For all the strangeness I’ve seen down here, one of the funniest ones is this guy who I call The Mad Printer.

The Mad Printer was discovered at Lion’s Coffee in Mission Valley. He started out like any other web surfer in a coffeeshop. He was posted up by the window with his laptop, quietly perusing the intarwebz, minding his own business. He was there for about 45 minutes before he disappeared to his car and returned with a large printer box. He proceeded to remove from this box a color inkjet printer and paper. He sets up the printer on a chair next to, plugs it in, loads some paper, and starts printing out email from Yahoo (not that I was looking at his screen or anything).

Coming to a coffeeshop with the intent to print things is, in my opinion, simply odd to begin with. Are there not better places to go? Aren’t you a bit embarrassed to have that complex of a set-up in a public place? Aren’t you scared someone is going to kick out a plug or bump into it? Not this guy, he was merrily printing away.

After I got over how silly this seemed, I went about my business writing a few blog posts. After another half-hour, however, I realized that this printer had been going full-bore that whole time and he had racked up a formidable stack of printed paper. This began to distract me as I wondered just how long it would continue.

In the end, this thing was printing continually for over an hour. At an average of about 20 pages per minute (guess), that’s over 1,200 pages of printed material… all from this guy’s email account. Part-way through, he abandoned his set-up to walk across the parking lot to the Staples and buy another ream of paper.

The environmentalist in me was furious, the financial advisor in me was dumb-founded, and the hater in me though this guy was out of his mind so I took pics and here they are.

A few tips for printing out material using less paper and less ink:

• Check out a  Print Preview before you fire up your printer. More often than not, there are pages at the beginning or end of your document that you can choose to not print. Watch out for blog posts in particular; sometimes you end up with page after page of comments you weren’t going to read in the first place.
• Try copying the text you want to read and pasting it into a word processor. Adjust the text size down if you can, remove images you don’t need, and shrink the margins. I’ve cut document sizes in half or more using this method which is a good thing to do if you’re talking about 10 pages or more.
• After you’ve chosen the Print option, click the Properties button and print two pages per sheet. This cuts the document and print time in half. If your printer is capable, also print on the front and back; this will also halve the number of sheets of paper you’re using.

Don’t be a Mad Printer. Print Smart.

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* Designed using recyclable aluminum and bamboo
* bamboo is steamed press using water only. No harsh chemicals or wood varnish are used.
* The aluminum enclosure is 100% recyclable
* Simplified eco-friendly package contains just the bare essentials to reduce waste
* No extra bags or inserts; the user guide is printed on the inside of the box and is also digitally stored on the drive
* Retail box corrugate is 100% recyclable
* Master carton is 100% recycled post-consumer content
* Protective external drive end caps are 100% recycled newspaper
* Energy-efficient design reduces carbon impact
* Energy Star® Level 4-qualified power adapter offering up to 10% power efficiency improvement over our current model, and up to 30% greater power savings over non-Energy Star adapters

The list goes on and on… but that’s undeniably a good thing.

I do a lot to make sure my footprint is low and part of that is driven by conscious consumer product purchases. I’m not perfect but I try to research what I buy to make sure I’m not doing any unnecessary harm.

Taming your technology has to do, in part, with not affecting others. Wasting energy to fulfill your techno-fantasies is on-par with taking a 45-minute shower everyday. You have to ask yourself, is it really THAT enjoyable?

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In the meantime, a photo of what I do in my spare time… recycle. This time, electronics:

Part of taming your technology is making sure that you deal with it responsibly. I found an e-waste even on-line and took a whole mess of monitors from the software company I’m working with. Electronic waste is a big problem; make as little of it as possible and, what you do make, get rid of it responsibly too. Here are a few resources for those of your in San Diego:

San Diego Waste Management can pick some of it up.

Have newer, usable electronics? Check out Costco; they’ll pay you for certain items.

Recycle San Diego gives a few free events and it looks like it is kept up to date. Plus they have this awesome hard-drive crushing video:

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[Kenichi] Horie completed a 110-day solo trans-Pacific voyage in a boat propelled only by the power of waves — to claim another first in the world. The 9.5 metre (31-foot) boat is equipped with two special fins at the front which can move like a dolphin’s tail each time the vessel rises or falls with the rhythm of the waves. Horie first made world headlines in 1962 when, at the age of 23, he became the first person to sail solo across the Pacific. His projects have included sailing boats that rely on a single solar battery or are made from recycled materials.

(Image from Latitude 38)

How fantastic is that?

I, for one, love the idea of sailing across the Pacific. It sounds unbelievably scary but what a feel of accomplishment at the finish. On top of that, uber-green sea-faring vessels are a must at this point. Our oceans are a critical piece of the entire biosphere and the damage that is being done to them is really deplorable.

Between wave power,sail power, and solar power, I don’t know why there is not a bigger push towards environmental mandates for pleasure/cruising boats. Part of taming technology is making sure that your technology is not a detriment to other parts of the biosphere. It’s hard to put a restriction on international trade (and transportation) but what about cruise liners? Personal watercraft? Mega-yachts? Why not place some stringent CAFE-type standards on any of those industries.

It would be a step in the right direction to say the least…

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