Plastics - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle?


PLASTICS, a cheap and durable `friend' for years and once hailed as the most useful invention of modern times, is now said to be the worst waste pollutant, an enemy to those who are environment-conscious because it is non-bio-degradable. And still many of us unaware of the environmental dangers posed by dumping which hudreds of years to decompossed and burning them will make it even worst which contribute to Earth's ozone holes development, acid rain pelts disappearing forests and the planet sweats under global warming. 

A sick planet is not healthy for us. 

Reuse, reduce and recycle - the philosophy of environmentalists worldwide is making inroads into the Malaysian scene. The last of the three "Rs", the most lucrative of the lot, is all set to be big business in the country. The recycling industry here exists where there is money to be made but the first two "Rs" should be emphasized.

There is no escaping from the fact that we will have to pay for whatever we do to or do not do for our environment. Sooner or later. The unsavoury present-day signs, however, are screaming the sooner the better. If we continue to dream uncaringly on until our sins of pollution and waste accumulate to hellish proportions, not only would our vision of our future be blighted, we may be left, if we were to survive, without a future in sight.

No one can deny the fact that our environment has suffered and has taken as much as it can; it can take no more. Global-warming and international concern have intensified even as scientists and politicians recognise rather belatedly that not only do the welfare and economies of their countries lie at the mercy of the environment, even mankind's survival is at stake.

It is unclear whether public awareness alone without enforcement, a genuine commitment to protecting the environment. Getting the public to recycle or reclaim packaging materials such as paper, metals, glass and plastics instead of simply throwing them away has always been a challenge for the packaging industry. In an on-going battle to save the environment, investment in the latest technology to recycle such materials may cost packaging companies dearly in the short run, but it is also increasing making good sense as consumers become more environment conscious and responsible. The environment consciousness is the key to our survival. For example, we could refuse a plastic bag for our purchase although it is very difficult to persuade shopkeepers not to give us one.

We also have to come up with something not only to reduce, reuse or recycle to solve the dilemma, or improve on a solution, particularly if it benefits a lot of people especially future generation. May be we might add in a few more 'Rs', Re-think, refill, repair and so on.

For example, the first thing to do is to re-think one's life, in one's home and in the office, in terms of the environment and to reduce one's consumption as a matter of course.

Refilling, for example, which is still a new concept to customers in Malaysia although it was introduced 15 years ago by various companies that used plastic as their products container to reuse it, has to be well and continuously promoted.

Governments also should force the plastic industries and encourage public to use products made of 100 per cent biodegradable and compost able materials such as from sugar cane husks (baggase) and corn waste which decompose faster (45 to 180 days - Return 2 Green) or products made of fibres from oil palm Empty Fruit Bunches ( Ecofuture) or at least the Oxo Biodegradable (OBD) plastic, which decompose naturally within 5 to 10 years (even though it's not good enough) which relieving the impact of empty plastic containers on the environment where as the conventional polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) plastics will typically take hundreds of years to degrade.

You have some ideas? Share it with me and others.

Since the Earth is all we have, don't you think we should treat it a little better? And it's not difficult, really. We don't have to change our lifestyles completely, only do things a little more consciously, remembering that we have a symbiotic relationship with Earth. What can we do to make a difference?

New Animated Header and Collapsible Menu

Today I have made some major changes to my blog appearance by replacing the old 900x100px animated header with a new 1050x200px header and also applying a collapsible sidebar menu using jquery script.

This new animated header has been done the same way and with the same procedure as the previous one.



This header was designed to give a new image lift to my blog which I will try to fill it with articles related to general information, technology, environment, health and so on.

Another thing that you might notice is that my side bar menus are in collapsible form. When you click on the menu title, the body will expand. I have learned this technique using the jQuery script.

Let me show you how to do it.

First as usual, log in to your blog layout page and edit HTML. Click on the "Download Full Template" to save the existing template to our computer hard disk. In case of anything happened, we can revert it to the original/previous template.

