After a lot of searching and reading I stumbled across Carl and his ledstuff.co.nz website. He really helped me select what LED lights I needed and has been very helpful. After sales service was also excellent and no-fuss-quick. So if you have any LED lights drop by his website and see what he’s got. Even if you haven’t thought about using LEDs before have a look. I think you’ll be amazed at what can be done today.

Also a good address for LED torches for that earthquake bin.

http://www.elmoto-cycles.com/

Inventors from Stuttgart in Germany have crossed a mountain bike with an electric scooter. Looks great and should be the ideal thing for Kiwis. Goes 45km/h and has a radius of over 60km. Costs about a $1 per 100km. This is something I could see myself on. Probably even good for off the road. Have a look at the pictures and videos on the site. The concept is sound by the looks of it. Currently still a bit pricey at $8500+ but that’s bound to drop.

The constructors seem to have really splurged on good quality parts and got the design right. Remains to be seen what kind of vehicle class this would be in NZ. Could be all you need is a cycle helmet…

Bill English said today something like “the downturn is worse than even the worst prognosis and therefore the tax cuts cannot be upheld”. Basically either he is lying and National has pulled the election coup of the century by buying the election and then not paying up with full intent or he is admitting that the oh so financially competent National Party has no clue what’s happening on the world markets. Please Mr. Key take a pick! I do feel sorry for the 45% (minus the few super-rich) that have voted for National. You’ve just proven that you’re politically gullible. Hope this will teach you a lesson in believing in what politicians say.

As for cutting investments into superannuation, the second idiotic thing in the budget, it’s just typical behaviour. Pray on the future which someone else will have to deal with. They made it look as if there were only two options: no investment or an unsound investment. I really can’t believe that a “financially highly capable” National Party cannot find an investment that cannot return a good return. I’d even say that money could have been invested into NZ and have directly created jobs! How shortsighted.

There seem to be only two good things that came out of the budget.

1. Insulation for homes. Thanks Greens and Maori Party!
2. Luckily not even more headless damage. Thanks National Party for being a bit lazy or afraid of the backlash.

Point to note is the absence of Labour in this post. I think they have to step up to the game a bit if they want to have a chance in the near future.

Sorry for the political rant but it’s hard not commenting when given such an invitation. I do hope the feeling is mutual.

The site seems cleanly designed and easy to use. Only personal caveat I have ist that it doesn’t use the Government Logon Service. Would have been a nicer option one logon ‘n all.

Now we only need better public transport and we’re set to save some serious CO2.

Let’s see when CityHop will have them….

I did some calculations and it turns out I pay about $6000 a year for driving a car (car depreciation, petrol, repairs, WOF, registration, insurance, fines,…). Depending on the car value either depreciation or repairs are higher. So the $6000 are pretty independent on the type of car for cars up to $20,000.

We don’t drive more than 5000kms a year anyway and use the bus and sometimes taxi for most of our work-week commuting. In an average week we use the car 1-2 times only. So we are really don’t need a car at all. What I’d really like though is an electric car but no-one will sell me one and I don’t have the time to build my own. I really don’t want another gas guzzler. For the time being I decided with Rebecca that we’d try and go no-car.

What does no-car mean for us? We’ll take $5000 as the calculation basis. That is the money we can spend on any means of transportation. Not included in those are 1 taxi ride a week and bus fares to and from work as we do that if we have a car or not. After some research we have found that we can do the following:

1. Walk and use the bicycle (free)
2. Ride buses ($2.25 per ride)
3. Use taxis for all trips where buses don’t drive ($15-30 per ride)
4. Use www.cityhop.co.nz. ($75 yearly, $13.50 – $15/hour for a car)
5. Use rented cars for longer trips/holidays. (about $60 a day)
6. Get a scooter (electric/petrol) for everything that doesn’t fit the above ($2000-$3000 for a scooter + $40 petrol & insurance/month)

So… then $5000 gives you 2,222 bus rides, 166-333 taxi rides, 333-370hrs of cityhop cars, 83 days of rental cars (petrol excluded). The scooter (point 6) is excluded here for now. Maybe it also motivates us to walk a little more as this directly saves money on our bottom line (there are no fixed costs to speak of). That’s a LOT of transport and it sounds quite good from a financial perspective. And(!) we can switch back to a car at any point in time without having lost any money to speak of. From an environmental perspective this is probably the lowest CO2 rating you could have in our situation (not including working from home as that is not a viable option for us at the moment).

So we’re going to give it a shot. The budget will be $100/week for all commuting expenses excluding bus rides to and from work but including all taxi rides (i.e. the one taxi ride per week is included here). Let’s see how that turns out for us. I’ll definitely post some updates on how we are going.

I’d say that is a very nice reason to loose the fumes. Does a 150mph and a 150 miles per charge (probably not at 150mph though). The motorbike is called Mission One and is probably the fastest electric bike around at the moment. Have a look at the website for more pictures. Although I don’t want to see the price tag…..yet.

