This is doing the rounds at the moment, as part of a post on Gizmodo entitled 10 Gadgets That Have No Business Using a Jet Engine.

The portaloo is the highpoint, because of all the vehicles on display it’s the one least-suited to any form of propulsion, let alone jet-power.

But Joel King reaching 112mph on a rocket-propelled luge - pretty much a big skateboard - comes a close second.

This was the stunt favoured by WaterAid campaigners in Brighton this weekend as passing children were recruited to “throw a poo and get a badge”.

This was overwhelming enough for some of the younger participants. But it was the commentary of the most stern-faced campaigner that had them even more bemused.

“Did you have a nice poo or wee this morning?” he asked, to a response of slightly unsure head-nods. “Did you have to go in the garden? Can you imagine if you had to go in the garden?”

No, I didn’t go in the garden; don’t make me go in the garden; mum I don’t have to go in the garden do I?…Their eyes seemed to say as they backed away. All in all, a slightly odd, but well meant, awareness-raising exercise.

Thankfully, the charity’s recent national awareness and fundraising campaign is a bit more mainstream. Last week, festival-favourites Hunter wellies, customised by celebrities at Glastonbury, went to charity auction on eBay. Some got a bit more creative than others, with KT Tunstall’s and The View’s efforts particularly impressive. And many other big names, including Kate Moss, Jay-Z and Amy Winehouse also made their mark on the wellies.

With bids still reasonable, being the coolest camper at next year’s festivals may not cost you the earth. But with all money from the auction going to help communities gain access to safe water in villages and schools in rural Madagascar, you can easily justify splashing out.

And if you can’t get your hands on a signed pair, limited edition WaterAid wellies are also for sale on the Hunter website, with a £50 donation from the purchase going to the charity.

IMAGE by Flickr user Kyknoord

My first (internal) reaction was: who do you think you are, Travis?

Surely this kind of claim is self-pitying nonsense of the first order? You know the kind: “I only get two days off at the weekend. And it always rains. And I feel tired. And I’ve got a bad leg,” etc etc.

Come off it, I thought. Get over yourself. Then he said the magic words: “It was on QI”.

Invoking Stephen Fry in these matters is, for me, an instant winner. Because Stephen Fry does not tolerate nonsense. It’s why I (and more than 6,000 others) are members of the Facebook group If Stephen Fry says it, then it must be true.

So when I Googled “more rain on Saturdays” or something similar, apart from zillions of unremarkable forecasts referring to “rain” and “Saturdays”, I did indeed get results of a non-wacky variety referring to the phenomenon.

Evidence for it was put forward ten years ago, by a team at Arizona State University. They found that, on the Atlantic Coast of the US, it was 22% more likely to rain on a Saturday than on a Monday.

The theory is this: the high levels of traffic and industrial activity on weekdays throws up more heat and pollution into the atmosphere, so by the time the weekend arrives there’s a higher chance that rain will be triggered.

As far as I can see, similar research hasn’t been done this side of the Atlantic. So I’m still suspicious that the Great British propensity to moan about the weather may have a strong role to play.

But if the climatologists’ theory is true, isn’t it (yet) another reason for us to get our emissions under control?

IMAGE by Flickr user Daniele Butera

The construction industry is currently responsible for 90 million tonnes of waste every year - approximately 20% of all UK waste - and around 12% of material on building sites goes to landfill.

The problem is that if, for example, builders have half a crate of bricks left over from a job, they can’t send them back to the manufacturer.

But an innovative website now offers builders the chance to share the waste material love with fellow workmen. Builderscrap.com allows users to upload photos and details of left-over building supplies via their phone or computer. Other users in the area can then go and pick up the materials free of charge or for an agreed price. And as the service helps cut down on skip hire and landfill tax costs, as well as helping to reduce the amount of useful building materials ending their life in landfill, everybody wins.

As testament to the innovation of its eco-minded creators, the website recently won a bronze Green Apple Award for environmental best practice.

Another alternative to wasting perfectly good building materials or buying new are Building Material Re-use Centres (BMRC) or ‘restores’. The stores, which offer cut-price reclaimed building products to builders and the general public, already run successfully in America and Canada. And this year independent environmental organisation Bioregional looked to bring the concept to the UK by creating a toolkit for entrepreneurs to set up their own restores around the country. 

