Bernard alerted me to the fact that Sustainable Energy Ireland launched their new website, combatclimatechange.ie in conjunction with the beginning of Energy Awareness Week.

The more people that follow the 10 Energy Saving tips the better for everyone. It does however annoy me, ever so slightly, that given there can be a fairly large initial outlay, there are no incentives for home owners to do more, i.e. Solar Heating, Solar Power generation (even with current, relatively ineffecient technology), and even wind power.

I quote
There are currently no general grants available to the consumer for the installation of renewable energy or energy saving measures. SEI’s allocated funding and resources are not sufficient to support this. At present SEI provides information on energy systems for consumers. The House of Tomorrow programme provides support for large scale housing developments – where solar panels can be supported – in order to encourage best practise in the building industry.

Directive on Electricity Supplied from Renewable Energy Resources
Directive on Liquid Biofuels
Directive on Combined Heat and Power
Directive on Building Services

here.

I emailed Brendan Minish (EI6IZ) last week as I heard he was looking for me to to a talk on APRS at the Mayo Radio Experimenters Network annual Radio Rally (Sunday the 20th of November). So I replied to him saying that I it should be no problem. In his reply he said that he was in Tromso, Norway, waiting to join Northabout. A quick google gave me that link.

This vaguely jogged my memory, then I remembered seeing a documentary about The North West Passage, and it turns out its the same boat. This time they are attempting the North East Passage. They are making a documentary of this trip as well.

Their last reported position is available here. And its you can check their progress reports here.

Looking out at the sunshine outside, I think I would prefer to be on a boat.

PROGRESS REPORT No. 15 (from the site)
Continue reading Northabout →

The Tall Ships Race is in Waterford at the moment. If you can’t make it, have a look at Waterford City Council’s two webcams here and here. If you happen to have a radio capable of receiving the Marine Band, most activity is taking place on channels 08, 13, 14 and 16. The city is pretty much locked down for ‘residents only access’ with more Gardaí on the street than I’ve ever seen in the town, and they are running a pretty tight ship (if you will pardon the pun).

While waiting for the uClibc Toolchain to compile, I did a quick check on my bloglines subscription, and came upon this short piece. Its worth reading the full story. Basically Mr Barlow gets ‘cold called’ on Skype and tells the interesting story about the caller and the call.

I love the bit:

“Why me?”

“Because your name is John. I think that anybody named John speaks English.”

Whatever her (the caller) motives, it does show the real power of the Internet in making the ‘Global village’ so much smaller.

Thanks for the heads up Bernie

An interesting article on how the Earthquake that caused the devastation around the Indian ocean has affected, amongst other things, the length of a day.

If your into that kind of thing Mr. G has just put a site live giving information on the Irish Scene. Thanks for the heads up Eddie.

I was in Clonmel yesterday visiting the folks, got my Dad to help me with a small wiring issue with my car.

I’m planning to have two Radio Transcievers in the car one dedicated to Tracking (APRS) and one for Voice communications. If I was unfortunate enough to hit maximum current draw on both at the same time it would require over 30Amps to power them. So yesterday we ran a dedicated cable out to the Battery. It should be safer than putting that much current through the loom in the Car.

Anyway, the point is I forgot to read the papers. And this morning I spotted Sunday Snippets and Jeremy Clarkson on A380 (from the Sunday Times) on Bernard Goldbachs weblog. I’ll take these as the highlights of the weekend 🙂

Saw this on the reg.

“The Northumbria Safety Camera Partnership, aka “Safe speed for life” has just published its top 10 excuses for geting nobbled by a speed, sorry, safety camera. Top of the list is alien-induced trance, closely followed by blaming excessive velocity on a passing aircraft. The list is culled from the letters received by fixed-penalty units in which motorists attempt to extricate themselves from copping a fine for speeding.”

Caroline is still wandering about, though she is on her way back to a cooler climate shortly.

Stephen and Annie were both briefly home so I dropped up and we had a few beers and a bit of a laugh. As always, it was a pleasure to stop by and have a few beers with the Burke family, and, as The Boss has purchased a new car, it was a good excuse to put a few miles on it.

Back to work today. Spent pretty much all day catching up on emails, fortunately most could just be deleted on sight. Oh well….