Phoebe's Jottings

Is cat food addictive (for cats!)

2011-12-04T05:51:00.000-08:00

A friend brought some fancy Felix cat food in sachets when I asked her to pick up a bit of cat food on her way here. My cats are outside cats. Their normal diet is dried cat food once a day with small beasties as they catch them. Just occasionally they get a tin of cat food for a treat. They do well on this diet always looking sleek and shiney.

Anyway they wolfed down the Felix that night and I thought no more about it. Next morning I was mobbed at the door as though they hadn't been fed for days. They spent the whole day at this and finally got their fix in the evening. Next day the same. Thankfully the Felix sachets are finished and their behaviour is returning to normal. What was that about?

Green shoots and old scaffolding boards

2011-04-15T02:44:00.000-07:00

Long, long ago I was a great fan of Geoff Hamilton's Gardener's World on the BBC. Geoff was a great man for showing us how to knock up useful garden items from a few old boards and some nails. With the untimely loss of Geoff we moved on to a new generation of presenters who reviewed the range of products we could purchase from our local garden centre and I rather lost interest in the program. Two bits of great news. Monty Don is back presenting Gardener's World, a real gardener and not a bit of garden centre tat in sight. Then, fired with a renewed enthusiasm for gardening programs, I tried RTE's How to Create a Garden and there were the good old scaffolding boards and how to make your own cold frame. Isn't it great to seem some attention given to build your own instead of buy your own!

How I'm going to vote in General Election 2011

2011-02-21T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've been struggling with how to vote as I don't feel any of the main parties are looking much beyond the end of their noses in their plans to fix things - or return to a sustainable economy as Fianne Fail puts it!

I want to see fundamental change in how we view the economy, in our use of non-renewable resources and a more imaginative and long term approach to planning for the future. I want to see more power at the local level along with people getting more involved in our own government. I want to a split in the political system between politicians how look after local and individual issues and those that are minding the country. I could go on....

No fundamental change is going to come with the current, well established people and systems of government so I will vote for whichever party will make the most fundamental changes in the way we govern ourselves that give a chance for change to happen AND for the party which makes the most effort to involve women.

I don't believe women make better decisions than men, or that men make better decisions than women, but I do believe that men and women together make better decisions. But for this to happen women must be allowed to be women and not feel we have to play the men's games better than them. Apparently men tend to make decisions that take advantage of the current situation whereas women are more likely to look at the long terms consequences of a decision and judge according. This make perfect sense to me and shows how men and women working together make better balanced decisions. This TED talk makes a similar point:

Now to the research. Any comments on who you think is doing best in this area very welcome!

Including Jpeg support in PIL on centos box

2010-12-13T02:51:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of posts out that say to install the libraries jpeg and jpeg-devel prior to installing PIL, but this did not work for me on Cento. For example this site http://www.jroller.com/RickHigh/entry/installing_pil_python_image_library suggests using the command:

$ sudo yum install freetype freetype-devel jpeg jpeg-devel libpng libpng-devel
Setting up Install Process
Setting up repositories
Reading repository metadata in from local files
Parsing package install arguments
No Match for argument: jpeg <<----- note the error here
No Match for argument: jpeg-devel <<----- and here
Resolving Dependencies
--> Populating transaction set with selected packages. Please wait.
---> Downloading header for libpng to pack into transaction set.
......

Instead use:

$ sudo yum install freetype freetype-devel libpng libpng-devel libjpeg libjpeg-devel

If you have already got as far as installing PIL, delete it from the site-packages directory and reinstall, I use easy_install PIL, and this will rebuild PIL, this time with jpeg support.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
*** TKINTER support not available
--- JPEG support available
--- ZLIB (PNG/ZIP) support available
--- FREETYPE2 support available
*** LITTLECMS support not available
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Training Horses like learning a Language?

2010-10-03T11:14:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to articulate how my methods of training horses have changed over the last couple of years, thanks to a number of books and in particular Clinton Anderson. It's about teach that when a give a certain aid, this is what I want the horse to do. But isn't that what I've always done? Take for example teach a rein back. I would apply some pressure on the reins and a bit of leg and keep increasing the pressure until the horse would step back, then I would reward him. Over time I would hope to reduce the amount of pressure I'd require to get the rein back.

The new method is only subtly different. First I will teach the reinback from the ground, light pressure on the chest means go back, then when I'm on board apply gentle pressure with the reins at the same time a pulling a rope around the horses neck. The instant the horse makes any attempt to go back, I drop the reins to indicate that was the right thing to do. After a bit I'll stop using the rope and include moving my weight back and finally add use of the legs. This way I've broken down the problem into steps and never had to apply a lot of pressure to show what I want. This second approach has meant my horses have become much lighter and stop and reinback with much less resistance because they have learnt the language of the aids.

So I would say my old method was like arriving in a new country where nobody speaks my language and beyond speaking a bit slower and louder, I don't get any help in learning this language. It is a slow and painful process! The second method is like having a teacher coming with you a helping gain fluency step by step at a pace that suits you. So as a horse trainer, I am focusing more on my skills as a teacher than my skills as a rider.

Mad Dog the Superstar

2010-05-04T03:07:00.000-07:00

Travelled up to Kilkenny yesterday (3.5 hours each way) for the excellent Amateur show that is held there on May Bank Holiday each year. It's been lucky for me in the past, but with no show since last October and straight into one of the toughest competitions of the year, I was stomach churningly nervous as I wait for the class to get under way. I needn't have worried, Mad Dog shook off the winter blues and returned to form to win the class in fine style, loving all the excitement and attention. Supercub finished fourth in the later speed class so very tired but happy horses and rider arrived home late last night.

http://stabletostable.com/en/2010/05/kilkenny-sji-amateurs-warrington-ec-03052010/

Dolores has healthy French Buffet Foal - the waiting is over

2010-05-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

Phew, the waiting is over! Dolores broke her pelvis when she was 1 year old and nobody except me and the vet thought she had a chance. But after waiting for 6 month, minding her day and night, neighbours all being called on more than once to help me get her on her feet again in the middle of the night, waiting for the scan at 3 years old to see if I could put in her in foal, waiting to see if she would go in foal, waiting to see if she would carry the foal full term, waiting for her to foal, the waiting is over and the horse count has gone up once more.

In the early hours of the 1st of May, out in the field because I thought I had more waiting to do, Dolores gave birth to a health filly foal. She is proving a calm and competent mother and is delighted with her foal. More photos to follow!

SPCs Talk at Labour Party Environment Forum

2010-04-24T00:44:00.000-07:00

Here is what I plan to say - but there is an hours journey to get there - it could all change!

Hello, my name is Phoebe Bright and I'm a member of Cork Environmental Forum, on the executive of Feasta (an Economics think tank), a Long Term Thinker, a Techie and a horse addict. I'm going to speak very briefly, only the role of SPCs, my experience of sitting on one of the Cork County SPCs and a couple of suggestions for how we can make them more effective.

Each County and City Council has a number Strategic Policy Committees made up roughly equal numbers of councillors and external representatives from organisations representing the environment, economic and social pillars. The expectation for SPCs was that they could provide a different perspective during policy development. For example, the policy planning unit might feel they don't more input into the farmer's market's. Should there be provisions in the upcoming Development Plans and if so what? A good question for an SPC. Or, are there enough provisions for dogs in the City? If not, what changes to policy should we consider?

That, as far as I can see from the documentation, was the expectation. The reality for me, and many of my fellow external representatives, was that the SPC had become another tick box on the road to policy implementation. Typically, we would receive documents for the next meeting a few days before the meeting, or at the meeting and we would spend 20 mins reviewing the Retail Policy for the City. As the councillors had already participated in discussion on this policy during it's development, they had nothing more to say other than to repeat their position on this policy and the external representatives were desperately looking to find something intelligent to contribute from a hasty reading of the document. As we saw these documents near the end of their progress from idea to publication, there was little chance of our input having any impact, even when we were able to make useful contributions. There was an understandable air of frustration from many of those involved.

The SPCs have lately been disbanded and reformed and we hope for better things going forward. I certainly feel the idea of the SPC is valid and could of great benefit in widening the discussion on policy and helping the external representatives and their organisations to better understand the thinking behind policy development and to challenge the mindset of the of the elected councillors.

I would ask you to consider two thoughts going forward, first the questions we ask and second the language we use.

Beth Novak did a talk on for the Long Now Foundation on what Obama's administration has done on Open Government in the last year, what they have learned and their plans for the future. On President Obama's first day in office he signed a memorandum on Open Government, committing all the departments and agencies to "transparency, participation, and collaboration. One of the lessons they have learnt to successfully encourage participation and collaboration is to ask good questions. In this case, good questions are SMART questions (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relavent and Time bound) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria. So if you are an elected member and an issue arises during the development of policy, why not suggest that this be brought before an SPC? If you are on an SPC, try to get these types of questions on the agenda.

Beth Novak's talk on Open Government: http://www.longnow.org/seminars/02010/mar/04/transparent-government/

The second suggestion comes from a gem in the book The Intelligence Advantage . The book talks about how culture is about language, the way we talk about our problems, the way we listen and the way we discuss. If we want to test whether change is happening, then all we have to do is listen to the way that language is used. If that has not changed, the culture is not changing either.

So if we want a different discussion in our SPCs, a different perspective and viewpoint, then we need to change the balance so that the councillors are drawn into a different conversation. At present the Chair of each SPC is part of the council, so my suggestion is to have the meetings chaired or facilitated by an external representative.

I could am happy to share further experiences and ideas for SPCs and open government, so please feel free to catch me in the next break or contact me later.

The Language of Change

2010-04-22T03:38:00.001-07:00

Dipping into The Intelligence Advantage - Organizing for Complexity by Michael D McMaster a gem of a book, I came across this section, which seems particularly pertinent to our situation in Ireland.

Organisations first appear in Language

Language is at the center of society, cooperation and the coordination of action. All social organization occurs in language. Community is a function of language. How we distinguish those who "belong" from those who do not is by the way they speak. Even when the distinction is based on common practices, these practices emerge from a society where language was the fundamental organizing medium.

A corporation, like a community, is held together by it's language, given meaning by its language, and is distinguished from other corporations by its language. IBM, Apple and NEC (that dates it!) all have unique language, unique stories and unique ways of speaking. Equally important, their unique ways of understanding things and listening. These ways of speaking, listening and understanding not only constitute the culture of a company, but they also constitute a company's unique way of organizing, managing and relating to the marketplace....

and further on...

If there is no change in the way that problems are described, the way challenges are spoken about, or the way values are stated, then it is very unlikely that any major change is occurring in that corporation.

I think there is a groundswell of opinion in Ireland that significant change is required in the culture of our public organisations. We will know that our decision makers and politicians also want change when we here a change in the language they use to describe our problems and how they talk about the future.

Installing GIT on Centos 5.4

2010-03-26T04:05:00.000-07:00

Following directions from this site:http://www.how-to-linux.com/2009/01/install-git-161-on-centos-52/

I got the error:

[root@tricostar-nwlc git-1.7.0.3]# make prefix=/usr/local all
/bin/sh: curl-config: command not found
GIT_VERSION = 1.7.0.3
/bin/sh: curl-config: command not found
* new build flags or prefix
CC fast-import.o
....

When trying to make GIT. After a bit of googling, found that I needed to include curl-devel as a dependancy so the following instructions worked for me:

yum install zlib-devel openssl-devel perl cpio expat-devel gettext-devel
yum install libcurl3-openssl-dev
wget http://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.0.3.tar.gz
tar xvfz git-1.7.0.3.tar.gz
cd git-1.7.0.3
make prefix=/usr/local all
make prefix=/usr/local install

Lessons learnt on Smart Meter rollout

2010-02-19T02:06:00.001-08:00

Just reading an interesting post on Greenmonks Blog http://greenmonk.net/pge-smart-meter-communication-failure/ on how not to roll out a smart meter system.

The crux of it is that if you want people to change their behavior, you have to make the information they need to adapt highly visible. In this rollout, the company was expecting customers to shift their loads from peak (high cost) periods to off peak (low cost) periods and thereby reduce their overall bills. But there were no displays on the meters giving the current cost of electricity, no way of seeing current consumption or current spend. I previously suggested in this blog, that to reduce our car driving we have the current cost of our journeys displayed in real-time on the car dashboard to keep reminding us how much we have spent. As it stands, we only have the short pain of filling up our tanks followed by a long period of driving for free, and judging from our steadfast reluctance to reducing the time we spend in our cars, fuel price increases don't lead to behaviour change.

Very chocolatey Cookies/Brownies

2010-02-14T09:07:00.000-08:00

400g of Lidl 40% chocolate grated

115g butter

-- melt together --

2 eggs, wisk with

140g demarara sugar

Add melted chocolate/butter

Add 1 tsp cinnamon

Add chocolate chips

Add about 40g cup of flour pending on whether you want cookies or brownies. For brownies add flour until just pourable, for cookies add flour until they can be shaped.

Bake for about 12 mins in 170/180 oven until just cooked.

Keep eating one more but try and stop before you feel sick!

Banning the use of the word Sustainable

2010-02-14T01:28:00.000-08:00

In a finite world due to be sucked into the sun in only 7.5billion years, nothing is truly sustainable. "Sustainable" has become so meaningless that the local chamber of commerce referred to a "return to a sustainable economy" recently, so would we be lost for words if we banned the use of "Sustainable"?