So put down your cuppa and grab a builders’ bargain!

IMAGE by Flickr user nicdafis

But how different from yesterday’s experience.

Because my second week kicked itself off with a dispiriting repetition on my so-called “intelligent” scales of both my weight (accurate to a fifth of a pound with last week’s measurement while I was still riding those stuffy, fugged-up buses) and my BMI (still 27, I’m afraid - and still I can’t believe that I’m, technically, a bit lardy).

More than this, though, 8am on Monday morning isn’t the best time to be confronting a diluvian onslaught. Luckily, where I live is pretty hilly, and is therefore immune to flooding. But as I looked out of the window at midnight on Sunday evening and saw rain literally falling up the hill, I knew the beginning of my week was going to be unpleasant.

Within half a mile of home my trousers were sticking to me and my new hiking boots were soaked through (confirming my suspicions that they were on the trendy side of the hill-walking spectrum). I dried out just in time for the rain-drenched walk home uphill.

Still, even as I walked through the disgusting weather, it was gratifying to see everyone else suffering in their own way.

Traffic is always busier in the wet, with more cars fighting over the same narrow strips of tarmac, clogging up the junctions of the hapless road system. Why this should be, I can never understand. When the sun is out, it’s not as if the suburban pavements are clogged with people foregoing their commute by car to jostle, elbow to elbow, on the way to work.

Where do these extra people come from? I’m convinced the rain actively brings people out in their cars who would otherwise be hiding under stones - a secret brotherhood who simply enjoy adding to the misery of rush hour drivers. It’s the only explanation.

Anyway, whatever the reason, it means that walkers splashing along the pavements can enjoy getting one over on the drivers who have to sit in even longer traffic jams than normal.

When it rains, the net effect is I’m even quicker than I would have been sitting on the bus, I tell myself. And six days walked equals £21 saved on bus fares.

Put another way, that is a deliciously guilt-free coffee and cookie each day. If all else fails and the scales refuse to behave, I can at least justify it to myself in this way. The rest of the commuting world can fall into chaos; après moi, le deluge.

IMAGE by Flickr user Per Ola Wiberg

We have a gas cooker. I had to find some matches to light it as the ignition is electrically powered, but no problem to boil water for my cuppa in a pan on the cooker. I ate my cereal by candlelight. Went up to the bathroom, got into the shower, turned it on. Yelped. Jumped back out. Gas central heating… but obviously some kind of electrical circuit board in the boiler… no hot water.

I was no longer finding the experience romantic.

I started wondering how long the power cut would last. Couldn’t turn on the radio or search the internet to find out. I stomped out the door, still shivering after my cold shower and wondering what state the freezer would be in if the power stayed off all day.

At the top of my street I stood as usual at the bus stop. But I had a really interesting sight to occupy me as I waited in the rain for the number 28. The traffic lights at the crossroads were also affected by the powercut. You’d have thought there’d be chaos and queues at what is a busy intersection. But on the contrary, the traffic seemed to flow just fine. People were actually using their indicators for once! There were a couple of toots on horns, but people generally took it in turns without confusion.

And more interesting still, pedestrians were treated with respect too. In the absence of a greater organising authority, people slowed down a little and worked it out between themselves. It reminded me of a number of projects I’ve read about recently that seek to take down street furniture like traffic lights, barriers and even pavements - creating a shared space that pedestrians, cyclists and motorists have to negotiate between themselves.

There have been surprisingly positive results. It’s not as simple as just removing traffic lights and signposts. Careful work goes into making it clear to drivers and pedestrians that they are sharing the road, by for example having no kerb - so pavement and road are at the same height. Simon blogged about some of these schemes a while back here on Living if you’d like to find out more.

You’ll be pleased to hear that I didn’t get home to find a freezer full of soggy food. Looks like power came back on a couple of hours later.

IMAGE by Flickr user RedEyedRex

I wouldn’t normally mind. Rain’s far more interesting than interminable grey skies, and every drop we get now reduces the likelihood of a hose pipe ban next summer, but I have a problem just at the moment - my roof leaks.

