Green Update

Posted by Matt Cipriano | 1 Comment

Just a quick little post about my favorite topic: Green. Well, kind of, at least everything in this post can be tied together under the Green heading.

First up, a website for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was hacked and loaded up with spammer links to sell Viagra, Xanax and the like.

It looks like only the pages associated with the blog were attacked and linked to other hacked pages from Westmont College (that or the Christian College is running a side business pushing drugs).

Looks like the hackers exploited a flaw in WordPress (a popular piece of publishing software) security. Might be time for us to up our own security here.

Next up: Compact Fluorescent Lighting. It has been six months since I installed the CFLs in my apartment. I am happy to report, no excessive dry eye, no feelings of having excessively harsh lighting.

They are pretty much like regular light bulbs. The one thing I have started to notice though is that after being regularly used for 6 months the bulbs take a few minutes to fully warm up. I now flip the switch and the lights come on immediately and everything, but they are a bit dim and after a few minutes they fully warm up and are pumping out the appropriate wattage and everything. They just take a minute to get there. I have also noticed savings on my electric bill. As I don’t have it on me right now, I can’t tell you what the specific savings are, but I will try and give you an idea next time a Con Ed bill arrives.

Finally, on the CFL front we have made some innovations to the CFL design. The Plumen project looks at the three existing shapes of CFLs on the market today and questions why a product that is the emblem of innovation and imagination has such a static lackluster design: “The PLUMEN low energy light bulb prototype is a reaction to the lack of real diversity, imagination and personality offered by the market today.”

Definitely some interesting ideas and designs. The project moves the CFL from a piece to be hidden under a lamp shade to a piece of art to be displayed. Some interesting concepts, and certainly worth a glance.

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