Innovation, thinking beyond the obvious

100+ uses of a paperclip

One of the ways to make the world a better, more sustainable place is finding new uses for things. By looking for new and innovative ways of doing things with what we already have, we can avoid buying or building new things. Versatility is key in the new economy. Something that portable storage San Diego has understood well and true.

There was a recent study done how where they challenged 4 year olds to come up with as many different ideas as they could for using an everyday object, like a paperclip. Within an hour time frame a group of preschoolers could come up with over 160 ways of using a paperclip, ranging from picking your nose or ears with it to, if you made a really big one you could slide down it. The childs mind is not yet throwing away any ideas as “unmanagable” or “unrealistic”. Instead it centers upon finding as many different uses for the paperclip as they can and let their imagination run free. Now this was a longitudinal study and they retested the kids at age 15. By the time these preschoolers had gotten an education they have trouble coming up with more than 20 uses for the paperclip. We lose a lot due to our education.

Smart thinking

I don't know if portable storage San Diego invited a bunch of preschoolers to work alongside them for the project but they did come up with some very usefull and innovative ways to use containers. First of all containers are for transporting stuff, right? Storage is a new use for containers and an innovation in its own right. Now you can put a bunch of those containers together and build a fence around them and you have transformed a vacant lot into a regular storage rental space at a fraction of the cost of putting up a building. This is exactly the way Coronado Mobile Storage started out!

Now there is more things you can do with a container and one of the things that I thought was really clever is that instead of asking people to bring over their stuff to storage, you can also deliver the container to their door to be filled with their stuff. A lot easier for both the customer, who can put their stuff in at leasure and for the service provider as well. All you have to do is drive the container out there and pick it up after the customer calls to say it's filled! How smart is that?

Many uses for containers

The next step is even more innovative. What else can you use these containers for? Well, it's a huge enclosed space that with a few adjustments can be modified into a mobile office, or you can provide an enclosed space to safely put equipment in at an on location jobsite, roadwork or the like. A few more adjustments and you can make a container into a complete home, where you can live part- or fulltime. A mobile home without the wheels, so to speak. And let's be honest: how many mobile homes are really meant to be mobile, meant to be moved around a lot. Generally it's more like a parked home to begin with. So lose the wheels and use a container to form the basis, put in a few adjustments such as electricity and running water and you have cheap housing, if not on a permanent basis then certainly in times of a crisis or disaster. Heck, let's go even further and equip the containers with their own solarpanels and you'd really be able to park them anywhere!

Solar energy: solar film, the solar panel of the future?

The future might be thin film

The developement of technologies is accelerating at a high rate. Where only a short 30 years ago solar panels were largely unheard of and considered highly advanced technology, the first generation is already outdated and the second generation will soon follow suit. Many people have started their own solar farm, helped along by government stimulation programs and the enormous rise in the cost of fossil fuels. They have formed co-operative efforts and use smartgrids to share the energy thus collected off their rooftops and in sharing they have found that they can be selfsufficient much easier than when everyone has their own closed circuit. So sharing is the name of the game, with smart computer programmes measuring the relative use of everyone connected to the smartgrid. Still for a lot of people solar panels are prohibitively expensive. The market for renewable energy resources is ready for the next breakthrough in technology making gathering solar energy available to even low income homes and families. And it might just be thin film.

Red light, blue light, all can be used

Thin film is a layer thin as can be, we're talking nanometers here. I don't pretend to know everything about the technologie that produces these thing films, but it's the same type of process that I wrote about in the blog I did on Magnetron sputtering. A thin film has to have certain properties that allow it to convert speed of the sun's fotons into energy. Now the classic first and second generation solar cells use only the red light out of the whole spectrum that the sun sends down. Red light is less energetic than blue light, but less blue light reaches the earths serface, so that sorta balances out. The idea now, with these thin film technologies is to create layers of thin film in which both the red light energy and the blue light energy can be converted into useable energy. This would effectively increase the output of solar panels manifold. A single layer thin film could already mimic the results of the (relatively expensive) solar panels, but a multilayer thin film is expected to increase efficiency enormously.

Imagining the future now...

Thin film can be mass produced, simply, effectively and for all kinds of purposes including solar energy. You can go to the hardware store and buy solar film for your windows (they're so thin that they are see through anyway, so why not put them on all your windows or at least the ones that get the most sunlight). Then you plug your household appliances into your windows and of course, because we've already learned the advantages of sharing, we build a smartgrid for every office building, every block of housing. Every empty building is turned into a powerplant by covering it with thin solar film from Vergason for instance and because it's so cheap, we cut our cost of living radically (incidentally ending the world wide financial crisis we're now in the middle of)

I don't know the particulars, but wireless electricity seems to be the next necessary step to connect people without needing a world of infrastructure and wires going everywhere. Because of all this interdependent technology we're also getting to know our neighbors better and because of this we're investing in each other more, becoming less dependent on the money grabbers at the utility companies and at the same time let's also get smart and share our wifi instead of letting the telecom companies bleed us dry. The future then finds us interconnected on a global scale while being interdependent on a local scale. Now there's a twist on globalization!

Social responsibility in business: Ice cream and more!

It's not all about the $$$$ anymore

In todays world owning a business is not just about the bottom line anymore. Or at least, at the bottom line, it's not just dollars being counted. Environmental impact, social treatment of your stakeholders and providing opportunities for personal growth to your staff are counted equally as much when you're company is rated for social responsibility.