When the skies open, water rolls off the slates into a couple of gutters that run the length of my flat. In theory, it should merrily babble along them before dropping out of sight into a gutter. In reality, a small amount makes it through the worn weatherproofing and into my loft.

Anyone who’s lived in flats will know that, with several neighbours to coordinate, building repairs don’t always happen quickly. Which means that on days like today, when a coastal gale drives tanker loads of water inland, people with leaky roofs can only sit nervously in the office, hoping that they’ll still have ceilings when they get home.

IMAGE by Flickr user madalena-pestana

Well, I’m changing my perspective. My current customer champion is Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. Mrs Reding has been driving through new regulation for cross border mobile phone use (known in the trade as roaming).

A couple of weekends ago I really noticed the difference.

I visited friends in Seville in Spain. I lived there for several months last year. At that point Mrs Reding’s new EU regulations on the cost of roaming hadn’t come into effect. Typically I paid around 75p a minute to recieve calls and £1 to make them using my UK mobile in Spain. (I ended up buying a local Spanish SIM card in the end which worked out much cheaper.)

When the new legislation was introduced late last year, there was all sorts of noise from the UK mobile operators about how regulating markets was a bad. They argued that competition itself is enough to keep prices low. What’s more the UK government was on the side of the mobile operators too.

What a load of rubbish…

Last weekend I made and received calls in Seville using my UK mobile for a fraction of what it would have cost a year or so ago. And there is no way that this would be the case without the EU legislation and Mrs Reding’s determination to push it through despite the lobbying and spin from the industry. As defined in the EU directive I also got a text message when I turned on my mobile in Spain telling me the costs I would incur. So I knew exactly how much calls would cost.

And the result?

Confident that the calls themselves weren’t much more than I’d be paying back home, I used my mobile far more. Instead of spending less, I reckon I spent more. So there you go… EU Regulation can work. And maybe not just for consumers, but even the whinging operators desperate to protect their high margins at the expense of innovation and genuine customer-centred products and services.

Next on Mrs Reding’s list - text messages.

Who’d have thought it? Finding something good to say about EU regulation.

IMAGE by Flickr user visualpanic

But this piece of news, which broke earlier this week, just has to be revisited. It concerns what remarkable discovery in renewable fuels, and who’d have guessed? It grows on trees.

Biofuels, as has become increasingly obvious, are not a neat answer to our energy problems. There are some very promising ones - particularly fuels produced by algae and switchgrass - and perhaps their development may have be fast-tracked by America’s new president-elect. But still, they require a lot in, in terms of equipment and energy, before you get much out.

So the discovery of a fungus in the Patagonian jungle which naturally emits something closely resembling diesel is potentially game-changing.

The fungus, Gliocladium roseum, was found in between plant cells. In low levels of oxygen, it appears to break down cellulose to directly produce a diesel-like brew of compounds - a process unknown elsewhere in biology.

It was discovered by a team led by Gary Strobel, a microbiologist at Montana  State University. He previously discovered a fungus containing the breakthrough cancer drug taxol, but this find could be even more significant.

“I would guess the gas mixture itself would be adequate to run an engine,” he told New Scientist.

The potential ramifications are huge. Strobel suggests it even questions the accepted theory that fossil fuels are produced entirely by sustained heat and pressure on organic material. Perhaps the process is in fact in its early stages in living rainforests all over the world, catalysed by fungi.

As usual, it’s unlikely that we’ll be seeing the impact of this on our daily lives for some time to come.

But remember that word ‘myco-diesel’. It could be a grower.

I’m either just slow-witted, or I’ve been exhibiting the same reluctance to believe good news that left me staring dumbstruck at the telly on Sunday evening, simply unable to believe that Lewis Hamilton had actually crossed the line in fifth place and won the 2008 F1 drivers’ championship by a single point. The BBC’s footage of Damon Hill watching at Silverstone suggested I wasn’t alone.

So, America has elected its first African American president - a historic and important result whatever your politics. The current incumbent is on his way out, but the changeover doesn’t happen like it does here. While we push our prime ministers from high office to high dudgeon, literally overnight, Obama is president-elect until 20 January 2009 - leaving George W Bush ample time yet to cancel the milk and arrange to have his post redirected.