Posts Tagged ‘Green’

Day Off - Sort of
A late Ramblings this week as I decided to stay offline last week. It was a long week and I was playing all weekend. It has been a while since I last took more than 24 hours off a computer, so that is a big feat for me.

HP Tech Forum

I had a fun time talking and working with Andy McCaskey and Kara Karsten with SDRNews. We had such a blast. We also put forward the mobile interview booth rig. We call it the “MacGyver” rig. Nonetheless, it was connected to uStream and we were able to conduct a few interviews for the event. Check out all the info on the Twitter log at #HPTF.

Great to meet some new bloggers: Shane Pitman of Neowin, John Obeto of AbsoluteWindows. We had a great week along with Halley, Tom, Calvin and Rebecca from HP and Buzzcorps.

Fryes at Vegas

Also got to go to Vegas again. While we didn’t run around town as much as with CES (everything was contained in Mandalay Bay), we did venture out to go to Fryes. It’s actually my first time at Fryes and I was pretty impressed. Of course, it was Vegas, so the store has a big slot machine up in it’s store front and stacks of coins as barrier posts. The inside was very big and complete. Andy had to get a new scratch drive since the one he brought died. We got what we needed and headed back to the safe Mandalay Bay

Mandalay Bay

Wow. This is a city contained in a building. That is, if you have the money for it. My room – which I call the “Bob Newhart” room – was decked with all the amenities. TV in the bedroom and the bathroom. You can connect an external device easily and be watching a movie while soaking in the tub.

The casino area was always hoppin. There were bands both on the “Sushi Pop” and “House of Blues” stages. Restaurants all over the building. A small walk and you are at “theHotel”. They even have their own beach – where we watched the Beach Boys play a set. Well, it was a short set for me, since I had a flight to catch.

Podcast on the show floor

I had the unique opportunity to record the show from the HPTF Expo floor. It was great because I didn’t have to set up a rig, do a show, rip it down and go to another area to post. I would also like to thank Simon Calder for helping out with the show notes so I could focus on other things.

What I got out of the show

Of course, there were a lot of things I have learned from this event. I have run server rooms before, but I was a little out of touch with the current technologies. FCoE was the big one I learned about. Also building a server is a lot different than before. Greener, more powerful and reliability were the best parts.

The Keynotes were just amazing. Learning about how these big companies are working on green technologies is amazing. Dr. Michio Kaku and his views for the future were amazing. A “Smart toilet” is definitely something to get excited about.

The Weekend

I got back to Madison at 8 AM on Friday. It was a long trip (5 hours, turned into 7 due to timezone changes). What was worse was on the trip back, I was not really impressed with the airline I flew. The one thing I noticed is they were not really friendly.

An example: We flew through a couple storm fronts during the trip. Most airlines would say “This is the Captain. We are seeing some turbulance, so please remain in your seats and buckle your belts. Thank you.”

The airline I was on? Well: “Please buckle your seatbelts”.

The airline also had screens drop from above. While I would normally invite this, I was in a evening flight. I had difficulties sleeping when something like a video monitor is playing. Of course, I didn’t pack my sleeping mask. Therefore, I was stuck watching “Confessions of a Shopoholic”. While other people loved this movie, I didn’t find it as interesting.

I got home around 9 AM, in which I proceeded to collapse on the bed for a couple hours. Woke up, caught up on some work I missed during the week, then headed off to play a show. Since it was out of town, I had to pack for another night away from home.

Band Gigs

Saturday was a day of playing. We played a friends graduation, then it was up to the Dells for our regular show at the Baja bar. There were 4 different Bachelorette parties that night and they were not in the Baja at the same time. As one party left, the next one showed up. Crazy.

New Guitar

While we were in transit to the Graduation party, we stopped at a local music store. There, I found a used Acoustic / Electric guitar. I picked it up as a spare for future shows. It needs some work to it, but not much to make it ready to play out.

Lazy Sunday? Not.

Of course, the day started out with this post. A quick breakfast, then it’s getting things ready for the week. Have to work on “Week in Tech History”, then I have to figure out how to put together the new video studio. Lots of soundproofing to do.

I suppose I should get to it. Thanks again to everyone for a great week. How do you top that?

and turn me on. The Guardian reports that Sainsbury’s, a UK retailer, is opening a store where the checkout will be powered by the parking lot. Story here.

Actually, that sounds pretty creative. Here’s a snippet:

Energy will be captured every time a vehicle drives over “kinetic road plates” in the car park and then channelled back into the store.

