I’ll only say that I would love one of these for Second Life, but I imagine it’s a few years off a consumer release as yet!

The is the full video and comment page at TED.

I’ve been pondering this tragedy and am wondering at the scale of it, a dark stygian cloud seeping beneath the water.  Some say it will spread up the Atlantic coastline, indeed, some rumors say it has already begun to.  This has been likened to an American Chernobyl, I think that’s an entirely justified comparison.

The cost in terms of both the environment and economy is well covered elsewhere, the political row echoes across the Atlantic, and reading newspaper website comments I wonder if many people in the UK can empathise with Obama.  I find myself feeling a deep sympathy for the man, and hoping that he can use this to break the stranglehold of Big Oil and move the US towards an alternative energy policy that includes walkable cities and clean efficient rail.

I was also pondering the effects on the mental level.  We’ve been caught out in our greed, as Peter so accurately puts it over at The Buddha Diaries:

“We have known for at least forty years that this dependency was a threat to our well-being and to the natural environment, but have done nothing to address it. Indeed, the reverse, our demand has only increased, our addiction deepened.”

I agree wholeheartedly.  This has been brought on by our greed, grasping for the things we feel entitled to, without realising that our sense of entitlement will be our undoing.  We have grasped and hoarded with no thought and our “solutions” to the World’s financial mess have seen us grasping at the resources of the future, impoverishing future generations to sate our own appetites.

So, are we Preta, hungry ghosts (speaking psychologically) with an insatiable appetite for a substance or object?  Our greed is forcing us recklessly onwards, as evidenced by internal emails from BP.  I’ve observed that the drive for profits, and damn the consequences, has stored up some pretty alarming trouble for us.  But I plan to cover that another time.

Or can we rise above that?  I believe that answer is “yes, we can”.  We will need to rediscover our humility in the face of nature, we have pushed too far thinking we could beat the odds; we couldn’t, you don’t beat Mother Nature.

I can only see only one solution.  That we must grow into a stewardship of this planet, and learn to use it sustainably; after all, it’s not like we have another.  Some vested interests are going to be severely inconvenienced, and will have to learn to restrain their greed but either we do this voluntarily and get a say in how it goes, or we sleep walk into another catastrophe.

Whats our Karma?

This release adds a choice of 4 backgrounds and fixes a CSS bug in the page.  My next release is intened to have a little love given to the design of the form and some more sounds.

On the subject of sound.  I’ve been asked for a version of this timer for folks on smart phones and other devices that don’t have Flashplayer.  I am looking into it, but sound in browsers is unreliable and nonstandard, to put it nicely.  It seems that HTML 5 will solve this problem quite finally and I will be able to lose the dependency on Flashplayer.

HTML 5 is due towards the end of 2010, if my informration in correct, if I can get it going earlier than that I will try to  do so.

You can find Sitquietly on this page.

I’ve noticed in the coverage that, aside from the airlines, there have been other people and companies hit by this.  People are low on medicines they need to control medical conditions, among many other stories.  This could have been avoided.

I am coming to think that our reliance on just in time methods has been shown to be an achilles heel, as has our reliance on imports and air freight.  I’ve talked about balance before, and I believe that what we are seeing here is that our situation is unbalanced, a wheel out of kilter.  I’m an advocate of local goods, and when the business is being poached by artificially lowering currencies, I also consider that the appropriate level of protectionism is a reasonable response.

If I take a lesson from this it is the importance of diversifying, making better use of local sources and building in redundancy.  We need to stimulate local jobs and protect local economies and communities, we also need to develop high speed rail as a matter of some urgency.

I also wonder at the unbalanced media coverage.  The BBC, and a lot of the UK media, seemed to miss the stories of the Finnish F18s and the NATO f16s that suffered damage in this cloud, most of the interest in the news websites seem to come from the commenters, not the journalists!

A team of Scientists from 8 countries have sequenced the genome of a 4000 year old Eskimo, who they’re decided to call “Inuk”. They’ve learned a lot and this opens a fascinating window, allowing us to peek into the past.  Opportunities like this don’t come by every day, and I think this work does us a great service by revealing another precious fragment of our evolution as one people of the Earth.

I recently started re-reading Carl Sagan’s book “Cosmos”, I’m starting to regain the feeling I used to have of how awesome the universe is and how the story of the universe from Big Bang to the present day really is the greatest story ever told.  Years ago, Carl’s books inspired me to look deeper and begin to really question things and start to appreciate the beauty of the universe.  I’m planning to broaden my remit here at Quiet Watercourse, I plan to have some fun along the way as well.

Nobody mentions the Elephant in the room, the end of Oil and the limits to growth.  There just seems to be a vague feeling of ‘oh, somebody must do something’, but no sense that business as usual is not possible long term and that certain limits are approaching.

I have spoken to people who see the end of oil, it makes me wonder that if those of us on the ground can see it with a simple common sense, why can’t those in charge?  The technology is there, but maybe because it’s not shiny and new; some kind of shiny impersonal Ithing with no soul, nobody wants to know.

One of the things that made me smile in all this cold weather was the story of a modern diesel locomotive rescued by a steam engine in England.  I’ve been of the opinion for quite some time that newer ways aren’t always better, reading Robert M Pirsig’s view in Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance that the correct question is not “what is new?” but “what is best?” confirmed my beliefs.

I’ve seen folks arguing that the renewable technologies need huge factories and lots of energy to build and all sorts of things, but windmills and water wheels have been around for centuries, they’re and ancient and time honoured technology and can provide a valuable contribution without all the rare elements and industrial wizardry, what is so hard to understand about that.

Or maybe we’re in denial because it’s not shiny and doesn’t fit our self image?