Where we had single core systems in the past we now have quad/eight-core systems. They are more efficient in Watt per MIPS but we now use ever more MIPS. So we are not really conserving energy. We would only be doing that if we kept the system usage the same. We have noticed in our test datacenter that the power usage has gone up dramatically and the cooling needs too. I think it is out of proportion to what’s being done. Nonetheless we need to put more power in and more cooling and….

The new power is going into more ram and HW to run newer and bigger OS’s, Java runtimes, .Net APIs,…  Do they bring more power to the user? Do software developers need to start thinking about power usage? I definitely think so. We need to start thinking of how and when to use multi cores and business needs to think about how time critical batch processing is. Developers need to know what API call consumes how much power per call and the such. Power saving features of hardware need to be used and optimised.

As for your desktop PC and/or your notebook… Most of us are using it to surf or do email. Maybe a little photo library stuff too. So why do we need quad-core 500-1200W consuming monster machines (I am not addressing the gamers out there)? Those machines would have replaced a whole scientific supercomputer 10 years ago. Luckily the notebooks are getting more prevalent. They usually use up to 80W. Even more interesting are the new Netbooks. They use even less power. Looking at Demand people are getting that too although power usage is not their motivation.

I still think IT is using far too much power for what is really needed. I’ve seen numbers like 15% of the worlds power is consumed by IT, one Google search consumes the equivalent power of running an energy saving lamp for 1 hour. I don’t know if these are just myths but they shure point to some smoke. We need to check in our own back yards (i.e. PCs and datacenters) if there’s a fire too.

IKEA is a household name all across the World. All the World? No. Two small islands in the Pacific resist the trend. New Zealand has NO IKEA! Here in NZ we live without the cheap but quality goods. Especially Europeans miss their favourite furniture store.

There are hundreds of rumours around the so-called Auckland-IKEA. It’s probably more elusive than the Loch Ness monster.

Judging from the demand I see I can’t explain why we don’t have one. NZ’s furniture prices are astronomical and the quality is cr*p (if you don’t plan on spending your months wages on one chair). People even resort to fly to Sydney and go to the IKEA there and ship it to NZ. So an Auckland store would at least pull all of the north island clientele.

But on top of that reading this article it might make sense from another perspective…. meeting Kyoto.I can’t see our current suppliers of furniture being very environmentally friendly. IKEA seems to have hit the nail on the head. They are going in the right direction with their cheap but not at any cost program. And I think the consumer is at that crossroads now. We want affordable furniture (and anything consumable for that matter) but we want to be environmentally friendly and get quality stuff. IKEA falls into that category as does Apple, Toyota Prius (although that’s debatable) and others. So far I don’t see those companies not succeeding. Just the opposite.

Why is there only a small percentage of these companies? Why are consumers not pushing the obviously winning strategy? Why don’t we have an IKEA? Is there a petition somewhere? Does this need to go on a political agenda?

(linked image from Inhabitat)

Some say the answer is in solar panelling the world or space, having a wind-farm on every hill, taking geothermal energy and having tidal generators for every stretch of coastline suitable. I’m not really opposed to that but even that is probably not enough to feed the energy needs and the future energy needs of India, China and others. I can also fully understand people that don’t want a rotor looming over their back garden.  So again what is the answer?

We all -deep down- know what the answer is. NO! It’s not nuclear reactors! God forbid! The radioactive waste on those has a half life of about 10,000 years. We haven’t even been able to come up with a warning sign that will last that amount of time (remember the pyramids are “only” 4000 years old). I think I’ll take coal any day compared to that. No, the answer is something we’ve all heard before but have chosen to ignore. It’s the stuff mentioned in the title. What I’m talking about is nuclear fusion.

Fusion is the only power source known to mankind that can supply more power than atomic reactors (thereby enough to power all of humanity) with producing a minimum of radioactive output (a minuscule amount compared to your average nuclear plant) or any output apart from energy for that matter. As I said we’ve all heard of it but why hasn’t everyone got one in their back yards? Well…. that’s because we can’t build them yet. We don’t even know if we can. The Europeans have come together to build the biggest Tokamak type reactor ever in France called the ITER (there’s also the Stellerator type fusion reactor like the Wendelstein 7-X being built in Germany which is a different concept and cheaper). It’s the first time there’s an attempt to build a fusion reactor that can produce more electricity than it consumes. i.e. it would be the first reactor that can be seen as a proper power generating station.

But remember that we don’t really know if the scientists and builders can do it. The whole project is currently budgeted for 5 billion US$. They will probably end up paying $6-7 billion. Expensive …not?! We’re building something we don’t even know will work but sinking all this money into it???!!!! Most people don’t even know that it is being built!

Well, I think we’re not spending enough and not enough buy a long shot. If ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) succeeds humanity will probably have solved all energy problems we ever had and could have. Within this century we could switch off almost all of our bad energy sources and wouldn’t even have to build any wind farms or solar whatevers. This would revolutionise the world energy economy. Fusion power is so cheap it would obliterate your energy bill. So why are we spending only $5-7 billion? If this is as good as it gets why aren’t we spending more? America pays $500+ billion a year in oil imports and $230 billion in electrical bills. A nuclear (fission) reactor costs about the same as the fusion reactor. Are you doing the maths?

