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Have Yourself a Green Christmas, Part II

Being environmentally conscious at Christmas time means reducing your impact by conserving energy and producing less waste. The first part of having a Green Christmas focused primarily on gift giving. This second part is focusing on energy saving and conservation.

  • Decorate with Energy-Saving LED Christmas Lights - The time for large glass Christmas light bulbs to decorate with is over. Switch those older lights over to energy-efficient LED Christmas lights.
  • Run Your Lights on a Timer - Don’t run Christmas lights during the day or through all hours of the night. Have a timer turn them on and off for you.
  • Buy a Potted Christmas Tree - Instead of going to a lot to pick up an already-chopped-down Christmas tree, you can get a live pine tree in a pot. This allows you to keep the living tree after Christmas. If taken care of properly, you can use the same tree for many Christmases to come. Living Christmas Tree
  • Avoid Fake Plastic Trees - Unless you have allergies or a good reason to not have a real tree, it is best to avoid plastic trees. Cutting down a natural tree is far better for the environment. Ninety eight percent of natural Christmas trees come from tree farms, which are sustainable since growing trees is a renewable source. Plastic is derived from oil, which is not renewable.

    The National Christmas Tree Association states that 500,000 acres of Christmas trees are grown and harvested in the United States and each acre produces enough oxygen for 18 people.

  • Recycle Your Christmas Tree - After the holidays, be sure to recycle your tree. You can enter your zipcode at Earth 911 and find where to recycle your Christmas tree.

A few more gift giving ideas that were left off the first list:

  • Donate to a Charity - I’m not sure how I managed to leave this one off the first post. Donating to a charity is a great way to help people in need. My friend’s family pools their gift money each year and instead of buying each other gifts they donate it to Heifer.org, which buys a farm animal for a needy family in a developing country.
  • Teas or Coffee - Another gift along the lines of giving consumable gifts: nice teas or coffee. This is appreciated especially when recipients may not splurge on these items themselves. Of course, this is assuming they like tea or coffee.

Related Links

  Posted December 09, 2007 § environment ‡ Comments (0)

Have Yourself a Green Christmas

Americans generate 25 percent more trash - that’s 25 million extra tons - between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Here are a few tips to have a Green Christmas, one with less environmental impact.

  • Buy nothing. A little hardcore and bah humbug, but the best possible way to contribute nothing to our landfills is to buy nothing. This also reduces all energy requirements to build and deliver items to the store, plus your energy consumed to purchase.

However, we do want to keep our economy going. If everyone bought nothing, the economy would be in a bit of a pickle. So here are a few other suggestions:

  • Food, Candy, Chocolate. Food is one of the best possible gifts. Everyone loves a box of chocolates, as it is something to be opened up and shared together. And though your waistline might find itself an inch thicker, you’ll add no excess inches of waste to the landfill.
  • Buy Small Gifts. This is a especially true for younger kids. Don’t get the gigantic playhouse made of 20 pounds of plastic that takes up half your living room. Huge items like these will be played with for a brief period time and then they’ll be off to the landfills.
  • Order Online. Save time and gas by not driving to the mall and circling around endlessly looking for parking. Besides, it will make your Christmas a little happier too when you save yourself from flipping the bird to your fellow holiday shopper who just stole your spot.
  • Give Green Gifts. Give gifts that encourage your recipients to be more environmentally conscious. For example, give a book on how to live a more earth-friendly existence or a compact florescent light bulb. A light bulb probably might work best as a stocking stuffer and not the entire gift.
  • Make Your Own Gifts. This is a risky one, since we’ve been conditioned to appreciate people’s altruism relative to the amount of money they spend. But if you are crafty, make your own cards or gifts.
  • Choose Simple Over Complex. When looking for gifts for kids, choose simple blocks or basic toys over highly electronic and complex toys. This will reduce energy and materials used to build the toy, as well as eliminate the need for batteries and their toxic chemicals. Be sure to be age appropriate, however, as giving a teenager blocks instead of a Wii may cause a revolt.
  • Give Action/Activity Gifts. Gifts to concerts, shows, sporting events or something similar gives someone an experience gift they can enjoy without requiring any additional product to be built. Plus who knows they may take you with them.
  • Use a Gift Bag Instead of Gift Wrap. A gift bag is reusable and won’t contribute to the 25 million tons of additional waste generated each holiday season. Save bows, gift boxes, and wrapping paper to reuse next year.

