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Johnjohn and I were sitting and eating some soft ice cream on Odengatan the other day.
This is a pretty busy street, so maybe my story will not be news to some people who often eat ice cream on busy streets. It was a surprise to me however.

At one point johnjohn noted that some small black dots were present on the ice cream. Not sure of what it was, he wiped it off with a napkin and kept eating. However soon both he and I discovered that the ice cream was again covered with black dots. Note that only the side that was turned away from my face was covered, meaning that the “dust” was not in ice cream.
The black dots were reminiscent of diesel dust that accumulates outside my window during the summer, albeit in a much less dense form.

So there you go, eating soft ice cream on the street is not recommended, as you might be consuming some serious diesel particles along with your dose of cream and sugar (and other ice cream ingredients).

Technorati Tags: environment, cars, diesel, dust

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I am planning to go someplace. I mean, locally. Just local train, bus etc.
I am tempted to borrow my parents vehicle. However what is the reasoning behind the temptation?
Well the reasoning is obvious. I can’t be bothered to transport myself from bus stations to the final destination. I mean, the travel process itself isnt too bad, aside from the less comfortable seats….

However what if there were free bikes on every major bus and train station?
Anyone could take said bike, bike with it to his or her destination and leave it there.
Say for the sake of argument that the only way for you to take a bike is to use a unique key to detach the bike from a special stall at previously mentioned major bus and train stations.
You can only use the key to remove one bike, and you can only take a new bike when you have returned your previous bike.

There would also be a bike pickup service, that would pick up bikes left unmoving for certain periods of time.
Also, anyone could take your bike if you left it on the street for more then 8 hours.
Once that bike is taken by someone else, your key is automatically freed and you can take a new bike.

A system similar to this exists in germany, but it is obviously not free and requires phone calls etc.

My idea would require bikes to be connected wirelessly to the central network, possibly via GSM.

Man, if only it were so.

This article prompted me to write my own little take on plastic.

In Japan, Sanyo came up with biodegrading CD’s made out of corn, called MildDisc. The CD’s degrade after about 50-100 years (link). So I asked a friend whether he’d buy a CD like that, and he immediately told me that a CD that degrades after 50 years is a really bad idea because a CD should last forever and people would feel less secure about their data. In other news, normal CDR’s should be rerecorded ever 5 or so years if you wanna preserve your data for sure. Otherwise you run a risk of losing it all, since even REAL CD’s made out of plastic, degrade. Except, it’s not the actually CD that degrades, it’s the data. So while you lose your data, the CD stays, to pollute the environment for a few thousand years.

I am hoping that his shortsighted views are not the views of most consumers…
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