Monthly Archives: April 2009
Fiber Week
This week I had the pleasure to be a speaker at the Fiber Week in Croatia, an event held for the 9th consecutive time. The beautiful surroundings and the good food were completed by interesting conversations. One eye-opener was the … Continue reading
The power of imagination
What can you do with a bunch of HD projectors, some old buildings and a lot of imagination? Some exiting stuff… Anybody still wondering what we are going to do with a lot of fiber to our homes? Just remember … Continue reading
Dirty
Mobility has brought us global sourcing of goods: China as the proverbial factory churning out cheap goods that are brought to us by giant container ships. But a recent article in the Guardian reports that the hidden price of this … Continue reading
Small is not beautiful
At least when you are considering windturbines or windmills. Lowtech Magazine reports about a real life test conducted in the Southwest of the Netherlands (Zeeland), a relatively windy and open area near the sea. If small windmills can perform, they must … Continue reading
Coming soon in your home theatre
Some companies have the audacity and vision to convert their view of the future in a consistent line of products and developments. RED is such a company. RED tries to push the boundary of digital cinema, to create products that will … Continue reading
Swap!
Get your favorite book, cd, dvd or game, and get rid of old stuff you don’t use anymore. On Swaptree you can list all the items you have (and want to trade), and all the items you want to have. … Continue reading
Unexpected benefits
There are a lot of windmills generating electricity in Denmark. Two Danish researchers have conducted a fascinating study on the effect of these windmills on the prices of electricity on the spot market (day trading between big producers/users of capacity). … Continue reading
Hot air
David J Mackay is a professor of physics at Cambridge University (UK). Frustrated by the abundance of biased and misleading statements about sustainable energy he has put himself to the task of getting the facts and the numbers right. Debunking myths and … Continue reading
The sound of fusion
Nuclear fusion reactors are the holy grail of energy production. A promise of virtually waste-free, CO2-free production using relatively abundant sources. But fusing deuterium and tritium into helium requires enormous pressures and temperatures to start with. The mainstream approach is … Continue reading
Impermeable
Relatively few people read German. That is probably the reason why most newspaper outside Germany have missed the news that the Russian-Dutch scientist Andre Konstantin Geim (photo) has received an important European price for the development of a sheet of … Continue reading