Creative names for icecream: Chocolate Therapy

Two Scoops

It all started I guess with Ben & Jerry's icecream. Two idealist hippies who didn't set out to change the world really, it just happened that they were doing what needed to be done. What they were about is not just making a buck, but actually helping their community. Getting their brownies from local ladies and making sure their chocolate wasn't harvested by child-slaves was a matter of course to them as well as making the best tasting icecream in the world. Somehow, against all odds, these two idealist created a multimillion dollar brand.

It's not just about the flavor

Sure, the icecream is good, some of the best ever, but only some off. That oddly named Haagen Dazs is at least equal in taste and well 31 flavors have some really good icecream as well. The thing that makes people buy B&J's icecream is the fact that they get to feel like they are making a contribution to something good in the world. For a couple of dollars they get to feel like they're saving the rainforest, promoting peace and helping a third world child go to college. What they're selling is not icecream, it's a whole new way of looking at the world.

Now, business has forever changed under the influence of these and others such hippies (think Google and don't be evil) and if you're going to promote your brand name you must do so in a way that reflects your brands responsible and environmentally concious way of doing things. A gift bag from Holden Bags might be just the way to communicate that. These bags are durable and when imprinted with your logo they say: This business cares about the environment enough to give durable stuff instead of less than useful plastic items that fill our wastebaskets.

Wine tote

Making the world a little better

For tradeshows or festive occasions, buying these tote bags bulk is made easy by the quick service at Holden Bags. Your design can be uploaded at their website and you can get a quote from them in under 15 minutes. One of my favorite bags is the cooler-bag, a supermarket necessity if you don't live real close to the store. It keeps your frozen items frozen untill you get home. Giving that away with some Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia icecream in it would be a great parting gift after a long day at a tradeshow. Or perhaps the wine-tote is the better choice, of course stocked with some fine California organic wine, red and white please.

Now, I'm not comparing the impact of reusable tote bags to the impact of Ben & Jerries icecream, but not all of us are meant to change the world so profoundly as those two did. Instead, we get to do our little bit for the environment and for social responsibility. We get to eat the icecream instead of making it and we get to choose environmentally friendly, reusable totebags for our next event. We do our part in making this world just a little better, one scoop or one bag at a time.

The new, socially responsible, sustainable iPad 4

What's new in the iPad 4?

Read all the information that is available on the iPad 4, which admittedly is not a lot. Apple, with it's typical closed mouth approach to marketing a new product, making curiosity do it's magic on the market and has not leaked a lot of information on this new iPad4 about to hit the stores.

However I figured I would make a list of the things we want to see on the new iPad. Let's speculate and make assumptions based on past behavior by Apple and go from there. In that we can see a lot of possible directions that Apple might be taking this. Let's also look at what is keeping people from buying an iPad and what Apple could do to make their customer base broader and happier. Perhaps if they take advise from a lowly blogger we might actually get the iPad we want!

Better customer support on the iPad4

The iPad4 targets the market where the most money is: The Elderly.

In an effort to better serve this market the iPad4 comes with an optional package of having a computer-specialist install it's basic software as well as some extension packages for the most used applications (meaning: Angry birds, photosharing tools and a basic version of pages, numbers, etc.) One of the best moves in the bussiness as a lot of elderly people (70 and up) are starting to be aware of the iPad and they do not always have a computer, nor the necessary computer skills to install the most used products themselves.

The customers service package includes several visits from the computer expert to re-install stuff that might have been displaced or lost. The package is also sold seperately. A very popular item for busy family members that don't want to drive up to grandma incessively to help her with her Pad.

The most environmentally friendly iPad to date

In an effort to please the most environmentally conscious customers as well, Apple now offers the iPad with minimal packaging, uses a lot of natural materials and comes with it's own built in solarpanel to recharge the batteries.

The front of the iPad4 consequently looks much different then before. Instead of the colored cover that the iPad2 and iPad3 sport it has the same foldable flap, but this time enbedded in it are 4 tiny state of the art solar panels that provide a high yield charge to your iPad4's batteries. Apple went all out in this and has merged their superior knowledge of minimization with the knowhow that's allready out there in terms of solar energy and has come up with a solar panel technology that could well revolutionize the world of solar panels as well. We'll be looking for the iPanel as it is called to branch out into other industries as well.

Apple sais no to slave labor!

Finally, in an effort to win all new age thinkers over, Apple has rallied to end slave labor in China (and all other countries that they buy their materials from. Apple has released footage from Chinese factories that they do bussiness with and in addition has laid out plans for the entire community surrounding the factories in China that produce their products. Plans include schooling for the young, a healthy, ergonomic work environment for their workforce and 40 hours a week contracts for all their laborers. There's also three weeks paid vacation included in the packages and pregnancy leave on a par with the Swedish are a part of the plan.

Since the package was introduced long lines of Chinese have formed outside their factories wanting to work there. Other Chinese factories have since introduced similar measures because they couldn't find enough personnel as everyone wanted to try out for the jobs in the Apple sponsored factories. World economic watchdogs are starting to call it the quiet revolution. People simply resist working at slave wages in factories.

Apple iPad4 is irresistable!

Long lines of senior citizens are expected to form when the iPad4 is introduced. A whole industry appears to be forming around the event. Small entrepreneurs with great idea's are peddling their wares to the customers waiting in line for their Apple product. There's people selling cut and cored apples to the health conscious elderly waiting in line. There's hot cocoa sold by the cup, of course this is slave-free cocoa from Tony Chocolonely that uses the introduction of the slave-free iPad4 to promote their latest product: hot cocoa mix. The atmosphere in line is festive, like a new world has begun.

Recycling, reusing and refurbishing your ECM: economic and ecological

Why go for new?

