Say What!?

eetimes

R. Colin Johnson writes over at the EETimes that QuantumSphere Inc. has had a breakthrough in the use of nanoparticles to increase the efficiency of Hydrogen production.
Johnson quotes the company:

“Instead of switching 170,000 gas stations over to hydrogen, using our electrodes could enable consumers to make their own hydrogen, either in the garage or right on the vehicle,” said Kevin Maloney, president, chief executive officer and co-founder of QuantumSphere. “Our nanoparticle-coated electrodes make electrolysers efficient enough to provide hydrogen on demand from a tank of distilled water in your car.”

Just sit for 15 minutes and consider just how much the concept of grassroots power production could change the way we as a species will exist.  Unlimited power for nearly free.  Too good to be true?  Before you let the realities of greed and political power seep into this thought process, just sit and dream about the possibilites…

obsolete skills

Sadly, you have to be over 30 to really get most of this. Still it is humbling and funny at the same time.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080216175953.htm

I’ve been discussing this for some time now.  One of the first things to get out of the way is the notion of “Natural” selection.  Nature has changed, some say it no longer exists.  However, the notion of how selection works in a Darwinian framework still applies to artificial selection; as seen in Dog evolution.  These principles still apply to culture, as they do to markets, and species. Of course the time scales are vastly different, but cultures and civilizations evolve at much greater rates than to biological systems. Domestic animals are especially interesting because they are a perfect blend of cultural and biological selection manifesting themselves.  I’m currently exploring the other side of this coin: the blending of cultural and technological selection as it applies to the homo sapien. Or more simply stated, the evolution of Man™

http://www.bridgesmathart.org/art-exhibits/jmm08/

The latest version of Adobe Magazine is out.  Some good reading and inspiration. I especially like how they briefly discuss how many of the projects were created.  Go get it, it’s worth the time.

Six Revisions Has a brief, yet good, run-down of development tips using the Chris Pederick’s Web Developer add-on for Firefox.  I especially like that Web Developer will display all of the style rules (despite location) that effect a chosen element.  When trying to help students debug CSS issues, it’s difficult to know where and what in their style sheet(s) is messing with a problematic element.  This will certainly help me narrow down those pesky CSS bugs.

http://automobiles.honda.com/fcx-clarity/

It all starts somewhere, and this is the beginning of the end for oil.  Oh, it’s gonna be a nasty death rattle, but it is inevitable.  Honda has broken the ice in the U.S. and it is only a matter of time before solar hydrogen stations start popping up.  In fact, hydrogen is so going to start out as a cottage industry, The big boys will try to squeeze the small guy out, only to find that they can’t.  Hydrogen fueling stations can use so many grassroots methods for electrolyzing water into hydrogen that almost anyone can have their own.
Any method of generating electricity can be used to create a hydrogen fueling station.  Of course I am referring to grassroots methods mainly, and not the use of natural gas, coal, oil, or nuclear energies.  I’m thinking more along the lines of wind, solar, geothermal, farm produced methane, greasel, and replenishable biomass.  Hell, I’d even love to see landfill trash, blown into powder (vortexdehydration’s windhexe) and burned as a fuel for electric turbines. I think they have ways of cleaning out the smoke?  So effectively replacing the nasty landfill sludge with its burned out carbon/soot. 

http://amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI73MA/
https://www.irexshop.com/
http://www.eink.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19736/?a=f

I have been quietly watching and cheering for the developments in e-paper.  Certainly, there will always be a need for a physically permanent method of storing information. However, most of our daily requirements include lightweight, portable, low-power, e-book readers; with the same visual characteristics of paper. Amazon.com’s new Kindle looks to be a good beginning.  If they could combine the features of the Kindle with the iRex Illiad 2, eliminate the “Page flash” and delay when changing the page, I’d probably buy one.  Color isn’t as important to me as portability.  I currently carry several thousand pages of dead-tree with me between classes and it gets tiresome.

I’ve got a new body of photos up at troyb.net

artist’s statement

The utility poles series and the communication towers are an examination of what we have learned to ignore. These poles, and towers, are engineered and designed for functionality with no appreciable concern for their outward aesthetic. Despite this, they expose a fascinating sculptural vocabulary. The whole system is designed to carry the invisible and vital, life-force of the evolving organism known as civilization. 

