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Google's 10^100

Saturday, 26 September 2009

Ganesh has gone off to Nepal for 3 weeks to see his family for dashain... This means that I am manning the fort alone for the immediate future. I wasn't absolutely thrilled to discover this occurring right at the same time the chooks have gone broody but my mood got a mega boost when I discovered that the project I suggested to Google's 10^100 was one of 16 chosen out of 150 000... apparently a few other people had the same idea, but my sentence made it to the project page:

Create an online educational platform that provides free training and education as part of a worldwide, officially accepted degree

If enough people vote for the idea it will be implemented!! Wow!! I'm really excited about the possibilities :-) Please vote here to ensure the project is a success!!

Vijaya Dashami everyone!

Labels: education, ganesh, google, ideas, nepal, travel

Sustainable Sharing

Thursday, 26 February 2009

The Sustainable Melbourne Round Table on Sustainable Sharing was on tonight! It's (sadly) the first one I've been to, but certainly not the last... It ran in conjunction with the eco city design competition run by the eco innovation lab and it was absolutely superb. It gives me such hope for the world to find out how committed people are! It's just getting over some of the inertia that's really difficult. It was really lovely to go with the girls from work too and get their opinions on the architectural and hard engineering sides of the ideas presented...

A quick overview because these ideas certainly warrant a plug:

The Clothing Exchange: Dedicated to releasing fashion waste from closets! You pay an entrance fee, bring along 6 items of clothing you value but no longer wear and exchange them for buttons... After all the clothes are hung up everyone runs around and finds items to exchange their buttons for! Remaining clothing is donated to charity. Simple and effective!
The Green Hanger: A simple idea. Replace unrecyclable wire hangers with cardboard hangers made from recaptured waste. In the dry cleaning and retail sectors this idea has already taken off!
Permablitz: Probably the idea that spoke to me the most! Basically a group of people who get together and do a permaculture 'backyard blitz' on people's home gardens. Attend 3 permablitzes and a large group of volunteers will come to your house, plant a vegie garden and design it beautifully as well!
Herdshare: Another simple idea... rather than own a share of a race horse or a greyhound, own a share of a cow and have fresh raw milk for life!
Grow Local: Barter the food you grow in your own backyard... Swap your excess tomatoes or potatoes for something sweet and delicious like cherries! You can attend on the first Saturday of each month at Smith Reserve, Alexander Parade, Fitzroy.
Compost Mates: From what I can gather a compost sharing project... Local community members pick up food scraps from apartments, local businesses and schools and use the rich soil to fertilise a community or home garden... Surprisingly, the compost enriched plants all survived the heat wave without an issue!
Ironbark Sustainability: Probably the most 'switched on' of the presenters (or the least hippie-like. The presenter was an engineer which helped, but basically Ironbark has identified a major issue in public lighting. It's owned by the power companies, but paid for by the councils. Obviously a major incentive for the power companies not to save energy! This group retrofits energy saving devices to existing lighting and lobbies for control by the Councils!
Solar Yarra Program: The City of Yarra was the first council in Australia to organise bulk discount purchases for PV cells for residents. This is the program we're now on with our council! A very discounted rate for PV cells because they organise many community members to buy together. It's great to see councils moving over the hurdle of not being able to recommend specific products and really aiding the community in practical ways!
Banyule Co-Housing Project: This works on addressing the urgent housing needs to enable people to get into sustainable housing and community building lifestyles aiming for effective economic savings in project costs and minimal ongoing "earth and $$$ costs" for the housing created... The commune is back!

A refreshing night of hope!

Labels: hope, ideas

Ideas...

Sunday, 4 January 2009

Now that it's the holidays I've had time to look around the web and have discovered to both my delight and regret that some of my ideas have now been implemented by other people, but at least they are now available for me to use!These include:

Community Exchange Basically a barter system managed online where people exchange their goods and services with others on the web who can provide other goods or services. Goods and services are valued in 'yarras' (the same as dollars) but no money is ever exchanged :-)

Teach Street Similar to the above but only for teaching various skills. I guess in the olden days a community centre would have served this purpose but now we have the web to bring us back together. Unfortunately this is only available in the US atm but it's such a great idea I'm sure it will be available in Australia soon... Or I could start it up at the new house!
Rudder Personal Finance A way to manage your finances, feed in your bills and have everything in one place. Also only available in the US but this is a good way to watch your money, pay your mortgage and start saving.

Remember the Milk A to do list that can feed into my gmail... I'm a big lister, I have daily, yearly, and life lists so this is very useful. I would prefer it if you didn't have to specify due dates though but it's getting there.
Planet Eye Digital tours of the world! There are a lot more features that could be added to make this amazing, but it's a good idea and you can pick up good tips for destinations around the world. Still a little light on content though.

And some others that are just interesting:

PostCrossing As a long term post card collector I'm surprised I hadn't come across this site sooner! It's a great way to generate pen friends and collect post cards from all over the world... I've sent my first 5 (all homemade) so I'll sit back and wait for 5 to come my way :-)
Pipes An interesting mashup tool - working towards web 3.0 and a more semantic web environment.
Afrigator News, photos and videos from Africa. Basically a digital taste of Africa and another type of interesting mashup.
Fire Eagle A way for people to locate you at any given moment! While this seems a little weird I really love their website design!
Help Exchange Similar to willing workers on organic farms and others but this one is free! (Plus they have listings in China and Japan)
Easy Home Exchange Similar to all the other home exchange websites but this one is free too!

Fortunately I still have a few more up my sleeve!

I'm starting to think that it would be a whole lot of fun to see the eclipse while couch surfing in Japan, and then spend a few days volunteering on an organic farm (or similar). A very different experience to normal tourists, much cheaper, and may help me with my 'make new friends' resolution :-)

In New Years Resolution progress I finally finished Green to Gold (it was a little heavy going at times). The most interesting point they made was of 'ecoadvantage'. It seems that green attributes rarely stand alone.... the environmental story is the second or third button. I guess this will be useful when marketing trash2treasure.com! I also started another book that I found while packing boxes about architecture in England which has been rather enlightening... You always find the most useful and interesting things when you pack... So far I've found a dremel, the missing piece of my wooden Illusionist necklace project, chocolates and the lovely tea post cards I collected at the flower and garden show last year.

There has been some interesting developments in terms of electric vehicles as well! This article mentions that Australia will play host to 'Better Place' recharging stations. So another possible carbon footprint initiative could include converting the little yellow car to electric!

Labels: ideas, websites