I'm going to try very hard to remove the word from my vocabulary from now on and use some of these instead:

Resilience - the ability to bounce back, and often the opposite of efficiency. A highly efficient system is designed for the highest gain in the short term. It is tuned to current circumstances and as soon as those circumstances change it is no longer efficient. The more efficient and specialised a system, business or organism becomes the less adaptable and resilient. Resillience is about the boring stuff. The boring banks were more resillient, the boring businesses producing essential goods and services for local markets - funeral directors, tyre sales, food markets are all ticking away. Resillience is about reliability and repairability. Resillience is about having an infrastructure we can trust - energy, transport, broadband, water.

Continuity - the value in keeping some things the same while others change. The loss of a business is not simply a monetary loss for the economy but the loss of intelligence. An established company has an intelligence and learning of it's own which is held by it's staff. While some of that intelligence may be written down, breaking up the people means losing that intelligence. Continuity is about keeping and using that collective intelligence, even if the original purpose has changed.

Balanced Portfolio - In the old days, a couple of decades ago, financial advisors talked about a balanced portfolio. You had your safe (!) bonds and blue chip stocks, your more risky stocks and shares and a few high risk investments. If our economy was a balanced portfolio, the safe investments would be investing in our own elf-sufficiency, making goods and services that are needed in our own economy. The medium risk would be making goods for export markets, attracting multinational FDR and investing in foreign businesses. High risk would be relying on cycles that are likely to be short lived - housing booms have historically been followed by housing busts and there seems to escape from that cycle.

Natural Lifespan - while long term thinking, continuity and resilience have their place, being able to exploit short term opportunities, the high risk element of the balanced portfolio, is also of great benefit and the trick here is to build in the demise as well as the creation and the skill is in knowing when to change.

What all of these words have in common is a longer term view of success than we have become used to, so rather than asking for the speaker's or author's definition of "Sustainable" as I have in the past, I will ask "Do you mean continue indefinitely, or do you have a more realistic timeframe in mind?".

Installing OpenCV 2 on OSX with Python

2010-02-07T04:11:00.000-08:00

Starting with instructions on the Willow Garage site, I fell at the first hurdle because thought I didn't need to install svn. Briefly, this is what I did and the more detailed explanation follows.

The short route:

1. sudo fink install svn-ssl (which takes a long time!)

2. sudo port install cmake

3. svn co https://code.ros.org/svn/opencv/trunk opencv

4. cd opencv

5. mkdir opencv/build

6. cd opencv/build

7. cmake ..

8. ccmake . (option c then option g)

9. make

10. sudo make install

On my osx 10.5 it copied the shared objects file to:

/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/cv.so

so I needed to move it to the site-packages I was using

11. cp /usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/cv.so /Users/phoebebr/Development/site-packages

Now I can do:

python
>>> import cv

no error

and I can run the tests in my downloaded opencv folder,

cd opencv/opencv/tests/python
python test.py

This did report a few problems but most stuff seemed to run. Tried to run some tests calling opencv from Aptana but this caused the following error: " cp /usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/cv.so /Users/phoebebr/Development/site-packages". Having installed successfully (I hope!) will have a go a writing a few programs next week....

The long route:

Already had svn so did:

svn co https://code.ros.org/svn/opencv/trunk opencv

and got

svn: SSL is not supported

so thought, I don't need https

svn co http://code.ros.org/svn/opencv/trunk opencv

and got

svn: PROPFIND request failed on '/svn/opencv/trunk'
svn: PROPFIND of '/svn/opencv/trunk': 301 Moved Permanently (http://code.ros.org)

So tried the instructions from the top:

The-Black-Book-2:site-packages phoebebr$ sudo port install subversion

Password:

---> Fetching apr

---> Attempting to fetch apr-1.3.5.tar.bz2 from http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.apache.org/apr

---> Attempting to fetch apr-1.3.5.tar.bz2 from http://apache.multidist.com/apr

---> Attempting to fetch apr-1.3.5.tar.bz2 from http://apache.mirroring.de/apr

---> Attempting to fetch apr-1.3.5.tar.bz2 from http://archive.apache.org/dist/apr

---> Verifying checksum(s) for apr

---> Extracting apr

---> Configuring apr

---> Building apr

---> Staging apr into destroot

---> Installing apr @1.3.5_0

---> Activating apr @1.3.5_0

Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/apr-1-config already exists and does not belong to a registered port. Unable to activate port apr.

Error: The following dependencies failed to build: apr apr-util expat libiconv gperf sqlite3 ncurses ncursesw readline cyrus-sasl2 openssl zlib gettext neon serf

Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.

So found this URL:

http://project-tigershark.com/people/rob/blog/2006/08/21/svn-on-os-x-with-fink-part-i-installation/

which explained that I needed the server version of svn and I only had the client version installed.

and did

sudo fink install svn-ssl

and that install svn so could continue with instructions above, missing the first step. Phew....

I want an iPad

2010-01-28T01:28:00.001-08:00

Apple have done it again, leapt ahead of the competition with the new iPad. Now I just have to find a business reason to justify buying one.

I can see a whole new market with the oldies and the computer phobes. This isn't a computer, just a simple of doing the essentials.

Want, want, want...

Dr Seuss and Copenhagen

2010-01-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Tin Harper who started it http://cientifica.eu/blog/2009/12/cop-15-as-reported-by-dr-seuss/ and Bruce Darrell who forwarded it!

Using Pyparsing to extract dates from text block

2010-01-25T12:09:00.000-08:00

This is very much work in progress, but I thought I'd post in case it helps anyone.

I'm currently using two bits of code, one to handle relative dates like "today", "2 days ago" and the other to handle specific dates like "3rd November 2009". These bits of code are building on work already done by others. I've tweeked them and added tests for parsing using parseString - expecting whole text to be a date, eg. "13th December 2009" and scanning using scanString where the date or dates is buried in the text, eg. "projects starts on 12th Nov 09 and finishes 3/2/10".

Relative dates:

Original code is in the Examples - In development on the pyparsing site: http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/UnderDevelopment

code : http://dpaste.com/hold/150360/

Actual dates:

Original code from Phil here: http://pcscholl.de/2009/09/24/better-later-than-never-the-pyparsing-based-date-parser/

Code: http://dpaste.com/hold/150357/

Can you read this ok?

2010-01-24T03:00:00.000-08:00

A good day for the terrsitros tadoy, wohse gaol atefr all is not to klil ppolee, but to sreapd trroer. The ppear and tv are flul of reotprs of the lteast inrasece in toerrr alret and all the mnay pisbosle rsaoens for it. And all the treisrort had to do was fial to klil a panle laod of peolpe and feed the mdeia. Are tehy vrey sarmt or are we vrey giulblle?

Stumbled across this blog and had to have a go myself http://blog.ggvic.com/2006/12/it-doesnt-matter-what-order-letters.html

Our brains are so smart that we only need the first and last letters in the correct order to be able to make a very accurate guess at the word.

For a bigger challenge, read Iain M Banks, Feersum Endjinn, much of which is written phonetically, for example:

Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday? & I agr.

Amazon

Have a go jumbling your text:

http://www.stevesachs.com/jumbler.cgi

Getting started with Pyparsing

2010-01-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

Pyparsing is especially useful for those of us who don't use regexp enough to get any good at it! It is a deceptively simple parser for all kinds of text.

Here are a few resources and tutorials I found useful.

Introduction to Pyparsing - http://python.cofman.dk/pycon/2006/papers/1/
Another short intro: http://rephrase.net/days/07/04/pyparsing
The discussions : http://pyparsing.wikispaces.com/message/list/home
Examples: http://teckla.idyll.org/~t/transfer/public/day2.pdf

And here is my first program. The requirement is to decode an instruction into two chunks. An opening "o" or "-", followed by a mix of "?", "!", "&","^".

from pyparsing import *

def matching(list1, list2):

if len(list1) != len(list2):
return False

for key in list1.keys():
if (not list2.has_key(key)) or (list2.has_key(key) and list2[key] != list1[key]):
return False
return True

tests = [
('o?',{'status':'o', 'stype':'?'}),
('-!',{'status':'-', 'stype':'!'}),
('-!!!',{'status':'-', 'stype':'!'}),
('o?!',{'status':'o', 'stype':'?'}),
]

def handleStuff(string, location, tokens):

print 'string',string
print 'tokens', tokens, tokens[0][0]
return tokens[0][0]

status = Word("-o")
stype = Word("!?&^").setParseAction(handleStuff)

search = ZeroOrMore(status("status"))+ZeroOrMore(stype("stype"))

for (test, result) in tests:
print '---------------'
parsed = search.parseString(test,parseAll=True)
return_value = {'status':parsed.status, 'stype':parsed.stype}
print test, return_value, result, matching(return_value, result)

The bits I had to google a while for:

How to return named tokens.

If you did:

search = ZeroOrMore(status("myvar"))

and this is recommended above using setResultsName I believe.

then to get the return value:

parsed = search.parseString("My test string")
print parsed.myvar

The other question was what does setParseAction return and the answer is an updated token. See example above which returns the first character in the first token.

Results of the program are:

---------------
string o?
tokens ['?'] ?
o? {'status': 'o', 'stype': '?'} {'status': 'o', 'stype': '?'} True
---------------
string -!
tokens ['!'] !
-! {'status': '-', 'stype': '!'} {'status': '-', 'stype': '!'} True
---------------
string -!!!
tokens ['!!!'] !
-!!! {'status': '-', 'stype': '!'} {'status': '-', 'stype': '!'} True
---------------
string o?!
tokens ['?!'] ?
o?! {'status': 'o', 'stype': '?'} {'status': 'o', 'stype': '?'} True

Freeze, Flood, Rollkur and Riding

2010-01-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, for the first time in nearly a month, the arena was not either frozen or flooded and three hairy, unfit horse got exercised by an unfit rider. This is a first for most people in Ireland. We understand wet, all to0 well, but frozen! Accident and Emergency have been clogged with broken bones, meetings cancelled, hunting a distant memory, water shortages because of people leaving their taps on to prevent freezing (again).

Anyway, a month of not riding has left me with time to think and get some of my ideas down on paper. Everyone has a book in their head apparently, and mine from an early age, was one on training horses. The problem is, I always feel I'm only just starting to get the hang of it, and that's after a more than 30 years!

One of the questions I've been pondering since a recent conversation is what is a good rider? With the hoo-ha going on in dressage around Rollkur (see http://epona.tv for video), there are clearly very very different opinions out there. To summarise the Rollkur issue, as I see it. Rollkur is the practice of riding the horse with his chin nearly touching his

chest, which is supposed to stretch his back and encourage submission. The Epona site shows an interesting video of riders of both dressage and show jumping horses warming up for competition and initially I could see nothing wrong. This is the way the pros warm up it's not the way I would ride my horses, but what do I know. Then I looked again and saw something I recognised but did not like. That feeling of power you get from putting a big powerful horse in a position of total submission, head arched, moving wherever you choose. I know that feeling of power, and I'm afraid it is called being a bully, and just because it's not only accepted, but encouraged by many in the horse world, does not make it ok.

To be clear what I mean by bullying, it's forcing a person or a horse to do something totally unnecessary just because you can. It's showing no respect for the person/horse and respect, I'm coming to find, is one of the keys to successful training. So coming back to what makes a good rider? First, what makes a competent rider?

The competent rider achieves three things: Firstly, a competent rider has a respectful relationship with their horse - they show respect for their horse and they expect, and get, respect in return. Respect is a bit out of fashion, it's a good deal harder than showing "Who's boss" or showing love and affection for our horses. Respect requires that I ask, not demand, that I listen carefully, not just assume any show of resistance is naughtiness. To my shame only today, I found Fred's reluctance to pick up his foot for the farrier was because he had a stone in the one he was expected to stand on, not a dislike of the farrier. Respect requires that I am consistent in where I draw the line. It's not fair to accept the yearling bouncing around on the end of the headcollar today because she is feeling fresh and I'm tired, only expect her to walk quietly beside me tomorrow. If I want respect I have to set a standard and stick by it.

Secondly, a competent rider does not get in the way of the horse. They stay in balance, not throwing themselves up the horses neck just as he tries to take off, or catching them in the mouth as they land, or hanging on to the reins to help them balance.

Thirdly, a competent rider gives clear aids to their horse, so he knows what is expected of him.

And that's all. The competent rider may not look that great, may not be successful in competition but their horses will be confident, relaxed and a pleasure to handle and ride.

A good rider, goes an extra step. They understand when a horse is having a problem and can help them with a slight shift in weight, increased leg pressure at just the right moment. They know from some kind of natural instinct and/or years of experience, when to put more pressure on a horse and when to easy off. They are like the perfect host at a party who puts everyone at their ease and keeps the conversation going, food and drink flowing all with without apparent effort.

The inexperienced rider does a lot to little effect, the competent rider learns to do less and achieves more, and the good rider does very little, but just the right thing and at just the right time.

Git and Unfuddle for python project - using .ignore

2009-12-30T03:20:00.000-08:00

This is a reminder to me in case I forget how I got this working.

Main development environment is local laptop
Master reponsitory on Unfuddle.com
Live environment on remote server

There are a few files, like settings.py, that I don't want to be synced and as these files were already in the repository I'd created, git kept trying to sync them.

To resolve:
Assuming already have everything setup - remote server setup with clone from unfuddle.

Create .gitignore file as part of repository:

settings.py
*.pyc
*~
site_media/avatars/*

Remove settings.py from git without deleting on both local and remote environments.

In Local environment:

git rm --cached settings.py
git commit -a -m "remove settings.py"
git push unfuddle master

In remote live environment

git rm --cached settings.py
git commit -a -m "remove settings.py"
git push

That should do it. Now commits can be exchanged without settings.py being updated.

