chillu.com

Leaving Germany next week for more exciting work at Silverstripe in New Zealand, I’m researching about my travel. With Web 2.0 and buzzword power of course.

At first i tried a web-app for planning my itinary: just send your flight-confirmation-emails to tripit, and they provide you with a nice printable travel-plan (with weather/maps/directions etc.). Unfortunately it didn’t accept the format of my booking agency, so no dice here (manual entry is way too tedious). Very handy tool for US-based travellers though!

Then I looked up info about my 2-day stopover in Osaka/Japan on Wikitravel – an incredibly useful resource, one of the best use-cases of a wiki that i’ve seen so far. Seatguru provided me with a nice schematic view of the A340-600 that I’ll be taking there, showing bad seatings and wing-positions.

I had a discussion with my family the other day, about me being so eco-friendly by not commuting by car down in Wellington. They argued that I produce my year’s worth of carbon-emissions just by taking the plane down to NZ – which I couldn’t believe. Turns out it is true: The TerraPass website calculated that I spend 8,958t of CO₂ on my 92,538km travel (roundtrip with several stopovers). I first thought this was the total emissions for all 340 passengers, but heck no, thats only my little contribution. The specifications for an A340-600 show that it can take up to 200,000 litres of fuel (how on earth does that thing even take off?!).

I could go carbon neutral by donating around $65 to planting new trees, according to TerraPass. Thats quite a bit of money, especially if you think how much good this amount could do in charity. I’m thinking about factoring it into the travel expenses though (which everybody should be forced to do anyway – see the Ökosteuer (economic tax) in Germany).

In Germany, lots of people even do short flights to Paris/Mailand/Stockholm for shopping costing €10 (made possible by cheapo airlines and EU-subventions). Definetly puts some perspective on being so “global”, and travelling across the world. Another argument for telecommuting/teleconferencing…

Update (04/10/2007): This article has been lifehacked. Thanks for all your comments!

Being a programmer, I crouch in front of computers a lot – obviously you want to avoid being a cripple with 30 and get an ergonomic workplace. Usually this means having a separately adjustable keyboard and screen in addition to my Macbook Pro. Currently i don’t have this luxury, so I came up with a really simple laptop stand to rise the screen-height and have a more relaxed wrist position.

This has been done before (a lot). Some of them are just clumsy, look bad, or can’t be applied to Apple laptops because of the limited bending-angle of their screens. I’m suprised nobody looked at the obvious, and constructed a stand from a ring-binder. Its very cheap, easy to build, portable, and in addition contains most of the clutter i need on my desk (post-its, pen, my two external drives). You can even bundle any cables through the metal hole present in most binders. And most important: It perfectly fits the color of my laptop! *g

What you need

1. A stable ring binder, optimally with the latch not sticking out of the top to prevent scratches
2. 40cm aluminium rail (0.5mm thick, 1.5cm depth/height), normally used for securing edges, its available in every utility store
3. 40×1cm felt or fabric, to prevent scratches
4. Double-sided adhesive tape
5. Two small metal clamps, normally used for securing letters
6. Optional: Some black anti-slide mat to cover the ring binder

Instructions

1. Cut the aluminium rail to the length of the ring binder with a metal saw
2. Round the cutting edges
3. Place adhesive tape on one inner side of the rail
4. Drill two holes towards the sides big enough to hold the metal clamps
5. Fit rail to one edge of the ring binder
6. Drill holes through the binder as well, and secure them with the metal clamps
7. Fit the strip of felt on the other inner side of the rail (which will hold the laptop)
8. Secure the sides of the clamps facing the laptop-bottom with tape to avoid scratches

Warning

If your laptop-bottom tends to heat up with high CPU-usage, a paper-based ring binder might pose a fire hazard. Consider using an aluminium binder, leave some room for ventilation, or cut venting-holes into the binder top.

Pictures