Archive for the 'Science and Technology' Category
Who’s Going to Police Space? 23 Jul 2010
I don’t usually see malicious plots at every turn, but this phrase from the BBC’s Spaceman blog caught my attention: Our customers are principally two major groups. The first group is sovereign clients – other countries that do not have the kind of access to the ISS that they would like to have, and that [...]
The Future of Space: Asteroid Mining 19 Jul 2010
io9 gives some opinion and sums up this Wired article on how mining asteroids could provide the funds and incentive to get us into space. I share their opinion, we’re going to run out of resources on Earth, we already know it. One thing we’re not good at is reining in our consumption. Once we’ve [...]
New airships to protect British troops 13 Jul 2010
Airships are going to be making their way back to the mainstream. Use by the government should help legitimise the new wave.
Another Day, Another App Banned 2 Jun 2010
Yes, that’s right, another app has been banned by Apple for no good reason. Apparently the developer was told (even by Steve Jobs via personal email) was that they ‘wanted all widget apps removed.’ I’ve written before about how this is a very bad idea, both for consumers, developers and, eventually, for Apple. On a [...]
Concorde to Fly Again 30 May 2010
Work starts in £15m plan to get Concorde flying. The engines on a French Concorde are to be examined as the first move in a £15m project aiming to get the supersonic passenger jet back in the air. It is hoped the jet will be able to fly as part of the opening ceremony of [...]
Using science to beat the volcano 19 May 2010
I have been putting forward all manner of strange ideas along the lines of weird science versus the volcano. Personally, I think a dome would be the idea, they did it with Chernobyl. We’re mainly interested in stopping the ash cloud, not the eruption. So fit the cap with extractor fans and suck the ash [...]
Body of the Future 13 May 2010
Yesterday I was reading an article about Aimee Mullins who discusses the notion that her prosthetic limbs are not an impairment, they’re an improvement (check out the TED video where she talks about it). Her limbs can give her ‘superhuman’ abilities. It was linked from an article about the singularity. Today comes an article about [...]
Power Consumption 6 Jun 2009
I borrowed an energy monitor plug this week to check what my home entertainment devices were pulling down. Some surprising numbers: Wii (Standby) 1w Wii (On) 16w Wii (Max) 18w TV (Standby) 0w TV (On) 118w TV (Max) 119w Laptop (Charging) 24w Laptop (Boot) 58w Laptop (Idle) 46w Mac Pro (Standby) 5w Mac Pro (Idle, [...]
Easier Ways to Surf 12 Apr 2008
A friend of mine has an iPod Touch, not so much to listen to music, but so he can check his mail and surf the web quickly and easily sat on his sofa. He’s been finding it great for those times when you want to quickly look something up or check your email without the [...]
Energy-Saving Lightbulbs 24 Mar 2008
I’ve been meaning to buy some lower energy replacements for my halogen GU10 bulbs for a while, but I wanted to test the options out first. For those who don’t know, GU10 bulbs are the standard halogen bulbs used in down-lighters and a lot of the small, modern room lights. We’ve got plenty around the [...]