A new ECM can cost you a lot of money. This is an investment of course that you have no choice but to make, seeing as having one is the law. But nowhere in the law it specifies that the ECM you're using has to be brand new. So you can save yourself a bundle if you can find a second hand one. Going to a specialist in ECM rebuilding is worth your while.

The trouble with second hand is, you never know whether the person selling it to you is levelling with you about the condition of the ECM or if he's just trying to palm off an ill functioning thing to you in hopes you won't notice till he's out of town. This is a bit of a risky deal then, because the law does require you to have a working ECM, even if it doesn't need to be a new one. This is where remanufacturing comes in.

What DSO Industrial does is buy up all kinds of old, second hand ECM's and refurbish them. This is a thorough process in which all the elements of the ECM are checked and if necessary replaced or repaired. The result: an ECM that may look a bit worn but internally, everything is sparkly and copacetic!

Knowledge and skill

The folks at DSO Industrial know what they are doing as this is their trade and craft. This means that aside from getting an ECM that is cheaper than a new one, you're also getting great advise on things that are very important to you.

Not every ECM works well with every truck, for instance. This is something that new manufacturers don't advise you one, they only sell their one type of product and they either don't know about troubles using their device in certain trucks or they don't care. The trouble usually starts to happen after a while, sometimes leading to breakdown of the unit right after the warrantee has come to an end, leaving you with an expensive piece of equipment that no longer works.

This too is where refurbishing can come in handy. The folks at DSO Industrial do repair work as well, but also they can advise you on which ECM's are known for causing trouble with your vehicle and which last longer, work better etc. That way, instead of just repairing the trouble when it occurs, they help prevent trouble in the future. That's the kind of service that you usually have to pay extra for. Here you'll find you're paying less because it's used and remanufactured goods that you're going for.

Helps the environment

Anything that re-uses old parts, like in this case ECM's, is good for the environment. Any piece of electronic equipment is riddled with hard to recycle plastics and difficult to break down into component parts and re-use when taken out of context. By taking old ECM's and refurbishing them to become new ECM's, or remanufactured ECM's if you want to be picky about it, DSO Industrial is preventing them from landing in the garbage pile and with that they are helping the environment by preventing waste.

On the other side of the production process, new materials are saved that won't need to be used because of the re-use of the original products in the new refurbished units. This is up-cycling at it's best. Prevention of waste and re-use of old materials, definately an environmentally sound choice to make.

The beauty of a high performance car

It amazes me

On the rare occasions when I take a look underneath the hood of a car I am totally amazed at how complicated the thing looks. All those wires and connections, all those parts that are interconnected and work together as a whole with just one purpose: propelling the car forward. There is such a lot that can go wrong when you think about it that it is amazing that most often, things just work!

The classic combustion engine is a machine that runs on controlled explosions. Think about that: tons of controlled explosions are taking place every time you start an engine. They take place in little chambers and they push a valve outward. Timing is of the essense: the valves are interconnected and go back and forth like a seesaw, so you don't want simultaneous explosions in interconnected chambers, right? So something directs the traffic of the impulses to explode, the sparks.

The spark plugs are given the explosion command by the internal computer of the car I suppose. I'm not quite sure on the mechanics of that and because I don't know this is where the magic begins for me.

The magic is also in the performance enhancing that you can do by installing high performance parts for cars in your vehicle. To me it's sheer magic that you could install a beautifull gadget and it will make your car go faster or burn less fuel, whatever it's set out to do.

Polishing and pimping

Polishing all the chromium parts and making all the visible parts shiny is a bit of a hobby for the serious car-buff. When it all looks shiny it even goes faster, or at least, it feels that way. When you've polished everything on the outside you're a bit of a show off, but if you polish everything under the hood, you're my kind of person. I don't like grease stains on my hands and clothes and on anybody I associate with so going for that clean look is really a must for me.

Pimping your car with spoilers and suchlike can also improve the performance of the car, creating less air resistance and as such they are, aside from nice looking extra's, performance parts that can make a real difference in your car's behavior on the road.

Another thing often overlooked in terms of performance are the tires on your car. Esspecially if you live in an area where there's a big difference between summer and winter it's important for the performance of your car to install wintertires in wintertime. The rubber on wintertyres is softer and that way it has more grip on the snow. It's a sin to keep the wintertires on in the summer though, for two reasons. One is that they tyres will deteriorate quickly when you're driving them on hot roads. The other is that there's a minute amount of drag from the tires that will slow you down considerably. It will also keep you from having the optimal miles to the gallon ratio and in these expensive times every little bit you can gain there counts.

Blasting away

Not really a Velocity factor but important for the enjoyment of the vehicle by men and women alike is the car stereo. With state of the art surround sound and big bass boosters the car is one of the few places where you can truly enjoy great music and feel like you're encased, enveloped by the music. The sound inside a car can be just as overwhelming as during a live concert and it really takes you away. It is palpable in your gut, you can sense it with more than just your ears.

Naturally, when you're enjoying great music in your car, it's important to keep your attention on the road as well. You wouldn't want to wind up driving 20 on the highway because you're so engrossed in your mantra's or classical music, nor would you want to get a speeding ticket because you're rocking to the Boss himself. Still, a car stereo is a beautiful addition to an electric high performance vehicle.

The Feng Shui of junk car removal

Your junker is worth a bundle

Services that remover your junk car for a fee are laughing all the way to the bank. Instead of giving you money for your old vehicle you're paying them to take it off your hand. They not only get your money, they also get to sell your car for parts. Doubling down on their money when you could easily lay your hands om some of that money yourself. Just give family car buyers a call and they will pay you money for your junk car. They will even pick it up off your lot. Now that's surely a service we can get used to, isn't it? Plus they'll give you a fair deal on that old junker.

