have a tour of the inside of Torrens Island Power station, the source of Adelaide’s electricity.  The short version: wow.  I didn’t realise the scale of the operation that goes on quietly 24-hours a day, every day and in the case of ‘B’ station since 1975.  Each ‘A’ and ‘B’ station have a set of four gas fired steam turbines (me standing in front of one above).  The main structure housing the equipment is about 13 stories high with that see-through grid flooring being the norm for most of the walkways – eek!  The people and technology driving it all is impressive.  The people especially, as I was speaking with some of the night staff there I found that it takes 2-3 years to become familiar with all the hundreds of valves, pumps, cooling systems, and control systems it takes to run the place. 

250px-Torrens_Island_Power_station_from_the_river_-_portrait

I-OriginEnergy 

701-tape

(IBM 701 – circa 1949)

It also surprised me to see the computing systems running the plant, like finding a bunch of Leeds & Northrup and Bailey INFI-90/NET-90 gear still humming along complete with mag-tape drives and connected to a bevy of continuous stationary Facit dot-matrix printers.  Its good to see Magnetic Tape (first introduced in 1949) still going strong in running our critical human needs systems in 2009.  The death of computing like this has been greatly overstated :)

Pratik's Photo Log
Pratik a work colleague has started to keep a log of his photos.  My car got snapped as part of his first round of photos! Check them out here.
 
 
My MINI parked at work
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