Algae Bioreactor

Here are some photos of my new prototype algae bioreactor.

I envision this design being used on the rooftops of businesses for CO2 sequestration.  It’s solar powered, modular and it has built-in contamination growth control with gravity driven harvesting.

The solar power system is built ready for more expansion and the modular aspect of the design makes it almost “plug and play” to add more growth capacity.

I’ll be testing it out over the next few weeks…

I just secured a location to expand my algae bioreactor.

I think I have most everything I need.

• I plan on building a greenhouse to host my bioreactor
• I have the design for the bioreactor
• I have Harvel® EnviroKing®UV 4inch pipe
• I worked out a process system to harvest the algae

As soon as I get it built I’ll take some picture and post them here.

I don’t usually write about theses things – but what happened? 

First the Patriot act – Spy on anyone for any reason – no search warrant required.

Now the Defense Authorization bill passed the senate, really?  I am having a hard time wrapping my head around it ~ Imprison anyone forever, for any reason without a trial… Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch said, “By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law,”

Next mix in SOPA – you know the bill that basically allows the government and big business to censor anything on the internet.

Remember:

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
 – Thomas Paine

Here’s the challenge taken directly from the link/story below – how will we “interpret huge–and ever-rising–amounts of information being collected today”?

http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/design-architecture/mckinsey-research-suggests-how-8220big-data-8221-affects-design/1210

Sometimes I think the missing ingredient is:  What do we want to know?  Maybe we don’t know what we want to know?  I think the person with the best answers to “What do we want to know” will be the most important thing to start with…  from there I’m sure will find more questions to ask. 

“Communicating Information in a Social Network System about Activities from Another Domain.”

The abstract:

In one embodiment, a method is described for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain. The method includes maintaining a profile for each of one or more users of the social networking system, each profile identifying a connection to one or more other users of the social networking system and including information about the user. The method additionally includes receiving one or more communications from a third-party website having a different domain than the social network system, each message communicating an action taken by a user of the social networking system on the third-party website. The method additionally includes logging the actions taken on the third-party website in the social networking system, each logged action including information about the action. The method further includes correlating the logged actions with one or more advertisements presented to the one or more users on the third-party website as well as correlating the logged actions with a user of the social networking system.

http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/facelook-coca-colas-facial-recognition-app/

Interesting, don’t you think?  I’ve worked on similar projects where the marketing message displayed depended on the who was watching but this takes that to a whole new level.  The software and image recognition software I worked with only knew the demographic of who was watching not the the actual person. 

How long before we can start to tailor marketing messages by identifying you by your face?  Maybe newspapers and magazines could embed inexpensive biometric sensors on their pages so they can tailor ads to you?  Should be interesting to see where this all goes.

Mark today down or Facebook will for you – Facebook just became a digital all knowing scrapbook of your online life.  Its a great way to get you to give more personal and or private information for Facebook to sell to advertisers, right?

Edit:
You’d think as a marketer I’d really be into this… but I’m really not.  To me this adds confusion to my idea of immersive marketing.  For instance – just because I’m listening to a new song or reading an new article doesn’t mean I like it, or that I want to recommend it or even share it.  I prefer to run it through my “personal filters” then think about if my friends might like it or find it useful or even hate it. (yes, sometimes I like to share stuff I hate just to see the response I get from other people).  I assume you’ll be able to decide if you want to: “frictionless” share or whatever the other choices in the app might be but while you and I are tech savvy – I know a lot of people who aren’t and will just automatically choose the app default.

Now lets take a look at the extreme.  I start to “frictionless” share my location, tweets, purchases and anything you can think of.  As a crafty programmer you add all of this info to a map and schematics of buildings.  And now you share that I’m in the bathroom reading Backpacker Magazine, or you correlate that I am with someone at a specific location and you pull up the public webcam that is near me and share that video, or you know that the person I am near is reading a story about radical thinking – am I now suspected of being a radical with that guys same views?  (by the way I hope not I am a radical with my own views damn it!)

Now lets consider the not so extreme.  Hey, Troy… Thanks for applying for our job.  Could you please friend me on Facebook.  Thanks.

If this “frictionless” sharing becomes the norm  – I’m happy to be weird!