Getting rid of clutter

There's an old Chinese proverb that sais: "The car that clutters up your driveway could be blocking your new mercedes."

Allright, I admit it, that saying isn't really that old, but the old Chinese art of Feng Shui does say something like this. It sais that all the stuff in your life that is not currently of use to you clutters up your life and it disrupts the flow of things. If you throw a brick in the water, the water will flow around it. However enough bricks in the water can change the course of the water.

Chi, or energy, is like water. For your life to work you need to have the chi, the energy, moving freely through your life, through your home and garden, through your driveway and everything in it. Dead plants, flowers that are wilting and rusty car carcasses are serious disruptions of chi and having those around means you're blocking chi and interrupting the flow of energy through your life.

According to the Chinese this can block the flow of money, health, relationships: pretty much everything that is important to you in your life can be disrupted by having too much clutter. There's whole theories about what chi is being disrupted based on the placement of large amounts of clutter in your house. I've had one experience of this that was quite shocking.

Chi disruption in relationship corner

In the layout of my house the bedroom is on the right when seen from the entry. This is generally the place where Feng Shui starts to watch, the entryway. The upper right hand, where my bedroom sits, is the relationship quadrant of the ancient Feng Shui interpretations. In my case, my bedroom was a mess. I didn't have enough closet space for all my things and in the upper right hand (from the entrance again) side I had a large amount of clutter: magazines and books, some incense, an old key, a bunch of stuff that I could just throw right out. Again, according to the Feng Shui book I read back then, this was the relationship spot of my bedroom.

And honey, did my relationships at the time match that corner. I was breaking up and falling apart over a woman that I adored who, I thought, was just like me in so many ways that it was scary. So I indulged in the Feng Shui book and thinking nothing might come of it except maybe a cleaner bedroom, I started to clear out the clutter. Lo and behold: shortly thereafter I met a wonderful person and we're together to this day.

Coincidence? Maybe so, who knows? But I've made sure to keep the upper right hand side of my bedroom tidy ever since. Certainly something to think about when you're considering cleaning up your place. You may actually make room for something good to enter your life.

Selling the car yourself?

You could of course try to pawn it off to someone yourself. Put an add in the paper or on the world wide web trying to sell your car for the best price ever. And let's be honest: sometimes this get's you a few extra bucks, over and above what thewww.familycarbuyers.com folks would pay you. However, don't be mistaken about the kind of hassle involved in selling a used car. It's never the first person that come to look that buys your car, so you have to show the car to a few people, they're going to ask all kinds of silly questions and you're either going to have to lie about the broken airconditioning or they are going to try to get the car for less than you want for it.

So if you enjoy haggling over the price, assuring prospective buyers that you're selling a gem rather than a lemon and are if you willing to have their disappointment on your conscience afterwards for a few dollars more, sure, sell your car yourself. If none of that applies to you, perhaps family car buyers is the way to go.

The sustainability of the vacuum elevator

The idea is simple enough

Years ago, in my local bank, I've already seen an elevator of the vacuum type. It wasn't a freight or people elevator, but rather it was meant to send pieces of paper from one place in the bank to the next. The medium was air. It was a contraption with see through plastic tubing and ingenious little egg-shaped containers that had rubber around the sides. The teller would put the paper (usually cheques or money) inside the little container, open a little door in the tubing, shove the thing in and press a button. Air then streamed into the tubing and pushed the little nestegg along the tubing. Possibly a vacuum was created along the other side of the tubing as well, i'm not clear on that.

With the technological advancement in computing, money became more and more obsolete, at least in it's paper and coin shape. Nowadays payments at my local bank can be done from anywhere with my smartphone and/ or computer and there's no need for a tubing system at the bank as for the most part, there's no more paper being shuffled around. I was surprised therefore, to see that in the US this system is still largely in place in drive through teller banking. A lot more of money transactions in the US are appearantly still in cash.

Anyway, the idea of shuttling little eggshapes with content in them though vacuumpowered tubing is in a nutshell the idea behind residential vacuum elevators. The residential elevator manufacturers make an inhome elevator a possibility for anyone who needs it. No longer the bulky seats that are hoisted up a flight of stairs, instead an elegant vertical tubing system that hardly takes up any inhome space at all.

Less materials, less dependence on fuels

The first way in which the vacuum elevators beat the classic staircase chair hoisting system as well as the traditional elevator for in home use is the use of lighter materials, less materials. Less bulk means less dependence upon materials that have to be produced and transported. This is of benefit for the environment but it also adds to the possibilities of putting an elevator in the home. The expensive alternatives are hard to install, difficult to realize and simply take up a lot of space, most notably the motor-house takes up a lot of space in the basement. (if you have a basement, if not, the installation of an elevator used to be nigh impossible.) But there's more: the actual shaft of the elevator, the counterweight mechanism, everything takes up space.

The alternative, a chair being hoisted alongside the staircase usually makes the staircase itself difficult to navigate for people actually taking the stairs. There's an unsightly aspect to it as well, a heavy chain pulling the chair upwards. And then there is the comfort, or rather the discomfort of the passenger to consider. If you're in a wheelchair, in order to go up the stairs you have to get yourself out of the wheelchair, into the seat, buckle up and frankly a ride in one of these is rather scary! Then upstairs you would need either another wheelchair or someone needs to bring you your wheelchair from down below. All in all a difficult and wearing process during which you lose you independence. Many people who live with the fact that they are in a wheelchair fiercely seek independence for as much as possible. Not to mention the cost of a nurse or other professional to get you from one floor to the next in your own home.

