Doing Google searches, and browsing through people’s blogrolls can only take me so far. If you have a blog about Tampa drop me a line, or leave a comment with the URL. If you live in Tampa or the surrounding area and you blog, but not necessarily about Tampa, ditto. And, if you read a blog that is by or about Tampa or Central West Florida, let me know.

Thanks!

The gift-giving season is just around the corner. If you’re planning on buying some books as gifts consider starting at one of the Amazon links to your right. It won’t cost you anything extra and Amazon will cut me in on the sell. This blog empire made me $3 in October, and with your help I can double that in November!

Thanks to everyone who continues reading and sending in suggestions.

Just a reminder - the St. Pete Times keeps blog about green/energy issues called The Fueling Station.

The Tampa Bay Business Journal has this brief article about the Urban Charrette.

“Volunteer professionals are expected to collaborate with Tampa community leaders beginning Nov. 12 for Tampa’s Urban Charrette, designed to help developer recommendations on creating a better neighborhood planning framework.”

But, you know what? It’s really, really hard to find information about The Urban Charrette. A visit to their website shows a total of two links, one to Tampa’s Sustainable Future, and another to Ecolution Tampa, which hasn’t been updated in months.

Tampa’s Sustainable Future (aka Sustainable Design Assessment Team or SDAT) at least has a Ning site (a social networking site) and a blog. But it’s infrequently updated. From reading their site it’s not really clear to me who they are, what they want, or how they plan on achieving their goals.

“SDAT is a community assistance program that brings a team of volunteer professionals to work with local decision-makers and stakeholders.”

Anyway, if I want to learn more I suppose I’ll attend the public workshop next Wednesday, November 12. You can learn a little more here. There are email contacts as well.

TJP just pointed out to me that Google Maps has a beta “walking directions” feature. Not only does it provide you with a map, like the regular directions feature, but it also gives you an estimate of the time it would take.

For a few months now, in a effort to not spend every single moment of my life in front of a computer, I’ve begun walking around the neighborhood. I just mapped out my route, and it jibes with my experience. My route is about a mile and a half and takes about 25 minutes. Google says a mile and a half and that I can walk it in 24 minutes.

You can find this function when you use the “get directions” link.

There’s also a “public transit” link. One of my co-workers, who is a dedicated bus rider, mentioned the other day that he uses this link all the time and that he likes it better than the info he gets from HART.

UPDATE - Kathy from HART writes to clarify the point I made above. The info from HART and the info from Google is the same. What he likes is the interface, because he uses many of the Google products (gmail, google docs, google calendar, etc.). Thanks, Kathy!

“One thing I wanted to point out re: the information from Google. HART worked with Google to produce the Google Transit piece, and has a link to the Google Transit site on our website. So essentially, the information there IS coming from HART.

“We have a partnership with Google whereby we provide them detailed information about our service for the Google Transit program so our customers can easily access it. It’s very easy! You just type in your beginning and ending locations, the time you want to arrive (or leave), and Google Transit will tell you what route or routes will take you there, what time to be at the bus stop - even where the nearest bus stop is to you.”

(Thanks, TJP!)

This 1-hour (or so) documentary (Toxic - Garbage Island) is about Garbage Island aka the Pacific Garbage Patch. It’s a 12-part series, embedded is part one. Check out the site for a larger hi-def version, and the other 11 episodes.

Bisphenol A, a chemical used to build some plastics, has been found in over 90 percent of Americans tested. You are plastic.

“Needless to say this whole journey ended up overturning my expectations about the Garbage Patch, as well as just about every misconception I’ve ever held about the sea, environmentalism, consumption, barfing, knots, pollution, humanity, and myself. After absorbing the myriad dangers of our plastic-heavy lifestyles for three weeks, I’m now a proud, carbon-conscious “Earth Warrior” who yells at grocery clerks for double-bagging my produce and carries around one of those 70s gunnysacks to drink out of. Just kidding, although the trip did lead me to ferret out a group of non-hippie environmentalists who you can read about here. I also finally got into Earth Crisis. Pretty decent.”

For every dollar Americans are spending on the Wall Street bailout, excuse me, rescue package, one ton of PCB plastic is produced. 700 billion tons a year. It is non-recyclable. It ends up in the earth and in the ocean.

Go straight to part 9 to see their introduction to the garbage patch.

Here’s a 5-minute interview with Dr. Vom Saal explaining the effects of Bisphenol A.

Wikia Green has over 700 articles. Drop by and add your own.

This isn’t quite the arborsculpture I’ve mentioned before, but it’s really lovely public art. I would love to see a few bus stops made in Patrick Dougherty’s stickwork style.

I love benches. I think a key element to a having a more walkable city is to have benches everywhere. They’re also a great way to introduce some whimsical design into the city. I don’t know if the bench below is very practical in Tampa. Even if kept out of the rain the ambient humidity would probably destroy it over the course of a summer. Nonetheless, I’m curious how they are built. How do you think this bench is built?

“334.
First furniture of the “X days project” series. The concept of it is to reuse the free newspapers we get in the street. Make your own piece of furniture by collecting day by day the free papers. The “334” bench is made of 3 parallel bars of metal and 334 newspapers folded and stacked next to each other. The challenge of that series is to recycle a product, but also to design a furniture without using any screw, glue, soldering, etc. Because of the large number of newspapers stacked in the 3 bars, the whole structure is very strong and can support more than 5 persons. The “334” bench costed around 5 pounds.”

Here’s a link to a collection of cool bench designs.