Preventing Jams: Contradictory Constraints

Recently (okay, a couple weeks ago) after leaving my reprap printing while out buying food, I came home to find this calamity:

Extruder body print ended with some wispy filament and then a big gap of nothing.

Series Heating and Other Developments

After a long break spent graduating, moving furniture into/around our flat, and lots of other such messing around, I finally got around to permanently solving my heated printbed problem, while getting a sturdy desk to set the printer on.

First of all, I had a problem with the way my heated-bed power-supply was connected, as the circuit was fixed with solder, that meant that the adapter block was physically connected to my reprap by its cable, and that I couldn't easily change it for another power supply.
My solution to the problem of wanting to quickly connect/disconnect a DC power supply was to take some bits of electrical screw-terminal:

sometimes referred to as a 'chocolate block' connector, cheap in long blocks

...and bolt it to one of Nicoll's bolted PLA bushings for Prusa Mendel.

On Small-Scale Plastic Recycling

While struggling through my last exams ever this week, I've been coming down with a fever, so I hope this blag makes sense, as I can't concentrate on much else right now.

Continuing along my previous train of thought (A Mission Statement), I've been considering how one might best go about recycling such sometimes 'non-recyclable' recyclable plastic bits as small bottle caps, yoghurt pots, or some of the chunkier waste material produced by failed prints.