Organic Food Takes On The Empire!

It might be rather silly, but I’ve a soft spot for Store Wars, the spoof Star Wars film made by the Organic Soil Association in America. You can view it here or watch the dodgier quality You Tube version below and see the story of a plucky young cucumber learning the ways of ‘the Farm’ and fighting the ‘Dark Side of the Farm’.

Of course it’s all got a serious message, promoting organic food, but it manages to raise a smile or two. The cantina scene is brilliant.

How To Recycle Old Audio Cassettes

With the death of audio cassettes now on the horizon, the problem of what to do with the ones in the back of the cupboard arises. The BBC looked at various ways of dealing with them.

1. Firstly convert them to mp3 format. This is easy, I do it with an old walkman and a small lead from the headphone socket into the line-in socket of the computer. Coupled with the brilliant, easy and free Audacity, ignore any of the expensive software that is now being advertised to cash in. Getting hold of the lead is the tricky part, but it is just a headphone plug/jack with a male plug on each end and costs about £4 from an electronics store, such as this one from Maplin. Then it’s just a matter of pressing record and play. Make sure you get the volume right as it makes a big difference. Also don’t expect mp3 quality! It can be quite time consuming chopping the recording up into individual songs, so give yourself plenty of time.

2. Once done, sometimes you can recycle them as the plastic and steel screws and springs can be recycled. However the recording tape cannot, so check with your local council first. The inlay cards could of course be recycled as usual.

3. You could sell them on eBay or at a car boot sale, though the market is very limited.

4. Gardeners use the tape to scare birds away, or use them to bundle newspapers together, or tie parcels.

5. Use them as belt buckles, necklaces, or wallets. The retro look is popular with some people, and several designers are using tapes in their designs.

6. Give them away - places like freecycle.org have a network of people giving things away for free, or your local charity shop might accept them.

7. If you still have a cassette player, then there’s no need to do anything!

Do you have any other ideas?

[Via: BBC]

Liverpool Bus That Wasn’t Used

Even being a Liverpool fan, I have to admit this is funny.

100 Ways To Save The Planet - Part 4

Onto part 4 of Life Goggles’ guide to saving the planet. Part 3 and links to the others can be found here.Five more ideas for you. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

26. Buy re-usable nappies. Almost half a million tonnes of nappies are put into UK landfills each year - that’s about three billion nappies or eight millon a day! The Women’s Environmental Network (WEN)has a handy comparison which says you can save up to £500 a year by using home laundered nappies. This takes into account water, electricity and even a washing machines lifespan! And of course it’s better for the environment too. WEN say by washing nappies your global warming impact is reduced by 24%.

27. Limit your dry cleaning. As Jerry Seinfeld said: “Let’s get one thing straight about dry cleaning right now. It doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as dry cleaning. There’s no way of cleaning with dry. Dry itself is nothing. You can’t use it. You can’t do anything with it. It’s not there. Dry is nothing. Are you listening to me? And we walk into these places with the big signs out front, “Dry Cleaning,” and somehow never question how they were able to put this absurd concept over on us. If I gave you a filthy shirt and said, “I want this immaculate. And no liquids!” what are you going to do? Shake it? Tap it? Blow on it? Give me a break. You almost can’t get something dirty with dry, let alone cleaning it.”

In fact liquid chemical solvents are used which are harmful to the enviroment, although the dry cleaning insustry has done a lot to improve this in the last 15 years. So if you can avoid it, then do. Also £15 for cleaning a suit is a bit steep…

28. Have a green funeral. Arka Original Funerals is one of many firms sprouting up to offer more enviromentally friendly funerals, while Ecopod makes coffins and urns from 100% recycled paper. Lovely.

The Daily Mail obviously doesn’t like this sort of thing, but their story here does at least suggest you be careful with your choice.

29. Print double sided. Sounds obvious really, but my printer at work doesn’t do it. Why not though? It saves on paper and ink so must be good for business. American office workers use, on average, 175lbs of paper every year. That can be halved by just printing double-sided. So while I’m using the other side as replacements for post-its, I’m trying to get my employer to get a new printer, however I’ve stopped short of purposefully breaking the old one.

30. Share a car to work or for please. Carpooling or liftsharing saves on pollution and saves you money too. It’s National liftshare Day on June 14 with the tagline ’share a car and save a tonne’.

The company liftshare estimates that a typical carsharer will save themselves around £1,000 and one tonne of CO2 per year by sharing their daily journey.

Proposal To Generate Electricity Via A Electro-Kinetic Road Ramp

The video below shows an idea for generating electricity by cars passing over a special ramp. The energy could be used for powering street lights, traffic lights and other road signs.

Some comments seem to think it would be wasteful if used anywhere but on a downward slope where it would also help the car slow down a little. Visit Boing Boing or sugiero for further details.

[Via Gary from Mandyleigh Storm - see Mandyleigh on Sellaband]

World’s First Eco Arcade

Here’s the (allegedly) world’s first biodiesel powered arcade. Sorry for the poor picture, but didn’t take my camera as it was raining in London (as is usual on a bank holiday) so this is from my phone. There was just one guy playing pinball in there so I didn’t venture in, but it seems a good idea. Even if biofuel isn’t a realistic solution, for things like this it’s ideal. More (and better pictures) can be found here.

Heroes Episode Guide - Chapter 18: Parasite

A BIG episode this one. We finally get to meet Mr Linderman who I doubt could have been killed by Nathan. You wouldn’t get as powerful as him and then get shot in a kitchen. I think he must have some power but not sure what’d be. Maybe he sees the future as he predicts what will happen with Nathan.

Candice’s power is pretty nifty, but as soon as I saw it I thought Mr Bennet’s in trouble, and soon enough he underestimate’s The Company.

Nice to see Hiro and Ando back together (with the help of Nathan) and importantly Hiro gets his sword but teleports to the future where nothing has changed from last time he saw it.

As well as Claire running off from the Haitian and then reuniting with him and Nathan’s mother, the other big thing is Sylar. For a moment I thought Mohinder wasn’t as stupid as I thought and he traps Sylar, but instead of getting his spinal fluid and killing him while he was drugged, he waits to talk to him and once again doesn’t realise how powerful he is.

The episode ends with Peter about to have his brain examined by Sylar. Since watching it my mind has been racing - will he go invisible, fly off with Sylar, heal himself and errr paint the future? He should technically have all of Sylar’s abilities that he stole off others so I expect he’ll fight back. Maybe Claude’s there with him, we haven’t seen him since Peter saved him.

As usual I’m left with lots of questions from the episode, but that’s the fun of it. New York still explodes, Hiro doesn’t save the day, will Peter? And what’s Mr Linderman’s role? All very good questions. I’m sure we’ll find out…

« Previous Page — Next Page »