Christmas Wish List

It's Christmas time and I can't resist the juvenile temptation to formulate a Christmas wish list. This year I am headed to Mexico for Christmas and will not be doing a gift exchange, rather I will be spending time with family, basking in the sun and renting beer.
Never-the-less I will make a wish list.

1. 1978 Chevrolet K5 Blazer
2. Four Wheeler Magazine Subscription
   
3. Neon Bible LP
4. Flat Eric
5. Play Station 3
6. House in Cumberland
   

Use your Vonage home phone as a long distance calling card

Status:
I pay $20 a month for a Vonage land line. I get 500 minutes to Canada and the USA. I have a cell phone. I get 150 day time minutes and 1000 evenings and weekends minutes which I never use up. My cell provider charges me $0.30/minute for long distance calls made from my mobile. I visit other cities and need to make calls to my local calling area.

Problem:
I don't want to pay $0.30/minute for long distance, instead I want to use my Vonage minutes and my mobile local air time I've already paid for. I also want to tap into my Vonage minutes while I'm out of my local calling area.

Solution:
Using a combination of a computer with internet access, a Vonage access number and Vonage call forwarding I can tap into my Vonage minutes from any major city in Canada, USA, Mexico, France, Spain or the United Kingdom.

Step 1.
Determine the local Vonage access number for the city you are in. Use this website:
http://vonage.ca/features.php?feature=v_access
For example, the access number for Vancouver is 778-786-1245

Step 2.
Using the Vonage website, log into your account and setup call forwarding to the number you wish to call. For in-country call forwarding, enter area code and number. For International call forwarding, enter 011 and then the country code, area code and local number.
For example if you wanted to call the Legoland Hotel you would enter: 011 45 7951 1343
Be sure to save your settings and leave the website open. You will need to disable the call forwarding after you make your call.

Step 3.
Dial the Vonage access number and follow the prompts to dial your own number. Once the call is connected you will be ringing the number you call forwarded to.
For example:
In Vancouver dial 778-786-1245 from any phone
Press 1 to call a Vonage number
Now dial your own Vonage number 1 555 555 5555 # (be sure to add 1 to the front of you 10 digit number)
Press 1 to confirm
RING RING

Step 4.
Once you hang up be sure to disable call forwarding using the Vonage website (that you left open) to ensure no one else calls the Legoland Hotel on your coin.

Conclusion:
This is a neat feature provided by Vonage. I doubt they set it up to work like a calling card. There may also be a better way to do this but this way works and I have already started making long distance calls for much cheaper than $0.30/minute. If you have the $40 unlimited Vonage plan you can talk for as long as you want for free, given its a free to call the local Vonage access number from where you are. You can also check your Vonage voicemail using the Vonage access number.


Happy chatting for cheaper

Pedal Powered Car

So what been distracting me lately? Alternative transportation...
We all love our cars. But they stink. They are loud. They are expensive. They pollute and they take up a lot of real estate. We have 'smart' cars which do a little less of all this which I think is a great step but not everyone can afford a new $15,000 car.
Biking is great. It's cheap, healthy, doesn't pollute but it has some serious issues. Cargo area, passenger capacity, shelter from rain and it takes work. So what do you want? Perhaps something in between.
I want a vehicle that doesn't pollute, isn't loud, isn't too expensive, fun, unique, doesn't take up too much space, cargo space, passenger capacity or passenger capacity expandability, isn't too much work and has shelter from the rain.
I want a pedal powered car. We have existing technology to make a lightweight frame and shell with some kind of extra power plant other than just your legs. Esthetically speaking the idea of having bicycle wheels on a car body looks weird but not on a car modeled after a 'Model T' with spoked wheels.

