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I was listening to a radio program (In Business) about how PayPal started. Back in 1998 there was a very clever Ukrainian student trying to create a payment gateway between two Palm Pilots using infrared. You can read some of it here. The really interesting point for me was how the investors were a bunch of tech . . . → Read More: The Right Kind of Angel Investors I finished reading “How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything” whilst on holiday. I am reading it in an attempt to cut through the growing hubbub of noise about micro-renewables. In other words, to see where the really CO2 friendly business opportunities are. Good quote from the forward (my copy is leant to a friend, so . . . → Read More: How Bad are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything Just finished reading the 2005 edition of “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery. This book is mentioned in Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson as the one that galvanized him into action on reducing emissions from his businesses. The first two thirds of the book are pretty interesting, where he sticks to his thesis that human kind . . . → Read More: The Weather Makers Just spent an interesting morning at the Silicon Southwest “The Future is Analog” seminar. A good chance to catch up with some ex colleagues from NXP. Though the main topic of discussion with a number of people from Silicon Southwest, Set Squared and local start-ups was “why is Southampton so poor in generating silicon based startups compared to . . . → Read More: Southampton Ventures ? Adam Smith said that if the price of a product or service remains inordinately high then it is not operating in a free market. Now, if the price of banking services remain high, then there must be a lack of competition in the market for those services. This means that market forces are not brought to bear . . . → Read More: Banker’s bonuses are not the problem, just the symptom A few weeks ago I made a “screetching tyres” visit to West Wales, to the Tal-Y-Bont Show to be exact. We moved there from England when I was 3 (returning after 10 years). It was, and still is a beautiful but foreign country. Half my lessons were in Welsh which I could speak fluently. My rugby . . . → Read More: Nant-y-Moch wind farm Interesting to hear Radio 1 hyping the Muse gig in Teignmouth this Friday. It’s funny as I went to the same school / sixth form as them some time ago. The tickets are £37 quid, but I reckon you will be able to hear the whole gig all over the small town anyway ! Joss Stone is also . . . → Read More: Teignmouth and Devon music The best thing about this book is that it comes to pretty much the same conclusions about EU energy security as my group study project for my MSc in Renewable Energy Systems Technology did. Namely that the EU is in big trouble in terms of becoming totally dependent on Russia and others for gas in the . . . → Read More: Some holiday reading:Energy Security by Sascha Müller-Kraenner Recently I recorded our gas consumption for the hot water for washing hands and washing up. About 40 p a day. Around £160 per annum or about £12 per month. So we turned the timer down from an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening to 40 minutes in the evening. Result: Plenty of hand / . . . → Read More: Just saved 35p a day on gas with no side effects Yesterday I suffered my worst bout of culture shock in terms of going from working for NXP Semiconductors Ltd – a very commercial, private equitied company into Southampton Solent University. I was in an appraisal training meeting. I checked through the relevant HR forms and asked where the box is for entering an overall rating. Answer – there is . . . → Read More: Performance appraisals with no grading … ? I was pondering how over millions of years the white cliffs in western Isle of Wight were created by gazillions of tiny calcifying creatures. They use photosynthesis to convert sunlight + calcium ions + carbon dioxide into chalk. I was also wondering whether Southampton has the skills to look further into harnessing this to combat climate change. . . . → Read More: Ocean based carbon sequestration I do like articles like this Solar power from Saharan sun could provide Europe’s electricity, says EU (Guardian July 08). They provide an insight into what we could do to replace energy from fossil fuels if we put our minds to it. I quote: “… it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling . . . → Read More: Solar Energy from the Sahara Desert I am starting to lose count of the number of people who have got back in contact after seeing my profile update in LinkedIn to Enterprise Business Manager at Southampton Solent University. Or via the Solent Synergy listing for us which includes the list of services we offer here. Anyway, the Philips alumni is alive . . . → Read More: The Old Philips Network Property investors look away now. Do not read this article “Why house prices have further to fall”. “There is one simple reason why house prices need to drop: for decades, they have risen many times faster than wages.” and then there is this table: 25 years of house prices and wages Year price wage ratio 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Increase Sources: Halifax House Price Index; Office for National Statistics . . . → Read More: House price to earnings ratio means prices have further to go Here is how the various news generators reported the inflation figures last