Power Watching
Posted: Wed 2 January, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Green Leave a comment »One of the things we got during the Festering Season was an OWL Electricity Monitor as part of our “Good Life” way of life. Yes, as BW said, it was £50 for the kit, but well, we’ll see how much it saves us.
Installation of the kit was remarkably simple – particularly bearing in mind that I’m really quite useless on these things, and that it involves putting the sensor around the live supply to the electricity meter, it was still easy to do, and took less than ten minutes all told.
Calibration and set-up took a little longer, but I’d say that everything was set up (except the actual electricity price, as I can’t find the supply price for our new account at the moment, which is fucking annoying) within half an hour.
It’ll take some getting used to, and a little bit of time to understand what’s actually being reported – but it basically monitors electricity usage through the day, so you can see how much is being used, particularly when everything is “off”. (i.e. left in standby, or with things plugged in but unconnected – phone chargers, I’m looking at you here) It also displays that data in terms of carbon emissions, either in kg per hour or tonnes per year, and the amount that the current load is costing you in pence per hour.
In non-electrical data, you also get to see the current temperature in the room where the monitor is sitting, and the humidity. I’m not quite sure of the use of those bits of information – although I guess that the temperature part at least is going to be useful to compare with the thermostat, so we can see if they produce the same results.
All gone, All gone
Posted: Sun 30 December, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Festering Season, Green Leave a comment »
While I’m fairly well-known now as someone who doesn’t like the Festering Season, Herself is rather more enthusiastic about the season, so we’ve had the decorated tree and so on while people have been here.
We bought the tree locally, and it has to be said that it was one of the worst trees I’ve ever seen or had – the needles started dropping pretty much immediately, and then didn’t stop. By today it was just about half bald.
Anyway, this weekend we’ve been taking the stuff down again, committing the tree to compostable waste (except for the trunk, which will be committed to the wood-burner at some point) and the decorations taken down. The cards will be shredded and probably composted (or used as firelighters, I haven’t decided yet) but that’s it, chez Lyle, the Festering Season is well and truly over.
And not a moment too soon.
Environmentally Friendly?
Posted: Sat 15 December, 2007 Filed under: Cynicism, Green Leave a comment »Is it just me that ends up with a certain bemused cynicism to see that the UN Conference on Climate Change which is currently all over the news is in – um – Bali ?
So every attendee is going to have had to fly in to Bali. And OK, I realise that people would have to travel in order to get to the conference wherever it was held – although surely that would be where something virtual like Second Life should be able to come into its own? Or is it just me that thinks it would make more sense to have something like this use an on-line way of doing all this shit, rather than adding umpteen thousands of air/carbon miles for a conference about global warming?
Free Rice
Posted: Tue 13 November, 2007 Filed under: Green, Health, News Leave a comment »
(via Blue Witch)
The FreeRice website has recently started as a spin-off from Poverty.com, and as of the time of writing has already donated some 1,330,639,890 grains of rice to be distributed through the United Nations’ World Food Programme. Read the FAQs for more information
FreeRice has two goals:
- Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
- Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.
Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.
Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.
Yes, it’s advertising-sponsored, but it’s not intrusive and hell, it’s what pays for the rice.
My average literacy level so far is 40-42, (mainly because I had occasional moments of twonkdom) which is apparently pretty good. Still, it’s fun, and it’s for a decent cause, so go on, participate, have a bit of bobble-hatted fun, and do some donation of rice via the UN. You know you want to.
Fowl Play
Posted: Wed 31 October, 2007 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden Leave a comment »I know, it’s a clichéd title – but hey ho. Live with it.
Anyway, we’ve had contact from the person supplying us with our chickens, coop, and all the guff for starting us off with three chickens. We pick them up on Sunday – just in time for my birthday. The coop is fuckin’ huge – 3′ x 2′ x 8′, so I’m hiring a van for the day to pick everything up.
In a bizarre way I’m actually looking forward to getting them – it’s going to make for some interesting times, having three chickens as well as Hound and Psycho Cat…
Windbelt
Posted: Wed 17 October, 2007 Filed under: Green Leave a comment »I think that this is a fantastic idea – basically, it’s just a micro-generator in a similar vein to a wind-turbine, but far simpler. It’s not going to power a city, but it’ll power small appliances, such as replacements for kerosene-lamps and the like. It could even be used to charge laptops, phones etc.
More importantly, it’s simple, easy to maintain, and doesn’t have all the extra necessary maintenance and infrastructure that a wind-turbine farm would require.
Absolutely brilliant.
Garden Organisation
Posted: Sat 6 October, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Green Garden, Plots & Green Stuff Leave a comment »Currently, we’re looking at what we’re going to be doing next year in the garden. Yes, I know, getting scarily organised. We’re going to be doing a lot of work in there during ’08, so we need to have a plan.
There’s going to be a fair amount of veg growing, for sure – we’ve already bought sweet and chilli peppers, sweetcorn, onions, garlic, as well as a couple of others, and we’ve still got some other stuff to buy – as well as generally sorting out more of the layout, getting rid of some (most) of the roses, putting in some more structure, and putting in a decking area around the already-existing pergola thingy.
So we’re starting to plan what’s going to be done when, and how, and why. And by who, of course.
It’s a bit odd to be planning some of the stuff for 2008 already, but there’s going to be so much going on at the time, it’s going to be better to know beforehand what we’re up to, rather than getting to Saturday morning and wondering what needs doing next…