This is what I’ve changed:

• Added details to instructions to clarify what to expect when running the timer.
• Changed wording and meta tags to use the phrase online timer.
• changed header when inside the timer to be a lot smaller, this should be better for smaller screens.
• Added a changelog that incorporates the pre-existing desktop changelog.

You can find my online medition timer here.

Well, just as the original filled a couple of needs I had, namely to learn Python and to get a Free Software meditation timer, I’m very pleased to announce that there is a new kid on the block.

I needed to get back into web design, PHP, HTML and CSS.  I’d also had the idea of of a completely web based version of my timer knocking about in my mind for about a year.  Well, I started it and then had data loss and got busy.  But I restarted it from memory very recently and after some work and a little swearing at Internet Explorer (don’t ask) you can find the results of my endeavours at http://sitquietly.quietwatercourse.co.uk/.

Now I’ve tested this on the most recent versions of all major browsers and as long as you have your Javascript turned on and an up to date copy of Adobe Flash Player, you should be laughing.  If you find a problem, or think things could be clearer, don’t be shy, tell me!

And yes… those are the words “Facebook Edition” on the site, I’ll keep everyone posted on that one… after the Web Edition itself only took a year to emerge! Lol!

In Buddhism we know that the cause of our suffering is that we tend to form crystallised ideas of the world and pretend they’re the reality, then get all hurt and confused when the ever changing world has moved on.

For example, we have people defending the idea that climate change is a fraud based, one look at the seasons and the state of the arctic ice is enough to make you say “hang on a minute…”.  But we tend to take our concepts, our ideas and try to make the world fit them.

In IT circles, we have various Operating System technologies which are considered by some proponents to be superior in all aspects to the others.  They’ll insist blindly that they are right, come what may.  The truth is that the choice of technologies adopted should be driven by the needs in reality, not the ideology in your head.

In religion, we have conflicts between doctrines and never mind the friction between science and religion.  Many people on all sides of the divide are busily defending their doctrine, not looking into what is real.

I was going to query the reasons we defend the ideas, are they the right ones?  Are we defending out of belief in their rightness or terror of the consequences if they’re wrong?

I question whether we should be defending them at all.

We use a huge amount of our energy in transport, I’m finding the march to electric cars and other ‘alternatives’ interesting to watch.  We already have the problem that without cheap, plentiful and energy dense fuel, we can no longer use the methods of air travel that we do, how much more true is this for cars?  The fuels we use in cars and planes provide us with a lot of energy in a small space, more than you might think, in fact they are far superior to any solid fuel, to quote a site that covers alternate energy sources:

“to replace your petrol tank with plant biomass, for instance, it would require two and a half times the mass (rather simplified, of course).” -  The Wolf at the Door. (the graph in figure E2 is illuminating)

The problem we have is getting that much energy around the place, and generating it in the first place.  We can keep pace with our current energy demands, but what happens when everybody starts plugging their electric cars into the electricity grid and demanding that sort of energy from it several times a week?  Remember, we don’t have to generate all that energy in oil, it’s conveniently there already.

The alternative fuels revolution is looking, at least to me, like us sticking our head in the sand and pretending we can keep doing “Business As Usual”.  I don’t agree with this, we can’t keep on this way, I’m increasingly of the opinion that “BAU” is not a viable option.

So, where do I see our options?  Greater use of Public transport is a good place to start, allowing us to quickly increase the efficiency of our travel with services that are already in place and working.  Of course, public transport networks do need improvement in many areas, and in others are, for the moment, almost unavailable.  For freight, rail travel is much more efficent than road, with the advantage of removing the huge HGVs from most of our roads.  I think that a network of mostly light rail and walkable / rideable cities, with the option of electric vehicles for commercial use will go a long way towards making a much more pleasant environment for us and our children and keep the wheels turning in a more sustainable way.

There is another option, one that’s good for our waistlines as well as our bank balances. Many of us can act quickly to improve our health, cut our emissions and our fuel bills by cycling around the place.  Even if it’s just one day a week to work, or to the shops and back, we should try to replace car trips with bike trips.  A bike uses, far fewer resources to make, maintain and run than many other modes of transport.  A good cycling advocacy website is Why Cycle?.

So, am I preaching from my armchair here?  No, I bought a mountain bike and some accessories on the weekend of the 4th April and started practising with it, and I’m having a really enjoyable time.  I have a greater degree of choice on my routes than I do with a car and also few of the associated costs, unlike a car, I can expect the bike to pay for itself with fuel savings.  Maintenance is something that needs doing, but is enormously cheap compared to a car.

I’m also discovering that if you’re a little outgoing with it, you speak to people more and it makes things much more rewarding.  I’m finding something Robert M Pirsig said to be very true, in Zen and The Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, he says that on a motorbike you’re part of the scene, not seperated from it by a car.  As I’m travelling more slowly and quietly, I’m finding that very true, even more true for a bicycle than a motorbike.  This changes the whole nature of travelling.

I’m also getting into situations that are completely new to me, let me give a very cool example from the morning of Sunday 12th.

I’d gone out for a ride along the local canals and got to a local nature reserve, I decided to try my lights and went through the Netherton Tunnel, nearly 2.8 km (1.7 miles) of darkness with light and air shafts in the ceiling.  I got through there fine and had a ride round the canals at the other end then turned and came back.  As I got to the tunnel a narrowboat was going in and the driver and his wife joked about me riding a bike through the tunnel.  So I slowed down and kept pace with the boat through the tunnel, using their boat headlights to provide much better light than my smaller lights.  We wound up having a good conversation while travelling for nearly an hour way underground and bumped into some other cyclists on the way.

I’ll no doubt return to my bike in future posts.