Nick: so we getting drunk?
Dane: I’m too full for drank. Let’s do shots!

*phone rings*
Mom: “how’s the lake?”
Dane: “pretty hungover — WHERE ARE THE BOAT KEYS!?”

Tomas: Hurry up and turn your computer on!
Ryan: I can’t I need a spike bar and a 2 prong to 3 prong converter.
Tomas: I don’t care, do it now.
Ryan: Don’t make me get out my pocket knife and make a wiring abomination.
Tomas: DO IT.
Ryan: But we would all die in a fire.

I dont know how many of you have been following this, but there’s a new movement in town to get away from BPA-containing plastics. BPA (bisphenol-a) is an estrogen-look-alike, at least as far as your body’s biochemistry is concerned, and can leach from plastics.

Manufacturers like Nalgene have tried to spin the news in their favor for a long time, but Canada just recently declared BPA “toxic to human health.” It is also heavily regulated, if not outlawed, in Europe. Now, it’ll probably be a long time before the US takes any action on it, but BPA-free water bottles are starting to pop up all over the net. However, the effects of BPA are most damaging when you’re still developing, meaning for most of us the “damage is already done” so-to-speak, but I’d hazard a guess that going BPA-free when you can wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

The fact is, all of the old water bottles we use going camping could be harmful to our bodies. I’d like to think that perhaps we get all pissy at the end of the trip due to all the estrogen-like BPA in our systems. I went to a seminar last summer which featured the head-honcho BPA researcher in the United States, and he stated that we’re essentially moderating the masculinity of males in our society with all the BPA we ingest and absorb. In fact, modern sperm counts are something on the order of half of what they were before BPA plastics were mainstream, and in-the-wild animals are less masculine as well due to run-off containing BPA. It’s not a good situation, and in light of the lack of government to move on this issue, you can vote with your wallet.

I wouldn’t leave you all hanging without a way to solve the problem, so here are a few tips:

Switch from your old water bottles to ones specifically mentioning BPA or bisphenol-a free.

I like Camelbak’s line of BPA-water bottles. I’ll be buying a Tritan Better Bottle for hiking and a Podium Squirt Bottle for my bike. The Tritan has the additional added benefit of a “squeeze and squirt” mouthpiece, so we’ll see how this works in the backcountry.

If anyone wants to get in on my REI order to save on shipping, gimme a comment!

With summer sitting out on the front porch, soon we’ll be able to put in some more time for the website. I’ll be re-doing most of the forum’s buttons (some look very “yuck”). I’ll also probably try to get the blog’s comments chunked and legible. With any luck, Justin will be able to get the “updates” bar in the forum working. Oh what a wonderful world that would be. Perhaps wp-united will help solve the problem. 

 

For the time being, I’d like to say that I think the redesign was a huge success. Everything looks great, and I learned a whole lot. Justin’s functions work great, and the updates bar is mega-pimp. I hope everyone likes the look and feel of the new site. It is way more user-friendly than ye olde electronox.net. I’d encourage people to keep the ideas coming so we can keep the site fresh and customized to our needs.

Codenamed Hardy Heron, Ubuntu 8.04 final will be released in the next two weeks from Canonical. I highly recommend everyone download the final live-cd image when it’s released (or the beta now if you’re feeling particularly apt).

In case you haven’t heard, Ubuntu can be trialed without making a new partition – it runs from a native Windows partition without deleting or modifying your old operating system. You simply reboot and the Windows bootloader will show a “Ubuntu” boot option next to your Windows O/S. While I’m not sure how this feature (named “Wubi” by the way), is worse (or better) than a native install on your typical linux partition, it does offer a best-of-both-worlds scenario for the weekend gamer and the weekday warrior.

With the latest improvements in convenient installation, the quickest integration of cutting-edge features any modern O/S has ever provided, and the prospects of learning about linux, there’s no reason not to install Ubuntu at this point.  There’s something to this free, opensource movement, and you’d be hurting yourself by not at least peeking in to see what it is all about.

Hello to those of you who have installed the electronox.net portal. The portals have been inactive since the re-design due to some revolutions in our site structure. You should now be receiving photo and blog updates. Forum updates should be coming soon. 

 

Edit: the windows portal is having some troubles, but in the mean time, be aware that you can get electronox.net updates on iGoogle. Just click here.