Smallist

Short answer: Yes. Long answer: as long as you think you’ll be waiting more than 10 seconds. It’s true that in the days of carburetors, it took lots of gas to start an engine. But with fuel injection, it’s a mere drip. In fact, in some Swiss cities, it’s the law to turn off the car at stoplights.

This info is from Celsias, a blog about global warming. (they’re against it.) After getting vague answers from the EPA and even Click and Clack, Mounties from the Canadian Office of Energy Efficiency finally gave a the benchmark number. Apparently they’re into it. So now, there’s a “homemade hybrid” anti-idling movement afoot. Cool!

Like many of you in the blog world, I have been seduced by David Allen’s promise of personal productivity. But like many of you, I lapse more than a nudist Catholic on a casual Friday. (note: rework joke, it makes no sense) Actually I lapse before I finish the book. I start out hopeful, enticed by the Lockean promise of the phrase “fresh paper,” and I start setting up buckets and contexts and whatnot. Then a few pages later, he uses the word “actionable,” and I have to put it down, take ten seconds, and reaffirm my basic political affiliations and instincts.

The basic problem with GTD is that for someone starting from complete disorganization, it’s too grandiose. I’m a fan of baby steps — incremental improvements that reward you enough to keep you playing.

Whence, the Writing Shit Down plan. Here are the rules:

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I thought these things were extinct, based on the fact that I only saw them in cartoons from the forties and fifties. But manual lawnmowers (or “reel mowers“) are still around, and they’re a lot easier to use than you might think. Not only are they quieter and easier to maintain, they also cut the grass instead of pulling it, which leads to healthier grass in the long run. And best of all for smallists, they take up a lot less space. Like everything else on the internet, they have their own advocate, who offers a few pointers. Among them:

• Don’t let the grass get ahead of you. That’s when these things tend to jam up and become a pain. Don’t let it go farther than a week. If you must, have someone do it with a power-model after a vaction.
• Walk at a very steady, brisk pace. Since your forward motion is what cuts the grass, you need to keep moving quickly to keep the blades spinning at their optimum speed. Slow down too much, and the grass will win.
• Mow in the morning. It’s cooler out, and since there’s no engine noise, no one will mind.

Of course, there are ways to avoid mowing altogether. Lesslawn.com has the story.

Vegetable gardening in containers. Keep it legal, kids.

There’s some basic, no-nonsense diet advice that’s pretty much the undisputed consensus. Here’s the things everyone agrees on:

• Eat lots of small meals throughout the day.
• Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.
• Avoid excessive, unrefined carbs.
• Eat fewer calories altogether.

These are all good tips, but there’s minor catch 22 due to a hidden variable: Preparation time. To eat fresh food and fewer carbs tends to increase preparation time, because vegetables have to be chopped, and ready-to-eat processed foods tend to be high-carb. Meanwhile, the economy of scale favors larger meals: if you’re going to chop broccoli, you may as well chop it all.

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So Boeing is unveiling a flying wing, and an MIT / Cambridge design team has a similar design for a silent, fuel efficient passenger jet. In the latter case, the fuel efficiency was a serendipitous side-effect of noise reduction.

Both promise fuel efficiencies, per passenger, similar to a Prius seating two people: 120 passenger miles per gallon. And they claim to do so by increasing efficiency by about 20 percent.

This made me stop and think. If a normal plane is getting 100 passenger miles per gallon, how bad can it really be? If you do a carbon footprint calculation, you’ll note that air travel is a big component of your footprint. But it’s precisely because you travel so far in a plane. It turns out that driving to california would put out roughly the same amount of CO2 as flying.

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Like most nerds, I like to have a second computer to experiment with, especially one that runs linux. And like almost everyone, I need a daily backup solution for my work files. Until now, I’ve been using a nondescript 7-year-old beige computer to do both. It sits in my desk’s tower cabinet (where my main computer would melt due to inadequate ventilation), and it’s set to automatically back up the main computer every 24 hours.

Problem is, it’s loud, hot, and draws lots of power. Which means it gets turned off a lot. Which sort of defeats the purpose of having a computer to do backups and futz with. So I need a computer that I can leave on 24-7, that doesn’t have a fan, and that can run linux. After the jump, two enticing options…

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If you want to see an efficient workspace, visit a jeweler and watch him do a repair. I live near Manhattan’s Diamond District, and I’ve had to take the odd watch or necklace in for a quick fix. I’m always amazed at how everything the jeweler needs is within arm’s reach. Light and magnification are focussed where they need to be, and all the most commonly used items are laying in plain view.

Here’s a few tips I’ve gleaned from observation: (more…)

OneBag is a fantastic resource for travelers despite their use of Comic Sans. Since 1996, they’ve been preaching the gospel of Smallistry, albeit in the limited domain of carry-on baggage. Here’s a rundown of my favorite tips from their site:

• “Bundle wrap” clothes to avoid wrinkling. Basically create a large roll of clothing with the nicest, largest stuff on the outside. Alternate collars on either side to keep a consistent thickness. The site has a great illustration here.
• Use the plastic bags your newspaper comes in to wrap shoes, if you’ve got extra pairs. Make sure to fill the shoes with small items, to conserve space.
• Wheels increase a bag’s weight 75% and sometimes remove almost half the storage space, so consider how useful they’ll be when considering what luggage to bring.
• If you must check baggage, remove or tape down padlocks, as they frequently get caught in the gaps between conveyor belts.
• You can get Inflatable Hangers, and they pack nice and small.

A lot of the site focuses on the needs of a third-world traveller, and may be a little off-topic for smallist, but it certainly whetted my appetite for adventure. For more tiny travel products, check out flight001.com

Norwich, England is going to start charging for parking by car length. (Of course, the law of unforseen consequences could lead to an upsurge in double decker coupes.) Via freakonomics.