Jerky Mouse on Virtual PC on Dell Laptop

2009-12-30T03:16:00.000-08:00

I'm recording the solution to this problem in case it helps someone else with this problem.

STICK SOMETHING IN THE USB PORT!

Install VPC 2007 on Dell laptop (with no mouse) running Windows XP and every time I'd open the VPC guest OS, the mouse would be so slow to respond, sometimes seconds, that it was unusuable. Installed Virtual PC additions, fiddled with the memory settings and all the other solutions I found online, no difference at all. Then found the suggestion to put something in a USB port and in desperation put in a USB stick. It worked! Well that only took 5 hours to solve.

The Future of the Irish Sport Horse

2009-12-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

Since the glory days of the 1960s and 70s, the number of Irish horses competing in Show Jumping at the top level have dwindled. While our Irish riders still compete at the top level, few of them ride Irish horses because there just are so few able to compete at this level. Horse Sport Ireland have put together a task force to consider what can be done to regain our ranking and their recommendations include education for breeders, better information and communication on breeding, improvements in the production of young horses and changes to the way mares and stallions are classified. All good stuff, but it got me thinking about the sport horse industry as whole and this is an extract from a submission on the subject:

1. We are currently very successful in the breeding of event horses. Any plan to improve show jumpers must ensure we do not lose that ranking.

2. Are we trying to breed IRISH show jumpers or EUROPEAN show jumpers bred in Ireland? I suspect that most of the potential breeding stock in Ireland already have a substantial amount of continental warmblood and that they would be taken to top class continental stallions. There is nothing wrong with that if you aim is to produce a top class show jumper. However, if producing Irish Show Jumpers was a business, we would be asking what is the USP (unique selling point) of the IRISH horse otherwise why will people travel to Ireland to buy a horse that differs little from those produced on the continent?

Maybe the advertising for an elite sales in Ireland in 10 years reads " Looking for a hose that is easy to train, will get you out of trouble and stay sound for years? Come to the Elite Irish Show Jumper sales... "

I am aware this is a challenge for which there is no easy answer but maybe this is a starting point. What gets measured gets done, goes the old saying, so identify what makes Irish horses unique and give these measures prominence in the stud book. Also ensure that these qualities are included in the branding of irish horses.

3. Consider the aim to produce top class show jumpers as part of the overall strategy of building a thriving sport horse industry in Ireland - that includes eventers and leisure horses. What is the traditional Irish Horse suited for? Clearly eventing, at which we continue to be successful, and the leisure and amateur sport horse where the good nature, intelligence and agility of the irish horse are highly prized. It would therefore make commercial sense to focus on the markets for which we already have a good product. That is not to say that I would not like to see Irish Show Jumpers represented again, but suggest that to achieve this we should focus on quality rather than quantity. Properly support a smaller number of specialist breeders with the interest and competance to breed and produce show jumpers, rather than hoping the farmer and small breeder are going to create a large enough pool from which a few good horses will emerge.

By developing all three strands - show jumpers, eventers and leisure horses, with a focus on breeding straightforward horses that are trainable, intelligent and sound, we build a solid foundation for all forms of sport horse and avoid a situation where horses bred for a specialist purpose that cannot fulfill their potential are not suitable for anything else.

Install Gas/Oil or use Night Rate for underfloor heating?My cold damp house is

2009-12-13T02:30:00.000-08:00

My stone and earth, cold, damp house is heated by two wood (and occasionally a bit of coal) fired stoves. The wood has so far come from felling 40 year old Sitka spruce on the property and I have some willow and other copice trees growing. But unless I keep both fires going full pace all day, most of the house sticks at 5 degrees C through the winter. Miserable. I have underfloor heating installed, but rarely have enough hot water for it to make a difference and the cost of running the 12KW of immersions in the water tank is high.

Having been purist about using only wood for the first 7 winters, I gave in and started putting the odd bucket of coal in the stove and I have to say it makes a HUGE difference. Even one bucket of coal a day gives enough extra heat for the UFH to kick in a bit and at least one room is positively warm for most of the day. Having looked at the cost of installing more biomass solutions - a ceramic stove or gasification boiler, both costing over €10k, and the extra work and wood required, I've also had to consider gas or oil at an installation cost of only 2-3k.

But what I have been holding out for is real time pricing. The electricity companies buy from a pool supplied by the generators. When it's windy that price is low because wind companies can sell at whatever price they can get, their costs are the same if they sell or don't. If it's a still cold afternoon in winter, the price can be very high as extra gas fired power stations are fired up. So the electricity companies buy at variable prices and sell to us at fixed prices. I want to buy my electricity at a fixed premium above the pool price, so when it's windy I get cheap electricity and can turn on my UFH at a couple of cents and hour and when it's not, I put an extra few logs on the fire. You can read more about Real Time Pricing at Jerry Sweeney's blog at http://synergy.chipeservices.com/, it's coming but we need smart metering etc.........

So in the meantime, should I bow to pressure to get a programmable fossil fuel solution to my heat problem, get some heated fingerless gloves or use night rate electricity? I've experimented with turning on the immersions during the night - the UFH kicks in automatically when the water reaches a certain temperature. By using 60kw a night at a cost of €5.22, I can rise the temperature of the whole house from 5 to 10 degrees and the rooms with the stoves in maintain a toasty 12 degrees overnight. A huge difference in the quality of life of the inmates.

Here is the cost calculation:

Price of Night Rate Electric kw	8.7
Price of Gas per kw	4.8

Units per night	60

Cost per night electric	€5.22
Cost per night gas	€2.88
Gas saving/night	€2.34

Installation of Gas boiler/tank	2000

Worst case - 200 nights/year	180
Payback period years	4.7

Ignoring maintenance costs for the gas/oil boiler and assuming the ratio between electricity price and gas/oil price remains unchanged, 4.7 years before I'm saving by putting in another solution! And my bet is that electricity will become, relatively, cheaper as we increase the proportion of wind. And Once the real time pricing kicks in, I could be heating the house for €1 a night on renewables and helping to balance the load on the grid. Then I would be smug and snug!

New Scenarios for Ireland 2025

2009-12-12T11:04:00.000-08:00

Scenario Based Planning

Scenario planning is a technique for exploring the future by creating several plausible but challenging alternative futures rather than making a single prediction. It has been used by commercial companies since the 1970s when Shell was the only oil company prepared for the oil shocks of that decade as a result of its use.

Why use Scenario Planning?

A prediction is (almost) never right. The unexpected always happens and the assumptions, conscious and unconscious, that apply today may not apply tomorrow. For example, at the end of the last century, London could see no solution to the ever increasing amounts of horse manure on the roads, then along came the motor car. This highlights the difficulty with using forecasts: they carry forward current trends, problems and constraints and do not allow for the unexpected.

Scenarios are versatile. Scenarios can be used not only to prepare plans for the future, but to check existing plans for robustness. Will a plan work in more than one scenario or will fail if any of the underlying assumptions change? If we can develop flexible plans that will work with multiple scenarios, then, when the unexpected does happen, there is a better chance that the plan can be adapted to the new circumstances.

It is difficult to get consensus for a prediction. You can either agree or disagree with other people's predictions - and the tendency is to disagree. Scenario planning is about building plausible futures, a much less contentious task because we only need to agree that a scenario is possible to be able to use it. We don't even have to agree that it is likely.

Good scenarios challenge one's thinking and stimulate discussion. The human species has spent most of its history telling stories rather than looking at graphs and spreadsheets. As a result, the implications of a rich story about the future can be more easily understood and used. It is surprising how much information a scenario can convey in a few words. For example, the following classified advertisement can tell us a lot about what the future might be like under a particular scenario:

For Sale: 4x4 with axle suitable for conversion to wind turbine.

This can be interpreted as: Increases in the price of transport fuel have meant that vehicles with high fuel consumption are no longer in demand and it is becoming difficult to sell these vehicles. However, with increasing prices of home electricity, there is a boom in DIY windmills. A component of these windmills is the back axle of a car.

The original Energy Scenarios Ireland, originally described in 2006/7 have been updated, though in a many ways they have not fundamentally changed.

Business As Usual has become Celtic Kitten - our focus is to get back to 'normal' but without a property boom to support the economy and a mountain of debt to support, it's a bit of a disappointment.

Enlightened Transition has become Celtic Phoenix - rather than emulate the ambitions of others, Ireland plays to the talents we have. A well educated work force, adaptable and creative, a small country with plentiful renewables - just what is needed to build and trial new products and services. Ireland markets itself as a big hothouse for new and growing young businesses.

Enforced Localisation has become Celtic Hedgehog - Back to the land and a life of frugal comfort. It takes decades for Ireland to re-emerge.

Fair Shares becomes Celtic Fox - In honor of Colin Campbell who used the Celtic Fox in his presentations. Ireland applies it's abilities to make the best of difficult times to adapt to a high cost economy. Times are tough but we are now well placed to build a stronger economy.

Further installments to follow, with particular focus on Celtic Phoenix.

Relief in Copenhagen as the cause of global warming is traced to a single address

2009-12-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

Entry in a caption competition:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/

Himalayan village has the right idea?

2009-12-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/29/when_the_glacier_left/?page=full

When the retreat of a glacier left this village without water each year, they decide to move their village and build again nearer the river. Their new homes will have solar power and they plan to put in microhydro in the river.

Take Skibbereen, a town of about 2500 people on the Ilen river that floods regularly. If you compared the cost of endless repairs and capital costs of fighting the river against moving the town, how long would the payback period be? Financial and emotional. 10 years, 20 years, 100 years? This is a question that many low lying towns will be asking themselves over the next decades.

What could New Skibbereen be like? Warm, dry, cheap to run with renewables built in, cars separated from people, a square, trees, under cover market area, covered shopping area, A comfortable place for tourists to visit with trips, by boat, around Old Skibbereen!

Google Wave - After a day playing with the API

2009-12-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

Have very mixed feelings about Wave after a day of heavy use. It has helped clarify in my ming what I want and don't want from an online comms tool. Here is the summary of strengths and weaknesses developed during a wave conversation with Bart.

Blip: What is your impression of wave - strengths and weaknesses?

Strengths:

- It's an 'Excel spreadsheet' of the messaging - giving you the power to do things your way
- open API
- realtime
- great if you want to carry on a number of chats at the same time
- can bring in clever gadgets/custom gadgets in a way that is not possible with googledocs etc. eg. voting, map.
- can develop custom gadgets and have the interface provided by wave - I could see this as being used for particular tasks/conversations rather than being open all the time.
- can be used for document sharing and commenting it (altho probably not much different from editing these documents on googledocs or acrobat.com )
- will give a new set of standards/language for doing this kind of thing - shares many ideas with tinycomms, making tinycomms an easier sell I think
- saves time on 'reinventing the wheel' by many contributors as everyone sees what other are thinking and writing about - avoids repeating the same tasks/ideas by all
- Wave as a wiki?

Weaknesses:

- Too much freedom - leading to mess quickly if not very very careful
- Right now feels like an island - no email like clients - you have to have your browser opened on the Wave page and keep lurking there
- inconfigurable interface (for now)
- Yet another thing to monitor and distract me - don't plan on leaving it open!
- not really suited for multi-user editing / brainstorming - but how is it better than etherpad or the dreaded googledocs. Just a smaller screen with people able to create new threads all over the place.
- Making any sense out of an advanced conversation may be a challenge (many contributors editing and changing things in-line over time) - the playback feature tries to make that easier, but still it is far from perfect.
- lack of built in support for voice/video - voice provided by gadget verillio (sp?) - yes but that's third party, not built in, no guarantees on its stability or usability
- if other people are editing at the same time as you but not within the same few lines, I can't see what they have changed. Snap! / it's not easy to keep track on cursor position of participants in a large document.
- too many ways to chat - yet none of them seem to be natural or streamlined.

Overall I'm left feeling this is another tool to help me multitask even more manically, whereas what I want is a tool that will help me focus on one thing at a time! So don't expect me to monitor wave and respond to your posts, I plan to use it for particular tasks, which will depend on the 3rd party gadgets developed. But this is after one day of use.....

Mars Bar Brownies

2009-11-27T11:57:00.000-08:00

9/10

4oz butter
165g demerara sugar
- cream butter and sugar then mix in the ingredients below --

1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp maple syrup
cinnamon
2 tbsp green and blacks cocoa
150g cream flour (not the bread stuff)
2 chopped mars bar

Bake at 200g for 20-25 mins, better to undercook than overcook, want it cooked on top and gooey in the middle so if you are testing with a toothpick, don't wait until it comes out clean!

Roast banana pudding

2009-11-26T11:17:00.000-08:00

9/10

Peal and split bananas lengthways and put in a dish that is not much bigger than the bananas.
Add honey and lemon juice (for 2 bananas about 1 tbsp and 1/2 lemon)

Cook in 180C oven for only 8-10 mins. Just enough to heat but I like the bananas still with a bit of firmness. You might like them more gooey.

Lovely just as they are, but you could also add cream and/or ice cream.

Beef Casserole - plain but good

2009-11-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

Score 9/10

Fry pieces of T bone steak cut into large chunks. When brown, add:
- carrots
- celery
- onion
Cook for about 2 mins then add:
- red wine
- stock

Put in a low (180) oven for 2 hours

If eating straight from the oven and you want to NOT burn your tongue, add some frozen peas.
If it's a bit watery still, add some cous cous.

New task - My recipe book

2009-11-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Have now been collecting recipes since 2001. I live in fear now of loosing the little notebook with all these recipes, so I'm going to start (slowly) to put the best ones in the blog.

