Pomme::TAB

Tejado en la Font del Gat

Originally uploaded by * No. Pip, no!!!.

Stunning photo coming from a Flickr contact.
It makes me want to come back there again. I miss Barcelona.

UK’s CIS Solar Tower garners 390-kilowatts from the sun: “

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We’re not entirely sure if Manchester’s CIS Solar Tower will be the world’s grandest solar tower, but in terms of buildings have moved beyond the drawing board, it definitely packs a punch. Reportedly, the flaky construction led to dilapidating walls, which were then replaced by a much greener solution — 7,244 Sharp 80W photovoltaic panels, to be precise. Curiously, only 4,898 of the modules are actually functional, but they still soak up enough sunlight to generate 390-kilowatts of energy, or in layman’s terms, enough juice to ‘power 1,000 PCs for a year.’ Additionally, the roof is home to two dozen wind turbines that generate 10-percent of the total power used in the building. Of course, such an endeavor did ring up at a steep £5.675 million ($11.4 million), but we’re pretty certain this solar panel makeover was concerned with matters other than dollars and cents. Click on through for a top-down shot.

[Via MetaEfficient]

Continue reading UK’s CIS Solar Tower garners 390-kilowatts from the sun

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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(Via Engadget.)

Interesting story, Boing Boing is reporting here.

I wonder though how they can ascertain that it is (was) the oldest business out there.

There must be some medieval originated trades still in business in the old cities of Europe.

World’s oldest business ends 1,428-year run: “Mark Frauenfelder:
A Japanese temple-building company founded in the year 578 is going out of business. Here’s Business Week’s article.

The circumstances of Kongo Gumi’s demise also offer some lessons. Despite its incredible history, it was a set of ordinary circumstances that brought Kongo Gumi down at last. Two factors were primarily responsible. First, during the 1980s bubble economy in Japan, the company borrowed heavily to invest in real estate. After the bubble burst in the 1992-93 recession, the assets secured by Kongo Gumi’s debt shrank in value. Second, social changes in Japan brought about declining contributions to temples. As a result, demand for Kongo Gumi’s temple-building services dropped sharply beginning in 1998.

By 2004, revenues were down 35%. Masakazu Kongo laid off employees and tightened budgets. But in 2006, the end arrived. The company’s borrowings had ballooned to $343 million and it was no longer possible to service the debt. In January, the company’s assets were acquired by Takamatsu, a large Japanese construction company, and it was absorbed into a subsidiary.

Link (Via Japan Probe)

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(Via Boing Boing.)

This month has been rich in news/articles about solar technology in the blogosphere.

Below are two more links

• Sliver
• 3D solar cells

TREE

Originally uploaded by T Glow.

Good Morning,

It’s Friday today, and this work of art just stood up among my contacts’ list of photos on Flickr.
So beautiful, it’s good to start a day that way.

That’s great news for renewable energy!

Solar Power-Cell Breakthrough: “An anonymous reader writes ‘Researchers from the Nanomaterials Research Centre at Massey University in New Zealand have developed synthetic dyes that can be used to generate electricity at one tenth of the cost of current silicon-based solar panels. These photosynthesis-like compounds work in low-light conditions and can be cheaply incorporated into window-panes and building materials, thereby turning them into generators of electricity.’

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(Via Slashdot.)

At lunchtime today, we were discussing about the trouble a colleague had to get a builder to install/repair a sceptic tank in a house in France, troubles due to language barrier. The colleague was advised to ask me … to be a translator.
For one moment I thought it was for my expertise in “toilets” , so I said.
Therefore, to be true to my reputation, here is another blog post on the subject found today:

Woman falls six stories into pile of crap: “David Pescovitz:
A woman in Nanjing, China fell off a sixth floor balcony and survived thanks to a pile of poop on the ground below. From Sky News:

‘She landed in a 20cm thick heap of excrement,’ the Kuaibao tabloid newspaper gleefully reported.

‘Workers happened to be emptying the building’s septic tank, which had not been tended for a long time, and had regularly blocked sewage pipes.

Link (Thanks, Vann Hall!)

Previously on BB:
• Sewer sprays blood on maintenance worker Link

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(Via Boing Boing.)

Peace ambassador

Originally uploaded by Ahmed Zahid.

Good morning,
It was pleasing to see this wonderful photo from a flickr contact at such an early time. It’s putting me in such a good mood for the rest of the day
Thank you Ahmed Zahid.
Have a nice day everyone

Everybody knows that a picture is worth a thousand words, but this guy is pushing the concept to a whole new dimension: his life.

Also it’s been awhile since last time I’ve posted pie charts

Life expressed as a series of pie-charts: “Cory Doctorow:

Craig Robinson has drawn up a page of pie-charts expressing facts about his life to date, such as portion of his life that his father was alive, percentage of countries visited, percentage of life supporting the Liverpool Football Club. Love the juxtaposition of the banal and the profound.

Link

(via Kottke)

“

(Via Boing Boing.)

The big tech news yesterday was of course the joint press conference in London by Apple and EMI. Below links cover that stunning news:

• BBC News
• Another BBC News report
• The Guardian (subscription required)
• xml.com blog
• Daring Fireball
• Tech News World
• Barrapunto (en español)
• Ratiatum en français)
• MSNBC NewsWeek
• Liberation (en français)
• International Herald Tribune(with an EU commission twist)

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apple, music, musicindustry, itunes, DRM, mp3, download, legal, emi, nodrm, pressconference