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GREENISH-TINGE
August 8, 2001
Flipping through the new Viridian issue
of the Whole Earth Review, I come across page 13, Natalie Jeremijenko
the suggestions that a networked power of "Futureproff/ed" eco-
meter could help your appliances choose design.
to run at off peak to save money.
And I start thinking, well, what
appliances? Most of them have to be run
when you need them. Maybe the
refrigerator: you could bias the 'fridge The fridge isn't
to running late at night to cool itself a bad target: any
down, and let it warm up a little more electric appliance that
during the day. That'd work better if pumps heat around really
there was more thermal mass in the eats power.
system. Maybe there should be. Add
a big chunk of something, let's say a
tank of water to the inside of the
insulated compartment to help it stay
cool. Change the water every six months Maybe longer than
or so, and it could double as an six months, considering
emergency water supply. it's kept cold.
Oh, but who's ever going to remember to
change the water in the emergency tank on
a semi-annual basis? Hm, okay, so you
automate it, put in
plumbing to fill and
drain it without human
intervention? Nah, too
much infrastructure, no
In general, the trouble with one is going to spend
emergency equipment is that it that much for such small
doesn't get used in normal gain.
situations, so there's very
little pressure to ever test
the stuff out.
Typically, people find out that they're
computer backups haven't been working
only after the disk crashes.
I know that my Y2K/earthquake supplies
are dwindling away... the cases of
Crystal Geyser get tapped into whenever
I do something like a beach trip, the
cans of Progresso soup get used now and
then as convienience food, and my
medical stuff is always pretty wimpy (we
now have a box of bandaids in the house,
having run out maybe a year ago). If
we've got a fire extinguisher, I've long
since forgotten where it is.
On the other hand, the water bottle on
my bike gets refilled every day, as do
the water bottles we keep by the
bedside.
I imagine a hardcore
backpacker probably
has much better
The stuff that diaster preparedness
gets used than the average
frequently is citizen. Water
what gets purification
attended to. tablets/filters,
first aid kit, some
dried food, sleeping
bag, portable stove,
a layered system of
outdoor clothing...
Ah, got it, so in this refrigerator
design, you make the water drinkable
at all times. You run a line *in* to Chilled water makes an
keep the tank full, and put a spiggot excellent drink by the
on the front so you can grab a glass way... when I remember
of chilled water whenever you want. to keep a bottle of tap
water in the fridge, my
You justify the extra plumbing for an consumption of coca-crap
immediate benefit (and this way there's has always tended to
no need for a drain pipe... though it drop off.
might not be a bad idea for a fridge to
have one of those, given their
propensity to dribble when out of
whack).
No one is going to want to
blow a big chunk of the Hm. But maybe you
interior space on a water should just freeze Causes
tank, of course, so there's the water? Get more problems
some design tradeoffs to be bang for the volume. for the
made here. Probably the best drinkability
spot is to hide it in the idea?
layer between freezer and
'fridge, a big flat pizza box
of a tank that covers the (I think there's
entire top of the compartment. a problem with
all this brilliant
thinking here:
this sounds a
So let us stagger towards lot like what
a slogan/aphorism: modern 'fridges
are like already.
life is an emergency I'm just used to
live like it's an emergency living with
the emergency is your life ancient ones.)
Yeah, that's not a bad one:
"The emergency is your life".
Note: this is not intended
Choose some good strategies to be a "viridian" aphorism,
for living, and you should but it might be a distant
get some insulation from corollary of "The future is
disaster out of it, without history -- be when you are."
much extra work.
Back to backups: these days
it seems like a lot of people are
using CD-Rs to backup their data. Of course, a lot of
people just don't do any
This seems weird to me: I use a DAT backups at all. Home PCs
drive (running on a SCSI interface, aren't sold with any way
accept no substitutes), with which of doing them, typically.
it's no trouble to stash 2 gigs
on a tape that costs $3 from This is very frustrating
Terrapin, compared to something like to linux evangelists.
a mere 650 Mb on a CD. "Sure, you can try out
linux without uninstalling
But, the advantage of the CD-R is that your current OS. You
people want them for *other* purposes: need to move partitions
They want them to be able to make music around on your disk, so
CDs. first backup your computer --
what, you don't have a way
So the burners get bought, and they get to do backups?"
exercised, and that alone makes them a
better backup medium for most folks,
despite the technical advantages of My solution to this:
SCSI DAT. tell people to
install a second
harddrive, and put
Another point about the greenish-tinged linux on that.
fridge: there's no real need for it to
be networked. All it needs is a timer. Rick Moen is an
Everyone knows when off-peak is likely advocate of just
to be. getting a second
computer to play
In general, whenever people talk about with "Most people
the virtues of having the toaster chat feel like they're
with the radio, it seems to me like only entitled to
these folks are running on sub-standard one computer..."
voltage... What for? Even if it gets But used ones are
super-cheap to do that kind of stuff, like $200.
why bother?
But it can be hard
I guess I can think of one to squeeze in
reason. I live in an another computer
apartment in an old in the home office.
Victorian building, now with
the usual modern additions: The advantage of
toaster oven, microwave, a second disk is
coffeemaker, washer/dryer... it fits inside the
existing box...
Any combination of the two
is likely to blow the
circuit breaker (and three
will definitely do it).
It would be good to have an
automated pecking order here,
like, "if the microwave has
been turned on, the coffee
maker should be powered down
temporarily".
So is Victorian living like Viridian
living? Do Viridian concepts start
to look better when power restrictions
are imposed on you?
My gut feeling though, is that these
power restrictions aren't going to
happen in the West any time soon.
You'd better hope we learn to do more
with less, because more is what we
demand as our birthright.
So, my prediction is that the networked
household will remain an elusive dream.
(This is a dangerous prediction,
because it presumes a degree
rationality on the part of the
consumer... and a degree of
irrationality in the politics
of power, but I'll let it
stand for now.)
===
A topic for another day:
On being a wishy-washy green.
Not Viridian, more like ECODOOM
a nauseated pale green color.
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