Another distraction of mine is the idea of building one of these units by hand. The trick would be trying to use parts that already exist such as bicycle wheels, brakes, lights, horns and drive-trains. Parts that would need to be fabricated would be the chassis, steering, suspension, body shell and canopy. Ideally you would want a nice aluminium chassis with a light-weight steering system with a shell/canopy made out of a combination of canvas and thin Plexiglas supported by fiberglass ribs similar to a tent.
Other technologies to increase practicality could include a launch assist system that gathers energy in capacitors when you hit the brakes. The kinetic energy would be captured by an electric hub motor such as the e-Bike DIY. A battery pack could also be added to the system to aid in longer distance or uphill commutes.
There are several neat ideas out there already: The human car, Light electric vehicles, Four wheel bicycles, ZEM

Making your own fuel

I love homemade stuff. There's something rich and true about it. I'm also a big fan of the 3 R's we learned in school re-use, recycle and reduce. Apparently so is Jack Johnson, what a guy. I also like automobiles. They are sexy, they are fast and they take you places. So lets put them all in a blender and see what happens. RRrshrvckrsheevrVEEeeeeee. Home made fuel for your car.

Ingredients: Compost, neigbourhood compost
Process: chopping, mashing, fermenting and distilling.

Problems: Building the setup and a still is a bit pricey. Heating your mash requires energy. I would like to use a fireplace to heat a boiler that in turn heats the mash to distill the go juice.

Benefits: Free gas made in your backyard and if you make a food safe still you can make your own hooch, legally!


Resources:
http://running_on_alcohol.tripod.com/id1.html
You can also use other garbage but it requires much more of a process: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4235968.html

Cellulosic Ethanol

Alright, so I have an interest in green renewable energy. Oil is not the answer. It would seem that there is no other answer and that we are all doomed to use what 'they' give us at the pump until it all drys up and we start running around like Mad Max marauding for gasoline. There is just too much money to be made keeping things the way they are. I would like to get out of that cycle without having to go live on some hippie commune, trying to 'live off the land'.
I believe the truth is each individual has the power to change where our planet is going by opening our eyes and thinking outside the box.

Which brings me to today's distraction. We all have cars. We are not all going to sell our cars and buy hybrids. We are not going to convert our cars to hybrids. Only diesel engines burn biodiesel. We are not all going to run out and buy diesel vehicles. We want something we can put in our tank that doesn't polute and is renewable.

Ethanol is nice clean fuel and is already in wide spread use in South America. It can be made from formenting and distilling corn and other starch/sugar rich plants already grown worldwide. Unfortunately there are problems. Ethanol production is still very crude and requires similar amounts of energy to be produced and produces similar amounts of green house gasses in production but it is a start in the right direction.

Some of the main bumps in the path for switching to ethanol are as follows:
1. Ethanol has a higher octane and is better fitted to an engine with a higher compression ratio. Standard vehicles sit about 8:1 where ethanol is best suited to 11-14:1. This would require rebuilding your engine to run at maximum effieciency, which is not cheap. Standard compression gives you roughly 80% efficiency. This is also the case for coverting your vehicle to propane.
2. Ethanol can eat away late model engine parts. Apparently vehicles made in the past ten years are immune to this.
3. You can't buy it at the Gas Station. Unless you live in certains cities you can't get ethanol. This would make travelling a bit of a bummer. I assume you could just replace the fuel in one of the tanks.
I'm sure there are other problems as well but like I said before if everyone get's educated and jazzed on greener fuels and demands our government to make a change, it will happen.

Something else I would like to point out is that the source of ethanol, known as the feedstock, up to now has namely been starch or sugar rich platations such as corn and sugar cane plantations. Apparently there is not enough corn and sugar cane in the world to fuel our energy needs so we need to look elsewhere. The best place to look is the dump! We all make garbage and if you have done any travelling to developng countries you'll know that there's a lot of it and its everywhere. Garbage is well hidden in our society but dumping it in a hole and forgetting about it is not the answer. Cellulosic Ethanol can be made from garbage such as agricultural waste, industrial waste such as paper sludge from pulp mills and municipal solid waste. Another resource is switchgrass which is a hardy plant that be easily grown in our climate and can be used to feed livestock as well as feed our cars. As cellulosic ethanol production technology improves it will make really good economical and environmental sense to invest in this technology.

So what are you going to do now? "If you're interested and you know it tell a friend. If you're interested and you know it and you really want to show it, tell a friend." The biggest hurdle is popularity. Educate yourself. Educate your friends. It's good news.

References:
http://www.harvestcleanenergy.org/enews/enews_0505/enews_0505_Cellulosic_Ethanol.htm