week: Sky News: Shock rise in UK inflation and the BBC … Ever since the “dodgy dossier” . . . → Read More: BBC biased towards the government We have a customer developing a new way of harnessing power from the ocean. Great to meet them and see what they are up to. Energy is an important area to throw R&D cash at. The debate about nuclear rumbles on. But we mustn’t forget energy efficiency as well. My visit to the National Grid control centre last . . . → Read More: Power from the ocean One month in. I have learnt a tremendous amount. I have found some world class nuggets. Starting points for great things. I have had some great coaching from buddies (even on a walk along to Durdle Door – ta Noel). Anyway, 21 days is enough learning time. So let’s see what can be achieved in the . . . → Read More: Tiger by the tail As of last Weds (4th Feb) I have started a new job as Business Manager of Solent Centre for Design and Innovation. Which is a dept inside the Faculty of Technology of Southampton Solent University. Having been at Philips Semiconductors / NXP since 1990 (bar a sojourn around the Antipodes in 93/94), starting a new job is . . . → Read More: New Job I have been playing with twitter. Renovating my dinghy rudder thanks to finally sourcing some genuine Bahco carbide scraper blades. Getting worried about Fasthosts again, having put a Wordpress Blog on a site hosted by them. It is a damn site slower than Zen who host this one. I think there is a place for freelancing this . . . → Read More: Carbide scrapers, web hosting, energy efficiency I have been talking with land and estate agents in mid-Dorset & Southampton, plus my friend who runs (ran!) a mortgage brokerage. Here is my take on where we are now and how the massive interest rate (IR) falls over the last 4 months have drastically altered the economy – see [A] and [B] below. [A] Where we . . . → Read More: Credit Crunch: My prediction of what happens next Last week was spent writing my first articles (see previous post) and revising for my forthcoming Biomass and Wind Energy exams for the Loughborough University REST (Renewable Energy systems Technology) MSc. I have some more news, as of 4th February I am lucky enough to start a new role at Solent University (more of this later). So . . . → Read More: The Joy of Freelancing Just spent 2 days reviewing keywords, mainly using Google’s Adwords SKtool. Found that one particular key phrase is worth 10x more traffic than the next best one. So that’s easy then The other issue is improving the traffic metering. I already use Google Analytics. But have added filtering out of the admin IP addresses. It has been a fairly manic week. Monday I drove to Loughborough Uni for the first day of lectures on Biomass (energy from). It has it’s place in terms of being a good way to get rid of waste and make some money from it in the process. Monday afternoon was spent writing a tutorial on “Fuels . . . → Read More: Anaerobic digesters and search engines, a usual week This site will soon have to start working for a living. I switched from $15 per annum z-host to £3.99 per month Zen to get a much faster response time. I also need to research some content management systems in order to turn this into a site more fitting for a freelance consulting engineer and postgraduate student. Yes, . . . → Read More: Content Management Systems and Freelance Consulting Over the last 2 years or so, I have engaged in some discussions with David Smith, Economics Editor of The Times. (OK, I should get out more I know). He posts his Sunday Times article onto his own blog for discussion during the week on I commented on his story from Dec 14th, 2006 . . . → Read More: Discussions with David Smith of The Times Three of my holiday reading books put together came up with an interesting insight into human nature. The books were “The Genome” by Matt Ridley followed by “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: The Shocking Story of How America Really Took Over the World” by John Perkins, then followed up with “On the Wealth of Nations” . . . → Read More: Adam Smith, Human Nature, Capitalism and Realism Having visited EcoBuild 2008, I was a little disappointed with the headlong rush to build new eco-friendly homes rather than renovate the existing stock, which is really the only answer. However, I just found this very good post on oildrum.com about making a 100 year old end of terrace into an almost carbon neutral home. Check it . . . → Read More: Eco-Renovation rather than Eco-Building Interesting article here. Seems to say that Moore’s Law caused a fundamental miscalculation of the US economy productivity growth throughout the 1990s. Did Moore’s Law hide the fundamental weakness of the US economy? Are the dotcom boom/bust and housing boom/bust a result of this monetary mis-management ? Quote: Well, I have seen it all at work now. The answer …. hold a couple of “un-interviews”. I kid you not, one of my colleagues was called in, and . . . → Read More: The Un-Interview I recently attended two days of conferences at The IET. The first day was Next Generation Networks . The second on IPTV. I think the broadcasters and ISPs have missed a trick. TV is being delivered as part of a social . . . → Read More: Social TV Just been checking out some stuff fromthe Microsoft TechFest posted on Scobleizer. There are a lot of similarities to stuff seen at Philips over the years… guess all techies think alike See here Techfest . . . → Read More: Microsoft TechFest |
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