Much better than is the comfort of a vacuum elevator, which comes in different sizes, large enough to accomodate up to 4 people and certainly large enough to hold a wheelchair. It doesn't require any more space in the home than the actualy shape of the elevator (which is by nature round) and it's a see-through tubing that is both esthetically pleasing and space saving. In it you zoom up to the next floor (up to 4 floors) in comfort and style.

5 questions about the future of cars

Foreign cars

The American car industry has missed the whole point of last few decennia. Instead of going with the trend and building ever smaller cars. Cars that perform well but are smaller simply because not that much space is needed in general when you're just driving to work or the grocery store. The new type of car is smaller, more economical in terms of how they use their space ánd get's great mileage.

Instead of building what most customers want: something that will get them safely from A to Z and back without guzzling too much gasoline. Even if the customers appear to want the bigger cars, this is only so because there simply aren't that many small cars available to them. They aren't used to them being out on the street and even if they are there, they seems somewhat out of place with the big models. It takes a real man to choose a small car.

Not only is the performance of the smaller car great in terms of mileage, withimport performance parts their speed of acceleration just to name an item can be improved on dramatically.

Small is the new big

The same developments we've seen in personal computers is starting to happen for cars. Instead of the gazz guzzing machines of yesteryear, people are now more likely to invest in an electric car and thus save at least half on fuel, more if you couple it to your own solar panel units.

Any child can see that it takes more energy to more a huge object than it does to move a small object (assuming that both have a similar weight/size ratio) So if you have a huge car, like the Hummer or some of the other rather backward American type cars, you're burning more fuel. If there's only one of you in a Dodge Ram, you're using up more than your fair share (if there is such a thing as a fair share) of the earths powersupply.

Things could move rather fast if we allow technology to develop unhampered by vested interest from the oil company's. Telephone has seen a similar speedy development where we started with Alexandre Graham Bell, making those bulky plastic phones all the way down to the first mobile phones with which you couldn't call for hours, simply because your arm would get too tired. All the way to todays smartphone, that basically is a unit larger than the first 4 types of computers, with more memory and more possibilities than it's predecessors from 1980.

It's time to start rethinking the concept of large cars and discover the joys of thinking out of the box with cars.It's time to start being curious about the why of things.

Why four wheels?

Why four (or more) seats, if there's only one of you?

Why a new car every year or two?

Why fossil fuels if you can go electric?

Why doesn't my employer offer me an electric lease car?

Worries about performance?

Your motor won't have to move so much steel and glass if your vehicle becomes smaller. This means quite simply put that you save a bundle on fuel that way. If it only has to carry one person, why not go for a one person car? Time for the industry to sit up and pay attention: we want personalized vehicles.

We also want the option of personalizing the driving experience by putting inimport performance parts to enhance the speed and acceleration of the car. That way instead of having a shady, unecological alternative, you have a vehicle that makes hardly any noise, uses hardly any electricity (non if you hook it up to some solar panels).

Imported car parts for improved performance

Fuel injection and more

When your car starts to stutter when you start the engine up, consider tweaking it by ordering and installing a new improved model of fuel injection. The technology in these products hasn't stopped the day you bought the car and it's likely that the best there was available at the time of production of your vehicle wasn't the top of the line to begin with. Everyone knows that the cars that roll of the line are a compromise between performance and price and when you're a discerning customer who doesn't have the money to purchase the high class cars out there that don't make consessions to affordability, this means you're getting mediocre parts to begin with. However that's not where you need to stay!

Getting top of the line import performance parts is a way to improve the performance of your car and because you do all the work yourself it's a cheap and easy way to upgrade your car to a really high performance vehicle.

Tinkering is for classic cars

Let's face it: these days if you're really a tinkerer, not a full fledged auto mechanic, there's no fun in working on a car less than 20 years old. Ever since on board computers have taken over the honest mechanics "I'll listen to the sound of your engine and tell you where the problem is" is an anomaly. Most people can't tell the difference anymore and the onboard computer has warning signs for anything that is about to go wrong before it actually spirals out of control.

In Africa and south America, where we ship our "wrecks", they keep cars on the road for ever with a piece of chewing gum and a pair of nylons if need be and people work together as a team on figuring out what is wrong with the car and how to fix it. It seems as though there they still understand the need for reconstructive maintainance. Making sure it runs is priority number one. This is why so many of the vehicles you see out there have long since outlived their natural shelf-life and are reconstructed to accommodate far more than the normal payload for any automobile that's on the road today. You can see schoolbusses that we've declared unfit for travel on the road there, painted up in glorious gaudy colors and giving off a thick black smoke whenever they accelerate and they are filled to the brim with people and luggage, stuff they are taking to the market.

Imported parts for import cars

Yes, you can use all kinds of parts with all kinds of cars. It often takes a lot of tweaking and customizing, but in theory you can use parts from an old american car and use it in a Japanese or European vehicle. The warranty on those expires the moment you take it for a drive as they aren't used to each other and the computerized systems used these days speak many different languages, so in a modern car you are more likely to make it work if you're a computerfreak than you are if you're an automechanic.

So my advise is simple: buy import performance parts for imported cars athttp://www.velocityfactor.net/. Installation should be easy with the manuals that come with the product and you'll be driving around in no time flat.

Tools are always sharp with ceramic coating

Some tools don't wear

Many tools are just fine without any protection whatsover. They'll stay sharp almost forever and look as shiny as the day you bought them for years on end.

Those are the tools that rarely get used, that are just sitting pretty in your toolshed while you and your mates play poker and have a beer. For the rest of us, tools are something that get's used a lot and most tools, in particular anything with a sharp edge on it tends to be subject to a lot of wear and tear. Protecting these tools would mean a serious step forward in the enjoyment of the use of sharp tools.

