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Noise in Computer Rooms

Some people think that you can recognise a good restaurant by the presence of obscure dishes on the menu or having high prices. The reality is that there are two ways of quickly identifying a good restaurant, one is the Michelin Guide [1] (or a comparable guide – if such a thing exists), the other […]

Pollution and Servers

There is a lot of interest in making organisations “green” nowadays. One issue is how to make the IT industry green. People are talking about buying “offsets” for CO2 production, but the concern is that some of the offset schemes are fraudulent. Of course the best thing to do is to minimise the use of […]

LUV Meeting July 2008

At the last two meetings of LUV [1] I’ve given away old hardware. This month I gave away a bunch of old PCI and AGP video cards, a heap of PC power cables, and some magnets (which I received for free because they were in defective toys that could seriously injure or kill children). One […]

Car vs Public Transport to Save Money

I’ve just been considering when it’s best to drive and when it’s best to take public transport to save money. My old car (1999 VW Passat) uses 12.8L/100km which at $1.65 per liter means 21.1 cents per km on fuel. A new set of tires costs $900 and assuming that they last 20,000km will cost […]

Record Oil Prices

MarketWatch reports that oil prices had the biggest daily gain on record, going up $11 in one day.

They claim that this is due to an impending Israeli attack on Iran and a weak US economy. $150 per barrel is the price that they predict for the 4th of July. That’s an interesting choice of […]

Solar Powered PC

I’ve just read an interesting post on TomsHardware.com about a solar powered PC [1]. It describes all the steps involved in creating a modern high-performance low-power computer.

They have a lot of interesting information. One surprising fact (from page 3) is that the PSUs tested (both for AC and DC input) were more efficient when […]

Fried Food

I’ve just been reading about oil deterioration when deep frying [1]. Apparently frying food can cause the production of Acrylamide [2] which causes cancer, is a neurotoxin, and does other bad things to your body. Deep frying in a vacuum [3] is a solution to this problem as the lower temperatures reduce the formation of […]

Car Sharing in Melbourne

Recently I noticed that some parking spots in the city area are reserved for car sharing. There seems to be two car sharing companies operating.

Flexicar [1] costs $50 to join, has a $10 per month membership fee (which includes one hour of driving at a value of $12), and costs $12 per hour or […]

A Bio-fuel Petrol Station

Today I happened to see a bio-fuel petrol station! I decided to check it out (even though I was traveling by tram in a part of town that I don’t normally visit so there was no possibility of any real purchase).

The station is Conservo [1]. Their main products are E10 petrol (10% Ethanol and […]

Vegie Cars

I’ve read a lot about running Diesel vehicles on plant oil, but one thing that was never clear was why some people claim that you need special chemical additives. … Their site is very interesting and has some good technical information, even if you never plan to drive a Diesel vehicle it’s worth reading if you are interested in cars. […]