Not only do the older styles of furniture provide a point of interest in the room to look at but, in a lot of cases , they also come with interesting back stories. Old wooden trunks were once used as items of luggage and this immediately suggests that they have travelled pretty extensively. In many cases the people who could afford to do this travel were the rich and famous so it is not uncommon to pick up an old wooden trunk that once belonged to someone of some repute.

Although the fact that an old piece of furniture might have belonged to someone who was known might be an interesting fact, it does not necessarily mean that it will also be worth a significant amount of money. That will still come down to the quality of the piece and the condition it has been kept in.

Placing these older items in the room can almost immediately transform it with the age of the furniture providing a certain degree of distinction and refinement. Using them sparingly and placing them with a little bit of thought can result in a room that looks and feels more comfortable and cosy. It is a fashion trend that will keep coming back so it may be used at virtually any time.

Solar hot water, photovoltaic panels and concentrating solar power are merely the stepping off point in which solar power is being developed and improved. More and more innovative ideas are being developed and trialled to make better use of the sun. Although heat and sunlight can be used in a number of different ways, the challenge has always be to find ways of using it without experiencing too much waste and this is where the inefficiencies lead to problems such as cost.

The creation of solar energy farms has seen an increase in the amount of commercial solar power being produced. While there are huge benefits that can be taken from these enormous facilities they are also surrounded by negatives and down sides.

The first of the opposition that is often voiced when a new solar power facility is announced is the impact it will have on the surrounding environment. Although the actual creation of the electricity is clean, the materials used to capture the sun and their manufacture is not. Similarly, the sheer size of many of these facilities means that there is inevitably going to be some impact on the surrounding landscape, not to mention the wildlife that inhabit the area.

Out of necessity, a commercial size solar energy generating power plant is very large no matter whether the solar power is produced by photovoltaic panels or CSP troughs or heliostats. This comes down to the inefficiencies in the conversion process and is only one of the areas where improvement is still being sought. As ways are found to increase the intensity of the heat that is being captured it may be possible to produce the same amount of energy in a smaller defined area.

One of the ways that the demand for electricity on a commercial level can be greatly reduced, and possibly one of the most underutilized opportunities, is with personal solar power. Every home and business in the country has the potential to generate its own power supply through solar panels being installed on the roof. Even if each home were to store one or two solar panels on the roof, the power saving that could be made across the entire grid would be significant.

Government assistance in the form of subsidies and other incentives could have been a significant boost to this sort of idea had it gotten off the ground with any real purpose. Unfortunately homeowners have not been given a great enough incentive to shell out the cost of the solar panels which, to some, are quite prohibitive. It is still an area that could be better exploited to further reduce the demands that are placed on the older coal-fired power plants.

Solar Power In the Next 50 Years

One of the more positive stories to have been released more recently has been a report by the International Energy Agency that has projected that solar generators could produce the majority of the power in the world within the next 50 years.

The projection is that there will be an increase in the electricity being produced around the world but most of it will be produced by solar-electric technologies such as photovoltaic and concentrating solar power.

This is a significant announcement by the IEA because the previous projection that the agency made was that PV and solar thermal power plants would produce around 21 percent of the world’s power needs by 2060. The fact that this has been revised upwards to over 50 percent is a serious change.

Add Value To Your Property

One of the ways of helping out, plus adding value to your property, is to install a solar power system in your home. It is the way of the future and placing solar panels on the roof means that the energy costs for the household are going to be significantly reduced. This is a pretty big selling point for someone looking to buy the house down the track. On a yearly basis, the electricity produced by solar energy can represent savings in the hundreds.

Apart from the monetary savings that can be offered to the buyer, the environmental benefits can also provide a big incentive too. When a buyer is trying to make a decision on whether or not to purchase the home, the fact that it has solar power installed could be a deciding factor.

Now To Improve Efficiency

As mentioned earlier, one of the big challenges for solar panel manufacturers and solar energy producers is to find ways to improve existing technologies. There is no question that solar energy is going to be an important part of the world’s energy production in the future, improving the efficiency of the way it is captured will mean that it will cost far less. There are a few companies around who have taken on the challenge and are coming up with ways of improving the existing solar panels to make them ultra-efficient.

The field of photonics is the science of detecting, generating and amplifying light, among other things. The area of silicon photonics is where it is expected that the way light is used is going to experience tremendous improvement and this could see a big leap forward for the solar power industry.

There is also something else that may still be sitting inside and it represents an identity risk to anyone who has unwittingly thrown them out. The hard drives of computers and personal devices may still contain data that can be recovered, representing a possible risk to you and your personal wealth or identity.

There are ways to retrieve data that has long been thought to have been removed or obliterated and with so many thousands of tons of equipment being dumped every year it is almost unthinkable that none of it contains personal or corporate information.

It means that before any computer is left out on the sidewalk for rubbish removal or taken to a recycling depot, the owner should have first gone through the proper methods of wiping the data. Are you sure that you know how to do this? I’m not sure that I am a hundred percent sure myself.

Recently in Australia it was revealed by a television program on the SBS network that Australian e-waste that was being dumped in Ghana could be presenting data management issues for companies and individuals in Australia. The program demonstrated exactly how the data recovery process could take place.

The idea that sending out old electronic equipment for dismantling in a way that would be environmentally friendly is now representing a security and financial risk means that fewer people are going to be inclined to do it in the future. It is not clear what the alternatives might be now that this potential danger has been revealed and more people become aware of it.

I guess opening up the computer and physically removing the hard drive and destroying it may be the sensible thing to do. The question then is, who here knows that what they are looking for when they open up a computer CPU?

His Ned Kelly Award wins were for Bad Debts in 1997, Shooting Star in 2000, Dead Point in 2001, White Dog in 2003 and The Broken Shore in 2006. The Broken Shore would have to be considered his most highly acclaimed work to date having taken out the Ned Kelly Award, the Duncan Lawrie Dagger, The Miles Franklin Award, the Colin Roderick Award and also the Australian Book Industry Awards as the Australian General Fiction Book of the Year.

It’s an impressive list of awards and the books have been deserving winners. Four of his books make up the Jack Irish series that features a Melbourne based lawyer with a few unusual sideline interests. The strength of each book lies in the way in which Temple captures the mood of his characters and helps the reader deeply identify with each. His ability, too, to put the reader right in the location to provide a greater sense of understanding is also a strength that is appreciated more at the end of the story than during.

The Peter Temple books should be savoured slowly to gain a true appreciation of what is going on. In some cases this is a necessity just to keep up with where the story is headed with plotting that demands something from the reader.

The full list of Peter Temple novels

Jack Irish series – Bad Debts, Black Tide, Dead Point, White Dog

Non-series – An Iron Rose, Shooting Star, In the Evil Day, The Broken Shore, Truth

Although The Broken Shore and Truth are listed as non-series books they do have a small overlap with a minor connection between the main character in The Broken Shore being referenced in Truth.

If you wish to get a taste of some of the best Australian crime fiction available you should make a point of finding the Peter Temple novels and take your time while enjoying them.