Now there's some new technologies out there that can actually make this come true! It's called vapor deposition and it's a way of depositing a ultra thin coating of a hard material onto almost any surface. The process is a specialty of the folks down at Vergason and they cater to the needs of a variety of industries, from the medical to the molding industry. With their vacuum coating process they can coat pretty much anything without having to heat the objects very much which allows them to coat metal objects without having to be concerned about the shape or hardness of the material changing.

You've probably seen these types of instruments in the kitchen. Kitchen knifes that won't wear out, made with a ceramic edge. Ring a bell? Yes, these things actually do work and they do stay sharp for a long long time.

How do ceramic coatings work?

One of the cutting tools we're all familiar with that has a hard ceramic-like coating sit's right in your mouth. Yes, I am talking about teeth. We all know that the teeth are reasonably soft and boney on the inside and if it weren't for the thin layer of dental enemal on them we would all lose our teeth very early on in life. The thin layer of something hard protects them from harm and gives them that nice, clean bite.

In much the same way putting a ceramic coating on, let's say a sawblade, can keep it from becoming dull very fast. A necessary innovation in particular since cutting the new MDF type of materials (which is really hard pressed cardboard) can dull an ordinary sawblade in an awful hurry. Any housewife worth her salt can tell you that cutting paper or cardboard with a pair of scissors will make the scissors unfit to cut anything else with them. This is why people have special scissors for fabrics. These are not so much special scissors, but basically they are scissors which are never to be used for cutting paper. Cutting only fabric keeps them sharp for a long while.

What all can you get a ceramic coating on?

Anything that is sharp and meant to stay that way is in principle a good candidate for a ceramic coating like the ones they make at Vergason. This goes way beyond your toolshed and into the medical field as well. In addition the ceramic coatings are heat resistant and for want of a better word they "glide" better. You've all seen seamstresses cut through swatches of cloth hardly even moving the scissors? Well a good seamstress would simply love a ceramic coated scissor because it would "glide" through the material with very little friction. Because of these special qualities ceramic coatings are also useful in the injection molding industry.

Not only is it good for cutting through wood, cloth or paper (or MDF) but it is esspecially useful in cutting though tougher materials like metal. Used on drills, saws, taps and a myriad of other instruments it helps prevent damage to the tools and keeps things sharp and easy to work with.

How to let your old clunker go (and why)

Selling or giving away

These are difficult times and a bit of extra cash can go a long way. The financial crisis has been around long enough to clear out most of our savings and put our family finances past it's stretching point. To make ends meet we have to find ways of cashing in on stuff we've gathered over the years and that are perhaps less than useful in todays economy and that can be converted to cash, like that old clunker sitting in your driveway gathering rust. There's a lot of things that still hold value to others sitting around your home. Selling them to family car buyers can be a great way of simplifying your life and getting your clutter back in control.

One man's trash is another man's treasure

In Europe today the trend is to arrange things without money. Trading and giving away things is a good way of bypassing the flailing money system and it helps to recycle and reuse things. One of the more succesful sites in the Netherlands is “free stuff” where people can list things they are done with, like furniture that is no longer in use and people can come and pick this up for free. Doing it for free has the advantage that a things find their ways to peoples home. In spite of the crisis in money, people still own a lot of things and rather than paying for storage or for having it removed it's an easy and fun way to get to know people and lessening the pressure of garbage on our environment.

Recycling can be profitable as well. That old wreck that is cluttering up your driveway or garage can be sold a a profit. This way you can convert something that is a hindrance to you into something that can enhance your life, like cash. Selling your car can be done profitably at http://www.familycarbuyers.com/

Ask and you shall be given

There's also a trend, coupled with the free stuff initiatives that is called: “Ask for it”. People who dare to ask for what they need have a much greater chance of getting it than those who don't, is the simple filosofie behind the idea. There's a great many things that go from hand to hand because of people asking for it. And it's not all just junk either, I've seen people ask for Ipads and planetickets and get them, because someone had what they were looking for and didn't need it anymore.

Giving away stuff you're done with is also a way of contributing to a better standard of living for people who are down on their luck. In the past few months I've gotten a fat-boy from someone who no longer needed it and I've gotten rid of several cookbooks which I don't need because I allready know how to cook. I've gotten a wonderful stylish lamp and an end table from some nice people who didn't want it anymore and I've given away a bicycle that needed just a bit of repair, like new tires and a new lock.

Spiritual cleansing

Spiritually it's a good thing for the soul to clean out stuff that you don't need. A good practise in letting go, letting go of your attachment to stuff. There's a classic piece by American comedian George Carlin about stuff. Giving up our attachment to stuff is a very buddhist, new age, spiritual cleansing sorta thing which means that George was probably way ahead of his time on that point.

Some things have intrinsic value though and although giving stuff away is good for the soul, making money is also a concern. In particular getting some cash for your junk car can help meet the bills. There's a lot of components to a car that can and should be reused and selling your junker to www.familycarbuyers.com. They even come and pick it up at your home and give you a good price for it.

How to quite paying for gasoline, buying an electric car

A new car for the new year

If you're still driving an old vehicle that is drinking gasoline like water and perhaps even burning oil, pay attention! You're burning money and killing the environment! Time to sit down at the kitchen table and look over the options for a new car. Now I don't know your wallet so I don't know what kind of money you have to spend, but you can look at a few options for getting money as well. Selling your old car to family car buyers for instance, instead of trading it in, might be a good way to add some money to your pocket book.

