Neurons sometimes fire too fast

So, it’s like this : green seems to be taking off at last. No longer do I feel totally weird about some of the thinking about saving the planet. Just a little bit off mainstream.
Seems as if the message is getting through to nearly everyone. Except the manufacturers of all the packaging that our household dumps into landfill every few weeks. It is our largest waste generator.
We compost, we have started a trial with Woking Council and the Green Cone food digester to see if a hole in the ground in our garden can actually cope with solely food waste. I say food waste, but being all vegetarians, we don’t have chicken carcasses to throw away, only the outer wrapper of the vegetables, and I’m not totally sure that that counts as ‘food waste’ as such. It will be interesting to see how the trial runs, and the results at completion at the end of summer.
I’m convinced, after going the the Grand Designs Live show last week, and having seen some of the associated TV programmes, that there is a huge interest in houses that work well, that cost less to run, that provide a smart ( as in designerly ) environment, and that have style. I am also convinced that the only people lucky enough to get all these are those errant band of self-builders who put their thoughts into practise.
There may be be many reasons for someone to build their own house ( believe me, and easy life is not one of those reasons ) but in the end they build something interesting. I can guarantee that the major builders in the UK don’t even think further than a getting a cookie cutter architect to design a range of boring, pastiche houses. ( OK Architects want to do more, but the companies don’t let them )
I can also guarantee that the self-builders are subject to all of the planning regs and checks, but that the ‘Professional Builders’ are not. I cannot practically see how a W*m*y or B*rr*t house could pass any air tightness tests.
I just don’t see that a carbon neutral house built in the traditional way will be possible. Factories and prefabs are the best way forward, and then what happens to the lounging, bodging building contractors. Where can they stamp there personality by putting walls in the wrong place, using the wrong staircases or wasting time drinking tea ?
No - I want to be proved wrong, but I won’t hold my breath.
The biggest problem in fact is existing housing stock. Glad to see people at Nottingham University running projects on renovating old stock to modern levels. Woking Council are also looking at the same kind of things.
We could save so much energy if we all had decent doors, windows and insulated walls ( let’s assume that insulating lofts is now a given, and hang anyone who still has an uninsulated loft ).
I wonder what we could have done with half of the 50 billion UKP that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling ‘loaned’ to the banks to fix their own greed ? Save three or four power stations ? Be less reliant on imported gas ? Built a future ?
Makes me think. Hope it makes you think too.

So, one of the problems with having a committed teenager in the house, is that when he does things, he does them with an undiluted passion that often surprises, but always pleases.

Over the Easter weekend he did the DW race for the second time. This year he paddled with his coach. They paddled their hearts out, won, and took around an hour and a half off the record for their class. Before I go on http://www.dwrace.org.uk/ is where you can find more details and the results. Because of his age, he can’t go through in one go yet, so it is a race over 4 days.

I made a promise last year that if he did it again, I would cycle as much as possible along the towpath and riverside paths. I did. Old man that I am, and unfit as I am, I managed to support them from the riverside, making sure they were OK on portages, feeding them on the way ( well, squirting power gels in their mouths ! ) and generally racing them.

The river was high, the weather was atrocious. We had sunshine, rain, snow, hail and horizontal winds. Awful conditions, but the flow on the river helped them all most of the time.

One section I will always remember though. At Henley ( where the regatta is held when the sun shines in the summer ) there was a headwind strong enough to deflect me on my bike, and white, cresting waves on the Thames. Paul and Sarah just kept going. They were doing 7 miles an hour into the wind. I have no idea how deep they dug, but it was just great to be beside them through it. I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.

What a great way to spend a long weekend.

I have just read Jeff’s blog ( http://jbailey.livejournal.com/ ). In the years that I have known him, he never really complained about how bad his vertebral problems were. I knew he had problems, and as one sufferer to another, we kind of had that unspoken sympathy.

He has T1 - T6 problems, and is having a cage fitted. My. That is drastic.

At least I only had a ’simple’ L5 - S1 problem.

What has been been great though is that it has taken me years to get anywhere near normal after the initial problem. Great means that it has been fun living on a body that is trying its hardest to recover normal function.

When I was taught biology, it was a ’given’ that nerves, once damaged, never mended. I wonder if those who promulgated that particular nugget ever spoken to anyone who had damaged a nerve ?

It was obvious to me that my nerves were trying really hard to re-route. I could tell by the random firing of muscle groups that they were shorting out and causing ‘arcing’ across the nerve.

I can think of few of these things that probably got in the way of real diagnosis of problems, and I can only hope that the latest recruits question what they are told !

Actually - perhaps that is not such a good idea, as I remember getting into trouble with my Palaeontology demonstrator at University : he insisted that the cast of a fossil we were studying had the exact same suture line as the one in the British Museum book.

Some while later, an example of the original artist being wrong / inventive was provided, and thus I felt really good the day I found that out. I just wish I could remember the specimen in question !

But anyway, I wish Jeff well, and hope that the pain killers they feed him, don’t upset his karma too much

So, there can only be a couple of days a year, or maybe a decade, that the auspices come down from their trees, and make magic.

It happened to me yesterday.

I managed to use three of my very favourite English words in a less than 3 hours.

First up was Borborygmi. A colleague was apologising for her noisy stomach. That has to be my very favourite word. I guess it is also a favourite of http://blogborygmi.blogspot.com/ too. These medics, eh? Oh and for everyone’s education : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borborygmus

Second was ungulate. Such a woody word, that. I knew that taking zoology at Uni would be good for something. Never really knew quite what, but if for no more than dropping ungulate into conversation ( well, an irc chat to be more specific ), it was worth a year of my life

And then, heavens above,  within seconds, we had onomatopoeia ! What a glorious conjunction of heavenly words.

