timouse

someone is off their meds again besides me that is.

luddites rock. btw thanks for the new signature

tell the nice people what your new job is, rick! congratulations!

most of the slocan valley is without cell service, and most of the residents seem to like it that way. when my friend marcel lived there, he was up in the mountains outside of town with no conventional phone service. he had to drive 45 minutes in to nelson to use his cell phone, making him a bit hard to get hold of. having said all that, he accepted this as the payoff was peace and quiet. he did finally break down later on and buy a satellite phone for when he did need to make a call without making a 45 minute drive first. i've heard visitors to the valley refer to new denver as "the place where the 60's went to die" good on them, the world needs places that are free of cellphones.

moe is the hardest working guy in show business. he deserves a hiatus.

you say that as though it's a bad thing.

happy birthday keri!

dear winter, i thought we had a good thing going. it's my first winter with a dog and a furry hat, and it's been great. every time more snow fell, i convinced myself that this was simply more groundwater, and that it would all be fine. my very cool neighbour was more than happy to lend me his snowblower, and has even come over with his bobcat to clear the driveway. well, now it's personal. instead of playing a gig tonight, i'm snowed in thinking about my friends that i'm letting down. you had lots of opportunity to dump on me through the week and cause me to miss a day of work, but no, you cruel heartless bitch of a season, you pick saturday night to wail down endless snow on me. drop dead, winter.

happy birthday carrie!

come back from the kootenays and become Minister of Finance.

meeee toooo

nope, those were girl hamsters.

yep.

hmmmmmm' date=' wont that dramatically lower the average cool quotient? [/quote'] what is this "cool" that you speak of?

so anyways, that gram parsons fellow. you're digging the book, newrider? i think that gp is opne of my favourite musicians, and return of the grievous angel is way under-appreciated as a tune. (paging steve and shelby )

check out http://www.fertilegroundcsa.com jennifer and i have been part of a CSA at an organic farm near us for the last couple of years, and have enjoyed it immensely. what a brilliant way to enjoy quality local produce and support a very cool business model at the same time. i don't know these people personally, but they come reccommended by lots of folks. at very least check them out & see...

wow. rip jeff.

i learned that if the letter carrier in rural guelph can't put your mail in the mailbox without getting out of her car, she will not deliver your mail. i also learned that she won't tell you for a couple of weeks. i subsequently learned that you can get a bobcat stuck in the snowbank while trying to make mailboxes accessible for said letter carrier. the snow's so bad here that my snail mail stopped working

[color:purple]at least china puts their prison population to work making consumer goods for wal mart. that's just staggering, particularly Kentucky, where the prison population has increased 600% while crime rates have only increased 3%.

rip buddy. the band on the other side is getting better all the time

happy birthday tigger!

radio one in toronto that is.

I want a sweater made of this stuff for my hyperactive dog. Microfiber fabric makes its own electricity? Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:43pm EST By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. scientists have developed a microfiber fabric that generates its own electricity, making enough current to recharge a cell phone or ensure that a small MP3 music player never runs out of power. If made into a shirt, the fabric could harness power from its wearer simply walking around or even from a slight breeze, they reported Wednesday in the journal Nature. "The fiber-based nanogenerator would be a simple and economical way to harvest energy from the physical movement," Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who led the study, said in a statement. The nanogenerator takes advantage of the semiconductive properties of zinc oxide nanowires -- tiny wires 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair -- embedded into the fabric. The wires are formed into pairs of microscopic brush-like structures, shaped like a baby-bottle brush. One of the fibers in each pair is coated with gold and serves as an electrode. As the bristles brush together through a person's body movement, the wires convert the mechanical motion into electricity. "When a nanowire bends it has an electric effect," Wang said in a telephone interview. "What the fabric does is it translates the mechanical movement of your body into electricity." His team made the nanogenerator by first coating fibers with a polymer, and then a layer of zinc oxide. They dunked this into a warm bath of reactive solution for 12 hours. This encouraged the wires to multiply, coating the fibers. "They automatically grow on the surface of the fiber," Wang said. "In principal, you could use any fiber that is conductive." They added another layer of polymer to prevent the zinc oxide from being scrubbed off. And they added an ultra-thin layer of gold to some fibers, which works as a conductor. To ensure all that friction was not just generating static electricity, the researchers conducted several tests. The fibers produced current only when both the gold and the zinc oxide bristles brushed together. So far, Wang said the researchers had demonstrated the principle and developed a small prototype. "Our estimates show we can have up to 80 milliwatts per square meter of this fabric. This is enough to power a little iPod or charge a cell phone battery," he said. "What we've done is demonstrate the principle and the fundamental mechanism." Wang said the material could be used by hikers and soldiers in the field and also to power tiny sensors used in biomedicine or environmental monitoring. One major hurdle remains: zinc oxide degrades when wet. Wang's team is working on a process that would coat the fibers to protect the fabric in the laundry.