There’s a lot of negative controversy around the ITER too. Green parties and Greenpeace are complaining that the funding is taking away from funding alternative energies. That fusion reactors will probably not be operative before 2050. Sorry but how shortsighted is that? Alternative energies are needed and good but we all know that they cannot ever produce enough power to feed the world with power. Humanity needs fusion power or something new we haven’t invented yet. We cannot stop researching fusion just to spend more money on the wrong type of power generation and by that I mean anything non fusion. Green parties and environmentally friendly organisations should concentrate on supporting fusion strongly AND pushing for alternative sources in the mean time. By bickering over this all energy sources loose.

Humanity will need more power in the future not less. Even if we start consuming less. We will probably see a day when there are 10-14 billion people living on this planet.  They all want to be warm, mobile and watch TV. They will still want to travel and do things. Fusion with its promise of the ideal power source is really the answer. I discuss electric cars, others are fans of hydrogen (which I believe will be the answer for trucks, buses, heavy machinery, air travel and not for personal travel – that will be battery-electric). Both need a clean energy source to have any positive impact on the world.We will not get that without the fusion reactor.

So my plea is to have a closer look at fusion and support it as much as possible. Maybe NZ should actively allow fusion reactors to be built and give TAX cutbacks for doing so. That might give the power companies something to aim for. But even if not that it would certainly create discussion and publicity for the technology. Who knows maybe the US Navy will go fusion and then they could come and visit us! Go out and do some research like I did and see for yourself. The links above are a good starting point.

Miraz

So far I haven’t driven an EV scooter and I’d be very keen. What I’m worried about are the Wellington hills. They are a challenge for any kind of transportation. They will affect the range of these cycles. The question is by how much.

(picture is the Vectrix VX-1)

I think the message is that simple and maybe we can do it without the politicians. You don’t necessarily need a law to forbid lightbulbs (thanks Nats for killing that act). You can just go and buy energy efficient ones. You can stop asking your car dealer for a petrol car and start asking for an electric one and promise him you’ll buy one if he can deliver one. You can switch to Meridian and give the people interested in clean energy the money to do more.You can start insulating your house to waste less energy (and who knows you might even convince your landlord). You can start thinking about what gadgets need to run how long. You can decide between a Kiwi made product and one coming from China/US (by the way, thanks Nats for killing the Kiwi Made project!). You can take the bus, ride the train, cycle or walk to work. You can challenge your employer to become more environmentally conscious. And you can switch off the lights in the office when you’re the last to go home. Maybe you can even vote CO2 away…

And I honestly doubt this will cange your quality of life one bit! I’d even suggest that you WILL feel a whole lot better.

As I have said before. It’s not about global warming but it’s about saving us all, becoming more a conscious and sensible species.

http://tinyurl.com/5laabm

Make a long story short this is another case of scientists saying Global Warming is a myth.

What I hate about the whole f*****g Global Warming discussion is that nobody seems to have gotten the point. I couldn’t care less about the official “Global Warming” discussion. This whole Global Warming discussion is about humanity looking out for nature so that humanity can survive. This is NOT about driving down temperatures or how much ice there is. Nature will always survive. If our planet turns into a smouldering Mars then that’s nature too but that won’t include humanity though.

So don’t kid yourself. What’s on the line here is us. Or to be more precise you the reader. Well to be exact its your kids and their kids. If we continue pillaging the planet we stand to lose it all for future generations. We have actually already done that. Now is the question how much we can get back.

And then there’s scientists that argue endlessly about computer models, theories and experiments. We have gazillion dollar research projects to find out if humanity is responsible for global warming. All for what? Proving something I already know?

Go out and look at what is happening. Try and find some untouched wild forests/mangroves/wildlife out there! Try and find a non polluted waterway/ocean/lake. Try and find a spot with CLEAN air. If you can -which I doubt- be happy. If you can’t, then I think you’ve just found “Global Warming”.

“Global Warming” should actually and more accurately be called “The quest for human survival”. Or maybe “Making our World worth living in again”.  Honestly?! Who wants to argue with me that humanity is not destroying nature? Open your eyes and weep at what you see. Then ask yourself if that is the world you really want to live in or if you’d like to have it with a little more nature and beauty. I’m no saint but I think I at least I’m starting to care and to react. Maybe you’ll open your eyes and take a look. Tell the scientists to shut-up and then go and start doing something about it.

And as a side-note…. Now that the new government is in place in NZ they have already started turning back the clocks. I honestly resent them for literally taking the axe to nature again. How can such stupid and shortsighted people run a country?! This probably applies to Labour just as much. They should all be ashamed for what they are doing but hey, if they were decent caring people they probably wouldn’t be in politics.

I’m still waiting on what New Zealand will be doing. BetterPlace has contacts but nothing has come of it so far. Not much hope here though with a Key lead National Government. We will probably loose out at least for another 3 years. I hope the new government is not as short sighted as I believe them to be. Somehow I’m still a little hopeful that I can replace my gas gulping pile of metal for something clean & green before the end of 2010.

[Update] Michellin has a nice invention here. A complete drive train in a wheel!