Reminds me of splunk - but that would be looking to much at work and the IT business ….

Ah yes - and the Lunar eclipse was a bit of a washout last night in the UK. Guess we have to wait for the next one. It has been clear at night now for over a wee k : and of course the night of the eclipse, it has to be warm and cloudy. Bummer. Oh well.

So, in thursday / friday, there is a total lunar eclipse to be seen in the UK. They are very cool, and I would recommend if you are nearby and have insomniac leanings, you take a look.

But more importantly, is it just me who thinks these things, or is it remarkable that total eclipses happen at all ?

Thin about it : the earth has to be just the right size to cast a shadow across the moon so that it just covers the whole moon. Same as  a solar eclipse : the moon is just the right size to cover the sun and leave a little bit ( the shiny rim with all of that marvellous activity ) showing.

I guess if I do the maths, I will find that the distances are large enough that the moon and earth could be quite different sizes, and we would still see the effect, but these things concern me. Why are they ’just’ the right size for these phenomenon to happen ?

Whatever the reason, I’m kind of glad that we get a chance to see such terrific events.

OK, so I had promised myself not to comment on the world appertaining to business ….. but I can’t resist.

Over the weekend Yahoo seems to have decided that they do not easily want to become a part of the Empire. They are holding out for more than twice their current worth. Gosh ! That is a pretty cool thing to do. Most people would have swooned at the amount MS offered.

Meanwhile, as this has been sitting waiting to be posted, Sun has bought Innotek for their Virtual Box product. If you have not tried it, you should, it is very good. I wish Ulrich the best of luck : he deserves it !

Looks as though Sun is buying a stack like Red Hat have tried to do before. Should be fun to watch this play out.

I like New York. I like the good days when the sun shines. I like the energy, the speed, the rust and the glass towers.

As I was wandering around there today, between appointment and hotel, I had the same thought that I often have in NYC : what on earth do all these people do all day ?

There are so many offices in Manhattan, so many people dashing between them : what do they all do ? Do they all push paper around all day ? Do they all use a PC on their desk ? Do they have any idea of the energy needed to keep them running ?

I had been in a discussion today about open source and the future of it and business using it. Linux has been around long enough to make a difference to IT costs and opportunities, but the next step has to be new hardware to go with what people really want to do.

They just want to get access to their data. Their applications to manipulate the data.

All of these people in NYC probably do mind what hardware they use - just so long as it’s reliable, fast enough and enables them to make their targets. Sure, they probably want something that is familiar or similar to what they are used to, but in the end, they really don’t care.

So : thin clients will have their day. 7W processors and solid state memory running applications and virtual desktops on a mainframe. Just think of the savings that could be made in managing the system, the power requirements, and the tech support calls.

If only life were so clear cut.

During my wanderings I also met up with a Greenpeace supporter. He was trying to get people to sign up and had some interesting numbers. He reckoned that they spoke to around 400 people in a day. About 20 would stop and discuss what they were trying to do, and that maybe 10% signed up.

That may be good for them, but it really does not look that good, does it.that means on his figures only 5% of people walking along 3rd Avenue were reasonably interested in the what Greenpeace stand for, and 0.5% were willing to support them.

I hope that there were more people noticing what they were doing to help the whales in the southern ocean. If only the Japanese would admit that the reason they want to kill whales is to eat them, the whole argument would be a lot easier. I have no idea who they think they are kidding by continuing to argue that they hunt for scientific research.

So then I get back to the UK and am confronted by a picture in the Metro ( free paper for London ) of a mother and calf being hauled in to the whaling ship. Science. What a bastardisation of a most important subject.

So being in the business, I should be looking at commenting on the fact that number 2 and number 3 search engines companies may be joining together to go after Google. About how the Empire will take on anyone because they can afford to, or that it makes perfect sense for consolidation to be taking place in many areas.

But that seems a bit predictable really.

What is more interesting is the difference between pedalling a mountain bike with fat tyres and 21 gears, and my old road racer with skinny tyres and 10 gears. Notice tyres, people. That reminds me a the signs that appear on the M25 sometimes : “Don’t drive tired”. A limited warning due to the number of characters available on the electronic displays, that must cause amusement to anyone who prefers or majors in one of the other versions of English where things are spelt or pronounced differently.

Oh, and forget the bikes for a minute, when I am in a plane about to land, I really expect that when it touches down it stops to let me off. I do not expect it to land momentarily and then take off again.

So yes, bikes. It doesn’t really matter right now. I just had a momentary lapse of cadence.

So in an attempt to be as eclectic as I can, I often look to how many tracks I play have been scrobbled, if there is decent artist profile and who listens.

I think I hit gold yesterday with Elaine Funaro, Dances with Harpsichords. I love the harpsichord, and this album is brilliant.

To see that there are least a few people on LastFM with interesting taste …. http://www.lastfm.com/music/Elaine+Funaro/_/Fandangle+Indeed-+fans

So if Soc Gen lost 7 Billion USD, who has it now ? How many banks have increased their profits through an errant trader ? And if that is too simplistic a proposal, surely then, Soc Gen haven’t actually lost the money ?

And if banks had made bad loans to sub primates ( is that what they are called ? ) then have they written off that much in loans, and people who took the loans out now debt free ?

Is that too simple too too ?

I wonder about these things