fornax.net

Transport for London is installing digital screens in various places around the tube network to display ads, replacing the old system of sticking posters to the walls. The other day, I tweeted about an article that I think is both interesting and important in relation to this – do these digital screens have a smaller or larger carbon footprint than printed posters?

If you think about it, and as the article talks about, this is a fiendishly difficult question. If you really want to answer it, you’ll need to know the carbon cost of obtaining all the raw materials required to make all the components of the TV, what it costs to make the components, what it costs to ship the components to where they will be assembled, what the cost of assembly, testing and packaging is, what the cost of shipping the TV to the wholesaler is, what the cost of storing the TVs until they are sold is, the cost of shipping and installation of the TVs, and then, finally, the cost of running and maintaining them after they have been installed — and then you’ll need a similar calculation to figure out the carbon cost of posters.

For most people, including me, that seems like a question that you simply can’t answer. There’s just no way you could actually sit down and figure all these things out. Sure, I could probably figure out the carbon cost of the electricity to run the TVs vs. the carbon cost of some guys driving about with posters, but calculating the whole supply chain cost from beginning to end? It all seems too hard.

All of which is a very round-about way of saying that yesterday was my last day at Imagini, and that come Monday morning, I’ll be working for AMEE. I’m incredibly excited to be joining AMEE, because I believe that answering fiendishly difficult questions like the one above are vital, because everyone in the world should have a way of being able to calculate the total carbon footprint of everything.

Is there anything that can’t be made better by doing it with lego?

I’ve dumped the old hosting provider, and move the www.fornax.net server to Slicehost. So far, their service and support has been excellent!

Hopefully, everything was migrated across correctly, and all of the RSS feeds still work. Apologies in advance if this post ends up anywhere it should not — please let me know if that’s the case and I’ll be happy to fix it!

Finally painted the window frame in the spare room on the weekend. That’s just about all done now! Might take some photos once the masking tape comes off…

I finally decided that the 18 month budget forecast is looking good enough that I can afford to buy an iPhone, so I called up O2, and guess what? They are out of stock.

Oh well, next weekend!

As a result of recent tunnel vision with regards to tests, I’m running behind in terms of news, so I have only just seen that Anil, who I had the pleasure of working with at OpenX many years ago, has recently left last.fm, and started a Ph.D.

So, congratulations, mate! I am sure you will have a blast — hopefully, we can catch up for a beer soon…

Yay! I just passed my Life in the UK test.

Update: Since everyone keeps asking… 4 minutes.