Danish architects ‘print’ a house

Well not really printing in the usual sense or even 3D printing, but these architects have used a CNC (computer numerical control) machine to manufacture the wooden parts for a house ensite.  Revolutionary?  Well the CNC technology is nothing new, and I’m sure that many parts of houses are manufactured using this technology anyway.  Green and sustainable?  Well, although there was no concrete used in the construction, the structural parts of the foundation were made from pretty heavy gauge steel girders and call me a snob but this building would have only a fraction of the insulation of a strawbale house.

Anyway, you can see the video for yourself below.

http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=234397419&edition=BETAUS

Natural Building Overview

Here is a slideshow which details the various methods for building homes with natural materials.  It covers most types including adobe brick, cob, earthbags, strawbale, papercrete, hemp, log, cordwood, etc.

Credit: NatureFirstBuilding

Presidential plagiarism

The Hungarian President features in this week’s issue of the BBC’s English in the News.  Click here to go to the site or listen to the report here.

Photo credit: Paul Worthington on Flickr

The most radioactive man in Japan

I found this touching video after listening to an interview with Naoto Matsumara on the radio.  He is the only person still living in the 20km exclusion zone near the Fukushima nuclear power plant and stayed there to take care of the animals left behind.  According to the radio report, he was reported to be the most radioactive man in Japan.

Fukushima: Alone in a Nuclear Zone from Glen Milner on Vimeo.

The nuclear debate … before Fukushima

Over the last year the debate surrounding the use of nuclear energy has swung widely from strong support in favour of building more nuclear power stations to the opposite extreme of not only not constructing any more, but closing down existing power stations, as soon as possible. The reason for this massive amount of attention on the nuclear issue is the Fukushima nuclear disaster resulting from last years earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Here are two interesting and informative presentations from Ted.com which explore both sides of the nuclear vs. renewable power generation debate.  Note that these presentations were given before the disaster in Japan.  The first presentation explores the pros and cons of nuclear power.

Whose argument do you find more convincing?

The second presentation is by Bill Gates who also explores the energy issue and talks about innovation miracles that need to be addressed.

It is possible to watch both of the videos with subtitles if you click on the play button – not on the video itself.

What do you think?  Leave your comments below.

The Nuclear Debate … again

It is a year since Fukushima Daiichi became internationally infamous with what can go wrong with nuclear energy.  Damage to the reactor following the earthquake, tsunami and subsequent flooding led to equipment failure and a series of explosions.  All of these factors contributed to the release of radioactive material to the surrounding area and a series of political reactions around the world regarding the nuclear industry.

The BBC has just recorded an interview with people involved in the nuclear debate – either against nuclear energy production or those involved in the nuclear industry.

Download the podcast here from BBC’s One Planet.

The level is upper intermediate.

While you listen try and list the arguments for and against building new nuclear power stations.

Concentrated Solar Power

Occasionally I get really annoyed with so-called green technology investments.  Last week I heard on the radio that Szeged had received funding (HUF 880 million) to install a whooping 2,700 photovoltaic (PV) solar panels.  What stuck in my mind was that the expected pay back time for the solar panels, i.e. the amount of time before the value of amount of energy they produce passes the cost of installation was a staggering 25 years!  This is what annoys me and personally I think photovoltaic cells are a waste of money in most cases and not even particularly green technology.  The production of photovoltaic cells is a very energy intensive process and because most them are produced in Japan it is relatively safe to say that they are heavily reliant on nuclear energy for their manufacture. It wouldn’t be too bad if it was a private company was wasting their money but because it is ‘public funded’ means that it is the tax payers money which is wasted and those involved are quite proud of their achievements.

There are times when PV cells are an extremely useful and cost effective solution especially where electricity generation is very expensive or limited (e.g. Hawaii where they rely on petrol for electricity generation) or the consumer is isolated from the network, but it is a waste of money when situated in an area where there is an existing infrastructure with relatively cheap electricity.

One other factor with using solar cells with a domestic power system is that they force you to really appreciate the value of electricity because you cannot afford to waste the smallest amount.  I’m sure that if everyone spent a year living on a solar ‘electricity diet’, this would go a long way to reduce the amount of energy we waste and subsequently the amount of energy we need to produce.

