Thoughts and Theories From Roger Andre
for the curious, and people getting to grips with computing and computers.
Friday 29 August 2008, 8:56 PM
Energy Utopia Shows A Practical Face.The Time's Ripe For A Power Harvest.
I've become aware of and interested in the idea of energy harvesting. In fact it's more than an idea, as there are devices already using this technique amongst us.
Capturing electricity by way of recovering vibrational type energy is known as piezoe electric energy.
This kind of energy, as we already know, is all around us all of the time and it's there for the taking. At the moment, there is a mass roll out going on for things like traffic monitoring devices (oh joy).
Another technique for capturing spare, and otherwise wasted energy is known as pyroe electric energy. This harvests energy
from high temperature sources and is stable up to 1200 degrees. This could be a superb way of catpuring what I would hope to be a great percentage, and a significant amount of all that energy that escapes into the air from industrial process.
The grand idea at the moment is grow the ability to capture the spare energy from nearly everything. It could be from sounds around us, the roar of jet aircraft taking off and landing, a voice, spare heat from rocks cooling down after a sunny day, furniture being moved around,tectonic plates, you get the drift, absolutely everything!
There has been talk of course of smaller scale devices that can use extrmely small amounts of power, but what sruck me, was the fact that there are ideas being towted around, that suggest enough energy could be harvested to allow collection in central distribution stations, there being possibly billions of miniture power stations feeding into a grid. I guess all these micro amounts would add up to a fairly respectable amount of available power. All free of course (ha ha).
Lets just hope that the earth with it s awsome natural system doesn't have its own designs on all this dissipating energy. Although I think we should be OK in this regard. There are some very real and high hopes for releasing the burden on our very finite and possibly almost redundant resourses.
I've posted a couple of addresses below for those who wish to know more on this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_harvesting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5009358.stm
Capturing electricity by way of recovering vibrational type energy is known as piezoe electric energy.
This kind of energy, as we already know, is all around us all of the time and it's there for the taking. At the moment, there is a mass roll out going on for things like traffic monitoring devices (oh joy).
Another technique for capturing spare, and otherwise wasted energy is known as pyroe electric energy. This harvests energy
from high temperature sources and is stable up to 1200 degrees. This could be a superb way of catpuring what I would hope to be a great percentage, and a significant amount of all that energy that escapes into the air from industrial process.
The grand idea at the moment is grow the ability to capture the spare energy from nearly everything. It could be from sounds around us, the roar of jet aircraft taking off and landing, a voice, spare heat from rocks cooling down after a sunny day, furniture being moved around,tectonic plates, you get the drift, absolutely everything!
There has been talk of course of smaller scale devices that can use extrmely small amounts of power, but what sruck me, was the fact that there are ideas being towted around, that suggest enough energy could be harvested to allow collection in central distribution stations, there being possibly billions of miniture power stations feeding into a grid. I guess all these micro amounts would add up to a fairly respectable amount of available power. All free of course (ha ha).
Lets just hope that the earth with it s awsome natural system doesn't have its own designs on all this dissipating energy. Although I think we should be OK in this regard. There are some very real and high hopes for releasing the burden on our very finite and possibly almost redundant resourses.
I've posted a couple of addresses below for those who wish to know more on this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_harvesting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5009358.stm
Tuesday 19 August 2008, 12:57 AM
We Need Some Perspective
OK...I want to sound off about this file sharing business. Firstly I would like to say, that it's not something that I have ever chosen or wanted to do. I'm happy buying CDs of the specialist types of music that I'm into, and want the artists to be paid.
On the other hand, I don't think it's fair that an entire family home could be kicked offline, because of the actions of a teenager living within the fold. Imagine the devestation that could be caused if someone who works from home and relies on the internet could no longer have access.
No, what we need is an intelligent solution, but what could it be?
Well, when it comes to the family home, then maybe parents had better become adept at using their web browsers blocking abilities and also knowing what their children are getting up to.
Its worth remembering that the letters due to arrive from ISPs will come as a shock to many.
Also, this is a problem that is fairly easy to grade. There is a gulf of difference beween an adult who takes the biscuit, by downloading 100s of GBs of movies and albums, and a hormonal teenager who just had to have something to listen to, for the purpose of easing him/herself through the very real pain of teenage angst. For the teenager, I am hoping that they could find relief in something like the wonderful playlist.com.
For the serial adult downloader, maybe there is no hope, but if they are old enough to know better....
This is why we need the due democratic process to be a part of the equation. The day that we find our selves in a situation where the record and movie moguls dictate who is to kicked off line with questions maybe asked later, will be a very dark day indeed.
On the other hand, I don't think it's fair that an entire family home could be kicked offline, because of the actions of a teenager living within the fold. Imagine the devestation that could be caused if someone who works from home and relies on the internet could no longer have access.
No, what we need is an intelligent solution, but what could it be?
Well, when it comes to the family home, then maybe parents had better become adept at using their web browsers blocking abilities and also knowing what their children are getting up to.