Then we have to predefine our new css code of the menu list, header and body element between <head> to </head> segment. It could be something like this.


.menu_list {
margin: 0px;
padding: 0px;
width: 400px;
}
.menu_head {
padding: 5px 10px;
cursor: pointer;
position: relative;
background-color:#
FF8000;
margin:1px;
}
.menu_body {
padding: 5px 10px 15px;
background-color:#
D8D8D8;
}





Then paste the jquery script below which use the hide, click and slideToggle function to the <body> to </body> segment or inside our sidebar script block.


<script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3/jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function()
{
//hide the all of the element with class menu_body
$(".menu_body").hide();
//toggle the component with class menu_body
$(".menu_head").click(function()
{
$(this).next(".menu_body").slideToggle(600);
});
});
</script>

<div class="menu_list">
<div class="menu_head">Header-1 </div>
<div style="display:none;" class="menu_body">
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
</div>
<div class="menu_head">Header-2</div>
<div style="display:none;" class="menu_body">
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
</div>
<div class="menu_head">Header-3</div>
<div style="display:none;" class="menu_body">
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
</div>
</div>

If you would like to use images as the menu titles like I did, you may omit the background color from the predefined css codes and instead of the menu title text, replace it with your image source link address. Which look something like this.


<div class="menu_head"><img src="http://YourImageLinkAddressHere"/></div>



The output should look like this. Click the header to see the action. The smaller the slideToggle value, the faster the action.




Give it a try and good luck.



Brake Failure - The Brake Master Cylinder


Today my 25 years old (which almost become an antique) 240GL Volvo Station Wagon, experienced a brake failure (the braking power was severely reduced) while I was driving to Kuala Lumpur. Fortunately, I had realized the failure before entering the highway. So I have to turn back to nearby workshop for an inspection.

There are lots of brake components that can go bad (wheel cylinders, master cylinders, discs, boosters and even brake pads). After a thorough inspection by a mechanic, the brake master cylinder was found to be the problem and the source of the failure.

There was a leakage inside the master cylinder. The brake fluid inside both reservoirs was almost empty. Since it is an old car, there is no brake fluid sensor which could warned me earlier if there was a fluid reduction.


Most car braking systems are broken into two circuits, (Is that why there are two reservoirs?) with two wheels on each circuit to increase safety. In most vehicles it is one front wheel and one rear wheel although some vehicles split front and rear wheels. With a dual system like this, if a brake fluid leak occurs in one circuit, we only loose half of our brakes. We will be able to stop although it will take somewhat longer. We will have to press the pedal further to activate it. In my case I am not sure which circuit was leaked because it was concealed.


Let me show you how it works:




When we press the brake pedal, it pushes on the first piston through a linkage. Pressure builds in the cylinder and lines as the brake pedal is depressed further. The pressure between the first and second piston forces the second piston to compress the fluid in its circuit. There will be a same pressure in both circuits if the brakes are operating properly.

If there is a leakage in one of the circuits, that circuit will not be able to maintain pressure. Here you can see what happens when one of the circuits, for example the circuit rear seal develops a leak.



When the first circuit leaks, the pressure between the first and second cylinders is lost. This causes the first cylinder to contact the second cylinder. Now the master cylinder behaves as if it has only one piston. The second circuit will function normally, but you can see from the figure above that we will have to press the pedal further to activate the second piston. Since only two wheels have pressure, the braking power will be severely reduced.


Customizing Blogger Template - 2 to 3 coloums


There are thousands of blog templates that we can choose from and apply to our blog. However some of us prefer to arrange our own layout or design according to our need and taste, even though we only have a little knowledge about the html and css code. It is better to learn how to do it our self rather than just use what ever they gave us.

It is not so hard to customize or to change our 2 coloums blog template to 3 coloums if we know the concept and have a bit of knowledge related to html and css coding.