Societies, and cultures are organisms with brains and bodies composed of infinitely complex and instantaneous human relationships. These relationships are exponentially enhanced through the instantaneity and reach of the global communication network(s).  In almost no time, these shifting and evolving relationships can manifest into dynamic new virtual organisms. These organisms survive on human, financial, and natural resources. Darwinian principles still apply. We are ultimately evolving toward a terrestrial singularity. As this occurs, homo sapiens are increasingly becoming inconsequential to the goals of the totality,and finding a mate will be paramount for the singularity.

My goal is to examine and record the developmental process of this entity.

The physical show is currently hanging on the walls of one of the better Atlanta art galleries, Get This! Gallery. Go Check it out!

Beautiful Evidence
This looks to be a beautiful addition to the Tufte books. I’m going to try getting my Library to pick this up.

45 freeware design programs

A great list of some well known and obscure free tools. 

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18086/

The low-down?

“The company boldly claims that its system, a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company.”

It’s interesting to watch how electricity requirements are becoming less (due to increasing electronic efficiency) and power capacity is growing.
What happens when people have access to cheap, endless power sources?  What if we make them small and portable?

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html

Geothermal baby! Hawaii has plans on being a major player in the production of hydrogen.  Lots of geothermal to produce electricity for electrolysis.
The article makes one statement that I have issues with.

“And unlike wind and solar systems, a geothermal plant works night and day, offering a non-interruptible source of electric power.”

Toksöz added that the electricity produced annually by geothermal energy systems now in use in the United States at sites in California, Hawaii, Utah and Nevada is comparable to that produced by solar and wind power combined. And the potential is far greater still, since hot rocks below the surface are available in most parts of the United States.

Again with the “my tech is better than yours!” Why can’t anyone look at the power problem as a multi-faceted solution? Another facet to examine is the impact on how water will be both used and discarded.  Water is a precious natural resource, and we can’t afford to take it for granted.

Iceland has already gotten a good head start on the whole geothermal power solution as seen here.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/01/magwind_vertica.php

This turbine appears to solve several key issues with homeowners running wind turbines, noise, size, and complexity.  It looks kinda cool too!

I firmly believe that it will be a combination of renewable resources that will break our world’s dependence on fossil fuels.  I think that it will be many generations before there is no fossil fuel usage on our planet.  In several generations (2-3) the concept or distributed power production will be the norm.  The politics and economic infrastructure will take some time to build.

Who knows, maybe someday we can all be like Michael Strizsk. Consider a standard home with a roof shingled with photo-voltaics. The roof is storing energy in both batteries and hydrogen form. Add to this a powerful consumer based wind turbine and you have a pretty solid solution. Michael Strizki of East Amwell, New Jersey has eliminated his utility bill in such a manner.  The biggest issue currently is economic feasibility. However, if you can make enough power to sell it back to the electric company, that’s got to help. Strizki’s solution is a prototype, so costs will be coming down once things get worked out.

I’ve just read, The Hydrogen Economy by Jeremy Rifkin.  Although the first half (if not more) goes into the history of oil (the fix we’re in), it’s really necessary to provide a good perspective on just how integrated into civilization oil is.  In fact it DEFINES the very core of our “civilized” world.  So, when a bunch of treehugger yahoos talk about decentralized power, their talking about collapsing the skeleton which supports much of the world’s economies.  Backing out of that gargantuan dead end is going to be a massive undertaking.  Rifkin offers a solution, a trajectory which is built around solar, wind, and hydrogen. He doesn’t have all of the answers, but he provides a plan.  It’s up to the rest of the political, and technical geniuses to fill in the details. 

I don’t know how long its been available, but Flash 9 beta is available at Adobe Labs. AS 3.0 looks to add some really handy functionality for developing dynamically generated interfaces and binding those interfaces with dynamic content. The document class seems to be a great new feature. It basically allows you to no longer have to add code to the timeline.

Flash and Flex are coming closer together. Can the two products continue to have so much overlap? Isn’t Flex basically Flash 9 in screens development mode?  I’ve only played with Flex 2 beta so I can’t get into any real comparisons between the two apps.

Jen and Peter deHann have a helpful little article on getting your feet wet with AS 3.0 workflow/features.