Server keeps overheating. Grrrrr. Am in Switzerland so can do nothing about it. We can but hope it remains ok….

I’ve just bought myself an iPhone, and this is the first post with it.

It seems that having a few hours of server downtime is a consequence of having VirginMedia broadband. Apologies - should all be fixed now.

As a family, we are safely installed into deepest darkest Essex and we now have an internet connection again! More later on life in the UK - guests will arrive soon.

Unfortunately, I could not write about my experiences in China as they happened, because the computer that hosts this website decided to have some technical difficulties. Now that I am home, 5 minutes of tinkering fixed it. Over the next few days I will reflect on my trip, making comment on how I think China will develop in the future.Apologies for the break. 

A fellow blogger has a question. When faced with a kettle with too much water in it for your needs, is it more energy efficient to throw away the extra water or boil it? That is, does it cost more energy to boil 2 cups of water or purify them?

Since this is (used to be) one of my favourite themes - calculating what is the most environmentally friendly thing to do - I thought I would do the calculation for him.

1. Assumption: 2 cups of water = 0.5 l = 500 g
2. The heat capacity of water is 4.186 J / g C
3. Assumption: the water is heated from 20 C to 100 C
4. Therefore, if a kettle was 100% efficient, it would use 167kJ to heat the water
5. However, 3 kW kettles are not 100% efficient. The average kettle needs 1 minute 26 seconds to boil 0.5 l of water.
6. Therefore, the average kettle uses 258 kJ of energy to boil 2 cups.
7. It takes around 2 kWh of energy to purify 1000 Gallons of water.
8. 1 US Gallon is 3.78 l.
9. Therefore, it takes 0.95 kJ of energy to purify 0.5 l of water.
10. Therefore throw that water away, Gav!

Now this does not take into account the energy needed to make the kettle or the treatment plant. But it’s safe to say that the energy needed to make a kettle is marginal compared to the energy used when boiling water in it over the kettle’s lifetime. The same can be said for water treatment plant and we need one of those anyway, whether we boil the extra 2 cups or not. In effect, the energy is already spent.

So the conclusion is that throwing the water away uses around 250 times less energy than leaving it in the kettle, if you don’t need it. You could of course empty the kettle into a jug and use it later, or just drink the extra water.

Now that the decision has been made - that I will be returning to the UK in September - will my thirst for politics return? The answer is that I do not know. This blog was originally set up as a soap-box for my political views, but on moving to CH, I became somewhat disheartened with not just politics, but the UK in general. Switzerland has a lot of things right; but that does not mean that I want to live here forever. And so, now that the move is definite, what will happen to this blog? Will I move onto local politics and events? Will my thirst for national politics return? Or will languish in inactivity, as it does now? Only time will tell.

My family and I are off to Blighty for a week, so a short blog break is on the cards.

I have added a new section to the gallery that is for displaying my hobby - that is, photography. Way back when, I used to love taking photographs. I had two cameras - a workhorse completely manual Eastern European Praktika SLR (it had no batteries) with 5 different lenses, tripod, two flashes, filters and a Minolta 2xi SLR (a bottom-end autofocus, auto-everything camera from the mid-90’s). Both use film. In the day and age of digital photography, I consider film to be a rather expensive luxury. Also, having a 2.5 year old daughter, not all photographs turn out as I would like and lugging around copious amounts of equipment is not very practical….

So now I simply use a 7.2Mpix Sony compact. Takes OK’ish photos considering it only cost £200, but it is no SLR. At some point, I will treat myself and purchase one of these, but not for a while. So a new addition to the gallery can be found here, and as a special treat, I have included some examples in this post.

After spending a couple of hours on the computer, I think I have solved the problem with the way my blog looks. If anyone notices anything strange, please let me know in a comment or email.Thanks. 

I have just noticed that this blog looks shiiiite on a windoze computer with firefux. Right now I don’t know how to fix it, and it is bloody annoying that “one size” does definitely not fix all. Whatever happened to standards? Whatever happened to browser interoperability? I now have to spend HOURS fixing this bloody pile of crap. Update: have reset back to the original theme. Bugger.

Whilst browsing the blogosphere, the LAST THING I WANT is to have my eardrums blasted with god awful music from Flash video adverts that are impossible to block without uninstalling Flash.

So F*CK OFF Mr Tim Worstall - you are now removed from my blogroll. Much that I enjoy reading your blog, as far as I am concerned, your blog is simply not good enough to put up with such intrusive advertising. My blog might be small fry compared to yours, but at least I don’t smack my readers around the head with a pony.

Well this is the first entry on my new look blog… just to test if it works. No comments yet, but I am working on it!