tidy up

It was a tidy up day for a high-tech lab! We had to replace air filters, take out all stuff we didn't need any more and most important thing we had to find the right place for the shiny instrument I have made for new experiments. I am so excited about it. I have ordered the last piece of it and I will receive it in the next couple weeks. I will right about our experiments later.

your garage

Do you have a car? If you do then its really important to have a place for it also! Well, it is kind of obvious, however, what I mean is really a closed area. You may have rain or snow in half of a year in Canada, so better to think of a garage. Even if you do not have a car you may think of an extra storage. But wasn't it easier if the garage was already made and there was only the installation remaining? I actually could not believe that there is a supplier for Concrete Garages on internet!

I am now living in an apartment, however if I was living in a house then I would need one of them. Such a garage could be useful in many ways. In my case I would use it as a small lab! I could set up my lasers, and all my instruments in it and that was right beside my house. You may say what a lazy crazy scientist! But that is exactly what I would do with it. If you have a place where you can set up lots of these garages together you can actually start a business and rent them as storage or garage. Look, you can even make money out of it!

affordable solar energy

As I mentioned before, my vote on the engineering challenges of the century is affordable solar energy. But I believe this is more a physics problem rather than an engineering problem. It is the problem of nano technology, thin films and surface science. I do not really see that much engineering in it!

What to do with your debt?

Well, My answer to the question above is Debt Management.

I always have a rule. I spend my real money not my credit. The only case I use my credit is when I am sure I am investing on something which pays me back the debt as well as some profit. This profit can be money or a new opportunity. But it's never just some stuff that I can live without. I may buy a car with my credit but that is only in the case that the car helps me to go to work and earn more money than I spent on it. So I always avoid debt.

But question is what to do when you have a lot of debt. You may see some people encountering bankruptcy. That means they can not afford their debt any more. That has never happened to me. But whenever I am close to a situation in which I may need to borrow some money, I start thinking about new possible ways of making money. That is true. If you stop thinking about the new places you can borrow money from and start thinking about new sources of income instead, you will never have to borrow any money. It may look difficult, however it always works for me.

Engineering Chalenges

Engineers always had a lot of effects in our lifestyle. I am actually in the stage that I should pick a project for my PhD experiments and so I was looking at available problems. In my search I visited a website about engineering challenges of this century. You can actually go there and vote for the most challenging one. Here is the list of problems:

Make solar energy affordable

Provide energy from fusion

Develop carbon sequestration methods

Manage the nitrogen cycle

Provide access to clean water

Restore and improve urban infrastructure

Advance health informatics

Engineer better medicines

Reverse-engineer the brain

Prevent nuclear terror

Secure cyberspace

Enhance virtual reality

Advance personalized learning

Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

You want to know my vote? That is "Make solar energy affordable".

cosmetic surgery

I was visiting a website about Breast Enlargement and I ended up reading some interesting piece of news about the number of cosmetic surgery procedures in US for 2007. It's about "11.7 million"! Comparing with UK (32,453 procedures in 2007) that is incredible. It is also good to know that more than 90% of it were done on females. I do not know about the numbers in Canada but it must be somewhat close to US. The average girls in North America are fatter comparing with Europeans. So it looks reasonable that Americans struggle to get a better shape anyway. May be I am wrong because cosmetic surgery is not just related to fat removal.

Cactus Fruit

Last night I was doing my weekly grocery shopping in a local mall and I was surprised when I saw some "Cactus Fruits" with discounted price. It looks kind of green , but you can't imagine the pink color inside. The thing that bothered me was the number of seeds you have to get rid of! It is a sweet juicy fruit though. I will write about nutrition facts later.