The Joy of e-waste

Recently I’ve been really worked up about all these computers in the closet. It’s a bunch of junk.

A bunch of dot-com-bubble bullshit that never needed to be purchased in the first place. I’ve been stressed out about that festering backwater of old computers since I got my job here 16 months ago.
For 16 [...]

June 18 2007

Beautiful Maps of Africa

Just discovered a beautiful resource of maps (mostly environmental info, especially soil) for most of the countries of Africa. (Found via Kikuyumoja’s realm.)
This is an incredibly thorough, high-quality resource, with scanned resolutions that will knock any map-lover’s socks off. The pages are easy to navigate, with appropriately-sized thumbnails and then really large downloadables. [...]

December 21 2005

Windmills for Wi-Fi

Woo Hoo! Wind-powered wireless!:

“A University of Texas professor creates tiny windmills to tilt at providing electricity: The prof has developed a system with his group that uses piezoelectric crystals which, when flexed by the small pressures provided by a 10-centimeter windmill running as slow as 17 kilometers per hour, can produce 7.5 milliwatts of electricity. [...]

November 17 2005

Computers Twice Wasted

A recent article in the New York Times discusses a report that computers are being “improperly recycled” (read: dumped) on developing countries as a way to avoid the expense of refurbishing them before redistribution.
“The report, titled “The Digital Dump: Exporting Reuse and Abuse to Africa,” says that the unusable equipment is being donated or sold [...]

November 11 2005

ONE/NW on Using Bloglines and del.icio.us

There are some very sophisticated techniques emerging into the semi-mainstream this year. You may not have noticed, and you may not care. But if you can get the hang of it managing the blogosphere, there’s a lot to be learned.
Rediscover your interests and your profession with the new tools of online networking: Blogs, tags [...]

December 20 2004