The kinetic road plates are expected to produce 30 kWh of green energy every hour — more than enough energy to power the store’s checkouts. The system, pioneered for Sainsbury’s by Peter Hughes of Highway Energy Systems, does not affect the car or fuel efficiency, and drivers feel no disturbance as they drive over the plates.

Follow the link for a picture of one of the “kinetic road plates,” which look for all the world like flat pieces of steel lying in the road.

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In Part 1, we looked at last years predictions. The numbers weren’t too shabby. This year, we’ve expanded the list to anyone that wanted to contribute. And Contributions I did get. 250 of them.

I spent most of Friday night and subsequent morning filtering the list to a couple pages worth of information. We have CEO’s, CTO’s, Marketers, Podcasters and even a Psychic helping us with this years list.

Of course at the end of the list I will be adding my 2 cents worth for 2009 on Page 2.  So without any further ado, let’s get started.

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Wow. It was about a year ago I asked for people to send in thoughts as to what to expect in 2008. I also made some Technology predictions. But the real question was – How far off was I?

This is actually part 1 of a 2-part story. This first part reviews the predictions I made last year and how far off I was. Part 2 will have this years predictions, including predictions from CEO’s CTO’s TechPodcasters and even a Psychic.

So without any further ado, let’s pick apart my idiocy from last year:

OLPC will have some growing pains. The first part of OLPC will be the easiest. Maintaining the machines will be the trick. Microsoft coming onboard will muddy the water, but they might be able to do things like offer a better support network to third world countries.

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The Economy is in Danger. Banks and Institutions are in a financial pickle. With the fall of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of bad business decisions and a Blind eye to investors building more homes than Americans need, financial institutions could collapse upon themselves. To protect their money, they could make it harder for Businesses to get loans.

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The call is made. For years now we knew we couldn’t keep living like this, yet, we still did. Now (for America), the reality is coming light a freight train toward a brick wall. We keep pulling those brakes, yet we’re not stopping.

Ever since the first windmill, we have been trying to pull energy from resources to make our jobs easier. Powering a light, running a car or using a laptop. Energy is a way of life, and we take it for granted way too often.

Recently, there have been some who have jumped out of the gate to say they have an energy source that would help. There’s even an inventor that says he has created a device that will give free energy which he plans to unveil it on June 20^th. With all those claims, we still seem to be stuck in the same conundrum we have been for the last 20 years. Will we ever break free and have a clean, reusable energy for our daily routines?

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Green Gas

3G iPhone Announcement on June 9

Ubuntu 8.04 Released

Feature: Getting XP after the cut-off date:

Change. Some love to do it, others would like to stay where they are. Sometimes change is needed – newer, faster, more powerful to take over old and un-updatable. Still, within time change happens like it always does in life. Its really a question of whether you want to change with it, or stick with the same.

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“Don’t Tase me, Bro.” is being heralded as the top quote of 2007. Who would have guessed that? Well, some tried to in early 2007. Predicting the future is not just a psychics’ job. Then again, we are not predicting – we are analyzing – Seeing trends in the last year to determine what is coming out next year.

I went through some of the predictions of 2007. Some were dead on. Social Networking and Apple devices seemed to top the list in this subject. Other predictions – well, not so much.

Now we are fast approaching 2008. There is a lot of technology that was debuted in 2007 and since they are still in their infant stages, we will see them ramp into tools that change the way we compute. 2007 was also a year of rethinking. Going Green is one of the ways we rethought things. We definitely had some good progress and will continue the trend.

So what is in store for 2008? I paneled my fellow techies at http://www.techpodcasts.com/ and we came up with some items to think about for this New Year. So let’s go through the list.

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Veterans Day. The day where we remember the men and women who have fought for us and subsequently died for our freedom. From the Civil War to today, Americans have given their life for their country. We remember that, and we honor that.

Technology and War are two things that go hand in hand. The newest advances will give the advantage swiftly and sometimes without prejudice. Whether it was the first Bomber Planes in WW1, the first use of mobile communications or the nuclear assault on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Each advantage turns War into a new game. Whoever is on top of their technology game can turn a battle to their advantage.

Remember the movie “Small Soldiers” (1998)? Action figures with a smart chip embedded in their systems start battling each other once activated. Today we have Robots that do things like disarm bombs and unmanned vehicles that can do recon or a host of other dangerous activities. Unfortunately for a large price at times.
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