Archive for the 'Sci & Tech' Category

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Mean green washing machine

Published by bcg on 11 June 2008 in Sci & Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

This article here is interesting, about the invention of a washing machine that uses only a cup of water.  It works apparently by pounding the clothes with small plastic chips, using a fraction of the energy of a conventional washing machine.

Sound good?  I thought it did – until I read to the end.  It requires 20kg of plastic chips, which last for up to 100 washes, and therefore need to be replaced up to twice a year.

Now, I can understand the need to preserve water, but what about plastic?  It comes from oil, which is in even shorter supply.  And the process of making these plastic chips is presumably energy intensive.  I wonder what the comparison really is between a conventional washing machine and this one?

Freesat

Published by bcg on 6 May 2008 in Sci & Tech. 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

I am very excited by the launch today of Freesat.  It is a joint initiative by the BBC and ITV, and offers free digital and HD satellite TV to 98% of the UK population.  I will definitely be investigating this, as soon as a set-top box with hard drive recording is available.

Freeview is ok, but the signal for Mux B (which includes ITV and Channel 4, E4 etc) is pretty poor where we are in Oxford.  And when the signal is bad, unlike analogue TV where the picture just goes a bit funny, or there's a hiss, the picture is pixellated and the sound clicks and pops, make it completely unwatchable.

Satellite TV suffers from the same problem when the weather is bad, but it is far less frequent.  Therefore, a new HD TV and set-top box are required!

The Grid

Published by bcg on 7 April 2008 in Sci & Tech and Web. 0 Comments Tags: .

I just found this on the internet:

Coming soon: superfast internet

The very clever people at Cern have invented something much faster than the internet – or rather, some technology that is much faster than the protocols used by the WWW.  It uses dedicated fibre optic cables and modern switching hardware, to avoid the bottlenecks of copper cables.

It would be amazing if this stuff made its way into the normal world, but with ISPs so concerned with short-term profits, and after chronic under-investment in the internet infrastructure in this country, I'll believe it when I see it.

As ever, the universities are there first:

Britain alone has 8,000 servers on the grid system – so that any
student or academic will theoretically be able to hook up to the grid rather
than the internet from this autumn.

Why am I leaving university?!  I should get a job as a lecturer...

The green car?

Published by bcg on 5 March 2008 in Sci & Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Having written about a wooden car a few days ago, I found an interesting piece about a 'green' car, with 'zero emissions':

Green sports car set for launch

It uses hydrogen fuel, so creates only water as exhaust.  However – it requires hydrogen, and getting hygroden an energy-intensive process:

Critics point out that to produce hydrogen by splitting
water uses a large amount of electricity. At present, the majority of
this electricity comes power stations burning fossil fuels and
therefore brings no environmental benefit.

However, the fact that this is the case now is not a good reason to stop exploring and researching this technology.  Hopefully one day someone will crack it (so to speak).

The wooden car?

Published by bcg on 22 February 2008 in Sci & Tech. 0 Comments Tags: .

This is rather a good story, about a sports car made almost entirely out of wood.  Sounds very suspect, and it doesn't look like it will go into production, but it's a fascinating idea!

Wooden horsepower

Northern = Stupid?

Published by bcg on 18 February 2008 in Culture, Random and Sci & Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This made me laugh a few days ago:

'Brain Training' slammed by 'Watchdog'

Apparently the computer game (which claims to train your brain) can't recognise northern accents.  So if you shout 'yeller' instead of 'yellow' at the console, it tells you that you're stupid.

Vista SP1

Published by bcg on 4 February 2008 in Sci & Tech. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

At last!  Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing (RTM) by Microsoft.  It contains much-needed performance and stability updates to their latest operating system.

However, it won't be released to end-users until March.  Here's the relevant section from the post on the Windows Vista Team Blog:

Here's the timing for SP1 availability for current Windows Vista users:

  • In mid-March, we will release Windows
    Vista SP1 to Windows Update (in English, French, Spanish, German and
    Japanese) and to the download center on microsoft.com.  Customers who
    visit Windows Update can choose to install Service Pack 1.  If Windows
    Update determines that the system has one of the drivers we know to be
    problematic, then Windows Update will not offer SP1.  Since we know
    that some customers may want to update to SP1 anyhow, the download
    center will allow anyone who wants to install SP1 to do so.
  • In mid-April, we will begin delivering
    Windows Vista SP1 to Windows Vista customers who have chosen to have
    updates downloaded automatically.  That said, any system that Windows
    Update determines has a driver known to not update successfully will
    not get SP1 automatically.  As updates for these drivers become
    available, they will be installed automatically by Windows Update,
    which will unblock these systems from getting Service Pack 1.  The
    result is that more and more systems will automatically get SP1, but
    only when we are confident they will have a good experience.
  • The remaining languages will RTM in April.

This is good news, but a bit frustrating that we'll have to wait another six weeks to install it!

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