"If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL), it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road."

We should have TV adverts every evening stating facts like this. Its not enough to just put this things in the shops in the hope that people will buy them out of conscience.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs : ENERGY STAR

"Emergency services have been called to three Tube stations after 'incidents', Scotland Yard said."

Here we go again - possibly...

BBC NEWS | UK | 'Incidents' spark Tube evacuation

Can't say that I'm particularly impressed with the remastered version of Yes' seminal 1980s rock album 90125. I've owned the original on CD since it was first release in 1983 (and I saw them live, and I bought the T-shirt) and I was led to believe the remastered version would really be worth gettings - but I cannot tell any difference in the 9 original tracks. Of course, you do get 6 new tracks, some of which have never been released before, so if you've never owned 90125 before, this version is certainly the one to get.

I bid a fond farewell as Star Trek's Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, played by Canadian actor James Doohan, heads for the great engine room in the sky. Born in Vancouver in 1920 (same year as my Mum), Doohan lost a finger in action on 'D'-day and survived a plane crash in Holland. He enjoyed a lucrative old age, making guest appearances at SciFi conventions, but did not have a successful screen career after the role for which he will never be forgotten.

"Teflon firm faces fresh lawsuit
US chemicals giant DuPont is facing a lawsuit accusing the company of failing to warn consumers about the health hazards of Teflon non-stick coatings."

I guess a big warning on the packaging saying "this saucepan may cause you cancer" wouldn't exactly be good for business...

"DuPont denied the claims, stating its products were safe and has vowed to vigorously defend itself."

First I've heard of this. Europe is always quick to bring in legislation to ban something that might, just might, be a hazard to health (like the vitamin supplements millions of us have been taking for years with no apparent side effects).

"Teflon was invented in the 1930s by DuPont, the US firm which uses it today to make non-stick cookware, and also markets it as a coating for clothes and carpets."

So it wasn't a product of the US space race after all (as we were always told!).

"'DuPont has known for over 20 years that the Teflon product and the PFOA chemical it contains causes cancer in laboratory animals,' said Miami-based lawyer Alan Kluger."

Yes, all my rats use Telfon® saucepans *.

BBC NEWS | Business | Teflon firm faces fresh lawsuit

* Note: I don't have any rats and even if I had rats I wouldn't put them in a laboratory, even if I had one, which I don't.

Ducks from above

Ducks from above
Photo uploaded to flickr 19 Jul '05, 3.28pm PST by hockeyshooter

The recent BBC4 series 'Digital Picture of Britain' where poor, unsuspecting professional photographers have a digital camera of varying capabilities thrust into their grubby hands, provided the inspiration to try taking some more shots this afternoon with my Nokia 6230 camera phone (or shouldn't that be phone camera?). OK, so the image quality is absolutely naff, and you have no control over focus, etc. but it is very liberating to actually use such a simple device to capture what you see as you walk along.

"Fraser Speirs: Flickr Export Plugin for iPhoto"

Works, too. Shame iPhoto is so painfully slow on this G4 Powermac...

Speirs.org :: Flickr Export Plugin for iPhoto

"Speed of Apple Intel dev systems impress developers
The speed of Mac OS X running on Intel hardware is impressing some developers who've been privy to one of Apple's first Intel-based developer transition systems.

The systems started shipping to Mac OS X developers three weeks ago, each equipped with a 3.6 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with 2 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz front-side bus, 1GB of 533MHz DDR2 Dual Channel SDRAM, and an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900."

The first of these machine have apparently now reached the UK. WinTel dedicates are going to be laughing up their sleeves at how long Mac devotees have always claimed their PowerPC CPUs were actually faster. So, were we being fed a line by Jobs all along?

"Developers sources say the early version of Rosetta, a dynamic binary translator that is designed to run unaltered PowerPC applications on Intel Macs, is also impressive. "Rosetta is completely 100 percent seamless and nothing like the Classic environment used to run older Mac OS 8 and 9 applications under Mac OS X," one source told AppleInsider."

This is good news because I hardly think Mac users would want to update all their applications, to suit a different OS, again.

AppleInsider | Speed of Apple Intel dev systems impress developers

Photo gallery now posted from Sunday's motocross event at Toddington. It must have been about 28 deg.C, in the driest summer since 1973, so the dust was everywhere.

"Court Rejects Effort by States to Force Bush Administration to Regulate Greenhouse Gases
States lost a bid Friday to force the Bush administration to regulate heat-trapping industrial gases that have been blamed for global warming.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the Environmental Protection Agency acted properly when it rejected a nonprofit group's petition. The group had asked EPA to impose new controls on carbon dioxide and other automobile pollutants that scientists say trap heat in the atmosphere like a greenhouse."

