Hooked on memes

Gadget freak Dan Tynan reports on a few days enforced abstinence from Broadband. (This story first appeared in PCWorld and is reproduced with permission of the author): WE WERE SITTING in a charming little pub in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland. As the band cranked through bad covers of American pop tunes, we sipped Guinness, checked e-mail on our laptops, made cheap Skype calls to friends halfway around the world, and IM-ed with reckless abandon. We had discovered Web nirvana. (more…)

Recycle this!

Finding a second-hand gem in thrift stores used to be easy. You’d go through endless rails of granny-attire then chance upon that elusive vintage Valentino dress. But the pay-off was huge – a designer bargain for next to nothing. For the less fashion-conscious it was a cheap source of good quality clothes, andit fulfilled a duty to recycle. Now the tables have turned, and in wealthy areas 2nd-hand is more expensive than new!

Recent trends (think Kate Moss in a Topshop boob tube) have dragged those looking for cheap clothing (more…)

Cools in summer, warms in winter

What makes heat pumps over 300% efficient?

Heat pumps move heat energy from one place to another. When you need extra heating, they remove heat from the outside air, water or ground (geothermal pumps are ones that use water or ground-heat) and deliver it to the house. The reverse happens when you want to cool the house – just like a refrigerator.

Heat pumps need energy to move heat from one place to another, and that means electric power, whether from wind, solar or a generator - but little electricity here goes a long way – for every unit of electricity used you get 3 or 4 units of heat delivered, making some pumps 300 or 400% efficient. (more…)

Destroyed by fire

A diesel powered Houseboat on the river Lee near London was gutted by fire last night, the third attack by arsonists on this stretch of river in the past few months.
Last year, a houseboat yards from the same site was completely destroyed by what was thought to be a suspicious fire.
A second houseboat was gutted overnight while moored on the River Lee at Nazeing several months ago. (more…)

Morford-better off-grid?

by Mark Morford …….Then come those times, like when you walk out your front door on a calm sunny Sunday morn, and find your shiny new car has been smashed by a hit-and-run driver to the tune of 14 grand’s worth of repairs and your heart sinks and your normally Zenlike ennui boils over and you look around your grungy metropolitan neighborhood with a sudden mix of resignation and revulsion and an uncontrollable hissing sigh, that you realize how fed up you are with life in the city. It happens now and then, a wave of nausea and heaving frustration all aimed at the congestion and the traffic and the parking woes, the spitting lunatic homelessness and the lack of space and the lack of quiet and the random urban demons careening around the ‘hood smashing windows and exchanging gunfire and peeing on your stoop, when you say to yourself, (more…)

Off the grid and off his head

A right-wing conspiracy theorist, anti-tax campaigner has barricaded himself into his 110 acre home, complete with water-well, solar panels and three months of food, preparing for a deadly shoot-out with local Sheriffs in Plainsfield, NH.

Retired rodent exterminator Ed Brown parted ways with his wife last week when he decided not to join her for the conclusion of their federal tax evasion trial. Brown has amassed a new and growing group of friends – fringe groups who support his decision to stand up to government authority. (more…)

Racist Lucy –Channel 4 star

A Reality game show set in the remote Cook Islands, where off-grid contestants battle for a prize of £70,000, has run into a racism storm for UK broadcaster Channel 4 TV.

The series has already been ordered by BBC America, but there is rethink going on because one of the contestants is heard saying that she doesn’t like black people. The programme was pre-recorded, and approved by station chiefs, so Channel 4 had endorsed her remarks. Lucy Buchanan, an 18-year-old private schoolgirl from York, praised slavery (more…)

Better Off

The UK government’s Energy White Paper to be published in March will contain new figures on the nation’s use of the standby button. It’s not good news. The figures show that there has been no reduction in the overall amount of energy consumption on standby, still lingering at 8-10% of total electricity use in the home.

If anything there has been an increase in the amount of appliances left on standby, but they have become more energy efficient in the two years since the last survey, so the overall position will be roughly the same according to researchers working on the report. (more…)

There’s no pylons here, dear

A sham project to make the last G8 summit “carbon neutral” by installing mains electricity in 2000 South African homes, underlines how remote the UK and other governments are from the realities of environmentally sound living.

The scheme, pioneered by Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, to make homes in the township of Kuyasa, near Cape Town energy-efficient, after first connecting them to the grid, is on the brink of collapse. It faces a £1m funding shortfall. Organisers now admit that even if they can plug the gap, it will not meet the pledge until 2029 at the earliest. (more…)