ronny.haryan.to

I love it when people develop clever power generators. Especially when it can be used to create a self sustaining environment where originally the environment “wastes” power.

This one is from the UK. Power is generated from a ramp that moves up and down as vehicles pass. The electricity generated can be used to power traffic lights and road signs. There are some videos on the website.

(via we make money not art).

Imagine the reactions you would get walking the streets of your neighbourhood in this robot/mecha vehicle from Sakakibara Kikai (too bad I can’t read Japanese well). It might be slow and won’t beat the traffic jams (unless you stomp all the cars), but it will definitely get you some attention. I would seriously imagine something like this will be useful outside the city, like exploration or navigating difficult terrains. If I made this, I would equip it with GPS and all sorts of navigation and communication devices you can imagine, plus a powerful computer and an efficient power source. Well, someone else actually made another kind of mecha, with flame throwers, no less, and is trying to sell it on eBay to fund their next mecha prototype.

I predict that before the year 2040 people like you and me could own this kind of robots, and some of the robots from animes I watched since I was a kid, or at least some of their features, would come to reality.

Update: Another mecha that looks like Gundam

Gara-gara membaca salah satu posting BoingBoing, dan teringat soal pemadaman listrik bergilir yang sering terjadi di Indonesia, jadi iseng nyari info tentang energi yang dihasilkan oleh treadmill yang ada di gym itu. Seberapa besar energi yang semestinya bisa dihasilkan? Kan sayang energi yang seharusnya bisa dikonversi dari tenaga gerak manusia itu menjadi energi listrik jadi terbuang. Walaupun mungkin kalau dipikir-pikir sih tidak besar.

Ternyata ada beberapa orang yang berpikiran sama. Idenya antara lain energi yang dihasilkan itu dikembalikan lagi ke power grid, atau digunakan untuk mensupply ke gym sendiri. Ada yang punya ide juga untuk memberi diskon gym berdasarkan besarnya energi yang dihasilkan.

Saya dari dulu selalu tertarik dengan sumber energi alternatif (non-fossil) yang bisa diperbaharui dan sustainable, antara lain solar cells, bio-diesel, arus laut, angin, dan lain-lainnya. Tapi kadang yang simple seperti tenaga manusia ini malah terlewatkan, mungkin karena energi yang dihasilkan sangat negligable dan tidak praktis untuk dijadikan sumber pembangkit listrik masal. Kecuali semua penduduk Indonesia diharuskan berlari di atas treadmill selama 3 jam sehari, lalu energi yang dihasilkan disimpan di baterai untuk digunakan sebagai penerangan malam harinya. Tapi ini tentu saja tidak masuk akal.

Tapi mungkin tidak perlu berpikir jauh-jauh. Mungkin energi yang dihasilkan cukup digunakan secara lokal saja. Misalnya kalau energinya dari treadmill ya digunakan untuk menghidupi sistem monitoring dari treadmill itu sendiri. Mirip seperti alat untuk merecharge baterai mobile phone atau GPS device di mana penggunanya harus memutar suatu tuas sampai menghasilkan energi yang cukup untuk merecharge baterainya di saat emergency, misalnya saat berpetualang di rimba belantara, hiking atau lagi off-road.

Ada sumber energi apa lagi yang bisa dihasilkan oleh tenaga manusia? Khususnya yang selama ini bisa dianggap terbuang begitu saja.

Update: Ada desa terpencil di Colombia bernama Gaviotas yang menjadi self-sufficient dengan mengimplementasikan ide-ide brilian. Informasi lebih lanjut.

Update 2007-03-06: Ternyata sudah menjadi kenyataan sekarang.

• Java

  Java technology is a portfolio of products that are based on the power of networks and the idea that the same software should run on many different kinds of systems and devices.

  Java is the name of Indonesia’s most densely-populated island. The name Java used by Sun is perceived to have come from the Java coffee which the developers fond of drinking.

• JavaScript

  JavaScript is the Netscape-developed object scripting language used in millions of web pages and server applications worldwide. Netscape’s JavaScript is a superset of the ECMA-262 Edition 3 (ECMAScript) standard scripting language, with only mild differences from the published standard. Contrary to popular misconception, JavaScript is not “Interpretive Java”. In a nutshell, JavaScript is a dynamic scripting language supporting prototype based object construction. The basic syntax is intentionally similar to both Java and C++ to reduce the number of new concepts required to learn the language. Language constructs, such as if statements, for and while loops, and switch and try … catch blocks function the same as in these languages (or nearly so.)

  Netscape was not creative enough by picking a confusingly similar name to Java, although there is no relation whatsoever between Java and JavaScript. Probably just to hop along Java’s popularity at the time. I like the original name, LiveScript, better.

• Jakarta

  The Jakarta Project offers a diverse set of open source Java solutions and is a part of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) which encourages a collaborative, consensus-based development process under an open software license.

  Jakarta is also the capital of Indonesia.

• Komodo

  ActiveState Komodo is the award-winning, professional integrated development environment (IDE) for dynamic languages, providing a powerful workspace for editing, debugging and testing your programs. Komodo offers advanced support for Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl and XSLT, and runs on Linux, Solaris and Windows.

  Komodo is the name of an Indonesian island, popular for the Komodo Dragons which can only be found in just a few places in the world.

• Kupu

  Kupu is a ‘document-centric’ open source client-side editor for Mozilla, Netscape and Internet Explorer. Inspired by Maik Jablonski’s Epoz editor, it was written by Paul Everitt, Guido Wesdorp and Philipp von Weitershausen (and several other contributors, for a complete list refer to the CREDITS.txt file) to improve the JavaScript code and architecture, pluggability, standards support, support for other webservers than Zope (which was the original target platform for Epoz), configurability and a lot of other issues.

  Kupu-kupu is an Indonesian word for butterfly.

• Karapan Sapi

  Karapan Sapi is Web Application generator, based on Struts Framework. Karapan Sapi will generate some common code that always repeated in developing web application.

  Karapan Sapi is a popular bull race event from the island of Madura in East Java.

Any others?

Found this one on the news today:

A MELBOURNE invention that claims to slash vehicle petrol bills by up to 20 per cent and reduce harmful engine emissions will go on sale tomorrow.

This is what the distributor has to say about it:

Typically, a fuel injection system only vaporises 80 to 85% of fuel injected into a combustion chamber. The remaining 15 to 20% maintains its liquid form and is wasted through incomplete vaporisation. Vaporate minimises this vapor loss to provide average savings between 10 to 20% on total fuel costs for 6cyl & 8cyl family cars and larger 4WDs.

Vaporate costs about AU $300 and must be installed by a mechanic. Repco (the distributor) claims that normally it can be done in under 2 hours. And there’s a Flash illustration showing how it works on the Vaporate website. It doesn’t seem too complicated, but I just don’t get it at first. I’m neither an engineer nor a mechanic by any means. How does attaching a thick metal ring improve the vaporisation process? I suspected it has something to do with heat, and looks like I’m in the right direction, it uses a clever trick with pressure and temperature as answered by this explanation.