If the energy people expend dancing and working out can power cellphones, lights and other electrical appliances, why not apply the same concept to all the energy spent by millions of people every day simply walking along city sidewalks? That’s exactly the premise behind Pavegen slabs, which can be inserted among regular sidewalk sections to capture the kinetic energy people spend just walking.
Each rubber slab from UK-based Pavegen Systems gets depressed by about 5 mm each time it gets stepped on. Using just that small movement, it can convert the kinetic energy used into electricity, which is then stored in the slab. Specifically, 5 percent of the energy harvested is used to make the slab’s LED glow, making it clear to users that their energy has been captured. The rest can be used to power pedestrian lighting, information displays and many other applications. Pavegen’s patent-protected technology has also been used to harvest energy from users’ footsteps on stairs; custom branding is available.
Following recent tests in East London, Pavegen is now seeking both investors and additional testing sites for its eco-iconic innovation. One to get in on early…?
Website: www.pavegensystems.com
We went to buy a new bed the other day. We’d already seen the one we wanted and we knew how much it was going to be.
So, we went into the store and had one final look at the bed to make sure it was the one we wanted. The price was £369, the same as in the brocuhers we had looked at. All good.
We went to the sales desk and told the salesperson which we wanted. She checked stock and took our details. And then: “OK, that’ll be £405 in total, please”. Now, beds are big and heavy items and I should have probably expected a delivery charge but it hadn’t even crossed my mind that I would be paying anything more the £369. Nowhere in the brochures or in store were any prices quoted as being + delivery.
I argued a bit about the extra charge and I thought 35 quid for delivery was a bit steep. Apparently the delivery charge was such because they had to travel a fair distance from the warehouse – not my problem. We couldn’t have the bed delivered to the store and pick it up from there, “no storage space” apparently.
By this time I was pretty p*ssed off to say the least. She still made the sale this time but lost any future custom from us. She also lost any word of mouth advertising.
ThemePerPost is a Wordpress plugin that lets you change your blog’s theme for individual posts or pages.
ThemePerPost is ideal for people who want to style their about page, create a unique landing page, show theme previews for design showcases, split one Wordpress install into multiple sub-sites. It’s for anyone who wants to have posts and pages with different styles.
You can create your own small one-file themes or you can use any existing theme.
You can download it from this Wordpress page or you can check out the ThemePerPost page for more info. If the plugin isn’t working right for you or there’s something that needs changing/improving then give me a shout. I’d love to hear from you.
This is available as a T-Shirt from Teefury.com
Hirsute History – Shirts featuring the hair of famous people. Not like ‘Britney’ famous, more like important. Well, mostly. Oh, and some beards too.
Matt Cutts has been trying something new or giving something up for 30 days at a time. First he tried to do 10k steps every day, then he gave up TV and now he’s biking to work at the Googleplex – each one for the 30 days.
As he says, 30 days is long enough to build a habit. I’m trying out his idea and I’m not eating chocolate for the whole of July.
A conversation overheard by Dooce:
First guy: “Dude, you got Internet where you live?”
Second guy: “Um… what?”
First guy: “The INTERNET! You know, Google and stuff.”
Second guy: “Dude, it’s 2009. The Internet is everywhere. Of course I have it where I live.”
First guy: “It’s not everywhere, man. It’s not in the woods and shit. They don’t run those wires out into the middle of nowhere.”
Second guy: “Okay, maybe not in the woods, but most people have access to the Internet.”
First guy: “Or out in the ocean. I bet you can’t get the Internet on a boat.”
Second guy: “Well, see, they make these things where you can access the Internet wirelessly.”
First guy: “Wire-what?”
Second guy: “Wirelessly. It works kind of like a cell phone. Do you know what a USB port is?”
First guy: “Dude, whatever. That’s all future shit. Sounds like you’re speaking Italian.”
There’s a ton of websites out there offering advice to beat procrastination, to make you a better person, to get you a better job, more money, nicer hair, healthier, a better website, etc, and so on.
I subscribe to a ton of RSS feeds, many of which are sites offering that kind of advice. Well, maybe not the hair one…
But not anymore, I’ve binned 90% of my feeds from Google Reader cos I realised one simple thing:
If I spent as much time actually working towards my goals as I did reading about how to reach them I would be much better off. Instead of reading about jogging form I could be out pounding the pavement. Instead of reading about a new programming language I could be writing something in it. And the worst of all:
reading about beating procrastination…
When does that become procrastination itself?
DOAJ is an online scientific and scholarly journal repository. They currently hold 3886 journals in their database – 1380 of which are searchable at the article level.
To be accepted into the DOAJ a journal must be peer reviewed and free to view.
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