I should add that in the interest of ensuring that no two meals are identical, I don't include amounts in most recipes! Ah sure it'll be grand.

Just discovered...

2009-11-12T05:51:00.000-08:00

How much is €60bn?

2009-09-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

If we are trying to solve our economic problems and we have €60b to spend, what could we buy?

Three of these: $21 BILLION ORBITING SOLAR ARRAY WILL BEAM ELECTRICITY TO EARTH - http://www.physorg.com/news172224356.html, which would add 50% to our generating capacity

All the top racehorse stallions in the world - really corner the market!

A load of overvalued properties

or

A lot of oil futures - just sit back and relax and watch the money come it!

Thoughts on NAMA

2009-09-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

When the main reason we are being given for NAMA is that it is the only game in town you know this is not a good idea. I did a bit of googling and chatting to various people who know more than me about these things, and reached these conclusions:

The reason for considering NAMA is to:
- Maintain Liquidity
- Restore Confidence
- Create an environment for recovery

Any solution must consider:

1. When given a choice we must choose to reduce risk rather than increase potential return - the government/taxpayers are not speculators
2. No plan can be justified on the basis of previous economic cycles - we are in uncharted waters with this global economic downturn and the impact of peak oil and spending on climate change not yet being felt.
3. The current banking model is not the only solution to maintain liquidity - banks can be bought out, new banks setup by entrepreneurs, new methods of lending and saving peer to peer etc.
4. No solution should have the objective of punishing or protecting individuals or companies.
5. Speculators have money but little time (they want a quick buck now), the government of a country has time but no money - any solution should play to our strengths.
6. Ireland has a finite amount of money it can borrow and spend over the next years - the opportunity cost of any solution must be compared against investing in projects which will support our economy in the future - energy, broadband, transport, food etc.

Risks
- What happens if, post NAMA, the banks are still unable to provide liquidity? Is there a Plan B? "There is still unexploded ordinance on the financial landscape..." FT

Questions
- Banks have already received an injection of cash but are still not lending. Is this a cashflow problem or a reserves problem? If it is a reserves problem, then they can do without cash!
- What would the impact on the economy be if our banks were bought by foreign banks or investors?
- Why do WE have to do the valuation? Take the bad assets on the basis that we will pay the banks the market price when they are liquidated - at some time in the future - and leave the banks to do the valuation for the purposes of their balance sheets?
- Why would nationalising the banks be worse than NAMA? We already own 25% of AIB and BOI at a cost of €7bn, why not buy the rest?

But I think the right questions to ask is, image we have €30-60bn to invest in the future. What are the best investments to relieving short term hardship and creating an environment for long term prosperity?

Liquidity - Buy a foreign bank or start one or support entrepreneurs who want to. Support local trading currencies. Support peer2peer lending.
Energy - building windmills is not enough to protect us from future oil shocks, we need the infrastructure to balance supply and demand of energy.
Transport - our infrastructure is predicated on the use of roads and the assumption that transport of people and goods is cheap.
Food - Ireland should be well placed to feed it's citizens in the event of disruption in trade or climate change disrupting harvests and supply surplus into the UK.
Broadband - without ubiquitous, affordable high speed broadband many options for change are restricted and new ideas are slower to develop.

I am not generally in favour of asking the country to vote, but in this case it's our money (or money we are borrowing and will have to pay back) so I think we should be asked. We will be voting anyway, whether the government is forced to call an election or whether we use the Lisbon vote, we will have our say.

Setting up Hardy Heron with Apache2 and multiple Domains

2009-08-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

Finally cracked setting up multiple domains on my shiny new Ubuntu server. In case it helps anyone else out of a hold, here are my tips for easy domain management.

1. Use GoDaddy and their total DNS option (google for instructions) This means you don't have to worry about a name server. Just setup your domains and subdomains with an A record that points to your IP address. If your domain is currently pointing to a nameserver other than GoDaddy's change the nameserver option to Forwarding - wait a few mins, then you use Total DNS.

2. in /etc/apache2/site-available, create one file for each domain, I just used the domain name for the filename, eg. mydomain.com This should contain something like:

ServerName mydomain.com
ServerAlias www. mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /home/django/mydomain

...and all the other usual stuff ...

3. in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled create a dynamic link to the file you just created in sites-available. Ordering is import so add a sequence number to the beginning of the name. Ensure sub-domains come before main domain entry.

eg.

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/blog.mydomain.com 010-blog.mydomain.com
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.com 011-mydomain.com

4. And this is what I had missed. Ensure there is a default file in your sites-available that includes this line:

NameVirtualHost *:80

That's all I have in mine. And have a dynamic link in sites-enabled so that DEFAULT IS RUN FIRST.

eg, ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/default 000-default

5. restart apache eg. /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

6. Cross fingers and enter domain in the browser.

If you are doing this all at once, it takes a while for the changes to propogate through from godaddy, so be patient.

Dead Cat Bounce

2009-08-18T01:56:00.000-07:00

I'm not filled with optimism by the 'green shoots' spotted here and there. I think this is the dead cat bounce phase, or put even better in the Editorial of the FT this weekend "... unexploded ordinance still litters the financial landscape".

Have a nice day...

2009-08-18T01:52:00.000-07:00

Travelled up to Dublin on the new intercity trains last week. The toilets have these huge curved doors that you open and close with a button. There is another large button to press once you are inside to lock it and when you do the door says "Thank you"!? Whatever next. Reminded of the doors and drinks machines in Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy... "Have a nice day!"

Catchup

2009-08-18T01:31:00.001-07:00

Got out of the blogging habit with the long (wet) summer days so going to try and get going again with a number of small blogets. Items of note in the last months?

Christophe and Jérôme, two french wwoofers, have just left after a month that has transformed the farm. Everything is strimmed, the fencing is not only repaired but has handles to open on every field and a bank of switches from which I can turn each field on and off. (You probably have no idea how great this is!).

Great multicultural BBQ Polish, Irish, French, German, Brits and Americans. Great pics here: web4u.ie/phoebehouse/

Managed to make haylage after 7 weeks trying but never a gap of 3 dry days. Started raining as we were baling so not sure how good it's going to be.

Had a great Jumpstart with Fish Publishing and came up with a raft of new ideas on how to get more entries to their competitions.
Recession much in evidence, but life and showjumping go on...

Can you teach old dogs new tricks?

2009-07-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

I am trying to learn a new programming language, Python, the new 'it' language. I taught myself PHP 10 years ago and it's interesting comparing the two experiences. 10 years ago I bought a couple of books on PHP and immersed myself in the language. I had many, many frustrating days trying to do seemingly obvious things with no success. But after six months I was pretty competant and after 18 months I was pretty good. For the last nine months, I have been working on and off with Python and I'd still class myself as a beginner. So what's the difference? Is it just that I'm 10 years older and finding it harder to learn new tricks?

Firstly there's the attention thing. Sometimes I can't remember if I brushed my teeth or not, but when I was a child with only a few hundred brushes behind me I was still a novice, and paid close attention to my brushing. Now with many thousands of brushes behind me I pay little attention, the brain focused on what to do today or tomorrow or what I should have done. So it's hardly surprising, given my lack of attention, that sometimes I can't find the memory of brushing my teeth. So while I've been learning Python for nine months, very little of that time was actually spent concentrating on learning. I have far more distractions than I did 10 years ago, far more different areas of work, and far more horses! So I don't put my attention into learning I put my attention into solving the immediate problems at hand as quickly as I can.

And this is the second point. Youth is for learning, and once we grow up, we are expected to get on with it. Until I moved back to Ireland, I attended evening classes took up new interest and was always learning new skills and new subjects. But there are fewer opportunities here, and seemingly less time every year, so I don't expect to have the time to learn, I just fix. So rather than sitting down and trying to learn Python, I've created websites in Python and fixed problems as they arise. I didn't even buy a book until a month ago! With Google, fixing rather than learning is so easy. You type in the kind of problem you're trying to solve,"python difference between two dates", for example and up comes the solution. You didn't have to work it out you just copy and paste and move onto the next problem. So in a months time you find myself again googling "difference between to dates".

So I don't think that is a problem in teaching old dogs new tricks, as long as the old dogs recognize that they're going to have to pay attention and commit their energy to learning, a skill which may be a bit rusty. I need to bring a different mind to the table, sit down with a different intention and probably uses a different part of my brain. I need to stop being so pragmatic and remember the joy of mastering a new skill and finding a whole new view on the world.

Feelings vs. Thinking and Tidy Towns

2009-06-09T13:15:00.001-07:00

Listening to a discussion at the Transition Towns get together for Cork groups at Cork Institute of Technology last week reminded me of a field trip at Shumacher College back in September 2001. The discussion was something like, we are working with the Tidy Towns committees to try and get them to understand the benefits of not spraying the road sides. "They could poison us" said the road side food gatherers.

As part of a course in Business and Sustainability run at Schumacher College (and if you ever get the chance to go there it is a wonderful experience) we did a field trip with a deep ecologist. We agreed the green fields of grass were deserts of monoculture, admired the cattle in the ancient water meadow (as I scoffed some very tasty blackberries. Nobody else would eat them and I wondered if I had missed a part of the lecture where we were told to leave the fruit to the birds.) After a bit of experiencing the wonder of trees we came to a field which had clearly not been touched for some years, with a wide mix of plants up to four feet high. Our tutor asked us how this field made us feel. The class expressed their appreciation of the wide mix of ecology, the animal and plant systems dependent on each other. At last I could hold my tongue no longer, "It makes me feel awful" I said. It's uncared for, unloved. It makes me want to get in there with a mower and tidy it up!". The tutor could not understand me. "But don't you see how the mix of plants and insects and animals create an ecosystem?". I couldn't explain to him that I was simply answering his question. How the field made me feel had little relation to what I thought about the field. While I like to think I have strong sustainability leanings and try to run my small farm as organically as possible, some fundamental part of me believes farmers have a responsibility to tend their fields, keep the grass grazed, the ground fertilised and hedges trimmed. No amount of logic is likely to change that feeling.

I think it will be a long, long time before you could convince a Tidy Towns committee or the judges (or me) that the verges should be left to run wild. No amount of explaining the benefits of sustainability are likely to have much impact on our own feelings about what cared for or tidy looks like. It says something about our culture that we assume that if we can simply explain logically our thinking, that this will change someone else's feelings about something. Do other cultures suffer under the same beliefs?

Tidy Towns at Work:

Dolores in Foal!

2009-06-08T13:37:00.000-07:00

Dolores (broken pelvis horse) scanned in foal today to French Buffet (TB) standing at Kylemore Stud in Co. Galway (b. miles away). 10 months to go but with a bit of luck there should be a foal next april! So excited.

<-- The mother

The father

Survival of the Fittest?

2009-05-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

This blog post was inspired by Trevor Sargent's speech in Clonakilty today at the talk on the Climate Neutral Network. His mention of the phrase "Survival of the Fittest" reminded me of when I had been picked up for attributing this to Darwin. The phrase does not appear in On the Origin of Species and his theory has much more to do with survival of the Fitting.

It seems to me our western competitive, dog eat dog world (do dog's eat dog's?) is, in part, justified by this famous phrase. It's the natural way of things, survival of the fittest and yet I think that has only ever been true in the minds of those who wrote the history books, the victors who passed down stories of chief's slaying other chief's to become the mightiest chief in the world. Everyone else was busy surviving by fitting into their environment or trying to change their environment to fit their needs.

I am encouraged by the change in language I hear from many of those taking a positive attitude to the future. From Obama's "We can do it" to the haven of positivity which is our local Open Coffee group in Cork. I hope the war metaphors of "combat ting climate change", "a war on poverty", "fighting drugs" will give way to a more fitting language of cooperation and alliances. The kind of culture that is emerging from the Internet worlds of open source development and from the gaming world where hierarchies are leveled and mutual benefits are sought.

(Having googled Survival of the Fittest before publishing this I find that Darwin did in fact add the phrase in his 5th edition, but that it was intended as a metaphore not to be take literally! - see Wikipedia entry for why it is incomplete and misleading).

New Foal at Kippagh

2009-05-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

After four sleepless nights, Emy Lou finally put us out of our misery and produced a big, strong, bay filly foal. Grabbed a few pics before catching up on some sleep!

Another Victim of the Recession - Fred the ex-racehorse

2009-04-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

I'm another victim of the recession having lost my job as a racehorse. I tried to get a job as a flapper but I guess they thought I was too old so it looked like the scrap heap for me. But luckily I got on a re-skilling course and I'm retraining to be a show jumper. I got lame soon after I started the course and was a bit worried that was going to be the end of it, but after a break I'm back practicing hard. Here I am doing a jumping exercise, made a mistake the first time but got it cracked now! Next stop Dublin!

Installing Pinax 0.7 on CentOS

2009-04-12T05:07:00.001-07:00

So Easy!

Here is the complete list of commands I used to install in a pinax directory of /home

easy_install virtualenv
easy_install pip
cd /home
mkdir pinax
cd pinax
curl -o pinax-boot.py http://github.com/pinax/pinax/raw/master/scripts/pinax-boot.py
python pinax-boot.py pinax-env
cd pinax-env
source bin/activate
pip install --requirement src/pinax/requirements/external_apps.txt
cd /home/pinax/pinax-env/src/pinax/pinax/projects
pinax-admin clone_project basic_project myproject
cd myproject

amend settings.py to point to required database - I'm using mysql
setup mysql database
python manage.py syndb
python manage.py runserver

DONE!

