Posts by — Elena

Books for the new decade

Here are some of the top-sellers amongst people who use this web site:

How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It: Tactics, Techniques, and Technologies for Uncertain Times

TEOTWAKI literature is the largest sector – (more…)

Go off-grid!

Off-Grid Editor Nick Rosen has written an article in today’s London Times about living off the grid, under the radar of the surveillance society as well as outside the clutches of the power and water companies.

Rosen, author of How to Live Off-grid: Journeys Outside the System, published by Doubleday, was also interviewed on Radio 4′s Today program earlier in the week, saying that the UK Civil Service had not managed to enter the information age, and that it was better to avoid having your information snooped on than to complain about it. He made similar statements in his Times article which dealt with (more…)

Benn during “vital” trip to India

Six months after being switched to the post of Britain’s Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn was still describing himself on his website as International Development Secretary. Perhaps he is trying to save energy by switching off his brain?

By the time you read this, his site may have been updated, but the detail is symptomatic of an ambitious but untalented and duplicitous man who has ascended smoothly on the coat-tails of his impressive father. (more…)

Bill’s cave

In an ongoing collaboration with Yukon resident Caveman Bill, British artist Tom Wolseley has produced a remarkable work, from which this photo was taken. It goes on show tonight for the first time at the Climate of Change exhibition, in London.

Wolseley took a slow 360° panning shot of the inside of Bill’s cave, where he has lived for the past 12 years. It is one of hundreds of works in a show which is a snapshot of artists’ response to climate change. Climate for Change opens tonight in a massive warehouse in back of London’s South Bank. (more…)

Watching them watching us

An article by Nick Rosen, Editor of Off-Grid, details the steps we can all take to fight back against the surveillance society of government and private company databases.

The story, Ten ways to Thwart Big Brother, in The Observer newspaper, lists ten simple actions, from wearing a hoodie in shopping malls, to special software which protects your identity online, to driving a horse and cart on the roads in order to avoid the automatic numberplate recognition systems.

This week also sees the publication of The Road to Southend Pier: One Man’s Struggle Against the Surveillance Society by Ross Kemp, a look at everything from CCTV Cameras in the High Street to the records the FBI keep on each and every one of us. (more…)

Keep it small

There are twenty simple tips to green your home at the end of this story, but first, what is an eco home?

Strictly speaking its a house built to minimise negative impact on the plants, wildlife and human beings in the area. It is designed to suit the climate of the area and uses alternative forms of energy for it’s running and maintenance relying on sun, wind and biomass instead of the grid supply.”Ecological homes reuse and recycle most waste and used materials that are available very close to the site/area. It encourages local handicraft or art and harvests rain water and reuses most water that the building consumes. It is a home that takes the least from earth’s natural resources to build. (more…)

Spare battery is more reliable

Fortune magazine are going off-grid crazy as it slowly dawns on them that you don’t have to live in a yurt to be off-grid. Their busy, important readers are off-grid too, each time they step out of the cocoon of their air-conditioned offices.

Their latest is a reader review of solar powered briefcases. The negative results also apply to all the solar powered bags we’ve seen so far.

Can a sun-powered briefcase keep you connected off the grid, asked Forbes. A reader writes: “Like many entrepreneurs, I spend most waking hours surgically attached to my phone, a T-Mobile Dash that I use mainly for voice calls and calendar tracking. I’m lost if it runs out of juice, so I was excited when Forbes asked me to test solar-powered bags (more…)

Heil Solar

Germany is the world leader in installed solar power, just ahead of Japan. And the Germans are installing solar way faster than anyone else in the world on a per capita basis. The full figures are at the end of this story.

Germany has 200 times as much solar energy as Britain. It generates 12% of its electricity from various renewables, compared with 4.6% in Britain and 2% in the United States. It has created a quarter of a million jobs in renewables – a number that is growing fast. Britain has only 25,000, a number that represents the amount of jobs created in the industry in Germany in the past year alone. (more…)

We’ll be hearing more about this

A member of the royal family may be pumping to work on a bicycle every day according to media reports. The bike is a Strida. And the rider is Viscount Linley who has had his sanity questioned for allowing his four-year old daughter to hang off the back of the luggage rack .

A spokesman for Linley, son of Princess Margaret, said: “David feels its better to cycle than clog up roads with a gas-guzzler.”

Viscount Linley, said to be worth £27m, owns an up-to-date Strida, having previously owned one of the original designs.

Viscount Linley has a British-made Pashley Sovereign bicycle on order. This will be fitted with a children’s bicycle seat. (more…)