Technology

Perusing Dwell Blog tonight I came across a post from Christopher Bright about the sustainability movement and some of the disposal issues cropping up with new technologies, such as how to properly dispose of toxic compact fluorescent lights (CFLs). Apparently Waste Management is offering disposal kits so they can take CFLs without breaking them and exposing the mercury they contain.

The sustainability movement has gone through a series of evolutions and iterations over the past several years””from nascent niche groups to mainstream, greenwashing, and back again””bringing us to the somewhat confusing current state of affairs. The pressing message of the environmental crisis is at the forefront of American minds, yet we”™re still stumbling our way towards a truly sustainable model.

Case in point is the CFL, or compact fluorescent light, the low hanging fruit of energy conservation. The easy-to-adopt traditional bulb replacement lasts exponentially longer than its antiquated predecessor, and uses much less energy, but elicits a new set of its very own green concerns. Since the lights last so long””and have only been introduced relatively recently””no one has really addressed what to do when CFL”™s finally do tucker out.

These new-fangled soft-serve-looking lights contain mercury, which means it”™s not ok to just toss them in the trash. In steps Waste Management, that company behind those big green trucks that most likely pick up your curbside recycling each week. With the introduction of their new program, all you need to do is go online, have a recycling kit sent to your doorstep, stuff your spent CFLs in the provided box, and drop it in the mail. Waste Management takes care of the rest.

Up next, similar programs for disposal and recycling of batteries, computer towers, monitors, and the like.

That last line sort of answers my first question as I started reading: “how do I dispose of old batteries properly?” Good to see the answers are starting to catch up to the questions. I think effective disposal is a great thing, but we also need to look at ways to reduce packaging and consumption across the board. It’s amazing how much trash we all create each and every day, and there should be lots of work going on to bring the amount of consumer packaging waste way, way, way down.

Greenbuild Conference: Waste Management


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It’s a rainy Thursday here in San Francisco and I’ve found myself with a day off. I packed up a laptop and headed out to meet a friend; we were going to sit at the cafe down the street from his house and write, taking advantage of the wireless Internet access. We ended up making some sort of eggs and potatoes dish, then he had a phone meeting with a client, so I headed out on my own.

I went for walk and decided it would be easier to stay over on this side of town then head back home, since I’d be ending up back this way tonight.

Once the rain became heavy enough to stop me from traveling on foot I caught a J-Church and headed out to City College. I haven’t been to the library there in awhile, but I figured they’d have Internet access and I’d be able to spend a few hours writing and reading the news.

But they don’t. When I asked at the information desk a very pleasant reference librarian told me even if I could sign up for access it takes a few days and I’d have to register my computer. Yikes. I found it odd that the public community college wouldn’t offer access, but what do I know?

I jumped on a K-Ingleside train from City College and hopped off at West Portal. The West Portal branch of the San Francisco Public Library is rigght across the street from the station and I figured it was worth a try. I came in and asked at the front desk if there was wireless Internet access. Another pleasant librarian looked up and smiled and said, “of course, just open up your computer and you should be able to connect.”

So here I am. Hooray for the San Francisco Public Library. It does make me wonder if we’re ever going to get the city-wide wi-fi that they tried to get going some years back.

Now if I could find a power outlet…


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A startup called Solyndra has developed cylindrical solar panels that are easier to install and take up less space than traditional panels and can absorb solar energy from any direction, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:

Solyndra’s tubes, made at the company’s Fremont factory, don’t need to be tilted to face the sun the way traditional solar cells do. They work just as well lying flat, making them ideal for the wide-open roofs of office buildings, warehouses and big-box retail stores.

And because Solyndra’s racks leave an inch of space between each tube, they don’t catch the wind very easily and don’t need to be bolted to the roof, cutting installation time and cost.

Yet another example of a clever solution to a problem (that’s kind of the running theme for this blog, of course). While the technical achievement of collecting solar energy from any direction is impressive, being able to install the panels easily — according to Solyndra they don’t need to be bolted down — is really exciting.

If adding solar panels becomes as easy as setting down a freestanding rack, homeowners and renters alike could put panels on roofs, on patios, in yards and anywhere else exposed to sunlight. Maybe solar panels could become as common as satellite dishes on buildings today, especially if a standardized way to plug them into the grid is developed and could be installed easily in an hour or two.