Difference between men and women is in the knot

2009-04-11T05:32:00.001-07:00

I havn't read Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and am sceptical of many of the differences attributed to the different sexes. But I do believe there are fundamental differences in male thinking and female thinking and I pondered yet another difference as I stomped back to the house from inspecting the resulting mess of wire and fence posts caused by SuperCub running through the electric fence.

Take knots. Men tie knots so they won't ever come undone. The rope is knotted and double knotted and then the ends of knotted just in case, and it rarely comes undone, ever. Women

have to undo this knot sometime, so let's make sure I can undo it, and yes sometimes it comes undone before it should.

When putting up electric fence, Men make sure the fence is strong and tight, wrapping the wire around the insulator so each section of wire if effectively tied to the fence post. Women think, something is going to go through this fence sooner or later, so lets put it so there is minimum work to repair it. This morning's fence was put up by a man and with four broken fence posts that need replacing it's going to take a while. If the wire had not been wrapped around the insulator, it would have pulled past the post and taken five minutes to put back up. Serves me right for not doing the fencing myself I suppose.

An on the subject of differences, what is the difference beween a male car and a female

car? Female cars are a bit unreliable, they sometimes fail to start and tend to have a few niggling complaints, but if you really need them to get you somewhere, they get you there, even if they are running on one cylinder when you arrive. Male cars are much more reliable, start on the first turn of the key every time, until that time when you really needed them to start...

Female vehicles I have had:

2 x Ford Transit

BMW 3.0s

Mitsubishi Shogun

Male vehicles:

Ford Cortina

BMW K75

Nissan Micra

Jaguar XJS V12

Jaguar Sovereign v12

Yahoo BOSS - no joy yet

2009-04-08T02:01:00.000-07:00

Am trying to get Yahoo BOSS search running in Django. It all looked so easy based on this site: http://www.peterkrantz.com/2008/yahoo-boss-in-django/ but I still can't get it working. So I'm adding a link to the site to see if that helps.

Visit http://dunmanway.ie!

The Barefoot vs. Shod experiment in West Cork

2009-03-09T14:42:00.000-07:00

Every interest group has it's battle lines, and there is one between the barefoot proponents and those who believe horses need shoes. I won't go into the arguments but just report the results of my trying to get my horses barefoot.

The biggest challenge here in West Cork is the endless rain and mud, winter and summer. This makes the hooves soft and encourages thrush and infection in the frogs and heels. It's all very well to show the wonderful hooves of horses in the mid-west of America, but you guys wouldn't believe the mud we have here!

I've been through the process of taking shoes off horses that are used to them, twice. The first month or so they get more and more sore and you really wonder if it is fair to put them through so much discomfort. I would advise riding them in boots from day one, there is no advantage to them getting sore heels and soles. Then they slowly start to harden up but it takes a good six months to get to the point of being able to ride them in a sand arena and occasionally on the road without shoes. But I could never get their hooves hard enough and putting eight lots of boots on to exercise two on the road and going back to look for them when they fall off is just no fun.

I've tried all kinds of supplements and potions for the feet and found none made any noticeable difference. The horse were in good condition anyway, shiny coats and out 24/7/365.

Re the boots. Marquis are goodish but they do fall off, even just trotting on the road. Easyboot Bares are better, but still fall off on the road occasionally breaking the gaiters, and they are black so not easy to find!

There are two major downsides to barefoot for me - chasing after the boots when they fall of and the need for studs when jumping competitively outdoors. So I have reached a compromise. When the horses reach serious competition level aged 5 or 6, the shoes go on in April, with stud holes. And come off again in October for the winter. This works well for me, and keeps the cost down (at €60 a set of shoes). I have had no problems with jumping the younger horses all summer without shoes, no swelling or lameness or splitting of feet or all the other dire consequences of riding without shoes that I have been threatened with.

But if a horse has had shoes for a number of years, don't underestimate the effort and discomfort you will cause the horse in getting him sound barefoot. Get some good boots before you start.

Fred the ex-racehorse

2009-03-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

Fred is a remarkably well mannered horse. He wouldn't dream of lagging behind when you lead him. If you ask him to pick up a foot, he snaps it up and holds it there for you. A joy after my lazy lot, who oblige you, generally, but at their own speed! But today, Fred showed the flip side of that anxious obedience. His feet are very sore after some weeks without shoes and when the farrier started hammering on some shoes, Fred's fear of reprimand was overridden by his desire to get rid of the farrier. With no warning at all, the farrier was thrown out the door. And this was the pattern for the rest of the feet. He would stand for as long as he could and then bang! He leapt forward or kicked back. Racehorses are generally treated with a lack of patience and understanding by a wide variety of people so their expectation is that people are unpredictable and often violent and the best policy is to appease them, if possible. Until anger and fear builds up to a point where the brain flips to fight or flight.

My nags and I have a escalation ritual. I ask quietly and politely, I ask more loudly, I shout and then start hitting with more show than effect and this is usually as far as it goes. The nags start with a look, a snap of the teeth, a raised leg, a nip if pushed and on only one occasion have I annoyed one enough to kick at me (got me by mistake I think).

It will be interesting to see if Fred can learn our escalation rituals.

After Fred, the farrier moved onto the two thoroughbred yearlings. It was time for them to re-learn that not only can we influence their behaviour, but they can influence ours. Both these two had been handled when small and would lead and pick their feet up. But in the last six months they have become a bit wild. Their reaction to having their feet picked up was, "no thanks, I'm off".

After patience and quiet has little effect a battle then ensues where the aim if to get them to a position where they discover that standing still makes the people relax. It's difficult to ensure they are learning the right lessons, and all to easy to teach them that rearing and kicking earns them freedom. But it's great when you see the light go on and they start to react to you as you react to them. I think many horses have no influencing skills when it comes to people. All they know is how to avoid trouble, how to run or how to fight. If only horses had money, they could go on management training exercises.

Slides/Notes from Energy Scenarios presentation at Dreamstake Meetup

2009-02-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

The presentation http://www.vividlogic.ie/uploads/Dreamstake_Feb09_ESUK.pdf

And the Scenarios Summary Sheet http://www.vividlogic.ie/uploads/ESUK_Summary_sheet.pdf

Any questions, do email me at phoebebright@vividlogic.ie.

London Open Coffee and the future of social networks

2009-02-19T05:52:00.001-08:00

Had lots of stimulating conversations at London Open Coffee today (yes I know you are supposed to gather essential info and move on but I relish meeting so many interesting people and am not going to waste the opportunity, so there).

First, checkout the amazing light sculptures at http://www.sculptlight.com from Ivan Markovic, who is an Adobe expert and an Acrobat guru.

Touched on the future of employment and work with Livia and Azita from Eat Your Cake who do job-sharing for professionals. Given the current outlook, are few jobs going to be shared by more people or will the unemployment figures rise?

I look forward to meeting Wendy Deaner to talk more about network marketing and where that might be going.

BobbyHathiramani is developing some pools (betting) software and is looking for the best business model.

Michael O'Shea has a website http://www.wickeduncle.com that does cool presents for small people, and we agreed it would be great to be paid just for being interesting!

Andrew Gerrard has a great new business card, minimalist - how to contact him and how he likes his coffee... We also had a far ranging conversation about the future of social networking. We agreed that similar to your local community network (that not everyone has these days) it requires investment of time and energy to get the rewards and having experience of both an online network and a strong local community network (thank you all those neighbours who turned out, many more than once, in the middle of the night to get injured horse back on it's feet last year), I wonder if we generally have only a finite amount of time/energy to invest in our networks and tend to make a choice between on or the other? Myself, I would say if I'm at home in Ireland, I focus on my "real" network, but if I'm in London, where I don't know my neighbours even, I focus on my online network. Is this a generational thing, or a character thing?

We also considered whether the last 50 years of an increasingly peripatetic lifestyle for many in the developed world, is a natural evolution or an exception. Traditionally the younge leave the nest and many return when it is time to marry and settle down. But these days people are expected to move with their work, or their next step up the property ladder. Are we living in perpetual youth? Is there a natural need to belong to a community and because we don't expect to stay anywhere long, is this what is driving the desire to invest in online communities? If we had the opportunity to become more rooted in our local communities, because we could work locally or from home, would online social networks become less important as we invested in our local community or would they continue in parallel? Lots of questions to ponder!

Posters with Messages

2009-02-18T03:54:00.000-08:00

Came across this site http://www.wildriverreview.com/4/art_sdposters.php with The Posters of Scorsone/Drueding

More like this:

and this:

Beyond the Recession - Dragon's Den 2020

2009-02-17T07:09:00.001-08:00

Dreamstake is a network for supporting entrepreneurs who want to take their ideas to market by providing networking with similar people plus access to funding, marketing, legal advice etc. It is still in it's infancy but the team are rushed off their feet as people decide to take their future into their own hands and go into business for themselves.

http://dreamstake.ning.com/

I'll be speaking at Dreamstake's inaugural meeting on Thursday talking about using scenario planning to identify risks and opportunities in uncertain times. The fun bit will be asking everyone to come up with ideas for Dragon's Den that would be appropriate for different scenarios in 2020. What will be hot?

All are welcome, just sign up to Dreamstake here
http://dreamstake.ning.com/

February 19, 2009 from 6pm to 10pm – Downstairs at Shish (Old Street) This will be an informal meet up for members of the DreamStake network. Phoebe Bright will facilitate some brainstorming about 'Beyond the Recession - steps to our new economy'. It will be a chance...

Cork Airport at Sunset

2009-02-16T07:20:00.000-08:00

An alternative to pouring money into banks

2009-02-14T01:13:00.000-08:00

I think it is a top priority to help people stay in their homes and like many people, I feel most uncomfortable with our taxes being poured into a seeming black hole.

Here is my idea for helping the banks indirectly and helping people directly - please shoot it down!

A family can't meet their mortgage payments. The Government redeems half the mortgage and gives the family 2 years payment holiday and then expects them to pay 3% interest per year. BUT, the loan belongs to the site not to the people. If the house is sold, the loan goes with it with the obligation to pay, what becomes in effect a property tax. However, the loan can be repaid in part or whole at any time without penalty. Why won't everyone do this? Because there is a public register of properties with loan amounts and payments made, no names attached, but it would not be hard to work out who. This could also be done where the landlord cannot meet the payment.

This has the benefit that the money is not going direct to the banks.
People are given every support to stay in their homes
The country has a SECURE revenue stream for the future

What do you think?

Avoid the peak to reduce carbon emissions

2009-02-03T15:44:00.000-08:00

Jerry Sweeney's website, Synergy Module, shows the current pricing for electricity on the Irish Grid. The graph above shows the graph for the 3rd Feb 2009. Remarkably consistant apart from the huge spike around 6pm. This is when peaking plant is turned on to provide the extra capacity required, and this peaking plant is not as efficient as generators for base load and so is both more expensive and emits more carbon per kilowatt. So if you want to reduce your carbon emissions, try to avoid using electricity at peak times. Run that washing machine at 4 in the morning, eat later! Once we get smart meters, we will have the option for smart machines to decide when it is cheapest for them to run. Until then we have to make the decisions for them.

Earning your place in the world

2009-02-03T15:22:00.000-08:00

It's tough being a small younge horse in a group of big older ones. You are at the bottom of the pecking order, at the end of the queue for a place at the haylage bale, and there is not much you can do about it. You will be kept in your place by baring of teeth, bites and threats. Ivor is reminding little Poppy above, who is the boss round here.

So what do you do if you want a place at the haylage bale? You can try puffing yourself up and going for the next in the hierarchy with teeth and hooves. If you are fierce enough you may succeed. You can wait in the corner until the rest have tired of eating and go a snatch a bit while they snooze.

I have watched my younge horses as they grow, deal with this situation in different ways. Little Piper tried the teetch approach and did quite well at it, until one morning I found him with a swollen head. A good kick in the face had put him back in his place. Supercub, the biggest horses on the farm, decided he was a victim early on, and despite putting on his best "I'm only small, don't hurt me" face to every horse in the place, he was unmercifully bullied.

Little Poppy has another approach. When scolded for trying to push in for a bite of the bale, she doesn't run back to the corner, but moves back just enough to avoid the teeth, waits for a bit, then tries quietly and respectfully to have another go. She is careful not to antagonise the other horses, does not take offence when they snap at her, but at the same time wants to make it clear she is not going away. This strategy of quiet persistance seems to be successful. After two weeks away I see she has earned the respect of her elders, and while she still is last in line for the bale, they do not try to bully her anymore.

Mad Dog, Ivor, Katy and Poppy.

Whaling songs

2009-01-27T08:30:00.000-08:00

We judge what is normal against our childhood experiences aparently, so I expect other people to know the music that my parents played during my childhood. But of course not many people know the whaling songs of the 19th century (why did they have that record!), the lyrics of all Gilbert and Sullivan or think the Beethoven's Archduke Trio one of the most famous piece of classical music.

My childhood music experience was shaped by a single record collection. In these days of easily available music, music collections are no longer constrained and I don't suppose children spend much time listening to their parents music anyway.

A sad loss, those whaling songs are great for getting the energy going at the end of the afternoon...

Positive Conversations

2009-01-25T02:20:00.001-08:00

In the worlds of a childhood song, it's time to "GET OURSELVES UP...

DUST OURSELVES OFF..

AND START ALL OVER AGAIN!

Having been ground down by the endless pessimism about the place, I took Christmas (and most of January) off and concentrated on learning Django - the hottest new framework for website development. But meeting up with my colleagues at Cork Environmental Forum got me back in the saddle and ready to focus on having positive conversations about our future.

