James Smith

I just saw the One Hundred Months campaign, and decided it was ripe for a bit of automated Twittering. So, 5 minutes hacking and we have One Hundred Months on Twitter. Code (as ever these days) is available from GitHub.

I'm amazed by what computers can do sometimes. This one seriously took me longer to publish to the world than to write.

In a fit of why-the-hell-not, I've just started writing my first gem for Ruby, which is going to be a wrapper around the AMEE carbon calculation engine. It's still in a very early incarnation, but more will be forthcoming soon. At the moment it can authenticate, and parse DataCategory nodes. DataItems and DataItemValues will be following after a short (UK-based) holiday. Source code and installation instructions are available from GitHub.

I read this article last night, about using Twitter to make machines talk, specifically Tower Bridge. "What a fantastic idea", I thought to myself. "Maybe I can do the same thing for climate change". Also, it would be a good way to flex my Ruby muscles a little and get some "fun" coding in for the first time since Amelia was born.

So, a couple of hours of Ruby later, and we have atmospheric CO2 updates on Twitter. The code is dead simple, and can be grabbed from GitHub.

Since I've been tracking my petrol usage on the Carbon Diet, I have realised that in the last 6 months, I have only used 3 tanks of fuel. The car is a 2-seater, basically just for me, no use for the family, and these days I never use it. I spent more on tax, insurance and servicing than fuel in the whole of the last year. It hardly seems worth having it.

So, considering I live out in the countryside where the buses don't run at useful times, commute just once a week to the station 10 miles away, but want to be able to go 20 miles to Guildford and back reasonably quickly from time to time without leaving my wife without a car, what can I replace my car with that is more environmentally friendly? Ideas, anyone?

Well, it's been quiet here recently, but that's because I've been working on a new project, which is slowly getting closer and closer to being ready. It's only open to testers at the moment, but there is now a tour which can be seen by anyone, so I thought I'd link it.

I present to you: The Carbon Diet!

The what now? Well, it's basically a carbon calculator on steroids. We've all seen the dodgy carbon calculators on various websites, but they're not really any good to tell you what you're really contributing. You can get a rough idea, but they're not great. The Carbon Diet is different. By entering easily-obtained data like actual electricity and gas readings, as well as fuel purchases, the site can calculate exactly what your contribution to climate change is, both for right now, and over time. It should allow people to really see how much CO2 they are producing, it should allow them to work out how best to reduce that amount, and it should prove to them that what they have done has worked.

If that sounds interesting, head on over and take the tour! If you want to help with the testing phase, then sign up and I'll get you sorted out :)