Monthly Archives: February 2003

My 50 Things To Do In My Lifetime — updated

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Remem­ber that great site My 50 Things To Do In My Life­time that I men­tioned a while back? Well they’ve imple­men­ted one of my sug­es­tions! You can now view my list of Things To Do In My Life­time. I’ve not added 50 things to my list, but I’m work­ing on it. I’ve also added a per­man­ent link down at the bot­tom of the left side­bar, below my wish­lists).
If you’ve not been to the site, check it out. It just may serve to motiv­ate you to ‘get around to’ some of those things you always prom­ised your­self you would do.

Graphic Design

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I’ve been doing a bit of graphic based web page design the last couple of days for one of my hos­tees. It’s been quite good fun! We’ve agreed on a look chosen from four that I put together. I need to redo the vari­ous ele­ments and plug in the B2 engine next.
I’m doing it all by hand (Paint­Shop Pro and Epsi­lon programmer’s editor) of course rather than with some WYSIWYG application.

Minority Report

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I’ve recently fin­ished Minor­ity Report by Philip K. Dick. Which is a re-published col­lec­tion of short stor­ies. Re-published to cash in on the movie based on the short story of the same name, I pre­sume.
In all it was quite a good col­lec­tion. I have not read a lot of Philip K Dick before, so this col­lec­tion was an eye opener. I liked all the stor­ies (although one much less then the oth­ers); he has a quirky sense of plot, and likes to add an unex­pec­ted twist to each of the stor­ies and give you some­thing to think about. This col­lec­tion also included “We can remem­ber it for you whole­sale” which was the inspir­a­tion for the movie Total Recall. I say inspir­a­tion, because the point of the story is quite dif­fer­ent from the movie.
I also found that the sci­ence in this sci­ence fic­tion was quite dated. Typ­ical of the pre-70s (when these were writ­ten). In fact, it kind of made my feel a little nos­tal­gic; I first star­ted read­ing Sci-Fi in 1971 (Asimov’s ‘I Robot’ was the first book I ever bought).

Any­way, recommended!

Rainforest tree eats up pollution

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Here’s an inter­est­ing story on the BBC News.

Jatoba, or hymen­aea, a rain­forest tree, has been found to grow much faster in atmo­spheres with high levels of car­bon diox­ide.
This could be import­ant in fight­ing cli­mate change, as car­bon diox­ide is one of the green­house gases that is mak­ing the planet warmer.…
Simply plant­ing large num­bers of Jatoba trees may not be the answer, as they can take a very long time to reach matur­ity and spe­ci­mens 500 years old are not unknown.

The art­icle goes on to men­tion isol­at­ing the gene which causes the desired effect and apply­ing it to other plants.

But that idea is con­tro­ver­sial, because it would in effect cre­ate a large num­ber of genet­ic­ally mod­i­fied organ­isms (GMOs).
“It will take years for us to under­stand how these things work,” Pro­fessor Buck­eridge con­ceded.
“I’m not say­ing we should have GMOs every­where. But we have to be prepared.