That does not mean ignoring the mess we are in and just saying positive things in the hope that the bad stuff will go away. (See Gerard O'Neill's excellent blog and thanks for this twitter link http://tinyurl.com/aasstf).

Positive conversations seek to understand where we are, without lingering too long on why, where we want to get to and how we are going to get there. We fear most what we don't understand and can't control and has little to do with logic. Terrorists from foreign countries and cultures are more frightening than the home brand. Being flown in a big jet which clearly shouldn't be able to fly, is more scary than flying yourself in a small one!

I'm going to get a chance to put the positive conversations idea into action at the first meeting of the Dreamstake network in London on Feb 18th 2009 where I will be facilitating a workshop and discussion around the risks and opportunities in the future. All are welcome!

The Case for Wind as a safe Investment

2009-01-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

I am not alone in believing the current safest investment would be in wind energy. The wind will keep blowing and people will keep needing electricity, although the amount will depend on the overall state of the economy amongst other things.

And, in Ireland, wind energy will always have a market because of the way the Irish market works. Since all generators must sell their electricity into a pool from which suppliers buy the electricity to sell to their customers. Wind energy will always be a price taker because it is always better to sell, regardless of how low the price. For a gas powered station, the cost of the gas gives a bottom to the price at which it is worth selling. (The calculation is actually more complex because of the cost of shutting down and restarting plant.) So your wind power will be sold ahead of other non-renewables.

Ireland desperately needs wind energy. We import nearly 90% of our energy and will be vulnerable to chaotic price changes in oil, which sets the price for gas, until we change that. There are many new renewable technologies coming on stream that may be appropriate for Ireland, but none that have over 20 years of experience of use. So wind it is in the short term, and we have plenty of wind. Ireland has set the target of 40% of electricity production from wind by 2020. If this target is to be reached that would mean building one 1MW wind turbine every day! See article in Greenmonk for the numbers.

So how might you wrap this product to make a good investment? I suggest a government backed bond with tax free returns for the first 10 years. In return no returns would be paid until the end of year 2 to allow time for construction and connection to the grid (see comment later as this is currently 5+ years). The product would be managed by a bank or financial services company who would operate the scheme on a 1% commission basis. This should not be problematical as there would be low management costs unlike other financial products.

Returns will depend on electricity prices, which in turn are a function of demand and oil price, both of which are currently uncertain. SEI projected returns before tax of 5.5% here.

So what are the risks? The main risk is that the grid will not be updated quickly enough to take an increase in wind, that demand response will not be implemented quickly ensuring that wind farms are not curtailed (turned off) when supply exceeds demand, and that longer term, high bandwidth interconnectors to europe are not built to ensure best price of electricity generated. This is why government support for this investment product to ensure that infrastructure was implemented in a timely fashion.

More about wind energy and the need for demand response here: http://pbjots.blogspot.com/2008/08/no-demand-repsonse-no-progress.html

Buy different

2009-01-21T06:43:00.000-08:00

There is an assumption that the solution to both peak oil and climate change would be to buy less and I think this needs to be challenged. And I'm not saying I wouldn't welcome a much less frenetic consumerism!

Without doubt, a rapid reduction in Carbon (so much easier than saying greenhouse gas emissions but we must remember it includes a number of other gases) would lead to a reorganisation of the economy. When this is something the powers that be want, it is a 'good thing'. Like moving away from manufacturing to a service economy, which will increase the number of jobs in high value businesses and create growth in new areas. But when it is forced upon them it is a 'bad thing' because it will mean loss of jobs and closing businesses and unemployment. Change always causes pain for some and gain for others whether the long term result is good or bad overall.

But if we all suddenly reduced our carbon usage by not travelling, not buying stuff, not heating our homes and not using electricity the economy would suffer badly, jobs would be lost, businesses close and because we were busy not spending, there would be little to replace them.

So we need to find a way to continue spending AND reducing carbon usage by choosing more carefullly how we spend our money. Do we fly to Rome for the weekend or buy a painting? Do we buy an apple from China or a local apple? Do we buy a plasma TV or a subscription to a movie channel?

Low(er) carbon spending usually involves not buying things but experiences or services.
Instead of buying a lawn mower, pay someone to mow the lawn for you (hopefully travelling around by electric vehicle)
Think quality before quantity
Eat at local resteraunts that use local foods
Get stuff repaired
.....

Types of Blog Posts

2009-01-21T04:47:00.000-08:00

For me, there are three kinds of blog posts:
- spur of the minute mini posts. I think of something to post and happen to be online at the time...
- longer posts. Anything to avoid what I am really supposed to be doing...
- serious posts. Having written a draft I don't want to post it yet as I think it worthy of more attention. Never gets posted.

I'm going to have a clear out of all those posts that never got finished and delete or post!

Japan Car - The Science Museum

2009-01-21T01:31:00.000-08:00

n c
Made one of my periodic trips to the Science Museum in London to worship the Steam Engines and see what had changed.

I think the Steam Engines - all shapes and sizes and some working - are Awesome. In every sense of the word. And never tire of looking at them, especially the early ones, where you can see a brand new idea evolving. It must have been so exciting to design and build them. And then to care for them. Some went on working for well over 100 years and got affectionate names like 'Old Bess'. We rarely get a chance to develop any kind of relationship, other than frustration, with our modern machines. They are just not around long enough.

The Japan Car exhibition includes examples of their mini-cars. A particular spec that limits the dimensions of the car and engine size to 600cc. They have a wide range of cars, including two seat drop head and a var/pickup. Also the iReal. If the segway is an advanced scooter, think of this as an advanced armchair. If we are all zipping around in these things, that take us from inside our homes, to the shops, around the shops and back again, how long will we have to spend in the gym to keep our bodies ticking over? I can see a later version having gym equipment built in to save you that hassle, and maybe even providing some charge for the battery. I really look forward to having one of these when I can no longer stride down the road, and hopefully there will be an off-road version for checking the horses in the field, I will be on equal terms with the more able bodied. But I still like the simplicity of walking. No need to check the battery is charged, just up and go!

Airships rise again

2009-01-21T01:17:00.000-08:00

Airships sound good in theory - cheap, load carrying, flexible routing (no airport required) - but various companies have failed over the years to get beyond the small blimps used advertising and carrying TV cameras.

Here is another go and the best of luck to them.

This article makes two errors:

Dangers of hydrogen - the same stuff we are planning to put in our cars. There is a comprehensive summary of the various theories of what cause the Hindenberg crash in Wikipedia but what is rarely reported is that
Despite the violent fire, most of the crew and passengers survived. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died. Also killed was one member of the ground crew, Navy Linesman Allen Hagaman. The two dogs on board the ship also died. Most deaths were not caused directly by the fire but were from jumping from the burning ship. Those passengers who rode the ship on its descent to the ground survived. Some deaths of crew members occurred because they wanted to save people on board the ship. In comparison, almost twice as many perished when the helium-filled USS Akron crashed.[12]

Energy Payback Period

2009-01-16T04:40:00.000-08:00

Suppose a developer looked at this row of poor constructed and poorly maintained buildings and had an idea.

I'm going to make this offer to all the property owners. I will knock this whole block and rebuild using a highly efficient pre-fab system so you can be back in your homes/shops in 2 months. I will put solar panels on the roof and a gas fired CHP plant for the whole block.

You get, at no cost other than some inconvenience, a new building that has low running costs.
I will rebuild back to a higher level and will get the additional space to rent or sell. I will also maintain and run the CHP plant and supply you with heat and electricity and take the profits from that.

So assuming you could work your way through peoples reluctance for change and the planning laws, and assuming this was a profitable deal for the developer. How long would the payback be in terms of energy and how long would it be in terms of carbon emissions (this would be sooner because the proportion of renewables would be increased)?

A lot would depend on constructions methods and how inefficient the buildings currently are. There are many options when you are building new buildings, to reduce fossil-fuel use and energy use overall. Retrofit is much much harder. Maybe we starting again in many cases. Develop a whole new 21st century style that retains some of the characteristics of earlier times, but is not trying to mimic any period of the past.

Anyone any thoughts?

I can flush with impunity again!

2009-01-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

Three days without water has not been fun and in despiration today called the plumber after trying a long list of fixes that all involved fiddling with spanners, water, compressors in a small, cold, dark shed.

So Phoebe, next time the pump stops pumping water, this is a reminder of what you learned this time.

If you can't prime the pump, 90% chance the problem is in the well, and probably the foot value. If it takes more than 5 gallons to prime it, that is a problem.
If there is a problem with the pressure tank, the pump will keep pumping, it will just keep kicking in and out.
This is a jet pump, and the top pipe going into the pump in the in, and the bottom one the out back to the foot valve.
You can prime through either the pressure reslease plug or the other plug next to it - makes no difference.
The pressure in the pressure tank should be the same as the point at which the pump cuts in, ie. the lower of the two pump pressures + a bit for luck. Pump currently set to cut in at 20 and out at 40. To repressurise the tank, turn off the pump, open a tap before pressurising with strong compressor (the little one on the jump start kit is not man enough).
Takes about 4 gallons to prime the pipes enough to run the pump - pipes are about 70ft long.
AND DON'T PUT ANY FITTINGS WHICH ARE NOT PLASTIC OR BRASS IN THE WELL.
The problem in this case was an iron fitting on the foot value which had rotted in exactly, to the day, 5 years since it was fitted.

And before the next time, get the pipe from the spring fixed and the hand pump working so it not such a drama!

For those who are NOT morning people...

2008-12-30T15:29:00.000-08:00

Early to bed, early to rise
No damn good if you don't advertise!

Mick O'Mara, Dunmanway, Co. Cork.

Solar car finishes around the world trip

2008-12-08T04:11:00.001-08:00

Looks normal enough from the front:
But needs a trailer of solar cells!

For more details of a trip around the world without any oil see http://www.solartaxi.com

Idea for Bars/Resteraunts facing downturn

2008-12-07T05:20:00.000-08:00

So the Christmas parties have been cancelled, people are buying the fixed price menu and the house wine. How can resteraunts boost their income?

How about attracting a new market. People who eat on their own but don't want to eat in a resteraunt on their own. Have a sitting every half hour and whoever wants to eat are put together on a table together. Very unbritish I know. But why not? The sell is you get cheap food, as cheap as eating at home, you don't have to dine alone and who knows who you might meet or what interesting conversations you might have. I would go just to meet new people but without the pressure of networking or the singles scene.

If you would go for this, there is a place in Broadgate ready to give it a try.

Saving the Planet - Not (rant)

2008-12-04T03:39:00.000-08:00

I have great difficulty with all phrases that imply the planet is having any kind of problem and that we can save it. The planet is not dying, the planet has no need of saving, it is absolutely fine, hardly noticed we are here. It's been around for 4.5 billion years or so and will be around for billions more. The environment on it's skin is changing, as is has continuously changed since it's birth and whether we caused a slight warming or a few volcanoes were responsible makes little difference from the planets point of view. The planet, (and there are other ones as well) has been very hot and an very cold, it's had massive eruptions of volcanoes that have made the rain as acid as a car battery. And yet it just keeps spinning away and life on it's surface evolved to suit the ever changing conditions.

So let's get over ourselves. The plant is fine, it's us that are in trouble and imagining that we are such powerful beings that we can 'save' a whole planet if we choose is arrogant in the extreme. Maybe if we understood ourselves as part of a huge system that nobody controls but that we can all influence in a small way, we might find better ways of changing that which we can and adapting to that which we can't.

Posted on Forum for the Future Scenarios

2008-12-03T06:06:00.000-08:00

Did a quick, and very favourable review, of Forum for the Future's Scenarios over on the Energy Scenarios Ireland blog.

Table built for me

2008-12-03T01:57:00.000-08:00

‘Push’ Table by Jennifer Hing.

"As someone whose filing system consists mostly of using every horizontal surface I can find to deposit strata of tools, books, papers, components, etc, the utility of the Push Table resonates very much. I can even imagine building (adjustable) separators into the sloped section, to allow a primitive physical filing system to emerge (but see also Anna Harris’s Ifiltro, discussed below)."

Lots of great stuff about the way we really use items as opposed to what the designer had in mind on this page here http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/category/user-psychology/ but this table was just made for me!

How can you reduce your Toms?

2008-12-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

As the result of an idea that two people had at the IT@Cork conference less than a week ago, a new website is launched today to help us visualise our carbon emissions and how we might reduce them.

The average European creates 10 tonnes of CO2 per annum. The average American, 20 tonnes. To avert the dangers of Climate Change, we need to drop our CO2 production to 1 tonne per person. Problem: What is 1 tonne of CO2? How do you visualise it? Answer: You don't! You change the metric. 1 tonne = 1 person's annual CO2 production. 1 average person. 1 Tom.

Have a look and join in the conversation and pass it on, especially to all your friends and relations called Tom!

Biofuels a transition fuel only

2008-12-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

Pic from http://besustainable.com

Here is my argument:

The internal combustion engine is inherently inefficient, loosing more energy through heat and friction than it delivers to drive a vehicle forward. (see Electric v. Combustion engines) We don’t know what inventions will be transporting us around in 50 years time, but the likelihood that they bear much resemblance to a heavy lump of metal, generating heat and exhaust gases seems very unlikely. Therefore, any fuel which is produced with the intention of running a combustion engine are likely to have a limited life.

However, biofuels could be used to generate electricity. The question is are there circumstances where it is more efficient to grow, harvest, process and ‘burn’ a plant than to use wind, waves or sun to directly generate electricity?

