The Tallest Timber Residential Structure In The World
You’d have thought that this would be somewhere like Japan, Scandinavia or perhaps Canada, but despite it’s name, the Stadthaus is in Murray Grove in the London Borough of Hackney.
Wikipedia says this about the building.
It is thought to be the tallest timber residential structure in the world.It was designed in collaboration between architects Waugh Thistleton, structural engineers Techniker, and timber panel manufacturer KLH.
Stadthaus is the first high-density housing building to be built from pre-fabricated cross-laminated timber panels. It is the first building in the world of this height to construct not only load-bearing walls and floor slabs but also stair and lift cores entirely from timber.
I like it and it shows how modern buildings don’t have to be constructed using traditional methods. It was also constructed in just 49 weeks and residents moved in ahead of schedule.
So as we need more housing and we need it quickly, perhaps we should build more houses and flats using these methods.
The End Of Television As I Knew It!
On the way to see Ipswich at QPR yesterday, I walked past the old BBC Television Centre at the White City.
The End Of Television As I Knew It!
It is all rather sad to see such an iconic building on the way down!
Royal Mail Iconography
I took these two pictures on Friday and Saturday respectively.
The brickwork has been saved and incorporated into the wall in the new Royal Mail sorting office in Islington and the Penford pillar box is behind the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush.
Weapons Of The Spirit
The BBC is showing a piece about the wartime history of the village of Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon, in saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis. The story is here on Wikipedia.
The title of this post comes from the documentary about the story, made by Pierre Sauvage, who was born and sheltered in Le Chambon.
The Fracking Story Is Now Dead
We won’t get much on fracking for a few days, weeks and even months, as the papers have decided to dig up that old chesnut of a story designed to sell newspapers; who actually killed princess Diana. Even that royalist rag, the Independent has the story.
Still as her death didn’t happen in Sussex, the police of that county must be very relieved.
The Enormous Amount Of Energy Used By Computer Servers
In all the hot air talked about fracking, wind power and nuclear power, very rarely does the argument stray into energy usage. The only thing people seem to worry about is the cost of their household energy bills and filling up their car.
But accpording to this academic report from Stanford University in 2010, over ten percent of all US electricity was used to power computer and IT equipment. Here’s the relevant part.
In 2010, over 10% of electricity in the U.S. was due to computer and IT equipment usage. At the current rate we’re going, analysts and experts figure that 10% of the world’s power bill will be spent on running computers. To give a more concrete example of how much energy this is, Dixon shows that one 50,000 square feet data center uses about 5 megawatts, but continuously. This energy output would satisfy the needs of 5000 homes. In another staggering example, assorted US data centers use a collective 7000 megawatt data centers from seven different plants; this is more power than is used by the State of Mississippi. Even more surprising is that this astronomical power consumption is just by the plants themselves – cooling systems use as much energy as the plants.
Also in this article in the FT. it says that in 2010, Goggle used about 258 Megawatts continuously.
Since this refers to 2010, I wonder how much of the UK’s energy usage goes in that area now.
According to this article, in 2012 average demand for electricity was 35.8 Gigawatt. Just imagine having to pay that bill!
So let’s assume that only five percent of that energy is used for computer servers, so that is 1790 megawatt. Bear in mind that the UK’s largest power station, Drax, has a capability of generating 3960 megawatts or seven percent of the UK’s electricity. So nearly half of its output and the enormous amount of CO2, Drax emits could be used to power computer equipment.
I need better figures here, but it would seem that a substantial part of UK electricity is used in computing.
But help is at hand in this area. To make computers use less power, you can do many things; like write better software and install more efficient cooling systems.
The biggest fight though is in the area of making chips that consume less electricity and there’s a war going on there, between the dominant Intel and the upstart from Cambridge called ARM. Whether Intel can hold off ARM is a subject for debate, but in a year or so, the average server will consume a lot less power than it does now. Unfortunately, the search, social networking, data storing and other IT companies will be a lot bigger, so all we will be doing with better technology is eating into the growth in energy usage.
I think though, this will mean that many large server farms will relocate to countries, where energy costs are lowest.
Can We Delay Fracking?
Or any other new means of energy creation for that matter?
There has just been a very heated debate about fracking on BBC Radio 5 Live and the amount of hot air produced could power the whole of Sussex without doubt.
Most of the arguments on both sides were fact-free and full of emotion, with accusations of lying and wrong facts from both sides.
The most significant energy news of the day is this story from the Guardian. It says that domestic energy use has dropped by a quarter since 2005.
More work in this field could actually delay the crunch, when we need to build lots of new power stations, be they powered by whatever.
That delay is the time to use to research every method of obtaining energy fully.
The trouble is this would probably give engineers and scientists enough time, to find a solution that ended all the arguments, so a lot of protesters and believers in uneconomic technologies would be kicked soundly into the long grass.
If I’d had a pound for every scientifically incorrect argument about energy I’d heard, I’d be a very rich man.
My Birthday Present To Myself!
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go back to the only mobile phone, I’ve ever been comfortable with; a Nokia 6310i.
My Birthday Present To Myself!
It arrived today and after charging it up, I can’t understand, why I didn’t buy another one earlier!
It does the things I need, like make and receive phone calls and texts and store useful pieces of information.
It’s also comfortable in your hand, in a way that modern phones just aren’t.
I got it on the Internet for £90, which may seem a lot for a twenty-year-old phone.
But then there is no substitute for good design.
Things I Really Want For My Birthday
Today is my birthday and a few years ago, I didn’t think I’d make the next one, let alone the fourth after my stroke.
I’m happy living here in leafy Dalston at the eastern edge of Hackney, but there are a few things, I want for my birthday.
The first is that, I’d love to get my breathing back to the level it was when I lived with C. All I’ve got is a permanently runny nose, just like I had as a child. Perhaps, it’s just London, although it really started after C died and got a lot worse when I had the stroke. If I look back on the last few years, there are times, when it goes, but why does it go. Two doctors have said it’s hay fever, but then another has said, I’ve no allergy except gluten. Certainly, the sea seems to make it better. So perhaps, I need to find an attractive widow, who lives by the coast in say Liverpool or Brighton.
I’d also like my bathroom finished, as it’s been a long time since the first builders started and then effectively gave up or went bust. The job started with the removal of the old bathroom in October last year.
I’d also like some stacking chairs for my living room to go with my table.
At least I’m getting one thing, I really really want and that is having supper in Arbutus.
But I suppose the best birthday present is outside my control. I did think about going to see the World Athletics Championships in Moscow this week. I didn’t, but I didn’t know that Mo Farah would be running in the final tonight. If I had, it might have swayed me.
But knowing my luck, he won’t win tonight! If it had been tomorrow, he’d have walked it.
Shanklin
I got off the Island Line train at the end, which was Shanklin.
As you can see I walked to the beach and then went back up the hill to the station.
I was glad to see a map, although the town had lots of finger posts and my original navigation system had no difficulty finding my way around.
The Anonymous Widower 