For example, to change a simple 2 coloums minima blog template created by Douglas Bowman to 3 coloums, there are a couple of steps that we have to take.

Step 1:

Determine and decide on our total blog width, (main coloum + 1st side bar coloum + 2nd side bar coloum width).

For example change the total width from 660px to 1020px (i.e., main-wrapper 470px + sidebar-wrapper 300px + newsidebar-wrapper 250px = outer-wrapper 1020px). I change the dimension as above because most of the ads and widgets available usually use those dimensions. Make amendment by editing the template html code.

Before editing the template, you may want to save a copy of it if anything went wrong.


Log in to your blog layout page and edit HTML. Click on the "Download Full Template" to save the existing template to our computer hard disk. In case of anything happened, we can revert it to the original/previous template.

Find the css code of id name "outer-wrapper" between the <head> to </head> segment. [To easily find the spot, hold Ctrl key + F and type "#outer-wrapper" in the pop-up text box].

Do the amendment as the figure above or copy and paste the code below:

/* Outer-Wrapper
----------------------------------------------- */
#outer-wrapper {
width: 1020px;
margin:0 auto;
padding:10px;
text-align:$startSide;
font: $bodyfont;
}

#main-wrapper {
width: 470px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

#sidebar-wrapper {
width: 300px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}

#newsidebar-wrapper {
width: 250px;
float: left;
word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking sidebar float in IE */
overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE sidebar float */
}


To add the new side bar that we have defined earlier to our template we need to modify the html code which lies between <body> to </body> segment.


Find the html code of id name "sidebar-wrapper" between the <body> to </body> segment. [Once again, to easily find the spot just hold Ctrl key + F and type "id='sidebar-wrapper'" in the pop-up text box]. We need to type in the html code for our newsidebar-wrapper after the code of our sidebar-wrapper as the figure above or copy and paste the code below:

<div id="newsidebar-wrapper">
<b:section class="sidebar" id="newsidebar" preferred="yes">
</b:section>

One more thing that is quite interesting is that the "Add a Gadget" element can be turn on by changing the the "showaddelement" value from "no" to "yes" on our wrappers html code.



For example the "crosscol-wrapper" html code which was created, couldn't be seen on the page element because the "showaddelement" value was set as "no" and now has been changed to "yes" so that we can see it.
Finally, after we have finished amending the template, we may preview and save the template.

If everything is ok, our page element will look like the figure above. Can you spot the different? Yes, there are 3 new items on our page elements. The "crosscol - Add a Gadget", the "main - Add a Gadget" and our "newsidebar - Add a Gadget".

Now we may add new items immediately below the header and also above our post. To make the header and the footer to be the same size as the outer-wrapper, we need to change the width value of both of its to 1020px.

Take your time to try it and good luck.

My post and Shout Box Commentors' Link

As a blogger, I will feel glad and very happy when someone has dropped by my blog or revisited me and leaved me some comments on my posts or at least a short pleasant words or a greeting on my shout box.

Since I am a very busy man, I sometime do not even have time to pay them a visit or surfing around to their site. Then, what I did was, I have to copy and list my visitor's link addresses and save it so that I could visit them later when time permitted.

As an appreciation, here I have their link addresses listed in my post woodworker's way. Each tab will open 10 link addresses of my visitors' blog or website. I will surf and look around for any update.

My friends, I will let you know where your link address is located by leaving you a comment in your shout box when I drop by to your site and for those who has visited me and wanted your link to be listed so that I could visit you later, just shout at me. I will be glad to add your link here as long as your blog doesn't related to gambling, adult content or sex related tips.

By doing this, it will be easier for me to revisit my old and new friends and you also my friends, could make new friends by clicking on any of the tab below. Visit my friends' blog, give a pleasant comment on their posts or shout box and definitely you will be visited by them.








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If you hate the idea, please let me know. I will remove your link. If you like it, please bookmark and share or you may copy this post to your blog so that you could make more friend.

Followers