Zeta Dooly

A Transition Initiative is a community working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this BIG question:

"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

The resulting coordinated range of projects across all these areas of life leads to a collectively designed energy descent pathway.

The community also recognises two crucial points:

* that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
* if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

For more information please look at the Transition Towns WIKI.

There are a group of us in Tramore
that have started to start this intiative ...life evolves ..its time to become active

There are solutions emerging ..educate yourself about this - there are many resources out there including lots on youtube
If you would like to contact the Tramore Transition Initiative directly please email:
transition-town-tramore@googlegroups.com.

The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) is a leading conservation organisation saving wetlands for wildlife and people across the world and its got a link for tracking geese, swans etc. iI found this link on the Friday Irish Times which we were still reading on Sunday eveing - value for money! and in particular interest was the Greenland Barnacle Goose where a school in Mayo was responsible for naming these birds - excellent use of technolgy, education and fun usage of the internet

Garden Banquets and Monster Farmers markets coming to Waterford, the Slow Food Ireland group and WIT are coming together for a 4 day event (Terra Madre) on food - should be good!

Peak Oil - Climate Change - everyone's responsibility, take time to think about your actions and take part in community efforts. This Future Scenarios website is very informative and gives cultural implications. Many communities are beginning to take action such as Transition towns movement these problems won't just disappear!

Even though the weather wasn't great - a mixture of sun and rain showers just like Ireland really northern Spain Asturias region is an excellent base for exploring the Picos de Europa
mountains and the beaches (empty due to low temperatures) were brilliant, very remote and often difficult to access which just made it more of an adventure.

Yesterday at the BSA security Awareness day Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, European Commission announced the creation of an advisory board within the Think-Trust FP7 project named RISEPTIS (Research and Innovation for SEcurity, Privacy and Trustworthiness in the Information Society). the main mission of the RISEPTIS Advisory Board will be to provide visionary guidance on policy and research challenges in the field of security and trust in the Information Society.

Continue reading "EU announces Think-Trust RISEPTIS group" »

I'm in Bled, Slovenia at Future of the Internet - EU conference it has raised many issues and from a security perspective every area has trust, security and privacy challenges that need to be addressed. It is going to be difficult to get concensus and move this forward as there are many areas deserving research prioritisation. I will try to present some info on this over the next few weeks...some sites worth visiting
-PEW Internet -US views
EU Forum
Projects such as 4WARD wirh some comments from my colleague Miguel

My children are a bit small for worrying about their internet activity but it won't be long so i'm developing an interest in this area see this website for some links and reference to reports and research in this area. Two of the comments surprised my somewhat...Meeting an online contact offline - the least common but arguably most dangerous risk; there is considerable consistency in the figures across Europe at around 8% (1 in 12) online teens going to such meetings; the exceptions are Poland (23%) and, especially, the Czech Republic (65%).
and
It appears that high risk countries are those that, on the one hand, are new to the internet (Poland, Czech Republic) and, on the other hand, are experienced with the internet (UK, The Netherlands).
The next riskiest are Iceland, Ireland and Estonia - all small northern European countries.

Fenor gets its broadband from CTM so now i'm pretty happy - its wireless too as he has an transmitter in Ballyscanlon. The CTM website doesn't provide much info and this was debated on some bulletin boards - but my theory is that he has enough work provided by word of mouth that they are too busy or its not a priority to update the website.

why oh why don't we have a more technology focussed country - we are being dubbed as a knowledge driven economy whereby companies such as Motorola
are moving out of Cork and rural braodband schemes are failing - report from Silicon Republic

I live in rural Ireland and for the last year the local school and some dedicated farmers in the area have been pursuing the broadband for the area objective to no avail then the government announce that the rural broadband plans are to be abandoned although having just emailed the government region co-ordinator and getting a fast response there are on official announcements from the Dept of Communications on this yet - surprisingly.