Small 2 Stroke/Cycle Bio-Diesel Engines?

Wouldn't it be great if someone would build small 2 stroke diesel engines for chainsaws, leaf blowers and other yard tools? Sure vegetable oil is more expensive than gas but most people use these tools rarely and being spared the the pain and pollution caused by mixing oil and gas is well worth the extra cost.

I'm not sure if the high compression needed by diesel is impractical for engines of this size or if using bio-diesel as the crankcase lubricant no longer works for diesel but I would love to see someone try this out. Examples of 2 stroke diesels I have seen all have crankcase oil but would vegetable oil be a good enough lubricant to allow the standard approach where the oil/air mixture is drawn through the crankcase?
Just think of the pollution this will help eliminate. And there is no reason this couldn't be applied to larger engines. I love the power of 2 strokes but I always hated the blue smoke. :-(

SPAM Detection

Spam Detection

Have you noticed that in the past few months the spammers have figured out how to get spam past the email providers.

Apparently the spam classifiers can't pick up on the fact that the text of the spam is an image. Anyway.. until AOL, Yahoo and others figure out a solution here is a good way to determine if an email is spam.

Many mail programs allow you to setup filters and most of this spam does not actually have your email address in the To: line so setting up a filter is really easy

In yahoo I did the following

1st I created a new folder called not-me

Then in mail options I setup the following filter.

If...

To/CC does not contain " Your Email Address Here @yahoo.com"

Then...

Move message to not me folder

Now I get about 40 emails a day in my not me folder. Occasionally it will be a newsletter that I am subscribed to, that sends to me via a listserv emal address, but about 99% of the messages in this folder are spam.

I still get about 1 spam a day that is actually addressed to my email address but that's better than the 60 that arrived in my inbox daily before.
Unfortunately I can't really do this at work since 80% of my emails come from listservs. :-(

For AIM/AOL I read my email via Thunderbird and I have a similar filter setup. Outlook also has filtering capability but I don't think the AOL client or AOL/AIM web mail have filters. Someone please correct me on this. :-)
Wondering how to read your AIM/AOL mail via IMAP? All the details are here

Ban CRTs!

I can't stand those computer bundles that include a monitor and printer. Its usually cheaper to buy the bundle than to purchase the computer separately so people buy it and they often have no need for another CRT and printer. I recently tried to give an unused CRT monitor to Goodwill but they only accepted monitors that were less than 2 years old. I felt bad about it, but I took this working monitor to my local recycling center for disposal.

My solution to this problem is simple. Ban all but high end CRTs in the US. LCD prices have dropped significantly in the past year and this main streaming of LCD monitors would hopefully help decrease the prices further. This would also create a demand for used CRTs for the die hard fans and for people who can't afford LCD monitors. Then I could easily find a good home for my used CRT and as this secondary CRT market ages the LCD technology will continue to improve and get cheaper so people will start moving away from CRTs before the existing supply is depleted.

Just think of the energy savings we'll have as the supply of CRTs dwindles and the benefits of reuse created by the used CRT market. Reuse and reduce are key here since CRTs don't recycle quite like an aluminum can. :-)