Even though the future might be predominantly electric, there will always be niches. Butane Fuel Cells for small devices might replace batteries, and they can provide 20 times the run time of the current battery technology for the same mass. The choice would be recharge your device yourself anywhere you can plug it in or go and buy a butane charge for your fuel cell. Hmmm, think I’ll plug it in thanks and wait for the battery technology to catch up.

Wind, waves and sun are intermittent so some form of storage is required. Maybe biofuels will be best used for powering backup generation?

I’m not convinced of my own argument here, so hoping for someone to point out the flaws in it.

No iReal or Segway for me, I want a K9 to carry stuff

2008-12-02T01:45:00.000-08:00

iReal
Segway

Last night I had delicious home cooked stir fry (thanks Flora) and maybe this is what stimulated my imagination as I tried to get to sleep. Been really bothered by the iReal and Segway. The idea that we might lose the use of our legs! I will keep walking. I enjoy walking, but I don't enjoy carrying a heavy bag with a computer, notebook, papers and goats milk. So here is what I want.

I want a K9 (the mechanical dog on Doctor Who), maybe a bigger breed than the one on Doctor Who, who will follow me faithfully wherever I go carrying all the gumpf that normally weighs down my shoulders and pockets. If I get a bit tired with all that walking, I can sit on K9 and he will provide with with, in winter, a nice cup of team, and in summer, a nice cup of tea. He will wait patiently outside the shop, guarding my purse and shopping and will come to the till, when summoned, to pay and pick up the shopping. When I get on the bus, he will hitch himself to the rear of the bus and recharge himself as he is pulled along. In the unlikely event that he runs out of battery (he warns me if his power is getting low and can curl up in the sun to recharge himself from his solar cells) he can can either turn tortoise and wait to be retrieved or throw out a handle to be wheeled home. He will also make life much less stressful by making sure I don't leave the house without the keys or some fresh goats milk and will make sure I take the keys out of the lock and put the goats milk back in the fridge when I get home.

City K9s would be more elegant than country K9s, that would be expected to negotiate mud, ditches and electric fences carrying buckets of feed, bales of hay and fencing posts. Evening K9s would be small chic little things, a fashion accessory, only required to carry purse, keys and lipstick. Special St. Bernard K9s would carry and, if required, entertain small children... Okay got to finish this off and do some real work.

Of course, in the future we will not be carrying paper because we will finally have epaper and we will be doing all our computing on our mobile and the shops will be delivering to our home and medical science will have found a way to get rid of my intolerance of cow's milk. But I still fancy a K9.

Please put dates on web pages!

2008-12-01T01:26:00.000-08:00

I know sites want to appear as though they have been recently updated, but at least news items could put a date. Many do, but there are still a lot that don't. This article on mini-cars for example, http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/11/1117_japan_minicar/index_01.htm
includes the totally unhelpful text "...they fell 6.2% in October..." and "In 1997, kei accounted for 24% of Japan's total auto sales; this year, the figure will be 35%." No help in the URL either. Anyone else share this gripe?

Homecamp November 2008

2008-11-30T07:31:00.000-08:00

Great day at Homecamp yesterday, an unconference loosly based around doing cool stuff with Current Cost and other home automation stuff. We heard about tracking llamas across the downs, linking your doorbell to twitter, sharing your electricity usage with a group and getting competative about it.

What impressed me most about the day was the awareness of the problems we face with energy and climate change and the enthusiasm for addressing them. How can we encourage the behavioral change we need? Was an ongoing question for the day. This was in marked contrast to the previous conference I attended where the general mood seemed to be denial of the problem if possible and certainty that people won't change behavior.

Back to Homecamp. Met lots of interesting people and more I never go the chance to talk to but here are a few links and buzzwords I managed to jot down:
IBM have exteneded their range of protocols down to a Really Small Message broker suitable for Pervasive Messaging (think lots of things measuring stuff and sending out messages about it). Google MQTT and RSMB and XMPP
Prices of Zigbee coming down, £4-5 per chip, but does have problems with stone walls as uses 2.4GHz - X10 still useful for some applications.
Current Cost is the cheap and cheerful device if you want to start measuring electricity use and using the results. Produces an XML feed which can be updated every ?? seconds or will save data up to a month but only in 2 hour granularity. Uses Serial port with Serial to USB cable to connect to a computer. More stuff here: http://code.google.com/p/currentcost/
If you don't want to use more electricity monitoring your electricity, consider Viglan MPC that uses about 10 watts. Cost £80ish. For details see ubunto podcast.
If you want to start tinkering go to tinker.it and buy a arduino board which can take data from all kinds of sensor and has an ethernet connection. Also check out knolleary.net, blinkum and ambiant orbs.
Predictive Failure Analysis links with Pervasive Messaging. Your washing machine sends the manufacturer ongoing measurements of it's performance so that changes in pattern can be used to predict failures before they happen. Or vans send data on their usage so that maintenance can be scheduled based on need for greater efficiency.
Ideas for visualising electricity/carbon - onzo.co.uk for another measuring device but using design to create awareness. Idea of having plant (real of electronic!) that droops or flowers depending on your behaviour.
Plugin for sketchup allows measurements from aduinos via pachube to be displayed on a sketchup model. Useful for planning location of solar panels, how buildings are behaving after people start messing with it in ways the architect didn't foresee. Can also do with into second life to turn lights on and off or see if you left the iron on.
Nokia are doing a homeautomation project using mobile technology - no details.
In terms of changing behaviour - social motivation is stronger than monetary (generally but depends on context). Nothing like a near death experience to motivate people. The power of the group can be used to provide a context - how am I doing compared to others in my group. People like challenges - challenging but achievable.
We currently waste more than half the energy we use (ie. delivers no benefit) 35-40% is down to the technology (standby mode etc) and 30-35% is behavioural (leaving things on).
We are facing a complex problem with is both socially and technologically challenging.
Joe Short from Dynamic Demand and I brought the group up to speed with the challenges and opportunities around dynamic demand and balancing the grid. It's not just using less that cuts carbon, but when you use it. A previous post on demand response.
Publish your data to http://www.pachhube.com (pronounced patch-bay) to allowing sharing and aggrigating. This project is only just getting going but already has feeds from all over the world - energy use, carbon footprint, wind speeds, London Bridge going up and down, whatever you fancy.

I've started twittering #laptopsurvey counting the types of laptops in cafes. This was initially triggered by a friend who said it was rubbish that more and more people were buying Macs instead of PCs. Also interested in counting uptake of netbooks as I think PC people are considering alternatives when buying a new laptop and I suspect many, who might have gone for a Mac last year, will go for a netbook. Feel free to add your own surveys!

Homecamp (approx figures)

Macs 11 (2 white, 5 black, 3 silver, 1 air)
PCs 7 (all but two were Thinkpads belong to IBM employees I think)
Netbooks 6

Checkout @homecamper on twitter and friendfeed room is homecamp.

Hope to see you all again in March if not before.

IT@Cork Conference 2008

2008-11-27T09:34:00.000-08:00

A full day yesterday with talk from a wide range of perspectives from a Segway riding (standing/commanding/steering/balancing/figureheading?) economist http://tinyurl.com/6pl4y2 to the CEO of the ESB. Mixed feelings at the end of the day.

We had strong talks on the clear and present danger of both climate change and peak oil (and gas and uranium and coal and copper) but for many people this was a bit of a surprise and were inclined to think they were too down beat. I, of course, would disagree.

On the plus side, great to hear all this stuff that I have been going on about for so long being talked about and built on.

Disconnect I felt, with the ITC presenters, who seemed to be talking about business as usual with lower consumption of energy, but lots more demand for computing. I don't entirely disagree with that, but I don't think they have thought through the implications of peak oil and recession for their customers and suppliers. Will blog on this in more detail in the future.

Very upbeat presentation from Padraig McManus of the ESB. Target for them to be zero carbon by 2035 and 30% reduction by 2012. Also talking demand response, smart metering (although no commitments on installation) and big growth in wind soon. Confident they would not be affected by a downturn and that demand for electricity increase significantly.

Congratulations to the organisers, well run conference, good speakers, although wifi kicking in and out so not able to keep twittering all day - probably a good thing. Met lots of interesting people so very glad to have gone.

Electric Vehicle Fans

2008-11-27T02:35:00.000-08:00

Been getting regular feeds from Zoomi Life for the last couple of weeks - all the latest electric vehicle news. Highly recommended:

http://www.zoomilife.com/

UK Budget 2008

2008-11-25T02:25:00.000-08:00

Three thoughts on the UK budget.

I think consumers main concern now is their mountain of debt and how they are going to pay the interest, never mind the capital. Are their jobs secure? Is the value of their house going to go back up again? Negative equity on the car and a mountain of credit card debts. I think, and may be wrong because not everyone is in debt and not everyone worries about if they are, that people are more likely to save or pay off debt with a little extra cash than go out and spend it. So I don't think cuts in taxes are going to do the business in encouraging consumer spending.

The stock markets liked the budget, today at any rate. Well that's okay then. Is part of the success criteria for the budget, that the city will like it? I suspect it is, and is this not the kind of short term thinking that got us into trouble in the first place?

What do we need new roads for? Peak Oil has not gone away and neither has climate change. In fact the problems of Peak Oil just got worse because the low price of oil has stiffled investment in both oil and renewables. I struggle to envisage any scenario that does not involve a decrease in driving in the short term, even the most positivie scenario where we replace some of our transport needs with technology. This budget was a huge opportunity to invest in the energy infrastructure of the country and show that the UK was a sound long term investment. Instead the gamble is that we are all going to start buying again and that energy prices, energy security and climate change are not going to cause a problem any time soon.

Just add a couple of wings....

2008-11-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

As a private pilot who once dabbled in building a kit plane, the new Aptera looks remarkably like one of those kits but without wings...

Re eMail overload at big organisations

2008-11-20T00:44:00.000-08:00

A couple of friends were telling me last night about the eMail overload they have at their company. 100-200 emails per day (not including spam) all of which have to be scanned to see if they are:
- genuine requests for action
- replies
- just thought you would like to know
- does anyone know....
- arse covering
- arse licking
etc.

We considered a number of solutions from charging people to send emails to banning email altogether, but here was the best idea of the evening.

Email is for actions only, ie. the first two in the list above
You can only send email to one person
You, generally, use the old fashioned chain of responsibility when sending - ie. you send a level up or down, NOT to the whole chain. It is the responsibility of the person you send to whether to forward your email. Structures are fairly flat these days, so not as onerous as it used to be.
All cc's get put on a public (to the organisation) twitter stream instead of being delivered. Can also post direct to twitter stream.
It is NOT expected that everyone will see everything on the twitter stream, but it allows for some element of serandipidy - MD just happens to see cleaners observation re competitions plans leaked to girlfriends, mothers, step-brothers, aunt....

Interested to hear any ideas or experiences of what has worked as huge potential savings here for many organisations! Is it possible to process emails before delivery and remove CC'd people then post text on internal twitter? Would need to notify people their email had not been delivered to everyone, by email, thus increasing the number of emails again!

Self-help gadget for electricity cost reduction

2008-11-19T05:13:00.000-08:00

Some time in the future our equipment will negotiate for best price energy without our having to do anything. But in 2008, if we want to reduce our electricity bills we have to do it ourselves. Studies show that installing equipment to show people their current electricity usage has a big impact on their usage. For a short time. But when the novelty wears off we tend to slide back to our old habits. Here is an idea for a gadget to keep reminding us to use electricity efficiently.

Having done your initial measurement, you can tell a gadget your target electricity usage for the day. Once you reach this amount and alarm goes off and the gadget flashes an anoying red. Only 6pm and you've busted your limit again. Of course you will start to ignore this after a while as well, but maybe by then you might have got into the habit of switching the lights off or running the washing machine at night (so you don't hear that alarm going off!).

If I won the Lotto - which car?

2008-11-18T07:18:00.001-08:00

My daydreams about which car I would buy if I won the Lotto (in a big way) has changed lately. In the old days (like last month) my daydreams conveniently excluded guilt over carbon emissions, crowded roads and the rough track up to my house in selecting my dream car. Contenders included the Mac Merc Monaro and Aston Martin and of course a Jag XKR.

However, pondering the credit crisis and future fallout, how long before I was struggling to find parts for my Mac Merc in West Cork. If I want to keep driving through the recession (assuming my big win can keep paying for petrol) maybe I would be better of with a classic car. Simple to repair, more parts available. And as I speed down the road in a cloud of carbon emissions I could remind myself that that I was preserving a piece of history for the nation!

Haven't come to a firm conclusion here as my favorite classics are a bit long in the tooth - Jaguar XK120 or never were that reliable - Sunbeam Tiger. Maybe I would go for something a bit more modest like a Triumph Stag?

Many happy hours ahead pondering this hypothetical dilemma.

Stimulate innovation by saying no

2008-11-18T01:07:00.000-08:00

Great example of what happens when you say No to someone - just makes them more determined. Unable to get access to a gas meter signal, this guy did a bit of lateral thinking.

http://phk.freebsd.dk/Gasdims/

and http://hackedgadgets.com/2008/10/14/energy-monitoring-project/

Wordle Cloud for this Blog

2008-11-17T12:46:00.000-08:00

Wordle Word Cloud for this Blog - share and enjoy.

http://www.wordle.net/

What if Prince Charles used Twitter?

2008-11-15T05:34:00.000-08:00

The recent BBC documentary on Prince Charles at 60 spoke of his hand written 'black spider' memos full of questions and ideas that were fired of into the ether of secretaries and ministers for response. What is Prince Charles were to fire these questions and ideas off into Twitter instead. I'm sure he would certainly get a satisfyingly large and fast response and he might find it more effective at promoting his ideas than the civil service?

