VENI VIDI REFECI – Wombling free! Rise of Maker Man, or how I managed to avoid spending a lot on a new monitor while philosophising about how the Universal Soldier really is to blame and also creating my longest blog post title yet.

The title means (in Latin) I came, I saw, I repaired. My step son, who’s pretty handy too, says he is going to get me a T shirt with this slogan on after the following all took place. In case readers don’t know, “maker” refers to the online trend for people to make their own - like growing-your-own, but with more carpentry and metalwork!

Maker links: Wiki article about makers - Maker faire - Make magazine 

Transition initiatives (click for a link to Jersey in Transition’s website – or Facebook page) are also keen on making and mending to demonstrate that there is another way besides buying and chucking away until people have “used it up and worn it out - because there’s nothing left in this whole world that they care about” (Odyssey’s only UK #1 single) .

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Now to the nitty-gritty of this post.

My computer monitor started flickering badly a couple of weeks ago whenever it was switched on. The flickering would settle down after a minute or so but the period was getting longer every day. I started to think I would be needing a new monitor, as I was not expecting it to be repairable. You know what modern electronics are like. Before I revved myself up to be a consumer again, I Googled for the problem and - hallelujah! - there were quite a few forums and Youtube videos that suggested the likely cause for this fault, which is mostly the electrolytic capacitors on the power supply board. Apparently quite a few manufacturers use low spec parts in this area – in my case, my Samsung 226BW used CapXon capacitors, which supposedly last about 2000 hours or three years and pretty much take you just to the end of the warranty period. Now doesn’t that almost look like someone designed the monitor to fail so it gets replaced (too) early? Most people would assume that it could not be economically repaired, as indeed I almost did, and I normally always try to repair anything that breaks first before I splash out on a new one. That makes me a bit of a rarity outside the transition and make and mend movements. There’s probably much larger numbers of people who are fed up with goods failing and breaking down too early but WHY DON’T THEY PROTEST ABOUT IT? Consumer pressure these days is just about the only thing manufacturers listen to, now that integrity, longevity and fairness have gone so out the window now we are in the 21st century. Yet so many just say “mustn’t grumble”

 

 

and soldier on without a squeak. Well Universal Soldiers, here’s a message for you. Every time you say nothing or do nothing, you reinforce the very situation you grumble about under your breath or bitch about to your friends and colleagues. You know what you should do, why don’t you do it?

 

“He’s the universal soldier and he really is to blame, but his orders come from far away no more, they come from him and you and me, and brothers can’t you see, this is not the way we put an end to war”

Phew – back to the mundane. Having obtained three new caps for under a fiver including postage and packing (I ordered higher spec ones – 35V instead of 25V ones, so they should last longer) I set to a few days ago following the video below and a step by step set of photos on the Overclockers forum which was a bit easier.

What pleased me first was that the case of the monitor was quite easy to split – it holds together using plastic clips, which often are not only hard to get apart but sometimes break. Manufacturers design these things so they can put them together as fast as possible and do not often seem to bother if that makes them harder to open for repair. Anyway, using a butter knife and debit card as levers, it popped open easily.

As I used to make electronic circuits when I was a teenager, I found I didn’t need to dismantle everything as thoroughly as the guides did so I managed to desolder the offending caps and resolder them (with the aid of Merlin, my trusty assistant Siamese) without going to their slightly excessive lengths. The three caps that usually go on this monitor are the three with arrows in the bottom right of the second pic. The “blown“ caps were immediately obvious once I got the power supply out – the tops were not only domed instead of flat but had started to leak the brown electrolyte from inside too. The two 830 µFs were blown but the 330 µF appeared Ok - I replaced it anyway as it was the same spec as the dodgy two.

Here is my assistant Merlin after the outside case and bits have been separated.

The power supply board is the right hand (slightly raised) one.  Merlin felt like a nap afterwards, because it was quite hot work in the sun.

 

The offending power supply board with the 3 dodgy caps arrowed (bottom right)

 

Can you see the leaking electrolyte on the top of the two larger caps?

