Saw "Children of Men" yesterday. I can't remember the last time I saw a science fiction movie that hit so depressingly close to home.

The premise of the movie is that its 2038, and no one has been able to have children for 18 years.

With no visible future, the world is falling apart, and modern science cannot do anything to solve the problem.

Not surprisingly from this description the original book was religious in its tone and message.

Have a person left on your list that already has everything?

Why not give them a gift certificate to make a donation to a small entrepreneur in the developing world.

www.kiva.org let's you pick a project that appeals to you in a country of your choice.

Kiva brings microcredit to the masses

Muhammed Yunus won the Nobel prize this year for coming up with the concept of microcredit in his native country of Bangledesh.

I have been really good, and have avoided spending a lot of money lately, so the Christmas challenge posts have been few and far between.

Today I had lunch at Subway which happens at least every couple of weeks, and usually more often.

Anyone who has read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser has heard that Subway functions on a kill or be killed franchise model where owners are encouraged to cut corners and saturate an area with as many restaurants as possible.

The always-entertaining editors at GRISThave put together a list of sources for bio-fuel that you wouldn't expect.

Seeing cannabis wasn't a surprise, but who knew that dead cats and greasy pizza boxes could run your car?

So think twice before throwing away that pizza box or driving past that roadkill..

Many of you may already know that I am a web developer in "real life". We use a popular content management system at work that is open source and developed by a very active community.

On http://www.drupal.org I noticed a link to a post by Nick Lewis entitled "Try Explaining This to and MBA". This of course caught my attention and I followed the link.

What followed was an explanation of the recent mini-controversy in the Drupal community regarding the use of a new theme developed for a yet-to-be-released version of Drupal being ported to another CMS.

Welcome to Conscious Geek - your guide to living a conscious life in an electronic world.

Some people may think that there is a disconnect between nature and the electronic life, but this isn't as true as you would think. I hope to create a guide documenting my own attempts to cross the divide

Conscious Geek will focus on, open-source new forms of community and communication, recycling, organic living, and any other items that bridge the gap between the natural world and the world of technology.

Wednesday evening spent wandering the aisles of Stop and Shop. Its a huge store with pretty much any kind of food you can think of.

Last week we bought the re-usable grocery bags that the store is promoting, but forgot to bring them this time. Rhode Island is one of the only states in the country that lets you recycle grocery bags, but its still better to have something re-usable. The problem is that when you get in the habit of having something handed to you for free its hard to go out of your own way to use another option.

So far so good, haven't bought anything, but just paid the gas bill.

90 dollars and its only now starting to get cold. There are a bunch of conspiracy theories saying that Bush got gas prices lowered for the election. If you look at the numbers prices dropped up until the election and have gone up ever since. I don't really feel like its a conspiracy, more likely rich oil barons keeping prices low because Bush and his friends being in power is good for them. And people say I'm cynical...

As a kickoff for Conscious Geek I am issuing myself a challenge. I am going to analyze every item I purchase during the rest of December (excluding top secret Christmas Gifts) for it's impact on the environment and wider world.

In order to make this more interesting than a list I am going to research the companies, supply chains, and everything else involved in getting the item in my hot little hands.

My hope is that by forcing myself to look critically at everything I buy I will come to a better realization about the real impact of my consumption.