Its getting to look like Bush is getting increasingly isolated in his own country on his head-in-the-sand environmental stance. The case was rejected by legal footwork and not the issues at hand.

ENN: Environmental News Network | Court Rejects Effort by States to Force Bush Administration to Regulate Greenhouse Gases

Late to the motocross at Toddington yesterday. Photos should be up tonight.

"With at least 20,000 disused mill sites in the UK, there is vast untapped potential to harness river and stream power to help meet Government renewable energy targets. But that is starting to change. A group of pioneering mill owners in South Somerset is working on Britain’s first micro-scale watermill hydro-power project, generating enough electricity to supply 150 homes in the area, with surplus energy sold back to the power companies."

Interesting article. When I holidayed in Austria, the town of Jenbach where we stayed was situated on a small, fast-flowing river and many of the houses had their own small generators giving them free electricity.

BBC Radio 4 - Open Country - 9 July 2005

You have received a new message

"You have received a new message" says flickr as it once again looses the subject line I carefully added to the MMS I sent this image with.
Photo uploaded to flickr 15 Jul '05, 1.50pm PST by hockeyshooter

"Message text" it says, instead of whatever it was I typed in to the phone. At least the image upload worked, after Vodafone duffed up the settings it took me so long to get working. Life's not supposed to be easy, though, is it?

Photo shows our backgarden (again) in more hot, evening weather.

"Food movement 'harms environment'
The distribution of food across the UK in cars and lorries adds to pollution, congestion and climate change, a report by the government says. It said the environmental cost of moving food was as much as £9bn a year, around half of it due to congestion. The quantity of food moved by road has doubled since 1974..."

At the end of the day, one significant cause of this is free trade. Like manufacturing, we have 'exported' a big chunk of our food production and sold off good farming land to build more houses. And the governments policy of allowing large numbers of massive supermarkets to be built outside towns around the country (often on green belt land - not fogetting that certain wealthy families behind some of the biggest chains are significant contributors to party funds) has meant many more car journeys.

I'd like to buy English apples all year round, but the EC destroyed most of our apple-growing industry with the massive subsidies they pay to fruit growers in other countries, notably France.

BBC NEWS | UK | Food movement 'harms environment'

"Record traffic to BBC News site
Visits to the BBC News website rose sharply as people went online to find out more about the bomb attacks in London last Thursday. The site had a record estimated 115 million page views, more than five times the average daily figure."

Kinda puts my my own photography website, which has achieved 3.2 million page requests in 938 days, in the shade. But then I don't tend to feature such tragic news. I guess they do some nifty load balancing - I never noticed any slowdown in their site.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Record traffic to BBC News site

Hey, its bright sunshine outside. Why do we need the lights on? Stop wasting energy.

"'No evidence' Iraq led to attacks
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said there is no evidence the attacks on London were carried out because of the UK's role in the Iraq war."

Well, I don't suppose there's actually any 'evidence' that it was carried out by or on behalf of Al-Queda, but there's got to have been a reason. I guess Clarke is just being diplomatic. If he states what everyone accepts - that it was in retribution for our Leader's choice to support the US - then he is effectively criticising Blair. Which he really shouldn't do - unless he wants to become the new Robin Cook.

Outspoken MP George Galloway said, "We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain."

I'm glad someone's got their head screwed on right. Comments in the press today suggest that the bombers could well have been English. So ID cards and/or biometric passports wouldn't have done any good in stopping them.

BBC NEWS | Politics | 'No evidence' Iraq led to attacks

You have received a new message

[You have received a new message] was the title flickr added to this - not the subject I gave the MMS message on my phone
Photo uploaded to flickr by hockeyshooter

[Message text] appeared here instead of the big block of text I painstakingly typed into my phone to go with the above photo. Either there's a fault with the template, or flickr could not separate the text from the image in the original message...

Not at all impressed with War of the Worlds last night at Cineworld in Milton Keynes. Found the film immensely annoying. 4/10.

Greenpeace marks Rainbow Warrior bombing anniversary

"The 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour will be marked on 10 July.

The bombing, carried out by French secret service agents, was an attempt to sabotage the 1985 Greenpeace campaign against Pacific Island nuclear testing."

I remember this happening with incredulity - how the French could have the nerve. But they essentially got away with it.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Greenpeace marks bombing anniversary