We bought, second hand, a Graco Travel System for baby Grace. Its a monster of moulded plastic with an ingenious folding action and, importantly for me, very high handles. We call it Optimus Pram.

We don’t have a car and I sometimes use Streetcar when we need to drive; as we did last week when Grace had hear hearing screen.

Now, rather wonderfully the Graco comes with a car seat that clips into the push-chair base: perfect for getting to the nearest Streetcar, but the nearest car is a BMW Series 1 and the boot looks rather small. So the question was: would I be able to get Optimus in the boot of the BMW?

Here’s the answer:

So I’m writing this; revisiting the blog, with the Wordpress android app, as it happens — how the world has changed since I bought this domain!

Sometimes I have to remind myself that my adventures continue, even when I’m not in Kenya, Kigali, or by lake Bangweulu. The difference is taking the time to reflect on them.

I left Tala shaking red dust off my feet. Who’d have thought I’d end up back at Holy Rosary after a number of years?

Bernard Mutua showed me the two new street lamps in the market stage areas.
“We call them …” and here he said something I can’t recall in Kikamba,
“What does that mean?”, I asked.
Bernard thought for a moment, “Spotlight on the thief”, he said.

Only one of the sisters I remember was still at HRC, the Cybercafe is, reportedly, down to only a couple of working PCs (probably dust in the heat sinks).

Bernard has been struggling at Kenbric too, but that’s a story for another day.

Some of our team suspect Ningm might up the price again in the near future to increase their profits. So I contacted their sales department, via their ticketing system, and asked what price-assurance they could offer a community-based carbon reduction scheme. Ning ignored my ticket for two weeks and then send me this:

Hi there,

We are going to close this ticket as it has been a while since it was submitted. We’ve found that most people have been able to find the  answer they were looking for in our extensive Help Center  (help.ning.com), on the Ning Blog (blog.ning.com), on the Plans Page (about.ning.com/plans) or by exploring their Ning Network. We strive to answer each ticket we receive in a personal, timely manner, and closing this ticket will enable our team to respond effectively to all newly created tickets.

If you are a Network Creator or admin and still have a question for our team, head to the My Network/Manage page on your network, click the Support link  and submit a new ticket via Contact Support. Tickets submitted this way will provide us with a lot of useful information to help prioritize appropriately.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks,
The Ning Team

So that was:

• We have ignored your ticket
• As we have been ignoring your ticket for a while now, we’re going to close it
• “We strive to answer tickets in a timely way” means we don’t give a damn about your question but we care about not having old tickets hanging around that make it look like we don’t get stuff sorted
• If you haven’t got the hint yet, you can create another ticket for us to ignore

Thanks, Ning. Fuck you too.

#youmightbeanatheist if you prefer to be informed rather
than have blind faith in something (DylanBrent) etc.

Meanwhile, despite TV ads from DECC’s Act on CO2, we still don’t  believe in climate change and we’re still not treating climate change as the emergency it is.

You might be an climate skeptic if:

• You’re waiting to see if the government ban domestic / long-haul flights rather than choosing to fly less
• You think driving over the speed limit increases your personal safety risk, but not global climate chaos
• “Clean coal” doesn’t strike you as odd
• You still haven’t seen An Inconvenient Truth
• You think DECC is a computer manufacturer
• You recycle but don’t compost
• You fly for pleasure
• …

Colleagues in the office were just talking about mobile phone contracts.
“I have seen one for £27 per month that looked reasonable”
That’s three hundred and twenty four pounds per year.

Earlier this month I downloaded my bank transactions and put them into Gnucash. It was easy to calculate how much I spent on my pay-as you go phone last year:

£50.00

That’s four pounds and sixteen pence per month.

I’m shocked.  It feels to me as if mobile phone contracts are contrived to encourage addictive and exploitative behaviour. To get value from free minutes, free SMS and free Internet, one must use them all up. I have a pay-as-you-go phone with no free minutes, no Internet and no free SMS. I pay for everything: 5p per text, 15p per minute for all calls. Paying for everything  I use discourages me from using my phone.  I use it less, and I pay very little.

I wonder whether if we actually paid for the real cost of our use of ecosystem services, we might use them less and ultimately have less to pay in terms of damage to the environment, climate biodiversity, resilience, etc.

Guardian Juxtaposition

A luxury kitchen advert opposite hundreds of Filipinos forced from their homes by typhoons. I wonder if the Guardian Weekend editors do this deliberately? The article about  climate-conference negotiator Bernarditas de Castro Muller gives a great inside view on the COP15 conference in Copenhangen in December.

Three things we can do together to help:

Sign the petition: Friends of the Earth petition to world leaders at COP15.

Join the Wave:  Peaceful protest in London 5 December

Find out more: about COP15: Copenhagen Question Time in Cambridge 27 November.

Windoze 7 Advert on The Tube

In a surprising departure, these adverts for Windoze 7 do not contain the word “Microsoft”. The web address at the bottom is windows.co.uk which redirects to www.microsoft.com/uk/windows. Is this to disassociate the corporation from the mysterious “They” who “improved security” at the bidding whoever’s voice the advert is in — presumably the guy in the picture?

Sarah and I are trying to do our bit. In Downing Street, we are composting, recycling, using energy-saving light bulbs and buying locally-sourced and sustainable food whenever possible. It’s little things like this which will make a big difference if we all do them.

David Miliband is less practical:

There will have to be compromise, but there cannot be compromise on the ambition

They both encourage us to back the UK bid in Copenhagen. They are writing as part of Blog Action Day on Climate Change. So am I.

The Prime Minister comes right out and says it:

Climate change is the biggest threat to all our futures

So just what can we do about it? Here are two local initiatives I am involved with:

• Cambridge Carbon Footprint empowers individuals to make personal changes to reduce their carbon footprints
• Cambridge Climate Change Charter supports organisations doing the same.