WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

CONSUMERS will be encouraged to cut power usage after the State Government announced a special day for unplugging all appliances.

Queensland Unplugged Day will be held on April 3, just days after Queenslanders are urged to turn off their lights for one hour for Earth Hour on March 29.

Household appliances cost Queensland millions of dollars in wasted power by using standby mode.

‘‘Standby power accounts for 4 per cent of the typical power bill,’’ Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation Andrew McNamara said today.

‘‘That might not sound like much, but if every household in Queensland turned off unnecessary standby power it would be a total saving in greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking more than 130,000 cars off the road, showing how small changes can make a world of difference.

‘‘In dollar terms, that represents a saving of more than $74 million a year,’’ McNamara said.

Queensland Unplugged Day is part of the ClimateSmart Living campaign.

Three previous promotions in the Climatesmart campaign saw 77,054 people offer support.

Sign up for Unplugged Day at climatesmart.qld.gov.au.

What a great idea! Wish I had thought about that a week ago.. OH WAIT!!

D&D Co-Creator Gary Gygax Has Passed Away Zonk — Today 4:22 AM

Mearlus writes “In the recent past co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons Gary Gygax has worked with Troll Lord Games, a small tabletop RPG publisher. Their forums have up a post noting that Mr. Gygax has apparently passed away. Gygax was known, along with Dave Arneson, as the Father of Roleplaying.” Saddened reactions from well-known designers have already begun to appear online. Consider this is an in-memoriam Ask Slashdot question: How has D&D (and tabletop roleplaying) touched/improved your life?

Posted today in Slashdot.

In the winter of 2006, a strange phenomenon fell upon honeybee hives across the country. Without a trace, millions of bees vanished from their hives. A precious pollinator of fruits and vegetables, the disappearing bees left billions of dollars of crops at risk and threatened our food supply. The epidemic set researchers scrambling to discover why honeybees were dying in record numbers — and to stop the epidemic in its tracks before it spread further.

Silence of the bees.

So long and thanks for all the nectar?

Lopez gives birth to twins

US singer-actress Jennifer Lopez has given birth to twins – a boy and a girl – in a New York hospital.

I guess that makes her a Lopez dispenser?

They reckon it’s accidental, but I dunno… That many prescription drugs and those types? hmm….  Seems to me more like they took a long time for the toxicology report so they could come up with a good story not to hurt his rep too much.

The feds are trying to figure out how Heath Ledger got all the prescriptions for the dangerous combination of painkillers and sedatives that led to his accidental overdose.

TVGuide.com reports that the Drug Enforcement Administration has launched an investigation into how Ledger got prescriptions, if in fact they were prescriptions. According to officials, the DEA has requested copies of Ledger’s autopsy as well as the original police report from the crime scene. The NYC medical examiner said this morning that he found the cause of death to be a lethal array of opiates and benzodiazepines; oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine.

Click here… it’s not over yet

Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of “The Alchemist”, is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren’t too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.

So is Coelho just seeding torrents of his books? That’s just the beginning. He took it one step further and, as quoted above, set up a Wordpress blog, Pirate Coelho, where he posts links to free copies of his books on filesharing networks, FTP sites, and so on. He says it had a direct impact on sales:

Believe it or not, the sales of the book increased a lot thanks to the Pirate Coelho site…

Read about it on the TorrentFreaks website.

Britney thought she might have a chance at getting the kids back. She went to the court room. Turned around and went back outside.

She used to be indecisive but now she’s just not sure.

Britney was in the building, but never made it to the courtroom. When the Commish asked her attorney if she was coming back, she answered “I don’t know whether she’ll be here or not,” adding, “I don’t want to delay the hearing.”

WTF — Britney Left??

Brit. If you want the kids, you are going to have to turn up one day…