West Dale Bay near Milford Haven is to get a rather appropriately named Wave Dragon tidal power station.
The floating units are moored to the sea bed but are able to adjust their position to the on-coming wave direction.
Water is channelled into a reservoir above sea level. It is then released through a number of turbines to generate electricity in the same way as hydro-electric power plants work.
Technorati tag: Wave Power, Tidal Power, Wales
Manchester councils are planning to crack down on drivers using bus lanes, monitoring them with CCTV and issuing £60 fines. Which is all very good, but what about the double yellow parking, pavement hopping and cycle lane blocking?
As many as seven in 10 drivers using bus lanes in Manchester are believed to be private vehicle users who are breaking the law. Currently the police are the only authority who can hand out tickets, but they do not use CCTV and a lack of resources means patrols do not give priotity to the issue.
Another link I found whilst surfing the Co-op’s intranet.
D1 Oils want to generate biodiesel from the seeds of the jatropha tree, a hardy shrub that can be grown all over the developing world.
Because it requires minimal rainfall, jatropha can be grown successfully on marginal, degraded, or even desert land. The trees also help prevent soil erosion. In addition to yielding oil for refining into biodiesel and glycerol for use by the cosmetics industry, the residual oil cake is excellent organic fertiliser. Research is underway into alternative uses for the residual seedcake, such as animal feed, briquettes for power generation and nutraceuticals.
If you’re in the right age group, this will need no introduction (but for your own sanity, you might want to avoid it anyway). If you’re not, this might provide the required background information.
It’s probably too easy to pick at the logic of children’s fiction, but i will any how.
In a world with so many sapient animals, is it right for the children to hunt deer? And what of any stags at court, surely their tacit approval of this activity makes them no better than slave owners- happy to allow the exploitation of ‘inferior’ members of their race. How did the beavers feel, watching the children of adam and eve walking around in fur coats?
It’s a problem with all anthropomorphism, not just narnia. If we imagine the creatures possess intelligence the equivalent of humans then we should consider how they would feel about humanity’s exploitation of other animals. Or we should expect them to remain shockingly beastly, but with added cunning. Does the intelligence to comprehend the impact of your actions automatically lead to the development of ‘morals’? Discuss.
I liked the way the opening scene was echoed in the final battle. Has there ever been one of these dual world stories where the humans come in and introduce modern tactics and adapt the fantastic creatures to suit? If not then it can join the long list of stories i should write one day.
Update Title taken from The Music That Nobody Likes by Carter USM. I like it so much that I’ve used it before. I also turned out to be The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in an online quiz ages ago.
The Pixelito is the world’s smallest remote controlled helicopter. Hamster not included.
via BoingBoing
Technorati tag: Helicopter
I was saying earlier that I need a patron. Perhaps I could persuade Anita Rodick to give me a little of her Body Shop wealth. If she can.
Listen to anyone in the philanthropy sector, and they’ll tell you that this is harder than it sounds. Giving away a fortune effectively is almost more difficult than it is to make the money in the first place, says Theresa Lloyd, author of Why Rich People Give.
Technorati tag: Philanthropy, Body Shop
I’ve counted twenty six nodes where one or more stories meet. If i can wrap each node in a page, with action identifiable from each of the stories, i could be onto a plan. It’ll probably be longer than twenty six pages because there are bound to be a few non node pages.
What i really need is a patron who’ll pay me to work on all these mad ideas.
Technorati tag: moblog
I have a sneaking suspicion that i’d make a good statistician.
Don’t tell anyone.
More reasons to switch to Firefox. Wired reviews the best plugins for the browser.
Technorati tag: Firefox
The magnetic North Pole is drifting away from North America so fast it could be in Greenland within 50 years. Watch Bush launch an invasion so they can get it back.
Technorati tag: North, North Pole
bahcount is a utility that counts down the seconds left until noon, January 20, 2009 in a small window. This is the expected date Bush will cease being president of the USA. The program takes your timezone into account and counts down according to EST. Various command line options are available.
What I want is a version I can stick on the website.
Thanks to Tim for the link.
Technorati tag: Bush
The FTSE4Good Index Series has been designed to measure the performance of companies that meet globally recognised corporate responsibility standards, and to facilitate investment in those companies. Transparent management and criteria alongside the FTSE brand make FTSE4Good the index of choice for the creation of Socially Responsible Investment products.
I’ve been reading up on the Co-op‘s environmental guidelines on the intranet, which is where I found out about FTSE4Good. I need to find out who to suggest green roofs to in the corporation.
Technorati tag: FTSE, Socially Responsible Investment
Official Rocky Horror fancy dress costumes-
via BoingBoing
Technorati tag: Rocky Horror
Explorer users will notice that the exhortations to switch to firefox aren’t as intrusive from today. I still think that you should switch, it’s just that the big ugly banner wasn’t really my style.
I’ll try to bring the archives up to date and roll the change out to the other blogs tonight.
Airfix has rejigged its website.
via Alan Bell
Technorati tag: Airfix, Scale Models
Another “content over style” web page from Steve Johnson.
In the Second World War people at home with loved ones spread far away around the world with the forces were fed a diet, often government backed, of “how it works” or “how we will win” technical information leaflets. Very often these would have contained superb cut away and sectioned diagrams, showing the “insides” or as was said at the time “the works!” of the machines that were winning the war for us!
via Drawn
One of my projects has just been renamed feta. This is what happens when your boss is greek.
At least it wasn’t halloumi.
A gallery of images from the IPMS UK show this year.
Technorati tag: Scale Models, IPMS