Off you go… into the purple yonder!

Carectomy has a nice writeup on 10 years of free public transportation in Hasselt, Belgium. I remember when this was introduced - most people wrote it off as a political stunt. It’s really nice to see that the project is still alive and kicking 10 years later.

Great article over at computerworld.com on reducing the energy consumption of a home office.

There is an interesting blog post at carectomy.com about the state of the US rail transportation system. The article mentions the “Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act” of 2007 (S.294) that cleared the Senate at the end of October with a $10 billion provision for building a high-speed rail network throughout the nation.
I suspect that [...]

I got a ViewSonic VP2030b today, and given all the recent commotion about blackle.com, I figured I would verify the claims in Google’s blogpost.

Description

Brightness

Power consumption

Sleep mode (no signal, orange light) or switched ‘off’ with the front switch

N/A

0.01A at 120V

Google.com (1024×768)

100%

0.69A at 120V

Blackle.com (1024×768)

100%

0.68A at 120V

Google.com (1024×768)

50%

0.58A at 120V

Blackle.com (1024×768)

50%

0.58A at 120V

Google.com (1600×1200)

100%

0.71A at 120V

Blackle.com (1600×1200)

100%

0.69A [...]

Scientists at a subsidiary of Boeing have published research on solar cells for electricity generation that are more than 40% effective. These are solar cells for use in concentrators, perhaps like the one in Seville, Spain, though that one of course heats water to make steam to turn a turbine. This is very exciting - [...]

Went to see Al Gore’s An Inconvenient truth last night. Highly recommended. I think the planet is in for major trouble - the bit about the ocean level rising is particularly disturbing…
Check out the website, too, particularly the advice on how to reduce your CO2 ‘footprint’.