There's many ways to go about buying a new car and many things to consider, so I'm going to focus on buying an electric car because I care about the environment. Now we all know that electric cars are better for the environment and get a lot better milage for your money, in particular if you go ahead and put some solar panels on your roof as well to recharge the battery with. Also recharging is offered in a growing number of places. If you're an average Joe, driving a maximum of 50 miles to work and maybe to the lake on the weekends, the average electric car will get you there and back on one charge.

Hybrids?

If you're not that average and have to drive long distances in your vehicle, a hybrid might be the way to go. This you can run on gasoline when necessary and on electricity when available. In addition running the car on gas allows you to recharge your batteries, in the smartest of cars they even store the energy you waste on braking. Also, the technology is relatively new so expect improvements to be made on your vehicle for some time, making our dependence on fossil fuels drop dramatically, with all the political advantages internationally.

If you have to go more than 50 but less than 100 miles to your place of employment (where you have to spend 8 hours earning your keep) you might want to talk to your employer about putting a recharging station in the parking lot. That way you can still use your car to go to work and back and half the electricity will be on your employers tab. With a little investment in solar panels this could work out very well for both of you. And 8 hours is ample time to recharge your batteries! This might eliminate the need for a hybrid and give you the option of buying a fully electric car.

Picture perfect: an electric car and solar panels

So let's make some calculations. Let's say you're driving 100 miles a day on average, going to work and back, etc. This means you drive a total of 36.500 miles yearly. Give or take a few miles, let's say it's 40.000 a year (for easy calculation)

Gasoline is $3,60 a gallon now, and more likely to become more expensive than less so, but for the sake of argument let's say it's going to be an average of $3,50. Your current family car, that old clunker you are going to sell tohttp://www.familycarbuyers.com get's about 20 miles to the gallon? You should be so lucky you say? We'll go with 20 MpG anyway...

This means you buy 2.000 gallons of gasoline each year. At $3,50 that means you're spending 7.000 dollars a year on gasoline alone! Average family, average use, average expenditure on a family car, am I right? Your situation may be a little or a lot different so you best do your own math on this one. If you have the money to invest in an electric car in combination with solar panels your average expenditure goes down to zero.

The electric car is free!

Buying an electric vehicle isn't cheap. However driving it is going to be a lot cheaper, up to zero expenditure in combination with solar panels (and a good deal with your boss for charging during the daytime). So how can you afford nót to buy the electric car?

What's the cost of a new electric car? You can purchase one round about 35.000 dollars, which would mean that if you had the money in cash you would start saving yourself 7.000 a year. The solar panels to feed your car would run about 7000 dollars as well. This means in only six years time you will have saved on fuel the full cost of a car and solar panel system. Put a different way: If you drive this car for 6 years it's essentially a free car.

If you have to get a car loan the interest on that is all you pay on top of what you would normally pay for gasoline alone. Selling your old car at family car buyers will give you a bit of capital and perhaps you have some savings so you won't need to loan the full amount. Interest is steep but remember, you'll be saving yourself 7000 a year (almost 600 a month) in gasoline cost.

Worth considering ain't it?

Why pay for gasoline when it's ever more expensive: the alternative is here!

Why bring your paycheck to the pump?

Sit down some day and think about all the money you've been spending on fuel! Your old family car, the one that get's maybe 25 miles to the gallon on a good day has served you well over these years but it has also guzzled up a major portion of your income. Not to mention that fuel cost is on the rise still! Time to put a stop to it and leave the oilbaron's servitude and consider the alternative. Time to get rid of that old junker, sell my car for cash and invest in an electric car. Because electric cars are the way of the future and you might need to get one today to keep up with the wave of the future.

Fuel cost is a major portion of your family budget, on a par with the cost of renting a home or paying a mortgage. I've heard stories a few years back that the complete income of one of the partners in a marriage went to cover fuel alone. Insane amounts of gasoline are needed to keep people on the road and incredible amounts of money go into the open jaws of the oil industry. It really doesn't matter if these are Texas oil barons we're feeding or Middle Eastern Oil Sheiks. Truth is we're getting the short end of the stick no matter what.

Democratization of energy

There's a revolution going on and we're all part of it. We're democratizing our energy consumption and taking the production of energy into our own hands. Too much of our money has gone to gasoline, electric companies and other sources of energy when the sun is beaming down on us constantly. Solar panels are showing up all over the place and people are getting off the grid and onto smartgrids: sharing energy in coöperative efforts with their neighbors. Solar panels, wind turbines: people are taking their own energy production back from big companies.

I see at least two reasons for this trend:

1. Of course there's the rising cost of energy. It's quite simply becoming relatively cheap to produce your own, because the electric companies, gascompanies and assorted others are overcharging customers left and right to make more money for their shareholders.
2. Underperformance of electric companies. Power outages are becoming more frequent and it appears that the current net needs some big revisions (meaning more rise of cost). It also doesn't seem very efficient to make energy in one place and transport it longdistance, when form most places there's ample local energy in wind and sun.

Going off the grid is going to be the trend, with technology improving in leaps and bounds and startup cost getting lower by the month.

Hook up your car to your solar panels

It's time to act. To grab the bull by the horns and take your energy consumption and production back into your own hands. You can save money every day on your car by selling your old gasoline consuming vehicle to places like original cash for cars and put the money towards solar panels and an electric car. Today's electric cars have enough range for average, every day use (just think about how much you normally drive in a day).

Even without solar panels and essentially free solar energy, the electric car runs at half the cost that your classic gasguzzler does. If you save up the money you would normally spend on gas and put it towards a nice family vacation you can finally make that trip to Hawaiï you've always dreamt about.

Getting stinky old clunkers off the road. Good idea? Or sinister plot?