This list may not be as crazy as it sounds. A 2005 survey by the Center for a New American Dream found that 78 percent of respondents wished the holidays were less materialistic. Eighty seven percent said the holidays should be more about family and caring for others, not giving and receiving gifts.

Suggested Gifts

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  Posted December 05, 2007 § environment ‡ Comments (3)

Leopard Bugs Follow-Up

A follow-up post on the Leopard bugs I previously discussed.

My biggest beef is that tar is still broken.

User Error: The terminal tabs shortcut keys was my mistake, they are curly brackets so I have to hold down the shift key to switch. Between Safari, Firefox, Terminal, and Adium there are just too many different ways to switch between tabs.

System Config Error: Spotlight issue was because Spotlight was not indexing on my system. So some searches worked and others did not. The odd thing is the Spotlight client did not realize this. It is now fixed and Spotlight has replaced Quicksilver. The auto calculator is awesome!

Still Sucks: The Opacity of Menu Bar and Menu Items still sucks. Plus the colors of foreground-background windows is still wrong.

Config Fix: I found a config parameter to stage the Stacks to show as a grid. Right-click on the Stack and select View As… Grid.

Config Fix: I also converted my dock to be 2D and not the weird 3D dock. From macosxhints:
$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

All in all, my opinion is now upgraded to neutral on Leopard.

  Posted December 01, 2007 § geek ‡ Comments (0)

Leopard Bugs

I ended up upgrading to Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) and I think that was a mistake. I should of headed my low expectations and not even bothered. There are many annoyances and a few bugs. The biggest bug which is actually impacting my work is also the oddest, some how they broke “tar”.

Leopard upgrades tar to version 1.15.1, the previous version was 1.14. In the new version the –exclude file parameter does not work. I have several scripts using tar to do builds and packaging, and not being able to exclude files screws it up completely. I ended up booting into a VMware ubuntu environment to do a deployment, ridiculous. Looks like I’m not the only one with Leopard tar problems.

Here are some other annoyances:

  • Opacity of Menu Bar and Menu Items makes the menu items difficult to read and adds no benefit at all. I’m surprised it is not configurable so it can be turned off.
  • Applications icon in dock defaults to first application, this makes it look like the Address Book is always running. I solved this by creating an ” Applications” folder alias, notice the space in the front. The old Apple trick to get things to sort to the top.
  • I thought Spotlight could replace Quicksilver since all I use it for is launcher and calculator, unfortunately Spotlight is too slow. It crashes frequently for me and I haven’t been able to get the demoed calculating to work. I disabled it again and using Quicksilver.
  • I thought tabs in Terminal could replace iTerm, but alas the shortcut keys to switch between tabs don’t work
  • Foreground and background window colors seem reversed, everything before was grayed out if it was in the background, but with Leopard the background windows are lighter and the foreground window is darker.
  • Stacks not coming out in a straight line is annoying, that falling away curve just looks wrong.

The only new feature I’ve found that I like so far is the Applications folder popping up out of the dock, however since I use Quicksilver I’m rarely launching applications like that.

  Posted November 01, 2007 § geek ‡ Comments (0)

Leopard: To Upgrade or Not

Apple has releasd yet another major upgrade to Mac OS X. Each upgrade becomes less and less interesting. I’m more interested in the GMail IMAP upgrade then anything at all happening with OS X. Hey Google, when does it come to hosted accounts?

The operating system is mattering less and less as web apps are now the primary applications. I think the only reason I will probably upgrade to Leopard is to get the upgrades to Apache 2, PHP 5 and upgrades to Python and Perl. I can clean them out of my ports instead of running two versions of everything.

There are a couple of applications I’m interested in:

Spotlight as an application launcher and calculator, which are about 99% of my Quicksilver usage, Spotlight just might replace it.

Terminal - Tabs, Window Settings, Grouping. If it works well Terminal might just have enough features to not require iTerm.

