jms

Try scraping two quartz crystals together and you'll see it for yourself!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence

You have to be careful to match the panels though - slightly different specs can cause problems for your setup. The same goes for batteries - mixing new and old will degrade your new batteries. (Lead acid batteries at least)

I wonder if any efficiency gains can be found by connecting the heat dump (outside heat exchanger) of the AC to the input of the hot water system?

The issue would be balancing the need for cold water to make the AC efficient and this being any use for heating up the water. Maybe with a larger smart tank that can vary the levels of water, or a secondary tank with pre-warmed AC water which can then be used by the hot water tank.

Australian taxi services are close to being a monopoly.

I've almost finished building a system for learning language specifically using spaced repetition.

Instead of basic flash cards, reads you the word (audio); then if you don't get it you'll be shown the word (visual); then you'll be read the word in context; then shown the word in context.

The system doesn't just drill you on single words, it tests comprehension on full sentences and documents too.

I'm currently putting the last polishes on to make sure new users can easily start learning. If you're interested, I'll announce the beta launch on my mailing list at www.hotglot.com , or if you're super keen email me at james @ hotglot.com and I'll give access to the alpha version.

If you swallow two (or one and it breaks in half), there's a risk that they'll clamp together inside you, with your intestines in between. Having played with neodymium magnets, having this happen to your finger or ear isn't pleasant, but the real risk is that they'll clamp together and tear a hole through your guts.

... causing my phone to refuse to let me use the camera!

I was getting helpful error messages something like: "Camera Error: Camera Error". After much searching, I found the solution... Uninstall Skype!

The question is, what's a better investment?

Investing in the home you live in gives you tax breaks (jurisdiction dependent).

You will look after your own home, instead of having renters with no vested interest.

You need access to a home anyway, why involve a 3rd party (landlord).

The leverage you can get is fantastic, and the interest payments are generally similar to what you'd be paying in rent anyway.

This does no apply to Buy to Let however, the advantages above don't really apply. A second property makes much less financial sense to me.

Having said that, I currently rent. I'm not settled down enough to tie myself to a single location, Australian property is super expensive (I think overpriced, but that's just a gut feel), and I'm keeping my non startup risk profile low to try and balance the risk I take on as an entrepreneur.

I use SRS (Mnemosyne) for memorising traditional Irish tunes. It feels like each tune is a bit too much of a large chunk to remember at one time for best use of an SRS (you're supposed to chop the information up into the smallest element possible), but the benefits of the system are amazing. Before I started using SRS I'd just practise the tunes I liked and already knew!, with the new tunes, and anything in the middle got forgotten about. Now mnemosyne forces me to practise tunes that I don't know, and the number of tunes I'm fluent in has increased dramatically.

I'm also building a language learning startup that uses SRS. If you're interested in trying the system out in beta, or being notified when it's ready for general consumption, email me at languagebeta@jh.id.au and let me know which language you want to learn.

Emacs is used as an operating system (interface), by blind users! Emacspeak adds speech syntheses and more to Emacs, and can do better than traditional screen readers in many ways due to being able to easily access the underlying lisp states easily.

My father has difficulty seeing, and spends most of his computer time within Emacs, occasionally switching to Gnome (for certain websites) or a speech enabled console.

I'd find stories about this interesting too.

I took a couple of weeks to camp by a lake and attempt to learn kitesurfing, while working in the evenings. In the test run with my solar panel at home, everything worked well - charge batteries during the day, work at night with a dim screen.

In the wild I soon found that mobile internet power usage goes up dramatically if you're a long way away from the mobile tower, it's hard to work without a decent seat (I took my motorcycle, so didn't have a car to sit in), and the light was just too bright in the days/evenings.

Next time I'm going to try with a van =D.

Also, to answer a couple of the other questions:

- Sand wasn't generally a problem for me, except I blew up my fancy 240/12V laptop power adaptor when some wet grit got into the connectors. - Sunlight was only really a problem in regards to battery power; screen brightness is a big contribution to power usage, so there's a trade off.

Back when I worked for a small ISP, we had a diesel generator in case the power went out longer than our UPS batteries would last. This provided a great sense of security until we decided to test the system by powering off the main break and... it didn't start!

It turns out the emergency stop button was pushed in. Easy enough for us to fix then, but if the power had gone out at 4am it would have been quite another matter.

After that incident, we turned off the main breaker to the building weekly. It was great fun, as most of our offices were in the same building. We had complaints for the first couple of months until everyone got used to it and had installed mini UPS's for their office equipment.

We did actually have to use the generator for real a while later. Someone had driven their car into the local power substation, and it was at least a month until it was fixed. Electricity was restored through re-routing fairly quickly, but until the substation was repaired we were getting a reduced voltage that caused the UPSs to slowly drain...

It seems to me this is one of the key functions of the organisation - to act as a pseudo governmental entity to asses qualification and experience claims relating to IT.

I believe it also exists to provide a framework around CPD (continuing professional development), but I'm not sure how relevant this is to our industry.

For anyone running phpMyAdmin, make sure to lock it down.

Here's a guide for limiting access to it by IP address via the apache config for Ubuntu users:

http://mixeduperic.com/ubuntu/how-to-restrict-phpmyadmin-ip-...

It does interest me as to why this is. I think it's this and maybe the geography/population making the mega supermarkets less viable.

I sometimes play with the idea of a food co-op to bring prices down, but haven't got far.

I don't know about other states, but food is crazily expensive here (Sydney) compared to the UK.

For some reason, eating out or takeaways is relatively cheap though.

It's interesting how quickly the text to speech setup can be made to run. My dad's computer talks so quickly I can't understand without slowing it down.

Apologies for the threadjack, but I'm moving to Sydney soon and am looking for work. I saw Atlassian and was very tempted as it looks like an awesome culture, but the there aren't any jobs that are really a great fit for me.

The tech and entrepreneurial scene looks pretty good in Sydney with barcamps and hacker spaces, and what seems like plenty of tech jobs. Would anyone be kind enough to get in touch (email in my profile) to help me identify the other good companies and resources?

I did that when I was younger - I started a company for the experience. Can you guess what I got out of it? Experience! (and not much else)

Now I focus on making money, solving problems, changing the world.

I'm based in Manchester, and can code etc. If you'd like to meet up to discuss things I'd be happy to catch up for a hot chocolate or beer sometime. Email me.

Logically you've got 3 choices.

* Learn to code.

* Pay someone to code.

* Partner with someone who can code.

Which you do depends on which you're happiest trading for what you want - time, money, or equity.

There are some networking events in Manchester that may be useful to you - geekup may be of interest.

Are any grants available to pay for the initial coding? I know that there are programmes such as 'Creative Credits' that connects you with universities etc, so this may be a route to go down.

I've worked with someone offering a similar service in the UK. We didn't continue the engagement as the business was at the wrong stage of development for his involvement, but if we were in the right stage then I think his help would have been very valuable.

Maybe it'll be worth talking to him - http://www.tecmentor.co.uk/ .