Daily archives: January 2, 2006


Top Ten Green Energy Schemes

The Department of Trade and Industry has named ten schemes which began last year that show the way ahead in cutting carbon emissions and promoting renewable energy. They include offshore turbines in Kent, a wave buoy in Cornwall and the solar-panelling of the CIS tower in Manchester.

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Fast Tiger

It’s taken me longer to edit and upload this video than it did to make the model.

Last November there was a rash of timelapse videos of artists at work. I thought they were cool, and I decided I should do the same with a model.

Obviously, I couldn’t do a really detailed model, and I’d be putting it together so quickly that I didn’t want to waste money on something grand. I settled on the Airfix Tiger tank.

Neither my new digital camera or video camera has a timelapse feature, so I had to improvise. I set the delay on the camera to ten seconds and had it take two pictures. This gave me enough time after pressing the shutter to pick up where I had left off and get some more painting or construction done before being photographed. The total build lasted about two hours. To put the model together in such a basic way would have taken an hour without the photography.

There were almost four hundred pictures in total and I stitched them together at two frames per image and uploaded the result to Revver. Enjoy.

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The fight goes on against Intelligent Design

Despite the recent ruling against the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board there are still some who would like to turn the United States into the world’s most backward developed country. They are particularly, and worryingly, active on university campuses.

I’d willingly sign a petition that called for ID to be taught in the right place- alongside all the other creation myths in some religious studies type course.

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Jatropha powered Le Mans

D1 Oils, previously mentioned as a top supplier of Jatropha curcas tree based biodiesels, is set to enter a car in the 2006 Le Mans 24 hours. The top speed from the modified Volkswagen engine is 200mph, compared to 215mph for petrol engines, but the team are counting on the greater efficiency meaning fewer fuelling stops.

D1 chief executive Philip Wood said apart from winning the coveted Le Mans gold trophy, the team’s other objective is to test the performance, fuel efficiency and emissions produced by different biodiesel blends during the trials.

“This is about demonstrating that low emissions don’t mean low performance,” he said.

“It is going to be of immense value to motorists who want to know that biodiesel will get them the mileage and performance they need while contributing less to global warming.”

via Foursprung and Jalopnik

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