Its worth remembering that the letters due to arrive from ISPs will come as a shock to many.
Also, this is a problem that is fairly easy to grade. There is a gulf of difference beween an adult who takes the biscuit, by downloading 100s of GBs of movies and albums, and a hormonal teenager who just had to have something to listen to, for the purpose of easing him/herself through the very real pain of teenage angst. For the teenager, I am hoping that they could find relief in something like the wonderful playlist.com.
For the serial adult downloader, maybe there is no hope, but if they are old enough to know better....
This is why we need the due democratic process to be a part of the equation. The day that we find our selves in a situation where the record and movie moguls dictate who is to kicked off line with questions maybe asked later, will be a very dark day indeed.
Monday 11 August 2008, 8:45 PM
Time For Goverments To Come Off Line
Ok, now things are getting silly. Surely it's time our governments
came up with a way for disconnecting themselves from the world wide web. At least the portions that hold details relating to national
security, and the ones that hold all our personal details.
This does'nt mean that governments should disconnect themselves from the world at large, or us humble citizens. Isn't there a way that
parallel networks could be set up (no VPNs allowed).
Our rulling agencies could run seperate terminals for day to day web access and use the most secure web based e-mail clients, but for goodness sakes, please keep all your (and our) sensitive data well away from any potential break ins. At the moment it's as though gold bars are being kept behind thin and foggy glass.
Please do this for us, we pay you enough!
Oh...I nearly forgot not to mention the cyber warfare that I've been reading about elswhere on this site!
came up with a way for disconnecting themselves from the world wide web. At least the portions that hold details relating to national
security, and the ones that hold all our personal details.
This does'nt mean that governments should disconnect themselves from the world at large, or us humble citizens. Isn't there a way that
parallel networks could be set up (no VPNs allowed).
Our rulling agencies could run seperate terminals for day to day web access and use the most secure web based e-mail clients, but for goodness sakes, please keep all your (and our) sensitive data well away from any potential break ins. At the moment it's as though gold bars are being kept behind thin and foggy glass.
Please do this for us, we pay you enough!
Oh...I nearly forgot not to mention the cyber warfare that I've been reading about elswhere on this site!
Tuesday 5 August 2008, 8:23 PM
Windows Silent Service
OK....I know many people are frustrated with windows,and microsoft.
A lot of the reasons are well documented...but there has been a plus side working silently away over the years.
The fact of the matter (from where I'm looking) is that windows is a
fairly high maintainance operating system. The silent service that I
refer to in the title is the fact that dealing with windows quirks has
encouraged many people to look under the windows bonnet and get their hands dirty.
A whole economy has built up around this high maintainance OS,
especially on the domestic front, where I,ve come across machines with over 4 gigabites of junk files and 67,000 invalid entries, or errors in the registry alone!
This is how I got started with looking under the bonnet, a cranky
early issue vista machine that refused to get on with a big name anti
virus product, and had many essential services switched off.
Now because I have had to deal with so many quirks and problems, I
feel happy with the knowledge that I have accumulated, and feel
confident about stabilising the OS on other computers, so I thank you microsoft for throwing me in at the deep end....
A lot of the reasons are well documented...but there has been a plus side working silently away over the years.
The fact of the matter (from where I'm looking) is that windows is a
fairly high maintainance operating system. The silent service that I
refer to in the title is the fact that dealing with windows quirks has
encouraged many people to look under the windows bonnet and get their hands dirty.
A whole economy has built up around this high maintainance OS,
especially on the domestic front, where I,ve come across machines with over 4 gigabites of junk files and 67,000 invalid entries, or errors in the registry alone!
This is how I got started with looking under the bonnet, a cranky
early issue vista machine that refused to get on with a big name anti
virus product, and had many essential services switched off.
Now because I have had to deal with so many quirks and problems, I
feel happy with the knowledge that I have accumulated, and feel
confident about stabilising the OS on other computers, so I thank you microsoft for throwing me in at the deep end....
Saturday 2 August 2008, 10:25 PM
A Tatoo In A Pill
Well then...How about this one!
Imagine a world (deep breath) where you could sit at a terminal, come up with a design, or drawing that you loved, and have a custom pill loaded with DNA manipulating software, that would then re colour chosen pigments in your skin, and voila, there is your new tatoo!
Not something I would choose to do myself, but I can see it coming.
Anyway, when you get fed up with the image you could then simply take a skin reset pill, and all would be well again!
In the realms of faster than light travel? Just around the corner?
Or just ridiculous nonsense?
Imagine a world (deep breath) where you could sit at a terminal, come up with a design, or drawing that you loved, and have a custom pill loaded with DNA manipulating software, that would then re colour chosen pigments in your skin, and voila, there is your new tatoo!
Not something I would choose to do myself, but I can see it coming.
Anyway, when you get fed up with the image you could then simply take a skin reset pill, and all would be well again!
In the realms of faster than light travel? Just around the corner?
Or just ridiculous nonsense?
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