Instruments intrigues me, the description “Record your application user interface events to easily create an ad-hoc test harness you can replay over and over.” This might actually be really useful, tie it in to Safari and create tests for web apps. Potential or will it have the same cast aside fate as Automator.

There are a lot more things I could completely do without, mostly flash and very little substance:

iChat Backgrounds, Mail Stationary, Stacks, Spaces, New Spring Loaded Dock, New Screensavers, iCal Server support, Quick Look, Boot Camp

Apple, for the love of god, let me sync my shit with Exchange. Blackberry has figured it out, just please… come on… please. I think the companies that run Exchange outnumber those that run iCalServer, oh like 165 billion to 1.

Time Machine - sponsored by Seagate. An amazing way to fill up your hard drive, keep track of every change you’ve ever made.

I’m just really not enthused by the upgrade.

  Posted October 26, 2007 § geek ‡ Comments (0)

Interesting Color Theory

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In the image above the two small squares in the middle are the same exact color value. Really. Visually, the box surrounded by the darker background looks lighter, and vicey versey. This is due to an effect called simultaneous contrast.

Interesting to think about when viewing photos within a photo editor such as Aperture, see this Inside Aperture article regarding What Do You Know About Color?

More info regarding simultaneous contrast from Apple’s color people.

  Posted September 07, 2007 § art, geek ‡ Comments (0)

Blog, Magnolia, Facebook - Pipes ties it all together

I publish various things on the web. I write in this blog, I publish photos to my photo blog and I save snippets of interesting articles using Magnolia. If you come to my mkaz.com home page you can see all three of these things going on. You can even subscribe to one or all of them via RSS.

However, people are less likely to do either; visit my site or subscribe to RSS. The best way I can surface this content to my friends is via my Facebook profile. The Facebook news feed is a wonderful information delivery mechanism. Fortunately, Facebook allows you to import an RSS feed into your notes. Unfortunately, they only allow the importing of a single RSS feed.

Enter Yahoo Pipes. I wrote about them previously here and here. Using Yahoo Pipes, I can combine my three RSS feeds my blog feed, my photo blog feed and my Magnolia saved bookmarks feed into a single RSS feed, which I call “mkaz combined”

I then setup Facebook to import this combined feed and they all show up in my profile feed as imported notes.

What I love about this system is: (1) it uses open protocols and open systems. My blog and photo blog are published using Feedburner, so no additional load even hits my server. (2) It ties together the three power houses of the current internet: Google (Feedburner), Yahoo and Facebook, all working together.

You can subscribe to my combined feed here.

  Posted August 09, 2007 § geek ‡ Comments (0)

Unix Directory Commands

Ok, I’ve posted way too much about the iPhone, I think a few people might actually be reading and subscribing to my blog. I’m actually getting comments too. Time to nip that in the bud with a post about obscure unix commands.

I was reading a tutorial on setting up an IMAP server and the guy was using the pushd and popd commands. What I love about unix is there are obscure commands on your system that do all sorts of things that you never knew about it.

The commands pushd, popd and dirs are commands which help track and change directories. The basics:
   pushd will push a directory onto a stack,
   popd will pop a directory off the stack,
   dirs will list the directories in the stack

When pushing and popping things on and off the stack, the commands will also change your current directory. Here’s an example, moving around while debugging web stuff:

First I want to add the directories to my stack:

$ pushd /opt/sites/htdocs
$ pushd /var/log/httpd
$ pushd /etc/httpd

You will notice as you push something on the stack, your current directory will also change to what you just pushed on. To see what is on your directory stack:

$ dirs -v
0 /etc/httpd
1 /var/log/httpd
2 /opt/sites/htdocs

Now to move around if you use pushd without any arguments it will swap the top two items in the stack changing your directory to what is now the top item.

$ pushd
$ pwd
/var/log/httpd

You can also use pushd +N and it will change to that position in the stack.

$ dirs -v
0 /var/log/httpd
1 /etc/httpd
2 /opt/sites/htdocs
$ pushd +2
$ pwd
/opt/sites/htdocs
$ dirs -v
0 /opt/sites/htdocs
1 /var/log/httpd
2 /etc/httpd

Use popd to remove items from the list. It supports the same +N syntax, or with no arguments will remove the top item and change your directory to the next. Use dirs -c to clear the directory stack.