Both of them are domed upwards because of the pressure – the smaller cap has still got a flat top but would no doubt blow shortly after putting the monitor back together - if it wasn’t replaced right now… You can just see Merlin’s paws as he formulates his strategy.

 

Merlin having a think about how he is going to tackle the soldering with this weird (borrowed) “solder gun.”

However, that will be after he has had another nap. He has already sorted out three new replacement capacitors.

 

First capacitor “legs” fed through the holes in the circuit board

Make sure to get the correct polarity leg through the right hole…

 

 

All three capacitors soldered on. Legs not yet cleaned up and clipped off

Excuse the rubbish soldering  - Merlin is only a cat and he said the soldering iron was not the best he’d used. I tend to agree with him but I’d borrowed it so beggars shouldn’t be choosers, I suppose. I tidied up the solder and flux (brown stuff) on the joints after I took this pic, although Merlin claimed he was a bit offended.

 

Just the back to go back on now

Merlin has disappeared for some snacks after his hard work and has left me to do the easy bit.

 

If you’ve got this model monitor; here’s a Youtube video below

“Repairing a Samsung SyncMaster 226 BW monitor”

showing you fairly clearly what to do, narrated in English by “Retroswede” who is indeed Swedish.

There are other videos out there for other breeds of monitor so this dodgy capacitor problem looks like a common cause of failure. It opens up the possibility of getting nearly free monitors by wombling (see urban dictionary for definition) for discarded office monitors and fixing them up.

Making good use of the things that we find, things that the everyday folks leave behind

One of the Wombles’ mottos is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish". Quite Transitiony. here is Series 1, Episode 1

“Orinoco and the big black umbrella”

Alderney’s commemorative stamp issue – Author Elisabeth Beresford went there to live and retire.

Not the Paralympics

This odd but haunting video is not anything directly to do with the Paralympics but, curiously, it resonates strongly with them.

Sue Austin has been a wheelchair user since 1996, but has dedicated herself to “finding ways to understand and represent my embodied experience as a wheelchair user, opening up profound issues about methods of self-representation and the power of self-narration in challenging the nexus of power and control that created the ‘disabled’ as other.”

 

Fantastic!

Here is some delicious sunset tree (and finally village) surfing. Click here for Davide Guiducci's facebook page. He lives near Villa Minozzo in Italy.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes

Here is a simple test. Watch this animation of successive months of data from NASA’s AQUA satellite. It is a record of methane release from the Arctic from March 2003 until March this year. If it doesn’t send a chill down your spine, you simply don’t know enough important stuff. If you see it and think “so what?” and do nothing – ask nothing – learn nothing – you are a danger to everybody else. And your children. And their children.

New “Story of Stuff” video

Today I’m featuring the latest video from Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff stable (see below). 

This one is called “The Story of Change” and it has just been released.
Nowadays it’s not enough to simply try to be a green consumer; actual citizen involvement and action is required as well to create sufficient pressure for change that institutions, governments, civil servants and corporations will react and adapt until we get to the promised land of sustainability – I have a dream…

There are phrases that advertising types use, particularly when marketing what they want us to see as greener products. These are such as “doing one’s bit” or “every little bit helps”. Well, this marketing speak unfortunately sometimes achieves a few things that are counter-productive

1) They help to sell products that might appear greener than the competition but are not necessarily green enough to pass muster sustainability-wise – “you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps” - David Lloyd George. Genuinely environmentally friendly products, which might be more expensive but last considerably longer, can be crowded out by superficially green but short lived products that ultimately prove more expensive in real terms and more wasteful because they need replacing more often.

