So after a quick look at the Ubuntu project and some of the very noble goals of the community – I downloaded the latest release (Edgy Eft). I had found myself a used IBM NetVista off-lease corporate workstation with only 256MB of RAM and a run-of-the-mill Pentium 4 processor for the experiment.

The installation was remarkably simple. Getting the old machine to recognize my network was a snap (Mandrake was a little trickier as I had to re-configure my network card every time I booted the machine), and with Firefox up and running a few seconds later – instant workstation.

The operating system runs a complete suite of office productivity software and all the web authoring tools I really need. And the machine is performing better than just about any current newer Windows-based workstations (purely based on my observations – don’t ask me to substantiate this). Not bad for under $200 CAD.

This proves that very often technology (the Pentium 4 workstation in this case) is made obsolete only by economic cycles rather than hardware or software limitations. I think that Linux is very nearly ready for prime time.

Having been a part of the modern environmental movement now for over a decade, one thing has become very clear to me. Nobody cares. Wait – let me type that again. Nobody cares.

What people do care about is money. And I think that I am only fooling myself if I run around preaching green this and green that and expect basic human nature to suddenly and fundamentally change.

Where did I read once that if you want to change the world, you need first to change yourself? Well, here goes.

I will learn the language of the economy. I will learn the tools of the corporation. I will learn the techniques of politicking. And perhaps most importantly, as the Jedi Master Yoda told young Luke Skywalker, I will start to unlearn what I have learned.

A magnificent machine, it regularly takes passengers on a one-hour trip from Tottenham, to Nowhere, Ontario (for real) and back again.

It has become somewhat of a family holiday tradition to make the trip. This year being no exception, we headed down to the station to board the train this morning, tickets in hand (e-mail confirmation, actually, as you can web-order tickets in advance). The kind staff helped us board the beautiful old coach and showed us to our seats.

While we were waiting for Santa, I took the time to examine the lovingly restored coaches. After our trip, I practically sprinted to the front of the train to get a close look at the engine.

But to dismiss Al Gore as a sensationalist or a zealot is maybe what some people might say to make themselves feel better – to make the problem go away. Well, as the World Wildlife Fund’s new television commercial illustrates – if we don’t acknowledge the problem now and take steps to fix it, it will be us that goes away.

Perhaps the time for communicating this very real problem in a nice way is over. I tend to agree with Gore that every day that goes by is a missed opportunity to do something to avert a very real disaster. A disaster that is unfolding now as entire ice fields drop into the Antarctic Ocean a century earlier than scientists thought they would.

And yet, even with a lump in my throat, I am optimistic that we have the ability to solve the problem (renewable energy sources are a good start). But the problem is not a technology problem – it is a people problem. And it is people that will have to change and adapt, not the planet.

Enter Bullfrog Power, a small retailer based in Toronto, Ontario that resells electricity produced by small-scale hydroelectric generators and wind turbine operations throughout the province. Good idea. Now, how much more would this cost me?

As it turned out, less than $10 (CAD) more per month than what I was currently paying. Since we had already taken every opportunity around our house to reduce our power needs (like installing only compact flourescent lightbulbs and purchasing only Energy Star® compliant appliances), our usage was only around 350 kWh per month.

So when we signed up with Bullfrog Power, we agreed to pay 8.3¢ per kWh for the next year. All in all, not a big change from the 5.8¢ per kWh I was paying before at the amounts I was using.

My Great Auntie Marg in passing had left my mom with a fine collection of Fiesta®, a brightly coloured collection of dishes first manufactured in the mid 1930s. The set included a variety of bowls, plates, cups, saucers, serving plates and even gravy boats.

We all loved the colourful dishes and ate off them for many years, until my mom read a small newspaper article in the Toronto Star. The Atomic Energy Control Board had posted a public notice alerting anyone in the possesion of Fiesta® dishes to bring them in for radiation testing.

Twenty years later, I now find myself at the kitchen table helping my three year old assemble his first LEGO model of a fire station. Incredibly, the basic premise of the LEGO building system has not changed a bit since the seventies. This is often the sign of a very well thought-out piece of technology. LEGO has been one of the most successful toys ever created, with fans of all ages worldwide building just about anything they can dream up.

As a web designer and developer, I am realizing how remarkably similar the creative processes of LEGO building and web design really are. The current XHTML (eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language) standard includes a very simple set of tags that are used to arrange information on a web page in a meaningful way, leaving the designer to work with a combination of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) rules that define how the structured page is to look. These tags or elements are not at all unlike bricks of LEGO.