I need to play around with them more, it seems useful but I haven’t quite incorporated it into my repertoire yet.

Here are online man page reference for the commands:
   pushd man page
   popd man page
   dirs man page

  Posted July 28, 2007 § coding, geek ‡ Comments (0)

5 Annoying Things about the iPhone

iPhone Icon I’ve had my iPhone for a few weeks now and here are the real issues I have come across.

1. No MMS Text Messages. I do not know of any cell phone which can not receive photo messages, except the $600 most advanced phone on the market. This one just baffles me. I do not care about Apple budgets, timelines, time-to-market or any other business blah-blah. They sold me a $600 phone, I want it to handle the basics.

To top it off, if you receive a photo you are sent a text message which includes a link, a username and password to retrieve the photo from the web. However, this is completely unusable because the link doesn’t include an http:// which would make it clickable in the iPhone. Plus there is no copy and paste so the random username and password (unique for every message) is practically impossible to type while switching between SMS and Safari.

2. Recessed Headphone Jack. Another baffling design decision, the headphone jack is unusable by almost all 3rd party headphones. All those fancy Bose and Schure headphones won’t work without an additional adapter. The mini-headphone jack has existed since the 80’s, it seems like you would have to go out of your way to make your device not work with them. The least you could do is include an adapter.

3. Incompatible Power Adapter with MacBook. I wrote about this one before.

4. Sync. This isn’t an Apple issue per se, or even a direct iPhone issue but I really really really really really just want to be able to sync my GMail Contacts and my calendar (Google or 30 Boxes). I’ve switched back to 30 Boxes because they tie in nicely with Facebook, but that’s another story.

My current processes, which is not ideal but sorta works: Calendar items I can create on the web, which iCal then syncs to which then gets synced to my iPhone. However, I can not create an item on the iPhone and have it go back up to the web. At least this work flow is automatic.

Contacts are the opposite and more painful. I use the Mac OS X Address Book to manage all my contacts. So whenever I get around to “syncing”, I do an export from Address Book which can then be imported to GMail. This process manages to either get duplicates in GMail or I clear out Google before hand and I lose addresses that I only had there.

5. Custom Ringtones. How come I can’t use any of my MP3s for ring tones, or have custom ring tones for different people. Another basic cell phone feature you would expect.

However, one look at the beautiful screen and I forgive it for all its short comings.

  Posted July 25, 2007 § things can be easier ‡ Comments (5)

Tyvek iPhone Case

[Photo] Here’s a simple how-to for making your own Tyvek sleeve case for your iPhone. Yes, it’s odd that I’m willing to spend $600 on a phone and then make my own case.

Tyvek is a magic material made by DuPont [more info]. It is used for mailing envelopes and house siding. I even have a wallet made of Tyvek. It feels like paper, is easy to cut with scissors, glue and fold like paper, but is really difficult to tear.

To create your Tyvek iPhone case, all you need is Tyvek, glue and scissors. My source of Tyvek was a USPS priority mail envelope. You can also use a FedEx or even a NetFlix envelope, except NetFlix usually likes them returned. I used a rubber-cement type glue, which marketing has dollied up and is now called a Gel glue.

[Photo]

You will need two pieces of material. The first piece wraps the iPhone, leaving an opening at the top and bottom. Measure this out by wrapping the phone and cutting to fit, leaving enough overlap so you can glue together. The second piece of Tyvek will slip inside and provide a handle at the top to make it easier to get the phone in and out. At the bottom, the second piece loops over and holds the iPhone in place. The second piece can be long and then cut to fit after it’s in place.

[Photo]

Now, to glue it all together. I left my iPhone wrapped in the material but protected so that the glue would not get on it. This way I could pull the Tyvek around it, not too snug, and glue it at the overlap. I put the seam on the back of the phone in the middle. Slide the inner piece in and glue it on the seam, leaving extra at the top and bottom sticking out.

I glued the bottom piece to the outside, which if I were to do again, I would tuck it inside and glue so you can’t see it. Trim the top and you’re good to go.

Your own Tyvek iPhone case. The world’s cheapest case for one of the world’s most expensive phones.

[Photo]

  Posted July 22, 2007 § geek ‡ Comments (3)