2) Worse, they defuse any social responsibility that the consumer may have felt impelling them to make a genuinely green purchase – or even not to make a purchase by considering whether they need the product at all. The consumer buying the greenish product may feel that they have done their bit – which leads to…

3) Consumers feel that they are trying to “do their bit” so can feel resentment because they don’t understand when environmentalists never seem to accept it was “enough”, so consumers can switch off in high dudgeon and the environmental case gets knocked back.
Having said all that, let’s get back to the video which promotes the idea that it’s not enough to simply change what one buys – it’s not even enough to

 

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" - Gandhi

 

Annie draws parallels with the great reform movements of the past such as anti-apartheid, the US Civil rights movement, Gandhi’s Indian independence movement (which didn’t just stop at encouraging personal change)  and the early successes of the environmental movement in getting anti-pollution laws passed which all came about because of a lot of protesting, campaigning, citizen pressure and occasional fighting. Just buying recycled toilet roll is not enough to cut the sustainability mustard.

THE STORY OF CHANGE

Crrraazzzy Climate Crock

We’re having a rotten wet and cold summer locally. I had to lift my garlic early to stop it rotting in the ground. In the UK there are huge floods – the wettest drought they have ever had! In America, they are burning up, breaking all time heat records. The U.S. government declared more than 1,000 counties in 26 states drought disasters on Thursday.

Here below is another in the Climate Crock of the Week series that I occasionally feature here. Peter Sinclair does many more “Crocks” but, to be honest, he has now convincingly debunked just about every argument and piece of misdirection that the sceptic/denialists have ever come out with so I just feature the more noteworthy and newsworthy ones these days.

This video is called  “Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives”. It showcases this year’s extreme out-of-the-ordinary weather events in the USA.  Final proof that the very latest extreme weather events are the climate changing up a gear can only be finally shown statistically to be happening after 20-30 more years data, although people’s common sense must be beginning to let them know what their future is likely to be.

What we are seeing are already statistically unusual/unprecedented events full stop. If people didn’t believe the previous clear statistical proof that the planet has been warming, owing to the misdirecting efforts of the “sceptic” deceivers and misleaders, perhaps they’ll start to take notice when their homes are burnt or swept away in floods and food prices start to shoot up. The US has got such a severe drought now that there is likely to be an extreme failure of the corn (maize) harvest.

Was that all just climate alarmism? I think not. The weasel word “alarmism” suggests there is no real problem – that it’s just those doomsayers crying wolf again. Move along, there's nothing to see here. The actual situation we are in is very alarming. The wolf really is at the gate. Bear in mind that it is believed that there is around a thirty year lag, from any increase in greenhouse gases, before the planet responds fully by reaching its new equilibrium temperature (just taking the “fast feedbacks” into account let alone the long term slow ones…). If we stopped using all fossil fuels tomorrow morning, things will continue to get worse for at least thirty years, if the science is right. If there are positive feedbacks and tipping points that are stronger or closer than anticipated, things might not stop getting worse for a very long time.

There are those who say that people won’t respond to such dire predictions – that somehow they will turn a blind eye to the threat because they don’t like the idea of anything shaking their "glass half full" ideology. Well what WILL get through to these crazy arrogant irresponsible people? Does their wishful thinking based on ignorance of reality give them the right to vote to expose the rest of us to whatever might happen? That would be democracy gone mad and yet we still have the apparently mindless mainstream media spreading the B.S. of the denialists in a misguided attempt to regurgitate what they were taught at journalism college – that they must always show “balance”. Journalistic balance is based on the clearly fallacious idea that there are always two sides to every story;  the media present the two sides in the climate wars as if they were of equal value and give them equal prominence. Truth and science trumps lies, stupidity, deceit and ignorance and it’s about time the media woke up to their true responsibilities. Start investigating the truth and report on it. Stop taking the money until you do your jobs right!



This is a companion video about sea level rise

Snippets from the Interwebs 10

Yet another digest of snippets from the Intertubes. A lot is going on that the mainstream media barely reports on.