California company has new approach to solar
Solyndra


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I’m always amazed at the little niches people carve out for themselves in the tech world. I came across backupcentral.com today, a site and blog run by Curtis Preston; he’s the author of O’Reilly’s Backup and Recovery and Using SANs and NAS books (his original title, Unix Backup & Recovery has been replaced by the aforementioned title).

This guy lives and breathes backups! And I think that’s not a bad thing at all. His writing is interesting and has a nice tone. I found myself getting engrossed in his “Mr. Backup” blog with entries like “Agentless Backup: Not evil after all” and “Dedupe, Immutability & Non-repudiation” (dedupe products are pretty interesting in and of themselves, but that’s another topic).

I consistently get a few calls a year from friends who ask something like, “so what can I do to get my stuff back since my hard drive died?” And I always know the answer to my first question, “do you have any backups?” The part that makes it even worse is after they say they don’t, I ask if they have an external USB hard drive and they usually do, they just didn’t rig it up to back up their data automatically.

Since USB drives are so cheap and easy to use, it’s a no-brainer to task them with regular backups. On the Mac there’s Time Machine, a pretty cool system that automatically creates versioned (ie different time-point) backups with a really easy to use interface. Most of the drives themselves come with some sort of Windows software to do the same thing, though it may not be as elegant.

On my Mac I run a shell script from a cron job that rsyncs everything over each night. If the prospect of losing my data files wasn’t enough simply because they’re, well, my data files, having the music files I’ve purchased online means I have files with actual known monetary value.

Once in awhile I do hoark some file and it’s great to be able to pull it right off the USB drive. In fact, now that I think about it, I had a hard drive die last year. Replacing it and reinstalling the system didn’t entail any data loss at all. Very handy. And instead of being a traumatic memory of losing all my stuff, I didn’t even remember right away that it happened.


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If you’ve talked to me in person for more than a couple hours, you’ve probably heard me say something like, “if every building had a windmill and some solar panels, think how much clean energy we’d have.” Seriously, it seems like a no-brainer. If we expect every building to have it’s own systems to use energy (water heaters, furnaces, air conditioners), why don’t we expect every building to have systems to obtain energy?

That’s not to say every building would be getting all the power it needs all the time, but if every building could harness wind and sun when it’s available at its location the aggregate amount of incoming clean and free energy could be substantial.

Miyoko Ohtake has posted an article on Dwell Blog outlining the basics of getting a residential wind turbine up and running in San Francisco, including testing your location’s wind strength, obtaining a permit, choosing and installing the turbine and connecting it to the grid in order to receive energy credit when your turbine is producing more power than you’re using.


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I had a chance to drive one of those little Smartcars the other day. This is the car that seats two and is just over eight feet long, about a third of the size of most cars and small enough to park perpendicular to the curb.

The biggest surprise I found was that driving it didn’t feel any different than driving any other car. The interior is totally normal and comfortable. Though there’s essentially no hood in the front and no trunk in the back, it’s not easy to tell that when sitting in the driver’s seat and looking out the windows. I found it strange to know that I was in a tiny car, but not feel like I was in a tiny car.

It was zippy enough — I tried revving it up and it seemed to have plenty of power. It’s all about proportion, I think. The engine is three cylinders, 1.0 litres and 71 horsepower. I’m not a “car guy” but I know that’s small (when I was a teenager I had a four-speed 1.0 litre hatchback that could barely get up a hill, but that’s another story). But given the low overall weight (I’m assuming) it felt just fine. I didn’t get to take it on the freeway, though.

I expected such a tiny car to have remarkable fuel efficiency, but it really doesn’t. The Smartcar gets 33 mpg city and 41 mpg highway (I sure sound like a “car guy” here). It’s not a hybrid, and its fuel efficiency is a lot lower than the full-size hybrids offered by Toyota and Honda (I used to read the “autos” section of the newspaper, so I can pull off the “car guy lingo” here). Safety is achieved through a stiff structure that encloses the passenger area, sort of like being in the middle of a strong rounded cage (and I just lost the “car guy” lingo completely on that one).

So with good — but not exceptional — mileage, the real appeal of the Smartcar is parking. These things can be parked pretty much anywhere, encroaching on spots previously only available to motorcycles.

I’m sure there are those who would welcome to the idea of fitting more cars into the existing available space. Perhaps with some foresight, though, smaller cars could allow existing space to be reclaimed for other uses; planting new trees, building parks and bike lanes, widening sidewalks and providing more pedestrian and transit options. It could happen, right?

Next step: small cars that are also highly fuel efficient. Let’s get the size down and get the energy usage down along with it!


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