I think that the sun is a huge resource which should be utilised but there are other more efficient ways than turning it into electricity, for example solar hot air heaters (beer collectors) or solar hot water.  One option which looks more and more realistic for large scale electricity generation is Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) which is especially suited to hot southern countries.

There is a video featuring Spain’s Torresol Energy CSP plant here.

Comprehension questions:

How many mirrors are in the installation?

How many people does it provide electricity for?

How is the energy stored?

What is the big innovation of this power plant?

Who invested the money in the plant?

What are the hopes for the future?

Appendix:

Following writing this post I found an article on the solar project in Szeged which you can read here.

According to the article, Szeged University uses 10 GWh per year  (1 gigawatt hour = 1,000,000,000 watt hours or 1,000,000 kilowatt hours).

If we calculate 50 HUF per kilowatt hour this means the University consumes 10,000,000 KWh x 50 ft =HUF500 million/year.

If the installation of the solar panels provides 7% of the total electricity consumption this means it produces the equivalent of 35million per year (HUF500 million x 0.07=HUF35 million).

If we divide the installation cost of the project (HUF800 million) by the annual savings (HUF35 million) this means that the number of years to pay off the development comes out at just over 25 years.  Not really something that anyone sane would think was a great business plan – but then again if you are using someone else’s money, why not.

Stool making

Here is something a bit different from the usual technology subject…although it does involve plenty of tools, and often makes me wince a bit in places.

Watch it for a bit of motivation to start on a project, any project.

Stools from Mark Morgan on Vimeo.

Clear your Google history

If you are a heavy Google user like me you have probably been bombarded by Google notifications recently when you log into any of the Google products, and probably like me, you are too impatient to really look into the small print of what Google is trying to tell you.  Most of us know that Google does collect our searches, analyse our emails, all in the name of ‘giving us a more personalised search experience’ or something like that, but did you know that you can access your history of everything you have looked up on Google since…well…probably you signed up for your first Google product, which is probably Gmail in most cases.  The notifications that you have been getting are to say that from March 1st, 2012, Google is going to share all your search data from different Google products into one big chunk of search history.

But did you know that you can easily delete that data and stop Google recording your searches?

Don’t get me wrong, I do like Google, my main email is Gmail, I frequently use Google Docs, Google Earth and I’m writing right now using Chrome which is my choice of browser, but I do like a bit of control over my digital footprint.

So…how do you access your history and delete it?

Log in to Google (probably with Gmail or youtube or any Google product), then enter https://www.google.com/history.  This will bring up a page of all the sites you have searched using Google.  If you are anything like me, you have made about 12,000 searches.

This is where you have the option to delete all your search history but before you do that have a look around.  What was the first thing you googled?  For me it was a local internet provider back in 2006.

Click on the trends tab and it will give you the list of the most popular searches you made (or in my case, my partner made while I was logged in).

Also it will give you statistics about how many searches you made on which day of the week or month and what time you made the most searches.

You can see a screenshot of my page below.

So you can see that the best time to catch me at my computer is at 9 o’clock at night on a Tuesday evening in November.  Although I’ll probably be too busy Googling things to get back to you.

Now once you had a look at your trends, you can go back to the main ‘History’ page and press the ‘Delete History’ button, confirm that you really, really want to lose that segment of your life and … it’s gone forever.

Or at least that is what Google wants us to think.

What was the first thing you Googled?  Which are the times you Google the most?

Leave your comments below

3D Printing

Imagine downloading plans from the internet and then printing them out on your printer – in 3-D.  Or thinking up something in your head, designing it on Google SketchUp and having it printed out in 3-D to hold physically in your hands.  According to Lisa Harouni, this is about to become reality, as she states that 2012 will become the year that the 3-D printer, or additive manufacturing technology, will be available to the mainstream public.

She gives a good overview of how the technology works and what applications it can be used for in the video below.

What do you think it will mean to the mass manufacturing industry?  Will people be much prouder to own personalised designs rather than mass manufactured products?

Please vote in the survey and leave any comments.