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Last week the state of Hawaii introduced a state-wide ban on plastic bags, becoming the first US state to do so. Now the city of Los Angeles has banned them too becoming the largest US city with a ban
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Globally, Mexico ranks 24^th in wind capacity and is expected to jump to 20^th, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). Mexico only produced three megawatts (MW) of wind power in 2005, but now has almost 400 times that amount and by the end of this year will have two gigawatts (GW). Mexico has the 14^th largest economy in the world, is the 11^th largest greenhouse gas emitting country, and is the world’s 7^th largest producer of oil. Mexico also has Mexico City, which has some of the most severe air pollution in the world.
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Microsoft has committed to become carbon neutral beginning on July 1, the start of the company’s new fiscal year. The shift results from three years of internal discussions within the company to improve Microsoft’s carbon footprint and environmental performance. The company will roll out the new changes, including a new accounting system, across its operations in over 100 countries.

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Our Economic Development Minister Senator Alan Maclean has just been trying to drum up business for Jersey in Israel. Here’s what some of their entrepreneurs are doing -
Rafael Aharon, an Israeli entrepreneur, has come up with a plan to make paper from human waste. This might sound unsavoury, but he sees an untapped business with plenty of potential.
Aharon is the CEO of Applied Clean Tech (ACT), a sewage recycling company. Their system is an “integrated solution combining reduced sludge formation for municipal waste water treatment plants (WWTPs) with recycling of waste water bio-solids.”
They take sewage poop they treat it and make paper out of the fibre they find therein.
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In April, Mexico’s House of Representatives passed a new piece of climate change legislation, making it only the second country in the world behind the UK and its Climate Change Act to do so, once it is approved by Mexico’s Senate. The law calls for reducing carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050.
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In March Virent and Virdia, formerly HCL CleanTech, announced the successful conversion of cellulosic pine tree sugars to drop-in hydrocarbon fuels within the BIRD Energy project, a joint program funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructure and the BIRD Foundation. The project, which commenced in January 2011, successfully demonstrated that Virdia’s deconstruction process generated high-quality sugars from cellulosic biomass, which were converted to fuel via Virent’s BioForming® process.
Virent used Virdia’s biomass-derived sugars to produce gasoline and jet fuel, the latter being sent to the U.S Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for analysis where it passed rigorous testing. Tim Edwards of the Fuels Branch of the AFRL said, “This fuel passed the most stringent specification tests we could throw at it (such as thermal stability) under some conditions where conventional jet fuels would fail. This fuel is definitely worth further evaluation.”
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Here’s a good website – ifixit.com - for those who want to relearn how to fix things. It mainly concentrates on electrical devices

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In March, the Danish government once again threw down the green energy gauntlet by pledging to generate 35% of its total energy from renewable sources by 2020 and 100% by 2050
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It would be good to find a site that rates thousands of products for such things as health, ethical and environmental performance.
Hence GoodGuide, a Web site and iPhone application that lets consumers dig past the package’s marketing spiel by entering a product’s name and discovering its health, environmental and social impacts
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Volvo Group, the transportation equipment manufacturer, has set a tall order for itself. It wants to reduce its carbon emissions from the construction equipment, buses and trucks it makes by 30 million tons by the end of 2014. To put the Volvo/WWF alliance in perspective, the 30 million ton reduction goal is the equivalent of the total carbon dioxide emitted by all of Sweden over a seven month period
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This website lets you examine in detail the performance of Germany’s huge photovoltaic sector in  real time – none at night! On this site you can view at any time the total output of all PV plants in Germany installed up to the specified cutoff date. As required, you can view this information as an absolute value or as a percentage of total installed output
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Moving along with Scotland’s ambitious plans to be the European leader in wind energy, Korean-based Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) has announced that it will base its first European offshore wind project in Fife. The venture is said to be worth up to £100m and is expected to create 500 new jobs in the clean energy sector in Scotland.
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Hank (who maintains the website EcoGeek and sings songs about particle physics) runs a YouTube channel that celebrates nerdiness. This Internet community is now a huge part of pop culture among self-professed teenage nerds. Hank’s new spin-off channel SciShow, which publishes videos about popular science topics, has only being going for a month but already has 90 000 subscribers and 1 million views. So I was very excited when Hank created this entertaining, polished, and wonderfully accurate video about climate change. He discusses sea level rise, anoxic events, and even the psychology of denial: In which Hank details the five scariest things that will likely happen because of climate change.