Yes we can!

A car is a means of getting from A to B in a relatively comfortable fashion and preferably quickly. Now I don't think there's an aware person in the world who doesn't know that cars also consume non-renewable, polluting resources, at least the cars we used to build. The old cars were built like a tank, weighed a ton and if you listened real hard you could hear a slurping sound in the back, that was your gasoline being consumed. There's a new car out that has that same slurp in it, the Hummer, but let's not go there. In an effort to become less dependent upon fossil fuels, the US government, like it's European counterparts offered cash for clunkers, really old vehicles that were the most polluting of all. I'm not sure how the roads looked after that in the US, but here in Europe it was a very satisfactory run programme, removing some of the worlds worst polluters from our cities and in doing so, making a contribution to a more sustainable future. So can I sell my car for cash? I think you'd better!

Licenced and bonded

Of course, in America there was the original cash for cars programme, licenced and bonded offering top dollar for your used car, trying to get you to sell it for cash to people who really want your old car, instead of trading it in to your used car dealer who according to the cash for cars people, have very little interest in your clunker. Either way, the US government offered cash for clunkers in an effort to clean up the environment and then of course there was the highly contested FOX news piece that Glenn Beck did. I included the video here.

Makes you wonder...

His position is that the government website related to the cash for clunkers program has a warning online that effectively allows your government access to all your computer files. Now, what is the deal here? According to Glenn Beck the text he warns people about is a privacy act from 1974. He never produces the text online, but instead provides the supposed text on a big screen.

In the same program, almost in the same sentence he scares people by warning them to not go to the supposed link on this website, not to check this out. He frightens people into believing that the government has cookies and has evil intent to pry into your personal belongings, your personal files and can even tapping into your phonecalls.

Now I can't help but wonder: Why in the world would the American government be in the least interested in your vacationpictures, your private conversations with your daughter who is away at college or your dare I say it? “Secret erotic images” squirreled away in some corner of your computer. Does that make sense?

Original Cash for cars will not run out of money!

The government programme as I understand it was very succesful, in fact it went offline in a few days because the funds allotted to it were all gone. Thankfully the American people weren't scared enough to fall for this rather obvious attempt at making the government look like, what did he call it “evil tzars” instead of celebrating the succesful programme that took over 22.000 gasguzzlers off the road in favor of more economic vehicles and less polution. The fact that their website was taken off the air later doesn't mean the privacy act Glenn Beck and Fox contended was on there was actually on there. It meant that the program had succesfully taken so many cars off the road that the programme ran out of money. Something that is not likely to happen at the original Cash for Cars. Their programme is not likely to run out of money because it is how they make their money! So don't hesitate to bring in that old clunker you've got littering your driveway. Or maybe, don't even bother bringing it in! They'll pick it up right outside your door. Now that's service for ya!

Live long and prosper: how to buy longevity promoting groceries

We live on a third of what we eat, the rest is what our doctors live on

I'm not sure who first coined that phrase but I think there's a lot of truth in that statement but a bit of fallacy as well. I'm not one for a spartan lifestyle with calorie-deficient diets and constantly watching my weight, which is probably why I am obese in the first place. Obesity is one of the factors that contribute to all sorts of diseases that shorten a person's lifespan. There are many other contributors. Here's some:

1. A sedentary lifestyle: sitting around a lot, not doing much of anything makes your body weak and unresponsive.
2. Overexercising: going to excesses of excersize, in a way many heroes of the sporting world do is very bad for your health. The average lifeexpectancy of a sportshero is much lower than that of the general public.
3. Stress: this should by rights be on the first place. Stress kills people, slowly and methodically. In addition it doesn't make for a fun life.
4. Smoking, drinking and doing drugs is generally bad for your health, even prescription drugs. The prevalence of such drugs in America is stunning to me.

So what should you be putting in your grocery bag when you want to live long and prosper?

Eat to live, not live to eat

The first answer to what you should be taking home from your grocery store is “less”. Sounds simple but it's true, we tend to overeat and in doing so we are subtracting years from our lives. But of course there's more to it than that.

The types of food we eat mean a lot to our system. It's not just about content either, but that is certainly a factor. A fresh look at some of the staple foods of America.

• Cereal. If you can find one that is sugarfree, perhaps honey sweetened, and certainly free of any artificial coloring and flavoring (including sugar substitutes) that would be a good thing to eat. Don't use milk with it though, milk is for baby cows, not people. If you must have milkproducts then go for sour milkproducts such as yoghurt.
• Mashed potatoes. If you buy the potatoes (organic of course) and you cook them yourself and mash them up with very little butter (real organic butter) then you might eat this.
• Vegetables. Fresh veggies you can eat a lot of. Hardly any of them are fattening and all of them are very healthy. However! Don't eat green leaves more than twice a week and don't ever reheat things like spinach: leafy greens that you eat cooked. Variety is key: use many different vegetables each week.
• Fruits. Apples have iron, pineapples have enzymes, kiwi's have oodles of vitamin C, more than any Oranges. As a rule of thumb though: Buy what is locally grown. If there's no Oranges where you live, you shouldn't be eating them.

Avoiding the bad stuff

Here's what to avoid putting in your durable holden bag at any cost:

• Anything freezedried or microwaved or needing such processing at home. In fact, first get rid of your microwave, then go shopping.
• Coffee, hot chocolate, black tea. Instead learn about the herbs and spices and their different properties and choose among their many healing qualities. Choose liquorice root tea of you have a sweettooth, but don't overdo it. (a cup a day max)
• Any food that is pre-processed: leave it at the store. It may be convenient, but it sure isn't food.