FT this weekend 15th November 2008

2008-11-15T03:00:00.000-08:00

Companies feel chill as trade credit insurance dries up

Companies that provide insurance against bad debts are reducing their cover - in one example from 90% to 60%. Other companies, such as Atradius, are withdrawing cover for whole counties and that list includes Ireland. As Ireland is so keen on leading the way with gaurantees, maybe we could lead the way by guaranteeing payment for all goods and services bought from Ireland?

G20 heads forced to temper ambition

The focus of the article is on how we are likely to regulate the banks in future and a process for introducing new regulations. This feels like closing the door after the horse has bolted. I know at some point in the future the door will need to close, bit isn't the priority to find the horse? Then we need to get a headcollar on him, maybe by tempting him with a bucket of feed, and then we can, hopefully, get him back into the stable...

Doubt cast on funds for Beijing boost

I have been asked all kinds of people over the last few years how dependant on exports they thought China was. If there was a slowdown in the US and Europe, would it significantly effect China. I got unsatisfactory answers, usually along the lines of "I don't know". A few felt China would continue to grow regardlesss of what else happened in the world.

Well to get the full answer, we are going to have to wait. China is still growing but at much lower levels than expected. It would seem that our global economy is so intertwined that nobody is recession proof.

Good Question Ma'am. But some people did see it coming

The Queen asked Luis Garicano of the London School of Economics "If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?". Well some did, writes Alan Beattie in an entertaining reply to the Queen. "It gets dangerous when you treat economists as court necromancers, listening only to the ones you find congenial".

Idea for Car Dealer

2008-11-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

I have great sympathy for all those car dealers who are looking at forecourts full of unwanted cars. Well here is an idea for you. Get a dealership for electric cars and learn how to service them and offer this package: You buy an electric car from us and you get free membership of our car pool. Anytime you want a larger car just park your electric car here and we'll put it on charge for you and you can pay by the mile (sorry, kilometer) from a choice of any of this range of cars. If the car pool gets popular, you can offer to take cars in part exchange if they are suitable for the pool, and offer the pool service to others, who can also choose to take an Electric car from the pool if it suits their needs.

Then you can start offering a special electricity tariff especially suited to electric car users who will be charging overnight and get a commission on use from your supplier of choice.

Then you can offer electric motorscooters and motorbikes and vars and buses.....

I have at least two customers for you already if you are based in West Cork.

And just in case you thought electric cars all looked like motorised shopping trolleys:

Japanese prototype that does 0-62 in 4 secs and top speed of 230mph!

And of course the Tesla:

The Celtic Phoenix

2008-11-10T05:06:00.000-08:00

With all the understandable focus on the credit crunch and contracting economy, the interlinked problems of peak oil and climate change have been lost, and they are a big part of the solution. If we are to maintain our current economic model, the government is going to have to pump money into the economy and what better way than with gifts that keep on giving. A new windmill keeps generating revenue year on year, a house whose energy efficiency has been upgraded with double glazing and insulation, not only releases income for alternative spending this year, but next year and the year after. By moving spend from imports, and nearly 90% of our energy is imported, to locally produced energy, this will put money back into the economy. And moving to a sustainable energy infrastructure, which includes generation, distribution, storage and use of energy, will create a wide spectrum of new jobs. from installation of windmills, redesign of products for lower cradle to cradle energy and oil use, software innovation for improving logistics and installing plug in points for electric cars. There is huge potential for new businesses to manufacture wind and wave equipment, manufacture electric cars and increasing cost of transport makes local production more competitive, especially in food production.

Rather than be sidetracked by the possibility of losing advantages over which we have little control, such as incentives for encouraging foreign investment, lets focus on the advantages nobody can take away. Our excellent wind and wave potential, our good agricultural environment, and above all, our ability to adapt very quickly to changing times.

First there was the Celtic Tiger, now there is the Celtic Mouse, but lets awaken the Celtic Phoenix.

Plastic flower more real the real flowers - or visa versa

2008-11-05T09:55:00.000-08:00

Took this picture at Liverpool Street station today. The colours are so intense, to my gardeners eye, they appear plastic. But they are real flowers.

It reminded me of the story of a little boy who is shown a real rose plant for the first time. "It's smells like poo spray" he says.

For many people, is their baseline is becoming the artificial version of the natural product?

Tired and Emotional - President Obama

2008-11-05T02:08:00.000-08:00

Stayed up and watched the whole election count - didn't go to bed until McCain and Obama had both made inspiring and generous speeches. I had never seen this John McCain, where was he during the elections?

Obama has inspired loyalty and faith in me. Somthing no politician has ever come close to. Whatever happens, he has shown a jaded generation or three that politics can be about more than saying what we want to hear and slagging off the opposition. It can be about bringing us together, all of us, to create something more than we ever could apart.

Congratuations America.

Travelling Less?

2008-10-31T06:53:00.000-07:00

As I sit at Gatwick waiting to get a flight home and feeling guilty at the huge increase in my carbon foot print, I wonder about how much travelling we will be doing in the future.

Oil supplies will be constrained in the future, which will hit first - a shortage in the ground or problems getting it out and refined, it is not clear. The recently publish report from the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security estimate we have a 3-5 year window to make substantial cuts in our usage. The focus of this, and many other reports, is on doing what we do more efficiently - and this is great. But even without the cost factor, changing the car for the bus/train/bicycle etc. is also going to decrease our journeys simply because it reduces our ability to be spontaneous. At the moment, for a car owner, a quick drive down to the shops to get a frozen pizza because we have a sudden craving for one is just a case of jumping in the car and off we go. Without the car a bit more thinking has to take place first. Is it raining? When does the last bus leave? Is the local shop still open or do I need to go the bigger one further away? I'm going past the supermarket tomrrow anyway... At this stage the cravings for the pizza have passed and suddenly a bit of pasta made with ingredients in the cupboard looks a lot more attractive.

The ability for consumers to be spontaneous is a huge driver of spending - just put it on the credit card and worry about the bill later, 24 hour shopping - never go without a Ben & Jerrys tub of ice cream when you really need one, £1 flights to Budapest - lets just go. The freedom of the open road etc. etc. When freedom becomes more expensive and inconvenient we change our habits and I foresee a lot fewer miles driven as we plan our travel more carefully and combine tasks.

And it's not just people miles. Plastics are made from oil and a vast array of all that stuff we buy is made with plastic. Companies seeking to reduce costs will redesign products to last longer but with the ability to upgrade - ideally a software upgrade, meaning there is less stuff to ship around. As transport becomes more expensive, making and growing things locally becomes more competitative and again transport miles go down. As logistics systems become highly intelligent and adaptive, fewer vehicles travel with part loads, again pushing miles down.

By how much? And for how long? As we crack cheap energy and future cars become cheap to buy and run again will we want return to a country run by cars?

The Oil Crunch

2008-10-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Attended the launch of The Oil Crunch, a report looking at what will happen if we fail to address the systemic problems we have with energy, and oil in particular, in the same way we ignored systemic problems in the finacial sector. For me this is the most comprehensive, clear and well written assessment of the energy situation yet produced including contributions from both Shell and Zero Carbon Britain as possible scenarios. The basic message is that the UK has a 3-5 year window to engineer a soft landing and their hope is that this report will put the arguments into context and stimulate a knowledgeable debate.

The four scenarios considered are:
Growth - becoming less plausible by the day
Plateau - Shell - growth in supply to 1015 and plateau into the 2020s
Descent - Zero Carbon Britain
Collapse - here be dragons
The taskforce favour Descent, although this is conservative compared the the current IEA forcasts leaked today in the FT which project a 6.4-9.1% pa!

A good question was asked about why businesses would not want to sell more, particularly utilities. Ian Merchant from Scottish and Southern Energy, jumped on this one saying it was not good business practice to sell people what they did not need. Much better to sell less and build up a larger loyal clientbase. Great answer! It seems as the mighty are falling, what was previously unsayable (if you valued your job or reputation) can now be said. Will Whitehorn from Virgin said that business growth for the sake of growth was not good either, although there would be opportunities for growth in a descent scenario.

Some other points that came out of the Q&A:
- the need for a policy around heat as well as energy
- the urgent need for a feed-in tariff (and this seems about to happen)
- a key question is how much energy do we, as individuals, need to fuel our lifestyle? This is about us using smart technology and making choices.
- there is an urgent need to look at the regulatory environment which is creating many roadblocks to progress such as planning restrictions
- Stagecoach have coverted some buses in Kilmarnock to run on waste oil such as chip fat. Custom has increased, and some travellers are bringing bottles of old chip oil to pay for their journey!

The Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security included senior representatives from Virgin, Solarcentury, Stagecoach, Scottish and Southern Energy, Yahoo, Arup, Foster and Partners and First.

Report at www.peakoiltaskforce.net

A few ideas occurred to me during this presentation. I don't think there is much to be gained by trying to analyse exactly when Peak Oil will occur. The question is when will the symptoms associated with Peak Oil start to have an impact and the answer is that that is already happening. Symptoms include erratic prices as confidence evaporates and pricing oil becomes more difficult, oil producing countries starting to conserve supplies for themselves, significant investment moving to renewables and alternative energy supplies, increasing interest in the subject in all areas.

I would like to see a mega plan put together identify all the projects/changes that need to happen and what the timescales and dependacies are for each of these. From that we could draw a huge plan identifying the critical path and what changes need to happen to unblock sections of the plan (like implementing feed-in tarrifs, smart metering and DR).

London Pics from the camera phone

2008-10-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

Trees that caught my eye:

Still lots of building going on in the City. View of cranes (you can just about make them out) from Waterloo bridge.

Only a few days ago I was walking down the street in a tee-shirt. It just started snowing!

Zero Carbon Britain

2008-10-28T15:25:00.001-07:00

Had an interesting chat with Paul Allen from CAT who has been working on the 'what to do about peak oil and climate change' for much longer than most. He acted as a consultant on the 'Oil Crunch' report due to be launch tomorrow. Lots of good stuff in the Zero Carbon Britain report, including details of addressing demand side management as well as the supply side.

Get the report here: http://www.zerocarbonbritain.com/

Review of Bigpicture.tv

2008-10-19T02:56:00.001-07:00

Bigpicture.tv

http://www.bigpicture.tv is a collection of videos of people talking about the big picture. Dipping in I found this http://www.bigpicture.tv/videos/watch/36660e598. Vandana Shiva talks about the idea that we are currently living in a representative democracy but an economic dictatorship and this chimes with the feeling I have, that we are the slaves of the economy, not the other way around. She suggests that we vote all the time, with our wallets, and we can use this power to bring about change. 132 speakers in all - share and enjoy.

Rated 4/5 on Oct 19 2008

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Review Tags: tv, energy, economics, future

Tax As You Go

2008-10-17T01:24:00.000-07:00

I hate doing tax returns. In fact if I could pay a bit of extra tax in order not to have to do a tax return I would! So here is a wild idea for making my life easier.

Tax as you go.

I sign up for a deal that adds 5% to every transaction I have with my bank that goes straight into my tax account. If I withdraw €100 from the ATM, €105 is deducted from my bank balance and €5 is added to my tax account. If I pay for €50 of shopping with my credit card, another €2.50 goes into the tax account. At the end of the tax year, the money in my tax account has interest added (which is above the rate I would receive at the bank) and is deducted from my tax bill.

When I pay may tax bill online I get to decide on where 50% of my tax goes and I can allocate it between health, education, public transport etc. There might also be special requests for funding - a hospital wants a new cancer treatment machine - and I can allocate some of my money to that. I can recieve updates on how that funding drive is going by text or email. The government gets to decide on what the pots are - we get decide how much goes in each pot. If we feel passionately that one pot is more deserving than another, WE can lobby our friends to put their allocation in that pot. Once a pot is full, the government MUST proceed with that project. This helps us feel part of the link between paying taxes and getting services which I know is missing for many of us.

There might also be some kind of gold star award we recieve when we pay a certain amount of tax that shows we are a responsible member of the community. People with gold stars are listed, so a wealthy person without a gold star is clearly visible to community and it is clear they are not contributing much to rebuilding the local school etc.

In the long term, I would like a pay as you go system to replace income tax and other forms of tax, removing loopholds and dodgy incentives. When what we want is more jobs and to use resources more efficiently, it makes more sense to me to tax stuff not people. So if I earn lots of money, I don't pay any tax until I spend it. If all transactions, including financial trading, were included, we would only pay a small tax, probably 0.5% on each transaction! Then there would be an end to tax returns - what joy!

Can I have a cappuccino with my goat's milk please?

2008-10-14T02:07:00.001-07:00

This request is met with a wide range of responses, but the answer is usually yes. In fact the only place that could have done it but wouldn't was the deli in Bandon and they wouldn't even let me buy a black coffee and put my goat's milk in it myself if I was going to drink it on the premises! Needless to say, I have not been back since. Anyway, the reason for the blog post was not to winge but to make an observation as I sit here in Costa Coffee at the motorway service station near Taunton. I think I can see a difference between the UK and Ireland when it comes to paying. I have no problem in paying the full amount for my coffee. It's not a lot of money and the coffee shop has to cover their overheads. But interestingly, the British sense of fair play has often meant they have charged me much less for my coffee! A gut feel would suggest I pay full price about 85% of the time in Ireland and only 40% of the time in the UK. I look forward to trying this experiment in other countries, though it will require me learning a bit more than 'Do you speak English' in the requisite language!