Neat Video of DrupalCamp NYC from back in May:

You can see me for a sec waving my hands at high speed. Lots of other familiar faces too.

Neat link that came up from a comment on a post below:

http://www.oilgae.com/

It's an attempt to be a one-stop-shop for oil-from-algae and especially biodeisel. Definitely worth checking out. They are recommending pressing/centrifuging (which I thought might work) as a practical extraction method. Quick idealistic burst: what if I could build a bike-powered centrifuge! Oh man, that would be so hippy-awesome!

The main drawback of Biodiesel from vegitable (algae or other) oil is viscosity. When it gets cold, it'll gum up and quit working. There are a few ways around this, including the creative use of an electric blanket. I'm psyched to try some of this over the summer.

Eventually it would be pretty effin' sweet to be able to disconnect as many physical dependencies with the outside world (e.g. food and energy) and keep up the non-physical connections (e.g. internet) at the same time. This presents an opportunity to solve the main problem with Pirate Utopias (being that they're secret and unsustainable) and do so in a highly public, mainstream-able fashion.

Finally got around to watching the two-part finale. It was pretty decent, although I think the path of "explaining" things is fraught with peril. I've always felt the show works because it exists in parable-space, making up meaning without really having to engage a chain of logic (e.g. "Who are you?" "We're the good guys" -- that's f'ing brilliant!).

So, I'm basically comfortable with a lot of things not getting explained -- that piece of statue, polar bears, etc -- because I think the fun of the show is in projecting your own explanations and theories onto it, and because I fear that attempting to tie up these loose ends will be a dissapointment. But so far so good.

Also, always a pleasure to see Clancy Brown at work. I dig his acting. He was on back earlier this year as US Military dude who interacted with Saed in Iraq. The two times he's appeared the characters have had different first names, but the same last name, but could be the same person. Or not.

Bioengineering is hot. Scientists are looking at how to get bacteria to make electricity, which could open up some very interesting solutions to the 21st Centiry energy crunch.

Bacteria that convert hydrocarbons into power will still vent CO₂ of course, but it would be a hell of a lot more efficient than burning the hydrocarbons and trying to capture that heat to boil water to spin a big magnet around to make electricity.

The real mojo would be if someone started engineering a way to get juice from photosynthesis. Biologically-captured solar power is where we get most of our energy (food, oil/coal/natural gas) from anyway. Theoretically it should be possible, but it's a whole different thing to work with plantlife as opposed to bacteria.